Nassim Taleb . . . and Alasdair MacIntyre

The test of originality for an idea is not the absence of one single predecessor but the presence of multiple but incompatible ones.--Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in The Bed of Procrustes

Although I do not know for certain, Taleb has probably never read MacIntyre. His latest book is a book of aphorisms, of which I have read only the beginning. This is in itself interesting, because, as one commenter pointed out on the web, "by creating a book of aphorisms he is echoing a point made by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue, that the best social scientists can hope to come up with is aphorisms, a la Machiavelli."

Scepticism about social science asside, this is an excellent aphorism--pithy and true.

Human reason, as reader's of MacIntyre know, depends on tradition to work. It doesn't start unless the language of other people jump-start it; its proper functioning depends on the validity of the labels and names handed down to it; it never escapes to a geometric realm where it knows with certainty all its results are true. The framework within which one reasons might always, in theory, be shown to be false--although claiming that the framework is true requires one to hold that it could not be shown to be false.

If human reason is so bounded by tradition, then the best sign of a new idea is not that it is new. As someone said, "Some look at things that are and ask, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'" And as someone responded, "Probably for a damn good reason." A totally new idea is probably cruddy.

But an idea that takes elements from two traditions that previously were opposed, and reconciles them, and preserves what is good in their particularity, and increases their universality--although they still remain particular--that is a brilliant idea.