Event and Milieu :: Language Sociology Essays

Event and MilieuABSTRACT I consider how the notion of fact is used in such important branches of twentieth-century thought as relativity, quantum mechanics, Marxist sociology and psychoanalysis. I show that in each case in that location is the same concept of event as of a series of communications. It is overly shown that this new concept of event corresponds to traditional concepts of historical events. I fail the difference betwixt the concept of event and that of fact. Since a fact presupposes an extraneous observer it is im practical to deal with an event without being involved in it. Since a fact presupposes its permanent logical form as a necessary condition of association about it, any condition of knowledge about an event appears to be empirical itself. I show that the component part between history and prehistory has the same basis as that between event and fact. The crucial disbelief is how knowledge about an event is possible. The line is that the concept of iden tity applicable to fact appears to be inapplicable to event. However, it appears possible to define an identity of event with an identity of media or places of communication. An open organization of such places we call milieu. A language is a paradigm for it. However, I suppose that unlike the linguistic paradigm, the paradigm of milieu should refute the conception of the exceptional status of human language. The notion of event became to play a basic role in science with such revolutionary carnal theories as relativity and quantum mechanics. Today the notion of event is widely employ also in synergetic. To make clear the importance of the notion of event for sociology and psychology of 20-th century it is enough to name such a recognise figures of the century as Marx and Freud. The notion of social even (revolution) is essential for Marxism as well as the notion of psychological event (childs trauma) for Freuds psychoanalysis. We cannot say that the notion of event was neglecte d by philosophers of our century Heidegger and Deleuze among others presented expand concepts of event. These concepts (which can not be analyzed here) however do not relate directly to science nor to knowledge in general. What is an event as a matter of knowledge remains beyond considerations of these authors. To answer to the question is the first purpose of this paper. The second purpose of the paper is to elaborate a notion of environment or milieu that as it is shown below appears to be correlative to that of event.