Explanation in Composition: Gertrude Stein and the Contingency of Inductive Reasoning

Abstract

Gertrude Stein’s experimental and more widely-read poetry, fiction, and lectures participate in a philosophical conversation about explanation. Her novel Q.E.D ., her poem “An Elucidation,” and her lecture “Composition as Explanation,” show how Stein theorizes the possibility and the problems of explaining based on inductive reasoning. Stein endorses inductive reasoning, using facts alone, as the basis of an explanation, although she is also aware that eschewing deductive reference to laws or theories means that any resulting explanations are necessarily more subjective and therefore more contingent. Understanding Stein’s philosophical ambitions allows readers to clarify, although not solve, her notorious difficulty; Stein’s work is difficult because she is writing about a difficult philosophical problem: when and how subjective experience may justify an explanation.