The Ordinary Universe: Soundings in Modern Literature

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each party's discourse is limited by its context does not at all tend to show that it is in any sense irrational or arbitrary. In so far as the suggested analogy with the philosophy of science holds, the Scheffler-type view must be sustained by Scheffler's arguments. But does the analogy hold? It is an essential point in Scheffler's argument that revolutionary systems in science tend to be more comprehensive than old systems, which they subsume. Nothing like this holds generally in critical discourse, though one could argue that it happens often to be true nowadays. More important, art critics lack the scientific commitment to rationality and responsibility; they are less rigid in denying themselves statements whose meaning and bearing are left vague. Finally and most important, the scientist's reality is given, in the plain sense that he has to take the world as he finds it, but art critics and historians can and do stipulate what is the reality to which their words refer. Everything that happens has to be part of the world, but not everything that is done has to be art. What makes a measure of rationality in art criticism possible is a consensus on the great range of what constitutes music or painting, and the consequent necessity of making whatever one says evidently applicable to the greater part of this range. This exercises some control over critical vagaries, but the control is immeasurably less stringent than that to which scientists submit.