Culture, unlike science, can always revisit superseded conventions for value
Evidence
The best artworks possess a depth and “strangeness” that delight and resonate, no matter the generation. “A work is eternal,” writes the literary theorist Roland Barthes, “not because it imposes a single meaning on different men, but because it suggests different meanings to a single man, speaking the same symbolic language in all ages: the work proposes, man disposes.” This is only possible, however, because cultural innovation is not the same as technological innovation. Science may twist and turn but marches forward over time. The arbitrariness of culture means we can always hop from one convention to another, and this includes returning to what came before. We can rediscover the joys of a failed German disco pop single from the 1970s or turn its hook into a new composition. By comparison, superseded scientific knowledge, such as the “four humours” of the body or “luminiferous aether,” is useless as practical instruction. Historical value exists precisely because the past can be a viable cultural guide for the present. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 685
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to debates in philosophy of science vs cultural progress and to the earlier contrast between technological convenience and cultural taste drives. — connects to: Cultural stasis may be the historical norm, not the exception. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 798; Retro revivals genuinely diversify present-day cultural understanding — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 680; Cultural stagnation can be reversed by choosing new norms and values — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 38 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Cultural stagnation can be reversed by choosing new norms and values
#expands(0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 38 - Past philosophical systems remain historically valid even after being superseded
#corroborates(0.82) - Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined
#corroborates(0.78)