Theory develops unevenly, paced by practical necessities rather than its own logic

Evidence

What I meant by theoretical gains was that the next kind of work that you feel able to do is done in a profoundly different way because you’ve had to wrestle with a new set of what I call conundra. You move within a different set of positions and with a set of conceptual insights which have emerged through what I metaphorically called struggling with the angels. I don’t know if that new work has any built-in guarantee that it’s better than the work you did before, quite often it’s not. I’m trying to represent the movement of theory, not from theorist to theorist or problematic to problematic, but from problem to … I don’t want to say solution because as soon as you get something which resolves a particular theoretical problem, you have instantly to recognize what it doesn’t do. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 268 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In serious, critical intellectual work, there are no “absolute beginnings” and few unbroken continuities. Neither the endless unwinding of “tradition,” so beloved in the History of Ideas, nor the absolutism of the “epistemological rupture,” punctuating Thought into its “false” and “correct” parts, once favored by the Althussereans, will do. What we find, instead, is an untidy but characteristic unevenness of development. What is important are the significant breaks —where old lines of thought are disrupted, older constellations displaced, and elements, old and new, are regrouped around a different set of premises and themes. Changes in a problematic do significantly transform the nature of the questions asked, the forms in which they are proposed, and the manner in which they can be adequately answered. Such shifts in perspective reflect, not only the results of an internal intellectual labor, but the manner in which real historical developments and transformations are appropriated in thought and provide Thought, not with its guarantee of “correctness” but with its fundamental orientations, its conditions of existence. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 180 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Theory is deployed strategically as bricolage rather than produced as autonomous object; Theoretical progress means gaining new problems, not resolving old ones — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 268; Intellectual change proceeds through uneven breaks rather than tradition or rupture — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 180 (+6 more)

Related

• Theoretical progress means gaining new problems, not resolving old ones (similarity 0.88)
• Intellectual change proceeds through uneven breaks rather than tradition or rupture (similarity 0.86)
• Intellectual history advances through uneven breaks, not traditions or clean ruptures (similarity 0.84)
• Intellectual paradigm shifts never completely break from prior positions. (similarity 0.81)
• Theoretical progress means gaining new expressive capacities, not approaching truth (similarity 0.81)
• Anomalies that disconfirm theory become prized scientific opportunities today (similarity 0.79)
• Social movements and historical conjunctures generate theoretical moments rather than merely consuming them (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Theoretical progress means gaining new problems, not resolving old ones #corroborates (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 268
• Intellectual change proceeds through uneven breaks rather than tradition or rupture #corroborates (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 180
• Sociology’s method-driven path has failed to deliver its Enlightenment promises #exemplifies (0.70)