Ernesto Grassi and Question 1

Grassi's critique of philosophers like Des Cartes and Kant speak to the reasons that composition studies do not fare well in academia. Grassi's critique focuses on the weaknesses of the scientific paradigm. Foss, Foss and Trapp explain Grassi in this way: "Grassi discusses various characteristics of the scientific paradigm, all of which he considers to be limitations of cience in terms of the knowing the world. The scientiric method seeks to discover first principles, yet it does not examine the source of such priniciples. In other words, knowledge exists within the boundaries of the system under examination, but no attempt is made to understand the origins of the system itself" (p. 55). Grassi (qtd in Foss, Foss, and Trapp) claims: "science is only applicable within th erange of a system based, in each field, on its own particular premises, and of course these premises cannot be proved because they form the system's own foundation" (p. 55).

The second problem for Grassi, according to Foss, Foss, and Trapp, is that scientific thought does not consider anything that cannot be generalized to the universe; there is no value in looking at specific cases for the sake of understanding the case only. Grassi (qtd in Foss, Foss and Trapp, p. 56)explains the problem as a "desperate effort of freeing oneself from relativity, from the subjectivity of what appears through the senses."

All of this leads to demoting/undervaluing the humanities, which Grassi explains is another limitation of the scientific paradigm. Any contribution offered by disciplines in the humanities is dismissed because, as Foss, Foss, and Trapp describe, "any discipline that is not grounded in logical processes is denigrated" (p. 56). Grassi explains that a scientific approach to the humanities is a "repudiation of history." Philology, art, and poetry face the same dilemma, and rhetoric "fars no better, because the passions impair the clairyt of though tand ocnsequently are not to be taken into account" (qtd. in Foss, Foss and Trapp, p. 56).

Foss, Foss, and Trapp: "Grassi seeks 'a proper appreciation of humanism's rejection of the rational' and devotes himself to showing how humanism, despite its domination by science, in fact offers perspectives not available to science" (p. 57).

All of this can be used in an argument that one of the primary reasons the field is under-valued is because of this mind set/epistemology.