The relationship between particularity and generality

 
Hayot 56: "There is, in the study of this universe, no such thing as nomothetism. Everything is historical. There is only idiographism--only qualitative work, at different time spans, and on different scales. The felt difference between nomothetism and idiographism, the sciences and the humanities, therefore, has to do not with an orientation toward the particular or the general as such, but rather with the relationship between particularity and generality--with analytic scale--as it is established in each discipline's rhetoric and practice of knowledge-formation"
 
Compelling, though Hayot is quick to note that "[a]lmost no one thinks this way" (also 56)

> from Eric Hayot's Humanist Reason: A History. An Argument. A Plan. (2021)

> tagged with #knowledge

> created August 26, 2026 at 6:43:32 PM


> part of unfinished everything


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