The Symbolic Forms... of Culinary Arts (and the Science of Food!)

As a quick note, it is interesting to consider the application of the philosophy of symbolic forms to the art (and science) of food preparation.  Just as all symbolic forms take shape based on the structure of human perception and thought, the culinary forms take shape from the structure of our perceptions of taste, appearance, odor and texture.  This intuitive, non-rational side is enhanced by a rational analysis of the food preparation itself.  The rational element of the culinary forms is scientific in terms of its consideration of chemistry, technique, and empirical/experimental evidence.  Indeed, there are schools in Paris where strictly rigorous scientific studies are being carried out for the sake of better understanding the possibilities various foods and techniques can offer the world of culinary arts.  There are studies which aim toward general principles, and there are still other approaches that concern themselves with the most particular event of the final dish, and all that leads up to it.  Rules and principles regarding technique (methodology) in the culinary arts/sciences are instances of a generalizing approach to knowledge, as are the principles of taste theory.  However, the essence of being a true artist in the kitchen is to have the confidence and trust in oneself to be spontaneous.  To create something entirely unique, to be enjoyed only once.  In the very impermanence of this art lays its true perfection of form.

The Fragmented Humanities: Picking up the Pieces

Whereas his contemporaries in the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism focused primarily on epistemology, logic, and mathematical physics (namely, in the service of the natural sciences), Cassirer stepped outside of these domains in order to deliver a unified theory that can account for both the natural sciences AND what he called the cultural sciences (Kulturwissenschaften). Unlike many of his contemporaries and predecessors since the enlightenment, Cassirer saw science as a whole to be vertically divided into the science of the world around us (natural sciences) and what are now called the humanities. The domain of Kulturwissenschaften includes the areas of anthropology, psychology, religion studies, history, art, philology, and so on.

Cassirer's concern was that while many were eager to give the natural sciences a unified structure and an underlying general theory, such was not the case for the Kulturwissenschaften. Many considered the studies carried out in this domain to be secondary and even illegitimate, mainly due to the lasting influence of Kant's critiques. For Kant, the only species of knowledge that is valid is empirical and strictly rational knowledge. Indeed, this view is not strictly Kantian: it is but an aspect of the naturalistic/mechanistic model that became prevalent during the enlightenment and has dominated scientific thought ever since. Providing a unified theory of knowledge for the sake of giving the natural sciences a legitimate structure and orientation has been one of the primary aims of post-enlightenment epistemology, and especially so for the Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism with which Cassirer is normally associated.

But the Kulturwissenschaften is a different story. In Cassirer's time most of the cultural sciences lacked the theoretical groundwork needed to connect the various fields of study into a unified system. Even now we see the effects of this in the structure of contemporary universities: the various fields of psychology, anthropology, history, literature studies and so on remain severed from each other, and the often praised but seldom practiced interdisciplinarity is but an academic buzzword. Cassirer understood that without providing this theoretical groundwork, not only would the Kulturwissenschaften remain fragmented within itself, it would also remain completely inaccessible to the natural sciences. Cassirer saw it as essential that these two sides of science proper be unified by a general theory, and that the endeavors of Kulturwissenschaften be recognized as equally legitimate. Cassirer's magnum opus, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, can be seen as his main attempt to provide such a unifying theory.

The primary text in which Cassirer considers the intellectual structure of the Kulturwissenschaften is his Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften: Fünf Studien, available in translation by S.G. Lofts from Yale University Press.

Cassirer also works out historically philosophy's failure to establish a unified structure of knowledge in the Fourth Volume of The Problem of Knowledge (Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der Neuren Zeit). Also available from Yale University Press, translated by William H. Woglom.

Cassirer, Ernst. The Logic of the Cultural Sciences: Five Studies. Trans. S.G. Lofts. New Haven: Yale U.P., 2000.

Cassirer, Ernst. The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History Since Hegel. Trans. William H. Woglom. New Haven: Yale U.P., 1969.