METAPHYSICS AND DISCIPLINARY CARAVANS

Metaphysics is a term which has a long and chequered history.

However, I believe that there are greater needs now, than ever before
for inquiries, call them 'quasi-generalist studies'('metaphysics' is too arcane).

How disciplines 'play together', among or across fields of specialties, borrowed or mistaken or misrepresented or missed analogies, imitations from other disciplines, are some kinds of areas modern 'metaphysics' might scrutinize from 'generalist', a distanced, and/or comparativist perspectives, scrutinized for different kinds of things, such as consistency, compatibility, etc.

(The various scrutinies of metaphysics are not necessarily 'close scrutiny';'beware' the 'hot breath' of close scrutiny; this aside for the lawyers, jurists, 'Rumpoles',and 'Bullinghams' out there.)

In this world, of one kind of expert or representative relying on other kinds of experts, or groups of them, of many kinds; and relying on them, in most cases, by 'definition', blindly, or almost so, or in constellated ensembles which result in obfuscation; these scenarios can have, have had, and will continue to have, incalculable consequences.

That persons so relying may have power, influence, or authority over, the experts of all kinds whose opinions they propound or rely on, is additional cause for concern about whole systems of such acumen.

The creation of mortgage backed securities, and securitization generally, are current examples of these types of phenomena, where various areas of real estate, contracts, secured transactions law, creditors' and debtors' rights, securities industry practices, brokerage, rating agency, marketing, finance, etc., were harnessed, ad hoc.

Many well intentioned, and some not so well intentioned, people, from different fields, collaborated, fought,earned a living, gave advice, did research of all kinds, to put together, market, and administer, these flawed complex groups of instruments.

What inconsistencies existed among the various topics and fields, hitched to the securitization wagon, that were trampled? Was it 'just greed' 'driving the train', an easy conclusion to reach, or weren't other issues, 'problems of method', also running around there?

(See, re ideas hitched to certain wagons, for example, Roger Hargrave, "Undercover agents", re the history, and attributions, of old stringed instruments.)

MORE GENERALLY, (You generally won't see anything like this at The Stone)

'History' (itself a discipline with 'specialties', its own historiography, including analogies, imitations, etc., from other fields along the way) has itself been subject to similar forces, harnessed to certain wagons, sometimes alone, sometimes in 'disciplinary caravans', so to speak.

More generally, the histories of many fields are literally 'littered' with examples of the kinds of thing I am talking about.

Here, for example, one might think of such things as Collingwood says re Kant's analytic and the history of science, a struggle Collingwood sees partly between Platonism and Aristotelianism, which Kant had not appreciated, (each according to Collingwood, modified through European history), but based at first on conflicting, or at least mutually exclusive 'analogies', each 'absolute presuppositions'(?), from ancient Greek 'fields' of biology, and mathematics.