The heuristic method revisted: The lasting impression of cézanne’s doubt

Running Head: WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION…

This conference paper has been edited into part two of a chapter

titled “Knowing versus Understanding” in the book Education in a

Postfactual World: From Knowing to Understanding (BrownWalker: 2018)

The heuristic method revisted: The lasting impression

of cézanne’s doubt

by PM Whitehead

2012 IHSRC, Montréal, CAN.

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 2

University of West Georgia, department of Psychology1601 Maple St.

Carrollton, GA., 30118

Abstract

While his embodied phenomenology has been eminently impactful in

the development of mind and body psychotherapeutic techniques,

Merleau-Ponty’s methodological theories—prefaced in Phenomenology

of Perception, later explicated in the unfinished papers of Visible and

the Invisible, and made evident by Dillon in Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology—

provide helpful insight into contemporary scientific inquiry.

The present paper compares the anticipated methodological

conclusions of Merleau-Ponty, as applied in his analyses of

Cézanne’s painting, with the heuristic method of Clark Moustakas.

Moustakas emphasizes the singularity of the co-researcher in the

experience and thus hopes to override thematic interpretations;

he emphasizes the timeless devotion and personal commitment to

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 3the phenomenon in question; and he admits a necessary leveling

down of phenomenal experience when meanings are “mutualized”

through the process of scientific inquiry. A similar engagement

with the world may be seen through the eyes of a painter, as

Merleau-Ponty tells of Cézanne, who attempts to express the

“insurpassable plenitude” of the world by transcending the

dualism presupposed by science, awakening the experience of the

consciousness of others, and by recognizing the infinitude of the

task.

In addition to providing an exemplar case, Merleau-Ponty’s

phenomenological description of Cézanne’s painting defends the

task and goal of the heuristic researcher.

Wandering through the county art show, I happened upon a

collection of oil renderings featuring a young girl of about

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 4five. I remember standing in the anonymous space between

exhibits, enveloped by these blond curls. They were alien to the

rest of the figures gathered about the canvas—living organisms

that had stowed away in a series of realist re-productions.

Given with their spectral image was a tactile quality; I could

feel the vivacity of their bounce in my open palm, their silken

texture between my fingers; the evening spring light inhabited

their glow. The rest of the painting stood in contrast. Sure,

it seemed pleasant enough—the kind that warrants a gilded frame

and geniality from guests, but the curls were going somewhere.

Intentionally or not, the painter seemed to have stumbled upon

something phenomenal. I patiently waited for the fascinating

event to reconcile itself—perhaps the curls would settle into

their two-dimensional thematized context of “girl in the spring

garden”, or maybe they would call forth their roots and rend from

the flatness a new world of being.

The artist addressed my peeping with shrewdness: “you must

be a painter; I can always tell a painter from the rest of the

visitors.” Like Sartre’s keyhole peeper, my consciousness

rescinded from the world of curls back into the body of a now-

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 5found-out graduate student situated conspicuously atop the

formerly anonymous square of grass in the greater county-art-

show-context. Torn between embellishing the few acrylic pieces I

had done in my youth on the one hand, and sharing with the artist

the kinship I see between painting and Merleau-Pontean

phenomenology on the other, I simply shrugged my shoulders and

replied: “not exactly.” Sheepishly, I ambled on, though

featuring a newfound appreciation for the fascination Merleau-

Ponty (1964; 2004) has expressed in Impressionist painting,

particularly that of Paul Cézanne; for example, he writes:

In the work of Cézanne… we encounter objects… that do

not pass quickly before our eyes in the guise of

objects we ‘know well’ but, on the contrary, hold our

gaze, ask questions of it, convey to it in a bizarre

fashion the very secret of their substance, the very

mode of their material existence and which, so to

speak, stand ‘bleeding’ before us. (1964, p. 69)

The engagement of artist with her model, landscape, or

still-life has been shown to have a kinship with phenomenology as

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 6taken up by Merleau-Ponty. And it is in his analysis of Cézanne

that one may begin to see pieces of a methodology emerge around

Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of phenomenological

perception. Indeed, the process of phenomenological inquiry that

is suggested by his interpretation of perception vis-à-vis

impressionist painting, particularly the ontological and

epistemological implications therein, bear a resemblance to the

methodologies espoused by the Human Sciences—e.g., the one

outlined by Humanistic Psychologist Clark Moustakas: the

Heuristic Method (1990; Douglass & Moustakas 1985). In his

method, Moustakas has emphasized the value of time, the

epistemological significance of relationship, the singular (i.e.,

personally meaningful) creativity of discovery, as well as the

singularity of creative transmission from researcher to other

(i.e., the researcher possessing a unique perspective).

Merleau-Ponty’s ontology complements the epistemology and

methodology of Moustakas’s Heuristic Method, such that both are

enhanced by the presence of the other. Merleau-Ponty’s analysis

of Cézanne’s painting provides a more familiar context for

discussing the ontological implications of Moustakas’s

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 7methodology; and Moustakas’s method suggests a framework for

exercising Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology in the field of

psychological inquiry. While his psychological methodology is an

apt representation of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology, the defense of

Moustakas’s heuristic method as the most apt representation is

not the current project.

The scope of the present paper precludes a thorough

discussion of the methodological, epistemological, and

ontological implications of the union of Merleau-Ponty and

Moustakas. The focus will instead be on the process of the

Heuristic Method with the complementary aid of Merleau-Ponty’s

analysis of Cézanne’s painting serving as an exemplar case;

together, these illustrate the spirit of human science inquiry.

The larger project, of which the present paper plays a part,

deals with an explication of the metaphysical foundations of the

Heuristic Method (a conversation that is curiously absent in

Moustakas’s work). This first1 includes an epistemology with

consultation from the philosophical anthropology of Martin Buber

and the philosophy of science of Michael Polanyi, and further

1 Whitehead, PM. (unpublished). “The epistemology implicit in the heurtistic method.”

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 8informed by the ontological consequences of Merleau-Ponty’s

thesis of the primacy of perception. Also included2 is an

explication of the ontological distinction between the Heuristic

Method and Giorgi’s Descriptive Phenomenological Method (2009).

As motivation for the former, Moustakas has never formally

outlined the epistemology implicit in his Heuristic Method, but

he suggests the influence of Polanyi (e.g., 1966, 1962, 1946) and

Buber (e.g., 1965, 1958). With some modification (i.e., the

recognition that these authors have been read from a particular

historical context), these philosophies of science justify a

union between the methodology of Moustakas and the phenomenology

of Merleau-Ponty. As motivation for the latter, the Heuristic

Method was published without the advantage of Merleau-Ponty’s

present acclaim. Now that his thesis of the primacy of

perception has received much academic attention in philosophy

(e.g., Dillon, 1988), clinical psychology (e.g., Gendlin, 1978),

and Consciousness Studies (e.g., Noë 2004, 2009, 2012), Merleau-

Ponty’s is a platform ripe for a psychological method of inquiry.

2 Whitehead, PM. (under consideration for MPC “Dillon Memorial Lecture” ). Mapping the ontological conclusions of gestalt perception theory onto psychological phenomenology: An unanticipated defense of the giorgi method.

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 9Furthermore, the ontological distinction between Merleau-Ponty

and Husserl, explicated by Dillon (1988), complements the

methodological distinction between Moustakas and Giorgi (Douglass

& Moustakas, 1985).

The most obvious similarity between the aspirations of

Merleau-Ponty and Moustakas has the misfortune of also being the

least interesting—that is, their mutual dissatisfaction with

modern conceptions of scientific inquiry. Since such

frustrations are ubiquitous in the fields of human science

methodology, their presence will be noted but their discussion

skipped.

Eureka! An a pro pos/poor title

Moustakas makes a commendable albeit intrepid move by

titling his inquiry process as heuristic. The danger, of course, has

been in selecting a term that already has a wealth of

significance in the field of cognitive psychology; an uninformed

reader may expect a kinship between the work of Moustakas and the

work of Tversky & Kahneman (1982), for example.

The brilliance, however, is in his earnest return to

etymological roots. The Greek heuriskein, to discover or find, has

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 10the cousin eureka(!) which makes heuristic an appropriate

designation for the present method, and Archimedes is as good a

place to start as any.

Indeed, the story lauds immersion (literally and

figuratively) of scientist in her work; shows the ego-

transcendent nature of inquiry; opens up the laboratory to the

life-world; and serves as hyperbole to the lunacy of scientists.

But crawl inside of this particular eureka! One must not hastily

presume the ecstatic moment happened independently of his

meaningful being-in-the-world. The question at hand—calculating the

mass of an object without available densities or simple area

calculation—was fully inhabited by Archimedes. He was peeling

his fruit as one enamored by this enigma; at night, it informed

the perceived dance of the flickering candle; and it stood

between him and his neighbor while they exchanged greetings. He

encountered no-thing that was devoid of its enigmatic shadings.

It entered the tub—the height of ubiquity—as if for the first

time in life, and the infinite familiarity of the buoyant

response announced itself and the enigma imbued its form.

Archimedes countenanced this enigma in its totality—the

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 11resolution of the ambiguity satisfied; it was a spontaneous

reconciliation of all that had been at issue for Archimedes

throughout the day. As the figure stood out with increasing

contrast from its background, so did the disparity between pre-

Archimedean/post-Archimedean water levels. He was not reposing

in abstractions, but engaged with a meaningful and familiar

environment. We may even imagine that as he fled the scene of

intellectual consummation, displaced water-droplets were deposited

in his wake; thermal energies were shared at every doorknob; the

shouts did not stop at his lips but displaced pockets of vapid silence in

the streets. To have seen him eat a bowl of soup in subsequent

weeks!

Archimedes had not simply zeroed his balance, but lived the

culmination of a scientific pursuit. There is no line of

fracture between Archimedes and the water that was displaced—he

was the displaced water; he was both entering and being exited.

Eureka!

Impression of Time

The questioning that Archimedes has done in his scientific

pursuit is a good example of the process of questioning a

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 12heuristic researcher will take up; it aptly portrays the first

theme that emerges in the present comparison—it is that of time.

This is not the time that is necessary for trial and error

protocols—testing every available hypothesis until an enigma

finds resolution. Unique discovery is a consequence of living a problem into its

solution in time.

Time is venerated as an infinitely valuable resource, for it

is only as a function of time that meanings may be lived and thus

understood. As Moustakas (1990) explains:

The heuristic research process is not one that can be

hurried or timed by the clock or calendar. It demands

the total presence, honesty, maturity, and integrity of

a researcher who not only strongly desires to know and

understand but is willing to commit endless hours of

sustained immersion and focused concentration on one

central question, to risk the opening of wounds and

passionate concerns, and to undergo the personal

transformation that exists as a possibility in every

heuristic journey. (p 14)

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 13Time is not here conceived as a necessary consequence of the

collection and collation of observations. This would be the kind

of conceptualization of time that venerates the apt use of

statistical analysis software that brings data-analysis

increasingly closer, temporally, to its collection—minimizing

time expenditure. What is instead called for is a distinct

conception of time, one that carries epistemological

consequences. This requires meaningful experience to unfold in

time, not in spite of time.

In his seminal book exemplifying the product of a heuristic

inquiry, Moustakas (1961) looks at loneliness. He explains how

the process of understanding loneliness took him two years. It

is evident from his biography that the process, now exceeding

half a century, is still ongoing. Two years, however, is quite

long by contemporary methodological standards (though one is not

hard-pressed to find a PhD-ABD embarking on her third year with

that distinction). For Moustakas, time is utilized in the

following: he tells of an early inquiry process of immersion,

where all available literature on the topic is absorbed—poetry,

music, biographies of famously lonely people, academic articles,

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 14etc. Conceptualized notions of loneliness are suspended (as in

all prudent phenomenology) so that their forming may be at the

whim of the representative examples and not the presupposition of

the researcher. In time the boundaries and borders of loneliness

that the researcher maintains expand and contract; ambiguities

present and are absorbed; but uncertainty about the phenomenal entity is the

glue that holds the process together. The representatives of loneliness—

i.e., the examples discussed—are singular but not arbitrary; this,

however, is not evidence that they must share an underlying eidetic structure.

Conversely, the apparent disagreement between representatives is

not cause for vexation. Instead, ambiguity must be celebrated, for this

ambiguity is the drawing into question of thematic preconception. It is the

moment that Archimedes reaches past the formalized conceptions of

mass and volume and lives a new relationship with them that

measure of mass of an object is found in the water it displaces.

Moustakas recognizes the necessary investment of time in any

phenomenological inquiry, as opposed to the observation

collection carried out in-spite-of time. His example, however, is an

exceedingly complicated one. He thus fails to successfully

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 15illustrate the depth of the epistemological consequences of

thematizing perceptions. After all, the reader may easily

conflate the epistemological consequences of thematization with

the difficulty of the particular phenomenon in question, i.e.,

the elusive “loneliness” experience. Fortunately, Merleau-Ponty

(1962) also makes a compelling case against perceptual

thematizing, emphasizing the necessity of meaningful perceptions

unfolding in time. He utilizes two exceptional examples which are

far more available to the readers’ own experience, oft-

experienced and oft-overlooked, they are sexual experience and

the perception of color. Since Cézanne’s love life failed to

incite the curiosity of Merleau-Ponty, we will stick with the

latter.

Cézanne has a series of vibrant, sensuous, and luscious

still-life renderings of fruit—most famously featuring apples and

pears. The alternative to his impressionist renderings would

involve taking the apples and pears as thematizations and

attempting to reproduce them on the canvas. Such an approach to

painting has been summed up by as follows (Merleau-Ponty, 2004):


[W]hen a painter is confronted by, for example, a

landscape, he chooses to depict on his canvas an

entirely conventional representation of what he sees. …

he arranges things such that what he represents is no

more than a compromise between these various different

visual impressions: he strives to find a common

denominator to all these perceptions by rendering each

object not with the size, colours and aspect it

presents… but rather with the conventional size…

vanishing point… etc. (40)

By conceiving these paintings thematically, for example, as “that

fruit which is right there on the table: look, See? Just

reproduce that here on the canvas,” one may rightfully anticipate

a representative regression equation traced onto axes of “time”

and “accuracy”. In so doing, one should require only as long to

paint the fruit as it takes to fill in the canvas with the color

that is out there, where the relationship between

representational accuracy and time spent painting are directly

proportional. For example, in ten seconds, one could paint an

apple; in ten minutes one could color it in; in ten hours one

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 17could get the shading pretty accurate; and in ten days one could

have a decent representation of that particular apple. In comparison,

Cézanne required at least one-hundred working days for a single

still life. One-hundred days?! For an apple? He must have been

seeing a lot more than “apple.” Precisely. “[T]hose who look

closely will get the feel of a world in which no two objects are

seen simultaneously, a world in which regions of space are

separated by the time it takes to move our gaze from one to the

other, a world in which being is not given but rather emerges

over time” (Merleau-Ponty, 2004 p 41). Cézanne is not interested

in painting thematized perceptions; he is experiencing being

anew, and telling his audience about it. He is not simply seeing

apple but experiencing multi-faceted appleness as Paul Cézanne.

“[I]n our encounter with a painting, at no stage are we sent back

to the natural object; similarly, when we experience a portrait

aesthetically, its ‘resemblance’ to the model is of no

importance…” (71).

Through the example of Cézanne, Merleau-Ponty adds something

to Moustakas’s account of time in experience. It is not that

time may be utilized as a tool—namely, that so much time is

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 18required for sufficient experience to unfold for its subsequent

consultation. Indeed, this would be a thematization of time as

it relates to experience. For Cézanne, the passage of time is

not arbitrary, but its influence cannot be accounted for. In the

perception of apples, the apple as a spatio-temporally static

entity is lost. Such fruit is not what Cézanne is after in his

painting. He is instead interested in providing fruit as it is to him.

Thus, he offers only the self-evident fruit that becomes uniquely

his.

In every Cézanne there is an autobiography; there is a

history of his childhood relationships. When you look at a

Cézanne, he is looking back.

Herrigel (1964) provides an appropriate quote that

emphasizes the absolute necessity of an investment and of time

and concomitant de-emphasis on thematic representations in any

project of understanding (which, to the Zen Buddhists, are the

only projects; I do not think any hyperbole is intended). He

explains to a Western audience how one becomes a master bamboo

artist: spend the first ten years among the reeds becoming a

bamboo chute, then forget everything and paint.

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 19Inquiry as Meaningful Relating

The re-framing of the Archimedean “aha” as a subjectively

lived meaning: his entry into the bathtub directly matched by its

change in elevation—i.e., the identity of himself and

displacement—is intended to serve as an example of the transition

away from the predictable interrelation of abstract concepts

(e.g., mass, volume, density; for example, on the geometrical

grid in their objective glory) into the interrelation of self and

other. Again, one finds that the scientist is directly involved

in her inquiry. This subjectivity need not be taken as the onus

of perspectival consciousness—that which must be overcome as in

empirical positivism, but may be appreciated in its singularity.

Rather than stated negatively as a failure to be objective,

heuristic—and otherwise human science—research may instead be

stated positively as a capacity to consider a phenomenon from a

singular perspective; that is, the only way it may ever be

experienced: in a manner pregnant with meaning which transcends

preconceived thematizations. The gaps of uncertainty (i.e., where

thematizing proves insufficient) are, after all, where new meanings are

experienced.

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 20 The singularity of a co-researcher’s perspective may be

considered a strength rather than a weakness. When Moustakas

tells a story of loneliness or reads the melancholic lines of a

Rilke poem, these are not to be taken as component parts of the

greater theme of loneliness as if each will play its part in

whittling down the final structure of loneliness. Each one is

loneliness—constituents and not elements. They are the substance

of the phenomenal experience of loneliness. They involve an

embodied consciousness that engages with a meaningful world that

comes together in such a way so as to suggest loneliness. There

is no separating the body from the experience. For every

description of loneliness, there is an embodied consciousness

that has formerly been imbued by it.

This is likewise the case in any phenomenal experience or

instance of intentional consciousness. Meanings are always

forming throughout conscious acting. Every perception is a

singularly meaningful aggregation of sensorial stimuli—a “this

and not that”.

Our relationship with things is not a distant one: each

speaks to our body and to the way we live. They are


clothed in human characteristics and conversely they

dwell within us as emblems of forms of life we either

love or hate. Humanity is invested in the things of the

world and these are invested in it. To use the language

of psychoanalysis, things are complexes. This is what

Cézanne meant when he spoke of the particular ‘halo’ of

things which it is the task of painting to capture.

(Merleau-Ponty, 2004, p 49)

An act of creative discovery

The alternative conception of experience as phenomenal, that

is, the shift away from mechanical and into phenomenological

thinking is the obvious foundation of both inquiries. With the

exception of Merleau-Ponty’s (1965) Structure of Behavior, these

authors had the chronological advantage of putting this question

to rest early on, and were thus able to focus on the remarkable

possibility of the epistemological cogency of shared

understandings. Despite losing the ease with which abstracted

understandings are referenced and applied, personalized

phenomenological understandings may still be transmitted.

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 22However, it requires added creativity. Indeed, the heuristic

method “does not aim to produce experts who learn the rules and

mechanics of science; rather, it guides human beings in the

process of asking questions about phenomena that disturb and

challenge their own existence” (Douglass & Moustakas, 1985, p

53). And therein lays the key, as well as the response to

accusations of solipsism. While the scope of the present paper

precludes a thorough explication of how these inquiries escape

solipsism, a preface to it may sufficiently suggest its solution

(or at least point the reader in the direction).

Whenever research methodology favors subjectivity, it is

argued that the researcher has merely found what she has set out

to find and furthermore, she cannot share her findings without

suspecting that her interlocutor is merely hearing what she

expects to hear—subjective understandings never intersect and are

the exclusive property of their subjects. Merleau-Ponty explores

this argument by referencing Meno’s paradox, which ultimately

becomes the former’s “paradox of immanence and transcendence”

(first mentioned in MP 1962, and further elucidated by Dillon

1988). If the immanent is always that which appears to me—that

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 23which I always have perceptual access to, then the transcendent

is always beyond my grasp. However, the immanent is never

disclosed in its totality once and for all. If this were the

case, then the totality of objects would be gathered in their

entirety upon initial perception and would cease presencing.

Merleau-Ponty concludes that there is no object that presents

itself in its totality (as if from all points of view at once;

1962)—no such anonymous perspective may be maintained. Thus, the

seemingly immanent presentation of things is contradicted by their partial

concealment; but the anonymous, transcendent thing-in-itself for

itself escapes conscious perception. The paradox of immanence and

transcendence presents a continuum of perception where a thing

always presents as in-itself-for-me, i.e., immanently, but is always

subject to question—i.e., as though it is transcendent. This

thickness of ambiguity that imbues the perceptual world suggests a paradox between a

pure immanence and pure transcendence. As Dillon (1988) explains: “The

solution to Meno’s dilemma requires a middle term between

certainty and ignorance, between transparency and opacity…. There

must be a way to conceive the world as both immanent and

transcendent” (p 36).

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 24 The terrain denoted by this “middle term” is tricky; it has

certainly earned its paradoxical stripes. But again, recall that

the key to successful phenomenological inquiry, as Douglass and

Moustakas (1985) have maintained, is in the “disturbance of one’s

own existence”: the hint of the transcendent in the immanent—that

point at which the experience of one suggests the experience of

another (Cf. Buber, 1965). One cannot assume the self-evidence of

the immanent is cause for attributions of its transcendent

quality. Merleau-Ponty cites the modern psychology of sensation

as the culprit of this hypostatization of experience:

It is only as a result of a science of the human body

that we finally learn to distinguish between our

senses. The lived object is not rediscovered or

constructed on the basis of the contributions of the

senses; rather, it presents itself to us from the start

as the center from which these contributions radiate.

(sns15)

Consider, for example, the hypostatization of the experience of

depression. I do not first exhibit the symptoms of depression

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 25and therefore satisfy the diagnosis of depression. Here

depression would be subject to definition—it would be

hypostatized as a certain aggregation of symptoms. This,

however, is not how depression is experienced. One lives

depression! The leaves collecting about one’s welcome mat

outside betray one! They collect in a decidedly somber manner,

shivering whenever the door opens or anonymous shapes hurry by.

The phenomenal experience is a change of world, and a disclosure of this

phenomenality is what the heuristic (or otherwise human-science)

researcher is tasked with investigating. One does not get the

transcendent entity that is depression in such an investigation,

but faces the singularly radical drawing into question of being

that a subject experiences as depression.

To further elucidate this existential challenge of heuristic

inquiry, return again to Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of Cézanne.

Here he characterizes the task of a painter in a similar manner:

If the painter is to express the world, the arrangement

of these colors must carry with it this indivisible

whole, or else his picture will only hint at things and

will not give them in the imperious unity, the


presence, the insurpassable plenitude which is for us

the definition of the real. That is why each

brushstroke must satisfy an infinite number of

conditions... [E]ach stroke must “contain the air, the

light, the object, the composition, the character, the

outline, and the style.” Expressing what exists is an

endless task (sns15).

Suddenly the one-hundred sittings requirement seems

decidedly optimistic. Indeed, the task these two

phenomenological investigators find themselves in is an

impossible one, but focusing on the inconceivability of a pure

phenomenological transmission is to miss the point. The painting

and writing are ways of managing infinite meanings gathered about

in one’s world. Archimedes’s preoccupation with his enigma at

hand was consuming; he was consumed with being—consumption one

could only be so lucky to suffer!

The act of creative transmission


It is not enough that perception alone is an infinite task

where the immanence of things is constantly called into question

by their continued intentional unfolding in time, now the

heuristic researcher and impressionist painter must attempt to

disclose the ineffable, indeed indefinable, thickness of

ambiguity. No stranger to the impossibility of this task, Rilke

(1934), with the sardonic tone with which he was wont to write,

poignantly characterizes these attempts: “they always come down

to more or less happy misunderstandings” (p 17).

Rilke’s phenomenological pessimism aside, the paradox of the

infinitude of the task of disclosing that which seems immanently

finite in perception may be utilized in its subsequent

transmission. That is, the tendency of the infinite to present

as finite is the manner by which the infinite may be expressed in

a particular finitude. One has only to share one’s understanding

of the finite presencing of the ostensibly infinite. Thus

conceived, the task may seem quite simple—even without the aid of

thematic conceptualizations.

Merleau-Ponty defines the schools of impressionist painting

in such a fashion. “Impressionism tries to capture, in the

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 28painting, the very way in which objects strike our eyes and

attack our senses” (1964, p 14). Notice that what is being

advocated is not the thematized re-presentation of the particular

object insofar as it may be perceived as such; this would require

a metaphysical crossover into realist ontology, a philosophical

transgression Merleau-Ponty is not interested in committing.

Instead, the perceiver must admit responsibility for the singular

perception of the object. The singularity belongs to the

perceiver in her perception of the object. Only then may the

“striking” and “attacking” of one’s senses be consulted. After

all, the intentional object of the impressionist painter, as thus

defined, is this experience of “striking” and “attacking.”

Forget the “apparent sizing scale” and “monocular and binocular

visual cues”, terms by which the gestalt (and other perception)

psychologists are wont to characterize perception. The objects

are not the unification of these contextual circumstances. No,

the objects as experienced by the impressionist painter are

before all of these thematic conceptualizations; they are the

feeling of “striking” and “attacking”. Only then may the rest

follow. Only now does one begin to understand how the simplicity

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 29of the above “impressionist painter” definition is really quite

complex. The painter has an incomplete perception that presences

in completeness; its completion is an immanent perceptual

experience of subjectively particularized quality while its

incompletion is characterized as a continual drawing into

question or suggestion of more.

The brilliance of this simplistic definition Merleau-Ponty

provides may be seen in Cézanne’s conception of the same.

In La Peau de chagrin Balzac describes a “tablecloth white

as a layer of newly fallen snow, upon which the place-

settings rise symmetrically, crowned with blond rolls.”

“All through youth,” said Cézanne, “I wanted to paint

that, that tablecloth of new snow…. Now I know that one

must will only to paint the place-settings rising

symmetrically and the blond rolls. If I paint

“crowned’ I’ve had it, you understand? But if I really

balance and shade my place-settings and rolls as they

are in nature, then you can be sure that the crowns,

the snow, and all the excitement will be there too.”

(1964, p 16)


Painting the “crowning” of the blond rolls in Balzac’s

description would be an act of conceptual thematization, and the

“absolute positing of a single object is the death of

consciousness, since it congeals the whole of existence”

(Merleau-Ponty, 1964 p 71). To paint the rolls as both aperitif and

crown would be to paint two things at the same time, or

furthermore to intend two objects at once is impossible (an

impossibility the gestalt psychologists made exceedingly clear).

The rolls are rolls; crowning is what they seem to be doing. In

his prudent and sober phenomenology, Cézanne realizes that all he

may will to do is shade and color the place-settings the way they

appear to him in all of his singularity. If, however, he is

faithful to his perception and its subsequent transmission in

painting, then the “excitement will be there too”.

A consequence of the ontological paradox of

immanence and transcendence in perception provides that infinite

descriptions of phenomena are possible. The denotation of

infinite here is not that of geometry’s point and line—this

denotation would necessarily restrict the implications of

infinite description. We are instead dealing with the infinite

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 31as perceived—the continuous unfolding of intentional experience.

Just as Cézanne’s perception of a pear is unending (as if all of

the love and care manifest in the gifting of fruit by his friend

may be summed up finitely), so too may his rendering be a source

of infinite description (suggesting the unsurpassable plenitude

of perception). Thus, an incomplete perception of an object and

its subsequently incomplete description becomes capable of

yielding a new object incapable of complete perception. This

paradox, which is of consequence to phenomenological methodology,

is characterized in the following quote from Merleau-Ponty:

[Cézanne’s] painting was paradoxical: he was pursuing

reality without giving up the sensuous surface, with no

other guide than the immediate impression of nature,

without following contours, with no outline to enclose

the color, with no perspectival or pictorial

arrangement. This is what Bernard called Cézanne’s

suicide: aiming for reality while denying himself the

means to attain it. (1964, p 12)


The consequence of this paradox (i.e., of immanence and

transcendence) warrants investigation into (at least) two

possibilities concerning the transmission of phenomenological

descriptions. The first is Merleau-Ponty’s notion of inter-

subjectivity which has methodological and epistemological

implications, and the second is Merleau-Ponty’s alternative to

the constancy hypothesis which distinguishes his primacy of

perception from Husserl’s idealized, pure transcendental-

phenomenology, which has ontological implications.

The first possibility, with methodological and

epistemological implications, will be further elucidated in the

more thorough account of the epistemology upon which the

heuristic method is founded. In his writing, Moustakas

acknowledges Martin Buber and Michael Polanyi as his

epistemological influences. Taken by themselves, the ontological

realism of Michael Polanyi and the implicit teleology of Buber’s

mysticism fail to connect to the above discussion. However, if

these are taken in the context of the development of psychology

as a human science, the time when Moustakas had been writing,

then these otherwise problematic assumptions of each may be

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 33better understood.

The analysis of Moustakas’s epistemology, as implied by the

description of Heuristic methodology in psychology vis á vis

Moustakas (1990) and Douglass & Moustakas (1985), exceeds the

scope of the present paper and may be found in the larger project

from which the present discussion has been taken.

The second possibility, which includes the ontological

implications for inquiry into the realm of the phenomenal, deals

with the interpretation of the gestalt law of autochthonous

organization. Taking after the conclusions of Köhler’s theories

of perception which places perceptual form back into the figure-

ground dichotomy, Gurwitsch and Husserl defend a transcendental-

phenomenological idealism. Merleau-Ponty, and I suggest

Moustakas as well, do not allow an ontology founded upon an

epistemology (e.g., as in the principle that perception may be

understood in terms of autochthonous organization); indeed, it is

perception that is ontologically primordial.

The ontology that is best exemplified by the heuristic

method is that which is founded upon the primacy of perception—or

the thesis of Merleau-Ponty. The defense of this claim is

WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 34suggested in Moustakas (1990) where the heuristic method is

compared to Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method adapted

from Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. This analysis has

been taken up in the larger project from which, again, the above

discussion has been taken.

References

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Douglass, BG., and Moustakas, CE. (1985). Heuristic inquiry: The

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Journal of humanistic psychology. 25:3. pp 39-55.

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Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. Boston: MIT Press.

Noë, A. (2009). Out of our heads. Boston: MIT Press.

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WHITEHEAD, PM. THE HEURISTIC METHOD REVISITED: THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF CÉZANNE’S… 36Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Chicago: University of

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The heuristic method revisted: The lasting impression of cézanne’s doubt

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