Multiplitism: Set Theory and Sociology

Eliran Bar-El
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Multiplitism
Set Theory and
Sociology

Eliran Bar-El
Multiplitism
 Eliran Bar-El

Multiplitism
Set Theory and Sociology
Eliran Bar-El
Department of Sociology
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-87051-5    ISBN 978-3-030-87052-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87052-2

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 Preface

With each epoch-making discovery,

even in the sphere of natural science,
materialism has to change its form.
~ Friedrich Engels, 1886

At the very end of the nineteenth century, soon before his death, French
sociologist Gabriel Tarde opened his book The Social Laws with an intrigu-
ing reflection. According to him, when the first herdsmen looked up at the
sky and wondered upon the stars’ movements and positions, the idea that
all that vastness and complexity could be explained with a small number of
laws—nowadays called astronomy—would have seemed to them as utter
farcical. Tarde felt that his fellowmen treated the social world, no less com-
plex or irregular than the natural world, with the same herdsmen-bewil-
derment that precluded any rational attempt to generalise sociological laws.
From Tarde’s perspective, it seems that we have not made much prog-
ress. Many of today’s sociologists and socially informed individuals still
deny that the social world can be explained by a small number of laws; ‘It’s
just too complex’, the postmodern-herdsmen would say. Alternatively,
opposing such common defeatist tendency this short and trans-­disciplinary
book is based on a simple affirmation: Georg Cantor’s invention (also
from the late nineteenth century), his mathematical ‘transfinite’ revolu-
tion of the pure multiple and its very few laws, was an epoch-making dis-
covery after which materialist sociology must change its form.
Admittedly, this affirmation is far from being self-evident. Other inven-
tions compete over the status of ‘epoch-making’; chief among them are

v
vi PREFACE

physical quantum mechanics and neuro-biological theories of the mind.

While prominent scholars such as Slavoj Žižek and Adrian Johnston opted
for these theories, respectively, I decide to follow philosopher Alain Badiou
in opting for the mathematical set theory and to consider it as the proper
ground for current materialist scientific thought. The underlying reason is
that mathematics has the highest level of abstraction, making it the basis
for all other more concrete sciences such as physics, biology and, indeed,
sociology.
Two immediate (elitist) objections could be raised here: firstly, that
mathematics has nothing to do with ‘matter’ (i.e. against grounding mate-
rialism on the most abstract mathematics); and secondly, that mathematics
has nothing to do with ‘the social’ (i.e. against drawing social and political
conclusions from mathematics). As for the former, the response is empiri-
cal. Some argue that materialism—thinking reality at the level of vulgar,
robust ‘matter’—should be based on the concrete, and what can be more
concrete than physics? However, paradoxically, it is precisely the current
advent in the sub-atomic study of quantum physics that facilitates the
most effective ‘deconstruction’ of matter, without any linguistic sophist-
ries. ‘Matter’ today is not raw and tangible as we used to think. Rather, it
turns out to be formalistic, compositional and, hence, mathematical.
As for the second objection, regarding drawing real-world conclusions
from mathematics, the response is decisional. Once we see that any
description of reality essentially rests on an axiomatic decision rather than
on any empirically or linguistically given, the question becomes how to
make such a decision most consistently with the given? This question is all
the more burning in light of Susan Buck-Morss’ claim (from her 2011
lecture on Commonist Ethics):

Today’s philosophically naïve social sciences purport to be objective as they

splinter reality into self-referential, academic disciplines that argue from
present-day ‘givens’ as a quasi-natural base (rather than dynamic, unstable
structures that depend on human action). Both approaches—thought with-
out empirical understanding and empirical understanding without thought,
without critical reflection—are extremely susceptible to reification.

Here, I argue, it is only the mathematical rigour itself that can guide us all
the way from the abstractness of concepts to the concreteness of things,
and actually reveal that, as put by Badiou, the concrete is more abstract
than the abstract. As he explained in his 1988 magnum opus Being and
 PREFACE vii

Event: ‘We must always bear in mind that the ontological foundations can
never be disclosed by subsequent hypotheses derived from empirical mate-
rial, but that they are always “there” already, even when that empirical
material simply gets collected’. Therefore, this book is about the conse-
quences of deciding upon set theory, and mathematics more broadly to be
the epoch-making discovery that re-forms the materialist thinking of real-
ity and society.
In doing so, this book sets out against both contemporary idealist ten-
dencies: the religious infinity of God on the one hand, and the capitalist,
secular infinity of Money on the other hand. These two tendencies are the
most prevalent orientations to social life, shared worldwide by profession-
als and laypersons alike. What they share is the defeatist approach to real,
actual and material infinity. Believing that infinity can be either religious or
secular keeps thought idealist and prohibits it from really, actively, think-
ing the infinite. It is also why we experience the contemporary hegemony
of cultural relativism, by which any kind of absolutism immediately sounds
oppressive. Contrarily, a materialist thought that begins with an absolute
decision on what matters, seems like the proper place from which to
launch our inquiry into a new approach to sociology; one that is all about
pure multiplicity in its irreducibility to any One.

Cambridge, UK Eliran Bar-El

February 2021
 About the Book

This book presents a set theoretical approach to sociological research. It

performs this presentation by revisiting existing sociological approaches
and discussing their limitations, before suggesting an alternative. While
the existing canonical approaches of Positivism, Conflictualism and
Pragmatism are based on biology, history and physics, respectively, the set
theoretical approach is based on mathematics. Utilising its philosophical
exploration delineated by Alain Badiou, the book further translates his
work into the field of social science. The result of this translation is termed
Multiplitism, which evades the limiting contradictions of existing
approaches. Drawing on the mathematical notion of ‘set’ and relating it to
recent sociological turns such as the relational and the ontological, the
book proposes a scale-relativity through which researcher (as subject) and
researched (as object) are integrated. This dialectical approach diagonally
cuts across the analytic/continental divide by combining science (and for-
malism) with critique (and values), thus resolving common conceptual
and methodological issues such as the qualitative/quantitative, subjec-
tive/objective and universal/particular divides.

Keywords: Social science, Set theory, Sociology, Multiplicity

 Contents

Part I Towards Sociology of Multiplicities   1

1 Introduction and Retroduction: The Logic of the Social  3

2 The Antinomies of the Social: Self-reference, Identity and

Society 17

3 Problems Abound: Multiplicities—Beyond the One and

the Many 27

Part II The Events of the Social: Counting the Dialectic  37

4 1 → 2: From Science to Social Science—Positivism 39

5 2 → 3: From Kant to Hegel—Conflictualism 47

6 3 → 2: American Interlude—From James (Back) to Kant:

Pragmatism 59

7 3 → 4: From Hegel to Badiou—Ontology of the Void 69

xi
xii Contents

Part III Means and Ends: The Four of the (Greimasian)

Square  77

8 Four Examples of Squared Analysis 79

9 Societies, Multiplicities, Sets: From Typology to Topology 89

10 Conclusion: Multiplitism and the Singular109

 About the Author

Eliran Bar-El, PhD is a sociologist of knowledge based at the University

of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of How Slavoj Became Žižek: The
Digital Making of a Public Intellectual (forthcoming with The University
of Chicago Press). His other publications appear in the British Journal of
Sociology, Cultural Sociology and Philosophy Today. He is also a translator in
the philosophy series at Resling publishing house, where he has translated
works by Terry Eagleton, Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou.

xiii
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Comte’s theory of science 10

Fig. 8.1 The Greimasian Semiotic Square 81
Fig. 8.2 The four philosophical positions 82
Fig. 8.3 The four mathematical positions 84
Fig. 8.4 The four epistemological positions 85
Fig. 8.5 The four sociological positions 86

xv
 PART I

Towards Sociology of Multiplicities

 CHAPTER 1

Introduction and Retroduction: The Logic

of the Social

Abstract This chapter explores the current formation of modern science

and the relations between its various disciplines. It focuses on sociology
and mathematics and explains how these disciplines were developed into
opposing positions: the former being considered as least scientific, while
the latter is considered its pinnacle. However, a closer look reveals that this
tension between science and social science is redoubled from within soci-
ology itself, in the form of methodological divides such as the (in)famous
qualitative (inductive logic) and quantitative (deductive logic). It is here
that retroductive logic mediates the tensed relations between sociology
(or words) and mathematics (or numbers) demonstrating the multiple as
the shared, intuitive basis for both.

Keywords Social theory • Method • Logic • Retroduction • Paradigm

• Science

In Hebrew, the verbs ‘to think’ and ‘to calculate’ are both derived from
the same root (‫ב‬.‫ש‬.‫ח‬.). This affinity between quality and quantity, reminis-
cent in that old language, is the driving force of this book. Imagine a
mathematician and a sociologist; peculiar beings, no doubt. The first
adores her abstract and formal work, while the latter is immersed in poli-
tics, values and judgements. For centuries we have come to think of these
figures, roles and disciplines as totally separate or even opposites of each

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Switzerland AG 2021
E. Bar-El, Multiplitism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87052-2_1
4 E. BAR-EL

other. Mathematics is normally conceived as the emblem of accuracy,

quantity and numbers, while sociology is thought (even by esteemed intel-
lectuals as Popper) to be nothing more than a spurious, qualitative collec-
tion of words. Also, mathematics is supposed to be prestigious, difficult
and high-minded, whereas sociology is sometimes seen as trivial, banal or
speculative. But is that all? Are they really only and nothing but different?
I think not.
Yet, however tempting and possible, I shall not criticise this common
(mis-) understanding by arguing that mathematics is also social (which it
definitely is), or that sociology has some degree of quantified accuracy
(which is also true). This kind of criticism keeps the distance between the
disciplines intact. Instead, as a bridge-building exercise, this book offers to
conjoin them. Through the curving of the space gapped between them
over the years, I suggest a kind of synthesis that provides a productive
conceptual cooperation among the disciplines, to the benefit of both at
once. This conjunctive synthesis provides sociology with a novel, rigorous
and meticulous ground, while emancipating mathematics from the ‘dicta-
torship of form’ and its solitary island of formalised and depoliticised
quantity.
The interventional aim of this book is to propose a new approach for
sociology and to direct it towards the research of sets, as mathematical
and, as such, real entities. I admit this is no easy task. However, the turn
to a decision at the very beginning is itself something very central to con-
sidering mathematical entities as real. And if, for reasons elaborated below,
this decision is made then we could ask: what are the following conse-
quences from considering that societies—as sets—are real? Actually, there
are two preliminary assumptions here. The first is that ‘sets are real’; the
second is that ‘societies are sets’. If we accept the first premise, which at
this point may seem questionable given its long philosophical and mathe-
matical discussions, then the second one is more understandable. As will
be explained, sets are, after all, multiplicities; and so are societies. This is,
in fact, their fundamental and foundational property. Therefore, if sets are
real, or at least could be, and if societies are sets, then there must be con-
sequences for this line of thinking, and we shall see where this line goes
and how fruitful it can be sociologically.
Thus, parting from current approaches to the study of social phenom-
ena, this book suggests that some alternative contours could be outlined
from recent developments in mathematical science and philosophy (Tiles,
1989). Unlike the positive, negative and middle-range sociological
 1 INTRODUCTION AND RETRODUCTION: THE LOGIC OF THE SOCIAL 5

paradigms, this new approach stems specifically from the shift in its onto-
logical materialist basis towards mathematics. Its primary goal is to evade
the antinomy of the universal and the particular while sustaining it in the
form of singularity and in this way to combine several recent social theo-
ries that share a common central feature among them. As will be shown,
this common new feature is the mathematical basis of axiomatic set theory.
For now, suffice to say that set theory is a list of about ten axioms (depend-
ing on the version) about sets as pure multiples. It was articulated by
Georg Cantor, axiomatised by Ernest Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel,
and became the foundation of all mathematics. Indeed, as put by
Cambridge set theorist Thomas Forster (2003, p. 176), ‘its importance in
twentieth-century mathematics arises from the fact that any mathematical
language can be interpreted in it, with varying felicitousness’ (see also
Baki, 2015). Uniquely, the reason set theory is so foundational is its abso-
lute beginning in the void.
This book explores this mathematical basis of the social as multiple by
identifying and analysing four specific problems haunting (à la Derrida’s
Hauntology) every current sociological research. Stemming from the gen-
eral problem of self-reference (Baert, 1998) are the three related conun-
drums of over-concretisation, non-observables and vanished-causality.
Whether in quantitative, qualitative or mixed research designs (Bryman,
2006), the main currents in social research strictly adhere to bracketing
ontological scientific thinking. As succinctly put by Ian Shapiro:

In discipline after discipline, the flight from reality has been so complete that
the academics have all but lost sight of what they claim is their object of
study. […] This goes for the quantitative and the formally oriented social
sciences that are principally geared toward causal explanation. But, it also
goes for many of the more interpretive endeavours that have been influ-
enced by fashions in the humanities—particularly the linguistic turn. …
Both rule out looking behind the world of appearances. (Shapiro,
2005, pp. 2–8)

Consequently, common sociological approaches frequently encounter

antinomies and contradictions in their logic, interpretation and implemen-
tation (Buck-Morss, 2011). With the focal notion of ‘set’ as ‘multiple
multiplicity’ and a retroductive scientific circle of discovery, new conse-
quential questions and tools are able to transcend the known old-fash-
ioned ‘solid’ basis of this now crumbling paradigmatic sociological
structure (Flyvbjerg, 2001; Savage & Burrows, 2007).
6 E. BAR-EL

As later chapters will discuss in greater detail, the sociological discipline

was forged and canonised through some complicated and multi-layered
processes. Its development as the social part of modern science stretches
back to the nineteenth century, and is focused mainly in Europe. Hence,
the first part of the book explores these origins to set the stage for the
framing of sociology as a modern scientific discipline via concepts such as
boundary-work and specialisation. This will enable us to move on and
further differentiate the classical world of Plato and Aristotle and the
medieval world of Ibn Khaldun, from these modern tendencies regarding
the social.
Embarking from science, Positivism took the leading sociological posi-
tion through the works of Harriet Martineau and Herbert Spencer in
England, and Henri de Saint-Simone, Auguste Comte and Emile
Durkheim in France. Those early philosophers and sociologists established
Positivism, though in different ways, as the only valid road to social truth,
and developed methods that reflect such scientific view. The second phase
in the sociological development moves the focus from France to Germany.
Under greater influence of romanticism, a different strain of social reason
emerged that focused on values, meanings, critique and understanding.
While the first positivistic paradigm is mostly rooted in France, the second
conflictual paradigm draws attention to Germany with fore-thinkers such
as Marx and Weber.
Unlike the positivist approach, which is termed as such, the negative
sociological tendency became the only valid way to think critically (i.e.
realistically or materialistically) of the social, and unearth its politico-­
economical truths. Utilising Marx’s Critique of Political Economy or
Weber’s Verstehen and Idealtypus to boot, this critical paradigm tried to
confront Positivism on its very ‘sociological imagination’ as well as its
methodology in practice. If one wanted to differ from this negative strain
but remain critical, they found themselves in critical or cultural studies, all
the way down to what today amounts to ‘identity studies’.
Simultaneously, amidst the Communist Revolution and the First World
War ordeals, a third sociological strain emerged, not so much a paradigm
(according to the doctrinal textbooks), yet different enough from its pre-
decessors to be considered one. This kind of social reasoning takes us
beyond Europe to the rise of the American, and then to the global scene.
In Chicago, thinkers such as Mead, Dewey, Cooley, and later on Goffman,
practiced further distancing from both earlier paradigms, and shifted their
bases from biology and history to lived physical experience. They focused
 1 INTRODUCTION AND RETRODUCTION: THE LOGIC OF THE SOCIAL 7

on micro-processes, symbolic interactions, group encounters and self-­

performances. Unlike the first and second paradigms, the influential prag-
matic Chicago School highlighted the empirical phenomenology of
everyday life, not appreciating much the greater ontological or metaphysi-
cal theories, schemes, systems and structures that have encapsulated social
reason thus far.
At this point, the main argument of this book could already be formu-
lated to a minimal degree. All prior paradigms, as already institutionalised
schools of thought, notwithstanding their important differences, inconsis-
tency rely, base or even ground their social reason on other, unstable and
not so grounded disciplines. In other words, they all borrow their forma-
tive imagination from other scientific disciplines. For starters, most English
and French Positivists drew on biology’s model-image of the organism.
Conflictualists, for their part, drew on a certain conception of history.
And, in turn, Pragmatists drew on the basic physical framework articulated
by common applied physicists, whereby ‘what we see (in every social per-
formance) is what we get (in the study of this performance)’. What all
three existing paradigms share, nonetheless, is the complete rejection of
metaphysics, and so a total abolition of ontological discussions with regard
to their social objects and subject matters.
Diversely, and turning the lack in ontology to ontology of lack, we can
now trace some recent developments, in- and outside of sociology itself,
and offer a comprehensive, consistent grounding for seemingly inconsis-
tent theories (such as Actor-Network-Theory, Žižek’s socio-analysis,
Object-Oriented-Ontology and Assemblage Theory). Grounded not in
biology, history or physics, this approach of Multiplitism is based on the
mathematical foundations of set theory and its constitutive lack, the void.
Put differently, the attempt here is to restore ontology not as metaphysics,
but as meta-mathematics. Maybe it is also proper to stress from the outset,
that this claim is not as unheard-of or far-fetched as it may sound. Simply
put, if mathematics precedes physics, biology and history together, this is
because it is conceptually axiomatic; it has more power of abstraction than
them. This means that mathematics is ultimately self-sufficient, and needs
not be empirical or transcendent. It develops a complete internal consis-
tency of its own apparatus, and as such, I argue, mathematics provides a
more stable base for the social examination of real multiplicities.
Up until and including Kant, mathematics was juxtaposed with philos-
ophy through the third vertex of logic. Yet starting with Hegel, philoso-
phy claimed superiority over every reign of thought including mathematics.
8 E. BAR-EL

For Hegel, due to his conception of the infinite at that time, mathematics
was a middle-field between metaphysical theology—as a false or ‘spurious’
infinite—and philosophical dialectics as the real infinite. It was necessary
for him to differentiate the formalistic mathematical infinite in order to
sublate it and reach the philosophical ‘true infinite’. However, as Badiou
pointed out, this disentanglement is the romantic speculative gesture par
excellence: ‘the localisation of the infinite in the temporalisation of the
concept as a historical envelopment of finitude’ (2004, p. 36). And conse-
quently, if philosophy after Hegel continued to disentangle itself from
mathematics, it is because this differentiation is based on the identity of
the same object—the infinite—as with mathematics.
This is not to say that mathematics is detached, automated formalism,
out of touch with any real contexts and agents, as Hegel saw it in his time.
Actually, nothing is further from the truth. As Lacan had put it: ‘mathe-
matical formalisation is our goal, our ideal’. Opposed to biology, history
and physics, which are bounded to and by the world as it is, mathematics
localises a plurality of infinites in the indifference of the pure multiple.
Unlike the other earthly sciences, mathematics has an absolute reference
point (the void) for which it is able to transcend all kinds of relativisms
affecting our current reasoning, from the linguistic to the cultural (Badiou,
2014). Thus, it is both abstract and concrete, and in charge of studying all
the possibilities of beings to be. This last remark caused Badiou, one of
Lacan’s successors, to claim that ‘mathematics is ontology’. This equation
means that any kind of ontology, as the study of being as such, including
that of any society, must consistently go through mathematics. It is crucial
to note that this attempt to bring mathematics closer to sociology (by way
of philosophy) cannot be characterised by the ‘caution proper to the epis-
temological modality’ (Badiou, 2004, p. 37). Cutting through to the
ontological destiny of mathematics, Badiou declares: ‘there is nothing but
infinite multiplicity, which in turn presents infinite multiplicity, and the
one and only halting point is the void, not the One’ (ibid., p. 41; see also
Badiou, 2005).
In order to continue thinking sociology in tandem with mathematics,
what is needed is to further count the dialectic: after Plato and the Two of
dualism, and after Hegel and the Third of triadism, I propose that now we
stand with Badiou in front of the Four of the square. This is proposed in
the specific context where social scientists and sociologists do use mathe-
matical concepts and models (such as linear regression or discourse
 1 INTRODUCTION AND RETRODUCTION: THE LOGIC OF THE SOCIAL 9

analysis); but they do only use them, not listen to them. Two short exam-
ples can demonstrate this.
A known story is told about an American sociologist, who, in Bourdieu’s
memorial lecture given in Paris by UCLA philosopher John Searle, stood
up and said: ‘my work begins when yours ends’. It is only against the back-
ground of a divided assumption that the sociologist’s saying seems fit. This
division of scientific labour is conceptually futile, since even if we believe
that social sciences deal with radically different objects than the mathemat-
ical sciences, we should not ignore the commonalities between them.
Many formal assumptions about the subject matter sink and dwell in the
sociologist’s research, written implicatively between the lines. Assumptions,
which most of their elaborations are not directly required for the socio-
logical investigation, it is usually claimed. But is it imaginable for a social
scientist not to be interested in the true nature of his or her objects and
subjects, in their being-ness? Can we really be surprised when the suppres-
sion of that interest leads to contradictions? I argue that today we can no
longer hold such clear-cut borders or divisions of labours and powers
between scientists or the sciences. We need cooperation instead. This does
not mean that all must learn all, but that if one thing is true, it must be
consequently true for all.
As for the second example: A drawing I was once shown was of ‘The
Order of Science’, and it describes a similarly divided view between science
and philosophy and within the sciences themselves. In retrospect, I can tell
that it was no less than Comte’s theory of science that initiated this think-
ing about the relation between mathematics and sociology (Fig. 1.1). But
at the dawn of sociology, this relation between it and mathematics was not
of co-existence but of separation and hierarchical subordination.
Over the years, this separationist image has made its ideological way
into a popularised sketchy meme called Purity (Munroe, 2008). The
meme depicts a horizontal line on which scientific disciplines are ordered
by their purity. Sociology is on the one end of it, as the least pure, and is
defined as ‘applied psychology’. It is followed by psychology as ‘applied
biology’, and so on, until we hit at a distance the mathematicians, on the
other end of the line. As most pure, they say to other disciplines: ‘Oh, hey,
I didn’t see you guys all the way over there’. Clearly, in today’s conception
of science, purer means less practical. With the outing of the philosopher
from the science box, as tweaked versions of the meme show, the box itself
is ruled and measured by practical applicability. Without getting into the
micro-details of the disciplinary separation and the (capitalist) measure
10 E. BAR-EL

Fig. 1.1 Comte’s theory of science

demarcating their distance from each other, it suffices to see that in both
vertical and horizontal scientific models there is a straight linear line domi-
nating their structure. My initial response to these drawings was ‘why not
see it as a curve? Why a line and not a circle, where the two ends meet
from opposite directions?’ I believe it is possible to curve the scientific
space in such a way that allows the ends of the lines to conjoin.
According to the common sociological paradigms, the two ruling
methodological ideologies against a materialist thinking of the infinite
were, first, the romantic yet conflictual gesture, and second the positivist
and empiricist approach. The latter argued against the speculative tenden-
cies of the former and claimed that ‘science constitutes the one and only
paradigm for the positivity of knowledge’ (Badiou, 2004, p. 23). This
claim could be formulated only from within the completed disentangle-
ment of philosophy and the sciences (as Fig. 1.1 demonstrates). In this
precise sense, all existing sociological paradigms of Positivism,
Conflictualism and Pragmatism, which share some animosity between
them, nonetheless joined forces and voted for the death of metaphysics.
For them, as in philosophy for Carnap, Heidegger and Wittgenstein (who
agree on nothing except that), metaphysics marks the classical era in which
mathematics and philosophy were still reciprocally entangled in ‘a general
representation of the operations of thought’ (ibid., p. 23).
A preliminary note is required regarding mathematics and the social
world. Mathematicians explore all the possibilities of any kind of beings to
 1 INTRODUCTION AND RETRODUCTION: THE LOGIC OF THE SOCIAL 11

be, even prior to these beings’ localisations in various worlds, such as

social, natural, mental, political and so on. The word ‘world’ thus refers to
a possible world. What mathematicians call ‘world’ in their work is not what
other people and even scientists mean by this word. For the latter, ‘world’
means this actual—physical and tangible—world, whereas for the former
it is precisely a possible world, made possible only by means of this or that
axiomatic decision. Hence, as trans-empirical:

Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from

any particular instance of what it is talking about. So far is this view of math-
ematics from being obvious, that we can easily assure ourselves that it is not,
even now, generally understood. For example, it is habitually thought that
the certainty of mathematics is a reason for the certainty of our geometrical
knowledge of the space of the physical universe. This is a delusion which has
vitiated much philosophy in the past, and some philosophy in the present.
(Whitehead, 1925, p. 403)

What does it mean, then, to ground sociological research in this mathe-

matical line of ‘abstract’ thought? Today, paradoxically, especially after
world events such as global pandemic and ongoing crises of democracy
(Przeworski, 2019; Eyal, 2019), social theory and authority is under a
multi-front attack (Sokal & Bricmont, 1999; Pluckrose & Lindsay, 2020).
When one would expect the growing relevance of sociologists, one actu-
ally finds their mounting negligence and ignorance. Furthermore, it seems
that sociologists are unable to make these attacks subside. Their scientific
cultural ‘tool-kit’ (Swidler, 1986) is not apt for the task. Each of the three
main sociological paradigms limit reason to the finite, and remain ortho-
doxically confined to the world as it is, excluding its other infinite possi-
bilities. Instead of reciprocal inclusion, every paradigm in its turn focuses
on differentiating and distancing itself, not on broadening the scopes and
borders of their rivals. On the contrary, they uphold and maintain these
borders. As a result, in social science, one can be scientific (and positivist),
critical (and conflictualist) or neither of them (and pragmatist).
Nonetheless, to think mathematically of the social is to fully embrace
the multiple, to trace its singularities, orders and limits, types of differ-
ences, and to examine the deepest details of the relations between the
construction of multiple sets and subsets. Hence, every mathematical
axiom of set theory, of which some are explored below, is constitutive, not
normative or regulative. Therefore, in sociology there is no need to find
12 E. BAR-EL

some additional ‘social’ axioms of its own, but rather to deepen our under-
standing and knowledge of the original axioms and to trace their conse-
quences for sociological methodologies, imaginations and problematics.
Yet, as Badiou remarked: ‘every genuine thinking is a thinking of singu-
larities’ (2004, p. 79). This may sound contradictory to a thinking of mul-
tiplicities. However, since every multiplicity has a singular excluded
element, the tracing of it becomes the cornerstone of scientific discovery.
Sociologically, this means using methodological retroduction to overcome
the major dualism posed by the (neo-Kantian) philosopher Wilhelm
Windelband, namely between the universal law (and deductive or
nomothethic logic) and the particular case (and inductive, idiosyncratic
logic). As will be shown, singularity stands for an exceptional case from
within a multiplicity, which as such sheds light on the universal rule while
not being, or being subtracted from any other particular case. Not to be
confused with the capitalist individualism (Reckwitz, 2020), singularity
(as nothing) cuts through universality (of everything) and particularity (of
something).
Retroduction is one of three known forms of logical reasoning. It was
first articulated by Aristotle (as ‘abduction’), and then reintroduced by
philosophers of science such as Charles Sanders Peirce, Norwood Hanson
and Roy Bhaskar (Zalamea, 2012). Joining some of its more recent uses in
the social sciences (e.g. Glynos & Howarth, 2007; Tavory & Timmermans,
2014), this book proposes that retroduction is the right type of logic to
allow for the integration of mathematical thinking into sociology. Precisely
because it goes beyond the ‘empirico-transcendental doublet’ (Foucault,
1994, p. 318), retroductive logic discards both contextualised self-­
interpretations common to qualitative research as well as the law-like
model of explanation common to the quantitative. In line with Whitehead’s
famous remark (from 1916) that a fight between inductive and deductive
logics ‘would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel’,
retroduction allows for their cooperation. Understood as inference to the
best explanation, retroduction is ‘reasoning on the basis of mature theo-
ries from observed effects to unobservable causes’ (Shapiro, 2005, p. 39).
It is the construction of a persuasive narrative that explains retroactively
why a phenomenon appears as it is. In doing so, it brings together the
deductive movement from general to particular—from law/theory to
fact/observation—and the inductive, opposite movement from case to
law. As Glynos and Howarth explain, this process:
 1 INTRODUCTION AND RETRODUCTION: THE LOGIC OF THE SOCIAL 13

Involves the constitution of a problem—explanandum—which invariably

results in the transformation of our initial perceptions and understandings.
Work is then started on furnishing an explanation that can render the recal-
citrant phenomenon more intelligible. This process is understood in terms
of the logic of retroductive explanation and theory construction, which
involves a to-and-fro movement between the phenomena investigated and
the various explanations that are proffered. In this way, an initially chaotic set
of concepts, logics, empirical data, self-interpretations, and so on, at varying
levels of abstraction, are welded together, so as to produce an account
which, if it removes our initial confusion, can constitute a legitimate candi-
date for truth or falsity. (2007, p. 34, my emphasis)

Retroductive logic and the mathematical set theory share a constitutive

feature which also lies at the heart of sociological reasoning: self-reference
(Forster, 2006). While most scientific disciplines, which rely on either
inductive or deductive logics, avoid and even abolish self-reference as it
leads to contradictions, sociology accepts it as a basic understanding:
researchers are a part of the world they study. In this sense, while I agree
with Glynos and Howarth that the application of retroduction in social
science rests on a distinct ontological shift, I differ from their view that
there are ‘distinctive ontologies underpinning the natural and social
worlds’ (2007, p. 19). Rather, I will show that retroduction actually func-
tions as a scientific speculation, which Whitehead conceived of as the flight
of an airplane: ‘It starts from the ground of particular observation; it
makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalisation; and it again
lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation’
(Whitehead, 1929, p. 5). Similarly, retroductive reasoning takes a three-­
fold form: it begins with a surprising, anomalous or wondrous observed
phenomenon (P). This phenomenon ‘would be explicable as a matter of
course’ if a hypothesis (H) were true, and so there is good reason to think
that H is true (Hanson, 1961, p. 86). In other words, the hypothesis is
not inferred until its content is already present in the explanation of P.
This retroductive logic forbids the generally divided view of the sci-
ences, and specifically of separating the context of scientific discovery from
the context of its justification. Instead, the context of discovery (through
which problematisation of the empirics occurs) and the context of justifi-
cation (through which persuasion and intervention occur with relevant
communities and social actors) must be overlapped, forming a retroduc-
tive loop. Retroduction is at the heart of social theory construction as it
14 E. BAR-EL

allows the creation of new hypotheses and theories based on surprising

research evidence using experience as a device, and speculation as a method
for the unattainable (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012; Parisi, 2013).
Following major breakthroughs in science, such as set theory and quan-
tum mechanics, the divided and separated view of the natural and social
worlds, which has split science and critique, is becoming gradually yet
severely untenable: just as the social subject, the atom is split and is affected
by our measurements, and the whole transfinite universe of sets is grounded
on axiomatic decisions. These self-referential issues, which came as a sur-
prise to natural scientists, are common among social scientists. Yet, the
proposed means of dealing with these issues differ greatly as they lack a
materialist and scientific grounding. This is what begins to take form below.

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Acquisition. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 24(6), 111–126.
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Political Theory. Routledge.
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Parisi, L. (2013). Speculation: A Method for the Unattainable. In C. Lury &

N. Wakeford (Eds.), Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social
(pp. 232–244). Routledge.
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Everybody. Pitchstone Publishing.
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 CHAPTER 2

The Antinomies of the Social: Self-reference,

Identity and Society

Abstract This chapter identifies the main theme that has distinguished
natural science from social science, namely self-reference. It shows how
self-reference has been a foundational scientific antinomy, and how the
notion of ‘identity’ was used to resolve it. Nonetheless, in social science
the notion of identity only aggravated the (self-referential) problem. Thus,
a new way of sociological thinking is needed, one that accommodates the
fact that every individual, including scientists, belong to and interact with
the societies they study.

Keywords Self-reference • Identity • Belonging • Subject

Sociologists usually raise critical questions and make some tentative

assumptions. Mathematicians provide rigorous arguments and formulate
very few axioms. The formers ‘search’ as neurotic-hysterics while the oth-
ers ‘find’ as neurotic-obsessive. What is needed today is a combined effort
of these developed historical scientific tendencies. At this point one could
start again, almost a century after Parsons, and ask, ‘who now reads
Spencer?’ (1937, p. 5).
However, most of sociological research done today actually shares
Spencer’s social vision or imagination: sociologists who research inequality
mostly (sometimes explicitly) strive for equality; those who research legal

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 17

Switzerland AG 2021
E. Bar-El, Multiplitism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87052-2_2
18 E. BAR-EL

injustice mainly presume it should be just. Further, most of the sociology

of education ultimately studies its stratified allocation so to find more soli-
dary ways for this system to function. While social scientists might think
that today they are as far as the calendar from Spencer, in fact they act as
not far at all, in that they rely on either implicit or explicit normative
assumption, be it biological as for Spencer, historical as for Marx or physi-
cal as for Mead.
Surely some important things have changed since Spencer’s and
Parson’s time. We need to clarify the theoretical and historical ways accord-
ing to which the field of sociology today shares certain common features
with its initial state of formation. This way sociology will adjust more sys-
tematically and rigorously to recent developments in other scientific fields
and make itself more relevant. But for us to get there we need to begin
from here, the basic core if there ever was one, of sociology. Thus, I shortly
review the early and recent developments relevant to the sociological
inquiry through few fundamental antinomies that lie in the heart of this
field, including structure and agent, object and subject, and individual and
society.
In what follows, I survey and explicate the core antinomies of the social
along four events. As epistemological ruptures, these paradigmatic events
changed the entire field of sociology and led to new perspectives on soci-
ety. To begin that short but necessary re-enactment, it would seem reason-
able to refer to major texts in the social sciences. However, I stress that the
antinomies of the social, thus its core, are not at all inside of it but extimate
to it (to use the Lacanian term for the opposite of intimacy). Much like
every baby, it has its externally influential parents. And the parents of the
social sciences in general, and specifically of sociology, are the modern sci-
ences. One of its greatest recent works, which will be further explored
later, is that of mathematicians-logicians Abraham Fraenkel, Yehoshua
Bar-Hillel and Azriel Levy, who together in 1973 composed The
Foundations of Set Theory, wherein they claim:

All the antinomies, whether logical or semantic, share a common feature

that might be roughly and loosely described as self-reference. In all of them
the crucial entity is defined, or characterized, with the help of a totality to
which it belongs itself. There seems to be involved a kind of circularity in all
the argumentations leading up to the antinomies, and it is obvious that
attempts should have been made to see therein the culprit. However a
wholesale exclusion of all reasonings involving any kind of self-reference is
 2 THE ANTINOMIES OF THE SOCIAL: SELF-REFERENCE, IDENTITY… 19

certainly too strong a medicine and would throw away the baby with the
bath-water. There are innumerably many ordinary ways of expression that
are self-referential but still perfectly harmless and useful. (1973, p. 11,
emphasis in original)

This passage is a treasure for the philosophy of every science, especially the
social. It designates the most fundamental problem of modern philosophy,
that of the self. This problem was sought to be solved for more than two
thousand years, between Aristotle and Hegel, with the simple equation of
A=A, being the very first law of discourse in Aristotle’s Logic. But unlike
Aristotle’s classical, a-historical and static world, Hegel affirmed with
romanticism that only through temporalisation a being can be said to be
itself (again). It is not ‘just like that’ that a thing is (equal to) itself. It has
to become itself in the infinitely prolonged dialectical process.
Importantly, modern science adopted Aristotle’s predictive and logical
discursive laws as its cornerstones. This was, among others, a result of
heavy theological interventions such as the writings of Thomas Aquinas.
The acceptance of Aristotle’s logical laws maintained the dominance of the
One, in its self-identity with itself, and is still why we think of science as
synonym to objectivity. Yet this was not the case with Hegel and modern-
ism. As put by J. A. Miller in this respect, ‘the impossible object, which the
discourse of logic summons as the not-identical-with-itself and then rejects,
wanting to know nothing of it, we name the object, insofar as it functions
as the excess which operates in the series of numbers, the subject’ (in
Badiou, 2000, p. 109, emphasis added).
Modern science started formulating its approach to nature not only
with new tool or organum, such as a telescope or observation. Combining
Aristotle’s logic of the One with monotheism, the starting point for mod-
ern science, as exemplified best in Newton, was some (ideal or sublime)
impossible point inside of nature. In Newton’s case that was the absolute
Vacuum of no-movement, whereas in Descartes’ it was the attributeless
Cogito. In contradistinction, Hegel’s self-identity was a-posteriori result,
not a-priori departure point. Here we find ourselves in a paradox: on the
one hand, thinking self-difference instead of self-identity, as noted by
Fraenkel et al., leads to antinomies; on the other hand, to entirely discard
the referential ‘self’, would amount to giving up logical consistency
altogether.
For them it was acutely crucial to allow some legitimate, consistent uses
of self-reference in science, as they were trying to develop and defend the
Another random document with
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Chaldæan architects, or that it contained the last word of their talent
and taste.
In any case it was the Assyrian palace that, about forty years
ago, began to reveal to us an early civilization to which modern
research is now awarding its proper place in the history of the
ancient world. About the commencement of the present century
criticism had succeeded in fixing approximate dates for the few kings
of Assyria and Chaldæa mentioned in the Bible and by classic
authors. It was suspected that the tales of Ctesias included many a
fable, and painful efforts were made to disentangle what was true
from what was false, but the language, the literature, and the arts of
those peoples were as yet entirely unknown. The sites of Babylon
and Nineveh had been ascertained with some degree of certainty; it
was known that ruins existed in the plains of Mesopotamia which
had been used by the natives as open quarries for century after
century, and that the towns and villages that now stud the country
were built from the materials thus obtained; but nothing had been
learnt as to the form and arrangement of the buildings hidden under
those heaps of débris. Travellers spoke of seeing statues and bas-
reliefs among the ruins, but they could not bring them away, and they
made no drawings which could be depended on for accuracy.
European museums could boast of nothing beyond small objects,
fragments of pottery, stones and terra-cotta slabs covered with
strange symbols and undecipherable inscriptions. Most of these
were cones and cylinders which proved that the Mesopotamians
understood how to cut and engrave the hardest stones. Such objects
excited a kind of hopeless curiosity. They were sometimes pointed
out to the attention of scholars, as by Millin in his paper on the
Caillou Michaux, a sort of Babylonian landmark that has belonged to
the Cabinet des Antiques[2] in Paris ever since 1801.
But no attempt was made to define the style of the school of art
by which such things were produced, and not the faintest suspicion
was felt of the influence exercised by Chaldæan productions over
distant races whose genius for the plastic arts was universally
acknowledged. A single writer, the historian Niebuhr, seems by a
kind of intuition to have divined the discoveries at which a new
generation was to assist, and to have anticipated their
consequences. As early as the year 1829 he wrote, “When at Rome
I heard from a Chaldæan priest who lives near the ruins of Nineveh,
that colossi are there found buried under huge masses of building
rubbish. When he was a child one of these statues was discovered
by a mere accident, but the Turks at once broke it up. Nineveh is
destined to be a Pompeii for Western Asia. It will be an inexhaustible
mine for those that come after us, perhaps even for our own
children. The Assyrian language will also have its Champollions. You
who can do so should prepare the way by the study of Zend for the
decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions.”[3]
Here Niebuhr showed himself a true prophet, but he was denied
the joy of seeing his prophecy fulfilled. He died in 1831, and it was
not till the 20th March, 1843, that the French consul at Mossoul sent
his first batch of labourers to Khorsabad. The date better deserves to
be remembered than that of many a battle or royal accession. His
first reports to the Academic des Inscriptions were scientific events.
[4] Funds were placed at his disposal, and a clever draughtsman, M.
Flandin, was sent out to help in measuring plans and copying bas-
reliefs. In June, 1845, the first Assyrian sculptures of any size that
had ever left their native place for Europe were set afloat upon the
Tigris, and in December, 1846, they arrived in France. In 1847 de
Longperier was the first to read upon the Khorsabad remains that
name of Sargon which is mentioned by none of the classic authors
and only once by the Bible.[5] This discovery was of the greatest
importance; it at once gave a date to remains whose age had been
previously a mere matter of guess. The most divergent hypotheses
had been started—some believed the sculptures to have belonged to
the remote times of Ninus and Semiramis, others thought them no
more ancient than the Sassanids;[6] it was a great point gained to
make sure that their true date was the eighth century before our era.
These first discoveries excited so much attention that they were
sure to attract many to the task begun with such unhoped-for
success by Botta. England especially, by whom all that has the
slightest bearing on Jewish history is so passionately followed up,
was sure to take her part. In November, 1845, Mr. Layard began to
excavate at Nimroud; he carried on his work there and at
Kouyundjik, until the year 1847. The adjoining map (Fig. 1) will-give
an idea of the relative position of the sites we shall so often have to
mention. The beauty and variety of the monuments sent home by Mr.
Layard, decided the authorities of the British Museum to intrust him
with a new mission, and from 1849 to 1851 he was again busy at
Nimroud; he cleared some more rooms in the great palace on the
Kouyundjik mound, and he undertook some explorations on the sites
of several Chaldæan cities. The objects he collected form the true
foundation of the Assyrian collection in the British Museum, which is,
at present, by far the richest in existence.
 Fig. 1.—Map of Nineveh and its neighbourhood; from Oppert.
In 1851, France decided to resume the excavations at
Khorsabad, which had been abandoned on the departure of Botta.
M. Place, his successor at Mossoul, continued and completed the
excavations, which had been little more than begun. His labours
lasted till 1855, but unhappily most of the sculptures recovered by
him are now at the bottom of the Tigris. The great work in which he
was helped by the skill of Felix Thomas is the most precious result of
his enterprise.
The era of heroic explorations seems to have closed with Layard
and Place, but during the last thirty years there has always been
some English agent sounding the flanks of the Assyrian mounds.
Under the surveillance of Sir Henry, then Colonel, Rawlinson, the
East India Company’s resident at Bagdad, many discoveries were
made by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, Sir Henry Layard’s collaborator, and
by the late William Kennett Loftus. Finally, we must mention George
Smith, who died at Aleppo in 1876, on the eve of his third journey
into Assyria. He had visited that country for the first time in 1873, at
the expense of the Daily Telegraph, which had placed a sum of one
thousand guineas at his disposal, and had afterwards presented all
the objects he had sent home to the British Museum.
We have enumerated all these dates with some dryness, and
without any attempt to write a taking narrative, because we wished to
impress upon our readers how recent these discoveries are, how
they have followed closely one upon another, and well within the
lifetime of a single man. The difficulty of our task will thus be evident.
We are making a first attempt to bring the results of all these
explorations into a connected form, and to present them
systematically to the reader. There is one thing that stands out very
strongly in the whole inquiry. The monuments, by which the art of a
great vanished civilization is represented in our museums, come
mainly from the ruins of royal dwellings. The chief idea suggested by
the words Khorsabad, Nimroud and Kouyundjik, is the excavation of
the magnificent palaces raised by the Assyrian monarchs within a
period of something more than three centuries. Following a custom
still in vogue with the native rulers of Egypt and India, of Persia and
Turkey, each prince signalized his accession by the commencement
of a palace which should be entirely his own.[7] To establish himself
in the dwelling which had seen the death of his predecessor would
have seemed an invitation to misfortune, and his pride would have
been wounded at seeing the walls of his house given up to
celebrating the exploits of any one but himself. Finally, each king
hoped to surpass all those who had gone before in the extent and
luxury of the edifice to which his name would be thenceforward
attached. Sometimes he took dressed masonry from abandoned
seraglios; sometimes he raised at his doors winged bulls which had
already done duty elsewhere, changing, of course, their inscriptions;
sometimes he lined his chambers with alabaster slabs bearing reliefs
in which the conquests of his fathers were narrated; in that case he
turned the sculptured side to the wall, and caused his own prowess
to be celebrated upon the new surface thus cheaply won.[8] Whether
old materials were used or new, the palace was always personal to
the king who built it. Thus it is that the remains of some ten palaces
have been found in the mounds already attacked, although that of
Khorsabad is the only one that has been completely explored.
We cannot attempt to describe the ruins of so many palaces. No
one of them is an exact copy of any other; their dimensions, and
many of their arrangements have much variety, but nevertheless, we
may say that they all follow the same general plan. The only way to
avoid continual repetition is to take, as a type of all, the example that
has been most completely studied. Our choice of such a type is soon
made. The palace of Sargon, at Khorsabad, may be neither the
largest of the Assyrian palaces nor that in which the best sculptors
were employed upon the decorations, but it is certainly that in which
the excavations have been most systematically carried on. Except at
a few points the explorers have only held their hands when the flat
summit of the mound was reached. The whole has been cleared
except the centres of some of the quadrangles and a few
unimportant outbuildings. Nowhere else can the general
arrangement be so clearly followed, or the guiding spirit of an
Assyrian plan so easily grasped.
PLATE V

PALACE OF SARGON, KHORSABAD

BIRD’S-EYE VIEW BY CH. CHIPIEZ FROM
The restoration by F Thomas

Fig. 2.—The mound and village of Khorsabad before the commencement of the
excavations; from Botta.

§ 2.—The Palace of Sargon.

The mound in which the remains of Sargon’s palace had lain

concealed for so many centuries bore on its summit, before the
excavations began, a small village called Khorsabad (Fig. 2). It rises
about nine miles north-north-east of Mossoul on the eastern bank of
the Khausser, an affluent of the Tigris, and in the neighbourhood of
the mountains which begin to draw in towards the left bank of that
river not far above the site of Nineveh. Botta was induced to begin
his excavations at this point on account of the numerous fragments
of cuneiform inscriptions which were found there by the peasants of
the village. He sent a number of workmen to Khorsabad under the
superintendence of his confidential servant, Charles Michel, who,
twenty years afterwards, was my dragoman in Asia Minor.[9] How
often during our long marches through forests and across barren
steppes he entertained me with the story of how he discovered
Nineveh, as, like his master Botta, he always called it, my readers
may guess. “We arrived at Khorsabad towards evening, and after
exploring the village I was rather puzzled as to what I should find for
my men to do—we had already been so often deceived. At
Kouyundjik we had raised no end of dust and found hardly anything.
While turning over this question in my mind I had my supper before
the door of one of the houses, and after the meal was over, I was idly
scratching the ground by the side of the mat on which I was lying,
with my knife. Suddenly I felt the blade strike against something very
hard; I withdrew it, and thrusting my finger into the hole, I felt a
stone. Working away with the knife I soon enlarged the hole, and
then saw that the stone was worked and chiselled with great care.
Next morning I brought my workmen to the spot, and watched them
closely to see that they advanced with sufficient precaution. A few
strokes of the pick-axe brought to light the head of one of the bulls.
Off I went at full gallop to Mossoul, and came back next day with M.
Botta.”
Whether this be a truthful narrative or not I cannot say. Michel
was born in the Levant, of French parents, and I always forgot to ask
whether, by any chance, his father was a Gascon. In any case, it
was to Botta’s honour that he understood the value and significance
of a discovery due, in the first place, to the idle scratchings of a
subaltern, and that he pushed on his explorations in the face of
Turkish ill-will and pecuniary difficulties, and that before he had
received any encouragement from Paris.
Botta soon recognized the true character of the building, even
although he clung to the erroneous notion that he had disinterred the
historical capital of Assyria, the Nineveh of classic writers and
Hebrew prophets.[10] The excavations of his successor and the
decipherment of the cuneiform texts have clearly proved his mistake.
The monument found and partly excavated by Botta, was never
included in Nineveh, vast though that city may have been. It was part
of what may be called a caprice of Sargon’s put into execution
between the years 722 and 705 b.c. That prince was not content
with founding a new dynasty; he determined to pass the intervals
between his campaigns in a palace and city which should be entirely
his own creation, and should bear his name. That town and palace,
with its situation a few miles from the great political and commercial
capital, was the Versailles of an Assyrian grand monarque.
The connection between town and palace was very close. The
fortified walls of the former inclosed a large rectangular
parallelogram (Vol. I. Fig. 144), while the lofty platform on which the
structures composing the king’s dwelling were reared, was placed,
as it were, astride of the wall on its north-western face. Its pavement
was on a level with the summit of the wall.[11] Thus attached to the
enceinte the palace esplanade shared the protection of its parapet
and flanking towers, while it stood boldly out, like an enormous
bastion, from the stretch of wall of which it formed a part. From three
of its faces it commanded a view of the plain, the river, and the
neighbouring mountains, so that the requirements of health and
pleasure were remembered at the same time as those of safety. As
for placing the king’s dwelling, as it might have been placed by a
modern architect, at some distance from the town, and upon the
summit of some gentle height, such a notion was quite outside
Assyrian ideas. A country site would have been too easily accessible
to the numerous enemies of the Assyrian kings—those eastern
Attilas, who could only feel themselves safe when sheltered by the
impenetrable walls of dwellings perched upon an artificial hill, from
which the whole surrounding country could be watched.
 Fig. 3.—Plan of Sargon’s palace in its present state; from Place.
We must refer those who wish to study the arrangements of
Sargon’s palace in detail to the plans and letterpress of Place. Botta
discovered fourteen apartments; Place cleared one hundred and
eighty-six. A few more were suggested by him on his restored plan
at points where symmetry seemed to demand their existence. His
plan, therefore, includes in all, two hundred and nine apartments of
various sizes.[12] The adjoining plan, which shows the actual state of
the ruins, is sufficient to show the general arrangement (Fig. 3).[13]
The longitudinal section (Fig. 4) is taken through the central axis of
the building, the position of the staged-tower showing that it is the
western half of the palace that has been chosen for reproduction. A
good idea of the general physiognomy of the whole may be obtained
from our Plate V. This is not a mere reduction from Thomas’s
restoration;[14] several details have been sensibly modified. Thus, on
the principal façade, barrel vaults have been substituted for domes
as being on the whole more probable; battlements have been placed
on the parapet of the double ramp, and the perspective, which is
very imperfect in Thomas’s plate, has been corrected. Our view is
supposed to be taken at some sixteen hundred feet above the
ground and at a considerable distance south-east of the platform.

Fig. 4.—Longitudinal section through the palace of Sargon; compiled from

Thomas.
We shall here confine ourselves to showing how the Assyrians
understood the plan and general arrangement of a royal palace. The
buildings of which it was composed were grouped upon a platform
shaped like a T.[15] Each of the two parts of this platform was a
rectangle. The larger of the two—that within the town walls—had a
superficial measurement of about 68,500 square yards, the smaller
one of about 40,000 square yards; so that the palace as a whole
covered between twenty-four and twenty-five acres of ground, and
the brick employed in building it may be put at about 1,750,642 cubic
yards. The imagination is oppressed by such figures, especially
when we remember that all this mass of material was carried to its
place in baskets on men’s shoulders. This we know from those
reliefs in which the construction of a palace is figured.[16]
At the first glance the labyrinth of chambers, corridors and courts
presented by the above plan seems to offer a hopeless task to one
anxious to grasp the principle of its arrangements and to assign its
right use to each apartment. Place and Thomas tell us that such was
their feeling when they first began to open up the palace, but as the
work advanced they grew to understand its combinations. In certain
parts of the building objects were found that cast a flood of light upon
the original purposes of the rooms in which they occurred; the
character and richness of the decoration varied greatly between one
part of the palace and another. The arrangement of the side
entrances, the rarity or multiplicity of passages, also had their
significance. Thanks to the observations made on all these points
during the progress of the work we can now understand the
economy of the building with some completeness.
Its general arrangements were suggested to the architect by
those conditions of life in the east which have changed so little
during so many centuries. From this point of view it was soon
perceived that the palace was divided into three distinct groups of
apartments, groups corresponding exactly to the three great
divisions into which every palatial residence of modern India, Persia,
or Turkey may be divided. There is the Seraglio, or palace properly
speaking, the rooms inhabited by the men, and the sélamlik, in which
visitors are received. Then comes the Harem containing the private
apartments of the prince with those of his wives and children, who
are guarded by eunuchs and waited on by a crowd of female slaves
and domestics. Finally there is the Khan, a collection of service
chambers that we should call offices. The analogy is so absolute that
in our ignorance of the Assyrian names for the three divisions of the
palace, we are tempted to make use of those employed throughout
the Levant, to designate the different parts of such houses, as,
thanks to the wealth of their masters, are provided with all their
organs.
 It is possible that the palace had some direct outlet to the open
country, so that its inhabitants could escape, unknown to the
population of the city, in time of tumult, or could make a nocturnal
sortie upon an enemy encamped beneath the mound. If there were
any such arrangement it must have consisted of staircases contrived
in the mound itself and closed, perhaps, at their inferior extremities
with heavy bronze doors. No traces of such passages have been
found. But even on the side towards the city, the side on which lay
the natural approach to the palace, there is no sign of any ramp or
staircase by which the forty-six feet of difference between the levels
of the platform and the soil upon which the city was built, could be
overcome. The palace had two great monumental façades, each
pierced with three large openings flanked by winged bulls. One of
these façades (that in front of the hall lettered I on the plan) formed
one side of a spacious rectangular court (H) and faced towards the
north-east. Some of the buildings surrounding this court have entirely
disappeared (see plan), but it is certain that it communicated with the
platform of the city walls and that of the palace itself by one opening
or more. On the north-eastern side Thomas has placed a wide and
easy inclined-plane by which horses and other beasts of burden
could mount to the platform, so that the king’s chariot could deposit
him at the very door of his apartments, and the heavily laden mules
and bullocks could deliver their loads in the store rooms which
occupied the whole eastern angle of the mound.[17]
The other façade occupies the middle of the south-eastern face
and is turned towards the town. It forms a majestic propylæum (Fig.
5) through which the largest of the courts is reached (A on the plan).
In the more stately of the city gates foot prints may be traced, while
in those that are less ornamental there are marks of wheels,
suggesting that some entrances were reserved for pedestrians and
others for carriages. It is likely enough that a similar arrangement
obtained in the palace, and that in front of this south-eastern
gateway there was a flight of steps instead of a continuous ramp. We
find such an arrangement at Persepolis where both steps and
balustrade, being cut in the rock, are still in good preservation; at
Khorsabad, however, there is now no vestige of such a staircase. If
the steps have not been carried away they must lie entombed at the
very bottom of the débris. We cannot say then that our restoration is,
in this particular, beyond contention, but it is both probable in itself
and entirely in the spirit of Assyrian architecture. These steps must
have been the shortest way from the town to the palace. Horsemen,
chariots, convoys of provisions had to make a détour and reach both
the palace platform and that of the city walls by the south-eastern
ramp.
Let us, too, make use of that approach, and, when we have
gained the summit of the incline, turn to our left and pass through the
first doorway. This must have been carefully fortified and guarded,
for it led directly to the heart of the royal dwelling. It has now entirely
disappeared with the northern corner of the mound on which it stood,
but we need not hesitate to restore it, with a whole suite of buildings
inclosing what must have been the chief court of the palace, so far,
at least, as dignity was concerned (H on the plan).[18] West and
south-west of this quadrangle there is a group of chambers
excavated by Botta, to which we have given the name of the
seraglio.
The seraglio contained ten courts and no less than sixty rooms or
passages, intimately connected by the doors pierced through their
walls. M. Place divides this great collection of chambers into two
distinct parts, which, he thinks, had different duties to fulfil.
He calls the first part, that in which the courts marked I, J, K, L
occur, the sculptural part.[19] It contained the sélamlik proper,
consisting of the largest and most splendidly decorated halls. The
narrow gallery separating court I from court J is 150 feet long and 19
feet wide. The other rooms opening out of court J are 106 feet long
by 26½ feet wide. This court J is the real centre of the sélamlik; it is
almost exactly square, with a superficial measurement of about
11,236 square feet. The eight doors that open upon it give access to
every part of the palace. Four of these doorways are supported by
bulls; they were all vaulted, and their arches decorated with bands of
enamelled brick. As for the walls themselves, their lower parts were
cased with bas-reliefs coloured in sober tints. It is quite possible that
this court was used for ceremonial purposes, as it could be easily
protected from the sun by stretching between the summits of its
walls, those rich stuffs the Babylonians knew so well how to weave.
By covering the ground with carpets a saloon would be formed in
which large numbers of people could be brought together, and one
whose noble decorations would be in complete harmony with the
stateliest pageants.

Fig. 5.—South eastern gateway of Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad; compiled from

Thomas.
We cannot attempt to describe the seven great chambers that
surrounded the courtyard. They were all decorated with sculptured
slabs and enamelled brick; the doors that led from one to the other
were flanked by colossi. At one point (looking towards the court
marked L) the spectator could look down a vista of no less than eight
of these arched and decorated doorways.
All these large rooms opening from a single court made up a
combination in which everything was calculated for show. Their size
alone made such rooms uninhabitable, and, as life has everywhere
much the same requirements, M. Place found to the south of these
state apartments a collection of smaller and less richly ornamented
chambers in which the king could sleep, eat, and receive in private
audience, and in which the officers of his chancellery and his
personal attendants could be lodged within easy call. These are the
rooms about the courts marked M, M´, N, O, P in our plan. They
contain a few sculptures. The walls as a rule are coated with a
coloured stucco, and sometimes decorated with fresco paintings.
There are in all forty-nine of these rooms, covering, with their courts,
about 6,000 square yards.
A short study of the plan is enough to make its presiding idea
clear to us. “Each court, taken by itself and with the chambers
radiating from it, forms a distinct group of apartments communicating
with other groups only on one side and often only by a single
door.”[20] Each of these groups must have afforded lodgings for the
personnel of one department of the king’s household. Ctesias says
that fifteen thousand officers and domestics found board and lodging
in the palace of the King of Persia, and although he may be here
guilty, as in so many other instances, of some exaggeration, we are
willing to accept this figure as being comparatively near the truth.
Travellers who visited Constantinople in the days of the Solimans
and Amurats, tell us that the walls of the old seraglio crave shelter to
thousands of individuals who were fed from the kitchens of the
sultan.
Before quitting this part of the palace we must point out several
other buildings that belong to it both by position and character. In the
first place, our readers will see that the northern angle is occupied by
a group of chambers abutting on one corner of the seraglio but not
communicating directly with it. This group opens on the state
quadrangle and upon the external platform. “This building was
decorated in the most splendid fashion. It contained eight vast halls
and a few smaller chambers. It was like a second seraglio attached
to the first and rivalling it in magnificence. What could have been its
destination? We can hardly answer that question with certainty, but
we may hazard the suggestion that, in the lifetime of Sargon, his son
Sennacherib was already a great personage and must have had his
own particular palace, or suite of apartments, in the house of the
king, his father.”[21]
In the western angle of the platform stands the isolated and
irretrievably ruinous building taken by Botta for a temple, and
restored by Thomas as a throne room.[22] In either case it played its
part in the official and public life of the king. We may say the same of
the building near the centre of the south-western face of the mound,
in which we have recognized a temple, although we have not
scrupled to make use of the title given to it by M. Place. The chief
sanctuary of the town that lay so far below its summit, it must have
been the scene after each campaign, of the royal homage to Assur;
the observatory of the astrologers, it must have had constant and
intimate relations with the palace, where the bulletins issued from it
must have been awaited with anxiety whenever the propitious
moment for any great enterprise was sought.
At the southern angle of the seraglio and to the south-east of the
Observatory, there is an almost completely separate building. Its
isolation, the few points of access and the way they are arranged,
the style of its decorations, their richness, and the disposition of its
chambers, all combine to suggest that this part of the palace was the
royal harem. An inscription upon the threshold of one of the rooms
confirms this conjecture; it prays for the blessing of fertility upon the
royal alliances.[23] In our Fig. 6 we give a large scale plan on which
its arrangements may be more easily followed. The total area of the
harem was about 10,912 square yards.
 Fig. 6.—Plan of the harem in Sargon’s palace;
from Place.
In the walls inclosing all this space there were but two openings;
one in the south-western façade, facing the city, the other leading
into the great court of the palace. The first opening was a narrow
passage leading to a small square chamber, which must have been
a eunuch’s guard-room. The passage from it into the main court of
the harem is at right angles with the first named passage, so that no
glimpse of the inside could be caught from the external platform, or
vice-versâ. The second entrance also leads to this same court (Q on
plan) which thus acts as a kind of vestibule to the rest of the harem.
This entrance leads from the southern angle of the large court (A on
first plan) into a rectangular guard-room like that already mentioned.
This guard-room has four doors. One leading through a small square
vestibule into the large court, two sides of which were taken up with
stables, workshops, and store-rooms; a second leading, as we have
seen, into the harem court; a third into the first of several rectangular
chambers that surround this court on the south-east; and the fourth
into a kind of corridor that runs between the harem wall (U) and that
of the great quadrangle, ending finally on the platform round the
Observatory. By this last named entrance the king could reach his
wives’ apartments by a route which, though longer, was far more
private than that through the great quadrangle. The passage may,
perhaps, have been covered by a wooden gallery, allowing it to be
used in all states of the weather.
The harem had three courts, around which were distributed a
number of small rooms and several large halls, destined, no doubt,
for use on festive occasions. There were no bas-reliefs on the walls,
which were decorated merely with a coat of white stucco crossed at
the foot by a black dado thirty-two inches high. Unlike the floors of
beaten earth in the seraglio, most of those in the harem were paved
with bricks or stone slabs.
The heart of the harem was the court marked U in our plan. Its
decorations were rich in the extreme. On at least one side the foot of
the wall was decorated with a sort of mosaic of enamelled brick
surmounted by groups of semi-columns (Fig. 101 and Plate XV.).
The doors were flanked by statues and by tall timber shafts cased in
metal, carrying on their summits tufts of palm leaves in gilded
bronze, giving a free rendering of the tall stem and graceful head of
the date-tree. We have restored one part of this court in perspective
(Fig. 7) introducing nothing conjectural but the upper parts of the
wall.[24]
 In this woodcut an arrangement may be noticed (it is still more
clearly shown in the plan) which is encountered nowhere else. The
area of the brick-paved court was intersected by two lines of stone
slabs crossing each other in the centre and standing slightly above
the general level of the pavement. These paths lead to three
bedrooms in three corners of the quadrangle and to a small
unimportant-looking room in the fourth corner. The three bedrooms
were exactly similar to each other and unlike anything to be found in
the rest of the palace. They were large oblong rooms; about a third
of their area was occupied by a kind of daïs twenty-four inches
above the rest of the floor, and approached by five brick steps. In the
centre of the end wall there was a kind of alcove, the floor of which
was again four feet three inches above that of the daïs. This alcove
was decorated with grooves and surmounted by an arch of
enamelled brick (Fig. 90, Vol. I.). Its dimensions were nine feet wide
by three feet four inches deep, or just a convenient space for a bed,
which might be reached by movable steps. Thomas has not
hesitated to introduce one into his restoration. The bas-reliefs
furnished him with a model.[25]