On Lonergans philosophy of knowing and historical insights

Fbio Maia Bertato

Centro de Lgica, Epistemologia e Histria da Cincia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas

Cidade Universitria Zeferino Vaz, Rua Srgio Buarque de Holanda, 251, Baro Geraldo,
Campinas, SP
fmbertato@cle.unicamp.br
Abstract: The main work of the Canadian philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984)
is the book Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957). In this book, Lonergan presents
his version of Aquinas philosophy of knowing from a contemporary perspective. His
task is to understand what is to understand and he focuses primarily in the knowing and
secondly in the known. He begins the study on insight considering the dramatic instance
illustrated by Archimedes rushing naked from the Baths crying Eureka!. With this
instance, Lonergan gives to the reader an insight on insight and introduces the
characterization of this important concept. The aim of this paper is to make some
considerations on Lonergans philosophy of knowing and to provide other examples of
well-registered insights from history.
Keywords: Lonergan; Insight; Philosophy of knowing; Historical insight; Epistemology.

Bernard Lonergan and his philosophy of knowing

Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) was a great scholar. He was a
philosopher, a theologian, an economist and a student of methodology. 1 He
taught at Loyola College, Montreal (now part of Concordia University), Regis
College (Toronto), the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Harvard
University and Boston College. He had background in mathematics, classics and
logic.
It seems more appropriate to call Lonergan a student of methodology than a
methodologist, because of his particular concept of method. While he accepted being
called a methodologist, he added: but what most people understand by method is a
recipe. This notion was strongly rejected by him (Morelli, 1997, p. 14; cf.
http://www.bernardlonergan.com).
1

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A few data about him: he has followers in the entire world. His works
were translated into several languages. There are more than a dozen centers
devoted to his work. Almost a dozen colloquia are held every year having him as
core subject. The literature on his thought currently comprises more than one
thousand articles and monographs. Those facts notwithstanding, the
overwhelming majority of people, including scholars, have never heard of
Lonergan. Indeed, a story in the Boston College Magazine (Spring, 2003) explains:
To his followers, Bernard Lonergan, SJ, was the most important theologian,
psychologist, economist, philosopher you never heard of. On the occasion of a
conference on Lonergans work, in 1970, Time magazine (April 20, 1970, p. 10)
wrote he is considered by many intellectuals to be the finest philosophic thinker
of the 20th century.
Lonergans main work is Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957).
In this book, Lonergan presents his version of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
philosophy of knowing from a contemporary perspective. Although knowledge
is the core of Lonergans philosophy, in Insight he also approaches philosophy,
mathematics, physics and other natural sciences, ethics, economics, metaphysics,
and so forth. In the present paper I discuss Lonergans concept of insight,
namely, the main one in his philosophy, as an act of understanding and provide
a few examples of historical insights.
The task Lonergan sought to accomplish in Insight was to understand
what to understand is by primarily focusing on the act of knowing and
secondarily on that which is known. His philosophy unfolds in the answers to
the following three questions: (1) What am I doing when I am knowing?; (2) Why
is doing that knowing?; and (3) What do I know when I do it? The answers to
those questions result in a cognitional theory, an epistemology and a metaphysics,
respectively. In this way, Lonergan reverses the traditional order of dependence
among these philosophical disciplines.
Lonergan began his reflection on insight by mathematics and
mathematical physics, because, according to him, the mathematicians know
exactly what they are doing when they have insights. His goal was to have an
insight into insight. Thus he concluded: Archimedes had his insight thinking
about the crown; we shall have ours by thinking about Archimedes (Lonergan
1992, p. 28).
In his theory of cognition Lonergan considers three steps for the process
of knowing: experience, understanding and judgment. Together with the decision
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to act, these steps represent what Lonergan calls levels of self-transcendence,

which might be conceived of as the set of operations by which one transcends
oneself and deals with the external world.
The objects of experience are data. Data are not mere deliverances of
sense - of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting. Data are what human
beings ask questions about. What humans experience but do not yet know or
understand. Data are immediately present to consciousness. Data give rise to
questions and questions can give rise to insights into the data. Through insights
one fills the blanks in the answers to questions in a way that makes sense.
Humans have a desire to know what they experience. According to
Aristotle, all men by nature desire to know (Arist. Met. I.1, 980a22, trans. Ross).
Lonergan calls this desire to know the primordial question. Aristotles
Metaphysics begins by assuming this fact, and Lonergan builds his philosophy on
that primordial question, that thirst for knowledge, that seeking for the unknown:
By insight, [] is meant not any act of attention or advertence or memory but
the supervening act of understanding (Lonergan 1992, p. 3).
Who seeks insights and in which domains? Mathematicians seek insights
into sets of elements, scientists into ranges of phenomena and men of common
sense (i.e., all human beings in their daily activities) into concrete situations and
practical affairs. Insight is universal: All acts of understanding have a certain
family likeness, a full and balanced view is to be reached only by combining in a
single account the evidence obtained from different fields of intelligent activity
(Lonergan 1992, p. 4).
Insights can be direct or inverse. Through direct insight humans get a
glimpse of the intelligibility of data (for instance, we can easily identify the pattern
underlying the following sequence of numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, ). Through
inverse insight we recognize absence of intelligibility (we understand the
randomness of a sequence like: 3, -2, 10, 40.023, 22, , -3,278, ).
In the stage of experience insights provide provisional understanding. In
the step of understanding one deals with the accumulation, integration,
systematization of insights. One grasps relations, connections among the content
of previous insights. Understanding develops.
However, inquiries derived from the primordial question are not
satisfied by just a plausible understanding of experience. One further needs to
check whether such understanding is true or correct. Every question for
intelligence (what is it?, Why? and How often?) leads to a question for reflection
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(Is it so?). 2 Therefore, one next moves onto the stage of judgment of the
cognitional process, in which the questions for reflection arise, aiming at
establishing whether evidences are sufficient to affirm a judgment (It is so) and
thus whether ones judgment is correct or not.
Dramatic situations: the experience of insight
In his study of insight as an activity Lonergan considers each singular
insight as an event that occurs within various patterns of other related events
(Lonergan 1992, p. 16). Here he is not interested in what is understood, but in
the process by which something comes to be understood. In the first part of
Insight, Lonergan seeks answer to the question, What is happening when we are
knowing?:
But in fact our primary concern is not the known but the knowing. The
known is extensive, but the knowing is a recurrent structure that can be
investigated sufficiently in a series of strategically chosen instances. The
known is difficult to master, but in our day competent specialists have
labored to select for serious readers and to present to them in an adequate
fashion the basic components of the various departments of knowledge.
Finally, the known is incomplete and subject to revision, but our concern
is the knower that will be the source of the future additions and revisions.
(Lonergan 1992, p. 12).

An insight is simply an act of understanding, an act that occurs easily and

frequently in intelligent people, but seldom among the ones lacking in intelligence
(Lonergan 1992, p. 29). The experience of insight marks the transition from nonunderstanding to understanding. The occurrence of an insight is related with the
passage from one problem to its solution.
What insight is not? Insight is not an act of memory. It is not an
intuition. It is not a vision of sensible objects. Insight is not an act of picturing.
Insight is commonplace. We all perform acts of understanding all the
time. People know in two possible manners, by acquiring commonsense or
On the notion of judgment and the different kinds of grasps and formulations
obtained from the questions for intelligence, see Lonergan (1992, pp. 296-303).
2

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theoretical knowledge, and insights are present in both. Through commonsense

insights one can understand things related to oneself. Theoretical insights allow
understanding how things are related one to another.
History provides many examples of extraordinary insights. As a dramatic
instance of commonsense insight (if one might say adjective common applies
to this case), let us consider the well-known story of the American author Helen
Adams Keller (1880-1968). She was deaf, blind and mute in consequence of a
disease she had at age 18 months old. Everything changed for her when her
teacher and lifelong companion, Anne Mansfield Sullivan (1866-1936), herself
visually impaired, went to Kellers home in March 1887. In the latters words:
The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave
me a doll. [...] Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-ll." I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. [...]
Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters
for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words
existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. [...]
But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that
everything has a name. [...] We walked down the path to the wellhouse, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it
was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed
my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand
she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly.
I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her
fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something
forgottena thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery
of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant
the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That
living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be
swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name
gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object
which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw
everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. [...] I learned
a great many new words that day. [...] It would have been difficult to find
a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful
day [...] (Keller 1905, cap. IV emphasis added).
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A little seven-year-old girl practically isolated from the exterior world by

her blindness and deafness discovered that everything had a name and each such
name allowed her acquire new thoughts. The blind girl could now see by means
of that strange new sight that enabled her to learn about and understand the
world. Probably Lonergan would have considered such new sight as insight.
Another well-known story is that of Archimedes rushing naked from the
baths shouting Eureka!. According to Vitruvius (c.80-70 BC-15 BC):
Though Archimedes discovered many curious matters which evince great
intelligence, that which I am about to mention is the most extraordinary.
Hiero, when he obtained the regal power in Syracuse, having, on the
fortunate turn of his affairs, decreed a votive crown of gold to be
placed in a certain temple to the immortal gods, commanded it to
be made of great value, and assigned an appropriate weight of gold
to the manufacturer. He, in due time, presented the work to the
king, beautifully wrought, and the weight appeared to correspond
with that of the gold which had been assigned for it.
But a report having been circulated, that some of the gold had been
abstracted, and that the deficiency thus caused had been supplied
with silver, Hiero was indignant at the fraud, and, unacquainted
with the method by which the theft might be detected, requested
Archimedes would undertake to give it his attention. Charged with
this commission, he by chance went to a bath, and being in the
vessel, perceived that, as his body became immersed, the water ran
out of the vessel. Whence, catching at the method to be adopted for
the solution of the proposition, he immediately followed it up, leapt
out of the vessel in joy, and, returning home naked, cried out with a
loud voice that he had found that of which he was in search, for he
continued exclaiming, in Greek, , (I have found it out).
After this, he is said to have taken two masses, each of a weight equal to
that of the crown, one of them of gold and the other of silver. Having
prepared them, he filled a large vase with water up to the brim, wherein
he placed the mass of silver, which caused as much water to run out as
was equal to the bulk thereof. The mass being then taken out, he poured
in by measure as much water as was required to fill the vase once more to
the brim. By these means he found out what quantity of water was equal
to a certain weight of silver.
He then placed the mass of gold in the vessel, and, on taking it out, found
that the water which ran over was lessened, because, as the magnitude of
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the gold mass was smaller than that containing the same weight of silver.
After again filling the vase by measure, he put the crown itself in, and
discovered that more water ran over then than with the mass of gold that
was equal to it in weight; and thus, from the superfluous quantity of water
carried over the brim by the immersion of the crown, more than that
displaced by the mass, he found, by calculation, the quantity of silver
mixed with the gold, and made manifest the fraud of the manufacturer.
(Vitruvius 1826, Book IX, pp. 264-265 emphasis added).

Lonergan choose this story as his first illustration of insight. Probably it

is a legend, as there is evidence against the possibility of reproducing accurately
the procedure indicated by Vitruvius. Still, if this story is true Archimedes might
have worked out the principles of displacement and specific weight or gravity. In
any case Lonergan was not interested in the principles of hydrostatics. His goal
was to have an insight into insight. Thus he concluded: Archimedes had his
insight thinking about the crown; we shall have ours by thinking about
Archimedes (Lonergan 1992, p. 28).
Following this dramatic instance Lonergan describes five characteristics
of insight that can be grasped by analyzing Archimedes Eureka moment and
reflecting on what is going on in our own minds while we are understanding.
Five characteristics of insight
1. Insight comes as a release to the tension of inquiry:
[] the fact of inquiry is beyond all doubt. It can absorb a man. It can
keep him for hours, day after day, year after year, in the narrow prison of
his study or his laboratory. It can send him on dangerous voyages of
exploration. It can withdraw him from other interests, other pursuits,
other pleasures, other achievements. (Lonergan 1992, p. 28)

It suffices to think of Helen Kellers joy. Or of Andrew Wiles (b. 1953)

absorbed in his research on Fermats Last Theorem for over six years in neartotal secrecy. Certainly, Archimedes running naked is an excellent example of this
kind of release.

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2. Insight comes suddenly and unexpectedly: One cannot force an

insight. When people have a problem, they are active in the sense they are looking
for answers and solutions. They are passive in the sense they are waiting for an
insight. Insights do not follow automatically from the formulation of a problem.
This fact is seen in the following quotes by Wiles and Henri Poincar
(1854-1912), leaving the beauty of the mathematical construction aside. About
his insight into the solution of Fermats Last Theorem, Wiles said, I was casually
glancing at a paper of Barry Mazurs [...] and I just instantly realized that there
was a trick that I could use [...] (apud Mozzochi 2000, p. 16). And Poincar, on
his sudden flash of illumination during a sleepless night that led him to formulate
the class of Fuchsian functions,
The incidents of the travel made me forget my mathematical work [...] At
the moment when I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without
anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it [...]
I did not verify the idea [...] I felt a perfect certainty. (apud van der
Waerden 2009, p. 69)

3. Insights depend on inner conditions rather than on outer

circumstances: Propitious conditions for insights to occur might be created by
asking questions continually, handling data, considering different perspectives
and reasoning by analogies. Yet, according to Lonergan (1992, p. 29), insight
depends upon native endowment; after all, many frequented the baths of
Syracuse without coming to grasp the principles of hydrostatics.
4. An insight pivots between the abstract and the concrete: Insights deal
with data and images which are concrete. An insight grasps an idea, a concept,
an abstract element. According to Lonergan (1992, p. 30),
[] because the significance and relevance of insight goes beyond any
concrete problem or application, men formulate abstract sciences with
their numbers and symbols, their technical terms and formulae, their
definitions, postulates, and deductions.

One might evoke Socrates and the slave (Plato, Meno 80d-86c): one
particular square gives a general result on areas of squares.

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5. An insight passes into the habitual texture of ones mind. Before

Archimedes could solve his problem he needed inspiration, but he no longer
needed it once the solution was found. A difficult problem becomes simple. And
tends to remain simple. This characteristic makes learning possible.
What one really understands somehow becomes part of ones own being.
It is like riding a bike...
After this characterization of insight, Lonergan discusses the genesis of
the definition of circle and the insight-involving cognitive process that allows one
go from a cartwheel to the concept of circle. He also considers the different kinds
of definition (nominal, explanatory and implicit definitions) and the emergence
of higher viewpoints, as the development from arithmetic to algebra (Lonergan
1992, pp. 31-37).3
Final remarks
Allow me a brief comment on the possibility of developing a systemic
approach to Lonergans philosophy of knowing: considering his characterization
of insight and that for every basic insight there is a circle of terms and relations,
such that the terms fix the relations, the relations fix the terms and the insight
fixes both (Lonergan 1992, p. 36), a systemic theory of knowing, a general
theory of knowing using the apparatus of mathematical logic is plausible. The
reason is that systems can be mathematically considered as relational structures,
that is, ordered pairs composed of a set of objects and a set of relations on the
set of objects. I intend to develop this formal approach in the future (Bertato
2014).
From the aforementioned considerations I may highlight the following
points: historical examples allow identifying some characteristics of insight;
According to Lonergan, insights on questions lead to further questions. Further
questions lead to further insights only to raise still further questions. In this way insights
accumulate as viewpoints; lower viewpoints lead to higher viewpoints. The example
of the emergence of algebra from arithmetic or the sequence of construction of number
systems (naturals, integers, rational, irrational, real, complex, etc.) can help understand
the idea of higher viewpoints as a result of the limitations of the lower ones (e.g., complex
numbers allow performing operations which are impossible with real numbers).
3

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understanding insight might help stimulate its occurrence; based on the notion
of insight one can build a philosophy and a metaphysics; the notion of selfappropriation proposed by Lonergan (in the sense of self-awareness and
obtainment of insights from the history of science) seems interesting; and
Lonergans theory has great potential for formal systems.
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