THE USE & MISUSE OF SCIENCE FOR CHANGE

SCIENCE FOR IMAGINEERS

KAOS PILOTS FEB 2012

NICK JANKEL, WECREATE

@NICKWECREATE@NICKJANKEL

DAY 1THE USE AND MISUSE OF SCIENCE FOR CHANGE

A FAST FORWARD THROUGH HISTORY, PARADIGMS AND COMPETING SCHOOLS OF SCIENCE, STARTING OUT WITH ”NATURAL SCIENCE”, PROVABILITY/REPEATABILITY, MOVING THROUGH VARIOUS SCHOOLS/PHILOSOPHIES LIKE POSITIVISM, BEHAVIOURISM, ENDING UP WITH QUANTUM PHYSICS AND CHAOS-THEORY. MOVING THROUGH SOCIAL SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY, ETC.

A CHOICE OF LENSES AND METHODS

TODAY

WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THIS SESSION? HOW DOES THIS TOPIC CONNECT TO YOUR GOALS? WHAT ABOUT THE TIMES WE ARE LIVING IN?

WHAT ARE THE TIMES IN YOUR LIFE THAT YOU FEEL MOST ENERGIZED AND VITAL IN?

4PROBLEMS

4TEAMS

PRESENT BACK ON THURS AM A 1 PAGE STRATEGY

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of consciousness that created them.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

CONSCIOUSNEEDS RAISING

NEED TO KNOW MORE

UNKNOWNSCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INTO CAUSESCOMPLEX / ADAPTIVE SYSTEMSAR / AL / AISCENARIO PLANNINGETHNOGRAPHY

“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called ‘research’.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

12

HEARTHANDHEAD

A BRIEFHISTORY OF SCIENCE

1758

“This year the world is witnessing the most satisfying phenomenon that astronomy has ever provided, an event unique to this day, changing our doubts into certainties, and our hypotheses into demonstrations.”

THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

TELESCOPEGALILEO

MECHANICSPENDULUMS, CALCULUS ETC.

EMPIRICALOBSERVATION

“Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough.”

IBN AL-HAYTHAM

INDUCTIONFRANCIS BACON

“There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immoveable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.”

FRANCIS BACON

DESCARTESRATIONALISM / DEDUCTION

BIASESMIND & SENSES

NEWTON

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in the night: 

God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

ALEXANDER POPE

CLOCKWORKUNIVERSE

“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.”

PIERRE SIMON LA PLACE

MICROSCOPEHOOK, LEEUWENHOEK

ENLIGHTENMENTVOLTAIRE, JEAN-JAQUES ROUSSEAU, LOCKE, HUME ETC

AUTHORITYSCIENCE & REASONOVERTRADITION & RELIGION

REASONBECOMES MORE AND MORE LIKE MECHANISTIC MATERIALISM

19TH CSCIENCE GETS PROFESSIONAL

CHEMICALDEMISE OF PHLOGISTON THEORYACCURATE MEASUREMENT

PERIODIC TABLEMENDELEEV

ELECTROMAGNETISM

FARADAY & MAXWELL

EVOLUTIONDARWIN VS. PALEY

EVOLUTIONDARWIN VS. PALEY

FINCHESGRADUAL CHANGE (NO LEAPS)

SOCIALDARWINISM

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”CHARLES DARWIN

GERM THEORYPASTEUR, KOCH

“[I]t seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have now been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice…. An eminent physicist has remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.”ALBERT MICHELSON, 1894

20TH CSCIENCE GETS SPOOKY/ED

RELATIVITYEINSTEIN

CHEMIST’S WAR

QUANTUMTHEORY

ENTANGLEMENT147 MILES

UNCERTAINTYLOCATION OR MOMENTUM BUT NOT BOTH

INCOMPLETENESSLOCATION OR MOMENTUM BUT NOT BOTH

CPUSPEEDS

EUGENICSNAZI ‘SCIENCE’

LYSENKOISMSOVIET ‘SCIENCE’

“He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists”

ANDREI SAKHAROV

HOLOCAUSTINDUSTRIAL SCALE RATIONALISM

“Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.”

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

PHYSICIST’SWAR

HIROSHIMAMANHATTAN PROJECT

ARMYINJECTING DISEASE IN 1950

COMPLEXINDUSTRIAL-MILITARY

WWWSOCIAL MEDIA, SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS...

WHAT IS SCIENCE?

WHAT MAKES SOMETHING SCIENTIFIC?

BODYOF KNOWLEDGE

METHODACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE

“Science is the systematic, rational acquisition of new knowledge.”

HAAPARANTA & NIINILUOTO

PROCESSFIND CURIOUS PHENOMENA / QUESTIONS

PROCESSFIND CURIOUS PHENOMENA / QUESTIONSOBSERVE A LOTMAKE UP A THEORYDESIGN EXPERIMENT TO TEST THEORYANALYSETELL EVERYONE ABOUT ITREPEAT (BY OTHERS)

OBSERVEINDUCE A THEORYDEDUCE A PREDICTION

DEDUCTFROM GENERAL TO SPECIFIC

INDUCTFROM SPECIFIC TO GENERAL

MYTHOSLOGOS

Mystery kidney disease in Central America

WHAT MIGHT YOU WANT TO OBSERVE?WHAT DATA MIGHT YOU WANT?WHAT KIND OF THEORY WOULD IT GIVE?

PREDICTIONTHEORY NEEDS TO CREATE HYPOTHESES TO TEST / VERIFY

FALSIFICATIONSCIENCE NEEDS TESTABLE PREDICTIONS

“A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.”

KARL POPPER

WHAT PREDICTIONS MIGHT YOUR THEORY HOLD TRUE?WHAT EXPERIMENTS COULD YOU RUN?

AVOIDSUBJECT BIASEXPERIMENTER BIASSELECTION BIAS

RCT

IN DEVPT

WHAT RCTS COULD YOU RUN?

CRITERIATESTABLEREPEATABLEOBSERVABLEPREDICTABLE

CRITERIAOBJECTIVITYPUBLICITYCRITICAL THINKINGSELF-CORRECTIVENESSAUTONOMYPROGRESSIVENESS

AGENDA-LESS?

VALUE-FREE?

“Science can (potentially at least) explain everything because its ways of trying to understand the universe by asking questions of it should not leave any areas off-limits. The methods of openness, inquiry, curiosity, theory building, hypothesis testing and so on can be adapted and developed to explore and try to explain anything.”

SUE BLACKMORE

GRANDNARRATIVE

PROGRESS!

TELEOLOYGEIST

CONTROL!PLANETPEOPLE

DEFINE!IQBMIHAPPINESSGDP

EXPLOIT!VALUEENERGY

BEING A SCIENTIST

OBSERVESOMETHING

SUBJECT /OBJECT

VARIABLESPLITS UNITY OF EXPERIENCE

“For is it not possible that science will create a monster? Is it not possible that an objective approach that frowns upon personal connections between the entities examined will harm people, turn them into miserable, unfriendly, self-righteous mechanisms without charm or humour? "Is it not possible," asks Kierkegaard, "that my activity as an objective [or critico-rational] observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being?" I suspect the answer to many of these questions is affirmative and I believe that a reform of the sciences that makes them more anarchic and more subjective is urgently needed.”

PAUL FEYERABEND

GOETHEDELICATE, EMPATHIC EMPIRICISM

300 YEARS BEFORE COPENHAGEN INTERPRETATION

“It is a calamity that the use of experiment has severed nature from man, so that he is content to understand nature merely through what artificial instruments reveal and by so doing even restricts her achievements...Microscopes and telescopes, in actual fact, confuse man's innate clarity of mind.”

GOETHE

TAWHIDISLAMIC SCIENCE

DISENCHANTMENTOF WORLD

“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the 'disenchantment of the world.' Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.”

MAX WEBER, 1918

POWERIMBALANCE

KNOWLEDGEPOWER

“And God said: Let man have dominion of the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air. and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth over the earth.”

GENESIS 1, 26

ESSENTIALTRUTH / IDENTITY

FOUCAULTGENEALOGYDISCONTINUITY

FOUCAULTINDUSTRIAL-MILITARY

“A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”

JEREMY BENTHAM

GAZECONSTRUCTS KNOWER AND KNOWN

“Which speaking, discoursing subjects – which subjects of experience and knowledge – do you want to ‘diminish’ when you say: ‘I who conduct this discourse am conducting a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist’?”FOUCAULT

SURVEILLANCE

SOUSVEILLANCE

HISTORICALVS ESSENTIAL

DARWINIMPERIALISM & DOMINATION OF NATURE

BIOLOGYNOW IN CONTEXT OF CO-OPERATION & COLLABORATION

EVOLUTIONREVISITED WITHIN COMPLEXITY

GENENOT ISOLATED

25,000HOW DO WE GET SO COMPLEX?

EPIGENETICSDNA METHYLATIONEVO DEVO

NATURALSELECTION?SPONTANEOUS SELF-ORGANISATION?

CONSTRUCTEDSOCIALLY

SSKEDINBURGH / BATH

TACITAGREEMENTSKNOWLEDGE

PARADIGMKUHNFOUCAULT EPISTEME

KUHN...PRE-PARADIGM PARADIGM (NORMAL SCIENCE) ANOMALY CRISIS RESPONSE & EMERGENCE OF NEW PARADIGM

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

MAX PLANCK

SHIFTSPTOLEMAIC COSMOLOGY - COPERNICANARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS - NEWTONIAN PHYSICSNEWTONIAN PHYSICS - EINSTEIN’S RELATIVITY CLASSICAL MECHANICS - QUANTUM MECHANICS LAMARCK - DARWIN’S THEORY STATIC BRAIN - NEUROPLASTICITY

REVOLUTIONINCOMENSURABILITY

INVISIBLETEXT BOOKS SHOW LINEARITYCUMULATIVE KNOWLDEGE

GESTALTSHIFT

BOLTZMANNPARADIGM SHIFT

DECLINEEFFECT

RELATIVISMAAARGH

MATERIALISMSTOPS BEFORE BIG BANG AS NO OBJECT / MATERIAL

SCIENCEVS PSEUDOSCIENCE

CARGOCULT

WHAT IS SOCIALSCIENCE?

168

POSITIVISMTHEOLOGICAL STAGEMETAPHYSICAL STAGESCIENTIFIC (OR POSITIVE) STAGE

POSITIVISMDESCRIBECONTROLPREDICT

COMTEPOST-REVOLUTION

“From science comes prediction; from prediction comes action.”

COMMTE

REFORM!DISSATISFACTION WITH WHAT IS

HERMENEUTICS

GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN

VERSTEHENVS. ERKLÄREN

“There are limits to what the process of observation, experimentation, prediction and falsification can tell us. Until we invent time-travel and really get a handle on the multiverse, science tells us little about history, for example. Science may be able to tell us why we like music, why certain types of sound appeal more than others, but not why Bach is the best. Taking this line in arguments leads to two things. The first is the view encapsulated by Wittgenstein, that one should only discuss things that one is kitted out to discuss. Science can only elucidate truths that can be framed in a testable, predictable and falsifiable scenario.”

A REALIST PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE: EXPLANATION AND UNDERSTANDING

ANTIPOSITIVISMMAX WEBER

“[Sociology is ] ... the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By 'action' in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful ... the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the 'meaning' thought of as somehow objectively 'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history, and any kind of a priori discipline, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.”

MAX WEBER 1922

TRUTHS(S)RELATIVISMPOST MODERNISM (IRONY)

AUTHOR IS DEAD

TRUTHWHO OWNS IT?(AND WHAT DO THEY GET FROM IT?)

COLONIALISMRESEARCH WITHOUT CRITICAL THINKING RECAPITULATES STATUS QUO

AND INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES

FRANKFURTSCHOOL

CRITICALTHINKING

“The emancipation of human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”

HORKHEIMER

1-DMAN

“The means of communication, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers to the producers and, through the latter to the whole social system. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood...Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior.”

HERBERT MARCUSE

MARXISTTHEORY

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

MARX

CRITIQUETHE CRITIQUE

PRIVILEGENEGATIVE DIALECTICS

DECONSTRUCTIONDERRIDA ETC.

HABERMAS

“The positivist thesis of unified science, which assimilates all the sciences to a natural-scientific model, fails because of the intimate relationship between the social sciences and history, and the fact that they are based on a situation-specific understanding of meaning that can be explicated only hermeneutically ... access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone.”

JURGEN HABERMAS

“No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption.”

PAULO FREIRE 1970

SOCIAL SCIENCETRUE? VALUE-FREE?

POPPERVS. KUHN

DIALOGICTRUTH

BAKHTIN

MAPNOT NECESSARILY THE TERRITORY BUT IT CAN HELP GUIDE US PRACTICALLY

“What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. The philosopher, of all people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself.” 

HANS-GEORG GADAMER

PRAGMATISMBETWEEN IDEALISM & EMPIRICISM

“In Aristotle’s words phronesis is a ‘true state, reasoned, and capable of action with regard to things that are good or bad for man.’ Phronesis goes beyond both analytical, scientific knowledge (episteme) and technical knowledge or know-how (techne) and involves judgments and decisions made in the manner of a virtuoso social and political actor.”

BENT FLYVBJERG

VICO

“Men are not isolated non-social atoms, but are men only when in intrinsic relations’ to one another.”

JOHN DEWEY

DEWEYEXPERMENTALISTRELATIONAL

PHRONESISWHERE ARE WE GOING?IS THIS DESIRABLE?WHO GAINS AND WHO LOSES, AND BY WHICH MECHANISMS OF POWER?WHAT, IF ANYTHING, SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT?

HEARTOPEN, OPTIMISTIC

INTENTION KNOWLEDGE TERMS LENSES

KNOW ‘TRUTH’ EXPLANATION OF WHAT IS

NATURALISM / REALISMPROOF

REDUCTIONISMEMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

INDUCTION / DEDUCTION

PREDICT / CONTROL NATURE

CORROBORATION OF WHAT WORKS INSTRUMENTALISM EVIDENCE BASE

RCTS

APPRECIATE / EMPATHISE

UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THINGS ARE HERMENEUTICS

SEMIOTICSCONTEXT

QUAL / QUANTPO

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

DISEMPOWER CRITICISM OF WHY THINGS ARE

STRUCTURALISMPOST MODERNISM

DECONSTRUCTION‘ARCHEOLOGY’

CRITICAL THEORY

IMPROVE INSIGHT INTO HOW TO CHANGE THINGS EMANCIPATION

SYSTEMS / CYNEFINACTION RESEARCH

CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

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