Re- Direct Conversation

[Victoria Hughes]

Russ wrote-

The question then is how do we understand/explain/talk about such phenomena from a scientific perspective.

 

Perhaps this is the sticking point. The "scientific perspective".

The way 'science' is being applied here doesn't seem to be working. 

How are you each using it?  Do you agree on that?

It looks like you have to agree on something somewhere in order to establish a base from which to investigate less-agreed-upon things.

Perhaps the issue lies is the definition of science and its workings; how you are using it: and needs to be examined and expanded or altered to suit the facts. 

From out here: 

You all are obviously 'first persons' for all human needs and interactions. You walk and talk, etc. You know how to understand and act from this first-person place without any thought at all. You know how to observe and interpolate, rightly or wrongly. You already know and do these things, yes. 

The issue arises when you investigate how you do these things. 

You are clearly discussing all this from a first person perspective, in that you are clear about your particular take on the issue (at least you are consistent)  and unable to see the other's perspective with the same ease you see your own. 

If there were a 'third person perspective' in here, wouldn't the discussion be more accessible to all of you, since there would be no a priori first person identity with the issues?

What if scientific method could offer you two some neutral agreed-on ground to start with?

Maybe look into examining / changing your ideas of what scientific investigation is.

Below the wiki def of scientific method. (my font size change) 

? Do either or both of you [think/know/feel ] Is it possible to be objective about your own objectifying? Can we truly be unbiased about our own awareness / existance? is that evolutionarily viable? (As long as you are not a Vulcan, at least?)

Having followed this discussion with interest, if not always agreement, I am beginning to feel like one of those people hanging over the railings at a rodeo; watching breathlessly, hooting and hollering, eyes widening at unexpected moves... Figured I might drop something in the ring and see what happens. Usually, of course, these actions go unnoticed by the riders, understandably focused on things much closer to home. Ahem. As it were. 

Tory

ps: Nick, the torrential rains moved west, fyi.

Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurableevidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.^[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation andexperimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.^[2]

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. 

Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Nick Thompson]

Tory,

 

How interesting that you wrote this BEFORE I wrote my appeal for articulation!

 

Before you asked the question, I would have assumed that both Russ and I would defend the scientific method stoutly... indeed, defend the possibility of a scientific method, of a reaching toward objectivity, even in the absence of any ability to know what objectivity means, given that we both see observers as giving fallible accounts of the words around them and neither of us is really comfortable with a God's eye view.  But how the dickens could either of us do that? 

 

A strange man by the name of Jacob von Uexkull wrote a strange paper long ago that became the foundation for the field of ethology.  In that paper he argued that every kind of animal lives within a life space of its own creation.  This led to all that wonderful research in ethology that demonstrated that animals living in exactly the same physical worlds that we live in respond in ways that suggest that what they see in those worlds is remarkably different what we see.  Lorenz was pleased to point out that in the "umvelt" of his pet  jackdaw (a small European crow) there was no such object as another jack daw... not as such.  For the purposes of species defense, Lorenz's black bathing trunks made a perfectly good jackdaw, and for the purposes of courtship, Lorenz himself made a perfectly good jackdaw.  Only for the purposes of formation-flying was another bird required (and even that could be perfectly well fulfilled by another corvid).    It would be as if you had a good friend who was a cooking buddy, and a tennis-playing buddy and a movie going buddy, but you never gave any indication by your behavior toward her that she was one in the same person. 

 

Von Uexkull has this heart-stopping  passage at the end of his essay in which he suggests that what we gamely refer to as the objective world is what the life worlds of all creatures, taken together, asyntotically  converge on.   From this objective world each creature picks out what it needs just as a child picks the raisins out of plumb cake at Christmas.

 

How could you build a science on that?  Indeed!  But ethology was built upon it, and thrived for half a century before it was finally beaten into the bland cake that now constitutes animal behavior research. 

 

So, I conclude, somewhat reluctantly, that science is a kind of game played by people who share a paradigm.  The problem with that view is of course, as Frank Wimberley points out to me every time I start talking this way, that scientists do get better at stuff, and the paradigm view doesn't really account for that.   Thomas Kuhn, I am told, regretted this interpretation of his Scientific Revolutions and wrote at length to correct it.  I wonder if anybody reading this message knows that work. 

 

Anyway, thanks for your "intervention"

 

All the best,

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/26/2009 7:06:48 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] Re- Direct Conversation

Russ wrote-

The question then is how do we understand/explain/talk about such phenomena from a scientific perspective.

 

Perhaps this is the sticking point. The "scientific perspective".

The way 'science' is being applied here doesn't seem to be working. 

How are you each using it?  Do you agree on that?

It looks like you have to agree on something somewhere in order to establish a base from which to investigate less-agreed-upon things.

Perhaps the issue lies is the definition of science and its workings; how you are using it: and needs to be examined and expanded or altered to suit the facts. 

From out here: 

You all are obviously 'first persons' for all human needs and interactions. You walk and talk, etc. You know how to understand and act from this first-person place without any thought at all. You know how to observe and interpolate, rightly or wrongly. You already know and do these things, yes. 

The issue arises when you investigate how you do these things. 

You are clearly discussing all this from a first person perspective, in that you are clear about your particular take on the issue (at least you are consistent)  and unable to see the other's perspective with the same ease you see your own. 

If there were a 'third person perspective' in here, wouldn't the discussion be more accessible to all of you, since there would be no a priori first person identity with the issues?

What if scientific method could offer you two some neutral agreed-on ground to start with?

Maybe look into examining / changing your ideas of what scientific investigation is.

Below the wiki def of scientific method. (my font size change) 

? Do either or both of you [think/know/feel ] Is it possible to be objective about your own objectifying? Can we truly be unbiased about our own awareness / existance? is that evolutionarily viable? (As long as you are not a Vulcan, at least?)

Having followed this discussion with interest, if not always agreement, I am beginning to feel like one of those people hanging over the railings at a rodeo; watching breathlessly, hooting and hollering, eyes widening at unexpected moves... Figured I might drop something in the ring and see what happens. Usually, of course, these actions go unnoticed by the riders, understandably focused on things much closer to home. Ahem. As it were. 

Tory

ps: Nick, the torrential rains moved west, fyi.

Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurableevidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.^[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation andexperimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.^[2]

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. 

Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Russ Abbott]

Feynman said that "Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is."

I agree. I'm not much interested in arguing whether science is just another perspective.  What I think is important (and I guess that's just my perspective) is that we should do what we can to be sure we aren't fooling ourselves about what we believe and why we believe it.  So for me science is the ultimate in self-awareness. Be aware of what you're doing and why you think what you are thinking. One may not always succeed, but that's the best one can do. And part of the standard scientific method is reproducibility, which in this context means that if one of us doesn't succeed in not fooling himself, perhaps others can figure out what went wrong.

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: [phone]
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Tory,

 

How interesting that you wrote this BEFORE I wrote my appeal for articulation!

 

Before you asked the question, I would have assumed that both Russ and I would defend the scientific method stoutly... indeed, defend the possibility of a scientific method, of a reaching toward objectivity, even in the absence of any ability to know what objectivity means, given that we both see observers as giving fallible accounts of the words around them and neither of us is really comfortable with a God's eye view.  But how the dickens could either of us do that? 

 

A strange man by the name of Jacob von Uexkull wrote a strange paper long ago that became the foundation for the field of ethology.  In that paper he argued that every kind of animal lives within a life space of its own creation.  This led to all that wonderful research in ethology that demonstrated that animals living in exactly the same physical worlds that we live in respond in ways that suggest that what they see in those worlds is remarkably different what we see.  Lorenz was pleased to point out that in the "umvelt" of his pet  jackdaw (a small European crow) there was no such object as another jack daw... not as such.  For the purposes of species defense, Lorenz's black bathing trunks made a perfectly good jackdaw, and for the purposes of courtship, Lorenz himself made a perfectly good jackdaw.  Only for the purposes of formation-flying was another bird required (and even that could be perfectly well fulfilled by another corvid).    It would be as if you had a good friend who was a cooking buddy, and a tennis-playing buddy and a movie going buddy, but you never gave any indication by your behavior toward her that she was one in the same person. 

 

Von Uexkull has this heart-stopping  passage at the end of his essay in which he suggests that what we gamely refer to as the objective world is what the life worlds of all creatures, taken together, asyntotically  converge on.   From this objective world each creature picks out what it needs just as a child picks the raisins out of plumb cake at Christmas.

 

How could you build a science on that?  Indeed!  But ethology was built upon it, and thrived for half a century before it was finally beaten into the bland cake that now constitutes animal behavior research. 

 

So, I conclude, somewhat reluctantly, that science is a kind of game played by people who share a paradigm.  The problem with that view is of course, as Frank Wimberley points out to me every time I start talking this way, that scientists do get better at stuff, and the paradigm view doesn't really account for that.   Thomas Kuhn, I am told, regretted this interpretation of his Scientific Revolutions and wrote at length to correct it.  I wonder if anybody reading this message knows that work. 

 

Anyway, thanks for your "intervention"

 

All the best,

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/26/2009 7:06:48 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] Re- Direct Conversation

Russ wrote-

The question then is how do we understand/explain/talk about such phenomena from a scientific perspective.

 

Perhaps this is the sticking point. The "scientific perspective".

The way 'science' is being applied here doesn't seem to be working. 

How are you each using it?  Do you agree on that?

It looks like you have to agree on something somewhere in order to establish a base from which to investigate less-agreed-upon things.

Perhaps the issue lies is the definition of science and its workings; how you are using it: and needs to be examined and expanded or altered to suit the facts. 

From out here: 

You all are obviously 'first persons' for all human needs and interactions. You walk and talk, etc. You know how to understand and act from this first-person place without any thought at all. You know how to observe and interpolate, rightly or wrongly. You already know and do these things, yes. 

The issue arises when you investigate how you do these things. 

You are clearly discussing all this from a first person perspective, in that you are clear about your particular take on the issue (at least you are consistent)  and unable to see the other's perspective with the same ease you see your own. 

If there were a 'third person perspective' in here, wouldn't the discussion be more accessible to all of you, since there would be no a priori first person identity with the issues?

What if scientific method could offer you two some neutral agreed-on ground to start with?

Maybe look into examining / changing your ideas of what scientific investigation is.

Below the wiki def of scientific method. (my font size change) 

? Do either or both of you [think/know/feel ] Is it possible to be objective about your own objectifying? Can we truly be unbiased about our own awareness / existance? is that evolutionarily viable? (As long as you are not a Vulcan, at least?)

Having followed this discussion with interest, if not always agreement, I am beginning to feel like one of those people hanging over the railings at a rodeo; watching breathlessly, hooting and hollering, eyes widening at unexpected moves... Figured I might drop something in the ring and see what happens. Usually, of course, these actions go unnoticed by the riders, understandably focused on things much closer to home. Ahem. As it were. 

Tory

ps: Nick, the torrential rains moved west, fyi.

Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurableevidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.^[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation andexperimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.^[2]

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. 

Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Victoria Hughes]

 Nick et al-

Thanks for writing.  

What I see happening with you and Russ is that from the most fundamental level, you are using words differently. 

You never established definitions for "I" and "feel" or "know", etc. 

Yet now you are trying to define those words by using those same words. 

Never gonna happen. Retroactive self-referential definitions. 

Might work if you perceived identically, but that doesn't seem to be happening either.

My suggestion, that you look at how you both are applying the 'scientific method', was an attempt to see if you two have any common ground of agreed-on definitions from which you could jointly build a verbal infrastructure to examine this idea of first and third person. I am not convinced your ways of 'doing science' are similar enough. 

Concepts of awareness and consciousness are the most notoriously difficult concepts to define scientifically, for any scientist or technologist. So the difficulties in this discussion are not surprising. 

In any field this is the Ultimate Question... 

Many apparently irreconcilable issues boil down to communication disjoints. 

If and when the various sides can agree on what they are disagreeing about, there's an opportunity to resolve this through creative action, if both sides want resolution. 

These disjoints happen often without conscious knowledge, and usually happen immediately. 

Then onto these disjoints massive monolithic assumptions are built, and the whole looming edifice defended unto the death, literally in many cases, rather than anyone pausing in a bit of self-awareness and looking at the pre-suppositions or assumptions in conflict in the original shared language set.

 Ah, words. They ain't a great tool, but they's the best we got. 

  Emails, as symbols of symbols representing spoken words, and thus not including the myriad nuances of spoken or in-person (first or third or both) communication, are not the best tool for conveying complex and highly nuanced concepts. We all have had experienced wildly divergent email interpretations, and know how easy it is to misinterpret.

I do believe that all our language about experience is necessarily metaphoric, since our perceptions - our senses- are not taken in words, they are instead about taking in sight, sound et al. 

As they are processed into something we can eventually distill into an email, those same perceptions become biochemical and neuroelectrical, and then activate memory and reflection and cross-referencing, then visual and kinesthetic, then digital... 

The elements of a sense of self, and of the experiences that self has, happen immediately to our senses. That would be the ideal level at which to share awareness of a sense of self.

I also believe that this metaphoric communication envelope is pretty effective, since each perception happens in synergy with others, and a metaphor acknowledges this synergy or holographic experience better than whatever a non-metaphoric communication tool would be. 

 Even saying something like 'I sit down' is translated metaphorically within the listener, related to their own experiences of "sitting", and "down", and (gasp) "I". Or they would have no idea of what you were talking about. 

But this doesn't have to be a bad thing. If we use it deliberately, it can be a tremendous resource for innovation, expansion, growth. 

As long as we are having this conversation, I see nothing contradictory in being both a first and third person, at different and the same times. I have experienced all these states and more. Paradox exists. 

But if there is no room for it in the scientific language, or methodology, even if we know experientially it exists, what do we do then? 

I know my choice would be to investigate and expand my definition and application of "the scientific method". Science is about knowledge. My direct experience is the closest to trustworthy knowledge I can get. I see no reason to deny my direct experience in order to support a system that has no place for my direct experience. I want a robust scientific method that increases my knowledge and augments and enhances my direct experience, not one that tell me I am in error in how I experience. Who's in charge here, anyway?

I have read Kuhn, and will go back and reread. And since you seem open to a diversity of input, I may respond to you personally with other resources and ideas. 

There are many methods in addition to strict scientific methodology to investigate the sense of self, and many of them work more smoothly than this one. Guess there is great importance to both of you that this investigation be done using this method. 

Best wishes for the medical stuff to go smoothly, and have a great time on your long family trip-

Tory

Reply-To: [hidden email], The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Tory,

 

How interesting that you wrote this BEFORE I wrote my appeal for articulation!

 

Before you asked the question, I would have assumed that both Russ and I would defend the scientific method stoutly... indeed, defend the possibility of a scientific method, of a reaching toward objectivity, even in the absence of any ability to know what objectivity means, given that we both see observers as giving fallible accounts of the words around them and neither of us is really comfortable with a God's eye view.  But how the dickens could either of us do that? 

 

A strange man by the name of Jacob von Uexkull wrote a strange paper long ago that became the foundation for the field of ethology.  In that paper he argued that every kind of animal lives within a life space of its own creation.  This led to all that wonderful research in ethology that demonstrated that animals living in exactly the same physical worlds that we live in respond in ways that suggest that what they see in those worlds is remarkably different what we see.  Lorenz was pleased to point out that in the "umvelt" of his pet  jackdaw (a small European crow) there was no such object as another jack daw... not as such.  For the purposes of species defense, Lorenz's black bathing trunks made a perfectly good jackdaw, and for the purposes of courtship, Lorenz himself made a perfectly good jackdaw.  Only for the purposes of formation-flying was another bird required (and even that could be perfectly well fulfilled by another corvid).    It would be as if you had a good friend who was a cooking buddy, and a tennis-playing buddy and a movie going buddy, but you never gave any indication by your behavior toward her that she was one in the same person. 

 

Von Uexkull has this heart-stopping  passage at the end of his essay in which he suggests that what we gamely refer to as the objective world is what the life worlds of all creatures, taken together, asyntotically  converge on.   From this objective world each creature picks out what it needs just as a child picks the raisins out of plumb cake at Christmas.

 

How could you build a science on that?  Indeed!  But ethology was built upon it, and thrived for half a century before it was finally beaten into the bland cake that now constitutes animal behavior research. 

 

So, I conclude, somewhat reluctantly, that science is a kind of game played by people who share a paradigm.  The problem with that view is of course, as Frank Wimberley points out to me every time I start talking this way, that scientists do get better at stuff, and the paradigm view doesn't really account for that.   Thomas Kuhn, I am told, regretted this interpretation of his Scientific Revolutions and wrote at length to correct it.  I wonder if anybody reading this message knows that work. 

 

Anyway, thanks for your "intervention"

 

All the best,

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/26/2009 7:06:48 PM

Subject: [FRIAM] Re- Direct Conversation

Russ wrote-

The question then is how do we understand/explain/talk about such phenomena from a scientific perspective.

 

Perhaps this is the sticking point. The "scientific perspective".

The way 'science' is being applied here doesn't seem to be working. 

How are you each using it?  Do you agree on that?

It looks like you have to agree on something somewhere in order to establish a base from which to investigate less-agreed-upon things.

Perhaps the issue lies is the definition of science and its workings; how you are using it: and needs to be examined and expanded or altered to suit the facts. 

From out here: 

You all are obviously 'first persons' for all human needs and interactions. You walk and talk, etc. You know how to understand and act from this first-person place without any thought at all. You know how to observe and interpolate, rightly or wrongly. You already know and do these things, yes. 

The issue arises when you investigate how you do these things. 

You are clearly discussing all this from a first person perspective, in that you are clear about your particular take on the issue (at least you are consistent)  and unable to see the other's perspective with the same ease you see your own. 

If there were a 'third person perspective' in here, wouldn't the discussion be more accessible to all of you, since there would be no a priori first person identity with the issues?

What if scientific method could offer you two some neutral agreed-on ground to start with?

Maybe look into examining / changing your ideas of what scientific investigation is.

Below the wiki def of scientific method. (my font size change) 

? Do either or both of you [think/know/feel ] Is it possible to be objective about your own objectifying? Can we truly be unbiased about our own awareness / existance? is that evolutionarily viable? (As long as you are not a Vulcan, at least?)

Having followed this discussion with interest, if not always agreement, I am beginning to feel like one of those people hanging over the railings at a rodeo; watching breathlessly, hooting and hollering, eyes widening at unexpected moves... Figured I might drop something in the ring and see what happens. Usually, of course, these actions go unnoticed by the riders, understandably focused on things much closer to home. Ahem. As it were. 

Tory

ps: Nick, the torrential rains moved west, fyi.

Scientific method refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurableevidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.^[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation andexperimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.^[2]

Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.

Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. 

Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Victoria Hughes]

On Jun 27, 2009, at 2:14 AM, Russ Abbott wrote:

Feynman said that "Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is."
I agree. I'm not much interested in arguing whether science is just another perspective.

What I think is important (and I guess that's just my perspective) is that

We should do what we can to be sure we aren't fooling ourselves about what we believe and why we believe it. 

So for me science is the ultimate in self-awareness.

Be aware of what you're doing and why you think what you are thinking.

One may not always succeed, but that's the best one can do.

This is a great way of summing up what science offers. What makes me smile is that this phrase, perfect for this context, could also be taken straight out of a number of other approaches. 

I don't care where its origin is in a particular context: if only people could really use it like this, with this expansion of investigation.

Thanks, Russ. 

Tory

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org