There is a lot of bad art everywhere being done by taking action without much thought.
Pretty much everything said here recently can be applied to "art" as well as to "science".
Both are problem-solving: action taken in expression of principles, actions taken on beliefs and experience about the perceived world. I could only have been as successful as my knowledge of how the material world works, so I can manipulate it to be 'successful'.
We humans are free agents. Hopefully we make connections and invent new forms through unique and self-aware process.
We each have both an internal world and an external world.
There does not have to be conflict between them. They are designed to support and enhance each other.
'Too much talking' often happens when the pendulum between thought and action has gotten tangled in something - and the same goes for too much action without thinking/talking.
Some resistance in the 'system' (please excuse my slightly different word usage here, I know this is a broader def. than some of you specify) is inhibiting movement into action.
Often in a functional creational environment, science or art, there is an ongoing, fairly short-period oscillation between thought/reflection-intake of new information, and taking action on that information.
Going back to the model of a conversation, ideally in a dialogue the pendulum swings back and forth, each person taking in and giving out. Easy fluid motion.
Listening and talking. Taking in and manipulating information, and then taking action on that.
Obviously in some activities, the time the pendulum takes to swing back and forth will be longer, accumulate more information. But after a certain point, it takes more energy to keep the weight of the pendulum held to one side than it does to let it move responsively to the 'forces' on it.
Thanks for reading. I appreciate this forum and learn a great deal from it.
Enjoy your day.
Tory
n Jul 12, 2009, at 7:02 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
All,
I continue to be concerned with sloppy use of sexual metaphors here. It seems to me that masturbation is a lot more like doing stuff without thinking than it is like thinking about stuff without doing.
I would agree that no science is done by people who think but do not act; on the other hand, bad science is done by people who act without thinking.
Now I suppose that bad science is better than no science; but why have these suddenly become the alternatives? I am in this conversation because I believe that if we are willing to hammer out some of these conceptual issues, we will do better, sharper work on complexity. I have no interest in blather for blather's sake. But, iff I and some of your colleagues want to pursue such a project, what's it to yah? Wish us well and get back to what you were doing. If we turn up something useful, you can be surprized and grateful. If we dont, well, ....
nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
----- Original Message -----
To: [hidden email] Sent: 7/11/2009 4:58:38 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Philosophy, Mathematics, and Science
Let me make sure I understand what you just said, Owen, by paraphrasing what I thought I heard:
Owen: "There are more people on this list who want to talk about doing things then there are people who actually want to do things, or, perhaps, even have relevant experience at doing things."
Or, an even shorter synopsis:
Talk is cheap.If that is in fact what you were suggesting, I wholeheartedly agree. IMO, the latest chatter about philosophy certainly meets this description. I openly admit a bias against philosophy, and in particular against philosophical discussions about philosophy because they invariably come across as giant exercises in mental masturbation.
Not, mind you, that I have anything against masturbation, mental or otherwise. It's just that nothing ever comes of it, so to speak.
If you meant something else, sorry to have misunderstood. Otherwise, I believe I share your preference to actually engage in interesting work, rather than just talking about the philosophies of how to accomplish work.
--Doug
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Owen Densmore
<[hidden email]> wrote:
I'm not clear on why there is such a culture clash on this list around Philosophy, Mathematics, and Science...
I think the conflict may be nearly trivial: constructing things.
Many of us, especially at the sfComplex, were hoping to create a synergistic community, where the whole was greater than its parts. Specifically, cross-discipline projects (Stephen's Hollywood model) creating fascinating technology with complexity being a foundational piece. The TED conferences in the complex domain.
The philosophical conversations thus far have not contributed to this, and indeed have created a second culture: folks who want to talk about things.
Talking is great, but for some of us becomes a distraction when not helping create a foundation for creating things.
There is a good example of a middle ground. Nick had the Moth (My way or the highway) alternative to the traditional iterated prisoner's dilemma. It was concrete enough to result in a project and a couple of papers.
So my hunch is that the "Please God No" reaction is along that line: many if not most of us are interested in creating things.
Thus to make the conversations more acceptable, it would be reasonable for it to suggest an investigation or project. The failure to summarize is just an example of how non-constructive the philosophic conversations have been.
-- Owen
On Jul 11, 2009, at 3:11 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
I'm not clear on why there is such a culture clash on this list around Philosophy, Mathematics, and Science...
I know only of one specific person on the list who has a significantly alternate perspective.
Whether we know of them (formally) or not, there are philosophical traditions which we are products of.
Most of us here are interested in the topics of mathematics, science, language, etc. *because* we were exposed to these ideas and modes of thought from an early age and from many angles. Even if we grew up in a household where there was a modicum of magical thinking and animism around us, the larger world, and most *any* practical-minded western family today is going to be acting and speaking with a lot of rational and empirical modes.
We got that way by being raised in a time and culture where that is how most people (try to) understand the world. If were were trained in mathematics or the sciences, we were almost surely trained by people who were grounded deeply in this philosophy.
Most of us here are empiricists and rationalists, which roughly implies that we are logical positivists. These are philosophical traditions. Philosophy (in this case, Western tradition) is a method or system of organizing the human experience.
Epistemology is the branch of (Western) Philosophy concerned with the nature and the limitations of human knowledge. Metaphysics is the branch concerned with the fundamental nature of being and the world. Science and Mathematics reside almost exclusively within Metaphysics and Epistimology. There are aspects of both which touch on (or are informed by) Aesthetics and Ethics, but the meat is in the study of knowledge and the study of the world.
Most criticism I hear (here and otherwise, explicit or implicit) seems to come down to one of two (mis)understandings:
Serious sounding talk about anything we don't understand is "Philosophy" and we either therefore hold it in awe or (more often) dismiss it. For some folks (few on this list), the same treatment is given to "Mathematics" and "Science" for approximately the same reasons.
The "white males" who show up most notably throughout our history as the shapers of Philosophy (and Mathematics and Science) were products of their social/cultural milieu and their personal failings in the realm of human and social equality, justice, etc. do not necessarily discredit the work that is associated with them.
Why can't we simply accept that most of us have a particular attachment and fondness for the empirical and rational subsets of philosophy and that the *rest* of it is mostly outside of our experience and perhaps interest. And *within* these subdomains of Philosophy, why can't we admit that our specific methods are derived from the more general ones of metaphysics, epistomology, and sometimes aesthetics and ethics?
For those who have experience/interest in other systems than Western Philosophy, I think similar things are true, with the most notable exception (in my observation) that empiricism and rationality do not play as central of a role. It seems *precisely* this which draws many (not so many here, but many in the larger world) to other traditions...
It is outside the scope of this particular posting to go into the merits of Empiricism and Rationality _vs_ other modes of knowledge and experience except to say that this particular Choir (FRIAM members) who for the most part sings *only* in the keys of E and R to be squabbling as if some of us are in a completely different key when in fact, the only problem is that few if any of us have perfect pitch.
- Steve
I think I need to take a long Motorcycle Ride (stopping to clean my plugs, adjust my valves, synchronize my carburators, lubricate my chain, and tear down and rebuild my forks at least once along the way).
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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============================================================
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