Re: pluralism in science

Posted by Merle Lefkoff-2 on Apr 11, 2013; 9:12pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/pluralism-in-science-tp7582640p7582645.html

Roger,

Righto!  We launch "Happiness Santa Fe" on Saturday ( go to our website, the Center for Emergent Diplomacy, or just go to Happiness Santa Fe for a calendar of events). We've had many recent  conversations about how to encourage conditions for a shift in our mental models from consumerism and inequality toward compassion and generosity.  

When I teach Complexity at Upaya in the Buddhist chaplaincy program I usually suggest that compassion is an emergent property of the biggest system of all--our brains.  So I say, hey guys, just meditate more!  We have hard neuroscience on how that works.  But how do we change the initial conditions for a collective response?  Perhaps one way is to  measure human happiness and well-being differently by expanding GDP to include ecological and social indicators as the Bhutanese have been trying to do for decades.  We tend to value what we measure.

You know, dear Roger, that I follow the research carefully.  Thanks for this link.  You guys study--we act and put it on the ground!!

Merle

 

On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

There's an intriguing book review in Science this week:

Studying Human Behavior How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality by Helen E. Longino University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013. 261 pp. S75. ISBN 9780226492872. Paper, $25, £16. ISBN 9780226492889.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6129/146.1.full?rss=1

The claim is that there is not and will not be a dominant paradigm for researching human behavior, there are multiple ways of establishing causes for behavior and that's just the way it is.

So not only do phenomena worth studying emerge at different levels of organization, but the emerging phenomena at a level of organization are amenable to different disciplines of study which may all be judged "scientific" by a philosopher of science.

So, what's scientific evidence now?

-- rec --

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merlelefkoff

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