An old book, but still interesting and relevant - Knorr-Certina, The Manufacture of Knowledge, looks at how science is really done and really written about and biases, blind-spots, and paradigms. A good complement to the even older work of Paul Feyerabend.
davew On Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:15:18 -0400, "Phil Henshaw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > I see those biases a lot, and use finding my own sloppy patches as keys > to where I'll discover new things. One exceptionally common bias of > current interest is the tendency of scientists to ignore the time lags > between cause and effect, that when not ignored lead to the discovery of > the independent developmental process that are functional necessities in > the occurrence of the response. An example? Any process of entropy, > seems to requires the local development of individual self-organizing > complex systems to carry it out, and when you look you find them. > > I've been reading 'Linked' by Barabasi, and thoroughly enjoying his > insightful discoveries of telling structural patterns in the topology of > networks, and how the distribution of densely connected hubs changes > network behaviors entirely, among other things. What's totally > remarkable is that despite observing that this 'scale free' distribution > of connections, as it has become called, develops as the network adds > and then abandons links (branching followed by selection) to produce the > final form, he attributes no causal contribution to the direct process > by which system producing the network develops, i.e. to what happens. > Instead he extremely consistently phrases the cause of the pattern as > being the benchmark indicator of having an inverse square distribution > of nodes with high degrees of connection, a statistical property > discovered after the fact. I'm going page after page after page > wondering when is he ever going to credit the evolutionary process by > which the pattern develops in the overall causal scheme of things,... > and the answer seems to be, well, never!! It's stunning how so many > hugely productive insights are so obviously being looked at squarely and > then skipped over again and again and again, evidently just not fitting > the question and purpose of his otherwise brilliantly observant > examination of the facts! > > I'm wondering if the blind spot this exposes is embedded in our tools, > since he obviously sees the actual behaviors producing the patterns and > is very creative in identifying the resultant patterns associated with > them, but is just not drawn to studying them. If used for the purpose, > these same patterns would lead us to investigate how the direct causal > mechanisms do actually operate, in detail, but he keeps consistently > declaring the resultant pattern to be the cause and the behavior to not > exist. Just g.d. remarkable! Could it be that our forbearers were > just so totally obsessed with control, that our traditional tools were > built in a way that can't describe anything else? > > > > Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > 680 Ft. Washington Ave > NY NY 10040 > tel: 212-795-4844 > e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/> > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Roger Critchlow > Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 12:47 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: [FRIAM] The Verifier > > > Here's an article about a kind of meta-analysis that looks for cognitive > biases among groups of researchers. > > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/business/yourmoney/05frame.html?ref=bu > siness > <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/business/yourmoney/05frame.html?ref=b > usiness> > > -- rec -- > > > > > ============================================================ 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
