Nice reminder, Nick: and as one of those that weighed on doing and
not just talking, I have an additional note I want to make clearly.
Just saw Doug's post as well, and ditto: there is room for everyone
and whatever they need to do. Ideally. (given this is all a cyber-
event anyway)
My thoughts below derive from making a living /a lifetime of
1. taking action, creating things and selling them, and
2. deliberately studying, investigating and developing enough useful
ideas about how the process works to make a living teaching, writing,
and consulting: how to do this more 'successfully' (whatever our own
goals for the project are)
Both the hard sciences and the intuitive processes are required. We
know this..
Both factual knowledge of basic physical principles, material
characteristics, properties etc - and a knowledge of our goal, the
rough area of solutions to a given problem, what things can be made
that will satisfy a given criteria, the inner realm of desire to make
the invisible visible, all that internal, intuitive stuff.
Creation of anything comes from reciprocal action: taking things
(information, memes, ideas, perceptions) in [talking and thinking],
and giving out them out [acting]
= information combined and enhanced in a new form.
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. (nst)
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,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Douglas Roberts
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Cc: aku
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 <[email protected]>
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).
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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
============================================================
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
