Bob-- As one who has strayed from the Darwinian discipline of evolutionary
biology (my erstwhile field), I can say that I have 'paid the price'. But I
have had a wonderful time exploring wherever my thinking has gone. I think
the discipline has in a sense guided me anyway, as turning away from it was
part of my motivation. That is the disciplines continue to exert their
effect in the reactions to them.
STAN
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 9:24 AM, Bob Logan lo...@physics.utoronto.ca
wrote:
Dear Colleagues - I have been reading the posts in this thread and
enjoying the conversation. I started playing with the notion of discipline
and came up with these undisciplined playful thoughts which I believe
provide an interesting or at least an alternative perspective on the notion
of a discipline. A discipline is a tool, a way of organizing ideas that
result from scientific inquiry or any other form of scholarly activity and
even artistic activity. Now every tool provides both service and
disservice. All of the posts so far have dealt with the service of
discipline. Here are some thoughts about the possible disservice of
discipline. Please take the following with a grain of salt. I believe the
notion of a discipline is anti-thetical to scientific inquiry in the sense
that it confines ones thinking to the confines of a discipline. One should
not be disciplined by a discipline but be free to go beyond the boundaries
of that discipline. Note that the root of the word discipline is disciple.
If one is to be free to explore new ideas and new phenomena one should not
be a disciple of the scientists or thinkers that created a discipline. Now
I am not saying that learning a discipline is a bad thing as it provides a
solid training and an understanding of how a set of principles describes
certain phenomena. It is a model of how a scientific, scholarly or artistic
practice can be carried out. As long as one does not become a disciple of
one's discipline or disciplines they can be very useful for creating a new
discipline or going beyond ones discipline. Perhaps the notion of
trans-disciplinary is not such a bad notion if one thinks of trans as
beyond.
As to the notion that there are these four super categories of disciplines
or great domains of science: Physics, biology, social and the 4th domain
which is computing or infomation depending on how one likes to classify
thing here are some thoughts. I find these classification schemes and their
inter-relations fascinating and useful. But I believe another challenge
worthy of consideration is to consider the interaction of the great domains
of science with the great domains of the humanities, ethics, the arts. How
does we connect the knowledge of the sciences with the wisdom of how to
best use that knowledge to benefit humankind. Here are some thoughts I
developed before this thread began that might be pertinent to our current
discussion. Science can be thought of as organized knowledge given that the
etymologically the word science derives from the Latin to know:
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/*science*
[edit]. From Old French *science*, from Latin scientia (“knowledge”),
from sciens, the present participle stem of scire (“know”).
*Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom: *The relationship of data,
information, knowledge and wisdom
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” – TS Eliot
“Where is the meaning we have lost in information?” – RK Logan
“• Data are the pure and simple facts without any particular structure or
organization, the
basic atoms of information,
• Information is structured data, which adds meaning to the data and gives
it context and
significance,
• Knowledge is the ability to use information strategically to achieve
one's objectives, and
• Wisdom is the capacity to choose objectives consistent with one's values
and within a larger social context (Logan 2014).”
While checking out the etymology of science I encountered the following on
http://www.luminousgroup.net/2013/05/on-etymology-of-science.html
“This might be a good time to examine the etymology of the word *science*,
It comes from the Latin *scientia*, from *sciens*, which means *having
knowledge*, from the present participle of *scire*, meaning *to know*,
probably—and here's where it gets exciting—akin to the Sanskrit *Chyati*,
meaning* he cuts off*, and Latin *scindere*, *to split, cleave*.
Science operates by cutting off questions of value. And this is why I
advocate consideration of the four great domains of science with the great
domain of the humanities, the arts and ethics. The greatest challenges
facing humanity is not just increasing our store of knowledge through
science but also how we choose to deploy our scientific knowledge in the
best interest of human kind.
So ends my challenge to Moises Nisenbaum and Ken Herold with thanks for
stimulating this
