Is there “more than science” (*1) that is valuable to understanding & engaging in content & processes in a world seen in terms of (*2) systems? (Cybernetics, Complexity, OR/Community-OR, Systems-Thinking, you name it, and all the specific theories, methods and processes within and overlapping those broad genres.)
Can we usefully distinguish – draw a #GoodFence (*3) between – that which is science from that which is more than science? (The explicit, objective, definitive, conceptually-modelled from the implicit, intuitive, subjective, humanistic, embodied, holistic, directly-experienced ?)
Is “wisdom” a good word – as good an umbrella word as any? For understanding and referring to all those aspects that are beyond science? (Note the question is about being any good, not about being rigorously defined in terms that would meet orthodox scientific standards, that’s the point. And obviously “social sciences” (*4) have lived with such compromises and approximations for many decades.)
So, is this (useful) wisdom stuff more than science (*5) or isn’t it?
(Does explicitly & exclusively attaching the word “science” to our endeavours, implicitly constrain language expectations – even kill useful dialogue – when considering more-or-less-wise, more-than-science, contributions from community members?)
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Notes
(*1) – This post is a summary of where recent email dialogue got to after I shared the proceedings from and proposal for ISSS Workshops. (Incidentally, I think it significant that the only dialogue so far is with the women, Janet and Jesse. The men are silent so far.)
(*2) – I make no secret of the fact that literally the whole world, from fundamental quanta to entire transnational governmental issues to the cosmos itself can be, and is best, seen in systems terms. This isn’t a fatuous “theory-of-everything” claim, simply a best-world-view claim.
(*3) – Most of my concerns here are linguistic – maintaining constructive dialogue that integrates broad (inclusive) views. All language is about choosing and using words (symbols) – what we choose to call things – every word has a pointer element making a “this-not-that” distinction for the purposes of such dialogue. I simply use the Robert Frost / GK Chesterton #GoodFences metaphor, to emphasise the plurality of such useful and overlapping distinctions as opposed to hard-and-fast dichotomies (camps) to be attacked or defended. This thinking is behind my “Tyranny of the Explicit” workshop title.
(*4) – I make few if any (explicit) social-science references in my work, I jump straight from STEM / Science to (maximally complex, human, eco-) Systems, but I do acknowledge that many of the issues I’m addressing already are and have been addressed in such fields. Note *3 is already one corollary – that war-like dichotomies between (say) science and post-modern “social-construct” views or between science and religious dogmas (say) are not useful even if the distinctions are themselves useful. Another is the idea that “objective approximations” and scientific representations are useful in subjective contexts, but always lose or distort some human aspects. I label understanding such dichotomies and paradoxes but choosing to treat them as simply useful distinctions as PoPoMo (Post-Post-Modernism) or what some now call “Meta-Modernism”.
(*5) – Whatever all the scientific and philosophical (and moral) threads and histories running through and across this whole topic – this simple question is the point of the workshop & posts:
IS WISDOM MORE THAN SCIENCE OR ISN’T IT?
(And if it is shouldn’t we be more careful in how we use those two words, Science and Wisdom?)
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