Scott Anderson on today’s Start the Week. re T E Lawrence, Faisal and the modern Arabia.
Category: Facebook
Sokal vs Maxwell
This evening Nick Maxwell presented “How Universities Can Help Create a Wiser World” launching his latest book of the same name. Alan Sokal and and Philip Ball provided responses.
Some 50/55 in the theatre as the UCL Grand Challenge on Human Wellbeing is introduced.
Nick describing his main theme that science has enabled the technologies that have contributed, even created, many of the global problems we face, but blaming science is the wrong response. Obviously science and technology are to be credited with immense positive progress. The problem is a damagingly irrational conception of “enquiry” that dissociates the pursuit of knowledge from how we apply technologies to achieving what is of value in the world.
The idea that Human Well-being is seen as a grand challenge by an academic institution like UCL is an indication that some part of the necessary revolution is already under way. But the rationality of Wisdom Enquiry is not yet recognised as part of this. The problem is that Knowledge Enquiry excludes value-based aspects of problem definition and problem solving – objectivisation and even hyper-specialisation often, without any interaction with the values and aims of the bigger picture. And that’s true even though the concern with the bigger picture may be exercising the minds of the same participants in their wider social world, evenings and weekends.
If you’ve read Nick’s earlier works, the continuing arguments are well recognised and rehearsed. (From Knowledge to Wisdom and Is Science Neurotic for example.) His 7-level model of Aim-Oriented Empiricism / Rationality. In fact as Nick concludes, it’s the same message he’s been pushing for over 40 years.
Feeding AOR into “Social Life” – the task is social methodology or social philosophy, not social science. Methodology notice, philosophy of action, about doing not theorising
Dr Philip Ball responds, mainly to the book itself. Science is much less methodical that it appears, than it might formally admit (Maxwell’s scientific neurosis?). Trend to have to define and justify (funding) aims in terms of economic benefit. (But must aims be economic – bean-countable?) Dr Ball sees the solutions as essentially economic, even if they may require alternate market models and incentives. The recently recurring reminder that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher before and above his position as an economist. (Very Benthamite – reducing all issues to cost-benefit, even justifying art projects on relevance and benefit.) Democracy is not a necessary part of scientific progress. Agree focus must shift from knowing, but to doing.
Alan Sokal responding; Science does make metaphysical assumptions, even though it would deny it. Scientists take weekends off, but we all know when non-unified scientific hypotheses are crazy. Nick’s work on the hierarchical AOE/R are important contributions to the philosophy of science, but the lack of “Wisdom Inquiry” in academic institutions is not really the fundamental problem preventing progress, rather than say economic incentives. Nick’s wisdom inquiry claims are probably more targeted at the social sciences than the natural sciences. (Quite the opposite in fact.)
My take is this.
Alan Sokal is well known for his fighting on the side of strict rationality against social constructivism, and yes we can all shoot PoMo Social Constructivists like fish in a barrel. Nick Maxwell’s “Aim Oriented Empiricism” basis for wisdom is however at that interface of rational knowledge with the social.
Yes, the rationality of the processes of gaining and applying knowledge may be strictly objective, logical, scientific. But, the rationality of aims is more than that. It’s also about what we value and how we agree what we should value. That is philosophical, even subjective and clearly social. They’re “problematic” – the task as Nick says is social methodology or social philosophy, not social science – requiring more than rational knowledge to manage and solve. Wisdom.
So, does Alan Sokal believe there can be more to applied wisdom than strictly logical, objective, scientific rationality and knowledge? Apparently not.
Ultimately disappointing, the discussion drew out into very general criticisms of “too hard”, and wider questions of national, resource and conflict governance – the arithmetic of democracy not excluded (*1) – well beyond academe. In fact both respondents really failed to pick up on the social values aspect of Nick’s “Aim Orientation”, slipping too easily to see aims as quantifiable economic goals (*2).
—–
Notes:
(*1) Sure, the one man one vote emancipation, epitomises the importance of the value of any human, but we’re talking here about methodology and doing, We can’t all take equal roles in every action, let alone deciding every action by popular poll.
(*2) Sure, technology is universally recognised as the main driver of global economic activity, and science as the main enabler of technology (Kondratiev, Schumpeter, Kuhn, you name them). But as well as enabling, what we do needs enacting, requiring populations of people with hearts and minds, hopes and fears, that ultimately determine what is achieved; Hiroshima or Hinkley.
Outsourcing Judgement to Calculation @tiffanyjenkins
Tiff Jenkins in The Scotsman today, writing on the problem of the “Quantified Self” movement. Short, sweet and to the point, so no excuse not to read. A reflection of the danger of applying new app / tech possibilities to exaggerate the slippery slope of giving privilege to those aspects of life that can be objectively quantified.
In summary – outsourcing (value) judgement to (quantifiable) calculation – doesn’t make judgement any easier, rather it bypasses, disconnects judgement from real empirical experience – making it easier to shirk the personal responsibility for applying judgement. What we should really be doing is making it easier for humans to connect to reality and take responsibility for it. Log personal “data”, sure, but treat it as audit / reality check for that human, not as an independent app, or a competitively shared “game”. Judgement is not a popular-voting – bean-counting – democracy.
Guidance of the wise, enslavement of the foolish comes to mind, again.
[Reminds me of the two cases noted earlier, of the UK MP and US Representative, counting the tweets in their inbox before voting on house motions. And – listening to BBC R4 Today interviews by Sarah Montague at the Tory conference – as old as the 20th century (and probably more) – the “cost of living” being objectified – something we can reduce to an index, as one interviewee warns – it’s not some free floating “object”. What matters can’t be measured, etc. Turning “objectives” into “measures” destroys their value …. and a thousand more.]
[Post Note : Another response here.]
A Post of Posts
The need to blog is fairly intense at the moment, not just many interesting things happening in the world to comment on, and significant things happening in my world to write upon, but also multiple communication initiatives that look like opportunities to turn talk into attention and opportunities into progressive action:
I am a fully-fledged grown-up adult,
I’m trying to make a dent, I’m trying to get a result
I’m holed up in a Hollywood hotel suite,
with tequila to drink and avocado to eat.
[Loudon Wainwright III]
My Left Knee – the story of my knee replacement surgery. [Truly inspiring life experience – to me anyway – in which I have been fortunate to come into contact with many wonderful individuals making the NHS work – and it ain’t over yet. In draft based on text notes and name-checks.]
Where Soul Meets Body – a stream of consciousness vignette within the above. [Based on the anaesthetic-and-morphine-fuelled immediate post-op euphoria, paying attention to the music collection on my Android phone whilst exercising my leg under the covers in fearful anticipation of the true pain level kicking-in. Rolling like thunder – that’s why they call it the blues – is not in that playlist, but much Roy Harper in there. Draft in chaotic notes.]
Leadership – an essay on what is really missing from society’s decision-making structures. [Prompted by a Facebook exchange with Martin. Near complete draft; a bit rambling and losing it’s way towards the end. Needs at least one good editorial session.]
Greatest [Currently Most Famous] Thinkers – revisiting the April 2013 Prospect Magazine poll on World Thinkers. I’ve expressed disappointment before, more than once, at the popular confusion between famous scientists and great thinkers, but thought it worth analysing the comment thread on the original article, in the light of the recent Comments in Crisis piece on the destruction of valuable debate. Also want to dig up that piece on how far most readers get beyond the headline – if at all – yet still immediately comment, share, like, link, embed, you name it. Meme’s in action. [Draft in mind only.]
The Cyprus Connection – transitioning from reading Sir Ronald Storrs’ Orientations – where he ended up as the first British governor of Cyprus, having been the first such governor of Jerusalem and Judea / Palestine post-Balfour pre-Herbert Samuel – into Mak Berwick’s Langkawi Lair, whose opening scenes witness an atrocity associated with the 70’s Makarios revolution in Cyprus. [Draft in mind only.]
‘Twas Ever Thus – the latest in a series of dozens, in which I often quote Horace explaining the impression, reported at least as long ago as 4000BCE, whereby ubiquitous and continuing aspects of human enterprise, are invariably dressed up as the latest problem “of our times”. Here goes ….
Prompted by reference to Terrence Rattigan’s falling out with John Gielgud – a topic on BBC R4 Today this morning – when “Johnny” elected to play the Dickensian anti-hero Sydney Carton, rather than appear in a production he’d already been working – fully cast and rehearsed – with “Terry”. An archetypically camp Cambridge gay set lovers’ tiff. Quite sweet to hear contemporary recordings of the luvvies actually, and I’m a fan of Rattigan, but the conversation brought up how significant Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities was, still is, to our times (yet again).
Tale of Two Cities is apparently my mother’s favourite book, or was until she started reading the Russian classics more recently. And, it’s a book I know I should know. It’s been on my reading list for ever. I’ve owned a copy for years. It’s been on the bedside cabinet and the desk beside me where I work, dozens of times before. I’ve read the opening chapter, and got up that muddy south London hill in the horse-drawn coach more times times than I can count, made the Dover meeting and the channel crossing several times, I’ve even got to meeting the heroine’s father in the Paris garret a once or twice, but …. I’ve still not got through it. No idea why.
Anyway, It’s one of those books – like Anna Karenina, similarly I’ve never completed – with mythically famous opening lines. So famous Sylvia and I lay there trying to recall them as we listened to the radio. Nope? OK …
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
And, in one long sentence, it goes on, ….
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we are all going direct to Heaven,
we are all going direct the other way
–
in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted
on its being received, for good or evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Sound familiar ? Plus ca change, ’twas ever thus.
Art for Art’s Sake ?
Not only is science a branch of economics, so now is art.
See: BBC Story and Guardian piece.
In fact if you think about the current scale of funding into fundamental physics, actually science is the branch of culture being funded for it’s own sake. Mad. The world turned upside down. (Follow @TiffanyJenkins)
Full transcript here. Less bleak than the journalists’ selective headlines.
Terry Eagleton & Roger Scruton on “Culture” (Hat tip to David Morey on FB)
[Post Note : The price of everything and the value for nothing.
Deputy London major Munira Mirza, via @TiffanyJenkins]
Songs That Changed The World
Worth keeping a link to this collection. Interesting.
I agree with several of them; I’d probably add Big Yellow Taxi.
Skilled Cheese Wits
One for the “creative writing” pile.
(Hat tip to Hugh McLeod)
Motivation 3.0 – Pink Does Maslow
Dan Pink’s “Drive” caught on as a best seller in the last couple of years in promoting the concept of “Motivation 3.0”. Of course, the terminology catches the fashion of the internet generation, and good luck if the brief readable book, with its “Toolkit” of ideas does lead to more management catching on in more organizations. (Hat tip to Robin for bringing up Pink’s Drive in a business call.)
Some many resist its obviously “faddish” looks, and some will be attracted precisely by that latest-fashion aspect, but like all good messages, there is nothing new under the sun. Absolutely nothing, and that’s why you can tell it’s good, despite the tag line “the surprising truth” – nothing could be less surprising, even though it opposes “received wisdom”. The core idea of autonomous engagement is very simple, far from rocket science, and not difficult to implement providing one overcomes the fear of letting go.
In a word, the first aspect – Autonomy.
People perform better if given a reasonable degree of autonomy. The hard bit is working out for your own particular case how much is reasonable, but even then, Pareto’s 80:20 rule of thumb says, anything less that 20% autonomy ought to be considered suspect, 32% autonomy a normal case, and 80% autonomy about as good as it gets. Go figure. No need to read on if that’s self-evident already.
Anyway, between then (F.W.Taylor and Abraham Maslow say) and now (Dan Pink say) there have been a thousand management gurus plying their trade in the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st. Each standing on the shoulders of giants, though as I often point out, in order to do that, you have to recognize the giant. Even the original Psybertron agenda (About >> Agenda) includes recovering from the status quo where “management mistook itself for a science” – a thinly veiled allusion to the errors of Taylorism. Very old news. (Gurus that spring to mind, all referenced in this blog, include; Taylor, Maslow, MacGregor, Ouchi, Argyris, Parker-Follett, Drucker, Handy, Peters, Godin, Gladwell, Ariely, Pink to name but a few, and not to mention the myriad of empirical anthropologists, behavioural-psychologists, scientists and philosophers of mind on whose research they depend. You no doubt have your own favourites.)
If we go back to Maslow, we can superimpose quite easily the evolving story that management gurus are trying to communicate to us. In fact he has been much maligned and, as I already blogged, there is a significant movement to rehabilitate Maslow in the “positive psychology” school.
Naturally, the first three levels of Maslow, are pretty much accepted as basic human rights anywhere in the developed and developing world, so they quite rightly look antiquated as motivators these days. They remain important of course, if you understand the hygiene rule. And like all generalizations, exactly what motivates / demotivates in each band varies by individual and circumstance; any general rules implied are “for guidance of the wise and the enslavement of fools“. And, as Theodore Zeldin reminds, us we all have imperfect knowledge and understanding as well as limits to our own competencies, whatever our motivation. In the modern “professional” world most people find themselves somewhere through Motivation2.0, with diminishing returns on, even seemingly-perverse negative responses to, extrinsic rewards as motivators. As Pink highlights, we’ve been struggling with variations of Motivation2.x (ref any number of management gurus) on our way to recognising Motivation3.0 for what it is.
The other main thrust of Drive is Engagement.
Once properly motivated and “empowered” by autonomy, the point is that people can properly engage with tasks, achieving a sweet-spot in performance. Zen and the Art of … doing what you do well … Optimisation is achieved when the task and the person effectively become one – there are no extraneous distinctions between the task and the person – what a radical empiricist / monist like James or Pirsig might call “dynamic quality” – or kinetic quality, relationalism, inclusionality, you name it – what has been dubbed “flow” since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
And finally for now, this is all closely tied to the movement that suggests we all recognize the difference between our life’s work and our day job. Or to express that the other way around, the closer our day job – the one that pays the bills – comes to our life’s work – that which we find intrinsically valuable to our purpose and meaning in the world – the better for all of us.
[Post Notes:
Oh look, the following day Dilbert is on topic too:
And recently, Gaping Void’s Message for the Next Generation.
[And on the motivational commencement speech genre, try the one by David Foster-Wallace.]
Further Reading ?
If any of this looks new or unbelievable to you,
or you can’t imagine how you would apply it in real life,
then read Dan Pink’s Drive, it’s an easy read with practical advice.
Or if you prefer, start with this video animation.
Pink has his own list of further reading, so I won’t put a spoiler here;
suffice to say Peter Drucker is amongst them.
In this up to date context, Drucker is interesting and impressive;
generally recognized as having been the guru of management gurus,
he himself acknowledged his own debt to Mary Parker-Follett.
(Drucker and Parker-Follett jumping off points already linked above.)
If you want some deeper background on the psychology,
or more generally on “how the mind works” in these contexts,
my recent favourites are Haidt, Kahneman, Kauffman and McGilchrist.
Not to mention recognizing the “flow” in the “peak experiences” writings of
James and Dewey, much-used by much-maligned Maslow.]
[Post Note : An interesting corrective on real autonomy and empowerment. It’s bottom up you dummy.]
[Post Note : Here an interesting reminder that Maslow’s Hierarchy / Pyramid is a later visual representation of Maslow’s ideas, maybe by Drucker or Parker-Follett. Not critical to my position – since ideas evolve anyway, and the essential value is there – but might be worth researching who originally proposed that evolving representation? Hat tip to @DrSarahEaton and @JulesEvans77.]
[Post Note : And an “Engagement” version of Maslow from David McInstosh Jan 2016:
[Post Note: And in 2018 Meaning as engagement in life itself by Steve Taylor in Psychology Today.
My own single sentence summary of the Meaning of Life:
Your experience will vary, but
there is an evolutionary hierarchy:… from yourself and your loved ones
surviving to live,… culminating in our striving
towards our best contribution to
wider humanity and the cosmos.
There is no more. All questions are about “what’s best?”.
See also #HTLGI2018 notes. ]
Bliss
An underused word (like the word “grace”). Nice piece from Hugh McLeod at Gaping Void (hat tip to tweet from Dave Gurteen). Message to the next generation to notice the difference between a life’s work and a career in a day job. In this case, based on the advertising business, but good for bringing in this Joe Campbell quote too:
“Follow your bliss.
Find where it is,
and don’t be afraid to follow it.”Joseph Campbell – The Power of Myth
A common message from the wise to those starting out. Here my favourite plea from Richard Russo in his 2004 commencement address.
“While you search for this work, you’ll need a job. [It’s] a fine thing to be good at your job, as long as you don’t confuse it with your work, which it’s hard not to do.”
Seven Pillars in Iraq
Interesting listening to the excellent BBC R4 documentary “Lawrence of Arabia – Man and Myth“ by Allan Little. I’m a long time fan of TEL as a humanist moral philosopher and poet, but amazing to hear that his opus Seven Pillars of Wisdom was regularly used by the Americans in Iraq, Gen Petraeus no less, “virtually every briefing meeting” even. Wow.
Good to see the significance of TEL being realized at many levels in modern middle-east geo-politics. (And an excellent documentary, BTW.)
Many interesting points, re Armenians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqis, but one in particular. Palestine as envisaged by TEL was to be for the Palestinian Arabs. Yes, he knew there were plans to grant a zone for Jewish settlement rights – a “homeland” – but the (explicit) point was for Jews to integrate with the natives in their state, not create an independent Israeli state with a Jewish majority dominating and/or excluding the locals. Effing Balfour!