Difference between revisions of "IMAGES"
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<div class="col-md-3"><h2>Repurposing knowledge</h2></div> | <div class="col-md-3"><h2>Repurposing knowledge</h2></div> | ||
− | <div class="col-md-7"><h3> | + | <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Mirror ideogram</h3> |
<p> </p> | <p> </p> | ||
[[File:Magical_Mirror.jpg]] <br><small><center>Mirror ideogram</center></small> | [[File:Magical_Mirror.jpg]] <br><small><center>Mirror ideogram</center></small> | ||
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<div class="row"> | <div class="row"> | ||
<div class="col-md-3"></div> | <div class="col-md-3"></div> | ||
− | <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Seeing the mirror</h3> | + | <div class="col-md-6"><h3>Seeing ourselves in the mirror</h3> |
<p><blockquote> | <p><blockquote> | ||
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison.</blockquote> | Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison.</blockquote> | ||
− | This often quoted excerpt from Einstein and Infeld's Evolution of Physics will serve us as a snapshot of that very moment when modern science saw itself in the metaphorical [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]. | + | This often quoted excerpt from Einstein and Infeld's Evolution of Physics will serve us as a snapshot of that very moment when modern science saw itself in the metaphorical [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]].</p> |
− | + | <p>And when the scientists realized that both the scientific concepts and the scientific theories are their own, that is, <em>human</em> creation. That there is simply no way to verify that those theories <em>correspond</em> with the real thing. And that our reason is amiss when it even tries to imagine a procedure by which we could confirm such correspondence.</p></div> | |
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Einstein.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Albert Einstein]]</center></small></div> | <div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Einstein.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Albert Einstein]]</center></small></div> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
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</blockquote> | </blockquote> | ||
This second excerpt, from Einstein's comments on Bertrand Russell's theory of knowledge, will suggest that the common supposition that our conceptions of the world <em>correspond</em> to reality has been a result of illusions.</p> | This second excerpt, from Einstein's comments on Bertrand Russell's theory of knowledge, will suggest that the common supposition that our conceptions of the world <em>correspond</em> to reality has been a result of illusions.</p> | ||
− | <p>But if the goal of our pursuit of knowledge is to distinguish | + | <p>But if the goal of our pursuit of knowledge is to distinguish reality from illusion – how can we base it on a criterion (correspondence with reality) that is impossible to verify? And which is itself commonly a product of illusion?</p> |
− | <h3> | + | <h3>Seeing ourselves in the world</p> |
− | <p> | + | <p>This insight acquires brightness and even brilliance when by looking at this [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] we see the world we are inhabiting and ourselves in it.</p> |
− | <p> | + | <p>We then instantly realize that our world is in dire need for knowledge – not <em>any</em> kind knowledge, but "right" knowledge and "good" knowledge.</p> |
+ | <p>We realize that there's nobody out there who can give the people such knowledge – except ourselves!</p> | ||
+ | <p>The space in front of the metaphorical [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] is a space for academic self-reflection.</p> | ||
+ | <p>Why is the academic culture as it is? Why do we produce so much of <em>a certain kind of knowledge</em>, and so little else? Why do we limit ourselves to detailed results in traditional academic fields – when there is so much more that could be done?</p> | ||
+ | <p>And yet we realize that this self-reflection – however interesting and necessary it might be – is not leading us to solutions. The clock is ticking, the people out there need knowledge. Whatever we may come up with, through self-reflection, will not give it to them.</p> | ||
+ | <p>But <em>what else can we do</em>? | ||
+ | |||
+ | <h3>Stepping through the mirror</h3> | ||
+ | <p>It is only by (metaphorically speaking) <em>stepping through</em> this metaphorical academic [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]], that the solutions are readily found.</p> | ||
</div></div> | </div></div> | ||
<div class="row"> | <div class="row"> | ||
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The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science. | The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science. | ||
</blockquote> | </blockquote> | ||
− | + | If that is how the sciences progress – why not allow our knowledge and knowledge work at large to progress in the same way?</p></div> | |
<div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Quine.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Willard V.O. Quine]]</center></small></div> | <div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Quine.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Willard V.O. Quine]]</center></small></div> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
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<h3>Truth becomes rigorous</h3> | <h3>Truth becomes rigorous</h3> | ||
− | <p>It stands to reason that our | + | <p>It stands to reason that our foundation for creating truth and meaning must itself be as solid as possible.</p> |
− | <p>The foundations we've just | + | <p>The foundations we've just outlined can be – and have been – made solid in three independent ways: |
<ul> | <ul> | ||
<li>They are a convention – and what's asserted in this way is true by definition, irrespective of what happens "in reality"</li> | <li>They are a convention – and what's asserted in this way is true by definition, irrespective of what happens "in reality"</li> | ||
− | <li>This convention express the state-of-the-art epistemological | + | <li>This convention express the state-of-the-art epistemological findings, and the insights of [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]</li> |
<li>The convention – the [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]] – is conceived as a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]]; it has provisions for updating itself, when relevant new insights are reached</li> | <li>The convention – the [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]] – is conceived as a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]]; it has provisions for updating itself, when relevant new insights are reached</li> | ||
</ul></p> | </ul></p> | ||
<h3>Knowledge becomes useful</h3> | <h3>Knowledge becomes useful</h3> | ||
− | <p> | + | <p>Yet our core task is not to "philosophize" about truth and reality, but to give the people the kind of knowledge they need, the <em>useful</em> knowledge. And it is <em>this</em> task that is most easily and most <em>academically</em> served on the other side of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]. </p> |
− | <p> | + | <p>To see why, imagine we tried to do that <em>before</em> stepping through the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]], imagine someone said "look – it's really this other kind of knowledge that the people most urgently need; why don't we give it to them?" You can be sure that someone, from some department or from several of them, will say "no, that would not be solid, or academic, or scientific..." and the whole attempt would melt down into a useless controversy. In our other modules we'll share from our collection of anecdotes or [[vignettes|<em>vignettes</em>]], instances where this indeed <em>did</em> happen.</p> |
− | <p>In | + | <p>Everything changes when we step through the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]! We can then <em>assign</em> a purpose to knowledge, simply by making a convention!</p> |
− | <p>By combining truth by convention with the creation of a [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]], knowledge work becomes securely established on the academic terrain that Herbert Simon called "the sciences of the artificial" | + | <p>In that way we can <em>both</em> liberate knowledge and knowledge work from its age-old subservience to "reality" (and therewith also with the age-old traditional procedures and methods which, as it has been assumed, secured that knowledge would correspond with reality) – and by the same sleight of hand assign it another purpose, such as the purpose of helping people orient themselves in the complex reality.</p> |
+ | <p>By combining truth by convention with the creation of a [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]] (which is an organized system of fundamental conventions), knowledge work becomes securely established on the academic terrain that Herbert Simon called "the sciences of the artificial" – which do not study what objectively exists in the natural world, but man-made things, with the goal of adapting them to the purposes they serve in the human world.</p> | ||
+ | <p>Our [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]] – by which this reversal is made concrete, or even possible – is called [[Polyscopic Modeling]]. What we call [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] is the [[praxis|<em>praxis</em>]] this [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]] fosters. Usually, however, we simply refer to both simply as [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]. </p> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
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<div class="col-md-7"><h3>Creating the way we look at the world</h3> | <div class="col-md-7"><h3>Creating the way we look at the world</h3> | ||
+ | <p>Our theme – or better said our <em>reversal</em> here is (of) the way in which our concepts are methods, and even information itself, are conceived of, created and used. We are about to witness a reversal of the way in which we look at the world.</p> | ||
<p> </p> | <p> </p> | ||
[[File:Polyscopy.jpg]] <br><small><center>Polyscopy ideogram</center></small> | [[File:Polyscopy.jpg]] <br><small><center>Polyscopy ideogram</center></small> | ||
<p> </p> | <p> </p> | ||
− | <p> | + | <p><blockquote> |
− | + | Once we've realized that our concepts and methods are our or more precisely <em>human</em> creations, it becomes natural to recreate them freely – so that we may see more, and see what <em>needs to</em> be seen.</blockquote> </p> | |
− | <p> | + | <p>Central in [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]] is the notion of [[scope|<em>scope</em>]] – which is, by definition, whatever determines how we look at the world and how we see it. </p> |
− | <p>The Polyscopy [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] stands for the fact that at the point where we've come to see our [[scope|<em>scopes</em>]] as our own creation and not our discovery, | + | <p>Not only our concepts and methods, but also our very models, or "pieces of information", are considered (by convention) to be just that – just ways of looking.</p> |
+ | our concepts and methods.</p> | ||
+ | <p>The Polyscopy [[ideograms|<em>ideogram</em>]] stands for the fact that at the point where we've come to see our [[scope|<em>scopes</em>]] as our own creation and not our discovery, it becomes natural to adapt them to the purpose of seeing what above all needs to be seen. </p> </div> | ||
</div> | </div> | ||
<div class="row"> | <div class="row"> |
Revision as of 13:25, 19 November 2018
Contents
- 1 Federation through Images
- 1.1 What should knowledge be like?
- 1.2 These images are ideograms
- 1.3 Repurposing knowledge
- 1.3.1 Mirror ideogram
- 1.3.2 Seeing ourselves in the mirror
- 1.3.3 Seeing ourselves in the world</p> This insight acquires brightness and even brilliance when by looking at this mirror we see the world we are inhabiting and ourselves in it. We then instantly realize that our world is in dire need for knowledge – not any kind knowledge, but "right" knowledge and "good" knowledge. We realize that there's nobody out there who can give the people such knowledge – except ourselves! The space in front of the metaphorical mirror is a space for academic self-reflection. Why is the academic culture as it is? Why do we produce so much of a certain kind of knowledge, and so little else? Why do we limit ourselves to detailed results in traditional academic fields – when there is so much more that could be done? And yet we realize that this self-reflection – however interesting and necessary it might be – is not leading us to solutions. The clock is ticking, the people out there need knowledge. Whatever we may come up with, through self-reflection, will not give it to them. But what else can we do? <h3>Stepping through the mirror</h3> <p>It is only by (metaphorically speaking) stepping through this metaphorical academic mirror, that the solutions are readily found. </div></div> What makes this apparent magic academically possible is what Villard Van Orman Quine called truth by convention. In "Truth by Convention", Quine posited that The less a science has advanced, the more its terminology tends to rest on an uncritical assumption of mutual understanding. With increase of rigor this basis is replaced piecemeal by the introduction of definitions. The interrelationships recruited for these definitions gain the status of analytic principles; what was once regarded as a theory about the world becomes reconstrued as a convention of language. Thus it is that some flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science. If that is how the sciences progress – why not allow our knowledge and knowledge work at large to progress in the same way? Willard V.O. Quine Truth by convention is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics: "Let x be... Then..." It is meaningless to ask whether x "really is" as stated. What makes 'the magic' possible, of 'walking through the mirror', is that the truth on the other side is (by convention) the truth by convention. We call this basic convention the methodology. <h3>Truth becomes rigorous</h3> It stands to reason that our foundation for creating truth and meaning must itself be as solid as possible. The foundations we've just outlined can be – and have been – made solid in three independent ways: They are a convention – and what's asserted in this way is true by definition, irrespective of what happens "in reality" This convention express the state-of-the-art epistemological findings, and the insights of giants The convention – the methodology – is conceived as a prototype; it has provisions for updating itself, when relevant new insights are reached <h3>Knowledge becomes useful</h3> Yet our core task is not to "philosophize" about truth and reality, but to give the people the kind of knowledge they need, the useful knowledge. And it is this task that is most easily and most academically served on the other side of the mirror. To see why, imagine we tried to do that before stepping through the mirror, imagine someone said "look – it's really this other kind of knowledge that the people most urgently need; why don't we give it to them?" You can be sure that someone, from some department or from several of them, will say "no, that would not be solid, or academic, or scientific..." and the whole attempt would melt down into a useless controversy. In our other modules we'll share from our collection of anecdotes or vignettes, instances where this indeed did happen. Everything changes when we step through the mirror! We can then assign a purpose to knowledge, simply by making a convention! In that way we can both liberate knowledge and knowledge work from its age-old subservience to "reality" (and therewith also with the age-old traditional procedures and methods which, as it has been assumed, secured that knowledge would correspond with reality) – and by the same sleight of hand assign it another purpose, such as the purpose of helping people orient themselves in the complex reality. By combining truth by convention with the creation of a methodology (which is an organized system of fundamental conventions), knowledge work becomes securely established on the academic terrain that Herbert Simon called "the sciences of the artificial" – which do not study what objectively exists in the natural world, but man-made things, with the goal of adapting them to the purposes they serve in the human world. Our prototype methodology – by which this reversal is made concrete, or even possible – is called Polyscopic Modeling. What we call polyscopy is the praxis this methodology fosters. Usually, however, we simply refer to both simply as polyscopy. Liberating knowledge and knowledge work
- 1.4 Growing knowledge upward
- 1.5 Knowledge federation in two pictures
- 1.6 Two examples
Federation through Images
What should knowledge be like?
The way we handle knowledge is historical and accidental
Perhaps no rational person would argue that knowledge should not be useful; or that information should not provide us the big picture and general, direction-setting insights, but only details.
There is, however, a reason why we don't have a culture of big-picture knowledge – and the reason is historical.
This excerpt from Einstein's Autobiographical Notes, where he describes physics at the point when he entered it as a graduate student, around the turn of last century, will provide us a snapshot of that history at the point where modern physics stepped in.In spite of all the fruitfulness on particulars, dogmatic rigidity prevailed on the matter of principles: In the beginning (if there was such a thing), God created Newton's laws of motion together with the necessary masses and forces. This is all; everything beyond this follows from the development of appropriate mathematical methods by means of deduction.
Einstein continues by explaining this state of affairs, the belief that Newton's or scientific concepts corresponded with reality in an objective sense, as a consequence of the omnipresent successes of science, in both explaining the natural phenomena and in changing the human condition. A complete model of the clockwork of nature appeared to be within reach, or even as having been reached already. It seemed plausible that this would not only enable us to understand the observable phenomena, but even to control them, to subdue them to our human purposes and desires. Science organized itself as a collection of disciplines, whose goal was divide and conquer the mechanics of nature. The scientific "reality picture" replaced the old Biblical one in education, and in the modern mind.
And then it all exploded – with the bomb that fell on Hiroshima! The mass – which was hitherto considered the immutable property of the matter itself, of which the universal mechanism was composed – turned out to be convertible into radiation and energy. The passage of time – once the very epitome of objectivity – turned out to be relative.
The future of knowledge is now in our hands
Necessarily, the giants of modern science saw that what they were discovering was not only the behavior of small quanta of matter, or the social mechanisms by which our shared idea of reality is constructed, or the neurological mechanism that govern our awareness – but that the bare foundations of how we think and create knowledge were emerging from the ground. Having thus lost its secure bearings in "objective reality", science acquired a whole new capability – to self-reflect. And through self-reflection to understand its own limitations, and the limits of our knowledge and knowing.
We are about to see that when we combine their insights, when we "stand on their shoulders" – then a whole new foundation for the creation of truth and meaning can be perceived as a natural next step in this process. A foundation that is both academically rigorous and empowers us to create the knowledge we need.
These images are ideograms
Pictures that are worth one thousand words
Not all pictures are worth one thousand words; but these ideograms are!
Each of them will not only summarize for us the insights of a number of the last century's most original minds – but also "stand on their shoulders" and see beyond, see the vast creative frontier that their combined insights reveal, and the specific opportunities that this frontier now offers us.
By using the ideograms we shall at the same time demonstrate big-picture science and its power. Recall that the philosophical systems of Hegel and Husserl took thousands of pages! Here only a handful of ideograms will suffice to summarize the philosophical findings of giants, and combine them into a paradigm. Our core purpose being to ignite a conversation, this very concise presentation will serve us best.
Also for brevity's sake, we shall allow Einstein to represent all other giants. In Federation through Stories we will give a voice to others. But here only Einstein will appear, in his usual role of the iconic "modern scientist". So as we quote Einstein, you may interpret his words as "modern science" lifting us up on her shoulders, and helping us see further.
Each image will be followed by a paragraph of text giving the ideogram its meaning. An image together with the accompanying text and the subsequent explanation together form a complete unit of meaning or "piece of information", not the image alone.
Repurposing knowledge
Mirror ideogram
On every university campus there is a mirror – although, being so busy with article deadlines and courses, we don't normally see it.
When we look at this academic mirror, we see the same world that we see around us. But we also see ourselves in the mirror. And we see ourselves in the world.
We then realize that we are not "the objective observers" of reality we believed we were, but people living in the world, creating the world – and responsible for it.
And when we look deeper into the mirror, we realize that the scientific concepts and methods and theories are not objectively true elements of reality our great predecessors discovered, but something they themselves created, which enabled us to make a quantum leap in our understanding of phenomena.
Just like that mirror in Louis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass", this academic mirror too can be walked right through. And when we do that, we find ourselves in an unfamiliar academic reality, where so many things appear to be inverse images of the academic reality we've grown accustomed to. And yet when we take a moment to accustom ourselves to it, we begin realize how much more coherent and meaningful this new academic world is than the one that appeared to us as the only possible one – before we saw ourselves in the mirror.
Seeing ourselves in the mirror
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison.This often quoted excerpt from Einstein and Infeld's Evolution of Physics will serve us as a snapshot of that very moment when modern science saw itself in the metaphorical mirror.
And when the scientists realized that both the scientific concepts and the scientific theories are their own, that is, human creation. That there is simply no way to verify that those theories correspond with the real thing. And that our reason is amiss when it even tries to imagine a procedure by which we could confirm such correspondence.
This second excerpt, from Einstein's comments on Bertrand Russell's theory of knowledge, will suggest that the common supposition that our conceptions of the world correspond to reality has been a result of illusions.During philosophy’s childhood it was rather generally believed that it is possible to find everything which can be known by means of mere reflection. (...) Someone, indeed, might even raise the question whether, without something of this illusion, anything really great can be achieved in the realm of philosophical thought – but we do not wish to ask this question. This more aristocratic illusion concerning the unlimited penetrative power of thought has as its counterpart the more plebeian illusion of naïve realism, according to which things “are” as they are perceived by us through our senses. This illusion dominates the daily life of men and animals; it is also the point of departure in all the sciences, especially of the natural sciences.
But if the goal of our pursuit of knowledge is to distinguish reality from illusion – how can we base it on a criterion (correspondence with reality) that is impossible to verify? And which is itself commonly a product of illusion?