Holotopia: Narrow frame
Contents
H O L O T O P I A: F I V E I N S I G H T S
Narrow frame
Science became "the Grand Revelator of Modern Western Culture" through a series of historical accidents. A consequence is that our most trusted way of exploring the world is a "narrow frame"—well suited for some purposes (such as developing science and technology), but poorly for others (notably for understanding "human development", and for developing culture).
An even larger problem, however, is that science constitutes a 'hammer'—a specialized set of tools, which make us favor disciplinary interests, and ignore the needs of people and osociety.
Stories
Narrow frame in physics
We adopted this keyword, narrow frame, from Werner Heisenberg, who in "Physics and Philosophy" (subtitled "Revolution in Modern Science") explained the narrow frame and its consequences (see our summary here).
Click here to hear Heisenberg say that
Most people believe that the atomic technique is the most important consequence. It was different for me. I believed that the philosophical consequences from atomic physics will make a bigger change than the technical consequences in the long run. (...) So we know because of atomic physics and what was learned from it that general problems look different than before. For example, the relationship between science and religion, and more generally, the way we see the world.
Here you'll find a couple of epistemological notes by Einstein, which will also be relevant.
Narrow frame in humanities and philosophy
In the humanities and in philosophy it was amply confirmed that the ways of looking at the world we have inherited from the past will not serve us in this time of change. See our comments that begin here.
Ideogram
The Polyscopy ideogram, with which we summarize the narrow frame insight, points to the key idea: Once we understood that the methods developed in the sciences are just human-made ways of looking at things or scopes—it became natural to adapt them to the purposes that need to be served; notably to the purpose of seeing things whole.
Keywords
Polyscopy and methodology
polyscopy is both a pseudonym we use, in colloquial speech and in application, for the Polyscopic Modeling methodology—which is a generalized "scientific method", whose purpose is to provide information according to contemporary needs of people and society.
Scope and scope design
Perspective and gestalt
A gestalt is the meaning of it all. The core goal of polyscopy is to use scope design to correct the perspective, so that a gestalt that is appropriate to the situation at hand can be found, expressed and acted on.
Pattern and ideogram
In the generalized science, as modeled by polyscopy, the pattern and the ideogram roughly correspond to the mathematical function and the corresponding symbolic representation. "E = mc2" is a familiar example. By why use only mathematics? The patterns and the ideograms generalize the approach to science completely; they can be, in principle, anything that works...