Roger,
I have stayed out of this one, pretty much, but I want to say how much I liked this post. Hope I run into you some time. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:59 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] hypothetical causes for semantic drift (was Notions of entropy) I think the article's plea to see the liberal arts and sciences as a united front pursuing evidence and reason based explanations has something to do with Lee's rant about semantic infelicities between disciplines. They're all doing the same thing for a fuzzy enough definition of thing. In particular they all steal vocabulary shamelessly as they struggle to name the stuff that appears to be important, so words reappear with different meanings in different disciplines over and over again. This makes it easy to generate interdisciplinary snark about how those barbarians murder the language and ignore the established meanings. And it makes it hard for interdisciplinary work to proceed at all if the terminological confusion gets sufficiently messy. The OED's first citation for recursion is 1616. Vector had a meaning before physicists appropriated it, it's still finds technical use in a sense closer to the original latin outside linear algebra contexts. And even when they use the same sub-discipline to describe the same kinds of phenomena, as when biologists use chemical thermodynamics (sometimes re-branded as "bioenergetics"), the usages can diverge because the phenomena diverge. Though the molecules of biology are just as much molecules as the molecules of chemistry, they don't get studied in the same contexts, and the biological polypeptides, polynucleotides, and polysaccharides are pretty much left by chemists as a problem for the biologists. I think your ability to find these sorts of semantic hiccups is only limited by your appetite to look. -- rec -- On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Steve Smith <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Roger/Glen - I would rework Steve's explanation. Just as infants babble to learn the correct sounds for their native language by feedback, older children babble explanations to see what works. Unfortunately, correctly formed explanations can be uninformed opinions or fallacious reasonings or imaginary evidence, and flawed as they are they can still sound true to some social population, so people get positive feedback for ridiculous explanations and build up self-consistent systems of explanations. Voila, the party of tea or the birthers or the church of scientology or sociologists crafting a bespoke vocabulary for linear algebra. I like this description. It is very mutation-selection and fits my experience. Adding Glen's view of language-as-grooming (which is growing on me over time), I prefer to think in terms of resonances. We are (perhaps) driven to seek harmonizing notes like a barbershop quartet. And if we have a pulpit/audience we play call-and-response. If we don't get a consistent and confident enough round of "hallelujah" (thanks to Dean's tip about Dictionaries I found the standard spelling rather than using my own idiosyncratic choice of "hallelujia") from the crowd, we review our sermon, modify it and try again, probably with more fervor and conviction until our message (and it's delivery) gets a satisfying response. This is where it comes in handy to have your own choir to try your sermons out on (e.g. FRIAMers, teabaggers, scientologists) but as the saying in that regard implies, "too easy of an audience can be a problem". The pursuit of Truth has an overtone of an absolute or objective rather than the mere relativism of "finding resonance with others". Here is where I think Natural Science emerged... from the activities of humans that roughly fit the model of seeking resonance with nature, of hypothesis and experiment as call and response. Strike one hollow tree to hear it's frequencies, then strike another. Unfortunately, capitalism and consumerism create another set of tuning forks... The "free market" (or any market, no matter how overtly or covertly manipulated or contrived) offers us resonances and those who learn to hit the right notes get (some of) it's fruits. Those who know how to manipulate it's resonances get the bulk of it (to use the 1%/99% inequity argument). So we learn to speak the "language" of the markets. Period. I think this is what we used to go to church for... a weekly sermon on some other counterpoint topic. Perhaps that is why some of us come to FRIAM (in person or virtually?). I really enjoyed reading http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Cant-the-Sciencesthe/142239/ this morning. It's all about the evidence and the reasons. I also read this and enjoyed it (at your recommendation here) but did not find it to be directly responsive to the topic? It is a fascinating analysis of the "Two Cultures" discussion with the topic of "filthy lucre" thrown on the fire to fuel it yet more... This particular vignette struck me: When Immanuel Kant called on people to "have the courage to use their own understanding," to "dare to know," he had in mind a broad expanse of inquiries, including those in the arts and sciences, and even the testing of truth claims offered in the name of religion. Although Kant wrote before practitioners of the various inquiries distinguished themselves from one another as physicists, historians, chemists, biologists, literary scholars, economists, geologists, metaphysicians, and so on, these several Wissenschaft were nurtured significantly by the same Enlightenment imperative, by the same broad cognitive ideal. It seems (sadly?) that there is yet another "two cultures" spread which Glen alludes to and is definitely in the air today with all of the 99% talk. It is the haves/have-nots, the elite, the plebians, the ignorant, the informed, the ... and the ... . Glen suggests that one "class" simply doesn't have the time or resources to think critically while the other does. I think there *is* something to that, but it isn't as simple as time/$$... it is also perspective or will. I think Roger's article speaks a little to that... the differing ideas of "whence critical thinking?". - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
