[FRIAM] The Verifier

[Phil Henshaw]

Thanks for the Feyerabend reference, but geel whiz... Knorr-Certina's
"The Manufacture of Knowledge" is $349.95, on Amazon, used! and only one
copy.  but in French it's only $25 bucks!    Hey should I snap it up?  


Phil Henshaw                       ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave 
NY NY 10040                       
tel: 212-795-4844                 
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com    


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Prof David West [mailto:profwest at fastmail.fm] 
> Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 7:12 PM
> To: sy at synapse9.com; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity 
> Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Verifier
> 
> 
> 
> 
> An old book, but still interesting and relevant - 
> Knorr-Certina, The Manufacture of Knowledge, looks at how 
> science is really done and really written about and biases, 
> blind-spots, and paradigms.  A good complement to the even 
> older work of Paul Feyerabend.
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:15:18 -0400, "Phil Henshaw" <sy at synapse9.com>
> said:
> > I see those biases a lot, and use finding my own sloppy 
> patches as keys
> > to where I'll discover new things.    One exceptionally 
> common bias of
> > current interest is the tendency of scientists to ignore 
> the time lags 
> > between cause and effect, that when not ignored lead to the 
> discovery 
> > of the independent developmental process that are 
> functional necessities in
> > the occurrence of the response.   An example?   Any process 
> of entropy,
> > seems to requires the local development of individual 
> self-organizing 
> > complex systems to carry it out, and when you look you find them.
> >  
> > I've been reading 'Linked' by Barabasi, and thoroughly enjoying his 
> > insightful discoveries of telling structural patterns in 
> the topology 
> > of networks, and how the distribution of densely connected 
> hubs changes
> > network behaviors entirely, among other things.   What's totally
> > remarkable is that despite observing that this 'scale free' 
> > distribution of connections, as it has become called, 
> develops as the 
> > network adds and then abandons links (branching followed by 
> selection) 
> > to produce the final form, he attributes no causal 
> contribution to the 
> > direct process by which system producing the network 
> develops, i.e. to 
> > what happens. Instead he extremely consistently phrases the 
> cause of 
> > the pattern as being the benchmark indicator of having an inverse 
> > square distribution of nodes with high degrees of 
> connection, a statistical property
> > discovered after the fact.   I'm going page after page after page
> > wondering when is he ever going to credit the evolutionary 
> process by 
> > which the pattern develops in the overall causal scheme of 
> things,...
> > and the answer seems to be, well, never!!    It's stunning 
> how so many
> > hugely productive insights are so obviously being looked at 
> squarely 
> > and then skipped over again and again and again, evidently just not 
> > fitting the question and purpose of his otherwise brilliantly 
> > observant examination of the facts!
> >  
> > I'm wondering if the blind spot this exposes is embedded in 
> our tools, 
> > since he obviously sees the actual behaviors producing the patterns 
> > and is very creative in identifying the resultant patterns 
> associated with
> > them, but is just not drawn to studying them.   If used for 
> the purpose,
> > these same patterns would lead us to investigate how the 
> direct causal 
> > mechanisms do actually operate, in detail, but he keeps 
> consistently 
> > declaring the resultant pattern to be the cause and the 
> behavior to not
> > exist.    Just g.d. remarkable!   Could it be that our 
> forbearers were
> > just so totally obsessed with control, that our traditional 
> tools were
> > built in a way that can't describe anything else?   
> >  
> >  
> > 
> > Phil Henshaw                       ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > 680 Ft. Washington Ave 
> > NY NY 10040                       
> > tel: 212-795-4844                 
> > e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
> > explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/>     
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: friam-bounces at redfish.com 
> [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On 
> > Behalf Of Roger 
> Critchlow
> > Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 12:47 PM
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> > Subject: [FRIAM] The Verifier
> > 
> > 
> > Here's an article about a kind of meta-analysis that looks for 
> > cognitive biases among groups of researchers.
> > 
> > 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/business/you>
rmoney/05frame.html?ref=
> > bu
> > siness
> > 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/business/yourmoney/05frame.
html?ref=b
> usiness> 
> 
> -- rec --
> 
> 
> 
> 
>