October 2nd, 2008
Scientists think they’re so smart with their white coats and clip-boards but what do they really know?
Here are my notes from reading Macquarrie: “Cognition” [from: In Search of Humanity] as part of my Philosophy course.
Empiricism is too narrow, that’s the idea that everything we know can be neatly packaged as a proposition and then tested and observed. Western society has been obsessed with empiricism for a couple of hundred years and it’s only the post-modern era where we’ve started to question it and that’s only in academia. On the streets and in most science labs, the attitude prevails: if I can’t see it and feel it and say it in one neat sentence, then it’s a load of old cobblers. This is also called logical positivism.
How can this faith in empiricism itself be tested? We just accept that all truth is accessible to our observation or at least provable with our maths. But this belief itself can never be tested since any knowledge outside of empiricism by the definition of empiricism is not knowledge but just myth and fairy tales.
Macquarrie examines two authors that criticise empiricism from two intersecting points of view. Karl Popper with his Objective Knowledge and Polanyi with his Personal Knowledge.
According to the empiricists, all knowledge is generated from our observations through induction: Little baby Fred throws his toy. He does it again. Eventually his brain induces that toys bounce when they are thrown.
Popper argues that most of the time our learning is a lot more sophisticated and that actually most of the things we learn are from the beginning interpreted through our expectations. For every experience we have, we form theories to explain it. Fred throws a toy, it bounces. Fred theorises that toys bounce. He throws it again to test his theory: Yes! It does bounce! I wonder if this glass I found on the coffee table bounces the same way?
Every time we do something, every time our brain senses some incident or effect, we form a theory to try and explain it. We test our theory and over time our theories become more refined and sophisticated. But we never reach perfection, there are always edge cases that don’t fit our theories. We never reach the truth, only what Popper calls a verisimilitude of the truth.
This all seems scientifically sound and empirical so what is the implication of Popper’s ideas? Well Popper is suggesting that there is no such thing as a pure observation. Before we can ever observe something, we have already formed a theory about what is going to happen. Thus the scientific method and empiricism is flawed because objective observation is unachievable.
Popper argues that it is our natural tendency to look for confirmations of our internally held theories. However it is always easy to find confirmation of our theories by ignoring any evidence which contradicts them. Sound familiar? Do you know anyone who has strongly held beliefs and infuriatingly refuses to acknowledge any contradictions? That’s human nature according to Popper.
Popper says that the only way to truly test a theory is to actively try and discredit it. This is where the scientific method gets it right: papers are published in journals so that other scientists can criticise and try and disprove the theories. If a theory can survive this process for a long time, then it gains credibility. But often theories are just found to be inadequate or in need of refinement. For example, Newton’s laws of physics are pretty good most of the time. But they don’t work at the speed of light. For that we need Einstein. Einstein didn’t disprove Newton. He just added to the theory and increased the verisimilitude of our understanding of physics.
Popper is also pretty down on things that are unfalsifiable such as marxism (where if you’re no having a revolution, you just haven’t reached the right conditions) and freudian psychology (where if you’re not thinking about sex, it’s because you’re repressed). And of course theology (where if God aint answering your prayers, he’s trying to teach you something).
Also Popper doesn’t care about where a theory comes from. Scientists don’t like traditional medicine, but Popper says that you shouldn’t discredit something just because the origins are dodgy: every theory must come from some experience and so needs to be tested.
But there are a few issues with Popper’s way of thinking. He talks about knowledge as if it’s somehow separate from the knower. As if knowledge floats around from mind to mind just improving upon itself. Popper doesn’t address that knowledge has to be learned by people and transferred and taught. Popper doesn’t include any theory of teaching.
This is where Polanyi comes in.
Knowing is not just about facts and propositions, knowing is also a skill. There is an art to knowing: the ability to hold knowledge, not just acquire knowledge but to keep it and be able to use it appropriately. Teaching and learning is much more than just conveying and imbibing a bunch of facts. Think of the master craftsman who teaches a student how to fashion a quality piece of furniture, the skill comes with the doing, not just the written propositions. The knowledge of craft cannot be contained in written documentation or be conveyed with speech alone. The knowledge of craft comes into being through experience and teaching involves guiding the student through the right set of experiences so that they can learn the craft.
The teacher has access to tacit knowledge: knowledge that comes from tradition and cultural background. Tacit knowledge is knowledge that we may not even be aware of. Culture shock is partly a phenomenon of lacking tacit knowledge. You turn up in a strange place and you find yourself confronted by things that you never doubted at home.
So what have we learned from Popper and Polanyi?
- Not all knowledge can be written down
- Hypothesis and imagination are key to expanding knowledge
- Detachment and objectivity are a hindrance, passion and curiosity stimulate the brain
- Participation beats abstract navel gazing
- There are other types of knowledge that we don’t recognise as knowledge: the knowledge that is expressed or communicated through art, craft and possibly religion and mysticism
Macquarrie spends some time on this last point and defines it as broad knowledge. Take human relationships for example. Part of knowing someone is that we know facts about them, we know certain personality traits but we also know things we can’t express very well in language. When you feel close to someone, you can predict to an extent how they will behave and feel.
Here Macquarrie starts to get a bit fired up.
We need to stop thinking that knowledge is some kind of object that floats about in the ether waiting for us to know it. We need to be more human in our approach. Knowledge is part of us all, it is our experience.
We live in a time of incredible access to knowledge but we lack skills to handle information, how to regulate our own behaviour, how to relate, how to build a just and fulfilling society. We need to recover the ancient idea of wisdom which transcends mere facts and figures and emphasises relationship, the master and apprentice journeying.
In conclusion: We have to go beyond empiricism when we try to understand the world. We need to seek true wisdom which is tacit knowledge passed to us from our culture and through experience. All knowledge is distorted by our personal desires and prejudice and then by our society and culture. Knowledge moves forward as an interaction of many voices and also recognition of our biases.
Title reference: Wikipedia: She Blinded me with Science
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