Science for Change Agents, Innovators & Entrepreneurs. Day 1 A fast forward through history from Aristotle to Chaos Theory The positivist dream Relativity, Quantum Theory & Uncertainty The Scientific Method (induction, deduction, repeatability, falsifiability) Science becomes social science: Durkheim, Weber & Anthropology Social Science: Explanation vs Understanding vs Liberation Kuhn, paradigms and the sociology of science Foucault and the Frankfurt School criticise science and its power The Lenses and Methodologies of Social Science: Discourse analysis, semiotics, qualitative research, quantitative research, participant observation MASTERCLASS FOR KAOS PILOTS, DENMARK

1. @NICKWECREATE
@NICKJANKEL
SCIENCE FOR
IMAGINEERS
NICK JANKEL, WECREATE
KAOS PILOTS
FEB 2012

2. DAY 1
THE USE AND MISUSE
OF SCIENCE FOR
CHANGE

3. TODAY
A FAST FORWARD THROUGH HISTORY, PARADIGMS AND COMPETING
SCHOOLS OF SCIENCE, STARTING OUT WITH ”NATURAL SCIENCE”,
PROVABILITY/REPEATABILITY, MOVING THROUGH VARIOUS SCHOOLS/
PHILOSOPHIES LIKE POSITIVISM, BEHAVIOURISM, ENDING UP WITH
QUANTUM PHYSICS AND CHAOS-THEORY. MOVING THROUGH SOCIAL
SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY, ETC.
A CHOICE OF LENSES AND METHODS

4. WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THIS SESSION?
HOW DOES THIS TOPIC CONNECT TO YOUR
GOALS? WHAT ABOUT THE TIMES WE ARE
LIVING IN?
WHAT ARE THE TIMES IN YOUR LIFE THAT
YOU FEEL MOST ENERGIZED AND VITAL IN?

5. 4
PROBLEMS

6. 4
TEAMS
PRESENT BACK ON THURS AM A 1 PAGE
STRATEGY

7. “Problems cannot be solved by
the same level of consciousness
that created them.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN

8. CONSCIOUS
NEEDS RAISING
NEED TO KNOW MORE

10. UNKNOWN
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INTO CAUSES
COMPLEX / ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
AR / AL / AI
SCENARIO PLANNING
ETHNOGRAPHY

11. “If we knew what we were
doing, it wouldn’t be called
‘research’.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN

12. 12

13. HEART
HAND
HEAD

14. A BRIEF
HISTORY OF SCIENCE

15. 1758

17. “This year the world is witnessing
the most satisfying phenomenon
that astronomy has ever provided,
an event unique to this day,
changing our doubts into
certainties, and our hypotheses
into demonstrations.”
THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

26. TELESCOPE
GALILEO

28. MECHANICS
PENDULUMS, CALCULUS ETC.

29. EMPIRICAL
OBSERVATION

31. “Truth is sought for its own sake. And
those who are engaged upon the quest
for anything for its own sake are not
interested in other things. Finding the
truth is difficult, and the road to it is
rough.”
IBN AL-HAYTHAM

32. INDUCTION
FRANCIS BACON

33. “There are and can be only two ways of
searching into and discovering truth.
The one flies from the senses and
particulars to the most general axioms,
and from these principles, the truth of
which it takes for settled and
immoveable, proceeds to judgment and
to the discovery of middle axioms. And
this way is now in fashion. The other
derives axioms from the senses and
particulars, rising by a gradual and
unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the
most general axioms last of all. This is
the true way, but as yet untried.”
FRANCIS BACON

34. DESCARTES
RATIONALISM / DEDUCTION

36. BIASES
MIND & SENSES

37. NEWTON

38. Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in
the night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all
was light.
ALEXANDER POPE

39. CLOCKWORK
UNIVERSE

40. “We may regard the present state of the
universe as the effect of its past and the
cause of its future. An intellect which at
any given moment knew all of the forces
that animate nature and the mutual
positions of the beings that compose it,
if this intellect were vast enough to
submit the data to analysis, could
condense into a single formula the
movement of the greatest bodies of the
universe and that of the lightest atom;
for such an intellect nothing could be
uncertain and the future just like the
past would be present before its eyes.”
PIERRE SIMON LA PLACE

41. MICROSCOPE
HOOK, LEEUWENHOEK

43. ENLIGHTENMENT
VOLTAIRE, JEAN-JAQUES ROUSSEAU, LOCKE,
HUME ETC

44. AUTHORITY
SCIENCE & REASON
OVER
TRADITION & RELIGION

45. REASON
BECOMES MORE AND MORE LIKE
MECHANISTIC MATERIALISM

46. 19TH C
SCIENCE GETS PROFESSIONAL

47. CHEMICAL
DEMISE OF PHLOGISTON THEORY
ACCURATE MEASUREMENT

48. PERIODIC TABLE
MENDELEEV

50. ELECTRO
MAGNETISM
FARADAY & MAXWELL

52. EVOLUTION
DARWIN VS. PALEY

53. EVOLUTION
DARWIN VS. PALEY

54. FINCHES
GRADUAL CHANGE (NO LEAPS)

55. SOCIAL
DARWINISM

56. “In the long history of
humankind (and animal
kind, too) those who
learned to collaborate
and improvise most
effectively have
prevailed.”
CHARLES DARWIN

57. GERM THEORY
PASTEUR, KOCH

58. “[I]t seems probable that most
of the grand underlying
principles have now been firmly
established and that further
advances are to be sought
chiefly in the rigorous application
of these principles to all the
phenomena which come under
our notice…. An eminent
physicist has remarked that the
future truths of physical science
are to be looked for in the sixth
place of decimals.”
ALBERT MICHELSON, 1894

59. 20TH C
SCIENCE GETS SPOOKY/ED

60. RELATIVITY
EINSTEIN

61. CHEMIST’S
WAR

62. QUANTUM
THEORY

63. ENTANGLEMENT
147 MILES

64. UNCERTAINTY
LOCATION OR MOMENTUM BUT NOT BOTH

65. INCOMPLETENESS
LOCATION OR MOMENTUM BUT NOT BOTH

66. CPU
SPEEDS

67. EUGENICS
NAZI ‘SCIENCE’

68. LYSENKOISM
SOVIET ‘SCIENCE’

69. “He is responsible for the
shameful backwardness of Soviet
biology and of genetics in
particular, for the dissemination
of pseudo-scientific views, for
adventurism, for the degradation
of learning, and for the
defamation, firing, arrest, even
death, of many genuine
scientists”
ANDREI SAKHAROV

70. HOLOCAUST
INDUSTRIAL SCALE RATIONALISM

71. “Evil is the product of the ability
of humans to make abstract that
which is concrete.”
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

72. PHYSICIST’S
WAR

74. HIROSHIMA
MANHATTAN PROJECT

75. ARMY
INJECTING DISEASE IN 1950

76. COMPLEX
INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY

78. WWW
SOCIAL MEDIA, SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS...

79. WHAT IS
SCIENCE?

80. WHAT MAKES SOMETHING SCIENTIFIC?

81. BODY
OF KNOWLEDGE

82. METHOD
ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE

83. “Science is the systematic,
rational acquisition of new
knowledge.”
HAAPARANTA & NIINILUOTO

84. PROCESS
FIND CURIOUS PHENOMENA / QUESTIONS

86. PROCESS
FIND CURIOUS PHENOMENA / QUESTIONS
OBSERVE A LOT
MAKE UP A THEORY
DESIGN EXPERIMENT TO TEST THEORY
ANALYSE
TELL EVERYONE ABOUT IT
REPEAT (BY OTHERS)

88. OBSERVE
INDUCE A THEORY
DEDUCE A PREDICTION

89. DEDUCT
FROM GENERAL TO SPECIFIC

90. INDUCT
FROM SPECIFIC TO GENERAL

92. MYTHOS
LOGOS

93. Mystery kidney disease in Central America

94. WHAT MIGHT YOU WANT TO OBSERVE?
WHAT DATA MIGHT YOU WANT?
WHAT KIND OF THEORY WOULD IT GIVE?

95. PREDICTION
THEORY NEEDS TO CREATE HYPOTHESES TO
TEST / VERIFY

96. FALSIFICATION
SCIENCE NEEDS TESTABLE PREDICTIONS

97. “A naturalistic methodology (sometimes
called an "inductive theory of science")
has its value, no doubt.... I reject the
naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its
upholders fail to notice that whenever
they believe to have discovered a fact,
they have only proposed a convention.
Hence the convention is liable to turn into
a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic
view applies not only to its criterion of
meaning, but also to its idea of science,
and consequently to its idea of empirical
method.”
KARL POPPER

98. WHAT PREDICTIONS MIGHT YOUR THEORY
HOLD TRUE?
WHAT EXPERIMENTS COULD YOU RUN?

99. AVOID
SUBJECT BIAS
EXPERIMENTER BIAS
SELECTION BIAS

100. RCT

101. IN DEVPT

102. WHAT RCTS COULD YOU RUN?

103. CRITERIA
TESTABLE
REPEATABLE
OBSERVABLE
PREDICTABLE

104. CRITERIA
OBJECTIVITY
PUBLICITY
CRITICAL THINKING
SELF-CORRECTIVENESS
AUTONOMY
PROGRESSIVENESS

105. AGENDA-LESS?

106. VALUE-FREE?

107. “Science can (potentially at least)
explain everything because its
ways of trying to understand the
universe by asking questions of it
should not leave any areas off-
limits. The methods of openness,
inquiry, curiosity, theory building,
hypothesis testing and so on can
be adapted and developed to
explore and try to explain
anything.”
SUE BLACKMORE

108. GRAND
NARRATIVE

109. PROGRESS!

110. TELEOLOY
GEIST

112. CONTROL!
PLANET
PEOPLE

114. DEFINE!
IQ
BMI
HAPPINESS
GDP

116. EXPLOIT!
VALUE
ENERGY

117. BEING A SCIENTIST

118. OBSERVE
SOMETHING

119. SUBJECT /
OBJECT

120. VARIABLE
SPLITS UNITY OF EXPERIENCE

121. “For is it not possible that science will
create a monster? Is it not possible
that an objective approach that frowns
upon personal connections between
the entities examined will harm people,
turn them into miserable, unfriendly,
self-righteous mechanisms without
charm or humour? "Is it not possible,"
asks Kierkegaard, "that my activity as
an objective [or critico-rational]
observer of nature will weaken my
strength as a human being?" I suspect
the answer to many of these questions
is affirmative and I believe that a
reform of the sciences that makes
them more anarchic and more
subjective is urgently needed.”
PAUL FEYERABEND

122. GOETHE
DELICATE, EMPATHIC EMPIRICISM
300 YEARS BEFORE COPENHAGEN
INTERPRETATION

123. “It is a calamity that the use of experiment has
severed nature from man, so that he is content
to understand nature merely through what
artificial instruments reveal and by so doing
even restricts her achievements...Microscopes
and telescopes, in actual fact, confuse man's
innate clarity of mind.”
GOETHE

124. TAWHID
ISLAMIC SCIENCE

126. DISENCHANTMENT
OF WORLD

127. “The fate of our times is
characterized by
rationalization and
intellectualization and, above
all, by the 'disenchantment of
the world.' Precisely the
ultimate and most sublime
values have retreated from
public life either into the
transcendental realm of mystic
life or into the brotherliness of
direct and personal human
relations.”
MAX WEBER, 1918

128. POWER
IMBALANCE

129. KNOWLEDGE
POWER

130. “And God said: Let man have
dominion of the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air.
and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth
over the earth.”
GENESIS 1, 26

131. ESSENTIAL
TRUTH / IDENTITY

132. FOUCAULT
GENEALOGY
DISCONTINUITY

133. FOUCAULT
INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY

134. “A new mode of obtaining
power of mind over mind,
in a quantity hitherto
without example.”
JEREMY BENTHAM

135. GAZE
CONSTRUCTS KNOWER AND KNOWN

136. “Which speaking,
discoursing subjects –
which subjects of
experience and
knowledge – do you want
to ‘diminish’ when you
say: ‘I who conduct this
discourse am conducting
a scientific discourse, and
I am a scientist’?”
FOUCAULT

137. SURVEILLANCE

138. SOUSVEILLANCE

139. HISTORICAL
VS ESSENTIAL

140. DARWIN
IMPERIALISM & DOMINATION OF NATURE

141. BIOLOGY
NOW IN CONTEXT OF CO-OPERATION &
COLLABORATION

142. EVOLUTION
REVISITED WITHIN COMPLEXITY

143. GENE
NOT ISOLATED

144. 25,000
HOW DO WE GET SO COMPLEX?

145. EPIGENETICS
DNA METHYLATION
EVO DEVO

147. NATURAL
SELECTION?
SPONTANEOUS SELF-ORGANISATION?

148. CONSTRUCTED
SOCIALLY

149. SSK
EDINBURGH / BATH

150. TACIT
AGREEMENTS
KNOWLEDGE

151. PARADIGM
KUHN
FOUCAULT EPISTEME

152. KUHN...
PRE-PARADIGM
PARADIGM (NORMAL SCIENCE)
ANOMALY
CRISIS
RESPONSE & EMERGENCE OF NEW PARADIGM

153. “A new scientific truth
does not triumph by
convincing its opponents
and making them see the
light, but rather because
its opponents eventually
die, and a new generation
grows up that is familiar
with it.”
MAX PLANCK

154. SHIFTS
PTOLEMAIC COSMOLOGY - COPERNICAN
ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS - NEWTONIAN PHYSICS
NEWTONIAN PHYSICS - EINSTEIN’S RELATIVITY
CLASSICAL MECHANICS - QUANTUM MECHANICS
LAMARCK - DARWIN’S THEORY
STATIC BRAIN - NEUROPLASTICITY

155. REVOLUTION
INCOMENSURABILITY

156. INVISIBLE
TEXT BOOKS SHOW LINEARITY
CUMULATIVE KNOWLDEGE

158. GESTALT
SHIFT

160. BOLTZMANN
PARADIGM SHIFT

161. DECLINE
EFFECT

162. RELATIVISM
AAARGH

163. MATERIALISM
STOPS BEFORE BIG BANG AS NO OBJECT /
MATERIAL

164. SCIENCE
VS PSEUDOSCIENCE

165. CARGO
CULT

167. WHAT IS
SOCIAL
SCIENCE?

168. 168

169. POSITIVISM
THEOLOGICAL STAGE
METAPHYSICAL STAGE
SCIENTIFIC (OR POSITIVE) STAGE

170. POSITIVISM
DESCRIBE
CONTROL
PREDICT

171. COMTE
POST-REVOLUTION

172. “From science comes prediction;
from prediction comes action.”
COMMTE

173. REFORM!
DISSATISFACTION WITH WHAT IS

174. HERMENEUTICS

175. GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN

176. VERSTEHEN
VS. ERKLÄREN

177. “There are limits to what the process of
observation, experimentation, prediction
and falsification can tell us. Until we invent
time-travel and really get a handle on the
multiverse, science tells us little about
history, for example. Science may be able to
tell us why we like music, why certain types
of sound appeal more than others, but not
why Bach is the best. Taking this line in
arguments leads to two things. The first is
the view encapsulated by Wittgenstein, that
one should only discuss things that one is
kitted out to discuss. Science can only
elucidate truths that can be framed in a
testable, predictable and falsifiable scenario.”
A REALIST PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE:
EXPLANATION AND UNDERSTANDING

178. ANTIPOSITIVISM
MAX WEBER

179. “[Sociology is ] ... the science whose object is to
interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a
causal explanation of the way in which the action
proceeds and the effects which it produces. By 'action'
in this definition is meant the human behaviour when
and to the extent the agent or agents see it as
subjectively meaningful ... the meaning to which we
refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended
either by an individual agent on a particular historical
occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate
average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning
attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure
type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the
'meaning' thought of as somehow objectively 'correct'
or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the
difference between the empirical sciences of action,
such as sociology and history, and any kind of a priori
discipline, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or
aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-
matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.”
MAX WEBER 1922

180. TRUTHS(S)
RELATIVISM
POST MODERNISM (IRONY)

181. AUTHOR
IS DEAD

182. TRUTH
WHO OWNS IT?
(AND WHAT DO THEY GET FROM IT?)

183. COLONIALISM
RESEARCH WITHOUT CRITICAL THINKING
RECAPITULATES STATUS QUO
AND INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES

184. FRANKFURT
SCHOOL

185. CRITICAL
THINKING

186. “The emancipation of human
beings from the circumstances
that enslave them.”
HORKHEIMER

187. 1-D
MAN

188. “The means of communication, the
irresistible output of the
entertainment and information
industry carry with them prescribed
attitudes and habits, certain
intellectual and emotional reactions
which bind the consumers to the
producers and, through the latter to
the whole social system. The products
indoctrinate and manipulate; they
promote a false consciousness which
is immune against its falsehood...Thus
emerges a pattern of one-dimensional
thought and behavior.”
HERBERT MARCUSE

189. MARXIST
THEORY

190. “Philosophers have only
interpreted the world in various
ways; the point is to change it.”
MARX

191. CRITIQUE
THE CRITIQUE

193. PRIVILEGE
NEGATIVE DIALECTICS

194. DECONSTRUCTION
DERRIDA ETC.

195. HABERMAS

196. “The positivist thesis of unified
science, which assimilates all the
sciences to a natural-scientific
model, fails because of the intimate
relationship between the social
sciences and history, and the fact
that they are based on a situation-
specific understanding of meaning
that can be explicated only
hermeneutically ... access to a
symbolically prestructured reality
cannot be gained by observation
alone.”
JURGEN HABERMAS

197. “No pedagogy which is truly
liberating can remain distant
from the oppressed by treating
them as unfortunates and by
presenting for their emulation
models from among the
oppressors. The oppressed must
be their own example in the
struggle for their redemption.”
PAULO FREIRE 1970

198. SOCIAL
SCIENCE
TRUE? VALUE-FREE?

199. POPPER
VS. KUHN

200. DIALOGIC
TRUTH
BAKHTIN

201. MAP
NOT NECESSARILY THE TERRITORY BUT IT
CAN HELP GUIDE US PRACTICALLY

202. “What man needs is not just the
persistent posing of ultimate
questions, but the sense of what is
feasible, what is possible, what is
correct, here and now. The
philosopher, of all people, must, I
think, be aware of the tension
between what he claims to achieve
and the reality in which he finds
himself.”
HANS-GEORG GADAMER

203. PRAGMATISM
BETWEEN IDEALISM & EMPIRICISM

204. “In Aristotle’s words phronesis is a
‘true state, reasoned, and capable of
action with regard to things that are
good or bad for man.’ Phronesis goes
beyond both analytical, scientific
knowledge (episteme) and technical
knowledge or know-how (techne)
and involves judgments and decisions
made in the manner of a virtuoso
social and political actor.”
BENT FLYVBJERG

205. VICO

206. “Men are not isolated non-social
atoms, but are men only when in
intrinsic relations’ to one another.”
JOHN DEWEY

207. DEWEY
EXPERMENTALIST
RELATIONAL

208. PHRONESIS
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
IS THIS DESIRABLE?
WHO GAINS AND WHO LOSES, AND BY
WHICH MECHANISMS OF POWER?
WHAT, IF ANYTHING, SHOULD WE DO
ABOUT IT?

209. HEART
OPEN, OPTIMISTIC

210. INTENTION KNOWLEDGE TERMS LENSES
REDUCTIONISM
EXPLANATION OF NATURALISM / REALISM EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
KNOW ‘TRUTH’
WHAT IS PROOF INDUCTION /
DEDUCTION
PREDICT / CONTROL CORROBORATION OF EVIDENCE BASE
INSTRUMENTALISM
NATURE WHAT WORKS RCTS
SEMIOTICS
CONTEXT
APPRECIATE / UNDERSTANDING OF
HERMENEUTICS QUAL / QUANT
EMPATHISE HOW THINGS ARE
PO
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
DECONSTRUCTION
CRITICISM OF WHY STRUCTURALISM
DISEMPOWER ‘ARCHEOLOGY’
THINGS ARE POST MODERNISM
CRITICAL THEORY
SYSTEMS / CYNEFIN
INSIGHT INTO HOW TO ACTION RESEARCH
IMPROVE EMANCIPATION
CHANGE THINGS CRITICAL
CONSCIOUSNESS

211. CONNECT
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