Brief history of science from Aristotle, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes to Max Weber, Foucault Theories of Science: Induction, deduction Critical thinking of science

1. SCIENCE FOR CHANGE-AGENTS
Part I: The Use & Misuse of Science
Part II: Innovating in Complexity
Part III: Transforming Systems
Part IV: Changing Human Behaviour
Part V: Insight-driven Innovation
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2. PASSION
NOT PROFESSION (THOUGH I USE SCIENCE EACH DAY)

3. ABOUT US
FOUNDED 2005 to help SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT MATTER
and so contribute to a world that works for all
We believe STRATEGIC INNOVATION, driven by
creative leadership & enabled by innovation
cultures, is the most POWERFUL TOOLSET FOR
SYSTEMIC change on the planet
We are a networked business - ensuring full
alignment & values match with each project
We create the container & space for optimal
learning, growth & transformation for leaders,
teams & orgs

4. WHAT WE DO
BREAKTHROUGH INNOVATION
BREAKTHROUGH LEADERSHIP
BREAKTHROUGH CULTURES
for a brilliant world

5. SOME OF IS no.1
CULTURE OUR CLIENTS

6. If breakthrough was easy, everyone
would be doing it... and they are not.
Why?
We can't solve problems by using the
same kind of thinking we used when
we created them.
Albert Einstein

7. © 2013 Ripe & Ready Media Ltd. All right reserved. Not for distribution without specific written agreement. Ripe & Ready is a ® of Ripe & Ready Media Ltd.

8. PART I
THE USE AND MISUSE OF SCIENCE
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9. WHAT IS SCIENCE?
WHY IS SCIENCE IMPORTANT?
HOW IS SCIENCE DONE?

10. 10

11. EVIDENCE
-BASED

12. “If you want to lose weight, don’t eat. This is not
medicine, it’s thermodynamics. If you take in more than
you use, you store it.”
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

16. “The previous belief of many lay people and health
professionals that obesity is simply the result of a lack
of willpower and an inability to discipline eating habits
is no longer defensible.”
RICHARD L ATKINSON, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND
NUTRITIONAL SCIENCES, THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN;
EDITOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OBESITY

17. “All calories are not equal.
We are increasingly understanding that attributing
obesity to personal responsibility is very simplistic.”
JONATHAN C K WELLS, PROFESSOR OF CHILD NUTRITION,
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

18. SCIENCE
HAS NO FINAL ANSWERS!

19. Though everyone endorses science when it can cure
disease, monitor the environment, or bash political
opponents, the intrusion of science into the territories of
the humanities has been deeply resented. Just as reviled
is the application of scientific reasoning to religion. In
the major journals of opinion, scientific carpetbaggers
are regularly accused of determinism, reductionism,
essentialism, positivism, and worst of all, something
called “scientism.”
STEVEN PINKER, THE NEW REPUBLIC

20. PART I
THE USE AND MISUSE OF SCIENCE
i) a very brief history of science
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21. MAP
NOT NECESSARILY THE TERRITORY

22. “The hunt for the origins of modern science has long
been a favourite occupation of historians. They differ
widely about the key moment which saw science’s birth,
tracing it to the philosophers of Classical Greece, or
celebrating the canonical achievements of 17th-century
heroes such as Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Boyle and
Newton, or insisting with great plausibility that until at
least the early 19th century, the typical institutions and
techniques of the natural sciences simply didn’t exist.
These different stories depend on widely divergent
versions of what distinguishes the scientific enterprise,
whether method, personnel, hardware or expertise.”
SIMON SCHAFFER

23. 1705
XMAS, 1758
(53 YEARS LATER)

24. “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

25. 16TH C
SCIENCE GETS STARTED

28. ARISTOTLE
AUTHORITY

29. ESSENCES predict nature in
spite of observation

30. SCHOLASTICS

31. toledo translation centre

32. PTOLEMY
COPERNICUS

33. 17TH C
SCIENCE GETS FIESTY

34. GIORDANO
BRUNO
MANY
worlds

36. GALILEO’S VISION
TOOK SPIRIT OF RENAISSANCE
(EMPIRICAL, COMPETITIVE,
EXPERIMENTAL, DOUBTING) ONTO
NIGHT SKY

37. “Science originated from the fusion of two old
traditions, the tradition of philosophical
thinking that began in ancient Greece and the
tradition of skilled crafts that began even
earlier and flourished in medieval Europe.
Philosophy supplied the concepts for science,
and skilled crafts provided the tools.”
FREEMAN DYSON

38. MANY
MOONS

39. DESCARTES
OBJECTIVE SCIENCE
1640S

41. CERTITUDE
AVOID BIASES OF MIND & SENSES
METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE

42. EMPIRICAL
OBSERVATION

43. Prometheus,
Teacher in Every
Art, Brought the
Fire That Hath
Proved to Mortals a
Means to Mighty
Ends.

44. INDUCTION
FRANCIS BACON

45. “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

46. Al Haytham.
1021

47. “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

48. TAWHID
UNITY OF ALL THINGS

50. NEWTON
CODIFIED IT INTO MECHANICAL SCIENCE

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

53. GOETHE v NEWTON
HOLISTIC VS MECHANISTIC
UR-PLANT

54. Nature, it seems, must always clash with Art
And yet, before we know it, both are one
GOETHE

55. CLOCKWORK
UNIVERSE
NEWTONIANS (NOT NEWTON! HE ALSO PRACISED ALCHEMY)

57. MACHINES
PENDULUMS, CALCULUS ETC.

58. Searching wits, of more mechanic parts
Who grac’d their age with new-invented arts
VIRGIL VIA DRYDEN (& NOBEL)

59. 18TH C
SCIENCE GETS POWERFUL

60. “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

61. THE ENLIGHTENMENT
VOLTAIRE, JEAN-JAQUES ROUSSEAU, LOCKE, HUME ETC

62. AUTHORITY
SCIENCE & REASON
VS.
TRADITION & RELIGION

63. REASON
BECOMES INCREASINGLY MECHANISTIC MATERIALISM...
LOGICAL EMPIRICISM

64. SPINNING
JENNY

65. WATT
STEAM
ENGINE

66. COTTON
GIN

67. “Whoever invents the car, invents the car crash.”

68. 19TH C
SCIENCE GETS PROFESSIONAL

69. CHEMICAL
DEMISE OF PHLOGISTON THEORY
ACCURATE MEASUREMENT

70. PERIODIC TABLE
MENDELEEV

72. ELECTRO
MAGNETISM
FARADAY & MAXWELL

74. EVOLUTION
DARWIN (NATURAL SELECTION) VS. PALEY (DESIGN)

75. EVOLUTION
DARWIN VS. PALEY

76. SOCIAL
DARWINISM

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

78. DEATH OF GOD

79. GERM THEORY
PASTEUR, KOCH

80. MECHANIC’S
WAR

82. “[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

83. 20TH C
SCIENCE GETS SPOOKY(ED)

84. RELATIVITY
EINSTEIN

85. CHEMIST’S
WAR

87. QUANTUM
THEORY

88. BELL
ENTANGLEMENT
18 MILES

89. HEISENBERG
UNCERTAINTY
LOCATION OR MOMENTUM BUT NOT BOTH

90. GÖDEL
INCOMPLETENESS
CONSISTENT OR COMPLETE BUT NOT BOTH

91. BIOLOGIST’S
WAR
EUGENICS: IS IT ‘SCIENCE’?

92. LYSENKOISM
SOVIET ‘SCIENCE’

93. “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

94. HOLOCAUST
INDUSTRIAL SCALE RATIONALISM

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

96. PHYSICIST’S
WAR

98. ARMY
INJECTING DISEASE IN 1950

99. COMPLEX
INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY

100. GDP
ALLOCATE RESOURCES IN A WAR

101. TECHNOCRATS
RULE THE WORLD
ECONOMISTS, GENETICISTS, ENTREPRENEURS, TECHNOLOGISTS

102. “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

103. ALGORITHMS
RUN THE WORLD

104. WWW
SOCIAL MEDIA, SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS...

105. PART I
THE USE AND MISUSE OF SCIENCE
2) the nature of science
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106. “Nullius in Verba.”
Take Nobody’s Word for It.
ROYAL SOCIETY

107. BODY
OF KNOWLEDGE

108. METHOD
ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE

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

110. PROCESS
FIND CURIOUS PHENOMENA / QUESTIONS

112. 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)

114. OBSERVE
INDUCE A THEORY
DEDUCE A PREDICTION

115. THEORY
THEORY NEEDS TO CREATE HYPOTHESES TO TEST / VERIFY

116. FALSIFICATION
SCIENCE NEEDS TESTABLE PREDICTIONS

117. DEDUCT
FROM GENERAL TO SPECIFIC

118. INDUCT
FROM SPECIFIC TO GENERAL

120. Mystery kidney disease in Central America

121. WHAT IS YOUR HYPOTHESIS?
WHAT PREDICTIONS MIGHT YOUR
THEORY HOLD TRUE?
WHAT EXPERIMENTS COULD YOU RUN
TO TEST IT?
WHAT DATA MIGHT YOU WANT TO
COLLECT?

122. AVOID
SUBJECT BIAS
EXPERIMENTER BIAS
SELECTION BIAS

123. RCT

124. IN SOCIAL IMPACT

125. CRITERIA
PREDICTABLE
OBSERVABLE / QUANTIFIABLE / MEASURABLE
TESTABLE
REPEATABLE

127. CRITERIA
CLEAR TERMINOLOGY
OBJECTIVITY
PUBLICITY
CRITICAL THINKING
SELF-CORRECTIVENESS
AUTONOMY
PROGRESSIVENESS

128. OPERATIONALISE
LIFE

129. LOVE
WHO LOVES their partner / friend MORE?

130. PART I
THE USE AND MISUSE OF SCIENCE
3) the contradictions of science
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131. “Science is an inherent contradiction — systematic
wonder — applied to the natural world. In its mundane
form, the methodical instinct prevails and the result, an
orderly procession of papers, advances the perimeter
of knowledge, step by laborious step… Who knows how
many scientific revolutions have been missed because
their potential inaugurators disregarded the whimsical,
the incidental, the inconvenient inside the laboratory?”
THE GENERAL THEORY OF LOVE

132. CREATIVITY
vs.
RIGOUR

133. “Science is not formal logic - it needs the free play
of the mind in as great a degree as any other
creative art. It is true that this is a gift which can
hardly be taught, but its growth can be
encouraged in those who already possess it.”
MAX BORN

135. “The most beautiful experience we can have
is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion
which stands at the cradle of true art and
true science.
EINSTEIN

136. WONDERFUL
IMPACTS WHICH HAVE CHANGED & SHAPED ALL OUR LIVES

137. WONDER
vs.
CONTROL

138. “[I]f you are going to teach people to
make observations, you should show
that something wonderful can come
from them.”
RICHARD FEYNMAN

139. CONTROL!
PLANET
PEOPLE
PROFIT

141. NORMALISE!
IQ
BMI
HAPPINESS
GDP

143. POSITIVISM
DESCRIBE
CONTROL
PREDICT

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

145. CHANGE!
DISSATISFACTION WITH WHAT IS

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

147. EXPLOIT!
VALUE
ENERGY

148. “‘I am come in very truth leading to you Nature with
all her children, to bind her to your service and make
her your slave.’”
FRANCIS BACON

150. SCIENCE
BASED ON ‘TORTURING NATURE’ (CF. CAROLYN MERCHANT)

152. “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

153. LIBERATION
vs.
ALIENATION

154. PROGRESS!
BUT... NIGERIA, HUNTER-GATHERERS

155. TECHNOLOGY
EMPOWERS US TO CONNECT, COLLABORATE, CO-CREATE

157. TECHNOLOGY
ENCHAINS US AS PRODUCERS / CONSUMERS

159. PART I
THE USE AND MISUSE OF SCIENCE
4) thinking critically about
science
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160. KNOWLEDGE
POWER

161. “How odd it is that anyone should not see that
all observation must be for or against some
view if it is to be of any service!”
CHARLES DARWIN

162. FOUCAULT
GENEALOGY
DISCONTINUITY

163. FOUCAULT
INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY

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

165. GAZE
CONSTRUCTS KNOWER AND KNOWN

166. SURVEILLANCE

167. SOUSVEILLANCE

168. MEASUREMENT
DISENCHANTS THE WORLD
MAKES US ACT STRANGE E.G. THE WELCOME NURSE

169. OBSERVE
SOMETHING
SPLITS UNITY OF EXPERIENCE

170. “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

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

172. “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

173. SCIENTISM
REDUCTION OF EVERYTHING TO SCIENCE

174. “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

175. HISTORICAL
VS ESSENTIAL

176. DARWIN
IMPERIALISM & DOMINATION OF NATURE

177. EVOLUTION
REVISITED WITHIN COMPLEXITY
IN CONTEXT OF CO-OPERATION & COLLABORATION

178. EPIGENETICS
DNA METHYLATION

179. SCIENCE
CONSTRUCTED
SOCIALLY

180. PARADIGM
KUHN
FOUCAULT EPISTEME

181. “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

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

183. “Elegant explanations are the Kuhnian
solvent that leaches the glue from old
paradigms, making space for new theories to
take hold”
EDGE.ORG

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

185. EVERY
PAST THEORY HAS BEEN ‘WRONG’

186. INVISIBLE
TEXT BOOKS SHOW LINEARITY
CUMULATIVE KNOWLDEGE

187. SCIENCE
IS NEVER ‘TRUE’...

188. “'It is imperative that we give up the idea of
ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all
knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our
errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes;
that all we can do is to grope for truth even though
it is beyond our reach. There is no authority beyond
the reach of criticism.”
KARL POPPER

189. RELATIVE
AAARGH!!!!

190. INTERPRETIVE
TURN
POST-MODERNISM

191. “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

192. TRUTHS(S)

193. PART I
R
E
M
I
ASCIENCE
THE USE AND MISUSEL
OF
C
S
5) appropriate science
I
D
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194. “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’?”
MICHEL FOUCAULT

195. BIG PROBLEMS
COMPLEX ECONOMIES / COMMUNITIES / BODIES
INTERCONNECTED & CHAOTIC

196. BIG DATA
INTERNET OF THINGS
WEARABLES

197. BUT
(AND ITS A BIG ONE)

198. IRRATIONAL
beliefs driven by
emotions
SYSTEM favors
predictability
(surviving) over
creativity (thriving)
Sources: Antonio D’Amasio, Baba Shiv,
Andrew Newberg, Jonathan Haidt

199. “Emotions are mechanisms that set
the brains highest goals... they
probably evolved because they were
hard to fake.”
Steven Pinker

200. RIGID
less neural plasticity as age
so rely on old
favor predictability over
spontaneity
even data does not dissuade
us
Source: Scientific American

201. HORIZONS
EMBODIED COGNITION
MINDFULNESS / COMPASSION CHANGES BRAIN
VAGAL NERVE STIMULATION
BIOLOGY OF OXCYTOCIN
2 MILLION GUT NERVES (PARKINSON’S)

202. “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.”
A REALIST PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE: EXPLANATION AND
UNDERSTANDING

204. TRUTH
WHO OWNS IT?
WHAT DO THEY GET FROM IT?
HOW DOES IT FEEL?
IS THAT FEAR / PATTERN OR INTUITION?

205. “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

206. SCIENCE
INCREDIBLE - VERIFIABLE EXPLANATIONS FOR MANY EVENTS
LIMITED - LOOKS FOR LINEARITY WHERE NON-LINEARITY RULES:
CREATIVITY, MIND/BODY CONNECTION, QUANTUM, COMPLEX
SYSTEMS, CULTURE, HAPPINESS

207. TRUTH
CO-CREATED BY EACH OF US
SCIENCE INFORMS
INTUITION GUIDES

208. MIDDLE WAY
BETWEEN IDEALISM & EMPIRICISM
BETWEEN INSIGHT & INTUITION
BETWEEN SCIENCE & SPIRIT
BETWEEN EQUALITY & MERITOCRACY

209. WHAT IS SCIENCE?
WHY IS SCIENCE IMPORTANT?
HOW IS SCIENCE DONE?

210. Ask me anything
nick@wecreateworldwide.com
@nickjankel
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