Entries Tagged 'Philosophy' ↓

The Taoist Dragon

I saw this image recently and liked it quite a bit. I was reading about the development of dualistic thinking. In the western tradition the idea of dualisms is thought to have been first developed by Herclitus. He is our “…you can’t step in the same stream twice…” friend, who noted that variation is the common thread of existence.The two concepts are closely allied.Dualisms are pairs of opposites (and sometimes called that). For example, hot and cold.At what point does being hot stop and becoming cold begin? Does that idea even have meaning? Can there even be such a thing as hot if there is not such a thing as cold? In other words, can they even be considered as different things or are they not simply two sides of the same coin?If they are two sides of the same coin, then what differentiates hot and cold is variation.All things are different along this dimension (temperature), some hotter and colder. Thus, we can say with assurance that there will be variation among things with regard to their temperature. They cannot be all the same. Such is the ubiquity of variation.Up and down, happy and sad, light and dark, are more of these types of examples and, once you begin to think about it, you see that our world is filled with these  pairs of opposites. Can we have good days without bad days? It wouldn’t seem so. We would only have days; neither good nor bad. Even more fundamentally, if the days are indistinguishable, is there any meaning in the label of day?I used to tell my kids when they said that they were having a bad day that they should be grateful. It is those really bad days that make the good days so good. They would just roll their eyes.In the East this is dualist way of thinking is an accepted truth and symbolized frequently by the Yin and Yang symbol we see in the dragon.It is not that some things are Yin and some Yang, a misunderstanding sometimes made by westerners. It is that all things are always both, but in different combinations.

In today’s press there are a number of clear examples of the fundamental and critical difference between explaining and predicting. The type and quality of knowledge required for each are substantively different.CBS leads this hour’s Google news offering with the following: “How Obama became the man to beat.”But, wait a minute. If CBS understands how Obama became the man to beat, why did they not predict his success two months or even two weeks ago? Why is it that everyone can tell us now why and how Clinton has fallen, but these same pundits were predicting that she would be the Democrat’s nominee. What happened?Nothing happened. The problem is knowledge. There is a world of difference between explaining something that has already happened and predicting it beforehand with regard to the quality of knowledge that is required. The day after some newsworthy event, conversation revolves around the question, “why did it happen?” Explanations abound. There is nothing easier in the world than explaining something that has already happened. If 100 people do it, there are 100 different explanations. One of them may even be right!The difficulty confusion about the cause/effect relationship that is described. Science (as we commonly understand it) is built on the premise that there is a way that things are and that what happens around us is the result of causes giving rise to necessary effects.In prediction, a theory states that if a given set of conditions are present, a given outcome will take place in the future. Explanation says that a given outcome took place because a given set of conditions were present in that past.The cognitive process is different in these two cases.In the first some theory or hypothesis is devised and then tested. This testing is critical. In order for a hypothesis to have scientific meaning, it must be testable. It does not have to have been tested, but a test must be possible. Einstein’s theories were not tested until many years after he wrote them, but they were written in a testable form.In the second case (explanation) a pool of potential causes is imagined and what the explainer considers the mostly likely antecedent is selected and designated the cause. Maybe it is maybe it isn’t, but there has been no test. The hypothesis is not put to the test, nor can it be since it has already happened. Statements arising this way may be interesting; they may even be true. But they lack scientific rigor.As a consumer of information, one might consider the type of assertion that a writer is making. Is he or she predicting something or making statements about what is likely to happen in the future? Or is the person inventing an explanation for something that has already happened. There is a world of difference between the two.

The following is an interesting piece which illustrates an important point about scientific thinking. Our knowledge and prediction is limited by our experience. Assertions or predictions about the world around us and our history on the planet are based on what we have observed. Who knows what unfound human remains might tell us about early life?

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Deming was fond of saying, management is prediction and, in this, I think he was exactly right. Management never takes action or makes decision to affect what happened yesterday, but rather to bring about what is hoped to be a desirable outcome tomorrow. Even when a manager is reacting to yesterday’s crisis, the action taken will bear fruit (or not) in the future. The instances where one is interested in a problem only in the here and now are extremely rare in management. This may be one of the principle ways that the business world is different from the academic world. Most businessmen do not find issues intrinsically interesting.

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The term Operational Definition was coined by Percy Bridgman and appeared in his book, The Logic of Modern Physics published in 1927 by Macmillan. I take the following from that book: Continue reading →