Breaking the Phoenix Cycle: an Integrative Approach to Innovation and Cultural Ecodynamics

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Breaking the Phoenix Cycle: an Integrative Approach to Innovation and Cultural Ecodynamics Breaking the Phoenix Cycle: an integrative approach to Innovation and Cultural Ecodynamics Essays prepared for the Aquadapt and TiGrESS projects by Nick Winder School of Historical Studies University of Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU United Kingdom. [email protected] Copyright Nick Winder © (excepting quoted materials) You may read, copy, quote and distribute this text freely (on- or off-line) subject to the understanding that the text has been provided without warranty of any sort. The text is available for download from project websites: http://www.aquadapt.net/ and http://www.tigress.ac/ Foreword Breaking the Phoenix Cycle is about cultural ecodynamics - the dynamic coupling between the biosphere and the world of beliefs and about the way our attempts to understand and manage these processes have changed scientific enquiry. The crib-sheet (Thematic Glossary) at the end summarises the principal arguments. If you get bogged down or need a reminder, use it freely. Notes and pointers to further reading are provided in passages labelled ‘orientation’ at the beginning of each section. Use or skip over these as the spirit moves you. I write as a participant observer rather than as a scholar, so the book is more or less self-contained. It is organised into nine thematic sections, each containing a few short essays. Some deal with theoretical matters, some with method, others with the management of research projects or policy in respect of knowledge and innovation. Anyone capable of reading this page knows a great deal about cultural ecodynamics. We are humans, programmed by our genes and experience to engage in those processes. However, for many that knowledge is tacit and unexamined. This is a formidable obstacle to public and, indeed, professional engagement with recent policy initiatives. Drives to promote innovation, the knowledge-based society and competitive sustainable growth, for example, presume a consensus that does not yet exist. This book is to stimulate discussion and so facilitate that consensus. My central thesis is that many communities get locked into a pernicious cycle of synthesis, paralysis, conflagration and renaissance that retards our ability to innovate, especially at times when the need for new knowledge is most urgent. Our well-being and possibly even our survival as a species may be determined by our ability to break the Phoenix Cycle. Newcastle upon Tyne, February 2005 2 Contents Acknowledgments ..................................................................6 Section 1: Rigour and Imagination.......................................7 1. Integrative Problems ............................................................ 10 2. The Phoenix Cycle................................................................ 12 3. Disciplines and Communities............................................... 15 4. Knowledge Creation............................................................. 18 5. The Natural History of Knowledge ...................................... 21 6. The Modern Way of Reasoning ............................................ 27 7. Realism and Policy-Relevant Research................................ 31 Section 2: Ontological Problems .........................................33 1. Mode 1, Mode 2 and the Universities................................... 36 2. Generalising System Theory................................................. 40 3. Systems Ontology – Old and New ........................................ 43 4. Valorisation.......................................................................... 47 5. Systems and Ontological Problems...................................... 49 6. What’s What and Who’s Who?............................................. 55 Section 3: Space-Time and Understanding ........................59 1. Pseudo-Systems .................................................................... 62 2. Time Geography................................................................... 67 3. Space, Time and Memory ..................................................... 70 4. Picturing the Cognitive Process........................................... 74 5. Appreciation......................................................................... 77 6. Value Judgments................................................................... 79 7. Empathy and Explanation .................................................... 81 8. Innovation Jolts .................................................................... 83 3 Section 4: Dynamic and Historical Problems .................... 86 1. The Uncertainty on a Teapot ................................................89 2. Mysticism and Dynamic Systems ..........................................93 3. Dimensional Coherence........................................................97 3. The Science of the Unreal...................................................101 4. Hard Science, Soft Science .................................................104 5. Reality Judgments in Hard and Soft Science......................107 6. Dimensional Coherence and Boundaries ...........................109 7. Systems Modelling ..............................................................114 Section 5: Reasoning a fortiori......................................... 118 1. Strong and Weak Beliefs.....................................................121 2. Probability Methods ...........................................................123 3. Bayesian Inference..............................................................127 4. Many Worlds.......................................................................131 5. Ockham’s Razor .................................................................138 Section 6: Integrative Research........................................ 144 1. Professional Knowledge Creation......................................148 2. Why Study Integrative Research?.......................................152 3. Knowledge and Information ...............................................154 4. Values and Empirical Testability........................................158 5. Probabilities and interpretation .........................................161 6. Science as the Rational Pursuit of Knowledge ...................163 Section 7: Managing and Regulating Innovation ........... 168 1. Regulation and Management..............................................171 2. Knowledge System Theory..................................................173 3. Regulatory Noise Abatement ..............................................177 4. The Funding Agency’s Appreciative Setting.......................180 4 Section 8: Deducing the Limits of Logic...........................183 1. Are Humans Machines? ..................................................... 188 2. Loose Ends ......................................................................... 192 3. Marx and Spencer .............................................................. 194 4. Realism and Russell’s Paradox.......................................... 199 5. Philosophical Subtleties? ................................................... 203 6. Integration and Advocacy .................................................. 207 Section 9: Appreciating Cultural Ecodynamics................211 1. Defining Evolution ............................................................. 216 2. The Challenge of Mendelian Genetics ............................... 222 3. Early Subsistence Strategies .............................................. 230 4. Ratchets and Co-Evolution................................................. 233 5. Domesticating Humanity.................................................... 236 6. Socio-Natural Policy and Artificial Selection .................... 243 7. Education or Acculturation................................................ 251 8. Cranks and Boffins ............................................................. 260 Thematic Glossary .............................................................269 5 Acknowledgments This book draws on research funded by the British Academy, English Heritage, the Science and Engineering Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Commission of the European Union under three consecutive Framework Programs and the Structural Fund of the European Union (among others). I am grateful for permission to re-use material originally published in: ‘Towards a theory of knowledge systems for integrative socio-natural science.’ HER Volume 11, pages 118-132, 2004. My interest in knowledge dynamics was quickened by colleagues on EPPM [EV5V-CT94-0486] and developed as part of my contribution to TiGrESS and Aquadapt. Paul Jeffrey, Brian McIntosh and Roger Seaton worked closely with me on these projects; my intellectual debt to them is enormous. David Hooper taught me about clouds and, coincidentally, about social systems while Claudia Dürrwächter’s decision to study innovation gave me an incentive to put these ideas in order. Heather Winder helped me nurse this manuscript (and many others) through several drafts in short order. I am sincerely grateful to them all. I am indebted to Professor Torsten Hägerstrand who drew my attention to his paper: Survival and Arena and suggested we needed an effort of re-conceptualisation more than another computer model. Without that green light I would have been reluctant to tinker. Finally I thank Professor Geoff Bailey who suggested I focus on one issue, leave out the equations and hint readers towards a course of action. Good advice (as always) operationalised imperfectly (as usual). The opinions expressed
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