- • AGAINST CONFERENCES OR THE POVERTY OF REDUCTION IN SOP - SCIENCE AND POP-SYSTEMS Gordon Pask System Research Ltd 37 Sheen Road Richmond Surrey England Paper pr epared f or the Silver Anniversary of the International Meeting of the Society for General Systems Research. London, August 20-24 , 1979. -1- • • "AGAINST CONFERENCES'" OR "THE POVERTY OF REDUCTION IN SOP-SCIENCE AND POP-SYSTEMS ." Gordon Pask System Research Ltd ABSTRACT committee, dedicated to the central limit theorem; a pride or pack of sober citizens Science is a consensual system which in~ormed, at greater distance, by the lS imaged, in miniature, by a conference. pald-up members o f referees-anonymous. Afte r examining the consensual system Not far off, there is a "faceless night­ "physical science " J attention is directed mare world of pure impartial!ty; its peer to the Social or psychological (S.O.P ) groups may be summoned by an automatic sci ences relevant to the theme topics of search of author-indexed-abstracts from this meeting. The mainstream movement in "the literature", Sop-science is an oversimplified, but socially viable, copy of physical sCience, Such egalitarian arrangements give replete with reductionist paradigms, but rise to one result, the entrenchment of wi th little relevance to the issues under norms and foibles proper to what Lakatos <iiscussion. General System Theory and calls a "programme of scientific research " Cybernetics may address the theme topics, a self perpetuating "mainstream". If a if the crippling (though organisationally confer e nce does that then I really am .i tr:ractive) errors, which render the against it, for, on a small scale, it ··xisting mainstream movement irrelevant, embodies the quintessence of pathologies, re avoided . Valid analogical reasoning latent in the scientific community at tlas a significant part to play in this large, but rampant in the mainstream (:n te rprise. Some indica tion of the movement of Socia~ or Psychological present state of affairs may be obtained Science. Ly noting to what extent this conference Jiffer s from conferences symptomatic of By token of the authors and the an inbred mainstream cult which the title titles in the Prel.iminary Tabl.e , this confer­ is "against" . ence has no such ugly face; not surpris­ ingly , for-syst em theorists should be able I NTRODUCTION to avoid the dangers. It is, for all that o ppo rtune to scrutinise the pathological Experience shows that unless you are mechanisms which nearly alwavs do come ~gainst something, nobody takes the into operation when a body a~ts-rn a con­ slightest notice of what you say . On this sensual mode; whether it is a confere nce occasion, the most obvious target for or all of an endeavour called "research" . ~nti-sentiment, is a conference; so I am <If:;ainst con ferences, t oday . Not against SCIENTlFIC RESEARCH ,;;l1is one, fOT tbat would be rude, and not against any in particular, for that would Lakatos' thesis is that research con­ be overly ge~e ral. Taken as a social sists in one or several "scientific occasion, as a surrogate for l earned r esearch programmes" which are socially society, a confe r ence is a capital affair. r egenerative. Some research programmes, This is the :,appy face of a conference . "the mains tream" , become resilient due to Out any conference, or almost any confer- a form of dissonance (Festinger) that 8nce, has an ugly face, as well. rejects or distorts ideas and evidence contrar y to the established mores. The The ugly face of a confer ence is thesis is supported by present day, as quite dispassionate. It has no glint of wel l as historical, evidence, and 1 take wickedness, no shade of guile . I t is the this picture of tbings, at least in out­ bland, immobile face of a review line, as g~ ven. The architecture of a ma instream .. I shal l not speak thi~ paper , which "scientific r esearch progr amme " is an is intended fo r reacting, but will make hierarchy of committee-like organisations, comments, app r opriate to the meeting, usually supported by a social environment aoout some parts of it. i'othcp [ootnote$ of the same kind. Within this framework '1 t. end 0 [ paper.J . there a re consensual mechanisms of c0rnmu nication , decision, and equilibration; a r e search programme are liable to [he> organisation depends upon their systematic aberrations. :J.~tivity and inertial properties . One, very general, aberration is a 111divic\llals who take part in pro­ degradation of agreement (a coherence {1,l"amrnes of scientific research, interact between individuals, or ideas) into the with nature by consensually agreed instru­ most rigid variety of consensus .• • In ments of observation such as microscopes matters of value a nd action , deciS ion is and cllemical tests. ~Ioreover, specialised reduced, by Formal "Decision Theory" , to "programmes for observation" differentiate selecting amongst ordained "alternatives" notably in astronomy, particle physics, on the basis of a probability distribu­ nod biochemistrv. Data from these observa­ tion (which may or may no t image a likeli ­ tions is candidate evidence, accepted or hood) and a static parody of "value" (as rejected by a sCi e ntist, according to many - attributed as you wish utilities to criteria of cohe r e nce truth . be). Organised research is prone to the same defects, manifested b y restrictions COHEREN CE upon communication and hypothesis form­ ulation. "Cohe rence Truth" is used 1n much the same way as Bradley and Hescher use it, A closely related aberration is pre­ and the meaning is congruent with Gaines packaged, with this kind of architecture and Zadeh's "possibi l istic truth". and with these committee-oriented rules "Coher ence" stands for a state of affairs and regulations; in summary "Commi ttees in wh icb some body (0 f sc ien tists, say) do not decide". There is ample quantita­ have a theory, o r a well tried set o f tive evidence for that intuitively trans­ hypotheses which are represented as inte r­ pare nt statement; for example, Atkin's linking propositions . The data, candidate elegant studies of the role that may be ev idence , are r e presented in like manner, played by ~ny kind of committee organisa­ a nd are more or. less compatible with the tion, scientific, academic, or political. theoretical beliefs ie. more or less The relations that must exist to bring plausible. Data, as such, is licensed by the organisat i on into being, and that are coherence wi th the consensual measuring perpetuated by its o peratio n, permit only ins trume nts, all the assumptions that go certain kinds of activity (Atkin calls it in to their manufact ure and use. It is "traffic"). This activity, vote casting, accepted as t~uthful evidence, if it does fussing over details, polem ic, is "Noise" fit both the observational norms and the I which may reproduce or reconstruct a currentl Y-believed-in-theory. If data fits structure of the same kind; as when sub­ only part of a theory, then a deviant comm ittees proliferate. But it i s irrele­ hypot hesis may be rejected, but. before vant to change in the status quo. any crucial modification (for example, Popper 's falsification criterion)i5 When structural transformations take applied, t he reliability of the evidence place they are due to catalytic sub­ is checked by a further consensual sub­ systems, people, who do not act as com­ system, to do wi th statistics, e xperi­ mittees are meant to act, whatever they mental design, and the like . are called. Of neceSSity, these compon­ ents are distingui s hed; often, by a It is useful (and legitimate) to private language. Beer calls them "Eso­ e.'\tend the meaning of "coherence truth" t e ric Boxes" which strikes me as fl happy by translating the static image of p ropos­ turn of phrase. The power to influe nce itions and h ypotheses into a kinetic the structure at all significantly lies, picture , on the grounds that scientists fortunately perhaps, with speakers of an a r e sentient beings; that they and their esoteric language , of real dialogue rather though t s, concepts, and hypotheses are than codified utte rance, in which con­ processes which may be tagged by proce­ sensus means coherence. dures undergoing e xecution . The extrapola­ tion places the word "coherence" in Scientific r esearch i s considered as kilter with physical coherence as, for a social o rganisation, (a collectio n of e xample , the light from a laser is scientific research programmes that are coherent, in contrast to the incoherent in progress), the day- to-day routine radi3.tion o f an electri c ligh "t bulb. activity is seen as "Noise" . In this Further, in these kinetic ter ms, "Coher­ model of things , most of the obse rvations ence Trut.h" becomes , in all .cases "mean­ made on tes ting hypotheses are also part ingful agreement" . of the "Noise". Th e y do not inform the social system in the sense o f making a DEGR,l.D.\T ION OF AGREEMENT significant structural addition to the system. All affirmative (confirmatory) The gooe-i n- themselves mechanisms findings are "Noise" and so are many which maintai.n the social organisation of findings "that disconfirm hypotheses . The • except·ion occurs when the preordained The consensual domain (in my own ('xperimen t bas surpr ise value; some aspect terms the conversational domain) of the 0'1 nature suggests a novel hypothesis. consensual system, "science". is its epistemology. This is not open to revi­ In general, a social system is sion within science.