July 26, 2006: Husserl's "Crisis" Revisited

In light of the focus of scienticism on controlling the world, this might be a good time to review some of the basic ideas behind Edmund Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences. A good summary of Husserl's critique of scientific thinking was provided by Habermas in his "Knowledge and Human Interests" lecture. Habermas breaks down Husserl's argument into three stages:

1. “It is directed in the first place against the objectivism of the sciences, for which the world appears objectively as a universe of facts whose lawlike connection can be grasped descriptively. In truth, however, knowledge of the apparently objective world of facts has its transcendental basis in the prescientific world. The possible objects of scientific analysis are constituted a priori in the self-evidence of our primary life-world. In this layer phenomenology discloses the products of a meaning-generative subjectivity.”
2. “Second, Husserl would like to show that this productive subjectivity disappears under the cover of an objectivistic self-understanding, because the sciences have not radically freed themselves from interests rooted in the primary life-world. Only phenomenology breaks with the naive attitude in favor of a rigorously contemplative one and definitively frees knowledge from interest.”
3. “Third, Husserl identifies transcendental self-reflection, to which he accords the name of phenomenological description, with theory in the traditional sense. The philosopher owes the theoretical attitude to a transposition that liberates him from the fabric of empirical interests. In this regard theory is ‘unpractical.’ But this does not cut it off from practical life. For, according to the traditional concept, it is precisely the consistent abstinence of theory that produces action-orienting culture.”

He then makes the astute observation that Husserl worked on this book in the early Thirties, at a time when the rise of the Nazis in Germany brought along an increased attention to scienticism in the name of "rising barbarism" (to use Habermas' phrase). With such a context I can only wonder if, once again, science is not being enslaved by another period of "rising barbarism," when the power of the government purse is ultimately determining what scientists can and cannot think and then lauding the virtues of their "objective thinking." The cover of my 1986 paperback printing of Husserl's book had a series of time-lapse photographs of the detonation of an atomic (or hydrogen) bomb. The cover of the current printing (shown in the poster above) is much more neutral. Is there a message here about how we ought to think about interpreting Husserl's message today?

June 13, 2006: Control and Consequences

I want to get back on the theme of the "half life of technical education" and why I am concerned about it. I suppose it all has to do with why I am trying to tilt at the windmills of technical education (and probably just about any other form of specialized education) in the first place. My concern is basically one of objectives, because it seems to me that the focus of such educational programs always comes down to some approach to controlling the world. Now that seems like a perfectly reasonable way to go, particularly in the mind-set of post-Enlightenment Western civilization; but, as we need to become more aware of our role in the world at large, we must not fool ourselves into believing that it is the only way to go or that "control solves everything." What is often overlooked when we focus to intently on control is that the world is a complex case; and, whatever control we may have, it will never be a handle on all that complexity. Thus, at the very least, we need to live by the motto that control has consequences.

This is particularly important when we try to reduce everything we do to making decisions and acting on the results of those decisions. In this regard I need to draw attention to (and recommend) the book Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers, by Richard Neustadt and Ernest May. This book is basically a series of case studies, each of which involves an act of presidential decision making in a time of crisis. The theme behind the entire book involves the way in which Neustadt and May characterize what they mean by "thinking in time." Basically, it involves asking two fundamental questions:

1. How did we get into this situation?
2. Given a course of action to consider, what will be the consequences of following that course?

In other words "thinking in time" involves more than analyzing a "state" in isolation: You have to understand that path through past states that led up to the present state; and, on the basis of your understanding that (and other) paths, you need to make a well-informed guess as to where the path out of that state (determined by the course of action) will lead (and, to invoke chess language, you have to look ahead more than a single move).

This also brings in an important reflection of decision support technology that goes all the way back to the pioneers of that technology: Peter Keen and Michael Scott Morton. Their first book on the subject, Decision Support Systems, begins by drawing the distinction between efficient and effective decision making. The punch line, of course, is that it is always necessary to strive for the latter, rather than the former. I believe that one of the hazards of the way in which specialized education is taught (if not of the subject-matter itself) is that efficiency tends to get the upper hand over effectiveness, simply because it is easier to evaluate efficiency, while evaluating effectiveness demands all the subtleties of "thinking in time." (We are back in the world of looking for your keys where the light is better, even if you know you did not lose them there.)

So perhaps there should be some corner of our educational process that makes sure we do not forget that it can be all right to just live in the world, without necessarily controlling (or feeling you can control) it. I do not mean this as a granola-based go-with-the-flow philosophy. Rather, to reflect on the quote in my Blast, you should be able to live in the world without "fear, superstition and pettiness," because the world throws so much at that stuff in our path that we should delude ourselves into believing the the only way to deal with it is to control it!