Difference between revisions of "Mirror ideogram"
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<div class="col-md-7"> [[File:Magical_Mirror.jpg]] <br><small><center>Mirror ideogram</center></small></div> | <div class="col-md-7"> [[File:Magical_Mirror.jpg]] <br><small><center>Mirror ideogram</center></small></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-3"><h4>]]The [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] symbolizes the entry point to an alternate academic reality. </h4></div> | ||
| + | <div class="col-md-5"><p>We use the metaphor of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] to mark the entry point to an emerging and vibrantly novel approach to knowledge (which we may also call a paradigm, an alternate academic reality, a creative frontier, or a way to create truth and meaning). The [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] here symbolizes the various insights reached in 20th century's science and philosophy, which challenged the age-old ideas regarding the nature of information and knowledge – and in particular, and most importantly, the idea that whatever knowledge work we have gives us an access to reality as it really is, and that we must stick to it if our knowledge work – and in particular academic work – should be good and solid.</p> | ||
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| + | <p>"On every university campus there is a [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]], which we – being all too busy with article deadlines – normally don't see", reads the explanation of this [[ideogram]]. "When we see ourselves in the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>, we see the same world that we see around us. But we also see ourselves in the world. We then realize that we are ''not'' the objective observes we believed we were. We are ''in'' the world! When we see ourselves in the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]], we recognize that it is us, humans, who have created the scientific method and the ethos of the disciplines. And that it is us, academics, who are creating the world we see around us, by looking at it in a certain way, and by instructing others to see it in that way." When we see ourselves in the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]], we begin to feel responsible for the world – for the way we look at the world.</p> | ||
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| + | <p>As the case is in Louis Carroll's familiar story from which the mirror metaphor has been borrowed, this academic mirror too has some unusual properties. To begin with, it is possible to walk right through it! And when one does, one finds himself in an entirely different academic reality. As in the story, this new reality is in a number of ways a reverse image of the reality we've grown accustomed to – more free and creative, and at the same time more solid and responsible, than the reality we're accustomed to. </p> | ||
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| + | <p>[[Knowledge federation]] is a model or a [[prototype]] of that new creative reality.</p></div> | ||
| + | <div class="col-md-4"> [[File:Magical_Mirror.jpg]] <br><small><center>Mirror ideogram</center></small></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-3"><h4>– Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.</h4></div> | ||
| + | <div class="col-md-6"><p>There are far too many [[giants]] on whose shoulders we might want to stand to more clearly see the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]]. Hence we here represent them by a single one, Albert Einstein. Also elsewhere on these pages Einstein appears in the role of an icon, representing "modern science". "Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world," Einstein and Infeld wrote in Evolution of Physics. "In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison."</p></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Einstein.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Albert Einstein]]</center></small></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-3"><h4>The belief that our ideas correspond with reality is a common result of illusion.</h4></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-9"><p>What we've just seen was 'modern science' telling us that "correspondence with reality" is a criterion that cannot be verified. What we're about to see next is 'modern science' telling us that the common conviction that our ideas correspond with reality is a common result of illusion: "During philosophy’s childhood it was rather generally believed that it is possible to find everything which can be known by means of mere reflection. (...) Someone, indeed, might even raise the question whether, without something of this illusion, anything really great can be achieved in the realm of philosophical thought – but we do not wish to ask this question. This more aristocratic illusion concerning the unlimited penetrative power of thought has as its counterpart the more plebeian illusion of naïve realism, according to which things “are” as they are perceived by us through our senses. This illusion dominates the daily life of men and animals; it is also the point of departure in all the sciences, especially of the natural sciences.” </p> | ||
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| + | <p>If our aim is to distinguish what is "really true" from illusion – how can we rely on a criterion that is impossible to verify? And which is itself a result of illusion?</p></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-3"><h4>– [The] flow from the theoretical to the conventional is an adjunct of progress in the logical foundations of any science. </h4></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-6"><p>"We are not discovering an objectively true picture of reality. We are constructing (an approximate representation of) reality". This conclusion, which we are calling the [[constructivist credo|<em>constructivist credo</em>]], follows from the results reached in a broad variety of disciplines (physics, biology of perception, cognitive science, linguistics, sociology, philosophy...). It is also an epistemological position that was upheld explicitly or implicitly by the 20th century's [[giants|<em>giants</em>]]. </p> | ||
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| + | <p>This epistemological position has a problem. When the <em>constructivist credo</em> is placed into a system of thought where "truth" means "correspondence with reality", and where each statement is supposed to be <em>about</em> reality, the result is a paradox.</p> | ||
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| + | <p>But there is a solution. It is what Willard Van Orman Quine called [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]]. <em>Truth by convention</em> is the kind of truth that is common in mathematics: "Let <em>x</em> be... Then..." It is meaningless to ask whether <em>x</em> "really is" as stated. In "Truth by Convention", Quine argued that "every science" progresses from an assumption of mutual understanding and of the reality of shared concepts, to realizing that this assumption does not hold, and then resorting to explicit definition by convention.</p> | ||
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| + | <p>So why not allow the creation of truth and meaning in general to progress similarly?</p></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-3 round-images"> [[File:Quine.jpg]] <br><small><center>[[Willard V.O. Quine]]</center></small></div> | ||
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| + | <div class="col-md-3"><h4>An up-to-date foundation for creating truth and meaning can be developed by relying on [[truth by convention|<em>truth by convention</em>]].</h4></div> | ||
| + | <div class="col-md-9"><p>A practical way to do that is to spell out the rules – specify the underlying assumptions by stating them as a convention. We call such a convention a [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]]. We have done the exercise; the result is a [[prototype|<em>prototype</em>]] called [[Polyscopic Modeling]]. The knowledge work (epistemology, methods, information formats, results, insights...) that results from applying this <em>methodology</em> we called [[polyscopy|<em>polyscopy</em>]]. We often use this shorter and simpler keyword also for the [[methodology|<em>methodology</em>]] itself.</p> | ||
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| + | <p> You may now imagine <em>knowledge federation</em> as a liberated academic territory, which is made available and at the same time separated from the conventional academic reality by the metaphorical mirror. By stepping through, we are liberated from the <em>reification</em> that "science" means what the scientists have been doing for centuries. Science has acquired a pivotal role in our society, of providing reliable and relied on or "good" knowledge. And even of defining for us what "good" knowledge is. Just as our great predecessor did, who made science great, on the other side of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]] we are invited to revisit those core questions and find new answers – by weaving together the new fundamental insights, new societal needs and the new capabilities of information technology. </p> | ||
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| + | <p>As a [[prototypes|<em>prototype</em>]] or model of the academic or more generally creative frontier on the other side of the [[mirror|<em>mirror</em>]], [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] will serve us to point to the frontier, strike a conversation about the future of knowledge and of creative work in general, and initiate real-life developments. [[Knowledge Federation|Knowledge Federation]] is a prototype of a new institution, the [[transdiscipline|<em>transdiscipline</em>]], which is capable of developing the [[knowledge federation|<em>knowledge federation</em>]] praxis. The task of Knowledge Federation is to add to the conventional creative work the capability to re-create itself. </p> | ||
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Latest revision as of 12:41, 11 August 2018
Mirror Ideogram
Giving knowledge a purpose
