v.3 - Linked to from: e_Preface.php#infoHum; A14 "..very misleading"; B7 "..scientism took root".

scientific limitations

The meaning of words is inseparable from their frame of reference. Divorcing their content from their context is impossible, and trying to do so only results in contested jurisdictions the intransigence of which frustrates the application of knowledge in every field, from theoretical physics to psychology, climate-change to wellbeing.

..I hope even readers sceptical of this particular conclusion might be persuadable of the general point that the deadlock in discussions of interpretation can be broken — or at least, our understanding of the problem can be deepened — by focussing less on specifics of the particular interpretative strategies, and more on what we should reasonably require of a solution..

Wellbeing is a dynamic function, comprised of similarly complex qualities, such as contentment and success; all of which are subjective. As it cannot be isolated from the individuals concerned it is unavailable for scientific observation and science can therefore say little about it. Nonetheless it is substantive, self-evident and priceless, and engaging with it is unavoidable.

The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a "young science"; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.) The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.

Mathematics is able to deal successfully only with the simplest of situations, more precisely, with a complex situation only to the extent that rare good fortune makes this complex situation hinge upon a few dominant simple factors. Beyond the well-traversed path, mathematics loses its bearings in a jungle of unnamed special functions and impenetrable combinatorial particularities. Thus, the mathematical technique can only reach far if it starts from a point close to the simple essentials of a problem which has simple essentials. That form of wisdom which is the opposite of single-mindedness, the ability to keep many threads in hand, to draw for an argument from many disparate sources, is quite foreign to mathematics.

Science, like a computer, can only engage with the inputs it is given; the less clear these are the less clear the outputs it gives, and the more its processes tends to be GIGO.

It may seem natural to think that, to understand a complex system, one must construct a model incorporating everything that one knows about the system. However sensible this procedure may seem, in biology it has repeatedly turned out to be a sterile exercise. There are two snags with it. The first is that one finishes up with a model so complicated that one cannot understand it - the point of a model is to simplify, not to confuse. The second is that if one constructs a sufficiently complex model one can make it do anything one likes by fiddling with the parameters - a model that can predict anything predicts nothing.

The results of scientific inquiry are assumed to be transparent; however, through its funding, political and economic agendas direct its research. While conceptual confusion is dismissed, perceptions of its results remain driven by assumptions; divorced from fundamental reasoning, it is rendered nonsensical, and easily misrepresented, to justify zenophobia, for instance, or climate-change denial.