Monday, June 24, 2013


99. Role models

 One of the six causes proposed by Aristotle is the exemplary cause. It is a model or example to be emulated. The carpenter makes a chair after a model, the portrait painter uses a model, and in organizations and society there are role models. Adam Snith used the pin factory as a leading example of division of labour: one worker draws the wire, a second cuts it into pins, a third sharpens, and a fourth polishes them.

 Exemplar is the original meaning of the term paradigm. That term has acquired a range of meanings, such as philosophical, scientific or political doctrine, or a set of basic perceptions, notions, assumptions, or methods. This suggests that at the source of these lies some exemplar that is emulated.

 There is wisdom in this. Using the exemplar to be emulated or imitated is an alternative for a set of precise prescriptions, instructions, rules, or a protocol to be followed. Those do not do justice to the complexity and variability of human life, and conditions of practice. Complexity and variability arise in the diversity and change of specific contexts in which a practice is to be performed. Practice, of work, art, debate, thought, and life in general, are too variable and complex to be caught in strict, universal, fixed concepts and rules. I discussed this in earlier items of this blog (e.g. item 16), where I argued for an interplay between universals and contexts of application in which universals can shift. The exemplar is a universal with built-in room for variety. 

Compared to strict rules or protocols, an exemplar leaves room for interpretation according to context. Thus it leaves room for individuality in work, and takes the variability and complexity of contexts into account. Such room for variety of practice is important especially for innovation, where ideas need to be adapted to novel challenges and opportunities.

Entrepreneurs, in business (Henry Ford), science (Einstein) and politics (Ghandi), are examples. They were originals, and what they did was difficult to reduce to strict prescriptions. It was more a matter of style. In retrospect one can reconstruct elements of it, such as efficiency from uniformity (Ford’s assembly line), unity of time and space, in four dimensions (Einstein), non-violent protest (Ghandi).

But variations upon the theme arise. Assembly lines developed into new forms of production (just-in-time, demand pull, self-regulating teams). In nature, four dimensions developed into eleven. Protest adopted social media, and standing silent for hours on Taksim square in Istanbul. What is imitated and improvised upon is not just a logical principle involved but also a spirit in which forms of thought and action are found.

As a result, the imprint on practice of the original inventor can last a long time. In the economy we see this in family firms that parade the founding father. Imitating the exemplar becomes part of the culture of an organization. And then it can atrophy, becoming a myth, ritualized, and can then become rigid, dogmatic, inflexible and brittle, to ultimately crumble in the winds of change.

Monday, June 17, 2013

98. Science and policy

Why is it so difficult to connect science and policy, as in economic and social policy, and why is there so little effective communication between the two?

The connection suffers from two related, fundamental problems. First, science is mostly connected with the Cartesian ideal of an objective observer outside the field of study, in a separation of subject and object, in ‘spectator theory’. In other words, the view that pragmatism opposes. Second, science is mostly associated with the spirit of geometry (see item 7 of this blog), in abstraction from the complexities and variability of specific conditions in which the world is observed. That is needed to argue rigorously, in deduction from premises. This also requires limitation of the range of perspectives one could take, in a specific disciplinary perspective.

Policy, by contrast, is applied in specific contexts and cannot afford all that. Universals must be embedded in specific contexts and must thereby be expanded with corresponding conditions and peculiarities that were eliminated in abstraction. It cannot afford to consider an isolated perspective but must simultaneously consider other possible and relevant perspectives. It must regard the specific context in all its richness and variability. In other words, it must exercise the spirit of finesse.

According to Blaise Pascal, the spirits of geometry and finesse cannot be mixed, like oil and water. So there lies the problem of scientific policy advice. What, then, to do? According to Pascal one can only alternate between the two. How is that to be done?

This problem is related, I believe, to the problem of incommensurability. Aristotle recognized that not all values are commensurable, cannot all be brought under a common denominator so that they may be added and subtracted, in a calculation of trade-offs. The assumption that this is always possible is an affliction of economic science. What is there to be done in such cases? All we can do is to try and clarify the contrasts among views or values in debate, with the aim to arrive at some reconciliation or some judgement of which perspective is the most relevant or valid in the case at hand. That is the job of the policy maker.

Can we find some further help, some instrument, in this process? I suggest that we can find this in multiple Aristotelian causality, discussed in preceding items in this blog. What could one say, in the particular context at hand, about the agents, means, motives, know-how, conditions and leading examples of the case at hand? Could insights from different perspectives be integrated along that scheme? Psychologists might say something useful about motives, economists or sociologists about the agents involved, economists about market conditions, sociologists about institutional conditions, social psychologists about social conditions, anthropologists about cultural conditions, sociologists about social network effects, organization scientists about organizational conditions, and engineers about technology. Would that help?

Monday, June 10, 2013


97. Proximate and ultimate goals

 Economists assume that people and firms go, and should go, for maximum utility or profit. But they don’t tell you how to achieve such goals.

As I argued in the previous item of this blog, in human affairs it is useful to see causality as multiple, as proposed by Aristotle. And then goal achievement depends on several causes, which are all uncertain. The efficient cause (that which acts) of labour, people at work, is difficult to predict and to manage, especially in the growing segment of professional work. The formal cause (how things are done) of technology changes due to innovation. The final cause (for what purpose people act) varies and may be multiple. The conditional cause (circumstances that affect the other causes) of markets and institutions operates in a complex system of strategic interaction, herd behaviour, fads and fashions, and a political process of bumper cars in a fancy fair, which yields unforeseeable and partly unintended effects.

What is much more reasonable and feasible than trying to go directly for the ultimate outcome is to try to influence the different causal factors as more proximate goals, in directions that are likely to contribute to ultimate goals, but without certainty. Those proximate goals may also be seen as having value in and by themselves, as different dimensions of virtue and merit, again according to Aristotelian philosophy.

In life this is what people in fact do. How do you achieve happiness? By developing the factors that contribute to it and have value by themselves. Build and maintain friendships. Be good to loved ones. Develop empathy. Build an education that you enjoy. Enjoy art so that it may develop your sense and sensibility.

In economies, select appropriate actors, motivate them, provide knowledge and technology, and provide proper conditions.

Firms should aim to motivate labour, not merely as a means but also as an intrinsic value. It is well known that intrinsic motivation is often more powerful than only the extrinsic motivation of salary and bonus. People are motivated by self-interest, yes, but also by the will to make a contribution to something significant. People want to be autonomous, yes, but they also want to be part of a social entity and process.

Aim to develop knowledge as a value in itself, and as contributing to technology. The more fundamental research is the more uncertain its outcome. Planning innovation on the condition of predictable contribution to profit is self-defeating since it will yield only marginal improvement on what already exists.  If fundamental innovation is too risky to go it alone, do it in collaboration with others to spread the risk.

Aim to make a contribution to the natural, social, cultural and economic environment that constitutes the conditions of success.

Create room for variety of ideas, internally, within an organization, and externally, in relations with suppliers and customers. Create a culture where failures are recognized and admitted, punished by blame only in case of misconduct. Organize opposition, to benefit from variety of ideas and experience. I refer here to earlier items (57, 58) in this blog, on cognitive distance.       

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

96. Multiple causality

Aristotle proposed a multiple causality. The efficient cause (e.g. carpenter) does something (makes furniture) with materials (material cause, e.g. wood) according to technology and craftsmanship (formal cause), in order to achieve an end (final cause), e.g. to create an income or to satisfy professional or creative will, depending on conditions that affect those causes (conditional cause, e.g. markets, institutions), possibly according to some model to be executed or example to be imitated (exemplary cause).

Aristotle applied this causality to nature, as if stars or falling objects have an end to which they move, and this idea was justifiedly relegated to the dungheap of the history of ideas. It was replaced by a simple mechanical notion of causality, as with billiard balls bumping into each other, or as a purely formal notion of consistent succession in time, with the effect invariably following upon the cause. The irony is that this single causality next became the ambition also of human and social science, while there Aristotelian multiple causality fits admirably.

Economists and social scientists talk about agents (efficient cause), their motivation (final cause), availability of means (material cause), know-how and technology (formal cause), under influence of markets and institutions (conditional cause).

According to criticism such explanation is not ‘real’ or ‘ultimate’ causality, which lies in the physics and chemistry of elementary particles, and all causality to be satisfactory must be reduced to that. The mind is based on the brain, which operates on the basis of neurons, ‘hence’ causality and explanation should be sought there. And then ‘we are our brain’. That reductionism, I claim, is invalid and not useful.

How far ‘down’ should one go in reduction? The firing of neurons is an electrochemical process, on the basis of molecules that in turn consist of elementary particles that in turn consist of elementary forces that may or may not be seen as vibrating strings. We are not sure yet. So, to be consistent we should descend to the level where we no longer know. How would that be better than, say, to surrender to belief in God?
The logic of explanation on a higher level is often quite different from that on a lower level. Consider Boyle’s law that when in a chamber a given amount of gas at a given temperature is compressed, pressure is inversely proportional to volume. That was an experimental law, discovered in 1662, which 76 years later could be explained as gas particles bumping into the wall of the chamber. But in the law itself we do not find those particles.

Doesn’t something like that also apply to the brain? Thinking may ultimately be based in electromagnetics of particles, but the latter do not thereby explain how thought works. A mere physiological explanation does not by itself explain why under certain conditions someone choses something.

An important point, however, is that a higher level causal theory must not be at odds with what on the lower level is physically possible. While a logic of thought need not be built up from a theory of elementary particles, it should not contradict what is possible on that level.