The Linder-Lindberg Dialogues

Haha, this is becoming a series. We should release it under the name of "The Linder-Lindberg Dialogues". We could be rich! I am quite enjoying this dialogue, your points add much value to my thinking!

Here is Marcus' comment:

At least a PhD student in four months - and in social science (!), although at a technical university. :)

Your post again deserves a comment, especially since you used my last comment as a basis for it.

In general, I tend to agree with most of what you say.

Actually, this argument brings to mind a brief discussion I had with my supervisor during one of the interviews. It was a very brief discussion, no more than one or two minutes. In essence it was about a similar topic: I took a very positivistic stance, talking about models that can predict social phenomomen and that are actionable and relevant. She agreed to the latter part, but I remember her briefly refuting my positivistic views.

Needless to say, she's also (like you) experienced me as being slightly sceptic to "softer" parts of her expert areas. I am not sure that really I am.

I am actually not all that sceptic towards social science in general. Except that I am convinced that it is much easier to hide crappy research behind fancy wording in the social sciences than in the natural sciences. However, I do believe that it is a newer and less mature science than the natural sciences. I have the impression that most fields of social science are younger than e.g. Gallileos model of gravity (16th century A.D) or Copernicus model of the planets, Keplers model of planetary motion etc. (There is of course e.g. the greek Platon and his Republic, but is not as much of a science in my opinion as the physicists mentioned above. This connects to the discussion about definition below.)

Thus, if you combine the fact that social science has been successfully around for a shorter time with the notion that it is probably more complex that you imply in your post, the idea that social science is less mature as a field of study is not so far fetched. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Newton was a brilliant scientist even though his field of research (natural philosophy) was fairly immature during his times. This opinion is actually one of the reasons I decided to venture into the field (and not inte natural science), I percieve that there is more stuff with a large impact on our lives soon to be discovered there.

Now, as for the second issue of comparing the two on the same scales. I think this mostly is a matter of how one chooses to use the word "science". I simply don't normally denote bullets 2 and 3 in Wilber's list as science. They are what I would normally refer to as philosophy (with the notion that all scientific fields start as philosophy and eventually make it into scientific fields of research; psychology during Freuds time being the most famous case of such a transition). That said, I think Freud made a terrific contribution to human knowledge!

Also, you shouldn't be so hard on newtonian models. They, as other types of models, can still add value in the social sciences. There are some pretty successful but at the same time very "newtonian" models of human/social phenomena. I'm thinking primarily of economics, chicago school stuff about inflation etc. But I am sure you probably agree with me on this issue. :)

Also, as you yourself point out, natural science is way more complex today than it was three hundred years ago. Some of that complexity is probably enough to capture a lot of interesting social phenomena in a good way. Although not all of them. I don't know anyone fairly acquianted with natural science who still believes in a "clockwork universe" as described by Newton. And albeit the related notion of predermination is still not settled it is now considered, as far as I know, a philosophical issue.

In other words, I think much (although probably not all) of our disagreement simply boils down to a matter of definition of the word science.

By the way, now that you mention Integral theory, I actually have an acquaintance in Växjö, Johannes, who's very deep into that stuff. Last time we met (2 years ago) he was going to start a school about the world view in Sweden. I'll tell him about you when I meet him again!

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Potentially, I could agree to not call "science" 2 and 3 Science. That would resolve the debate in an easy manner. We could simply call those modes of discovery "other means of seeking knowledge", while worthwhile and important, they would not be called science.

Do you remember when we were debating Howard Gardner's concept of multiple intelligences in high school? Our united opinion was that logical intelligence is the only intelligence (per traditional usage of the word), we also agreed that even though the other capacities should not be called intelligence, they were still equally important in living a happy life as a human being.

The problem with this argument becomes clear when examined from a postmodern point of view. The word "science" is not only a combination of 7 letters, it is also a "social object" which carries high levels of credibility. Denying a mode of exploration, or means of seeking knowledge, the label of "science" means to diminish its credibility.

Based on the paragraph above you could argue that anything should be called science in the name of social egalitarianism. Obvously this is not my argument. Our discussion, as you already have noted, boils down to a question of the definition of science.

I guess this is where the ball should pass over to you: What is, and what is not, Science?

Now, let's turn to the maturity or immaturity of social science. The question that arises in my mind is: what is expected of social science once it becomes "mature"? Would we be able to predict election results accurately? Would we be able to predict the outbreak of war?

I don't believe so. Human societies and cultures develop continuously, and thus the study of the social spheres needs to develop as well. The universe doesn't change fundamentally, which makes it easier to create a "mature" science of nature.

I say that it would be more fruitful to stop labeling natural/social science as mature/immature and recognize that they needs to have different foundations (per the subject studied) which creates sciences (modes of creating consistently actionable knowledge) which function differently.

Here, I will actually argue that the labeling of social science as "immature", or denying it the status of "science" at all, actively contributes to ineffective and destructive social sciences. If we assume (as I do) that social science needs a different foundation compared to natural science, and that this is not generally recognized, this forces social science into a mode of science that is unsuitable to its very nature.

Social science is thus striving towards a "maturity" that it can never achieve, using foundations which are unsuitable for the study of human beings, their groups, organizations and societies.

Looking again at the example of Newtonian clockwork metaphores. While it is clear that natural science has moved away from these kind of theories or metaphores, many social sciences still use them, or have used them, to catastrophic effect. Engineering might benefit from Newtonian models (since the model itself is based on engineering practice), but social phenomena can never be as linear as a machine. Social phenomena are by definition ever-changing, dynamic and systemic.

Applying Newtonian, engineering inspired models, to social practice ignores key dimensions of social reality. It has created doctrines such as marxism in politics, and business models that fundamentally ignores the systemic relations between a company and its environment (social and ecological), simply viewing the company as a box with inputs and outputs. While I agree that there has been important advances in fields such as economics, which seems to be inspired by Newtonian dynamics, I think it is important to try to move beyond this paradigm towards a more suitable social science paradigm.

Last, a note on Wilber. I haven't read any of his books, but he seems to have some very interesting and fresh ideas. He is also not an academic scientist, and I can see many parallels between him and his "followers" and Ayn Rand and the movement around her. It seems to be developing into a quasi-cult/sect similar to Rand's "Collective". I would probably prefer to read some of his earlier books and largely ignore the "integral movement" as such.