The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
|
Natural & Engineering Sciences HHC © last revised December 2004 Draft in Progress |
Page 68 69 70 72 74 74 77 78 81 83 86 87 87 88 |
Epithet The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge.... The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) Columbia World of Quotations, #30010 Within the university ... you can study without waiting for any efficient or immediate result. You may search, just for the sake of searching, and try for the sake of trying. So there is a possibility of what I would call playing. It’s perhaps the only place within society where play is possible to such an extent. Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) Columbia World of Quotations, #16117 |
5.01 The knowledge qubits WIT (Senses, Mind, Doing, Experience) and PSI (Reason, Revelation, Sentiment, Sensation) involve acquisition of knowledge by a natural person. Once acquired, however, knowledge may be shared and in the sharing socially agreed categories develop under which different forms of knowledge may be classified. For my purposes there are two categories: knowledge domains and practices. The word ‘domain’ means, among other things, “a sphere of thought or action; field, province, scope of a department of knowledge, etc.” (OED, domain, n, 4a). Knowledge domains have two characteristics. First, hierarchically a domain, as a province, is subject to the dual realms of Science and Design. Their relative influence tends to fluctuate and vary over time, e.g., periods of normal or revolutionary science (Kuhn 1996) and the shifting balance between Church and State over the course of Western European history.
5.02 Second, functionally each domain “as a sphere of thought or action” has a preferred configuration of Reason, Revelation, Sentiment and Sensation deemed methodologically appropriate for acquiring knowledge in that domain. This is analogous to the pattern of dominance and subordination of faculties identified by analytic psychology and to the configuration of drives in a personal computer where there is usually a primary dominant/subordinate pair and a secondary dominant/subordinate pair of drives. [A] The primary configuration will, for my purposes, serve to differentiate knowledge domains by their primary epistemic methodology. I will first consider the changing role of the university then define knowledge domains and, finally, examine the Practices.
68
5.03 The stereotypical medieval university was organized into the three domains of philosophy: natural, moral and metaphysical within each of which functioned different disciplines, departments or faculties. Domains, in turn, were housed within a College of Arts and Sciences. To these ‘pure’ knowledge domains, the practices (applied knowledge) or self-regulating professions of law and medicine were added as distinct, quasi-independent colleges or branches. Taken together these domains and practices constituted the university.
5.04 This structure changed very slowly following the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. With religious wars waging, the university – both Protestant and Catholic – were busy defending religious doctrines and resisted the new experimental philosophy. In effect, the university remained a training ground for elites in traditional and proper ways of knowing. The first significant change occurred in the early 19th century with the founding of the German research university at the University of Berlin (1809). Due to the efforts of Wilhelm von Humboldt, this transformed or ‘modernized’ the mandate of the university from interpretation of old to the generation of new knowledge. In the process, the experimental sciences made the university their home.
5.05 From the 17th century Scientific Revolution, the experimental sciences existed outside the university proper acting like an ‘emergent process’ (Emery & Trist 1972, 24-37). First through concealment and latter by parasitism, the natural sciences gradually entered the university, absorbed more and more of its resources (financial and human) until finally it became what it is today – arguably the dominant knowledge domain. In the process, the old ‘natural philosophy’ faded away replaced by a triumphant experimental philosophy, or rather, experimental science
5.06 The assertion that the university is the ‘natural’ home of the sciences has been made by Michael Polanyi. [B] (Polanyi 1960-61, 406) He argues that the source of new knowledge in other domains is primarily found outside the university in the ‘real’ world. This he considers appropriate because the natural sciences concern the objective unchanging laws of nature while other domains are subject to the artificial laws and exigencies of the human condition.
5.07 While arguably the ‘natural’ home of the sciences, the university has only recently become the foster-home for technology and engineering. Enacted by Elizabeth I in 1563 as a response to death-dealing waves of plague and rising real wages, the Statute of Artificers regulated technical training and employment in the craft guild tradition until 1814 (Cassidy 1928; Derry 1931). In that year, responding to Smith’s laissez-faire economics and Bentham’s social theories, Parliament abolished the Statute. In short order, the guild system collapsed. By the mid- to late nineteenth century, vocational training in the English-speaking world gradually formalized in institutions of higher education called polytechnics. These were often created by founders of the early 19th century Industrial Revolution who, in turn,
69
were nonconformists who had been excluded from the universities and learned their science indirectly while pursuing their trade. In other words, the coupling between science and technology was very loose and did not rely on the established system of higher education. (Senate Special Committee 1970, 21)
5.08 Similarly, major innovations of the late 19th century, e.g., the telephone, telegraph and electric light did not result from university-based research but from the insight of independent inventors, who, like Bell and Edison, often created their own private research institutes outside the university. Nonetheless, the success of ‘vocational’ institutions such as the Manchester Polytechnic resulted, in many cases, in their eventual absorption or transformation into traditional universities. For example, the Manchester Polytechnic began as the Manchester Mechanics’ Institute in 1824 then went through many changes in name over the decades becoming the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology in 1955 then combining with Victoria University in 2004 to form the University of Manchester. In Canada, a similar path was followed by the Ryerson Institute of Technology founded in 1948 becoming Ryerson Polytechnic University in 1993 and then Ryerson University in 2002.
5.09 In fact, it was only in the post-World War Two era that university and university-based research became a dominant source of new technology including chemical, electrical, and nuclear technologies. The war years confirmed that university-based scientific knowledge could play a major role in development of new technology, e.g., radar, jet and rocket engines and, of course, the atomic bomb. Conventional wisdom now holds that the era of the independent, nonconformist inventor is drawing to an end. However, this convention, in turn, could be swept away with the appearance of another Bell, Edison or Marconi, i.e., an inventive genius from outside Polanyi’s natural home of the sciences.
5.10 Since the change in the university’s mandate from conservation of old to generation of new knowledge, new practices have been appended to the university, e.g., Colleges of Commerce in the late 19th century. Furthermore, as will be seen below, the domain structure transformed after the Second World War with formal admission of the Fine Arts. Arguably, however, another change in mandate is occurring at this moment as business and government form ‘partnerships’ with the university appending new structures to it, e.g., special research centres. Most are dedicated to the economic exploitation of new knowledge flowing from any and all parts of the university itself. Such linkages and partnerships form part of the ‘national innovation system’ (NIS) intended to enhance the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy (OECD 1997).
5.11 In a process I call ‘pragmatic epistemology’, nation states have created, above their universities, specialized funding agencies to foster and promote distinct knowledge domains. These too form part of NIS even though most historically pre-date the NIS concept (OECD 1997).
70
5.12 In Canada, relevant agencies include the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canada Council for the Arts (CC). In other English-speaking countries, the pattern is a variation on this theme. In the United States, there is a National Science Foundation embracing the natural & engineering sciences and the social sciences; a National Endowment for the Humanities; and a National Endowment for the Arts. In the United Kingdom there are, in effect, separate councils for each of the natural sciences, the engineering sciences, the social sciences, the humanities and the arts.
5.13 Such grant-giving councils are economic agents that direct public monies towards development of new knowledge – both for its own sake as well as for its contribution to the economy. In this sense they are political economic institutions. Which organizations, programs, projects or individuals to support is generally decided by peer evaluation including grants made by individual officers employed by a council and who act, in effect, as one-person juries (Chartrand 1987a). Councils tend to reflect the political communities of interest active within each knowledge domain. This grant-giving system parallels the independent practice of peer review of articles before publication in disciplinary journals. Using the Canadian experience, I identify three contemporary knowledge domains:
· The Natural & Engineering Sciences (NES);
· The Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS); and,
· The Arts.
5.14 In the sixth century before the Common Era, the Chinese sage Sun Tzu suggested in his classic The Art of War that a battle may be won before it is fought through a clear understanding of the terrain (Sawyer 1994). The terrain of a knowledge-based economy is dominated by these three glacier-clad mountains. Each rises up above the lowlands and valleys of the economy. Each has its own historical and institutional foundation; each reaches to a summit of excellence - individual and institutional. In the NES and HSS, the traditional institutional peak is the university. In the Arts, it is the fine arts academy, museum, music conservatory and production company.
5.15 It is in these artistic, cultural and scientific ‘ivory-towers’ that most new knowledge is created, collected, compiled, conserved and/or coalesced into a nation’s stock of knowledge capital. From their icy peaks rivers and streams of knowledge flow down winding circuitous paths or through channels chiseled deeply into the historical bedrock of a nation-state. In the valleys and lowlands their waters merge, mingle and mix to irrigate all sectors of a nation's economy.
5.16 In practice such knowledge becomes applied as technology in the original Greek techne meaning art and logos meaning reason, that is, ‘reasoned art'’. The NES generate physical technology, that is, how to manipulate the natural world. The HSS generate organization technology, that is, how to manipulate the human-made world. The Arts generate aesthetic or design technology, that is, how to manipulate the human heart and soul to achieve what the Greeks
71
called kosmos, the right ordering of the multiple parts of the world (Hillman 1980, 28).
5.17 Beyond the pragmatics of contemporary institutional structures, this trio is consonant with traditional pedagogy and epistemology. With respect to pedagogy, the NES corresponds to the natural philosophy of the medieval university; the HSS to moral philosophy; and, the Arts correspond to metaphysical philosophy (now part of the Humanities) since separation of Church and State and Art from Religion. In effect, Religion, the institutional homeland of Revelation, the controlling faculty of Western knowledge for centuries, has been reduced to a Sentiment within the university, i.e., a human value studied under the Humanities. Art, meanwhile, has donned the cloak of intuition and the associated god-like ex nihlio powers of creativity.
5.18 With respect to epistemology, since at least the time of Galileo a traditional distinction has been made between primary, secondary and tertiary elements of knowledge, or experience. Primary knowledge concerns facts or quantities such as size and extension in space, number, weight or mass, motion and time. These elements of knowledge are regarded as belonging to the ‘real’ or physical world. They are accessible to observation, experiment and measurement. This is the domain of the NES.
5.19 Secondary knowledge, or qualities, pertains to sensations such as colour, taste, smell and form as well as larger concatenations of these qualities. Qualities are held to exist only in the mind of the observer, i.e. they are produced by the perceiving mind out of physical experience; they do not exist in the objective world. Accordingly, even if qualities are real, they are not directly accessible to the scientific method (Sloane 1991). This is the domain of the Arts.
5.20 Tertiary knowledge, or values, are not perceivable from the outside world but are rather innate ideas, divinely implanted or invented by the subjective observer (Griffin 1991). Being purely subjective, values (or morals) are not directly accessible to the scientific method. This is the domain of the HSS. In what follows, I will outline the natural history of each domain and demonstrate the internal configuration of knowledge faculties.
Natural & Engineering Sciences
5.21 There are three primary natural science disciplines – biology, chemistry and physics. Each breaks out into an ever widening range of sub-disciplines and cross-disciplines, e.g., biochemistry. In each there are distinct engineering specialties, e.g., chemical, genetic, mechanical and, electrical engineering. It is from these that physical technology flows. More generally, the relationship between science and related technologies has been described as the research-front of one being related to the accrued archive of the other, i.e., science operates with the previous generation of technology while technology operates with the previous generation of scientific knowledge (Price 1965, 568). [C]
5.22 Arguably, the success of the NES in generating new knowledge can be attributed to three factors. First is the Pythagorean Effect,
72
i.e., exploitation of the cognate relationship between mathematics and the world of matter and energy. Second is the Instrumentation Effect, i.e., scientific instruments generate evidence (in mathematical form) not requiring intermediation by a human subject and providing readings at, above and below the threshold of natural human sensibilities. In effect, this lends metaphysical legitimacy to the NES. In a way, scientific instruments realize a Platonic ideal: “belief in a realm of entities, access to which requires mental powers that transcend sense perception” (Fuller 2000, 69). Furthermore, the ‘language’ of scientific sensors realizes another ancient Greek ideal, that of Pythagoras, by reporting nature in numbers. Third is the Puzzle-Solving Effect of working within an established paradigm or ‘normal science’ in which anomalies to expectations leads to solution or ‘scientific revolution’ (Kuhn 1996).
5.23 Concerning the proliferation of specialized NES sub-disciplines, Thomas Kuhn concluded:
Over time a diagram of the evolution of scientific fields, specialties, and sub-specialties comes to look strikingly like a layman’s diagram for a biological evolutionary tree. Each of these fields has a distinct lexicon, though the differences are local, occurring only here and there. There is no lingua franca capable of expressing, in its entirety, the content of them all or even of any pair.” (Kuhn 1990, 7-8)
5.24 Knowledge in the Natural & Engineering Sciences is fact-based and subject to objective, value-free testing in which replicability of results is the ultimate test. It is concerned with objective truth and understanding of the physical world. It exhibits decreasing tolerance through time for difference and error as old knowledge is progressively and reductively displaced by the new, i.e., NES knowledge progresses vertically up the ladder of time.
5.25 Expressed in terms of analytic psychology, the NES assigns dominance to Reason while Sensation and Revelation (intuition) are subordinate with Sentiment suppressed. Using the computer drive metaphor, the primary dominant is Reason and the primary subordinate is Sensation. (see para. 5.02 & [A]) The secondary dominant is Revelation or intuition while the secondary and repressed subordinate is Sentiment. It is the primary dominant/subordinate configuration of Reason/Sensation that characterizes the NES – measurable quantity.
5.26 In the NES, Sensation is thus in the service of Reason embodied in scientific instrumentation that completely isolates or distances the observer from the observed and from the passions of the flesh and spirit. As will be seen, this contrasts with the Arts in which Sensation is dominant subordinating Sentiment to produce sensual or aesthetic effects on a flesh and blood audience. The contrast is one of extroversion or introversion of Sensation. In the NES, Sensation is directed outward by Reason towards the external world. In the Arts, Sensation directs Sentiment inwards towards what James Hillman calls The Thoughts of the Heart (Hillman 1981).
73
5.27 When applied for other purposes, NES knowledge, formally and informally obtained, generates physical technology, i.e., the ability to manipulate matter and energy to satisfy human want, needs and desires as both intermediate and final goods and services. The impact in evolutionary terms is that the human species has multiplied prodigiously from some 3 billion people in 1950, 6 billion today and around 9 billion projected for 2050 (Population Reference Bureau 2003). Through our physical technology we now occupy and/or exploit every ecosystem on the planet with plans to move beyond.
5.28 Much has been and more will be said about the Scientific Revolution and its implications for a knowledge-based economy. One seldom hears, however, about the preceding ‘Humanist’ and subsequent ‘Social Science’ revolutions. Yet they happened and they too have significant implications. The Humanist Revolution of about 1400 C.E. pre-dates the Scientific Revolution by some two hundred years which, in turn, pre-dates the Social Science Revolution of roughly 1800 by about two hundred years. This sequence is not necessarily co-incidental. One revolution builds upon the foundations laid by its predecessor. The sequence may or may not continue with the year 2000 marking, perhaps, the dawn of the Genomics Revolution. We will know only in historical hindsight.
5.29 The Humanist Revolution was a revolution of the mind leading to our modern concept of the individual as the legal and ethical foundation stone of democratic society. But, as will be seen, like the subsequent Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, the Humanist Revolution happened despite the university, not because of it.
5.30 From an economics perspective the Humanist Revolution can be interpreted as the result of two factors: (i) a sudden decrease in the supply of labour, specifically of educated labour; and, (ii) growing demand by two competitors – Church and State.
5.31 After the first Crusade in 1095 C.E., Western Europe gradually stabilized over three hundred years into a highly structured feudal system of subordination. The last wave of ‘barbarians’, the Vikings, had been successfully assimilated into Christendom. Pressures eased from the Islamic south and east with Mongol hordes reaching the borders of Egypt. In the north-east, the same Mongols halted in and then withdrew from Hungary to southern Russia in 1241-2 where descendents of the Golden Horde live to this day, i.e., the Crimea Tartars.
5.32 Except for dynastic disputes and those between the Papacy and the titular Western Holy Roman Emperor, Western Europe experienced a period of relative peace and prosperity. One was born, however, into a designated slot in a geographically-limited life from which there was no escape except the Church and death. The peasant was subordinate to the lord of the manor who, in turn, was subordinate to the Crown, who, in turn, was subordinate to God. Guilds, municipal, trading and other corporations received exclusive grants of privilege from the Crown in return for oaths of fealty and
74
tribute. The first universities were created during the time of the High Middle Ages and in this same manner. The English family names ‘Smith’ and ‘Cooper’ sum up this system – one was known by one’s trade or ‘mystery’ not bloodline per se: a Smith being a metal worker of some sort and a Cooper being a barrel maker. Social space was fully defined. Everyone knew their place. This caste system might have lasted much longer had not two historically coincidental developments shocked the system.
5.33 First was the rise of the secular state beginning in Italy where government took the form not only of monarchy but also of commune, republic and, of course, the Papal States. Humanists first appeared here marking the beginning of the Renaissance about 1400. Their predecessors were notaries and public officials of the many Italian city states including Rome, capital of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. One branch – accountants – introduced the double entry ledger that supported the commercial revolution in the West’s trade with the East. Another branch included the secretaries, speechwriters and diplomats of princes, popes and dukes as well as the republics or communes of Florence, Genoa and Venice. While some attended the new universities most were of common rather than noble birth.
5.34 Unlike northern Europe, the increasingly urban Italians looked out every day to see clear evidence that their fame and fortune was as nothing compared to the ancients. This led to a search of the past for examples of greatness to make comparisons with their patrons. Humanists produced “hymns to the gods and praise of famous men” as required by Plato (Plato, The Republic, Book X, 1952: 433-434). Fame was what patrons wanted and fame was what Humanists gave and, by association, they thereby received. This focus on fame distinguishes the Humanists of the 14th through 16th centuries from the natural scientists of the 17th who were concerned with contributing ‘knowledge-for-knowledge’s-sake’. This tradition, it has been argued, was established by late medieval ‘Mechanics’ who in journals dedicated their knowledge to future growth and improvement of their craft, not fame or fortune (Zilsel 1945).
5.35 Nonetheless the Humanists initiated serious epistemological investigations, some of which eventually entered the university, e.g., philology or ‘comparative linguistics’ that, in a certain sense, was the first ‘social’ science. While some Humanists attended university, they were not part of the university. Their natural environment was secular, not scholastic or religious. In effect, Humanist separated secular human life, especially politics, from religion, e.g., Machiavelli (1469-1527).
5.36 The second shock to the system was the Black Death which ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, two generations before the Renaissance. Originating in China and Inner Asia, the plague was transmitted to Europe when a Kipchak army, besieging a Genoese trading post in the Crimea, catapulted plague-infested corpses into the town. The disease then spread to the Mediterranean ports and beyond (Encyclopedia Britannica, “Black Death”, 2003).
5.37 While mortality rates varied the monastic communities had the highest incidence of victims. The ranks of the Church were
75
decimated, e.g., the papal court at Avignon was reduced by one-fourth. In general, talent in all skilled trades, became scarce; wages went up; and, the social status of the individual climbed gradually breaking the feudal chains of subordination and giving birth to Capitalism. Fifty years later, unlike their medieval predecessors, Renaissance artist/engineer/scientists signed their works inaugurating the Western ‘cult of the genius’.
5.38 Humanism assumed that Man not God is the measure of all things. It declined as an epistemological force for three reasons. First, it was identified with the Republic and when the political fortunes of Italy turned and French and German armies marched in, many Humanists found switching allegiances ethically difficult. Second, the vernacular – Italian, French, English and German - began to displace Latin but the Humanist’s bond, Latin & Greek, with the glories of the past proved difficult to break. Third, the Religious Wars of the 16th and 17th centuries beginning with Luther’s posting of his protest ‘the Ninety-five Theses’ on the door of the Castle Church, Wittenberg on Oct. 31, 1517, put God back in the driver’s seat (Zilsel [1943] 2000; Cochrane 1976, Grudin 2003).
5.39 After the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, the various Humanities were, in effect, absorbed by the university under Moral Philosophy. Today, the Humanities consist of a wide range of disciplines and sub-disciplines including: folklore, history, language & literature, linguistics, philosophy, religious studies and women’s studies (Chartrand 1980).
5.40 The modern social sciences arose out of two forces. First, the cult of the genius found successive expression in two individuals (excluding Marx and Freud) – Adam Smith (1723-1790) and Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Smith gave birth to economics out of moral philosophy. Writing in 1969, economist Kenneth Boulding could observe:
Adam Smith, who has strong claim to being both the Adam and the Smith of systematic economics, was a professor of moral philosophy and it was at that forge that economics was made. Even when I was a student, economics was still part of the moral sciences tripos at Cambridge University. It can claim to be a moral science, therefore, from its origin, if for no other reason. (Boulding 1969)
5.41 Comte gave birth to sociology by way of the natural sciences and in the process spawned Positivism. This, in turn, led to the Logical Positivists and the Vienna Circle of the twentieth century in the philosophy of science with epistemological consequences previously noted. For Comte, all sciences pass through a theological then metaphysical stage before entering a final positive, experiential or ‘mathematical’ stage. In the case of both Smith and Comte, it took until the last quarter of the 19th century before the university formally admitted economics and then sociology.
5.42 The second force leading to the emergence of the modern social sciences was the apparent success of the experimental natural sciences and the accelerating progress of technology. In Smith’s case this connection with the natural sciences is made in his early essay of about 1750: Principles which lead and direct Philosophical
76
Enquiries, illustrated by the History of Astronomy (Thomson 1965, 213). This success also led the poet Coleridge to ask the philosopher of science, William Whewell, to rename natural philosophers. In 1833, he did so, coining the term ‘scientist’ (Snyder 2000).
5.43 There were, however, two contrary tendencies. The first was towards a unified single social science, e.g., the sociology of Comte. The second was towards specialization. In the end, the second triumphed. Today the Social Sciences breakout into a very wide range of disciplines and sub-disciplines funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada including: administrative studies, archaeology, communications & journalism, criminology, demographics, economics, education, geography, industrial relations, information science, law, library science, political science, psycholinguistics, psychology, recreology & physical education, science policy, social work, sociology and urban & regional studies (Chartrand 1980).
5.44 The Humanities and the Social Sciences (HSS) seek knowledge about the human world. Whether the question is alienation, ethics, history, metaphysics, monopoly, political power or religion; the HSS are concerned with human values. They assign dominance to Sentiment with Reason and Revelation subordinate and Sensation suppressed. The primary dominant is Sentiment, the primary subordinate Reason; the secondary dominant is Revelation, the secondary and suppressed subordinate, Sensation. It is the Primary relationship: Sentiment/Reason that characterizes the HSS - values. And in both, arguably, the pursuit of fame has given way as motivation to a contribution to knowledge.
5.45 Knowledge in the Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS) is value-based and subject to mixed value-free/normative testing in which historical context plays a critical role. It is synthetic in that it seeks reconciliation between objective and subjective truth. It exhibits shifting tolerances through time as old knowledge is recycled in a pedagogic spiral to which new knowledge is added. New knowledge therefore does not necessarily displace old knowledge and revisionism is common, i.e., seeing old things in new ways as well as seeing new things in old ways.
5.46 The limited success of the HSS in generating new knowledge compared to the NES can be attributed to the absence of the Pythagorean, Instrumentation and Puzzle-Solving Effects noted above. First, while there may be some relationship, there is no cognate relationship between mathematics and human behaviour. Second, HSS evidence – in its collection, compilation and analysis - is subject to intermediation by human subjects inherently limiting its objectivity. Third, with the pedagogic exception of economics and its Standard Model, there is no generally accepted paradigm in any HSS discipline corresponding to ‘normal science’ that, according to Kuhn, is required for efficient puzzle-solving.
5.47 When applied, HSS knowledge, formally and informally obtained, generates organizational technology, i.e., the ability to shape and mold human societies. This includes the entrepreneurial and managerial knowledge to combine capital, labour and technology
77
into intermediate and final goods and services designed to satisfy human want, needs and desires. It more generally involves management and organization of the firm and nation-state. It addresses questions about how to motivate workers and managers and how to marry them with financial capital as well as physical plant and equipment. The search for the best in organizational technology is known as In Search of Excellence (Peters & Waterman 1982). In effect, the HSS provide the epistemological basis for governance.
5.48 The effects of organizational technology have been made explicit by Harvey Liebenstein’s discovery of ‘x-efficiency’, i.e., consumption in the act of production. Liebenstein estimated that poor motivation of workers and managers costs the USA between 20 to 40% of gross national product (Liebenstein 1966, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1978, 1981, 1992). This exceeds by an order of magnitude the estimated allocative inefficiency of monopoly. Similarly, it is generally recognized that the post-war success of the Japanese economy is attributable to superior organizational technology. As well, the historical inability of Canadian managers to effectively innovate new products and processes is an example of poor organizational technology (Economic Council 1985). The contribution to innovation of organizational technology was also highlighted in the 1992 World Competitiveness Report (WEF/IMD 1992).
5.49 The size of the HSS Industry has not, to my knowledge, been estimated. Its impact – economic and social, however, can be suggested. HSS research results initially in invisible innovations, i.e. ideas and insights, which affect the cognitive processes and perception of actual and potential goals and values of individuals and communities. HSS research, i.e., new knowledge, has three orders of impact. Primary impact occurs within the research community itself. The research community has been traditionally motivated by the search for knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Secondary impact occurs within the societal guidance mechanism which requires knowledge and technique for purposes of policy development and direction. Public and private policy-makers are motivated by the search for knowledge for the sake of decision. Tertiary impact occurs within the economy and society as a whole resulting in amplification or other modification to the ethos, i.e. the characteristic spirit and beliefs of a community, people or individual, and the individual and collective behaviour of citizens, i.e., institutions. The concerned citizen is motivated by the search for HSS knowledge for the sake of insight into one’s community and one’s ways of life (Chartrand 1980).
5.50 The contemporary Arts consist of four primary disciplines and their sub-disciplines including: the literary, media, performing and visual arts. Each uses a distinct medium of expression: the written word; the recorded sound and/or image; the live stage; and, the visual image, respectively. Each discipline is composed of distinct sub-disciplines and schools. Each has a five stage production cycle: creation, production, distribution, consumption and
78
conservation. And each takes on five distinct functional forms including: the amateur, applied, entertainment, fine and heritage arts (Chartrand April 2000).
5.51 The Arts have troubled western civilization from the beginning. Plato thus warned:
… we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praise of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State (Plato, Book X, 1952: 433-434).
5.52 It is ironic that it was not Art but Economics using Bentham’s hedonic calculus that made pleasure and pain “the rulers of our State”. Fear of Art was reinforced, not diminished, with Christianity. As one of three monotheist religions subscribing to the Mosaic Code (the others being Judaism and Islam), it explicitly prohibits worship of graven images. Among all three ‘peoples of the book’, so named in Islamic tradition, censorship of the image traces back to Moses and the Golden Calf. In the book (the meaning of the word - Bible), the Word is sacred but the image is at best profane; at worst, evil incarnate.
5.53 Metaphysic suppression was reinforced by class suppression: the Arts were for the Mechanical not the Liberal or ‘free’ classes of society. Other than ‘hymns to the gods and praise of famous men” Aristotle tasked the Arts with imitation of Nature. After the fall of Rome a second task was added: imitating the Art of the Ancients. By both tests, the Arts of the Middle Ages were inherently inferior.
5.54 Once the Renaissance imitators using perspective successfully approximated the original – natural or ancient - the Arts, specifically the visual arts, attained a significantly higher social status and the visual artist attained to celebrity. Thus in 1563 in Florence, under the personal influence of Vasari “the painters, sculptors and architects cut their previous connections with the craftsmen’s guilds and formed an Academy of Art (Accademia del Disegno), the first of its kind that served as a model for later similar institutions in Italy and other countries” (Kristeller 1951, 514). Recognition reflected, however, not just the result but also their method: geometric perspective. The artist/engineer/scientist of the Renaissance was a geometer, a mathematician, an image captured in Dürer’s 1514 engraving of Melancolia holding a protractor in his right hand with his chin supported by his left, a pose somewhat reminiscent of Rodin’s much later statue The Thinker (1880). In a manner of speaking, that which allowed music to become a Liberal Art – its Pythagorean or mathematical roots – was demonstrated in the Visual Arts.
5.55 Imitation continued to be the test until the late 18th century when the Fine or Beaux Arts coalesced and were rationalized through Baumgarten’s philosophy of aesthetics - his new science of sensuous knowledge to balance logic as the science of intellectual knowledge (Kristeller 1952, 35). The word aesthetics itself derives from the Greek aisthesis - the activity of perception or sensation - which at
79
root means “taking in” and “breathing in” - a “gasp”, the primary aesthetic response (Hillman 1981). In effect, Baumgarten liberated the Arts from epistemological subordination to Church and State.
5.56 The successful imitation of Nature by the Arts combined with the success of the NES in revealing her secrets led to what is known as “Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes” or the battle of the Ancients and the Moderns. This marked the beginning of the 18th century Enlightenment and the end of the Renaissance and of traditional Humanism (Kristeller 1952, 19). Who are superior, the Ancients or the Moderns? The answer: the Moderns.
5.57 In the Arts, Sensation is the primary dominant that subordinates Sentiment while Intuition is the secondary dominant that subordinates Reason. The primary configuration Sensation/Sentiment characterizes artistic knowledge – quality. As noted above, the reversed position of Sensation - subordinate in the NES but dominant in the Arts - reflects extraversion versus introversion of Sensation. It also highlights four essential differences. First is the use of concepts versus precepts.
Whereas Art begins with desired effects and finds causes to create these effects and no others, Science starts with presumed causes and seeks effects to confirm or negate these causes. Art organizes ignorance by precepts while Science organizes knowledge by concepts (Nevitt 1978, 7).
5.58 A second difference is that new knowledge in the Arts does not necessarily displace the old. Rather King Tut still sells; Shakespeare is still performed; Bach is played more today than in the 17th century. New works are, however, being added all the time to the inherited repertoire once they pass the test of time. Thus artists, unlike scientists, face competition not just from their peers but also from their long-dead predecessors. At the same time, Egalitarian Realism or poke-in-the-eye art including such icons as Mapplethorpe’s homo erotica photographs and Andres Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’ found an audience during the Culture Wars of the 1980s and 1990s (Chartrand 1991). These correspond to the so-called ‘Science Wars’ of the same period (Fuller 2000).
5.59 Third, subject to Reason in the NES, Sensation is restricted to ‘what is’. In the Arts, Sensation is dominant and an avant garde has existed since the mid-19th century that seeks change-for-change’s-sake; it seeks novelty (Scitovsky 1976). The Arts embody the impulse toward the new and original, a self-conscious search for future forms and sensations to the point that the idea of change and novelty overshadows the dimensions of actual change. The artist no longer, as in the past, simply affirms a moral-philosophic tradition but rather searches for a new sensibility, a search which society actively encourages. What is imagined in the mind of the artist today becomes the reality of tomorrow (Bell 1976: 33-35). It is in this sense that Revelation or intuition is the secondary dominant in the Arts.
5.60 Fourth, the role of Reason as dominant in the NES made entry into the University natural. In the case of the Arts, however, with the exception of music (due to its Pythagorean connection with mathematics) and literature (rhetoric and grammar), the Arts were not
80
part of the ancient or medieval liberal arts curriculum (Cantor 1969: 66-67). The Arts were and still are considered ‘crafts’, i.e., they involve experiential learning. This is epistemologically critical – knowing by doing. It was not until the Renaissance that the fine art academy was established as a formal center for visual art education, separate and distinct from the university (vom Busch 1985, 3). In theater and dance, there was no formal training in any English-speaking universities until the late 19th century and the fine arts were not fully admitted until after the Second World War (Robinson 1982, 178-179, 191-192). Once admitted, however, they had a dramatic effect on both the university and English-speaking society in general (Toffler 1965). The traditional independent status of the music conservatory within the university is further evidence of the separate institutional pattern of learning pursued in the Arts.
5.61 Artistic knowledge is concerned with subjective truth; a search for a sense of kosmos or the right ordering of the multiple parts of the world. It is holistic in aesthetic contemplation or gestalt. Testing is purely personal and subjective: ‘It works for me!’ It tends towards increasing tolerance of differences, styles and tastes. It is value laden, not value free.
5.62 When applied, Arts knowledge, formally and informally obtained, generates aesthetic or design technology, i.e., the ability to manipulate sensation through emotion or how we feel. The Arts provide the ‘technology of the heart’. The arts industry includes all profit, nonprofit and public institutions including incorporated and unincorporated enterprise as well as self-employed artists that: (a) use one or more of the arts as a primary factor of production, e.g. advertising, fashion, industrial and product design; (b) use one or more of the arts as a tied-good in consumption, e.g. home entertainment hardware, magazines and newspapers; and/or, (c) produce one or more of the arts as their final output, i.e. create, produce, distribute and/or conserve goods and services in the literary, media, performing, visual and/or heritage arts. Using this inclusive definition, I have elsewhere estimated that the American arts industry accounts for between 6% and 8.5% of Gross National Product, i.e. all goods and services consumed in the United States but not necessarily produced there (Chartrand April 2000).
5.63 Unlike physical and organizational technologies, however, design technology primarily affects the demand-side of the economic equation. In effect, design technology involves the use of the Arts to manipulate the aesthetic or emotional responses of consumers. In this sense, it is the technology of the human heart primarily appealing to emotion not to reason. It is thus more sensitive to culture, custom and tradition than physical technology. This fact, together with the injunction against the study of consumer taste – “De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum” (Stigler & Becker 1977) - explains why there has been little investigation by mainstream economics and why Art is simply ignored in the Standard Model.
5.64 Aesthetic design is fundamentally different from technical or functional design such as the ‘design’ of a more efficient automobile engine. It contributes ‘elegance’ defined as simple but effective or
81
“the best looking thing that works” (Cwi 1985). If a consumer does not like the way a product looks, he or she may simply not try it. In effect, design technology involves marrying aesthetic to utilitarian value.
5.65 Beyond consumer goods, design technology plays a critical role in advertising and forms the foundation for the ‘entertainment industry’. It is generally forgotten that within the ecology of capitalist realism, advertising is the lubricant of the market economy. And advertising, to a great extent, is the application of the literary, media, performing and visual arts to sell goods and services. Actors, dancers, singers, musicians, graphic artists, copywriters, and editors are employed to sell everything from fruit to nuts; from cars to computers, from beer to toilet paper. Traditionally, mainstream economics has viewed advertising (with the exception of pure information) as unproductive because it manipulates consumer wants through non-rational techniques. Such manipulation supposedly reduces consumer sovereignty.
5.66 Entertainment art generates enjoyment, amusement and recreation. In the entertainment arts, America currently leads the world. Thus entertainment programming (film, recordings and TV) has been reported to be the second largest net export of the United States after defense products (The Economist March 11, 1989, 65-66). In a global knowledge-based economy, the Arts involve both economic and geo-political competitiveness.
5.67 If the relationship between science, technology and the university has been problematic in the Anglosphere, the relationship between Art and the economy has been even more so. As noted previously, until 1814 the Statute of Artificers had regulated training and employment of artisans in the craft guild tradition. In that year, responding to deregulation or laissez-faire economic policies, Parliament abolished the statute. In short order, the guild system collapsed and the labor market became flooded with unskilled workers. By 1835 the competitiveness of top-end British products, particularly textiles, had declined to the point that the British Board of Trade appointed a select committee to investigate the problem and recommend remedies. The committee called for the direct application of art in manufacturing in order to maintain competitiveness with European rivals, especially Lyons in France and Munich in Germany. The result was creation of the first school of design in South Kensington in 1836 (Savage, 1985, 94-97). It is interesting to note that the curriculum of the new school was designed to ensure lower-class craftsmen trained therein would never aspire to become artists who were, by definition, gentlemen (and later gentlewomen) who attended the Royal Academy of Art.
5.68 Similarly, in 1870, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts became the first American state to make art education a requirement in the public schools with passage of the Drawing Act. The Act originated through pressure by Boston manufacturers who argued that European students were trained in design and drawing and therefore American manufacturers suffered a competitive disadvantage (Freedman 1985, 21). Within two decades, the same argument served to introduce art education in Canadian schools (Chalmers 1985, 108). During this period, the most eminent of
82
contemporary economists of the day, Alfred Lord Marshall, explicitly recognized the importance of art to economic life, even if he questioned the moral results of art education:
Education in art stands on a somewhat different footing from education in hard thinking: for while the latter nearly always strengthens the character, the former not infrequently fails to do this. Nevertheless the development of the artistic faculties of the people is in itself an aim of the very highest importance, and is becoming a chief factor of industrial efficiency… Increasingly wealth is enabling people to buy things of all kinds to suit the fancy, with but a secondary regard to their powers of wearing; so that in all kinds of clothing and furniture it is every day more true that it is the pattern which sells the things. (Marshall 1920, 177-178)
5.69 Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, however, the economic importance of design, and therefore the contribution of art to national income, has, in effect, been forgotten in the Anglosphere. Partially this reflects the perceived dubious morality of the artist reflected in Marshall’s words. It also reflects the pedagogic triumph of the Pestalozzian rational for art education, namely to develop creativity and expression, which displaced the economic rationale in the 1930s (Betenas 1985, 99-101).
5.70 It also reflects, however, a general shortsightedness on the part of contemporary economists and other social scientists concerning the nature and implications of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution not only transformed economic production, it also transformed the nature of consumptions making phenomena like advertising, the department store, fashion, and the mail order catalogue critical to the modern economy (McCracken 1988, 4). This lack of study has resulted in little empirical evidence concerning the impact of art on economic competitiveness. But while the impact of improved design has not been quantified, its impact on competitiveness is again being recognized:
There is, then, another aspect to culture, namely good taste, good design and creative innovation, that should enable smaller industrial economies to compete effectively in the world economy.... In this endeavor, higher quality implies an organic relationship between business and engineering, on the one hand, and design and craftsmanship, on the other.... High quality products, technologies, plants, homes, cities and locales require the presence of creative artists of all kinds. To increase the long-run supply of artists ... governments must support the artists and the arts. The long-term return from investment in artists and the arts is real and substantial. In the absence of strong public support of this sector, Canada will not reap these benefits. Governments at all levels should increase their contribution to their respective arts councils. (Royal Commission, 1985, pp. 115-116)
5.71 Domains are concerned with the growth of knowledge; the Practices are concerned with its application in satisfying specific human wants, needs and desires. For my purposes, a practice is the “carrying on or exercise of a profession …, esp. of law, surgery, or
83
medicine; the professional work or business of a lawyer or medical man” (OED, practice, 5). I will extend this definition to include other traditional and contemporary professions such as accountant, architect and engineer.
5.72 In turn, a profession is a “vocation in which a professed knowledge of some department of learning or science is used in its application to the affairs of others” (OED, profession, III 6). Put another way, practices “link bodies of knowledge to forms of action” (Layton 1988, 92). I will, however, narrow this definition to exclude the now obsolete definition of profession as “the function or office of a professor in a university or college; … public teaching by a professor” (OED, profession, IV 7).
5.73 Application of professed knowledge to satisfy the needs of others implies knowledge in action accounting for theory, the client/patient and ethics, i.e., “the science of morals; the department of study concerned with the principles of human duty” (OED, ethics, II 2). Professional ethics, of course, are a socially conditioned and historically relative set of values.
5.74 This distinct form of knowledge may be called ‘praxis’ a term with a colourful history. It was first coined by the alchemist, metaphysician and subsequent saint, Albert Magnus, about 1255 C.E. He derived it from a Greek noun of action meaning “doing, acting, action, practice.” (OED, praxis, Epistemology) It was re-coined by Cieszkowski in 1838 to mean “the willed action by which a theory or philosophy… becomes a social actuality.” It was then adopted by Marx in 1844 for whom it explained “how knowledge could give power” not through thought like Hegel but through the will. In this sense, praxis approximates design in its emphasis on intent (OED, praxis, 1 c). It also reflects knowing by doing, not just by the senses or mind. Practice as experience is another facet of praxis as knowledge. More generally, praxis means the “practice or exercise of a technical subject or art, as distinct from the theory of it” (OED, praxis, 1a). For my purposes it will mean ‘knowledge in action’. In this regard, it is important to remember that knowledge can be used as a verb as well as a noun (OED, knowledge, v)
5.75 The Practices centre on the ‘self-regulating professions’ such as accounting, architecture, dentistry, engineering (applied), law and medicine. The Practices engage knowledge in real life situations while domains involve knowledge creation, e.g., knowledge-for-knowledge-sake or art-for-art’s-sake. Praxis is not academic speculation. It is not knowledge as a noun but as a verb affecting the lives of real people. As in aesthetics and science, however, the Practices do observe a certain ‘professional distance’ but the object of concern, directly or indirectly, is the welfare and well being of very subjective human beings with legal rights. Atoms, words and pictures cannot sue, people can and do.
5.76 The Practices draw, merge, mingle and apply knowledge and methodologies from all three domains in varying combinations, e.g., the use of actors by medical schools to prepare future physicians to face the emotional realities of their practice - patients. Another example is the Art of Dentistry. Unlike academic disciplines within knowledge domains, e.g., economics, final certification or ‘licensing’
84
to practice is not generally granted by the university but rather by an independent professional society, e.g., a College of Physicians and Surgeons. This partially reflects the fact that praxis cannot be fully codified, i.e., written down. Put another way, there is a gap between graduation and professionalism that must be filled before being licensed to practice independently. This gap is reflected in the requirement, in all the Practices, of some kind of compulsory apprenticeship, articling or internship before licensing.
5.77 In many ways, the Practices are descendents of medieval guild mysteries operating in the Mechanical Arts. More so than academic disciplines, the Practices control entry and exit, set rates, supervise initiates and regulate practice. In the case of medicine and law they were also the first ‘practical’ subjects of knowledge to be admitted to the university. Some Practices are, however, also associated with grant-giving or funding agencies such as the Medical Research Council of Canada and the National Institutes of Health in the United States.
5.78 Guilds originally received their charters from the Crown granting them monopoly rights in return for fealty and sometimes tribute. Today the Practices are regulated by the State, but as with business law (Commons 1924), most traditional customs and privileges of the Practices are effectively enshrined, preserved and protected by legislation under Common Law.
5.79 As private institutions serving the public purpose – including health, education and welfare as well as wealth creation and preservation and protection of legal rights – the Practices have seldom been acknowledged as critical players in the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy. How they should be regulated and held accountable is, however, an important question for public policy in general and for development of an effective national innovation system in particular. As demonstrated by Birkenshaw, Harden and Lewis (1990) in their review of Government by Moonlight: The Hybrid Parts of the State in the U.K., USA, France, Germany and Austria, there are different ways in which this may be done. More will be said in 10.0 Competitiveness.
5.80 Before ending this chapter with a reconciliation of Knowledge Domains and Practices, I wish to profile one of the most important and relatively recent additions to the Practices – Engineering. This will highlight the different types of knowledge involved in the Practices and differences in national treatment. Engineering, as a formal practice, did not emerge in the English-speaking world until the mid-19th century. It is the offspring of an epistemological ménage à trois of craft technology, mathematics and the natural sciences. It continued the empirical and experimental traditions of the crafts including architecture but replaced rule of thumb mathematics first by statistics (Layton 1976, 692) [D] and, much later, by calculus: “American engineers were still debating in the 1920s whether students needed to learn calculus” (Kranakis 1989, 18). It also absorbed the findings of the natural experimental sciences.
5.81 This order of epistemic integration differs from continental Europe where in France, for example, what might be called
85
‘scientific’ engineering emerged a hundred years earlier with a requirement for training in the calculus at formal ‘academic’ institutes such as the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées (1747) and the Ecole Polytechnique (1794). As a practice, however, it was restricted to public engineering of armaments, canals, fortifications, roads, etc., and did not extend to private industrial production (Finch 1952). In France too, rules of thumb, ‘craft laws’ and design principles rather than mathematics continued to dominate industrial production.
5.82 Engineering in the Anglosphere (Bennett 2000) remains to this day much more of a ‘self-regulating profession’ than an academic discipline as in Europe. Furthermore, emphasis has historically been on industrial research, particularly in the United States, in contrast to ‘theoretical’ studies in France where an industrial research tradition did not develop until well into the twentieth century (Kranakis 1989, 7)
5.83 Excepting the Humanities & Social Sciences, both the NES and the Arts exhibit significant praxis. In the case of the experimental instrumental sciences this includes designing and building instruments as well as their operation. In the Arts, praxis creates effects embodied in sets, props and costumes which produce the illusion of verisimilitude. This facilitates what the poet Samuel Coleridge called the temporary or willing ‘suspension of disbelief” required of an audience. And like the Practices artistic knowledge is intended to affect natural persons in their daily lives. Professional ethics in the Arts, however, are radically different than in the Practices, e.g., to deliberately shock and disturb a client is not normally accepted in the Practices; it is in the Arts, e.g., The Shock of the New (Hughes 1981).
5.84 There are also some borderline cases such as the academic disciplines of geography and psychology which may function like Practices. In the case of psychology, for example, professional practice outside the university is common. Applied psychologists work in business, education and government conducting employee and student testing and placement, e.g., The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ®. Furthermore, psychiatry clearly crosses the border into medical practice. In the Occupational Classification Manual for the Canadian Census of 1971 ten different occupations in psychology were identified as being applicable to any industry (DBS 1971, 63). Similarly, practicing geographers can be found outside the university working in urban and transportation planning departments of governments as well as environmental departments and agencies of both business and government. Furthermore, geography’s link with geology can also crosses over the border into the NES.
5.85 When it comes to economics the border lines become even more obscure. Economists are employed by for-profit and non-profit enterprise as well as government. In the Occupational Classification Manual for the Canadian Census of 1971 thirty-two different occupations in economics were identified as being applicable to any industry (DBS 1971, 63).
86
5.86 Thus the borderline between Domain and Practice is more an osmotic membrane than an impenetrable barrier. Knowledge from Domains seeps into the Practices and praxis seeps into Domains. This is consonant with the interpretation of knowledge as a biological rather than mechanical phenomenon. With respects to Domains and Practices, this mutability can be expressed in the form of two related qubits of knowledge – the IMP and the PED.
5.87 The IMP is a qubitic measure of epistemological knowing via the Natural & Engineering Sciences (NES), the Humanities & Social Sciences (HSS), the Arts (literary, media, performing and visual) and the Practices. The IMP can be expressed as some function of NES, HSS, Arts, Practices. In brief, the NES generate knowledge about the physical world of matter and energy; the HSS generate knowledge about being human - individually and collectively; the Arts generate knowledge about human emotion; and, the Practices apply knowledge gleaned from the first three to answer practical and pressing problems of daily human life, e.g., death and taxes. The three knowledge domains – at their professional peaks - generate new knowledge as ‘knowledge-for-knowledge-sake’ or ‘art-for-art’s-sake’ while the Practices apply knowledge to solve practical human problems.
5.88 As an example of the IMP in action, consider a science fiction novel which is, at its best, a work of artistic intelligence. Such a work, by definition, is based on the extension of known NES knowledge. To be convincing, however, such knowledge must be placed within a believable social setting developed from HSS knowledge and subject to the Practices of daily life. The mix, blend or balance of NES, HSS, Arts and Practices in such a novel will be quite different from an article in a NES journal. However, such an article will often include diagrams whose usefulness is a function of artistic presentation. Similarly, to be accessible to readers, it must conform to grammatical and syntactical standards based on HSS knowledge in addition to any mathematical formulae it may contain. Both the science fiction novel and the scientific article are also both subject to legal practice in the form of intellectual property rights.
5.89 While the IMP provides a qubitic measure of epistemological knowledge, another knowledge qubit can be identified at the pedagogic level. Knowledge can thus be classified according to its domain/practice (d/p), discipline (d), sub-discipline (sd) and specialty (s). This quartet constitutes the qubit PED which is some function of domain/practice, discipline, sub-discipline and specialty. Returning to the example of a science fiction novel and scientific journal article, the novel emerges from the Arts; the article from the NES. In terms of discipline, the novel is part of the literary arts; the article may be in biology, chemistry or physics. At the sub-disciplinary level the work of science fiction belongs to prose as opposed to poetry; the article may concern marine biology, organic chemistry or sub-atomic particle physics. At the specialty level, the novel is a work of fiction rather than non-fiction and falls into the specialty category of
87
‘Science Fiction & Fantasy’ while the article may concern marine mammals, reptiles or fish.
5.0 Domains & Practices
[A] HHC: With respect to analytic psychology, Jung observed:
“Experience shows that it is practically impossible, owing to adverse circumstances in general, for anyone to develop all his psychological functions simultaneously. The demands of society compel a man to apply himself first and foremost to the differentiation of the function with which he is best equipped by nature, or which will secure him the greatest social success. Very frequently, indeed as a general rule, a man identifies more or less completely with the most favoured and hence the most developed function. It is this that gives rise to the various psychological types.” Quoted in Sharp 1991, ‘Primary Function’.
With respect to computers, the technical term is master/slave rather than dominant/subordinate. Some Black American commentators have objected to the term for obvious reasons. The terminology may also reflect, however, Aldrich’s concern that the classical contempt towards technology continues today but with the mechanical device cast in the role of slave. (Aldrich 1969, 383)
[B] “Nature is given to man ready-made; we may try to elucidate it, but we cannot improve it. But language, literature, history, politics, law, and religion, as well as economic and social life, are constantly on the move, and they are advanced by poets, playwrights, novelists, politicians, preachers, journalists, and all kinds of other, non-scholarly, writers. These are the primary initiators of cultural changes, rather than the Faculties of Arts which contribute to the advancement of culture mainly at second-hand, by studying language, literature, history, law, religion, and so on, as produced outside the universities. Hence, academic science has an advantage over the humanities similar to that it holds over technology…
We may conclude that the profound distinction between science and technology is but an instance of the difference between the study of nature on the one hand and the study of human activities and the products of human activities, on the other. The universities cannot be the main source of progress either in humanistic or in material culture, as they are in the natural sciences.” (Polanyi 1960-61, 406)
[C] “It is probable that research-front technology is strongly related only to that part of scientific knowledge that has been packed down as part of ambient learning and education, not to research-front science… Similarly, research-front science is related only to the ambient technological knowledge of the previous generation of students, not to the research front of the technological state of the art and its innovations… This reciprocal relation between science and technology, involving the research front of one and the accrued archive of the other, is nevertheless sufficient to keep the two in phase in their separate growths within each otherwise independent cumulation.” (Price 1965, 568)
[D] Layton referencing Benjamin F. Isherwood’s Experimental Researches in Steam Engineering, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1863) notes:
“He acknowledged that his own work was simply “a collection of original engineering statistics with the general laws deduced from them.” But he insisted that “science is nothing but a similar collection of statistics.” Isherwood similarly imputed to science a strongly utilitarian cast. To him sound theory consisted of “the whole of the
88
knowledge we possess on any subject, put in such order and form that we can make a reliable practical application of it.” While Isherwood was proposing to limit drastically the idea of science and general law in one direction, he was expanding it in another. The general laws which he had deduced from his statistical tables were not statements about nature at all but rather rules for the design of a man-made object. In short, Isherwood incorporated engineering principles into the laws of science. (Layton 1976, 692-693)
89