1.0/ Introduction

1.         In his April 25, 2005 ‘State of the Union’ address to the Duma, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, called the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century (BBC April 25, 2005).  Whether true or not, this event, accompanied by the nearly synchronistic conversion of Communist China to market economics marked the end of the Market/Marx Wars which had raged and divided the world for almost a century and a half beginning with publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848. 

2.         The Communist Revolution failed.  The previous, Republican Revolution, survives.  A world divided and threatened with nuclear winter for almost half a century now rallies around the last ideology standing – market economics with its political and legal corollaries: popular democracy and private property.  This is not, however, the end of ideology (Bell 1960) nor of history (Fukuyama 1992).  Now that the fog of war has dissipated, it is time to reconsider both victor and vanquished.  Glorification of ‘us’ and demonization of ‘them’ are byproducts of war - hot, cold and ideological; reflection and reconciliation are byproducts of peace.

3.         The word ‘ideology’ has many meanings today (Gerring 1997) but was coined simply enough by Condillac, a contemporary of Adam Smith (1776), to mean ‘the science of ideas’ (OED, ideology, 1a).  Separation of Church and State was critical to both American and French Republican Revolutions.  Creation of a secular ‘science of ideas’, to counter the awe and mystery of religious and metaphysical thought and ritual, was part of a revolutionary agenda designed to overthrow an Ancient Regime of subordination by birth. 

4.         The antagonistic relationship between religion and secular ideology today appears, in its most virulent form, in the guise of Al Queda and a jihadist radical Islamic campaign of terror against ‘the West’.  However, the West itself remains divided between resurgent religious fundamentalism (faith) and a secular ideology of science (knowledge).  Of this global dilemma, Carl Jung wrote:

The rupture between faith and knowledge is a symptom of the split consciousness which is so characteristic of the mental disorder of our day.  It is as if two different persons were making statements about the same thing, each from his own point of view, or as if one person in two different frames of mind were sketching a picture of his experience.  If for “person” we substitute “modern society,” it is evident that the latter is suffering from a mental dissociation, i.e., a neurotic disturbance.  In view of this, it does not

1

help matters at all if one party pulls obstinately to the right and the other to the left.  (Jung 1970, 285)

5.         If technology cum Heidegger (1955) enframes and enables us as physical beings within a human built environment then ideology (inclusive of religion) enframes and enables us as mental beings within local, regional, national and global communities of ideas.  It is this enframing and enabling of minds within systems of ideas that forms, in part at least, what theoretical biology calls the noösphere, i.e., “that part of the world … [consisting of human] conceptual thought… as opposed to the geosphere, or nonliving world, and the biosphere, or living world (Encyclopedia Britannica 2003).

6.         Today, with the exception of North Korea and Cuba, no Nation-State on earth subscribes to economic Marxism while the People’s Republic of China struggles to reconcile private property and the marketplace with the political clarity of Leninism (M. Polanyi 1957, 480).  (In this view, conversion is a necessary yet distasteful, temporary detour on the road to perfect communism.)  Nonetheless, virtually all Nation-States are either current or expectant members of a World Trade Organization (WTO) rooted in the ideology of the marketplace.

7.         Ideologies are, if you will, organisms capable of adaptation, growth, mutation, recombination and symbiosis.  They may also exhibit “avalanches of speciation and extinction” (Kaufmann 2000, 216).  This metaphor of avalanches of change has been extended by Kauffman from molecular biology or genomics to the economy or what he calls the ‘econosphere’.  He draws a parallel with Joseph Schumpeter’s description of technological change as the “gales of creative destruction” (Kauffman 2000, 216; Schumpeter 1950, 81-86).  He also suggests its application to the growth and development of human culture and knowledge.  It should not therefore be surprising that just as the former Second World of centrally planned economies melted into a single global marketplace, the economies of the First World were shifting from a foundation based on manufacturing to one based on knowledge. 

8.         Similarly, it should not be surprising that as the knowledge-based economy emerged the definition of knowledge itself underwent what amounts to a scientific revolution (Kuhn  1996).  An old philosophy of science modeled on the ‘when-then’ causality of physics (Grene 2004, 95) is increasingly being displaced by causality by purpose, both natural purpose in biology and human purpose in works of aesthetic, intellectual and technological intelligence (Aldrich 1969).  The emerging science of genomics arguably represents a marriage of both natural and human purpose.

9.         Ideologies, as organized systems of ideas, concern therefore both human nature and Nature herself.  The later are generally called ‘sciences’.  To classify the scientific study of Nature as ideology may sound strange to some but as Michael Polanyi has written “the very

2

substantial flaws which the rigorously positive conception of science contains … requires to be supplemented by fiducial elements - which I shall call ‘scientific beliefs’ - if we are to draw a true picture of science.”(M. Polanyi 1950, 27).

10.        ‘Belief’ is a characteristic of ideology, not of traditionally narrow ‘positivistic’ science.  Ideologies concerned with human nature, on the other hand, even when portrayed as ‘scientific’, e.g., Marxism-Leninism (Polanyi 1957), are fundamentally flawed.  This is due to their object – humanity - which remains far more opaque to understanding than Nature revealed over four centuries of the experimental method.  This varying transparency may simply reflect the ascending complexity of physical, biological and intellectual forms or, alternatively, levels of analysis, i.e., geosphere, biosphere and noösphere.

11.        In this presentation I am concerned with the meaning of ‘knowledge’ and how it affects the competitiveness of nations in a global knowledge-based economy.  In a way, such an economy is the ideological part of the noösphere involved with the buying and selling of ideas as well as other knowledge transactions.  After formal definition of the problem (2.0 Problem: A Flawed Ideology) and the methodology adopted to resolve it (3.0 Methodology: Trans-Disciplinary Induction), I will roll a snow ball down the mountain to gather mass and momentum as increasing definition of knowledge until it finally crashes into the valley below where lays the Nation-State.

12.        First, I will compact knowledge into a snowball as a monotonic abstract Platonic noun like Beauty, Truth and Justice (4.0 Knowledge as Noun).  I will demonstrate that this monotonic definition is rooted in the undifferentiated but polymorphous biological human need to know.  Knowledge, as noun, also exhibits immeasurability and incommensurability finding general expression through inherently limited and biased human languages including mathematics and English. 

13.        Second, as the snowball rolls it accumulates meaning as a diaphonic verb ‘to know’ invoking two alternate yet complementary ways of knowing, i.e., by Science and Design, or rather, knowledge acquired through reductive and/or constructive methods (5.0 Knowledge as Verb).  I will examine each, their historic relationship and propose a reconciliation to satisfy Kauffman's hope “to glimpse a constructivist companion to the reductionist thesis” (Kauffman 2000, 268).

14.        Third, rolling further and faster down the mountain, knowledge assumes visible physical form as personal & tacit, codified and tooled knowledge (6.0 Knowledge as Form).  The last – tooled knowledge - constitutes what is conventionally called technology, the technology that enframes and enables us to extend the human senses and grasp of the natural world.  These, in turn, take form as inputs to, and outputs of, a knowledge-based economy.  As inputs, knowledge takes form as: (i) codified & tooled capital, personal & tacit labour and toolable natural resources.  As outputs, it takes form as (ii) the Person, Code and Tool.  I will also demonstrate that codified and

3

tooled knowledge acquire meaning or function only when mediated by a natural Person.  Put another way, all knowledge is ultimately personal & tacit.

15.        Fourth, wrapped in three layers of definition, the snowball will then bulge out across the mountain side with content (7.0 Knowledge as Content) considered with respect to etymology (Chapter 8), psychology (Chapter 9), epistemology & pedagogy (Chapter 10), law (Chapter 11) and economics (Chapter 12). 

16.        Fifth, the snowball, now a veritable avalanche, finally crashes into the Nation-State below.  It is here the metaphor must change.  Creative destruction is not simple destruction.  What Kauffman calls ‘coconstruction’ and ‘coevolution’ sets in (Kauffman 2000).  The snowball breaks apart.  Its pieces collide, combine and coalesce with the Nation-State and its constituent institutions and networks, mutating their structure, form and function.  I will examine the nature of the Nation-State, consider the shifting sands of sovereignty on which it stands and outline its governance as custodian, facilitator, patron, architect and/or engineer of the national knowledge-base (13.0 The Nation-State).

17.        Sixth, I will then consider the competitiveness of nations by reference to a production function in which all inputs, outputs and coefficients are defined in terms of knowledge.  I will then consider comparative advantage with respect to knowledge as a noun, verb, form and content (14.0 Competitiveness).  Furthermore, I will progressively displace the contemporary sports metaphor of competitiveness - ‘win/lose’ - with the biological metaphor of fitness to adapt to a rapidly changing economic landscape through coevolution and coconstruction with other Nation-States or, more generally, with other “autonomous agents” (Kauffman 2000).

18.        Seventh, and finally (15.0 Conclusions), I will offer three sets of closing comments about knowledge, the production function and the Nation-State.  The first set will involve the causal hierarchy of knowledge, ‘dirty hands’ from its misapplication and ideological commensurabilities between knowledge domains.  The second will concern the production function for a knowledge-based economy and the labour theory of knowledge.  The third and final set of conclusions will concern the fragility of the Nation-State, its role as prime attractor in a global knowledge-based economy, the limits of comparative advantage and the ideological coevolution of the Nation-State and economics.

 4

1.1/ Acknowledgements

1.         I wish to acknowledge my supervisor, Dr. Peter W.B. Phillips of the Department of Political Studies and Director of the College of Biotechnology, University of Saskatchewan (USASK) who provided support through the many twists and turns of academic reorganization of the Interdisciplinary Program and guided this work to its completion. 

2.         To my Advisory Committee I wish to thank: Professor George Khachatourians, Head of Applied Microbiology and Food Science, Department of Agriculture at USASK for his inspiration and encouragement to undertake this effort in the first place; Professor Tom Steele of the Department of Physics & Engineering Physics and Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies, College of Arts & Sciences, USASK whose intellectual skepticism served me well in shaping the crucial concept of ‘tooled knowledge’; Professor Grant Isaac of the College of Commerce and Chuck and Norma Childers’ Chair Professor for Saskatchewan Enterprise whose good nature and insight, particularly at the difficult beginnings and end of the process, encouraged me to continue; and, Professor Zaheer Baber of the Department of Sociology and Canada Research Chair in Science, Technology and Social Change for answering the call to join the Committee in spite of his busy and hectic schedule.  I also thank GELS Prairies for their financial assistance.

3.         I also take the opportunity to thank: Professor Morris Altman, Head of the Economics Department for directing me towards the work of Nathan Rosenberg and his ‘Black Box’; Professor Joel Bruneau, also of the Economics Department, who encouraged development of a more formal economic epistemology; Professor Murray Fulton, Director of the Interdisciplinary Program for directing me to the critically important work of Brian Loasby; and, Professor Glen Aikenhead of the College of Education for his friendship, conversation and directing me to the work of Ken Kawasaki which highlights how our understanding of knowledge is limited by the natural language we use.

4.         I would also like to acknowledge the support of my initial application by my former professors (then at Carleton University) and sometimes colleagues: Gilles Paquet, Director, Centre for Governance; University of Ottawa; A. L. Keith Acheson, Professor, Department of Economics, Carleton University; and, Christopher Maule, Professor, Department of Economics, Carleton University.  I would also like to acknowledge Richard Vanderberg, formerly of Carleton University, for introducing me to the ‘old’ activist Institutional Economics of John R. Commons.  This introduction has guided my footsteps ever since.

5.         On a more personal level I wish to thank my friend and colleague Guy Morin of the federal department of Indian Affairs & Northern Development for his time and patience in hearing me out and, most of all, I wish to thank Grier and Olivia for their patience and support.

5

Index

2.0 Problem: A Flawed Ideology

IDEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION:

The Competitiveness of Nations

in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy