Posted by Yogesh Malhotra on September 03, 1999 at 14:30:08:

In Reply to: Re: Beyond the "Stovepipes" of Industry & Academia posted by Reilly Atkinson on September 02, 1999 at 21:46:22:

It is heartening to find the divergence of perspectives that is the hallmark of this forum and that characterizes the process of sense-making at a global scale. As evident, many of us, coming from diverse experiences and backgrounds, bring forth our perspectives - translating small slices of our "tacit knowledge" into a more explicit form. The differences are important as these differences help in creating the necessary tension for surfacing and reconciling one's assumptions with others' through this medium of cyberspace.

Like many of the other "renaissance" practitioners and scholars on this forum, my past has taken me across the boundaries of engineering, computer science, business administration, philosophy, psychology, sociology and public administration. Although trained in the rigorous methodologies of scientific research, my 'reflective practitioner' mindset has been trying to reconcile the tools, technologies and methodologies of science with the problems of the 'new world of business' around us.

Most interesting discoveries in science as well as practice seem to be hidden along the boundaries of the disciplines. As observed by Kees and others, often one feels the need to 'set apart the blinders' to appreciate the "unity in diversity" to reconcile the validity of the discipline-bounded theories through the lens of multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary insights.

You have referred to the quote about the doctoral thesis by Dr. Laurence Peter (of Peter's Principle fame - "everyone rises to one's level of incompetence"). Your point is well taken and it is heartening to observe that your research work has found a following in the world. Most of those in sociological research are well aware of the 'file drawer syndrome' (95% of research never getting reported as its doesn't fit the 'mould') as well as the disconnect between the 'theories in action' and 'theories in use' of science. For instance, when questioned why science doesn't positively affect policy making in certain areas such as educational psychology (in line with the assertion by Campbell and Cook), a domain expert had stated that most policy-makers may not be much caring about science. The obvious question he was asked: if science doesn't have any relevance for the 'real world' then why care about science.

The quote about the doctoral thesis does take a stab at the constraining and straitjacketed disciplining of science that constrains inquiry into the interdisciplinary assumptions that may very well be at the basis of some such 'disciplines'. The established structures of science, while providing some degree of comfort and grounding, may often need to shaken up by those who traverse across the boundaries of disciplines. While my formal doctoral work has been raising queries from across the continents, however my stronger 'alternative hypotheses' that underpin the evlution of @Brint.com seem to have had a greater impact on the world of business and knowledge.

Here are some more quotes to add to the ongoing stream of dialog:

"[Individuals who break through by inventing a new paradigm are] almost
always...either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm
they change....These are the men who, being little committed by
prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are
particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define
a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace
them." (Thomas S. Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions)

"Design, properly viewed, is an enormous liberation of the intellectual spirit, for it challenges this spirit to an unbounded speculation about possibilities."

-- Churchman, C.W. (1971). The Design of Inquiring Systems, New York, NY:
Basic Books.

"Knowledge carries with it both a tremendous joy and a great despair -- a
joy of being at one with a whole area of living human activity, and a
great despair in recognizing how little this oneness really is compared
to what it might be."


-- Churchman, C.W. (1971). The Design of INQUIRING SYSTEMS: Basic
Concepts of Systems and Organization, Basic Books, New York, NY, p. 11.

"The naiveté of a scientist, while it is a professional adaptation, is not a professional defect. A man who approaches science with the point of view of an officer of detective police would spend most of his time frustrating tricks that are never going to be played on him, trailing suspects who would be perfectly willing to give an answer to a direct question, and in general playing the fashionable cops-and-robbers game as it is now played within the realm of official and military science. I have not the slightest doubt that the present detective-mindedness of the lords of scientific administration is one of the chief reasons for the barrenness of so much present scientific work."

-- Wiener, N. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and
Society, Avon, New York, NY, 1967.

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