A Legitimate Concern

• Phenomenological Science? by John Fentress, 3/24/98
  • Hmmm..... Code Words??? by D. William, 4/19/98
    
    

The existence of code words and aliens is a legitimate concern when one stays in "phenomenological mode". As clinicians, many know much more about this than I do. Part may be how the issues are framed. Carl Jung wrote a small book on space ships, not to talk about space ships per se, but to acknowledge that space ship sitings in the early 60s were common. This, to him, was a hard psychological fact.

Phenomenological science certainly sounds like an oxymoron. For those who propose it a valid part is insistence upon direct observation (or observation as direct as one can get). This can, paradoxically perhaps, also mean "personal observation" - a filling in of "objective" fact with individual twists and turns. That, we all agree, is not science, although one can in principle have a science where "personal observation" in the above sense is the subject matter (as in space ships).

Just yesterday I received a Fax from a person at The Naropa Institute who offered thoughts for a future course related to Phenomenologica Science. I won't give the author's name, as this was an exploratory draft. It is well written, and perhaps can serve as a framework for any who wish to join in on the conversation/debate.

HERE ARE THE WORDS I RECEIVED (by Fax, not spaceship):

"Possible title: TRADITIONAL AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL SCIENCE: OBSERVING THE UNIVERSE

DESCRIPTION: How do scientists perceive the world and then try to understand those perceptions? How can the study of their ways guide us to connect to the world beyond our own minds and then use this connection to understand the world more deeply? How are the scientist's ways related to the perceptions of the artist and how are they unique? This course {tentative outline} will explore ourselves as observers and the world of events and behaviors that bear observing. We will enter the complex world of interdependencies and paradoxes, observing stability and change, separateness and connectedness and the many ways events go beyond mere interaction and begin to mold one another. We will also come to realize the subtle ways the observer affects what is observed and can, in turn be affected by it."

Here is an interesting issue. The course does not sound "quite like science"; its not, at least in any traditional sense. However, some of the questions as posed by the author are both interesting and potentially valuable in my view. That is why I rant against "objectivist science", where one bias that is shared takes on the religious zeal of true objectivity. Can indeed sound a bit "alien".

Sometimes hard to share our spaces, whatever ships we happen to be on.

In sum this ship/space I am trying to articulate has two biases:

The first bias is that shared blinders (via methodologies, concepts, etc.) can mold individuals into a single way of thinking, thus appearing "objective" when it really means similarly prejudiced (compromised).

The second, related bias, is that science as a human enterprise always involves internal processing by the observer. Thus, comparing different "initial biases" can reveal different perspectives which in turn deserve exploration.

A second story, connected to the first:

I just returned from a very good international conference on motor control. SCIENCE (big letters) was at the heart of this conference. Many very sophisticated engineering and mathematical models, of movements plus mechanisms/systems of neural control, were presented. In formalizing these models both biological and psychological realities were often compromised (simplified) to fit the equations. Fine. Good stuff.

The next question is the old one of trading off reliability for validity. I am not certain whether some of these models were more than reified redescriptions of abstracted sets of phenomena. Here is the problem in a nutshell. We can simplify in science, indeed must. If we forget what we do when we simplify nature we can mistake nature in its broader sense as being encapsulated within, totally within, our simplifications. We share simplifications and we appear scientific in the sense that we de facto agree with others who share our simplifications. So, the real issue might be: How do we go beyond those simplifications without caving into a "anything goes" alternative? I do not think the question offers a simple answer. Some might prefer not to ask it. I think it deserves asking.

There is an alternative emphasis which is quite respectable. Take science as biased and limited. Do not extrapolate to broader issues from the necessarily limited stances that everyday science gives us, and gives us well. Enjoy art for its own sake, smell the rose, and let it go. But it IS interesting to wonder why some forms of art have impact, on some people, and why roses smell like they do (subjective experiences). Maybe these experiences are beyond science in their full explanation. I prefer Crick's stance that we have not even begun to ask the appropriate questions, and that we will need to be creative as well as critical in asking these questions. Issues of evolutionary history might give us some clues, but they (obviously) are also hard to pin down. We don't want to handwave our foes into laughing fits.

It must be (my view as outside observer) that a skilfull clinician - as a skilfull ethologist - has hunches based upon vast stores of past experience: that person is paranoid, that wolf is about to attack. It is often difficult to pin down the cues we use, but neither of us (clinician or ethologist) wants to avoid access to the wisdom of those cues + experience, even though they themselves are often not well articulated. IFF that is true, then we might want to probe how we practice our crafts using those cues, how others (with other biases/cues) might come up with different pictures, how these pictures might relate to one another, etc. Not easy, to be sure. Maybe close to impossible in fact.

Point: If I hear one speaking of aliens and spaceships I need not believe in either aliens or spaceships to think there is something worth investigating here. In less extreme forms, if someone "sees" nature differently than I do, I might do well to try to access that person's framework. I can then ask whether that framework has sensible rules on its own, and whether it might offer something to my framework. The next question is where one draws the line in all of this. Sounds a bit fluid and non-ending.

At this point I have recently turned to some philosopher friends who study frameworks of human knowledge. Their problem is that their explanations rarely get beyond word juggling. Direct observation and fact are too often neglected, at least from the perspective of my bias. Given this bias, I think they often need closer contact with the "phenomenology" of nature, broadly defined. Here phenomena can range from isolated "fact" to "networks of facts" to "mechanisms" (and who we interpret them in relation to phenomena) to "complex systems". When these complex systems seem to be at the alien/spaceship level most of us indeed beat a retreat. There are probably good reasons for this, but, I submit, there are many less extreme forms of alternative perception that deserve our sensitivities - simply because our own perceptions are guided by rules that are less than fully understood. Where to draw the line in the sand is not a fully objective issue; sometimes we just feel better being in one space, on one ship, than with the alternatives.

Maybe indeed the full scope of science, as a phenomenon, is beyond science to understand fully. That is, can one have a SCIENCE of science? If not, then the foundations of science are, by scientific standards, a bit shaky. (Can I do an experiment, with proper controls, to COMPLETELY eliminate alternative views as OBJECTIVELY inferior to science...say in human values?)

This type of query, in a sense, becomes "recreational science". If I want to BUILD a spaceship, then I call the engineers. If it works, its real. That is fine for technology. If a theory in science works, it might be "real", or it might be a currently accepted bias that will crumble. I then call the theorist or philosopher, or even clincian, for help.

Anyway, I am probably off target re. the points you make.

John

• Some Clarification by Doug William, 4/27/98