During this class, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing simplicity. I can certainly understand that simplicity is held as a virtue in most scientific fields, Occam's Razor and all that, but I find myself trying to generate arguments against this virtue, perhaps because of my experience with bureaucracy, or as a result of cogent arguments that question the limits of Occam's Razor. At many times during my career I have seen simplicity used as a weapon to silence critics of various proposed changes or "improvements" in public education. A decision to close this program here or cut funding there is tied to "simple facts" but unfortunately using "simplistic arguments" to justify the use of these facts, and not others. Too often, simplicity, particularly in a policy and governance context, is used as a shield to prevent others from prying into how little work was done to establish the facts, or how thin the grounds are for making claims about the veracity of those facts. Without getting into details, I got to see this pattern repeated many times at the local level, sometime with a front row seat, sometimes from afar. If I had to offer a defense of this practice, that is, the oversimplification of cases and contexts by discouraging anything more than superficial analysis and reliance on the first set of facts that present themselves on a preliminary investigation of the thing being decided on, I would suggest that educational leaders have virtually no training in the kinds of fields that would normally offer challenges to perfunctory treatment of issues. We need more philosophers to become educational leaders!
This may seem tangential to the notion of simplicity as discussed in the class, but it is important to know about the association I bring to this subject if I hope to dispel or at least challenge my pre-concieved notions and biases. It also raises the question: if important decisions have been made in education by masking complex issues with a cloak of complexity, then what else have we been sold because someone (a company, a group of experts, a government) has offered up a Simple Truth or conclusion about something because it was the easiest path through a bureaucratic quagmire. At any rate, I believe it is as healthy to have a robust skepticism of all claims to simplicity as it is to seek out simple theories or models of best fit.
Speaking of bias, I was stopped by this line from one of the articles we read: "Preferences for simpler theories are widely thought to have played a central role in many important episodes in the history of science." (Simplicity in the Philosophy of Science from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The history of science, here and elsewhere, is probably taken to mean the history of Western Science. I can't help but wonder about the correlation with colonial, andocentric, and Eurocentric perspectives. Does the use of a contrasting perspective to traditional Western Science, feminist standpoint theory for example, challenge the appeal to simplicity as a virtue and use of simpler theories? What is simplicity, again, is masking complexity because it contains perspectives and interpretations within existing paradigms?
I wrote two quotes at the top of my copy of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the noted social and political Viennese philosopher Karl Popper..I'm really not sure if it was his words or something I picked up in class: "science must begin with myths, and the criticism of myths" and "science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplication." Taken together, these quotes could furnish a course-length study on their own, but I appreciate how they frame, for myself anyway, the important bookends of a study on the faith in simplicity in scientific research, particularly of a social kind applied to policy and culture. I made a note to return to Popper's disdain for historicism. I sense that many Social Studies teachers are unwitting acolytes of historical determinism, so perhaps Popper will suggest a cure. I should also note that the most interesting word I learned while reading about Popper was amanuensis, as in Popper's wife was also his amanuensis. It means secretary.
This may seem tangential to the notion of simplicity as discussed in the class, but it is important to know about the association I bring to this subject if I hope to dispel or at least challenge my pre-concieved notions and biases. It also raises the question: if important decisions have been made in education by masking complex issues with a cloak of complexity, then what else have we been sold because someone (a company, a group of experts, a government) has offered up a Simple Truth or conclusion about something because it was the easiest path through a bureaucratic quagmire. At any rate, I believe it is as healthy to have a robust skepticism of all claims to simplicity as it is to seek out simple theories or models of best fit.
Speaking of bias, I was stopped by this line from one of the articles we read: "Preferences for simpler theories are widely thought to have played a central role in many important episodes in the history of science." (Simplicity in the Philosophy of Science from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The history of science, here and elsewhere, is probably taken to mean the history of Western Science. I can't help but wonder about the correlation with colonial, andocentric, and Eurocentric perspectives. Does the use of a contrasting perspective to traditional Western Science, feminist standpoint theory for example, challenge the appeal to simplicity as a virtue and use of simpler theories? What is simplicity, again, is masking complexity because it contains perspectives and interpretations within existing paradigms?
I wrote two quotes at the top of my copy of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the noted social and political Viennese philosopher Karl Popper..I'm really not sure if it was his words or something I picked up in class: "science must begin with myths, and the criticism of myths" and "science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplication." Taken together, these quotes could furnish a course-length study on their own, but I appreciate how they frame, for myself anyway, the important bookends of a study on the faith in simplicity in scientific research, particularly of a social kind applied to policy and culture. I made a note to return to Popper's disdain for historicism. I sense that many Social Studies teachers are unwitting acolytes of historical determinism, so perhaps Popper will suggest a cure. I should also note that the most interesting word I learned while reading about Popper was amanuensis, as in Popper's wife was also his amanuensis. It means secretary.
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