[Fis] Scientific communication (from Mark)

[PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ]

________________________________________
De: Mark Johnson [johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com],



Dear Dai, Rafael, Loet and all,

Thank you for your comments - the theological connection interests me
because it potentially presents a paradigm of a more vulnerable
and open dialogue.

Loet, clearly the redundancy is apophatic, although one has to be
cautious in saying this: the domain of the apophatic is bigger than
the domain of Shannon redundancy. At some point in the future we may
do better in developing measurement techniques for 'surprise' in
communication (I wonder if Lou Kauffman's Recursive Distinguishing is
a way forwards...). Shannon's formulae have served us well because
we've constrained our digital world around them. "Surprise", from a
phenomenological perspective, is a much more slippery thing than the
measure of probability. There are, as Keynes and others identified,
fundamental ontological assumptions about induction which do not
appear to be sound in probabilistic thinking. These questions are not
separable from questions about the nature of empirical reasoning
itself (Keynes used Hume as his reference point), and by extension,
about the communication between scientists. I still don't know what
information is; I've simply found it more helpful and constructive to
think about constraint, and Shannon redundancy presents itself as a
fairly simple thing to play with.

Back to scientific communication, I've been looking at David Bohm
whose thoughts on dialogue are closely related to his thinking about
physics, and to my own concern for constraint. He writes:

"when one comes to do something (and not merely to talk about it or
think about it), one tends to believe that one already is listening to
the other person in a proper way. It seems then that the main trouble
is that the other person is the one who is prejudiced and not
listening. After all, it is easy for each one of us to see that other
people are 'blocked' about certain questions, so that without being
aware of it, they are avoiding the confrontation of contradictions in
certain ideas that may be extremely dear to them. The very nature of
such a 'block' is, however, that it is a kind of insensitivity of
"anaesthesia" about one's own contradictions." (Bohm, "On Dialogue",
p.4)

The blocks are complex, but "published work" and "reputation" are
important factors in establishing them. I was at a conference last
week where a highly established figure castigated a young PhD student
who was giving an excellent but challenging presentation: "have you
read ANY of my books?!". The student dealt with the attack elegantly;
everyone else thought it revealed rather more about the constraints of
ego of the questioner (confirming a few suspicions they might have had
beforehand!)

Our practices of "Not communicating" in science are, I think,
well-demonstrated by considering this encounter between Richard
Dawkins, Rowan Williams and Anthony Kenny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bow4nnh1Wv0

I think it's worth pointing out the constraints (or "blocks") of their
respective
positions, which (particularly in Dawkins case) are very clearly on
display. My reading of this is that they attempt to communicate by
coordinating terminology/explanations/etc. All the time they are aware
of the fact that they have fundamentally different constraints: there
is no overlap of constraint, and really no communication. The medium
of the discussion is part
of the problem: it structures itself around the 'topics' for debate,
and then it becomes a matter of not making oneself vulnerable within
that frame (this is what Bohm advocated avoiding). Yet for
communication (or dialogue) to take place between
these people, mutual vulnerability (I suggest) would have to be the
starting point. The discussion is also framed by the history and
reputation established through the each participant's published work.

One of the reasons why I mentioned the theological work (and why I
think this is important) is that it is much harder to talk about
theology without making oneself vulnerable - or at least, an
invulnerable theology comes across as dogmatism... of the kind that in
this instance, is most clearly exemplified by Dawkins!

What's missing is usually our vulnerability.

Best wishes,

Mark

--
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Institute of Learning and Teaching
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
University of Liverpool

Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com