Another important post from Overcoming Bias about why it is difficult to explain things to other people.
Overcoming Bias: Expecting Short Inferential Distances
Call it “inferential distance” if you like; I like to call it “building on concepts”. We all acquire concepts when we learn things, and at the end of your academic education things look simple in your concept space which would have been incomprehensible in a different (unmolded) concept space. That is essentially what makes it so difficult to convey scientific knowledge to the public; and even for scientists of different disciplines to communicate.
As my thesis is rather interdisciplinary I have ventured into diverse scientific communities (cognitive science, biology, physics, philosophy, computer science).
I have found that the scientific/epistemic cultures in different disciplines are so alien to one another, that when I venture from one seminar into another I feel like visiting different worlds.
To me the furthering both of interdisciplinary dialogue and conveyance of scientific knowledge to the public are of paramount importance, and should be made one of the top agendas of philosophy departements.
An interesting subject would be to start building concept hierarchies: develop core concepts of scientific disciplines and relate them across disciplines.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Terren // Oct 27, 2007 at 4:26
Wow, that’s a really neat idea… a taxonomy of concepts. I can see a neat parallel to the taxonomy of biological species, which might be a rich metaphor considering the possibility of identifying lineages of ideas - a phylogeny of ideas.
Of course, it would be ever-changing and controversial, just as the biological version is. But it would be invaluable, and the just the sort of thing the internet is great for. A science Wiki, but one organized as a hierarchy.
2 Terren // Oct 27, 2007 at 4:28
Correction: not just a science wiki, but a science, math, philosophy, law, literature, etc. Is it feasible? Or is this something that would quickly get out of control?
3 guenther // Oct 31, 2007 at 0:36
Getting out of control, that’s the big problem actually - the job is infeasible for a single person, so you have to start a collaboration like wikipedia. But, while for wikipedia more info is always better, this is not the case for a concept wiki.
So there would have to be tight moderation. Maybe a structure like scholarpedia would work out nicely. Maybe I should contact them about this idea…
4 guenther // Oct 31, 2007 at 0:39
Addendum: I like your comparison to the taxonomy of biological species.
I think such a concept hierarchy would be invaluable for many things: enriched with references to core publications it would be a real help to many researchers.
5 complexitystudies » Blog Archive » The Simple Math of Everything // Nov 19, 2007 at 17:47
[...] guess this is the same idea I presented a couple of days ago in this post (which incidentally was also inspired by an Overcoming Bias [...]
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