Some brief thoughts on the Synthese issue

Leiter has a writeup here and here about the special Synthese issue about intelligent design. You can read all the details there, I'm not going to rehash them. Some brief thoughts, however:

• It seems to me that the Editors in Chief took the wrong approach on the insertion of the disclaimer into the issue. If they truly believe what they say there, the offending paper(s) should not have been published in the first place.
• Assuming that the Editors in Chief acted professionally when the issue originally appeared (i.e. they checked that the articles met the usual scholarly standards), it looks highly likely that some pressure was applied after the issue appeared. That also explains why changes were required to a paper that was already published online.
• We don't know what sort of pressure was brought to bear, or even the nature of it (political, financial, reputational, some sort of blackmail, really who knows).
• The disclaimer as published seems a lousy compromise at best. If heavy handed political or financial pressure was brought to bear, the reasonable response of the Editors in Chief would have been to resist or resign (dependent on the source of the pressure) - for the simple reason that if this succeeds once, it will just happen over and over again.

This sort of thing does however point to the sort of slippery slope (about which I hope to write some more later) that professional academia is slowly being pushed onto. For me, the disclaimer from John Wilkins in his blog post here sums it all up:

I am, of course, an Associate of the Philosophy department of the University of Sydney and do not act in any official capacity there, just for clarity’s sake. Complain to them all you like. It can’t lose me any salary.

To me, this is one of the main attractions of the 'life of the mind' outside academia. If you're dependent on the system, it will mess with you. Just because it can.

Update: there is an exception to the last bullet point which I've overlooked. What if not only the Journal but also the Editors in Chief received 'libel' threats (the last ones addressed personally)? I rate this as an exception because in that scenario, not publishing the disclaimer and immediate resignation would not have removed the threat. Even so, publishing the disclaimer was still a lousy compromise.

Presenting a paper at AAP

I've thought about attending for a while, but finally decided to present a paper at the AAP conference.

Rather than rehash my thesis, I've decided to talk about something related, but also new: the absolute theory of chemical reaction rates. The reason for this is that it is surprising to some degree that this theory has not attracted more attention in the philosophy of chemistry community. It is a very nice example of physical chemistry at its best.

I actually tried introducing this theory in my thesis, but found that it did not really integrate well in the structure of that particular argument, so finally, before Christmas, decided to leave it out.

Anyway, my abstract reads:

Henry Eyring's absolute rate theory provides a good insight into what it might take to reduce a realistic theory of chemistry to a collection of physical theories. The theory of absolute reaction rates is an example of how the unity of science works in practice. The theory explains the size of chemical reaction rate constants in terms of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and quantum chemistry, but also uses a number of notions unique to chemistry, such as the 'transition state'. Moreover, the explanation relies in important measure on the comparison of reaction rate constant expressions derived from these individual theories. This example can be used to evaluate the philosophical notions of reduction deriving from Nagel, Spector, and Kemeny and Oppenheim, as well as Darden and Maull's notion of 'interfield theories'. These various theories of reduction are the key building blocks in the idea of unity of science. I argue that philosophical ideas about the unity of science need to consider theories of sufficient complexity to avoid the trap of oversimplification. On the other hand, we must also avoid a lazy conclusion of disunity, to which the theory of absolute reaction rates provides a robust counterexample.

This will be my first full conference in about 12 years, and I don't really know what to expect. But I'm going to have fun. I'm coming on my own wing, so see it as a holiday...

Useful work intersections

Occasionally, my work in IT security gets me some little nuggets of information that I think are relevant for philosophers too. Here are two:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB260/index.htm

(a history of spying in the cold war)

http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/

L&PS paper published - some annoying typos

A global change is a dangerous thing. When I wrote the manuscript for my L&PS (PDF) paper on quantum chemistry, I wrote both 'Quantum Chemistry' and 'Quantum Mechanics' with a capital. Pretty consistently. Then at the last moment I changed my mind. As a result, there are some annoying typos in the paper with an inconsistent capitalisation of both 'quantum', 'chemistry' and 'mechanics'.

I also noted I dropped a factor 1/2 in formula 2. The summation over 2-particle terms needs a factor 1/2, or it needs the sum changed to read that it is over i less than j.

While none of this changes the argument one little bit, I'm slightly annoyed with myself nonetheless.

Software for Schools a missed opportunity

If the article on software in schools ('Pupils suffer in schools computer row' NZ Herald, Tuesday 29 May 2007) highlighted one thing, it surely was the fact that the New Zealand Ministry of Education is spending NZ$100 million over 10 years to put software in schools. This $100 million represents an immense missed opportunity for New Zealand children, New Zealand education and ultimately the economy.

The press release issued by Microsoft on the signing of the deal makes it clear that what we are getting is mainly a Microsoft Vista / Office combination. This is not enough for schools to build a meaningful digital infrastructure and it will do little or nothing for students in junior schools, who are unlikely to be thrilled by the prospect of running a word processor and spreadsheet. What the deal also ignores is that a Microsoft based computer lab requires significant investment in 'after market' software such as antivirus and internet access monitoring software just to keep the computers secure. Microsoft Vista, moreover, will only run on the newest hardware, whereas many schools run second hand computers. The $100 million that we are spending now is only the beginning.

But the opportunity missed is much larger than the money saved if a free alternative was chosen. To get a full sense of the size of the opportunity we are missing here, we should look at what we otherwise could have done. As your correspondent Peter Griffin points out in a blog post on the Herald website the ministry could have opted to go with open source software. To some degree they have done so. The Neo Office package which is now recommended as the office package on the school Macintosh computers is a Macintosh port of the well known openoffice.org package.

But had the ministry chosen to go the whole way and choose a package like edubuntu for the schools, the opportunities would have been far more significant. Edubuntu is a solid combination of operating system and applications aimed at children from kindergarten to secondary school. My children, aged 6 and 10, use it daily. It is easy to install, has no or few issues with viruses, and comes with many different educational packages ranging from math and spelling games to complex graphics packages.

One could argue, as was indeed done in the Herald article that such free software is full of bugs and not ready for primetime. To do so misrepresents the reality of software development. All software has bugs. In fact, many studies on this topic suggest that open source software has less bugs than most closed source software.

But functionality is only one side of the coin. What is in fact most important about free software is its underlying license and associated philosophy. Free software and open source developers are fond of saying that the software is not only free as in 'free beer' but also free as in 'free speech'. It is the last freedom that matters most.

Free software is published under a license called the 'General Public License' (GPL for short). The GPL grants the end user not only the right to use the software, but also to distribute it (give it away to friends), make modifications to the software and finally distribute these modifications.

These four rights are a good fit with our prized 'kiwi ingenuity' and New Zealand should have made the most of it. We could have been leading the way in integrating our school curriculum directly with the software used in schools, building on the basis already present in open source software to provide age appropriate software integrated with children's other learning materials. This would have led to a wave of IT reinforced learning that our kids are now missing out on.

What is more, doing so would have provided local jobs for developers and integrators and would have had significant spin-off effects into the software development and creative industries.
Students in secondary school would have had a solid platform to develop their own software, and gain in-depth experience with the technologies used in putting a modern operating system together. These students would also have been exposed to the open source development model, which is arguably the most efficient software development model currently in existence.

Finally, deploying open source in schools would have helped preparing our children for further study, recognising that Unix type operating systems are an established mainstay of computer science and natural science curriculums.

Going open source in our schools would have made eminent educational and economic sense. It would have aligned New Zealand with similar initiatives in other countries, such as in the European Union, South Africa, parts of the USA and a number of South American countries. It would have given IT in schools a significant boost and helped us well on the way to becoming a kiwi ingenuity based knowledge economy.

China's empire - the view from the Three Kingdoms

It is astounding that many now think that the 21st century will bring a Chinese empire, and that this empire will somehow take the form of the old British or current American empire.

For to think so is to be blatantly unaware of China's history and culture. I think those who believe that we are somehow facing a Chinese empire would do well to reach out beyond Sun Tzu's 'The art of War', get out of the management section of the bookstore, and reach out for one of the four classics of Chinese literature - 'The Three Kingdoms'.

I am about half way through 'The Three Kingdoms' and while it is a novel on many levels, including ancient strategems for war and deception, it is, in my view, essentially a view of what good government entails.

The book opens with a union between three brothers, signed in a peach garden. Three brothers of very different characteristics, but eventually making up one ruler.

There is Liu Bei Xuande, the oldest and wisest brother. He represents wisdom and patience in the face of adversity. The second brother is Guan Yunchang, a powerful protector of justice and an example of loyalty. The third is Zhang Fei, representing what in Jungian terms can only be described as the 'wild man'. Hairy, with a rough sort of cleverness he is prone to drunkennes and impulse action.

What the three brothers want to restore is the 'mandate of heaven', which can be seen superficially as 'the rule of the emperor' but can more accurately be viewed as the ideal of political and social harmony that ensures ongoing peace and prosperity. At the same time, in the way the story unfolds it is made implicitly clear that this vision is utopian.

In fact, the only times when it can be said to be realised throughout the entire book is at the beginning, where the book chronicles the rapid descent from utopia into chaos, and at the end, where some sort of utopia is painfully restored.

From my reading up to this point, I think there are a few interesting points to note.

1. Unlike Western empires, the Chinese empire, if it ever eventuates, will not be built on an idea, it will be built on an ideal of government. This difference is much more important than would appear at first sight. For each driving force 'building empire' brings a shadow in its wake.

The British empire can be said to be built on the ideal of parliament - the British have introduced British style parliaments in almost each and every colony. This brought in its wake wholesale suppression of indigenous cultures and has turned (over time) most British colonies into the same sort of class-based society that is present in the UK.

In contrast, the American empire is built on the idea of global free trade, and its particular dark secret has been the upsurge in rampant greed that characterises a lot of modern multinational corporations.

2. Similarly, an empire can be seen as driven by a social and economic utopia. For the British empire, this utopia was democracy, for the American empire, it is wealth.

In contrast, if the Three Kingdoms provides a guide to Chinese empire, its ambitions would seem to be lower, although even then it will have dark sides uniquely its own.

Further to conspiracy theories

This is a beautiful cartoon that sums it all up really!

Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories are defined by a plausibility of truth. A plausibility theory of truth has to fulfill three major requirements

1. Internal consistency
2. Non verifiability
3. Partial agreement on some facts with non conspiracy theories
   

The conspiracy theory (or story) needs to be internally consistent in order to be believable (after all, plausibility is ultimately a test of believability). Similarly, and crucially, it needs to be non-verifiable. If the conspiracy theory would be verifiable it would be possible to expose it as a lie or determine that it is the truth; in either case, it ceases to be a conspiracy theory. Lastly, the requirement of partial agreement is required to allow the theory some connection (and distinction) from a situation where no conspiracy is required to explain the same facts or situation.

We live in a time and place--call it the blogosphere or whatever--that conspiracy theories are more popular then ever and its interesting to wonder why.

One could postulate several things, such as that people feel they have less and less power over their lives (therefore feel the need to project some 'other' as the main responsible actor for their reality), yet for what it's worth my money is on information overload. Conspiracy theories then become a pathology of thinking that can only exist in a universe of babbling voices.

Fuller on the tent of biology

Somewhat -- OK, quite -- belatedly I came across the snippet of informaton that Steve Fuller has actually spoken out in defence of Intelligent Design. While I would expect little else from someone who propounds his particular version of a strong political SSK -- one where a bunch of technopols from management schools 'manage' science according to the dictates of todays political expediencies -- some part of me feels a small disappointment. Yes, I would have expected more, maybe not intellectual rigor, but at least courage.

Because Fuller's argument stinks. It pretty much starts with the belief that science itself it just a belief system and a practice, not unlike that of the church. With that step taken it is not so hard to develop the argument that science is about to become 'secularised', i.e. socially marginalised in a manner not dissimilar to the manner in which most churches have been socially marginalised in the last fifty years or so. It escapes me why Fuller should proceed to spend three booklength arguments in making this point, since it is quite trivial once one accepts its postmodern premise.

One could make the point perfectly well that consumerism has managed to secularise the church first, and is now doing the same to expensive science. The consumer is more interested in iPods than in Superconducting Supercolliders, and since a consumer mind is not bound to reason, it can ignore the (somewhat tenuous anyway) link between the two. The consumer has this decision outsourced anyway to a technopol somewhere busily 'picking winners'.

Where Fullers argument stinks (or becomes disingenious, in more polite language) is that it ignores that this secularisation of science is accompanied by a rise in the fortunes of the extreme christian right. From this perspective, it becomes somewhat frightening that the secularisation of science, so ardently assisted by Fuller in the name of critique of power and emancipation of the underdog, is accompanied by the rise not only popularity, but in some circles at least, also a partial belief in, millenial hate literature such as the 'Left Behind' series (see Joe Bageant's commentary "the whore that sitteth on many waters" for a commentary and analysis, or see this article about Claire Curtis to name just a few). This is the smell of those who argue for Intelligent Design. For 'Left Behind' (or crass consumerism) to florish, it is better if critical faculties are temporarily suspended.

It would of course be perfectly consistent for someone like Fuller to argue that political science should indeed be run along the tenets of 'Left Behind', just like he has now argued that Intelligent Design should be part of the accepted canon of Biology. Apart from the fact that this claim is rubbish -- Intelligent Design is a meta theory and not a theory -- Fuller's argument of the 'tent' of Biology in which Intelligent Design could have a 'democratic' place ignores two facts.

The first is that Intelligent Design has proven to be merely capable of pointing out a 'hole' in the Darwinian theory (one that in my opinion is not a hole at all), and is not capable of establising a positive research programme.

The second is that Intelligent Design in this setting is a Trojan Horse -- it is there to cast doubt, eventually release the soldiers inside and open the doors of the castle for those who will burn it down.

Global warming and the weakness of sociology of knowledge

It should be fairly obvious by now that sociology of knowledge has done the world little good and is a discipline that deserves to perish.

Take the global warming debate. Even while the large majority of climate scientists agree that global warming is both real and forms a problem to be dealt with, politicos the world over are doing little or nothing about it. One major reason is that it is too easy to cast doubt on the statistics, and suggest that climate scientists have a political wheelbarrow to push.

Sociology of knowledge seems to have succeeded in spreading enough FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)about science in general and scientists in particular to make this 'debate' go on much longer than it has to, and indeed much longer than the reality of the situation warrants. In this, sociology of knowledge is nothing more than the handmaiden (or should that be lapdog) of big business -- big oil, big car makers and the like. Thanks for nothing, guys.

On pre-emption: presumptive or normal?

Two interesting notes on pre-emption. In one of Morgan Stanley's economic dispatches (found here: http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20060412-wed.html) Robert Feldman gives a definition of both normal and presumptive pre-emption. These types are of the sort that affect the decision making of the central banks, in this post the central Bank of Japan (BoJ).

Normal pre-emption is defined as situation in which the expectation is considered to be a hypothesis on the state of affairs, in the particular case of central banks this would be the economy. Another type, presumptive pre-emption, is defined as follows: "Rather than testing a hypothesis against emerging data, the central bank engages in “presumptive preemption” — i.e. it bases policy mostly on its expectation for the economy, and gives very little weight to actual data."

At this point it is interesting to keep in mind that pre-emption is now considered to be, and was recently confirmed to be, a key aspect of current American military strategy. See the discussion in the IHT by Henry Kissinger: "American Strategy and Pre-emptive War" (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/13/opinion/edkiss.php).

This article contains the following interesting observation: "Pre-emptive strategy involves an inherent dilemma: When the scope for action is greatest, knowledge is at a minimum. When knowledge is high, the scope for pre-emption has often disappeared."

I cannot help thinking that at this point it actually matters whether one engages in normal or presumptive pre-emption. When engaged in presumptive pre-emption, the dilemma actually stands, and should act as a precaution against overindulging in military adventures such as the US is now engaged in in Iraq and may soon be engaged in in Iran.

When pre-emption in military strategy is of the presumptive kind, then, in the words of Kissinger's dilemma, the maximum scope for action actually coincides with the point of greatest expectation (which is the point of minimal knowledge). This suggests that presumptive pre-emption in military strategy is pre-emption of a dangerous kind.

On the importance of a Chinese map

An article in the Economist three weeks ago attracted my attention--it seems likely now, or at least possible, that the Chinese civilisation possessed a complete map of the world as early as 1418. The article is really a discussion of the likelihood that the seventeenth century map found recently is a copy of a 1418 original.

The map is supposed to originate from the travels of Zheng He, a well known Chinese explorer. At the peak of his power between 1405 and 1433, he commanded a fleet of at least 317 ships and 37,000 men, more than the combined navel power of Europe at that stage. His flagship was a nine-masted vessel measuring 150m in length.

But the accompanying claim, made by Gavin Menzies, that the history of New World discovery will have to be rewritten considerably, is more doubtful in my opinion. The discovery is relevant not so much because it prompts us to reconsider the history of Western discovery, but because of what happened nex. Two comments.

Firstly, the significance of Columus' discovery of the Americas in 1492 and Magellaen's first circumvention of the earth in 1519 - 1522 for Western historians lies in the fact that these travels provided the first nails in the coffin of the flat earth theory. Ultimately they therefore assisted with the change which took place in astronomy in the early seventeenth century. Copernicus' book saw the light of day in 1542. It should be noted that the particular predilection for a flat earth stemmed from a particularly narrowed interpretation of the bible, and ultimately was an issue of christianity, not one of technological and scientific progress.

What I'm driving at, of course, is that the significance of the Western exploration of the world is primarily an internal issue of Western history (if we leave the subsequent history of colonisation out of it, at least).

Secondly, the claim that the map is genuine begs the question how it is that the Chinese didn't make more use of it? The answer to this question lies in the fact that political changes in China soon after Zheng's death left the junks to rot. A generation later most of knowledge on how to build and sail these ships over the oceans had vanished from Chinese society.

The lesson is thus that 'picking winners' by committee is a dangerous course to follow. The history of the following centuries would have been very different had the Chinese not made that particular mistake. One can only speculate about what would have happened had the early European discoverers and traders met with a confident and oceangoing Chinese empire.

A religious Postmodern definition of 'science'

The New York Times this morning drew my attention to a new definition of science coming out of the Kansas school system.

This document (pdf) outlines the changes. The new definition of science is straight out of postmodernism 101:

"2. Defines Science" as: "a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena." "

It's interesting that the document also notes that this definition excludes 'supernatural' explanations from the definition of science. However, this philosphical pacifier doesn't make a lot of difference to the argument--creation 'science' has moved on from Genesis 1; and creationists are now more commonly adherents of the theory of 'intelligent design'.

And while the document claims to exclude 'intelligent design' from the category of science, its hard to see how the above definition can uphold that claim--on the definition of science given above, intelligent design would be a valid alternative to the theory of evolution.

The document also states that the definition does not prohibit 'discussion' of intelligent design. And the changes go through great pains to ensure that the theory of evolution is presented as a theory that 'postulates', or 'seeks to explain' the world.

So here's the upshot: 'evolution' can be taught as 'just' a theory along with 'intelligent design' as an appropriate, or at least possible, meta theory which challenges the meta-theoretical implications of evolution-such as the concepts of variation and selection as just another variety of crass materialism. This is actually a neat solution (from the perspective of a fundametalist christian, that is) which avoids an outright debate between evolutionary theory and Genesis 1 at a level where observations and objectivity matter, but neatly shifts the whole package to a discussion about meta-theoretical implications where a straw man variety of the implications of evolutionary theory (such as 'man descends from the apes') can be contrasted against religiously inspired views without recourse to such things as material evidence.

I wonder whether this distinction between theories and meta-theories will actually filter through in the classrooms. It should be fairly clear that this step is a win for the religious right given that Christianity's problems with the theory of evolution have historically been focused more on its meta-theoretical implications than on the theory per se anyway.

The point is that 'intelligent design' doesn't stack up as a meta-theory either. To give credence to intelligent design would be to advance the empirically weaker meta-theory. By means of logical necessity, the theory of intelligent design is empirically empty. Why? Because it has no power to exclude certain ways the world could be; because all its explanations are by necessity post hoc, ad hoc arguments of the sort that the world was created to make it look 'as if' the theory of evolution, or any other cosmological theory were 'true' (and the word true has to be in scare quotes too for this to make sense).

A true postmodernist doesn't care about such distinctions--for the postmodernist such notions stem from a classical notion of philosophy of science which lost its last vestiges of validity somehwere in the mid-1960s, with the wider acceptance of Kuhn's notion of scientific paradigms. For the true postmodernist there are no a priori superior ways of 'making sense', just different ways. And in the end the 'way of making sense' that can muscle into power wins.

On the Scarcity of Scientists - Redux

Here are some first impressions after reading Chapter 1 'A Disturbing Mosaic' of Rising Above the Gathering Storm.

There is in my opinion quite a serious flaw in argument. In fact, I believe Chapter 1 is a large non sequitur. The analysis is based on Thomas L. Friedman’s view that in the twentieth century, due to the forces of globalization, the world will be 'flat'. What this means is that the forces of outsourcing and offshoring, coupled with ubiquitous networking, can distribute business processes over the world. The economic upshot of this scenario is one of increased competition but also cheaper production and services, as well as supporting political change. Overall, Friedman is positive about the forces of globalisation and believes that they will lead to a new era of prosperity.

The report states that the US is badly prepared for such a situation. The key passage of the first survey chapter reads:

"Friedman asks rhetorically whether his own country is proving its readiness by “investing in our future and preparing our children the way we need to for the race ahead”. The answer, not surprisingly, is no.

This report addresses the possibility that our lack of preparation will reduce the ability of the United States to compete in such a world." (page 1-3)

There is actually little more in the way of analysis to be found in the first chapter, the mosaic merely analyses a 'quiet crisis' in three related clusters. I might have more to say about these later, but think several comments can be made at this stage. My main comment is that in brief, the report selects the wrong metaphor to build the argument--it attempts to build the argument on a flat world, whereas it would have been more fruitful to build the argument on a spiked world.

The first comment is that in a flat world such as Friedman describes, national boundaries do not matter all that much; neither do concepts such as national security, or national competitive advantage. So it would seem that the use of Friedman’s view of globalisation discredits to a large extent the very point the report tries to make—that the US is simply not raising the talent it needs to compete in the brave new global world.

One might well argue that the forces of globalisation shift the nexus between rich and poor from a perspective of nations to--dare we say it--a perspective of class. It is somewhat surprising that the report fails to mention the key economic and social impact of globalisation (discussed for instance in the work of Zygmunt Bauman): geographically mobile capital and a geographically localized workforce (by and large). A macro trend might well be that we are moving from a world of national differences to a global world of class differences.

While this could lead to quite an interesting discussion of its own, I think the upshot for the report is the following. Were Friedmans picture the correct one, then as long as the world is not running of of scientists and engineers, it hardly matters whether one nation does.

The second comment is that the work of Friedman is hardly uncontroversial. I personally think that Friedman counts as one of the more naive writers on globalisation, and personally subscribe to the view that the world is becoming a place that is neither flat nor tilted, but spiked. What this means is that there will increasingly be clusters of specialisation in the world, and that the wealth of nations very much depends on the presence of the more lucrative clusters inside the national boundaries. There were some interesting graphs in the October issue of the Atlantic Monthly illustrating this concept quite well (but unfortunately not available on the web).

Of course, on the 'spiky' picture it is crucially important whether a nation has enough scientists and engineers inside the national boundaries, and indeed whether it has the capability to develop and sustain these clusters. This brings us back to a failed political experiment of the eighties, when it was quite popular to apply Michael Porter 's 'competitive advantage' theory to nations, and then 'pick winners' among its research programmes. That failed experiment is at least in large part responsible for the current misery.

But even on that picture, it is hardly a foregone conclusion that the Western world is running out of scientists and engineers. I personally would more believe an institution like the Rand corporation to get some of this right than the scientists themselves (The latter have too obvious an axe to grind). And the most recent reports (here and here) of the Rand corporation on the same issue form a much less convincing argument for the notion that we need to educate more scientists and engineers.

A fruitful area of research, provided the 'spiked' picture of the world is correct, is what creates and sustains specific spikes. The contention would be that this is a combination of the presence of specific skill sets, education, clever marketing and a lot of dumb luck.

Does open source software development follow the scientific method?

One of the most exciting, and revolutionary, innovations in software development practice has to be the development of open source software. That open source works as a practical method of software development doesn't need too much debating: there are many successful open source products and companies. Products include the entire GNU/Linux operating system, the Apache web server, many security offerings such as snort and much more.

There are significant similarities between the ethos of the open source software movement and the ethos that most scientists would consciously or unconsciously agree to: a focus on openness, free sharing of information, the ability to reproduce and tinker.

This post focuses on the question whether the development methods of open source software bear a relation to those principles that philosophers of science claim to have identified in the development of scientific theories—and whether open source software development can shed some light on issues that might have been missed by philosophers of science in the past.

It would be attractive to see the success of the open source movement as another example of the success of the scientific method if it were not for the fact that beyond a superficial level there is no agreement in philosophy circles on what exactly constitutes the ‘scientific method’.

Broadly speaking, the consensus is divided in two camps. On the one hand there are philosophers who believe that there is some method or rationale behind scientific research, and that the aim of scientific research is to improve our theories, approach the truth, or make an inference to the best explanation. On the other hand there are philosophers, cultural scholars and a bundle of sociologists who argue that scientific knowledge is socially constituted.

A key observation is that the main point of debate between these camps is not the existence of rationality in scientific endeavor, but merely the direction of this rationality. ‘Traditional’ philosophers of science maintain that the goal of scientific rationality is improvement of scientific knowledge; the other camp believes that the goal of scientific rationality is social and professional advancement.

Philosophy of science has been stuck in this Gordian knot for the best part of the last 35 years, and it is here that a more detailed philosophical study of Open Source Software can make an impact. This contention is based on the three following premises:

1. Open Source Software follows an ethos very similar to that of scientific development, and has the same commitments to improvement of the end result, openness and sharing of information that has to this point characterized the Western scientific community


2. Open Source Software is successful from a social perspective, with a significant adoption by businesses and end users.


3. Open Source Software is successful in improving its end product – measured not only on the scale of social adoption, but also on the scale of improving the stability, security, and overall quality of the software.

On the scarcity of scientists

"Rising above the gathering storm" is the latest in a long series of publications that argue that America will soon run out of scientists and engineers. This sort of studies is commonly adopted quickly for the European markets too.

From my memory, studies like this go back to at least the late eighties, and maybe even earlier. The earliest study I'm aware of is an NSF study from the mid 1980's, which was bandied around aspiring PhD students pretty widely at the time with the prediction that on graduation in the early nineties, we'd all be guaranteed a job. We now know what happened to that.

The typical pattern of these studies is to link a modicum of political and economical analysis (in most cases of shockingly bad quality) to a foregone conclusion: we urgently need to educate 'xxx' more science and engineering graduates in order to stay economically competitive in a brave new world.

As with most lies, studies like these contain truths in reverse: the lie is that Western countries urgently need more science and engineering graduates--the truth is that science and engineering departments in the Western world are running out of students, fast, and urgenly need more students, graduate students and especially postdocs.

I'll probably be posting more about this particular study later, since I haven't read it in detail yet. I'm at this stage merely astounded that another one has seen the light of day.

Past postmodernism

It is somehow amusing to see how the 'postmodern' philosophy is dying out; and it will be interesting to see what will replace it as a leading line of thought in academia. Here are some thoughts and speculations.

Postmodernism didn't become well known-or popular, take your pick-for its intellectual rigor, or its capability to say something useful about philosophy or science. At the time, it was the hip, progressive thing going. The main surprise at this stage is that postmodernism didn't leave a coherent body of political or critical thought.

In retrospect, I think one can fairly say that postmodernism was the main intellectual vehicle to allow a realignment of academia to a business oriented model. Postmodernism didn't emerge because the internal dynamic of intellectual progress somehow made it emerge--it was a market dynamic more than anything else which made it happen. Three things stand out in this market dynamic:

1. Postmodernism made some academic careers at a time when a career crunch for academics was looming, and allowed academics to posture with the allure of film stars. No wonder that Hollywood was such a popular theme.
2. Postmodernism convinced a wider public that Universities still had something relevant to say--something relevant that was moreover easy to understand, but which could be made to look fairly difficult with ease.
3. Postmodernism was capable of attracting students to the sort of departments that might well otherwise have failed in the neo Darwinian universe of the modern university.
   

Its lasting legacy will be that it legitimised the realignment of academic research with the random vagaries of the 'knowledge society', as well as being able to silence most coherent forms of political criticism from both academics and students. It did all this while posturing as a philosophy of the left. Quite a feat, and a delusion which is now happily over.