Where are the System-Builders? Recovering the Lost Art of Connective Thinking
I. Introduction: Philosophy and Universal Free Sharing
Originally, I intended to submit this short piece to Academia Letters. Its scope and content may be familiar to regular readers of APP, since it deals with the consequences of (hyper)specialization in the sciences and philosophy. However, as it turns out, the Article Processing Fee to be paid upon publication is $500. This is where I draw the line. First, we as a community provide the core content for Academia.edu: without us, they would not exist at all. Second, we as authors write content for Academia Letters, and we are requested to review and comment on submissions by others participating in the publication series. But how are we remunerated for this time investment? I get it that a commercial enterprise wants to make some profit, but I truly wonder what Academia.edu does for me that justifies them in asking me to pay $500? That is a very handsome fee for copy-editing a short piece or putting it into a template. And if I have to invest time for free to keep the series going, the corporation has to share the profits with the contributors. So, here is the piece for free. The Internet is wonderful place for sharing materials, and it is even better without large corporations charging me for writing my own content and sharing it.
II. A Plea for Generalism and the Systemic Frame of Mind
If you graduated during the 1920s in physics, you would pretty much be acquainted with the entire state of the art of that discipline. There would be time enough for specialization later on. During the 1950s, this situation was radically different: it became impossible to know the entire state of the art. As an aspiring scientist, you had to specialize. What was once one unified discipline disintegrated into various more-or-less mutually isolated sub-domains of specialization.
This pattern has affected other sciences as well: biology, microbiology, material science and geology count numerous specialized fields. However, the most pernicious effects of such “hyperspecialization” are visible within the professional academic discipline of philosophy. Under the pressure to publish or to make one’s way into a chosen subdiscipline, specialization occurs earlier and earlier—even during undergraduate years. This development is strongly indicative of a looming crisis in the fundamental and applied sciences and philosophy alike.
Moreover, and unfortunately, the effect that hyperspecialization has on one’s frame of mind is—although often quite unintentionally—constrictive and narrowing. The big problems of humanity do not only require specialists, but equally or perhaps even more so require generalists. Alongside the individuals concerned with the pieces that make up the puzzle, we equally or even more so require people who play around with the pieces and who think from a systematic viewpoint. To educate narrowly focused minds is to widen the gap between the complexity of the world and the capacity of our intellectual strategies to think outside hyperspecialist frames of thought.
The formulation of a “comprehensive system of thought” or “unifying vision” of the universe almost certainly provokes some kind of ire nowadays. The very attitude that is required for building such systems is lost to us, as it has perished in a Post-World War II culture that put more stock in the utility of applied sciences than in conceiving grand systems of thought. The ubiquitous successes of the formal and natural sciences during the Space Age and the digitalization of the last decades cemented a steadfast belief in so-called “decompositional” forms of problem-solving. The idea is simply that problems are compound entities that can neatly disassembled into their constituent parts, each of which can be addressed in relative isolation and with the help of the latest technological advances.
While some tenets of this approach still reign supreme in the hard sciences, another cultural force—namely, poststructuralist thought—has prevailed in the humanities and in so-called “Continental” philosophy. Following the thought of J. F. Lyotard, it has distrusted so-called “grand récits,”because they were deemed oppressive ideological or social constructs, or very lopsided visions of the world at best.
For archetypical “hard” scientists, sweeping world visions are off-limits, because they prefer to work on discrete empirical problems in their disciplines; and for archetypical humanities scholars and so-called “Continental” philosophers, the distrust of overarching visions leads all too often to an avoidance of any system-building at all.
Indeed, at the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche wrote that he distrusted all philosophical systems, preferring instead to build an “anti-system” that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the schemes of his predecessors. But what were the systems that Nietzsche rebelled against? –Above all, Hegelianism and all its variations, which were dominant during the first half of the 19th century in Germany. Hegel envisioned a mega-system of philosophy, in which no corner of human knowledge was left uncharted; moreover, it promised the most sublime insight into the human condition, epitomized by the notion of the “Absolute.” Slightly later on in the same century, we encounter the same ambition in the thought of Schopenhauer, who theorizes the entire cosmos as the result of a ceaseless Will.
Both philosophical visions were grandiose by today’s standards. Hegel lectured on art, religion, political philosophy, metaphysics, biology, physics, and chemistry. Schopenhauer amassed all the empirical evidence he could lay his hands on in order to argue for his idea of the Will, even writing a separate volume On the Will in Nature. In this work, we find detailed surveys of astronomy, chemistry, zoology, botany, and magnetism, united in one grand philosophical undertaking.
We can of course criticize the tendency of these authors to impose a single conceptual scheme on the world, for it is a strategy that may easily backfire, as everything is interpreted against the background of a single Pepperian “root metaphor.”
On the other hand, compared to our era of disciplinary fragmentation, these thought systems accomplish two impressive features: they are truly multidisciplinary and connective. In a few bold moves, thinkers like Schelling, Alexander von Humboldt G.W.F. Hegel and Schopenhauer (but equally the British Idealists, Samuel Alexander, John Dewey, Henri Bergson, and A.N. Whitehead,) attempted to connect a wide variety of ideas, concepts, notions and experimental approaches into comprehensive world-pictures. That they did not always succeed is a given; and that they had their faults by clinging to old notions for too long is certainly true.
But their willingness to translate ideas freely from one domain to another, learning multiple conceptual languages in the process, and combining ideas in bold new constellations seems immensely valuable to me. Is it not the case that such system-building strikes us as odd exactly because we have lost the art of thinking connectively? Instead, we very often stay locked inside our comfortable disciplinary cubicles.
To change, we must think about the role of hyperspecialized science that is currently dominant. Such science, after all, must function in a world that grows more complex—not less. And it is unlikely that more specialization will be the right answer once we truly realize see how interconnected our problems are. A virus that originates somewhere on the other side of the globe can wreck entire economies all over the Earth; a slight increase in temperature might alter entire ecosystems; a radioactive cloud that escapes from a nuclear reactor may cause unforeseen disastrous effects for generations.
Even while digital computation and technology allows us to model relationships between phenomena with a precision that was inconceivable one century ago, the availability of this technology does not create versatile thinkers. It creates experts at retrieving information from an ever-growing database, but not necessarily individuals who come up with the right questions and the capacity to envision bold new ideas by tracing out connections, relations and cathedrals of thought. The system-builder must be a mind not just capable of understanding “systems theory,” but must be capable of creatively constructing new systems out of bits, pieces and ideas. To say that we have “systems theory” nowadays does little to address the problem: we do not need more theory about systems, but instead people who can actually build systems.
III. From an Anecdote to a Strong Thesis
An anecdote is not proof but may serve as illustration. For well over a decade now, I have worked with interdisciplinary consortia of scientists in various fields, ranging from material science to product design and smart urban design. In all cases, it took well over a year to make the participants understand that they were speaking different conceptual languages. By that time, they still had to work toward truly understanding each other—and the initial step was to realize that other collaborators thought differently.
Correspondingly, here is a strong thesis: we require generalist thinkers who practice the bold and seemingly lost art of system-building. Not to find universal answers, but to help others in collectively doing so. And here lies a massively important role for the philosophy of the 21st century.
Just as scientific education molds the “scientific identity”, so too can we develop pedagogies that thought-shape and train connective thinkers steeped in the art of system-building. There are already some encouraging initiatives in this direction, but not nearly enough attention is paid to perspectives that search for the connections between the facts; to daring theories that take leaps of faith; and to the synoptic perspective that prefers to think from the systemic and encompassing viewpoint, rather than from the specialized and enclosed one.
IV. Conclusion: Four Practical Suggestions
By way of concluding, I’d like to propose four practical suggestions for a new methodological approach to philosophy, whose goal is to produce and sustain system-building once again.
1. Stop reading, and start thinking
In a world replete with information, thinking is an art that has to be practiced in relative isolation from being bombarded by other people’s words. Thinking is not just citing someone’s else’s ideas. It is a deliberate attempt to create coherent viewpoints from which problems and issues are approached. It is because we have different skills and capabilities that we can create unique, individual viewpoints that are of immense value. But doing so requires a retreat from the onslaught of new information in order to focus on conceptual structures that connect the dots.
2. Speculate, don’t consolidate
Nobody comes up with a perfect idea. Even the “Eureka moment” is preceded by years of hard work, training and developing skills. Often, the most-cited articles convey the impression that every idea must be completely insulated against all possible objections. However, especially early in thinking processes, too much defensive precision impedes creativity. Therefore, speculate and don’t worry about inconsistencies. There will be more than enough time to deal with them later on.
3. Create, don’t confirm
Creation is much more important than confirmation. Some scientists may balk at this thought, but for a system-builder, creating connections is a way to visualize exactly those relationships that disappeared due to too much specialization. Again, other people can busy themselves with confirming ideas; others must put them out in the world first.
4. Be comfortable with gaps and unknowns
If ideas are open, imperfect, and creative, then they contain glaring gaps, unknowns and blank spots. This is not a disadvantage. “But what will my peers think of it?” Don’t worry about that! They are entitled to their opinion, but they cannot dictate what you should think; and they shouldn’t even try. For effective system-thinking, don’t start right away with critical or skeptical questions: “You have not defined notion X!” “I doubt your conclusions!” “Here are some counter-examples!” Instead, turn the approach around: start out by looking for the merit in a theory or system, and then try to extend and/or improve it as a whole. The right times for criticism, healthy skepticism, and revision will naturally emerge later.
REFERENCE
(Von Humboldt, 1814). Von Humboldt, A. Atlas Géographique et Physique du Nouveau Continent. Paris: Schoell. Available online at URL = <https://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/docannexe/image/25488/img-3.jpg>.
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