Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures

Gilles Paquet

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780776618104
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures, Gilles Paquet criticizes the prevailing practices of the social sciences on the basis of their inadequate concepts of knowledge, evidence and inquiry, concepts he claims have become methodological "mental prisons". Paquet describes the prevailing policy development process in Canada in terms of its weak information infrastructure, poor accountability, and inflexible organization design. In contrast, he suggests that social science and public policy should promote forms of "serious play" that would allow organizations to experiment with new structures.

Paquet engages with numerous foundationalist programs in the social sciences in order to show their inadequacy and suggests important and unexplored directions in policy areas as diverse as education, science, health, intergovernmental and foreign policy. He closes the work with a plea for experimentalism in academic research, policy development, and organization design.

PART I

Crippling Epistemologies

Introduction

Part I may appear to some to be tedious reflective whining about the defective philosophy of the social sciences and their ambient culture, an overlong detour on the way to the sort of practical policy research announced above. This is not the case.

The critique of crippling epistemologies constitutes a necessary first step in the development of good governance. Without some critique of the existing mindset, one will not be able to identify the epistemological blockages and their sources, or to initiate the difficult process of development of an alternative arsenal to the “methodist” model of policy research in good currency, and to the development of better governance. Without such a discussion, neither the critical evaluation of the tools in use nor the case studies would be as illuminating as they might be. Neither is this critique the result of whims and “ad-hocery” only. Failures of governance are most often the direct result of crippling epistemologies.

But there is more. If one is to develop an alternative to the traditional model of policy research, one has to establish the identity papers and credentials of the new approach it suggests, the mindset it is built on, and the different components and stages of its inquiry process. Much of this can be done only by ensuring that it is shown to be standing in sharp contrast with the features of current models.

The chapters in Part I provide the minimal amount of material necessary to make sense of the traditional approach, and to understand its characteristics and its flaws. At the core of this critical work is the central notion of “inquiry” in John Dewey’s (1927) sense.

Charles Lindblom (1990: 3) defines inquiry as: “the production of social knowledge as a vast social process in which even relatively uninformed, ordinary people play significant parts along with political and opinion leaders.” This process of probing is much larger and more heterogeneous than the process of problem-solving: it “emphasizes persistence and depth of investigation, uncertainty of result, and possible surprise”; it connotes “a continuing varied, diffuse, and interactive process.”

Lindblom’s (1990) choice of this prudent approach to social problems stems from his conviction that one cannot expect anything meaningful from “scientific problem-solving” or “ideology”. Neither the simplistic technical rationality of means and ends, nor the anamorphosis of the present situation via a single Great Idea, can generate much usable knowledge. In both cases, nothing can be expected except a caricature of the situation based on a systematic effort to distort the situation in order to make it fit the dominant perspective.

Probing is clearly not the preserve of professionals. Lay persons probe as much as professionals do, and both groups depend on each other. In fact, some of the worst outcomes might be ascribed to a lack of coordination between the two sorts of probing.

Chapter 1 examines the crisis of confidence that has plagued the human sciences as the result of the gradual displacement of content by “methodism” and the professionalization of the academy, without the parallel growth of a sense of professionalism, that has led the human sciences to desert their founding questions, and to focus on generating unhelpful maps. It is argued that the only way out is to redirect the human sciences toward their original questions.

Chapter 2 indicts the post-secondary education system not only as a significant victim, but also as a continuing source of this perversion, this professionalization without professionalism, and suggests a refoundation of the post-secondary education system in a manner that would preserve the core importance of savoir-faire and savoirêtre within a transformed educational paradigm that would give access to a broader varieties of knowledges, and might provide some of the winning conditions for the renaissance of a less crippling and more inclusive process of acquisition of knowledge.

Chapter 3 deals with a complementary source of crippling epistemologies: the surrounding national and corporate cultures. Culture is used as a focus for examining many of the hidden forces that shape our acquisition of knowledge, and our decisions outside the realm of education and research. It is suggested that various neuroses act at the cognitive and ethical levels to shape learning, and thereby to influence the capacities to experiment and innovate.

These diverse sets of constraints and sources of crippling epistemologies, intellectual, institutional, educational and cultural, have been mental prisons preventing the human and social sciences from evolving the breadth and depth necessary to deal effectively with the challenges of governance in a complex and turbulent world.

Identifying these prisons is a not insignificant accomplishment, as it helps to focus social scientists’ attention on the main sources of distortion. Such distortions are to a significant extent responsible for flawed informational infrastructure, inadequate instrumentation and governance pathologies, but these are reparable once their sources and causes have been properly diagnosed.

CHAPTER 1

Two tramps in mud time

Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done.

— ROBERT FROST

There may be no better description of the humanities and the social sciences, and no better characterization for the time, than the title of Robert Frost’s poem quoted above, “Two Tramps in Mud Time”. My argument raises questions about two basic assumptions on which, at present, most demands made on governments by humanists and social scientists rest: first, that the humanities and the social sciences play an important and useful role in modern society; and, second, that governments should therefore provide important additional resources for their support. Unless human scientists change their ways, it may be argued, the case for their social usefulness and their deserving of funding is not very strong.

Here is a road map of my argument. First, the humanities and the social sciences are quarrelsome twins that may not be identical, but are also not fundamentally different. They are sets of languages of illumination, exploration and interpretation of the physical and human worlds.

Second, a crisis of confidence in the humanities and social sciences has developed recently, but analysis of this crisis has generally evaporated into a boring enumeration of troublesome symptoms. The real source of the crisis, I will argue, is in a loss of origin, in the fading away of the founding questions from which the social sciences and the humanities originated. This has led to a gradual displacement of content by method in the practice of both the humanities and the social sciences.

Third, such a displacement is particularly unfortunate when the substantive form of our social and economic order is mutating. The fixation on procedures has induced a great deal of irrelevance in their discourses, just when the humanities and social sciences appear to have the most to contribute.

Fourth, the professionalization of the academy, without a parallel growth of professionalism as part of its duties, appears to be at the roots of this loss of origin. Since World War II, academics have professionalized the practice of both the social sciences and the humanities, and self-regulating corporations have transformed and perverted the use of their languages. The much-needed shift back from method to content is unlikely to occur as a matter of course, and additional public funds will not suffice either. Despite specious arguments to the contrary, governments have legitimate concerns about affairs of the mind, and have to accept responsibility for stewarding the humanities and the social sciences back toward substantive questions.

Fifth, what is required is nothing less than a strategy of culture, to serve as a sextant for such government action.

The intent of this chapter is not to deny that much work of great value has been done, and is being done, in the human sciences. Rather, the point of my argument is that despite their technical and sometimes substantive contributions, the human sciences have not lived up to what could reasonably be expected from them and that, if anything, the situation is likely to continue to deteriorate (although there are signs that a true renaissance may be in progress). Thus, it seems important to ask why this is so, and how one might correct such a situation.

THE QUARRELSOME TWINS MAY NOT BE IDENTICAL, BUT …

Scientists, social scientists, humanists and artists illuminate reality, explore the unknown, and interpret the physical and human worlds. It is their common fundamental task, and it is instructive that “theory” and “theatre” have the same ancient Greek roots (Nisbet 1976: 10–12). Robert Nisbet has argued that art and science are simply different paths, different logics of discovery of synthetic, self-consistent worlds. In this array of perspectives, the humanities and the social sciences are close neighbours.

Even though reality is the quest of the artist as much as of the scientist, a sort of division of labour has occurred and each group appears to be attempting to illuminate, explore and interpret alternate realities. Lawrence LeShan and Henry Margenau (1982) have tried to illustrate the multiplicity of those alternate realities through an account of a businessman’s day, as, successively, a tycoon closing a profitable deal at lunch; a husband almost telepathically communicating with his wife on the dance floor in the early evening; a worried father praying for the recovery of his sick child later in the evening; and, at night, a dreamer of kangaroos and mermaids. LeShan and Margenau (165–166) propose four different classes of ways to organize reality: the sensory reality of everyday common sense; clairvoyant reality (as on the dance floor); transpsychic reality (as with the father praying); and mythic reality (as in the man’s dreams). Which of these is reality? The answer is that none of them are: there are many realities. Science, the social sciences, humanities and art illuminate, explore and interpret alternate realities, alternate domains of experience, alternate realms, whether observable or not.

The logics used to explore these alternate realities are not, however, contradictory. They are different, but they are also compatible and complementary. Methods of study appropriate to each obviously differ, and different kinds of languages must be found to describe and interpret different experiences, but there are often more differences between such languages within the humanities or within the social sciences than one category or the other.

A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

A crisis of confidence has developed among humanists and social scientists in North America over the last thirty years or so of the 20^th century and the early years of the new century (Andreski 1974; Kaufmann 1977; Woods and Coward 1979). This crisis is akin to the one that has developed in relation to professional knowledge (Schön 1983). Practitioners in the humanities and the social sciences experienced this crisis first in their practice, but the concerns of their clients have been echoed widely and rapidly in the broader social context. Consequently, patrons, including governments, have become less willing to fund the activities of both humanists and social scientists.

Any community suffering such a fall from grace and a loss of legitimacy, might react to the new situation by reflecting on its goals and rejuvenating itself through reeducation, entrepreneurship and creativity. Alternatively, it might take refuge in clichés “about knowledge being its own reward and about following the truth wherever it may lead” (Kaufmann 1977: xvi), and refuse to take notice.

On the whole, humanists and social scientists have refused to reflect on their goals and essentially have indulged in a process of rationalization or defence of what they have been doing. However, the two groups have developed divergent rationalization strategies. On the whole, social scientists have explicitly sought a new legitimacy for their work through rapprochement with the “hard” sciences on matters of method. Humanists have done so more hesitantly, while articulating a stubborn defence of their existing practices as the only road to knowledge. While this general statement probably holds for most humanists, it does not mean that there has been no change in the practice of humanists over time. Indeed, for many humanists the temptation to emulate the strategy of social scientists has been compelling. Structuralism, post-structuralism, semiotics, semiology, grammatology and deconstructionism, with their different fixations on method and on the syntactic dimensions of their realities, have obscured or even discarded their quintessential semantic dimensions (Sturrock 1979; Searle 1985). However, on closer scrutiny it becomes clear that the differences are a matter of degree. Both groups, despite their rhetoric, have drifted in the same direction.

THE REACTION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

The social sciences have become beset by what Lewis Thomas has aptly called “physics envy”: they have promoted wholesale borrowing of epistemology and methodology from the physical sciences. This borrowing has tended to reinforce a pervasive undercurrent in the social sciences that goes back at least to the beginning of the 20^th century. A machine model of reality became the norm, the epistemology and methodology of physical scientists were lionized, and the existence of alternate realities was denied (LeShan and Margenau 1982: Chapter 12). This process has almost succeeded in emasculating the human dimension of the human sciences. The heritage of Bacon and Descartes was rediscovered and became hegemonic. Concentrate on method and the discovery of knowledge would follow: such was the new dogma. Little did social scientists care that Bacon and Descartes disagreed on what the method was to be (the inductive method or the deductive method, respectively). Emphasis on method per se became central (Nisbet 1976: 13–14).

This development brought together two strands of arguments from different epistemological traditions, which jointly have done considerable damage to the social sciences. From Bacon came a narrower definition of reality: as Jürgen Habermas (1971: 78) has put it, “exclusive reality is now claimed for phenomena which have previously been considered trivial.” This narrower reality has been imposed and other realities have been obliterated. From Descartes came the sanctification of the priority of method over substance. Epistemology is reduced to methodological procedures, it being understood that the only acceptable methodological procedures are those borrowed from the physical sciences (Paquet 1985).

THE REACTION OF THE HUMANITIES

The general reaction of humanists appears to have been almost the obverse: all realities and all methodologies are declared admissible. Indeed, humanists often “take the high ground” and declare the existing practices, by definition, best practices. While this sort of “anything goes” approach to both substance and method may not be reprehensible in itself, it often rationalizes pointlessness and characterizes as uncouth any discussion by humanists about the point of their studies.

To confront the accusation (by humanists themselves) that research in the humanities has tended to produce “irrelevant museum culture” (Grant 1979: 47–50), the standard defence has been for pure humanists to point an accusatory finger at the institutional entrapments produced by the “external environment”. Practitioners have been led astray, so the argument goes, by the worship of false idols brought in from outside the academy, to the detriment of the progress of knowledge. If only those false idols and their institutional entrapments could be removed, the workings of the “invisible hand” would generate optimum knowledge through a union of substance and method.

This was the technique used by Francis Bacon (1620) with his four idols: the idol of the tribe, the idol of the cave, the idol of the marketplace, and the idol of the theatre. Guy Rocher (1985) has used the same stratagem to analyze the obstacles facing social scientists in Canada. These “idols” refer to the mental weaknesses typical of the human species (the tribe); to distinguishing peculiarities, such as the colonial status of our scientific enterprise (the cave); to the influence of language, as words are “confused, badly defined and hastily and irregularly abstracted from things” (the marketplace); and to erroneous systems of philosophy (the theatre) (Quinton 1980: Chapter 5).

E. H. Gombrich (1979: 112–122) uses a similar stratagem to explain why the humanities have been diverted from their optimal path. He identifies four classes of idols to be blamed for their fall from grace: idola quantitatis, idola novitatis, idola temporis and idola academica. He complains that research in the humanities has been distorted and somewhat perverted by the influence of the physical sciences, with their emphasis on quantification, novelty, the use of the newest intellectual or mechanical tools, and the academy’s division into departments and disciplines, subjecting this corpus of knowledge to nothing less than sacrilegious dissection. Gombrich claims that, even if unwittingly, the humanities have been corrupted by the same set of influences that has afflicted the social sciences, emanating from the model imported from the physical sciences and imposed on them by the academic environment. In this case, as in that of the social sciences, there has been a gradual displacement of content by method.

Such reactions have not solved the crisis of confidence and the causes of the failure of the human sciences have not been exorcized. The symptoms are clear. Overspecialization, quantophrenia, methodological naïveté and pretension, and formalism as camouflage have over the past fifty years weakened the credibility of the human sciences. This loss of credibility has come about when public expectations, oversold by earlier human scientists on the usefulness of their knowledge and their ability to solve social problems, were growing exponentially.

The changes that have occurr...