Ulteriori informazioni
Zusatztext The questions posed by the authors in their book are important. They are also a good reminder to constantly consider the dialectic between knowledge! authority! and its relationship with certainty. Informationen zum Autor Ian Angell is Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics. His research interests include organizational and national IT policies, strategic information systems, computer security and systemic risk. He has written fourteen books, including The New Barbarian Manifesto (2000), and over a hundred research papers. Dionysios Demetis is a Research Associate at London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include anti-money-laundering schemes and related technologies in the banking sector, systems theory, computer security and the global consequences of information systems. Dionysios S. Demetis is a Member of the Scientific Board of the Geolab Institute at the Ionian University, Greece. Klappentext This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. How do we humans know what we know?Can there ever be knowing about knowing?This ambitious book is written in reaction to the so-called 'rigour' that pervades much of today's scientific research and practice. Taking examples from across the natural and social sciences, the authors examine the deep-seated assumptions that underpin the discovery of knowledge. They claim that all scientific methods are delusions in pursuit of theory. Their controversial argument uses Systems Theory, and in particular the concept of self-reference. For them, the very process of observing must mask the underlying delusions, tricking the human mind into developing a self-consistent description of itself. This opens up a belief in the certainty of a causal 'reality'. However, our esoteric descriptions, our theories, our ways of thinking, in fact all the abstractions we use to examine the world around us, are distinct from the 'reality' being observed.This fresh and audacious work makes an important contribution to the study of scientific method, and takes readers out of the comfort zone of their perceived scientific certainty.This book seeks to deconstruct the process of scientific knowledge discovery and theory construction by scrutinizing the circumstances under which all scientific hypotheses are conceived. It concentrates on the interrelatedness of observation, paradox, delusion and self reference in scientific theory and method. Zusammenfassung This book seeks to deconstruct the process of scientific knowledge discovery and theory construction by scrutinizing the circumstances under which all scientific hypotheses are conceived. It concentrates on the interrelatedness of observation, paradox, delusion and self reference in scientific theory and method. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of Figures Preface 1. Introduction 2. Divination and Theory Construction 3. Delusion 4.Individual Allusions Contra Sensory Overload 5. Patterns of Categorical Delusions 6. Tidy Minds, Technology, and the Myth of Control 7. Systems Theory 8. On the Premises of Observation 9. The Frame of Observation & the Functional Differentiation of Science 10. Higher Order Observations 11. Asymmetry and Self-Reference 12. Collapsing Systems 13. The 'Reality' of the Real Epilogue: Science's First Mistake Notes References Index ...
