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Principles of Applied Epistemology (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)
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Mick Harper
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And one more today. Perhaps I should try for one a day
-------------------

Paradigms I Have Loved
It all goes back to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions


You have all heard of ‘paradigms’, you all vaguely know what they are, you all vaguely worry you might not have got it quite right. Join the club. Join the human race. Paradigm theories have been worrying and propelling human beings ever since Ug discovered the First Law of Thermodynamics, ‘When two sticks are rubbed together, thou shalt get fire’. (I paraphrase.)

They are those fundamental laws, assumptions, theories, hypotheses upon which our detailed knowledge of the way things work are based. It’s no use spotting the sun rises in the east — it might rise in the north tomorrow— without knowing the reason. God ordained that the sun went round the earth in that direction, and He doesn’t mess around when it comes to Creation.

Plate Tectonics is a ‘paradigm theory’. Darwinian Evolution is a paradigm theory (strictly speaking, it is now Neo-Darwinism but we need not go into that). The Laws of Thermodynamics are paradigm theories. You get the drift.

They came into vogue after Thomas Kuhn published his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. You may not believe it now but they were on everybody’s lips at the smarter dinner parties. So much so that by the nineteen-seventies any mention of them got you jeered at for being so yesterday, darling. This was a nuisance for me personally because, after reading Kuhn’s book, I had resolved to make the study of paradigm theories my life’s work but fortunately the vogue for inviting me to dinner parties had passed by then.

So what have I learned? (‘Briefly, Mick.’) Well, I have learned that every paradigm theory that every society has ever come up with has turned out to be either completely wrong or in need of such radical revision it might as well be. With one exception. Our own.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:

So what have I learned? (‘Briefly, Mick.’) Well, I have learned that every paradigm theory that every society has ever come up with has turned out to be either completely wrong or in need of such radical revision it might as well be. With one exception. Our own.


Isn't that the point, any new paradigm, including yours (THOBR), actually encourages revision as it immediately generates new ideas and thinking. Any dying paradigm will increasingly defy simple and obvious attempts to rehabilate it, when faced by refutation or contradictory evidence.
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Mick Harper
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Isn't that the point, any new paradigm, including yours (THOBR), actually encourages revision as it immediately generates new ideas and thinking.

You are raving. THOBR is a case in point. It has not generated any new ideas, no new thinking. It is simply ignored. As are all challenges to current paradigms.

Any dying paradigm

Can I stop you there. There is no such thing as a dying paradigm (or if there is, kindly name one). They just sit there, accepted as 'observably true' by everyone, until one day they are replaced by something else. Which is also observably true.

will increasingly defy simple and obvious attempts to rehabilate it, when faced by refutation or contradictory evidence.

I have no knowledge of such a process.
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Mick Harper
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Quite an interesting exchange from Medium on the general theme of 'the truth is always boring'. It started with this piece from an old sparring partner with whom I have a friendly but highly competitive relationship.

Harold De Gauche wrote:
Five Signs We Live in Interesting Times
From the coolcation to the exocyborg
It really is astonishing to witness the rate of change, the scale of progress, the sorts of technologies that are emerging, and how this impacts humankind. All of these are shifting and evolving faster than any epoch that has come before and at such breakneck speed that few can fathom their implications. Here are 5 things that epitomise the spirit of this most interesting time of ours....

Mick Harper wrote:
This may all be true but surely we are ourselves developing in tandem to cope. Unless we have more than impressionistic analysis it may be that human beings always feel this way.

Harold De Gauche wrote:
Humans adapt for sure. Every age has its own especial style and nature as there is a certain universal and immutable style and nature. But when things begin to move ultra fast, faster than ever before, we are in new territory. Great change has happened many times before, but this time it's all just so fast.

Also, AI and the biotech revolution will fundamentally change how we view free will, achievement, responsibility, agency, self-control and many others things. We are dealing with a massive chance of degree and kind in my view. Thank you for the astute observation.

Mick Harper wrote:
The clue surely is whether we, as individuals, are coping with it all. We seem to do this effortlessly even if we have the perception--or are being told--that all is falling around us.

Harold De Gauche wrote:
The Industrial Revolution was hugely traumatic and life was worse for workers for about 50 years - disease, terrible conditions, early death, gruelling hardship. Yet, countries as a whole came through it? Is this what you meant by coping? Seems like the one word people would use to describe this would be 'effortless'.

Mick Harper wrote:
No, this is your back projection. The Industrial Revolution wasn't even noticed by contemporaries. It was not traumatic, life was not worse for workers, there was no disease, deaths were not early, there was no hardship, gruelling or otherwise. Leastways not more than normal.

Harold De Gauche wrote:
It's not my 'back projection' as you call it. There has been a lot of analysis of this by Eric Hobsbawm among others. I don't understand history by just deciding how I feel about different times and then going with it.

Your thesis seems to be - humans live in an eternal present with no or little sense of movement. They cope (whatever that means as you still haven't defined it) with whatever is. Changes and periods only exist for later humans looking back. This is what I have got from you thus far.

Mick Harper wrote:
Then you've gone a long way.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Wiley's view is that some folks from the mid to late 1800s started to conceptualise (back project?) an industrial revolution (sic) that had already happened.

The phrase "industrial revolution" itself seems to have been popularised by publication of lectures by Arnold Toynbee ( 23 August 1852 – 9 March 1883).

Ortho places this revolution (sic) between 1760 -1840.

Despite all the dying, and suffering, according to ortho the total population actually rose significantly (maybe this is a point against you) less child mortality, increasing life spans etc.
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Mick Harper
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It's not that people didn't know they were living in changing times--they, like us, never stop talking about it. My main beef though is this idea that the past was by definition horrid. You wait till you hear what they say about us in a coupla hundred years' time.

"There were parts of London that didn't have 5X technology."
"Positively Hogarthian, darling. Pass the twelve-course banquet pill."
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Mick Harper
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Harold has posted up a coda with one phrase I thought summed up his position, which called forth my own and which ended in a broadside from him that quite surprised me in its bitterness

Harold De Gauche wrote:
Five More Signs of the Times
From the end of fame to doom and gloom

Not all ages are created equally.

Mick Harper wrote:
"Not all ages are created equally."
Actually, if you view all civilised societies from c 3000 BC to c 1500 AD you will find they are remarkably similar. They all had the same range of technologies, the same pace of life, the same broad intellectual palette. Then we went from horse-and cart to moon rockets in no time flat. So it is better to say, "All ages were created equal, but one was more equal than the others."

Harold De Gauche wrote:
No it isn't. Do you know what eristics are? Eristics are where one party tries to beat the other, through subterfuge, casuistry, whatever really, with the sole goal of winning. No shared growth, no give and, no pooling of knowledge. Dialectics are the opposite.

You are the former. I engaged with you cause despite your gruffness and surliness, occasionally there was something useful and engaging. However for the last while, there is nothing of use or value or benefit in anything you say. All it is a grouchy man picking one part of an article and saying something negative or bitter or silly about it.

Continue to read my work by all means, comment as well if you wish, but I won't be replying as it's just a waste of my time, which I have less and less of these days. If you were just a misanthrope but deconstructed things in a compelling way with large and insightful appraisals of what I write as a whole, I could accept that. But bitter negativity with nothing else to offer apart from bitter negativity, nah, is a waste of my time and yours.

Mick Harper wrote:
I was expressing disagreement. I don't know what the name of that is.

Though in truth he may have a point.
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Mick Harper
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Harold has just provided an illuminating example of careful ignoral. It all started when he posted this up

Harold de Gauche on Medium wrote:
Would You Die For The European Union?
Why the nation-state is more essential than ever

It was quite a good piece, within its own terms, and was the usual paean to the splendid qualities, especially the modernity, of nation states. As you know this is a bit of a specialty of mine so I quoted a bit of his paper and gave him a quick broadside

Mick Harper wrote:
"The nation-state as a political community run by and for members of that community is a very recent phenomenon—perhaps 200 years old."

Your politics is showing. The nation state goes back to c 1300 when England (and Scotland) achieved their permanent borders. Earlier than that if you include Japan (and possibly Korea). Their unique characteristic is that they are immortal. They are not (necessarily) run by and for their members but their members will never cease from mortal strife to defend them and, if necessary, re-constitute them.

I knew this bit of coat-trailing would provoke him but I was still a bit taken aback by the sheer spleen of his response

Harold de Gauche wrote:
Read about it. Type it into Google and do some research. Everything you will find will say much the same as I have said. I even gave you links which you didn't open. What you are talking about are dominion states and monarchical states, not nation states. Their legitimators are kings and queens, not the people themselves. This would have been a daft notion to even suggest at the time. The first time all the elements come together is the French Republic.

Maybe you should do some research about serious stuff before wading into a conversation with someone that knows the topic well. It has nothing to do with my politics. Here's some help for you.

From what source does a government obtain its right to rule in a state like the Kingdom of Britain? And answer the same question for the French Republic? By and for - I said this is part real and part mystical. Do you read these pieces properly or just find a part you disagree with and wheel out whatever happens to be in your brain relating to this subject?

I wasn't quite sure what to do at this point. I decided to force myself to do something useful, as opposed to roistering about having a good time with Harold:

Mick Harper wrote:
No, I rely on my own independent analysis based on accumulated knowledge of history, then write books about it. I'll post up on Medium the rules for 'nation states' (mathematical and no exceptions) and see if I can wean you from your faith in woolly academicism.

Harold de Gauche wrote:
No, you just pull stuff out of your arse and go round in circles. Nothing woolly about it. There are many definitions of nationalism and the nation state, but there is massive consensus on when they appeared. I put my faith in the store of human knowledge and my ability to assess it in order to make assertions of varying degrees of certainty. This assertion is made with full certainty.

Mick Harper wrote:
As promised I have posted up some thoughts on this https://medium.com/p/406ff93b7e39

This produced no response from Harold. So I put up two more stories

Mick Harper wrote:
Sorry to impinge further on your good graces but it's an important subject and your account has prompted me to add two more https://medium.com/p/ff482f4bbfcb and https://medium.com/p/7fccb263afb2 to complete my version of what a nation state is.

Which produced a nibble

Harold de Gauche wrote:
Ok, Mick, I'll take a look when I get a chance. I hope you've at least typed in to Google to see what comes up - is nationalism and the nation state modern?

Why is it people say they are going to read something when it makes better sense to read the something instead? If it is a book, fair enough, but when it's a coupla minutes work and a public commitment, it is a holding exercise. It's what happened next that makes it full blown careful ignoral.

Nothing happened.

You can see the cleft stick Harold is in. A lesser light (say, a Ukrainian partisan sounding off) would just blast my efforts with several more barrels but Harold is a pro. He understands I have made good on my boast about knowing plenty on the subject. He has to recognise that I know more on the subject than he does--he has more or less admitted he is relying on Wiki et al. He is, on the face of things, obliged to comment on the substance of my three Medium pieces. But all these things are deeply uncomfortable to him (even if he considers what I have written to be horse manure).

So he does nothing. What is going on in his head is interesting. But I would think temporary.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Don't know. Seems to Wiley, after his normal mug of coffee, that the key bit is the centralisation that enables you to control the borders, then act as mediator, both locally and (it's even going a bit wrong, in my own mind, need another coffee) internationally.....

It seems to me London becoming de facto capital would be a good start.

It's something like cities first, then an entrepôt led to a de facto capital, leads to a Nation State.

Hmmm, bit provisional.
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Mick Harper
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A bit Gauche if you ask me. I'll post up my three stories to put you straight.

The Immortality of the Nation State
The term ‘nation state’ is familiar enough. But what are they?


The official definition can be disregarded. It was composed by historians who are not qualified to speak of such things. What is needed is a systems analyst, so here goes.

From time to time — and from time immemorial — human beings organise themselves into territorial units that have more or less independence from other political units. These ‘states’ arise somewhat haphazardly and last until they either dissipate or get incorporated into another political unit.

We have records of these independent political entities going back to c 3000 BC and for the first four thousand years and with the possible exception of Egypt and China none of them are around today. No matter how large the empire, no matter how prosperous the city state, they all proved to be ephemeral.

After 1000 AD a new sort of political entity arose that was not ephemeral.

This was the ‘nation state’. They have no defining characteristic save this immortality. For some reason, once a nation state gets established it continues to exist within the same borders forever. It is this ‘same borders’ rule that rules out China from being a nation state. For now. Egypt, it would seem, has acquired hers. Probably.

There are lots of countries in the world today that are not nation states.

Russia being a notable example. It may have been around for half a millennium as a political entity, and no doubt it will be around for another half a millennium, but until it acquires permanent borders it won’t be a nation state. That is one of the reasons in favour of nation states: non-permanent borders make for noisy neighbours.

But this is also what bedevils analyses of nation states. It is always a post hoc definition: you don’t know that a country’s borders will be permanent until… they are. The very term ‘immortality’ has to be qualified with ‘till now’.

It would only take one nation state to cease to exist and the whole schemata would collapse. Or, as we might say, ‘brings to an end the epoch of the nation state’.

Note, a nation state can disappear temporarily should it be occupied or partitioned, but if it is a nation state it will sooner or later re-emerge and with its old borders.

We can examine two nation states, Belgium and Holland, to see how powerfully these twin principles of ‘immortality’ and ‘same borders’ operate. The formal boundary between the two countries defies all logic, cutting off the best port in the region, Antwerp, from the sea and generally being a total pain for both countries — economically, militarily, politically… logically.

Yet neither seem able to do anything about it.

The boundary was established back in the sixteenth century as the ceasefire line in a series of wars by which the northern half of the Spanish Netherlands gained its independence and became the nation state of Holland (as we can call it for convenience). The southern half remained Spanish and went through a number of trials and tribulations until, in 1830, it became what proved to be the nation state of Belgium.

So why can’t they sort out their border? ‘You have this bit, we’ll have that bit, and the Scheldt can be the border between us.’ In the short term it was because the Dutch said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to allow Antwerp access to the sea, it will adversely affect the trade of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.’ In the long run, the only answer appears to be, ‘Because we’re nation states.’

The idea that nation states have to be ‘national’ in the sense of containing some discrete nation of like-minded souls is quite erroneous (though it helps enormously). Belgium, for instance, is a nonsensical shotgun marriage between Dutch-speakers and French-speakers who don’t get on one little bit. Never have, presumably never will. Any fool can see the northern half of Belgium should join up with their fellow Dutch and the southern half go to France. Even splitting the country into two countries is favoured by many on both sides.

But none of this can happen because Belgium is a nation state and hence immortal. And so, for that matter, are Holland and France who can’t change their borders. It’s all very well saying, ‘Watch this space’ but we’ve been expecting it since 1830 and it hasn’t happened yet.

That’s enough for now. This is a new idea and needs getting used to before embarking on the why’s and wherefores of nation states. And don’t worry, all those caveats and objections that are teeming through your brain have been thought of and catered for. Mostly. Kinda. Like I say, it’s a new idea.
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Mick Harper
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The Nation State, Part Two

Leaving Japan and Korea aside for the moment, the nation state was a European invention. Leaving aside for the moment why that was, we can observe how the phenomenon started and how it spread.

England became a permanent political entity in the eleventh century thanks to the efforts of Anglo-Saxons, Danes and Normans. But it was only fleetingly an independent one, generally being part of a wider ‘empire’ of Danes, Norman and Angevins. It was no different from other contemporary territorial entities that flittered in an out of the history of medieval Europe (indeed the world).

Things changed in the thirteenth century when King John lost Normandy and England found itself as ‘just England’. But with the unique advantage in Europe of not having anybody major on its borders and therefore not having to be a permanent war-state to keep people out (and a permanent temptation to incorporate them in).

But England was not a nation state. It had no settled boundaries with either Wales or Scotland. This meant it either (1) carried on being a war-state like everyone else or (2) set up large semi-independent organisations on the Welsh and Scottish borders to keep the Welsh and Scots out (with the permanent temptation to incorporate them in).

But any state that adopts the latter policy will have a continuous record of political instability because any time the central government is weak it will be prey to one or other of these necessarily powerful organisations seeking to take over the whole shooting match. That’s just the way things are in all non-nation states, whether it is the Roman Empire or the Holy Roman Empire. It is not a recipe for progress.

But gradually, with England, Wales and Scotland having been given the priceless advantage of not having anyone else sticking their noses in, they were able to sort things out for themselves. Wales was extinguished and Scotland became a proto-nation state. That did not mean an end to wars between England and Scotland — they carried on until 1650—but it did mean an end to either (1) or (2).

That is the great gift of the nation state. Once there is a settled idea of ‘an England’ and ‘a Scotland’ and once they have a settled border, there is no need for either a standing army or overmighty provincial subjects. You can always raise an army when needs must. Meanwhile you can get on and do what people do when they’re not living in either a permanent war state or in chronic political instability:

Get rich. Live long.

King John, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne might be everyone’s villains but they presided over a land that had the highest combination of prosperity and security the world had thus far ever seen. Stick that in your quiver, Kevin Costner.

Of course it was early days in the march to full nation statehood but reviewing later English medieval history it quickly becomes obvious what being ‘just England’ entails vis à vis the other European states who resolutely refused to become ‘just France’ or ‘just Germany’.

* It simplifies your foreign policy no end.
* The capability to raise ad hoc armies (and navies) like no-one else could.
* And paying large cash sums to anyone you feel needs encouragement to do your bidding.

The French were the first to find out what having a nation state on the doorstep entails. France was infinitely larger and more powerful than England but was a country of the old-fashioned sort: a permanent war state constantly strapped for cash, having enormous appanages at all points of the compass thirsting to take over the whole of France (or ally with England to become bigger appanages). They didn’t stand a chance against an opponent with no such complications.

So France had to become a nation state out of sheer desperation. Which meant Spain had to do so as well. And that meant a Portuguese nation state. The English were soon also-rans now their advantage was over but at least they had started the nation state dominoes falling. They were soon falling all over a very surprised world.
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Mick Harper
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The End of the Nation State

Consider the fate of your country. Your non-nation state country. If you are small — say, a city state — you might be very rich, you might be very powerful, but sooner or later you will get extinguished by someone richer, someone more powerful. You might be Venice and last for a thousand years but your fate is sealed.

Or maybe you’re Rome and start growing and growing territorially until you’re too rich and too powerful to be extinguished by anyone but since non-nation states don’t have any mechanism to stop growing one day you are going to out-grow your own ability to administer and defend yourself. Then you’re in big trouble because non-nation states don’t have a mechanism to stop contracting, so you are likely to disappear altogether.

Unless you are the Ottoman Empire and contract in the era of the nation state, then your contraction will end when you have reached the Turkish Anatolian heartland. Though it is still early days to declare Turkey a nation state, the Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a homeland to call their own.

Nation states have the recipe for immortality. They cannot expand, they cannot contract, they have permanent borders. They are no different from other types of states — they are just as greedy, just as paranoid — but this does not impinge on their own survival:

* A nation state can have an empire the sun never sets on but so long as all the extra baggage is overseas this will not affect its own borders.
* A nation state can be so small it is constantly being overrun but it will resume as if nothing happened once the peace talks get going.

So are we doomed to be a world of nation states? Ah well, that’s a different question but at least, now we know what a nation state is, we are in a better position to find out. Here endeth the lesson.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Thank You. Will take a closer look. It's maybe worth the hassle of separating into its own thread as it seems important. (sorry, Ed)...maybe it's just me. If you use it as a tool to explain some of your other ideas I think you might be onto something. That is the reason why H has stopped, he senses you have something.
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Mick Harper
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There's some stuff buried in the bowels of the Reading Room. I haven't really worked it up into anything and I'm taking a sabbatical from Big Projects. Meanwhile I am stealthily putting up stuff on Medium that introduces various AE principles.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
The End of the Nation State

Consider the fate of your country. Your non-nation state country. If you are small — say, a city state — you might be very rich, you might be very powerful, but sooner or later you will get extinguished by someone richer, someone more powerful. You might be Venice and last for a thousand years but your fate is sealed.

Or maybe you’re Rome and start growing and growing territorially until you’re too rich and too powerful to be extinguished by anyone but since non-nation states don’t have any mechanism to stop growing one day you are going to out-grow your own ability to administer and defend yourself. Then you’re in big trouble because non-nation states don’t have a mechanism to stop contracting, so you are likely to disappear altogether.

Unless you are the Ottoman Empire and contract in the era of the nation state, then your contraction will end when you have reached the Turkish Anatolian heartland. Though it is still early days to declare Turkey a nation state, the Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a homeland to call their own.

Nation states have the recipe for immortality. They cannot expand, they cannot contract, they have permanent borders. They are no different from other types of states — they are just as greedy, just as paranoid — but this does not impinge on their own survival:

* A nation state can have an empire the sun never sets on but so long as all the extra baggage is overseas this will not affect its own borders.
* A nation state can be so small it is constantly being overrun but it will resume as if nothing happened once the peace talks get going.

So are we doomed to be a world of nation states? Ah well, that’s a different question but at least, now we know what a nation state is, we are in a better position to find out. Here endeth the lesson.


The birth of the nation state can be fixed as the point, membership of the nation is assigned no longer by blood but territorial birth within borders, and is recorded/registered as such, so avoiding common disputes over legitimacy and land, and also ensuring protection for all within those borders regardless of blood. It's 1608.
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