Seeing the wood for the trees: Social Science 3.0 and the role of visual thinking

© 2016 ICCR Foundation. Social Science is increasingly called on to address “grand challenges”, “wicked problems”, “societal dilemmas” and similar problematiques. Examples include climate change, the war on drugs and urban poverty. It is now widely agreed that the disciplinary structure of academic science, with its journals, curricula, peer communities, etc., is not well suited to such trans-disciplinary, ill-bounded, controversial issues, but the ways forward are not yet clear or accepted by the mainstream. The concept of a next generation paradigm of “Science 3.0” has emerged through work on sustainability systems analysis, and for this multiple channels for learning, thinking and communications are essential. Visual thinking in its many forms (from technical representation or mapping, to photography or video, to design or illustration, to fine art) can bring to the table tacit and “felt” knowledge, creative experience and links from analysis with synthesis. This paper first sketches the contours of a Social Science 3.0, and then demonstrates with examples how visual thinking can combine with rational argument, or extend beyond it to other forms of experience

Voting and the Cardinal Aggregation of Judgments

The paper elaborates the idea that voting is an instance of the aggregation of judgments, this being a more general concept than the aggregation of preferences. To aggregate judgments one must first measure them. I show that such aggregation has been unproblematic whenever it has been based on an independent and unrestricted scale. The scales analyzed in voting theory are either context dependent or subject to unreasonable restrictions. This is the real source of the diverse 'paradoxes of voting' that would better be termed 'voting pathologies'. The theory leads me to advocate what I term evaluative voting. It can also be called utilitarian voting as it is based on having voters express their cardinal preferences. The alternative that maximizes the sum wins. This proposal operationalizes, in an election context, the abstract cardinal theories of collective choice due to Fleming and Harsanyi. On pragmatic grounds, I argue for a three valued scale for general elections

J D Bernal: philosophy, politics and the science of science

This paper is an examination of the philosophical and political legacy of John Desmond Bernal. It addresses the evidence of an emerging consensus on Bernal based on the recent biography of Bernal by Andrew Brown and the reviews it has received. It takes issue with this view of Bernal, which tends to be admiring of his scientific contribution, bemused by his sexuality, condescending to his philosophy and hostile to his politics. This article is a critical defence of his philosophical and political position

J D Bernal: philosophy, politics and the science of science

This paper is an examination of the philosophical and political legacy of John Desmond Bernal. It addresses the evidence of an emerging consensus on Bernal based on the recent biography of Bernal by Andrew Brown and the reviews it has received. It takes issue with this view of Bernal, which tends to be admiring of his scientific contribution, bemused by his sexuality, condescending to his philosophy and hostile to his politics. This article is a critical defence of his philosophical and political position

Soft systems methodology: a context within a 50-year retrospective of OR/MS

Soft systems methodology (SSM) has been used in the practice of operations research and management science OR/MS) since the early 1970s. In the 1990s, it emerged as a viable academic discipline. Unfortunately, its proponents consider SSM and traditional systems thinking to be mutually exclusive. Despite the differences claimed by SSM proponents between the two, they have been complementary. An extensive sampling of the OR/MS literature over its entire lifetime demonstrates the richness with which the non-SSM literature has been addressing the very same issues as does SSM

Political Dimensions of Environmental Citizenship

Conceptions of Environmental Citizenship are core to models of sustainability. Such contested conceptions raise historically significant questions associated with the rights of the individual and the responsibility of the community to the environment. Attitudes towards sustainability beg questions of models of citizenship ranging from compliance through democratic deliberation to active dissent. Philosophical problems also intersect with Environmental Citizenship. Ecocentrism prioritises a systemic holistic view of Nature in which the human species has no privileged role. Anthropocentrism in its more liberal aspect has an instrumental view of Nature underpinned by beneficence. These divergent ideologies also presuppose metaphysical and ontological questions about the relationship between Mind and Nature, hence fundamental implications for education and citizenship more broadly. There are, of course, intermediate positions. This raises three driving questions: 1. What are the main philosophical and political positions associated with Environmental Citizenship? 2. What are the justifications underpinning particular approaches to Environmental Citizenship? 3. Can we map the main components of Environmental Citizenship to create a coherent European and Global approach to inquiry

Evidence and Ideology in Macroeconomics: The Case of Investment Cycles

The paper reports the principal findings of a long term research project on the description and explanation of business cycles. The research strongly confirmed the older view that business cycles have large systematic components that take the form of investment cycles. These quasi-periodic movements can be represented as low order, stochastic, dynamic processes with complex eigenvalues. Specifically, there is a fixed investment cycle of about 8 years and an inventory cycle of about 4 years. Maximum entropy spectral analysis was employed for the description of the cycles and continuous time econometrics for the explanatory models. The central explanatory mechanism is the second order accelerator, which incorporates adjustment costs both in relation to the capital stock and the rate of investment. By means of parametric resonance it was possible to show, both theoretically and empirically how cycles aggregate from the micro to the macro level. The same mathematical tool was also used to explain the international convergence of cycles. I argue that the theory of investment cycles was abandoned for ideological, not for evidential reasons. Methodological issues are also discussed

Negotiating the modern cross-class ‘model home’:domestic experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court

This article investigates the spatial articulation of architecture and home through the exploration of current domestic experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court housing scheme (1959-1962), Edinburgh. How architecture and home are both idealized and lived is the backdrop for a discussion that draws on the concept of “model home,” or physical representation of a domestic ideal. The article reads Claremont Court as an architectural prototype of the modern domestic ideal, before exploring its reception by five of its households through the use of visual methods and semistructured interviews. Receiving the model home involves negotiating between ideal and lived homes. Building on this idea, the article contributes with a focus on the spatiality of such reception, showing how it is modulated according to the architectural affordances that the “model home” represents. The article expands on scholarship on architecture and home with empirical evidence that argues the reciprocal spatiality of home