To: David and Rick
RICK (today)
When applying a 'marketplace' metaphor to the intellectual level one should
not forgot that the competitors are the ideas themselves rather than the
scientists (or philosophers, etc.) who create them. But the real action in
the
marketplace comes when we have to make choices via the prioritization of
values; when some patterns must be embraced and others discarded. That's
where DQ is really activated.
ROG (yesterday)
I agree that competition is a prominent feature of the 2nd and 3rd levels.
By the 4th level, the interesting feature of competition is between ideas (I
would say your scientist's ambition is indeed social). The competition is
between competing theories and concepts. I see it as extremely powerful
here. This is a driving force toward the progress of science and other
intellectual theories. The cool thing here is that the same scientist can
have multiple, competing hypotheses or theories.
DMB
Based on the theory that "the competitors are the ideas themselves", it'll
be an awfully long wait. How LONG does it take for ideas to sort themselves
out?I'm waiting... for the punchline. Who forgot what? To paraphrase the
author, static patterns don't change and improve all by themselves. It takes
a living being. Scientists are the ones who ask the question, construct the
experiment, conduct the tests, gathers the data, draws the conclusions and
publishes the results. You wanna leave them out of it? Its true that
intellectual patterns have an existence and a "life" all their own in some
sense, but to pretend scientists are anything less than essential is
preposterous.
ROG now adds:
Rick and I both clearly understood and explicitly mentioned that ideas are
created and evaluated by scientists or other people. There has been no
attempt to leave them out. But, the level of competition where "the action
is" is at the level of the ideas themselves. Scientists, using the
methodology of science, do indeed act as judges.
For an introduction on this way of looking at this 4th level issue, I
recommend Popper's writings on Evolutionary Epistemology.
Rog
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