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A Postmodern Metatheory of Knowledge as a System by Gerrit Van Wyk 301 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-2471; ISBN 1-4120-1993-1; US$25.50, C$29.99, EUR21.00, £15.00 This multidimensional investigation into epistemology adds to the existing postmodern debate by synthesizing numerous aspects of what we know into a new whole.
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about the book
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sample excerpts and Table of Contents
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About the Book
A Postmodern Metatheory of Knowledge As A System is about the age-old question, "what do we know and how do we know it is the truth"? The original intention of the text was to be a summary of the position of Western philosophy on the question, but it soon became clear that postmodern knowledge is a much more complicated subject than philosophy by itself can answer.
To form even a superficial and provisional theory of knowledge, in addition to philosophical concepts one has to consider neurophysiological realities including, vision, language and how the brain manipulates data. In addition, sociological, anthropological and psychological issues that impact on the ways we manipulate knowledge needs to be considered. The outcome is a multifaceted and multidimensional model consisting of the sense data that we experience as well as the ways that we construct and interpret the world we live in symbolically. And such a metatheory shows that ultimately it becomes impossible to pass judgement on the truth without knowledge of the context within which it exists and objective truth is merely imagination. This position is decidedly postmodern, but the dilemma of postmodernity is that if anything goes and there is no objective truth, the rich fabric of life becomes dull and pessimistic.
One possible escape from this double bind is to include knowledge of the spiritual dimension, which traditionally is excluded from the discourse and that transcends many existing notions of how and what we know. If the legitimacy of this argument is granted, one ends up not only with a much richer canvas, but also a situation where the traditional phenomenal and symbolic begins to touch and intermingle.
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About the Author
Gerrit van Wyk's interest in what we know and how we use what we know to make decisions started after a Masters dissertation in Systems Management at the university of Cape Town titled Medicine And Medical Process As A Learning System, which was examined externally at the University of California Berkeley. During a career in healthcare spanning twenty-five years, he saw countless examples of decisions going wrong both on the clinical and planning sides. the search for answers to the question "why do we make so many mistakes in our decisions" took him through many disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology, spirituality, and so on and culminated in this text, which is the outcome of many years of personal research. he made numerous presentations to lay and professional audiences about the subject and is currently practicing medicine in Moose Jaw. He also has an MBA.
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Sample Excerpts and Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Culture 25
Mind maps (belief systems) 26
What are mind maps? 26
Personal maps 28
Public maps 29
How do they work? 30
What is the purpose of mind maps? 32
Why do mind maps resist change? 33
Communication 34
Digital communication - verbal language 36
Semiology 36
The transformational grammar theory 38
Deacon's theory of language 39
Analogue (symbolic) communication 40
Nonverbal communication (kinesics) 40
Myth as language 40
Art 41
Dreams 42
The Verification Problem (How Can We Be Certain) 43
Knowledge as a system 43
Common sense 44
Rationalistic verification * formal logic 46
Empirical verification - scientific method 47
Criticism 49
Pragmatism (modern empiricism) 50
Knowledge and time 55
Fuzzy logic 56
The problem of social truth 59
Knowledge as a product of social games 61
The scientific narrative 63
Knowledge as functional class 65
Synthesis 67
Morphological classes of knowledge 67
Physical classes of knowledge 69
Taking Action - Inquiry 70
Common sense inquiry 70
Logical inquiry 71
Inquiry as a social activity 73
Method and procedure 77
Methods for acquiring knowledge about natural phenomena 79
Logic 79
Deductive logic 79
Inductive logic 80
Scientific method 80
Statistical method 82
Controlled inquiry 83
Methodological problems of the scientific method 84
Causality 84
Control 85
Equilibrium 87
Methods for acquiring knowledge about symbolic phenomena 88
Field theory 88
Criteria for a methodology of symbolic knowledge 90
The systems approach 91
Systems inquiry 92
Error in decision making 94
The Dilemma of Social Inquiry 96
Social theory 96
The French tradition 96
The German tradition 97
Weber 97
Marx 98
Social method 99
Positivism 99
A social science related to philosophy 101
Phenomenology 103
Phenomenological method 105
Phenomenological sociology 106
Social knowledge 106
Everyday life 107
Language 110
Society as objective reality 112
Society as subjective reality 120
In summary 123
Ethnomethodology 124
Hermeneutics 125
Linguistic understanding 125
Grammatical interpretation 126
Technical interpretation 126
Method 126
A phenomenology of tradition 127
In summary 128
Neo-Marxism 129
Critical theory (the Frankfurt school) 129
Method 130
Critical Marxism 132
In summary 133
Social stability 133
Psychology 136
Psychoanalysis 136
Theory of instincts 137
Psychic apparatus and ego psychology 138
Modern ego psychology 139
Method 139
Schools of psychoanalysis 140
Individual psychology (Alfred Adler * 1870-1937) 140
Analytical (depth) psychology (Carl Jung - 1885*1961) 140
Active therapy (Sandor Ferenczi * 1873-1933) 140
Other schools of psychology 141
Gestalt 141
Behaviorism 142
Transactional analysis 142
Transactions 143
To summarize 146
Learning - The Natural Evolution of Knowledge 147
Group learning 149
What is speculation? 152
Standards of measurement 155
Standards of value 157
Intuition 158
Speculation 159
Ethics and morality 159
Philosophy of values 160
Aesthetics 163
The nature of being 165
Hunter-gatherer Belief 168
Indian Thought 168
Hinduism 172
Chinese Thought 172
Buddhism 174
Planter-city state Belief 177
Judaism 179
Christianity 181
Islam 184
Synthesis 185
Summary 185
A Critique of the Metatheory of Knowledge 187
The structure of knowledge 187
The epistemological questions of philosophy 187
Is objective knowledge possible? 188
What are the limits of knowledge? 188
What are the origins of knowledge? 189
The problem of methodology 190
Apriori 190
Types of knowledge 191
Truth, or verification 191
In summary 191
The shortcomings of the metatheory 191
The evolution of the metatheory 193
Postmodernity 195
Postmodern themes 196
The Historical Context 198
"Postmodern" science 198
Quantum physics 198
Chaos and Complexity 202
Language 204
Wittgenstein 204
Semiotics and Structuralism 205
Structuralism 205
The language system 207
Semiotics 212
Semiotic traditions 215
In summary 219
Postmodern humanities 219
Postmodern anthropology 220
Postmodern psychology. Gergen's theory of social saturation 221
Multiphrenia 222
Language, mind, and understanding 223
Postmodern culture's effect on self 224
Relationships 225
The new consciousness 227
Postmodern sociology. Baudrillard's hyper-reality 228
Postmodern philosophy 229
Positivism 229
Existentialism 230
Derrida's grammatology 232
Rorty's Mirror of Nature 233
Is The Metatheory Postmodern? 235
The Implications of Postmodernity 238
Wholism 242
The Systems Approach 242
General System Theory 242
Cybernetics 243
Hard and soft systems 244
C West Churchman 245
Peter Checkland 246
Systems thinking 247
Systems approach 247
Quantum Theory 248
Bootstrap Theory 249
Many Worlds Theory 249
Decoherence 250
Quantum non-locality 250
Implicate Order 251
Transcendent Knowledge 255
Integral Psychology 254
The Premodern Contribution 256
State and Structure 256
Cognitive Development 256
Developmental Lines 256
Self 257
The Modern Contribution 257
The Postmodern Contribution 260
The Conscious 260
Transpersonal Theory 262
The Body Ego 263
The Mental Ego 264
The Mental Ego to Integration Transition 264
Regression 265
Regeneration 267
Integration 267
Psychosynthesis 268
The Unconscious 271
Archetypal Psychology 273
Other Selves 274
Transcendental Psychology 278
Taoism 280
Zen 281
Shamanism 281
Sample excerpts
Isaac Newton said that his work stands on the shoulders of those who came before him. I am no Newton, but I am also deeply indebted to those whose work prepared me for this task. In true postmodern fashion, the document is a pastiche, or collage of many opinions and view points. these opinions are acknowledged in the text and bibliography, and I took the liberty of freely quoting from and on occasion extensively summarizing these viewpoints. In the end, the text is like a quilt towards which I have just provided the needle and thread. I trust some will find this a useful quilt, and some perhaps even beautiful.
Reading the text is a bit like reading an Inca rope book. The text consists of a number of strings and knots, but within each string there are also many threads that may surface in various places and during subsequent readings. Being a collage, the argument is diverse and the strings deeply interconnected, and consequently may mean different things to different people.
The text started as an attempt to write an essay that would provide an overview of the current status of knowledge in society. But soon it became clear that this was impossible, and the outcome is a text that took on a life of its own. Each knot in a string caused a pause and many more questions and ramifications, each of which had to be followed out, albeit in a superficial manner.
The reason for selecting knowledge as a topic is tied to our need to know in order to render a world growing increasingly more complex more understandable. At the conclusion of the text, I stand in awe before the realization of the vastness and complexity of the cosmic whole. I am struck with postmodern muteness and at a loss to express the cosmos as thought via the media available to me. And what I learnt is that consciousness is the inexpressible whole, and the inexpressible whole is consciousness.
A brief outline of how the text evolved to serve as anchor is as follows. The argument begins with the philosophical traditions underlying epistemology. Kant's synthesis of the traditions is then used pragmatically as framework to start the investigation.
In terms of this framework, knowledge begins with the totality of what we can be conscious of. At a given moment, we have a subconscious awareness of a small fragment via our sense apparatus. This experience is then actively constructed as a meaningful entity according to innate rules in the mind as a part of a robust yet flawed process that not infrequently results in mistakes. Judgement is then passed on the meaning of the entity identified, and the outcome can be communicated, most frequently through language, verified as accurate, speculated about, or used to take purposeful action. Each of these steps depend on the accurate functioning of associated systems that in turn depend on assumptions, learnt rules, and the correct application of the system. Most of these rules and assumptions arise from tacit social agreement. Ultimately, meaning therefore depends on knowledge of these rules.
Knowledge is therefor constructed, it is dynamic, occupies a spectrum of possibilities, and truth depends on social conventions and interactions. No narrative can claim to be more legitimate than the next, and this applies in particular to scientific dogma. There is a range of different but equally valid methods for generating knowledge.
Effective action critically depends on available knowledge, and decisions can be taken either intuitively, or as part of a conscious process of connected thinking, or logic. The purpose of logical thought is to reduce the risk of mistakes, and inter alia demands knowledge of the rules or method for interpretation and assigning meaning. There are numerous methods that can be followed, and the ideal would be one that can accommodate them all, of which only one is currently a candidate, namely wholismic thinking.
Postmodernity is the over-exposure to otherness, within which there are a number of postmodernisms, or schools and movements. Over-exposure results in complexity, and complexity to the dilemmas of knowledge identified in the text. Postmodernity adds to the confusion by rejecting the tyranny of any form of authority, i.e. anything goes. The dilemma for the individual is then, how do I live postmodern? To this there are two possibilities at the ends of a spectrum, namely skepticism, anarchy and nihilism associated with the existentialist tradition, or by assimilating the texture and complexity of the infinite whole in a position of wonderment, awe and curiosity, which demands an opening up and increase in consciousness. Some will call this spirituality, but by implication, it must be then spirituality at a transcendant level.
Catalogue Information
