I.
Theory and practice
1.
In broad terms, theory is how matters get represented, whereas practice
is how matters
get
done. The relations between theory
and practice
could
logically
be
a genuine dialectic,
defined
here as
a dynamic cycle between two
processes guiding each
other
along.
The
practice is theory-
driven, and the theory is practice-driven; the theory envisions and
expounds the practice; and the practice
specifies and implements the
theory (Fig.
1). The output from theory is top- down, whilst the
output
from
practice is bottom-up.
The more ‘theoretical’
the operation, the more steady and and precise the ‘practical’ guidance
needs to be.2. However, in several scenarios the dialectic goes out of
alignment. In one, theory runs ahead of practice, e.g., devising abstract
plans and goals from the top down without concrete methods to implement them
from the bottom up. So you proceed with partial approximations of a practice:
reasoning from previous experience with similar practices, and trying to adapt
and implement ones that worked before. The practice can undergo ‘tuning’ and
become steadily more effective as the practice catches up with the theory.
3.
In the converse scenario, practice runs ahead of theory, e.g., engaging
in sundry activities with no sound conception of plans and goals. Here, you
proceed on partial approximations of a theory, reasoning from
previous knowledge of similar theories, and trying to rethink them for new
situations. The theory can undergo
tuning and become steadily
more rational as it catches up with the practice.
4.
In a more radical scenario, theory runs away from practice, e.g.,
‘theorizing’ from the top down and disregarding practical consequences or
applications. Theorizing
becomes
its
own
goal,
and
‘theoreticians’
claim
an
independent
and superior authority over
‘practitioners’ handling practical matters (I.23, 34; II.187). A theory may
indeed be valued precisely for its distance from practice.
5.
In the converse radical scenario, practice runs away from theory, e.g.,
using methods that baldly ignore or contradict the professed theory. You invoke
a false theory which presents you in a favourable perspective, and disclaim
responsibility for your true and unfavourable actions.
6.
In the first pair of scenarios, you retain the potential to make theory and
practice converge, as when a novice gradually becomes a veritable expert. In
many domains, however, a total convergence of theory with practice could only be
a state of utopia — an ultimate, unreachable goal. To keep proceeding
toward the goal, heartened rather than daunted by the unlimited space for
progress, is a hopeful utopia; to abandon your search for the goal in
despair is a hopeless utopia.1 Unhappily, the ‘hopeful
utopian’ is far more easily transformed into a hopeless one — switching from
selfless to selfish, from idealist to cynic, from benefactor to exploiter, from
liberator to tyrant — than vice-versa.
7.
But in the more radical pair of scenarios, theory and practice cannot converge.
Instead, an official theory is publicly declared but does not guide
practice, whereas an operational theory is not publicly declared or is
flatly denied but does guide practice. In parallel, official practice is
spuriously claimed to be what gets done, whilst operational practice truly
gets done but does not get admitted.
8. The present Introduction will be building on the basic terms and concepts just proposed, using a method we might call concentric frames, working inward from general to specific, or outward from specific to general (Fig. 2a-b). Theory and practice constitute the outermost frame; then theory and practice in society; then theory and practice in some institution of society, such as education or science; and finally at the centre, theory and practice in some specific concern of that institution, such as language education or language science.
Each
issue is thus situated within concentric contexts, e .g., how a society based on
inclusive theory but exclusive practice sustains a corresponding contradiction
in science and education despite well-intentioned projects for inclusion.
Recovering a genuine dialectic requires making explicit both the
‘theoreticalness’ of human practices and the ‘practicality’ of human
theories.
I.A.
Theory and practice in society
9.
Democracy, the currently dominant official theory of the state,
envisions, in abstract terms, universal inclusion and equality for every
citizen, and calls for such institutions as free elections and universal
education as the operational means. In return, the practices of such
institutions specify, in concrete terms, how to implement inclusion and
equality, e.g., by conducting voter registration at election time or standard
examinations at the end of school terms. A total convergence of theory with
practice in a democracy would be perhaps the most obvious utopia. But a
‘democracy’ truly merits the name only as a hopeful utopia that vigorously
promotes its theory in its practices, e.g., by means of ‘equal rights
legislation’ and ‘equal opportunity employment’. A society that
endemically restricts the human rights of women or minorities cannot be a
‘democracy’, no matter how loudly it calls itself so and no matter how many
elections and school exams it can boast.
10.
The agenda of ecologism upholds genuine democracy through a dialectical
convergence between inclusive theories and inclusive practices that promotes the
expansion of human potential. We can accordingly define social progress
as inclusive practice converging with inclusive theory, versus social regress
s as exclusive practice diverging
from
inclusive theory (Fig.3).2
By
these terms, many events or processes labelled ‘progress’ in public
discourse do not qualify, such as the ‘economic progress’ benefiting only
the top classes of society and neglecting the rest (cf. I.23f; VII.1;
VIII.51-54).
11.
Four factors
could
be described in
corresponding terms. In the
factor of social roles, inclusion
produces
insiders
in a group, whereas
exclusion produces outsiders (Fig. 4). People can
naturally
. 
occupy
both roles as insiders for some groups and outsiders or others. The vital question
for ecologism is how these roles can strengthen equality and respect for human
rights through the mutual treatment of insiders and outsiders.
12. In the factor of human interaction, solidarity interacts outward on equal levels amongst insiders, whereas power interacts downward on unequal levels against outsiders. Inclusion in a power group can empower the insiders and disempower the outsiders. Whereas solidarity is a restful state promoting human rights and drawing people into supportive co-operation, power is a restless state demoting human rights and impelling people into divisive conflicts, typically over money and property
(Fig.
5). The ecological practice for a power group would be to empower outsiders and
resolve conflicts — and not, as commonly occurs, to exploit and foment.
13. In the factor of human potential, actualisation frees you to realise and build your potential in meaningful activities selected by your own free inclination, whereas alienation limits your potential to meaningless activities dictated by others (Fig. 6).3
Becoming
alienated and disempowered is an inner ‘regress’ that excludes steadily more
aspects of your human potential, thus engendering and aggravating inner
conflicts among the perpetrators who alienate and the victims who get alienated,
and maybe culminating in violence (cf. I.18, 38).
14.
The counterpart term ‘actualisation’ is far less familiar, no doubt being
rarer in ‘modern’ societies. Becoming actualized and empowered is inner
‘progress’ that includes steadily more aspects of your human potential, and
thus reconciles inner conflicts and promotes mutual respect. Ecologism holds
that actualisation should be recognised as an essential human right for
democracy to advance, especially in adapting the design of its educational
systems to reflect more progressive insights on such concepts as
‘intelligence’ (cf. I.57ff, 74).
15. In the factor of ideology, defined here neutrally as a framework of ideas that legitimise what is ‘natural’, ‘normal’, ‘proper’, and legitimise what is not,4 a left-wing ideology holds that human rights are inclusive and equal in theory, even though, short of utopia (in the sense of I.6), social conditions create exclusions and inequalities in practice. The borders between insiders and outsiders should be attenuated; conflicts should be reconciled; and the empowerment for actualisation should be actively nurtured. Social progress (in the inclusive sense of I.10) is a sound investment, and constitutes a significant duty of the state and its institutions, as professed for instance by the ideology of ‘socialism’.
16.
A right-wing ideology holds that human rights must be exclusive and
unequal in both theory and practice, in exact proportion to each individual’s
share of wealth and power, no matter how these were acquired. The borders
between insiders and outsiders should be accentuated to keep people in their
‘proper places’; conflicts should be ‘manfully fought’ until ‘victory
or death’ to ensure the ‘survival of the fittest’; those who prove
‘unfit’ are wholly to blame for any disempowerment and alienation they
suffer. Social progress is a reckless experiment, and constitutes an
irresponsible intrusion of the state, as professed for instance by the
ideologies of the ‘free market’
and ‘social Darwinism’.
17.
The social practices legitimised by left-wing theories are predictably
‘illegitimised’ by right-wing theories, and vice versa; when political power
shifts sides, social policies may get abolished or reversed. The right speaks
for the economic top (the rich and powerful ‘elites’), and the left speaks
for the economic bottom (the ‘working masses’) (VII.1). A different
opposition pervades their cognitive and discursive styles. Left-wing theory is
complex and intellectual, and respects multiple viewpoints, with the unhappy
side-effects of talking over the heads of the masses and of dividing its own
practitioners into clans and factions who debate and dispute when they should
unite against challenges from the right. The left argues for resolving social
and economic problems and helping
the victims — those without homes or jobs, or in jail — because the social
order is unjust in alienating human
potential; but their arguments are frankly complicated.
18.
In contrast, right-wing
theory is simplistic and anti-intellectual, and respects only its own viewpoint,
thus uniting its adherents into a single faction (or ‘klan’) to attack and
silence its immense gallery of ‘enemies’ (cf. VII.27ff). The right advocates
blaming social and economic problems on scapegoats who are ceaselessly accused
of an evil conspiracy to destroy the sacred values of family, home, and homeland
— intellectuals, artists, minorities, gays, immigrants, foreigners, and now
Muslims. The right blames the victims of social problems,5 saying they richly
deserve their sufferings, whereas the social order is just; and the arguments
are frankly simple-minded.
Indeed, the right converts victims into perpetrators6 — scroungers,
anarchists, agitators, terrorists, etc. etc. — and hence into legitimate
targets of spontaneous or state-sponsored violence. The discursive reduction of
human potential thus legitimises the physical reduction (cf. I.38).
19.
Using the four social factors outlined here — with their correlated polarities
between insider and outsider, power and solidarity, alienation and
actualisation, right-wing, and left-wing — we might tentatively describe three
basic stages in social evolution. A pre-modern society (the term
‘traditional’ is too loaded) with a hierarchical organisation (e.g., the
Egypt of the Pharaohs) restricts power to an aristocracy of insiders determined
by static criteria like birth, rank, and class, and sustains an official
right-wing ideology like the divine authority of kings or priests. A few
families control the politics and economy, though their ties may be invidious
and insidious in scheming for power against each other. The economy centres on
slave labour extracted to supply the opulent wants of the elite, such as
ornaments, villas, temples, and palaces, enlisting primitive technology. The
environment is regarded as a reservoir of vast wealth and as a backdrop for
sumptuous rituals that mediate between heaven and earth. Alienation and social
disorders are taboo topics, and their agents or critics get persecuted or
executed.
20.
A pre-modern society with an egalitarian organisation (e.g., the cultures of the
Amazon rainforest) attributes little value to criteria like birth, rank, and
class. Families have the small size the environment can support, and their ties
are strong and durable, e.g., in caring for the young, the aged, and the sick.
The economy centres on communal labour, such as hunting in the wild or
harvesting in the fields. The environment is regarded as an extended home to be
respected and preserved, and perhaps as a home to protective spirits too.
Technology is minimal and serves directly essential needs, such as weapons and
tools. Alienation and social disorders are rare, and their agents get ritually
reintegrated.
21.
A modern society mixes hierarchical and egalitarian modes of organisation,
and relies on dynamic criteria like education, initiative, and enterprise.
Families are smaller than the environment could support and their ties are
weaker and more fragile; care for the young, the aged, and the sick is consigned
to institutions like ‘rest homes’. The grouping of insiders and outsiders,
and the distribution of power, follow the right-wing and left-wing oscillations
of state ideology. The economy organises manual (‘blue-collar’) labour into
large enterprises, and interposes layers of (‘white-collar’) management to
oversee and ‘motivate’ them. In response, labour forms unions to attenuate
the social divide between the ‘working class’ and the ‘middle class’,
and propagates patterns of inclusive consumption of lower-priced commodities
like ‘compact cars’. Unions can also protect jobs during expansions of
technology, as when assembly lines get partially mechanised by robots. The
environment is regarded as a resource for commerce and industry to exploit,
regardless of depletion and pollution. Alienation and social disorders are
common, and their agents get isolated in mental wards or prisons, or dumped on
the streets.
22.
A post-modern society sharpens the tension between hierarchical and
egalitarian modes of organisation. The grouping of insiders and outsiders, and
the distribution of power, are subject to abrupt and radical changes. Social
diversity flows from multiculturalism and multilingualism, but finds expression
mainly in superficial ‘life styles’ like fashions in pop music, clothing,
and, recently, body-piercing. Few societies have yet seriously faced the
diversity by reaffirming equality in human rights, and many quietly or openly
seek to deny or repress it, e.g., by drastically restricting immigration. The
operational theory of ‘democracy’ juggernauts off to the far right as whole
governments and national economies fall under the power of immense multinational
banks and corporations. Labour and capital are ‘globalised’ as these power
groups circle the planet on the trail of ‘favourable conditions’, which, in
the discourse of corporate cynicism, means government incentives, privatisations,
abysmal wages, hazardous working conditions, and an absence of labour unions,
public health care, environmental safeguards, and (above all) taxes (II.119ff).
Workers see their buying power melt away, and much of the middle class sinks
down into the ‘working poor’, who are redundant and irrelevant as consumers
when the economy shifts over to the exclusive consumption of high-priced
commodities like ‘luxury cars’. Families are pressured to reassume social
burdens such as care for the young, the aged, and the sick, whilst the ‘social
safety net’ is legislated away and social services are shut down because taxes
are ‘cut’ and taxable wealth is ‘sheltered’ or ‘moved offshore’. The
natural environment gets intrusive competition from the ‘virtual realities’
where alienation is released by ‘vaporising aliens’. Social disorders grow
intense, swelling the legions of jobless vegetating in overcrowded
prisons or desolate streets.
23.
These basic stages, as described here in theory, can assume a variety of forms
in practice. Egalitarian pre-modern societies sustained a close association
between theoretical and practical knowledge. Modern societies, in contrast, have
proliferated theoretical knowledge apart from practical knowledge, and
elaborately dissociated ‘theoreticians’ from ‘practitioners’ (cf. I.4,
34). Post-modern societies are managed by tiny groups of publicly inaccessible
theoreticians within commerce and technology whose theories and practices equate
‘economic progress’ with rises in executive salaries, stock prices, and
shareholder profits, full stop (cf. I.10).
24.
Such dissociations perfectly suit a society whose official theories are
inclusive and operational practices are exclusive. This unsettling polarity can
line up with those of ‘freedom’ versus domination; of ‘equality’ versus
discrimination; of ‘economic growth’ of the few versus economic shrinkage of
the many; and of ‘peace-keeping’ versus war-mongering. The dissociated
society glibly professes the one and lives by the other, all of which burdens
the social order with a smouldering underside of social disorder that must
eventually erupt (I.32; VII.38).
25.
‘Modernisation’ might be roughly described by the four scenarios in I.2-7. Theory
runs ahead of practice, as when a country abolishing colonialism names
itself a ‘democracy’ but makes no fundamental provisions to guarantee
comprehensive human rights. A new elite supplants the old in battening on the
masses whose lives barely improve. Further social inequalities may mirror
divisions by region (e.g., urban or rural, coast or interior), education (e.g.,
A-level or O-level, tertiary
or
secondary), and profession
(e.g., bureaucrat or farmer, manager or clerk).
26.
In the converse scenario, practice runs ahead of theory, as when new
technologies are introduced with no conception of how they may affect the social
order. They typically generate moneyed ‘technology elites’ whose access to
global communication and information distances them ever further from the
masses.
27.
In a more radical scenario, theory runs away from practice, as when
post-colonial nations pass legislation granting full ‘official’ status to
indigenous languages yet continue to conduct official business and economic
activity in the language of the former ‘colonial masters’.
28.
And in the converse radical scenario, practice runs away from theory, as
when a new ‘democracy’ retains the secret police of the old dictatorship
under a new name like ‘information management bureau’. The operational
practices are secretly augmented to suppress the publicly legalised opposition.
29.
Despite the labels, pre-modernism, modernism, and post-modernism need not form
any uniform or precise historical sequence. Substantial leeway inheres in
assigning a date to the onset of modernism, and, even more, to its presumed
transition into post-modernism. What I am calling ‘modernism’ in hindsight
gradually crystallised from a complex of social, political, economic,
demographic, and technological trends whose timetables differed appreciably
among countries, regions, institutions, or social classes. In the basic
‘Western’ model followed here, these trends generally included migrating
from rural to urban regions; decentralising power; expanding commerce and trade;
raising efficiency in production; forming new specialisations; and
institutionalising national languages. Even these trends have often focused on
fairly specific sectors of society, and encountered entrenched resistance from
sectors who stood to lose through processes of change, notably the centralist
authorities of church and state.
30.
Post-modernism in turn is generally associated with such trends as degrading
urban centres and migrating to suburbs; transferring state power to corporate
power; painfully cutting back social services; globalising commerce and trade;
rationalising production and destroying jobs; concentrating new specializations
in high technology and communication; and expanding English world-wide over
local languages. The focus here has been still more specific, focused on the
economic top, and resistance is difficult mount, let alone consolidate.
31.
By this account, both modernism and post-modernism have been practices running
well ahead of theories; and their retrospective ‘theorisation’ has been
mostly undertaken by academics who are not in control of the trends and, if
neutralised by ‘conservative’ mass media as ‘fringe radicals’
(VII.30ff), exert little impact on public discourse or private practice. Nor are
the vast majority of the world’s citizens, holding no explicit theories at all
of those trends, remotely in control of their own practices. They are easily
misled to equate ‘progress’ with innovative trends (like ‘digital
cameras’ and ‘plasma television’) that are highly exclusive and should
thus count as ‘regress’ in the socially oriented sense of I.10.
32. The new millennium seems destined to endure the full strain of post-modernism being injected into societies that still embody a vertiginous mix of pre-modernism and modernism, so that the term ‘democracy’ for a whole society signifies at best a mosaic and at worst a euphemism. Diverse populations live in dramatically disparate stages of evolution — as in the ‘luxury condo’ with ‘high-tech workstations’ surrounded by hovels without running water or electricity. This mixing gets spread all round the world by globalisation, and threatens to foster explosive breakdowns in communication and interaction, and thus in social cohesion, human responsibility, and democratic principle (Ch. VII).7
33.
The response of ecologism might be to promote a lively dialectic of
deconstruction and reconstruction by analysing discourse to determine
which social practices are implied by the official theory; how they diverge from
the operational practices; and how more inclusive alternatives might help theory
and practice converge for real social progress (I.10; II.182ff). As ecologist
agents, we would also seek convergence between our dual social roles. As theoreticians,
our discourse could expound practice-driven theories for social progress, e.g.,
a theory of text and discourse centred on strategies for enhancing equality (Ch.
VI); and to deconstruct impractical theories unsuited for social progress, e.g.,
a theory of ‘language by itself’ (cf. II.41f). As practitioners, our
discourse could model and implement theory-driven practices to take account of
new discoveries, and to propose future theories, e.g., classroom methods using
new insights into language due to large corpora of authentic data (II.202); and
to deconstruct anti-theoretical practices which ignore new discoveries and shun
contact with theories, e.g., classroom methods preaching purist ‘rules’ far
from authentic usage (II.13f, 18f).
34.
Finally, we might analyse discourse to show how ‘theoreticians’ and
‘practi-tioners’ possess complementary kinds of knowledge, and deconstruct
discourses attributing great knowledge to the former and little to the latter
(I.4, 23). We can retrace the devaluing of practical knowledge from divisive
historical processes of modernisation, specialisation, and education; and show
it to be patently misplaced in a post-modern society whose survival depends on
united initiatives in practical knowledge to protect and restore our human and
natural environment.
I.B.
Language and discourse as theory and practice
35.
Again in the broadest terms, a language is a theory of cognitive
knowledge and social experience (what language users know and live), and discourse
is its practice (how they talk about it),8 both sides
interfacing the linguistic, cognitive, and social domains (cf. II.84, 111, 143).
A text (lower case) would be a communicative event that
contributes to a discourse as a set of mutually relevant texts,
usually a conversation; a Text (upper case) would be a communicative
unit produced by a discursive event and recorded in some prosodic or visual
medium. Any relevant sub-unit, such as a Phrase, Clause, or Paragraph, can be
called a Stretch of Text to remind us where it belongs. Still, the Text
is not just a series of units but rather a tri-modal system that
integrates the sub-systems of Lexicogrammar, Prosody, and Visuality (Chs.
III-V). Thus, a text can deploy not just language, but also tone of voice,
gesture, facial expression, imagery, photographs, cinema, or some combination of
such resources.
36.
Here at least, the dialectic between theory and practice, stated to be
fundamental at the outset (I.1), is well secured. The practices are richly ‘theory-driven’
because discourse draws upon language as a ‘theory’ — or indeed a vast
network of ‘theories’ — for ‘representing’ our ‘world’ and
ourselves, and for constructing alternative states of the world, or even, as in
literary discourse, whole alternative worlds (II.175, 182). Participants must
‘theorise’ extensively about what words mean, what people intend, what makes
sense, and so on. Meanings are especially theoretical entities, like
‘mini-theories’ we can’t prove, though they generally suffice for
practice. We understand each other insofar as our language-theories have a
parallel construction which becomes tuned during discourse. And this tuning
steadily maintains the language in the dynamic process of being both confirmed
and constituted by discursive practices (cf. II.21, 157, 178; VI.3, 10.3).
37.
By this account, discourse is the most theoretical practice humans can
perform, and the most efficient and effective in using the least effort for the
most goals. In return, language is the most practical theory humans can
devise — an unlimited ‘theory of everything’ offering resources to shape
and guide almost any practical activities. Yet language as theory also runs
ahead of discourse as practice by fore-shadowing some further certainty and
precision beyond what is attained on any one occasion. As I shall be showing
later on, a ‘critical’ analysis of a text or discourse regularly uncovers
some uncertainty and imprecision — a natural reflex of the openness of
language for an unlimited range and variety of expressions.
38.
By a similar reasoning, language is the most inclusive theory humans can
devise, and thus the most ‘progressive’ for integrating people as insiders.
The practices of discourse navigate our social relations within the family, peer
group, school, and career. Of course, language can exclude people as outsiders,
but I submit that doing so turns language against its natural potential.
Consider how frankly the discourses of radical exclusion as in racism and
colonialism, reduce and debase the language in order to reduce and debase human
beings with hatespeak smears like ‘scum’, ‘animals’, ‘savages’,
‘niggers’, ‘coolies’,
‘towelheads’, etc. (cf.
VII33ff). Consider too how often a refusal to use language is a glaring act of
exclusion or an ominous prelude to violence, which constitutes the ultimate
reduction of the human potential of both perpetrators and victims (cf. 0.2;
I.13, 18). The essential nature of language, and the fundamental rationale of
its very existence, must be inclusion.
39.
This reasoning leads to a vision of language being our foremost hopeful
utopia with a limitless potential for improving our knowledge and
understanding, and sharing them with an ever wider community. Even the single
text is ‘work in progress’ in the special sense (proposed here) of moving
toward more inclusive theory through more inclusive practice (cf. 0.13; II.134).
The utopian challenge to the sensitive speaker or writer is to sustain a clear
direction of progress throughout the ‘textual work’ of production until the
text is judged sufficiently efficient, effective, and appropriate (cf. II.113).
40. However, inclusion in theory and practice is vitally sensitive to social equality and inequality, as
suggested in Fig. 7.Linguistic
equality could advance
social equality with the theory that all the world’s languages have equal
potential for expressing or communicating relevant any content; none is
definitive- ly superior or inferior. Such is firmly sustained by the official
theory of linguistics (II.38), which has, however, not generated a really
practical programme for social equality through discursive equality.
41. In contrast, linguistic inequality could advance
social inequality with the theory that some languages are definitively
superior and deserve the most respect. Such was long firmly sustained by the
official theory of colonialism, the ideology empowering ‘higher cultures’ to
govern ‘lower cultures’, occupy their territories, and extract their labour
and resources. The indigenous peoples were declared ‘unfit to govern
themselves’, their ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ languages being unsuited
for ‘expressing civilised ideas’. Forced to communicate with their
‘colonial masters’ on earthy matters, they improvised varieties that came to
be known as ‘pidgins’ and ‘creoles’.9 Even after
independence, these remained the practical media for discursive inequality
between the ‘masses’ and the ‘standard’-speaking ‘elites’
.42.
I would accordingly describe social equality and inequality as the leverage
points deciding whether and whom the dialectic between language as theory and
discourse as practice empowers or disempowers. Yet by an ironic reversal,
inequal-ities in language and discourse are being exploited today as
justifications for social inequality, such as denial of employment.10
Now that other modes of discrimination are prohibited, speakers of
‘inferior’ languages or varieties are routinely disempowered and deprived of
the right to be heard. Should they manage to switch to ‘superior’ ones, they
may find themselves alienated from friends and family.11
43.
Evidently, the official theory of linguistic equality presently fails to guide
practices of discursive equality, whilst operational theory guides practices of
both linguistic and discursive inequality. The ecologist agenda seeks practical
theories of equality to guide practices toward linguistic and discursive
equality. On the ‘theory-side’ of language, we can help to design practical
models for rendering the supposedly superior languages or varieties more
reliably teachable and learnable to promote inclusion in socially strategic
domains of discourse, such as access to new technologies. In parallel, we can
help to design practical models for exploiting the capacities of the supposedly
inferior ones to accommodate those domains, such as technical terminologies,
which should improve public attitudes. On the ‘practice-side’ of discourse,
we can help to map out inclusive strategies which favour social equality and
reconcile inequality, and which deconstruct undemocratic attitudes about
superiority and inferiority.
44.
Expressed in terms of the social factors aired for theory and practice in I.A,
we should explore how strategies of discourse include hearers or readers as
insiders, or exclude them as outsiders, or do both at once, e.g., by addressing
a group of outsiders who aspire to become insiders although only a select few
will be genuinely included, as in higher education (I.49, 55).
45.
Further, we can explore how strategies of discourse either promote solidarity
for joining with others on equal terms; or else promote power for controlling
others on unequal terms; and how such strategies either empower people to
actualise their potential, or else disempower them to be alienated by others. We
may expect solidarity in friendly conversations; empowerment in user-friendly
presentations of special knowledge; and disempowerment in strenuously technical
presentations. Even purporting to objectively ‘speak the truth’ or ‘report
the facts’ can be an unobtrusive and effective move for discursive power.
46.
A key question in our explorations is whether the participants in discourse must
choose between moves of including or excluding, between solidarity or power; or
can remain neutral. Isolated Words or Phrases can seem neutral, but longer and
richer Stretches of Text rarely are, due to the agenda of intentions and the
factor of attitudes.12 Ostensibly neutral discourse may prove to be
camouflaged discourse of power. Still, inclusion and exclusion could be relative
rather than total, and could be intended or accepted to varying degrees in
discourse. Or, those moves could remain largely below our awareness whilst
enacting unequal roles, such as parent and child, employer and employee, master
and servant, landlord and tenant, bureaucrat and citizen.
47.
For its agenda of promoting the solidarity that unites and deconstructing the
power that divides, ecologism can derive its firmest grounds for a hopeful
utopia from the fundamentally inclusive essence of language (I.38f). We are not
bending language and discourse to some private politics or personal philosophy
for our own advantage; indeed, we would probably reap greater material benefits
from dryly ‘academic’ or purely ‘theoretical’ studies. We are merely
progressing toward an ecological ambience where language and discourse are
steadily more empowered to actualise their natural potential for inclusion.
48.
Furthermore, I would argue that many implicit human theories resemble language
in implying a hopeful utopia and endlessly seeking some higher certainty,
finality, or completeness. Science, philosophy, and religion are three
monumental utopian theories for intellectual and spiritual discovery; and
democracy is one for the social order. To widen our chances for improving human
lives, we must strive to acknowledge and revitalise the ‘utopian’ dimensions
of democratic societies as conceived by their founders and articulated in their
constitutions.
I.C.
Theory and practice in ‘modern education’
49.
Among the institutions in a society, education is an eminently cognitive,
social,
and linguistic enterprise.
Yet its authority is served by appearing as a pre- dominantly cognitive enterprise whose linguistic and
social domains are secondary or incidental (cf. I.58, 77; VII.55). In
official theory, education includes all cognitive outsiders who ‘lack
knowledge’ by converting them into cognitive insiders who ‘possess
knowledge’; in operational practice, inclusion is mostly secured for
linguistic insiders whose home language or variety is approved in schooling; and
for social insiders who hail from secure, well-to-do families. The discrepancy
reflects the historical legacy whereby private education for insiders furnished
the enduring model for education at large. The dominant pre-modern methods since
antiquity have featured rote memorisation and repetition of authorised
information, such as ‘classic’ texts — an approach to ‘education’ with
remarkable longevity (I.53, 59f, 64, 74, 108; II.200).
50.
To appraise cognition more precisely, I would propose a key distinction. Knowledge
is more dynamic and integrative. Its content is characteristically
practical, and naturally acquired from lived experiences
and directed intuitions among a cultural community. The operations for storing,
retrieving, and using it are relatively effortless. When not in active
use, it can undergo spontaneous evolution and elaboration in
mental storage and generate more of itself. New knowledge being entered can
reverberate through associated prior knowledge and update its specifications.
Or, old knowledge can be creatively modified and adapted for unfamiliar or novel
applications.
51.
By contrast, information is more static and compartmentalised.
Its content is characteristically theoretical, and consciously
acquired from specialized activities. The operations for storing,
retrieving, and using it are relatively effortful.
When not in active use, it can undergo spontaneous conflation or degradation.
New information being entered is unlikely to be integrated with prior
information unless the mutual associations are expressly constructed. And old
information can be difficult to modify or adapt to unfamiliar or novel
applications.
52.
A pre-modern society is mainly knowledge-based, oriented toward manual
labour and the production of essential commodities in harmony with the environ-ment
(cf. I.19). But as specialisation leads toward the modern society, information
steadily intensifies until the society is mainly information-based, and
information emerges as a commodity for sustaining wealth and power.13
Today, the constant production of information closes the circle by enforcing a
heavy reliance on ‘information technology’, without which you are doomed to
the status of outsider.
53.
The emphasis on memorisation
and repetition in education essentially fosters methods that treat knowledge
as information — static, compartmentalised, theoretical, and consciously acquired. This trend too
has intensified during the evolution of ‘modern education’, so that new
knowledge in the sciences and the arts has, with a routine time lag, been
converted to information for uses in education. The more ‘modern’ the latter
becomes, the greater the volume of information being ‘taught’ which is
distinct from knowledge and is unlikely to become knowledge. Instead, it
degrades over time and becomes inaccessible.
54.
A dualism arises in the relation between the theory and practice of education
itself — what it believes to be doing and what it is doing — and the
relation between the theoretical information it values and the practical
knowledge it devalues. The
official theory of ‘modern education’ is left-wing and functionalist
in its ideology, holding that all learners deserve and receive the ‘same’
chances for success within the ‘same’ curriculum, which equips them all to
be ‘well-informed citizens’ in practical life (but cf. I.58). The schools
should work to ensure success; learners with problems should receive special
help to include them in the process. Yet the operational theory of
modern education is more often right-wing and formalist, holding
that only the ‘superior’ learners merit the ‘benefits of education’,
which should be chiefly academic and theoretical, set apart from practical life.
A wide-ranging scale of success and failure is judged normal and natural, as in
the social Darwinism of ‘survival of the fittest’ (cf. I.16); learners with
problems should be sternly warned or severely punished, and, should they fail to
‘improve’, excluded altogether. As in other domains of society, the practices legitimised by the left are
‘illegitimised’ by the right, and vice versa (I.17); and spiralling
conflicts over matters of policy can stymie any real progress in the system and
thus result in a default victory for the regressive right.
55.
Insofar
as a modern society sustains
inclusive theories but exclusive practices (I.24), education takes on the
split functions of including insiders and excluding outsiders along much the
same lines as society itself. The split drives the operational right-wing theory
known as the hidden curriculum:14 converting selected
outsiders into insiders by a process so difficult and arbitrary as to leave a significant portion of aspiring
learners either included only along the margins or else excluded as life-long
outsiders, whilst representing the process as eminently fair. Flagrantly
undermining the official theory of democracy, the curriculum must be kept
hidden, where it can unobtrusively deflect left-wing
projects to render education more inclusive and democratic.
56.
The hidden curriculum favours practices of testing to yield moderate
rates of high success and low failure, and to place a large contingent in the
middle as ‘average’, which is invidiously interpreted as ‘mediocre’ or
even ‘inadequate’. As
long as a modern society refuses to grant equal merit that entitles equal
benefits in adult life in such areas as employment, wages, or housing, the
schools and colleges are obligated to make children appear unequal at ages when
their human potential is still rudimentary and emergent. A profound
reorientation is demanded:
[4]
Schools [should empower] children whose different talents are developing at
different speeds to have experiences which will boost their confidence and give
them a taste of success — rather than seeing themselves labelled as
comparative failures in the ‘three Rs’, [lest they get] ‘switched off’
education before they even reached secondary school, especially from
‘challenged’ families (Tim Brighouse, in BBC News).
Children
get thoroughly tested and ranked long before they can actualise the linguistic,
cognitive, and social skills that constitute genuine merit in the real world;
and many whom the tests dump at lower ranks become alienated and cease to strive
for such skills, engulfed in a monstrous waste of human potential (I.62):
[5] They are catalogued,
measured and deemed wanting the moment they enter school; they are tested before
they are instructed. The teacher becomes a judge; the class’s standing in
reading and arithmetic is a yardstick of collective failure; and the fear of
inadequacy pervades the classroom, suffocating teacher and pupil alike.15
Even
successful learners may be encouraged by testing to focus on vacuous but easily
testable topics, like doing ‘long division’ or reciting historical dates.
57.
The emphasis on testing strategically rationalises success or failure as products of the merit of the individual learners,
who are confronted with massive information and left to their own devices about
how to absorb it for testing. In one account, merit is decided by your
individual intelligence and aptitude, which you have derived
chiefly from nature or genetics and so cannot really control (VII.51). In the
other account, merit is decided by your diligence and obedience,
which you can and jolly well ought to control. To paper over the patent
incompatibility between the two accounts, schooling might piously assume that
intelligence is the material cause of diligence, or that diligence is the direct
proof of intelligence.
58.
Yet substantial evidence suggests that, barring cases of severe physical or
mental disability, young children entering school are all fairly equal in their
cognitive abilities and potential — their real intelligence and
aptitude. Where they are manifestly not equal is in their linguistic and
social abilities. Camouflaging the hidden curriculum behind an image of fairness
therefore accords with representing education more as a cognitive enterprise
than as a linguistic or social one (I.49). The ‘same’ information gets
presented in the ‘same’ lectures or textbooks to all prospective learners
who do the ‘same’ tasks, tests, and so on (cf. I.54) — all of which might
in reality be experienced as radically different among learners from disparate
linguistic and social backgrounds.
59.
Due to this latent contradiction between sameness and difference, the estimates
of ‘intelligence’ and
‘aptitude’ inferred from rigid, uncreative test-taking skills are more
properly products of schooling than its preconditions.16
The hidden
curriculum requires education not merely to manifest and confirm differences in
‘merit’ (the official theory), but also to devise and entrench them (the
operational theory). Social
uniformity and neutrality are simulated by constructing a special cognitive and linguistic framework remote from
social life. In such schooling, a formalist approach whereby abstract
theoretical information, preferably facts and figures, gets learned for its own
sake with utmost precision, is favoured over a functionalist approach
whereby concrete practical knowledge is learned for its human interest and its
applicability in later life. In parallel, the academic or technical discourse
that is valued above ordinary conversation foments commun-icative bottlenecks
and encourages memorizing and reciting the discourses of lectures or textbooks
without needing to genuinely understand them. Learners are challenged to
assimilate themselves to an artificial sheltered environment, where some will
feel socially unwelcome or displaced. The conventional social values for this
assimilation emphasise courtesy, punctuality, neatness, and cleanliness; the
cognitive values emphasise verbal and mathematical skills; and the linguistic
ones emphasise Standard English with punctilious spelling, punctuation, and
penman-ship. The heavily mainstream middle-class orientation of these values is
tacitly deemed universal and unquestionable, and conspicuous defiance may lead
to denying ‘merit’ and forfeiting the ‘benefits of education’.
60. The emphasis on testing also imbues
the whole system with a negative orientation. Arbitrary theoretical norms or
standards are imposed from the top down to distinguish between ‘right and
wrong answers’. Evaluation routinely assigns an equally arbitrary number of
‘points’ to each answer on the test, and subtracts the ‘lost points’
from the total. Since most modern societies have a decimal mentality, the
standard total is ‘100’, and the ‘grades’ are descending blocks of 10:
‘90-100’ for ‘excellent’, ‘80-89’ for ‘good’, ‘70-79’ for
‘average’, ‘60-69’ for ‘poor’, and ‘59’ and below for complete
‘failure’. Especially when learners didn’t know just what information
would be tested, they recite memorised discourse from textbooks or lectures, or
fudge and guess in hopes of hitting on the ‘right answer’. Yet the
‘grade’ concocted out of these chancy practices is solemnly construed to
reveal how ‘good’ or ‘poor’ the learners themselves are. In effect,
products of alienation undercut the prospects for actualisation (cf. I.13f, 56,
61f, m 68, 82).
61. To produce clear distinctions in merit, tests and problems need to
present substantial difficulties and provide ample opportunities for wrong
answers. In cognitive terms, testing demands not just a
theoretical capacity like ‘intelligence’, but a practical capacity to
operate near the threshold of overload. This condition sets in when the
demands upon physical or mental processing overtax available resources, and
performance enters degradation, notably affecting the rapid and precise recall
of complex information. Learners who do quite well in a relaxed, co-operative,
and actualising environment with the freedom to check and revise their work
might well suffer overload and do quite badly in a high-pressure, isolating, and
alienating environment.
62. And such is just the typical
ambience of the conventional examination, especially a large-scale test
for a whole school term. It is too long and laborious to be done with real
safety or thoroughness in the time allowed; anxieties run high, given the threat
of failing; the test takers are often jaded or exhausted from swotting and
cramming; help from classmates is sternly forbidden, as is the use of even
rudimentary aids, such as dictionaries or pocket computers. Quite plausibly, the
results seriously underestimate real abilities; the test situation shears off or
flattens out potential peaks of success and produces artificially deflated
scores. Yet those same scores are certified to be the best indicators, if not
the only indicators, of the learners’ ‘achievement’, or indeed of
their ‘potential for achievement’. The very examinations treated as the key
to classifying young people as ‘high achievers’ or ‘low achievers’ are
the tools most prone to misrepresent them. The ‘low’ ones can marshal no
effective defence against the alienating image, which they are left to accept
and internalise until they ‘tune out’ or ‘drop out’ —
which, I maintain, betokens a monstrous waste of human potential (I.56).
63. If all learners were
totally equal at the start, a high-pressure testing system running near overload
would produce random results, with ‘merit’ being accorded or denied by pure
chance, like throwing dice. But if learners are equal only in their cognitive
potential, the results will mirror inequalities in their social and linguistic
background (I.70). In official theory, children from the ‘lower classes’ of
society are ‘free to rise up by achieving merit’. In the operational
practice, doing so essentially demands assimilating yourself to mainstream
middle-class culture and language at the risk of being alienated from your home
culture and language (I.42).
64. The precise and detailed quantification of ‘merit’ is managed
through the ‘grading system’, which entails several right-wing
administrative theories abetting the hidden curriculum. The theory of the ‘right
answer’ holds that the every item of ‘school knowledge’ (i.e.,
information) corresponds to a single ‘right answer’ clearly distinguished
from all ‘wrong answers’; and that teachers or test-markers are fully
‘informed’ to judge the distinction. The practice accords undue reverence to
the exact wording of the answers and so to the rote memorisation of educational
discourse — a pre-modern method in a modernist setting (I.49, 53, 59f;
II.200).
65. The theory of the ‘grade average’ holds that fluctuations among
the individ-ual grades of a learner should be balanced out, the low ones
bringing down the high, and the high bringing up the low. This
theory ignores a basic imbalance. A low grade may be merely accidental when
learners are feeling too tired, anxious, or distracted to perform at their true
potential, and so succumb to overload. A high grade, on the contrary, demands
deliberate and concentrated effort and a staunch resistance to overload, and is
therefore a far better indicator of learner’s potential. So when grades are
averaged, minor accidents can cancel out major achievements.
66. The theory of the ‘grade
curve’ holds that the results of a test or assignment should be spread across
a consistent pattern: some ‘high grades’ near the top, some ‘low grades’
near the bottom, and a cluster of ‘average grades’ near the middle (cf.
I.68). In rigorous practice, pretexts may be invented for giving lower grades
than the learners actually earned. When a large portion performs near the top,
their grades may get squeezed and manipulated downward — a travesty of
fairness the learners will readily perceive and resent. And, as I have noted,
being ‘average’ may be taken to mean not ‘normal’ or ‘typical’, but ‘mediocre’
or ‘inadequate’ (I.56).
67. The cycle of right-wing
reasoning is completed by the theory of ‘grade inflation’, holding
that a ‘balanced’ grade curve is natural and necessary; a notable proportion
of high grades thus indicates not the success of learners in performing the
test, but the failure of teachers in not maintaining ‘high standards’ and
‘discipline’. The term ‘inflation’ artfully hints that teachers have
been artificially pumping the grades up to levels not justified by performance.
But the conventional procedures of grading by high-pressure tests under
conditions near overload would actually foster grade deflation by scoring
learners below their real potential (cf. I.69). If so, progressive teaching
methods to support the actualisation of that potential will naturally produce
results falling significantly over the statistical mean within an otherwise
alienating programme. Such methods do not burden assess-ment with an unfair
inflation but rather free it from an unfair deflation.
68.
Whereas ordinary examinations and their grades implicitly claim to deter-mine
personal ability, ‘aptitude tests’ bearing anagrams like ‘SAT’,
‘PSAT’ and ‘NMSQT’ do so explicitly. These are advertised to provide an
objective and accurate measure of general human potential that reflects how well
you will succeed in ‘higher education’ and beyond in your future profession.
For some years, applicants to prestigious universities in the US were compelled
to undergo these tests, and the results could decide whether and where you would
be admitted. To encourage schools in using the tests, the dominant
‘Educational Testing Service’ (ETS) charged not them but the captive
test-takers, amassing annual profits over $100,000,000 whilst listing itself as
a ‘non-profit organisation’. 17
69. Progressive research on the ETS tests themselves has roundly invalidated its advertisements. The tests predict academic success marginally better than throwing dice; they are (no surprise) biased toward mainstream middle-class culture; they exaggerate abstract theoretical reasoning in ‘math’ and ‘verbal skills’; they are far longer than even the speediest freak can finish; the wrong answers are subtracted from the right answers rather from the total of possible answers; the questions are craftily designed to fool or mislead the unwary; and the scores can be suspiciously improved after expensive special coaching. All these findings reveal that the tests unlikely are to produce a reliable assessment of human aptitude; and that the results are even more unfairly deflated than conventional examinations.
70.
A comparison with athletic sports might be helpful. There, novices participate
in situated learning18 with experts on a playing field. The
criteria for success or failure are clearly defined, e.g., strength, speed, or
distance in lifting, throwing, running, and scoring. Efforts can be
strategically focused, e.g., practicing key movements and doing exercises to
strengthen key muscles. Positive achievements are clearly recognised among both
novices and experts, and a rewarding sense of progress is sustained. Even when
your team loses a match, you have their support and the will to go on and
surpass yourself in another match. Moreover, the rules of competition sports
strictly prohibit and penalise unfair advantages, such as ingesting steroids;
and unfair disadvantages to harm your opponents, such as inflicting bodily
injuries.
71.
Academic education, in contrast, abounds with advantages for insiders and
disadvantages for outsiders, depending whether your home language variety
resembles the preferred academic variety; or whether your family can afford a
high-powered home computer or a private tutor. The more education strives to be
‘standardised’ and to discount the rising cultural and linguistic diversity
of post-modern society, the more this unfairness serves to divide insiders from
outsiders — in effect, confirming how society has already divided their
families (cf. I.55).
72.
We might predict that learners who come from alternative or non-traditional
cultures and whose language variety is judged ‘non-standard’ will excel
frequently in practical athletics but rarely in the more theoretical and
academic subjects. Similarly, they will regard sports as the most promising
channels to professional success in later life and the safest arenas to offset
disadvantages in their academic schooling. And the evidence confirming these
predictions is incontrovertible.
73.
So far, I have highlighted the more regressive right-wing currents in
conven-tional education because they most glaringly point up the disparities
between its official theories and its operational theories and serve the
‘hidden curriculum’ of preparing children to acquiesce in social inequality
within an official ‘democracy’ (cf. I.54f). Moreover, these currents are
largely responsible for the ‘educational crisis’ periodically castigated in
the public media, with right and left in their usual deadlock. Right-wing
commentators hotly deny the very existence of the hidden curriculum, and
attribute the crisis to irresponsible teachers and learners refusing to respect
the core values of hard work, diligence, obedience, and so on; the solution is
stricter discipline, harsher punishments, and frequent expulsions. Left-wing
commentators highlight the alienation engendered by the hidden curriculum, and
attribute the crisis to forceful resistance within a broader social and economic
crisis when a diploma no longer promises social rewards.
74.
Whatever the causes, the schools incur greater risks as the social division
between the few insiders and the many outsiders grows explosively wide and
acute. Alienating right-wing methods, such as rote memorisation and repetition,
still predominate among large public schools in poorly funded inner-city
districts, where many learners come from families of outsiders and are destined
to stay outside.19 Meanwhile, progressive left-wing methods have
gained in small private schools, with projects that are more learner-centred,
creative, interactive, and responsive to cultural differences. Model schools
like the Harvard Project Zero20 and programs like LOGO21
prove that learners who were once classified with ‘low intelligence and
aptitude’ by conventional schools are capable of impressive success after
trading an alienating environment for an actualising one. These practical
findings corroborate the theory that ‘intelligence’ and ‘aptitude’ are
more the products of schooling than its preconditions and can be significantly
enhanced through progressive practices that fulfil the official democratic
theory of education.
75.
The issues raised in this section should indicate why education deserves a
central place on the agenda of ecologism. Progress toward inclusion and equality
can only be achieved if the majority of our young people have not spent their
formative years being been channelled through a system that legitimises
exclusion and inequality, engenders alienation, disengagement, cynicism, or
frank hostility, and endangers the general credibility of social institutions
and civic responsibility.
76.
In an ecologist agenda, the process of ‘getting educated’ does not consist
merely of acquiring specialised information and then
reciting it on tests or parading it in the technical discourse of insiders.
Instead, the process must work to convert specialised information into relevant
knowledge and integrate it with general knowledge for communicating with
outsiders whose interests are at stake, e.g., citizens menaced by environmental
pollution. A ‘highly educated’ person is not one who hoards specialised
knowledge for personal status, but one who can share it to empower others. By
this definition, communicating knowledge, and not just hoarding information,
is the crucial measure of how ‘educated’ anyone deserves to be considered
(II.112, 209). Knowledge is one possession that you increase for yourself by
giving it to others; explanation for them can bring clarification and renewal
for you (I.49, 84; II.113). Such could be the benefits of practices for
‘progress’ toward a convergence with an ecologist theory of education for
promoting free access to knowledge and society.
77.
Among the institutions of modern society, science is an eminently
cognitive, linguistic, and social enterprise. Yet even more than education
(I.49), it is typically represented as a predominantly
cognitive enterprise whose linguistic and social dimensions are secondary or
incidental; the term ‘science’ itself is emblematically derived from the
Latin ‘scientia’, meaning ‘knowledge’. If this representation
lends
education an aura of
fairness (I.58),
it lends science an aura
of authority.
78.
As evidence of a cognitive emphasis, I would cite the collocations —
typical word combinations we shall explore later on22 — in the
British National Corpus (BNC), a data bank of 100 million words of contemporary
British English texts (II.153ff). There, the Modifier ‘scientific’ often
appears with cognitive terms, such as ‘knowledge’ (160 occurrences),
‘theory’ (95), ‘understanding’ (24), ‘thinking’ (19), ‘thought’
(16); ‘research’ (250), ‘study’ (84), ‘investigation’ (57),
‘inquiry’ (24), ‘discovery’ (44); ‘evidence’ (114), ‘data’ (36),
‘observation’; (9), ‘principle’ (33), ‘idea’ (27), ‘concept’
(17); ‘objectivity’ (13), ‘fact’ (20), ‘truth’ (12), ‘proof’
(13). Occurrences are rarer with linguistic terms, such as ‘paper’ (68),
‘language’ (12), ‘terms’ (12), ‘communication’ (9); ‘writing’
(7); ‘lecture’ (5),
‘discussion’ (4);
and with social terms, such as ‘work’
(58), ‘activity’ (39), ‘achievement’ (8); ‘cooperation’ (20),
‘collaboration’ (2). Intriguingly, ‘scientific’ never occurs in the BNC
with ‘responsibility’, nor with ‘error’ or ‘mistake’.
79.
The cognitive emphasis
fits the public image of science as an enterprise producing ‘scientific
theories’ that can be tested and proven ‘true’ or ‘false’ apart from
the language of the discourses that express them and from the social status of
the theoreticians that advance them. The practices feature calculating or
observing ‘scientific data’ which your theories purport to explain or even
predict, rather than deploying your powers of persuasion or your
leverage and prestige. But if, as I assert, all human activity integrates the
cognitive, linguistic, and social (cf. I.35, 49), this decorum merely
camouflages the real power of persuasion and prestige.
80.
The reputation of science as the ‘most theoretical’ domain in society is
somewhat misconceived. The ‘theoreticalness’ of science is undeniably the
most explicit and formal, but far less complex and elaborated than the implicit
and informal theories members of society hold about the general organisation of
the world. The most theoretical entity of all is in fact our language, and
discourse is the most practical test, but not a proof (cf. I.B). And whereas the
scope of most scientific theories is expressly limited, the scope of language is
unlimited (I.37).
81.
The term classical science23 has been used for ideology
holding that the theory and practice of science constitute ‘objective’
explorations of ‘classical reality’ fully governed by determinacy and
causality, such that any phenomenon can be explained by a sole ‘valid
theory’ — the heavyweight institutional equivalent of the sole ‘right
answer’ in education (cf. § I.64). The influential family of related
ideologies includes realism: the real and concrete is more valid or true
than the ideal and abstract; empiricism: all knowledge is derived from
sensory experience; positivism: statements have meaning only if they can
be verified or falsified; physicalism: scientific explanations should
refer only to observable prop-erties of physical objects; unified science:
all sciences should be unified within the purview of physics plus formal logic; mechanism:
all biological process should be described in terms of physics and chemistry;
and behaviourism: humans and animals are to be studied through observable
and measurable behaviour. In their more radical discourses, these ideologies are
characteristically assertive, reductive, or exclusive, witness the foundational
discourse quoted in [6].
[6] physical language is the basic language of all
science [and] a universal language comprising the contents of all other
scientific languages. […] Closely associated with physicalism is the doctrine
of the unity of science: that there are no logical
distinctions
to be drawn
between the
different branches
of science. (Rudolf Carnap)24
On
the opposite side are arrayed such ideologies as idealism: the ideal and
abstract is more valid or true than the real and concrete; and mentalism:
human knowledge and activity are based upon representations in the mind. But
these are more at home in philosophy than in science proper.
82. The 20th century saw the downfall of
classical science among scientists, due to challenges from general relativity,
quantum theory, chaos theory, superstring theory, and so on. But the classical
image persists in public discourse and education to sustain the authority of
experts and teachers. Science is ‘taught’ in the schools as
‘information’ reserved for especially ‘smart’ people’ who become
‘experts’ and either cultivate pure theory free from practice, or else turn
science into policies the society must accept.
83.
The most discussed version of classical science is normal science,
wherein a dominant ‘paradigm’ informs both theory and practice. The
currently accredited theory sets the approved framework for ‘theorising’ and
the suitable practices for solving specific types problems we might call
‘puzzles’, like sets of prefabricated pieces to assemble. Every puzzle
solved implicitly reconfirms the theory; mean-while, the theory elides unwelcome
or potentially disruptive issues. The cognitive aspects follow well-fenced
channels, while the linguistic aspects obey the terminology propagated for the
theory, and the social aspects favour the ‘scientific community’ sharing the
paradigm. So all three aspects sustain the theory regarding high technology,
funding agencies, editorial boards, conference calendars, university programmes,
and so on. Insiders find normal science reassuring and rewarding, whereas
outsiders (my own customary role) find it complacent and myopic.
84.
In
an
ecologist
account
of
science,
‘theory’
would
be
a representation
of
nature
designed
to
yield
explanation,
whilst
‘practice’ would be the
objects and events of
nature
that
constitute
the
data
to
be
explained.
This
account
sees
a genuine dialectic
wherein
the
theory explains current data
and predicts future data by means of theory-driven, top-down input, whereas the
data either confirm or refute the theory by means of data-driven, bottom-up
input (Fig. 8).
By highlighting ‘explanation’ and not just ‘knowledge’ or
‘discovery’, this account reunites the cognitive aspects with the linguistic
and social aspects of science as dynamic activity. Achieving knowledge is just
preliminary to communicating it to society; knowledge is the main possession you
increase for yourself by sharing it with others (I.76). Science constitutes an
eminently ‘hopeful utopia’ (in the sense of I.6): despite occasional
grandstanding about the ‘end of science’ or the ‘final answer’, the
space for new discoveries is inexhaustible. However, I detect isolated strains
of hopeless utopia in my own science of linguistics, as in the pronouncement
that ‘speech
cannot be studied’ ‘for we cannot discover its unity’ (see II.40).
85.
A second dialectical cycle relates a ‘theory-driven’
explanation giving input from the top
down and highlighting
calculation, with a ‘data-driven’
explanation giving input from the bottom
up and highlighting observation (Fig. 9).
These terms can be broadly understood as general processes of
‘tuning’ by humans or machines (or both operating in co-ordination). As
complementary cognitive moves, calculation uses prior data to tune current data,
whilst observation uses current data to tune prior data; the tuning can deploy
qualifying, quantifying, calibrating, adjusting, reformulating, and so on. How
these cognitive moves and their outcomes can be efficiently and effectively
represented in discursive moves is a complex issue which scientists have rarely
resolved, preferring the notion that the ‘findings speak for themselves’, or
relying on narrowly prescriptive conventions, e.g., organising the text into
sections called ‘method’, ‘results’, ‘discussion’, and so forth.
86.
For observable phenomena, a third dialectic relates the ‘material substrate of
matter
and energy with the ‘data
substrate’ of information. The
material substrate manifests and determines properties, such
as the quantities and polarities of subatomic particles like neutrons, protons,
and electrons, whereas the data substrate registers and identifies those
properties, such as the atom identifying an element as hydrogen or lithium
(Fig. 10).
This
dialectic operates in distinctive ways for each science. Some sciences like
physics have a ‘sparse domain’ with
general and uniform constraints whereby material and data are related by ‘hard coupling’ (e.g. in a collision of particles); others like anthropology
have a ‘rich domain’ with specific and diversified constraints, where
material and data are related by ‘soft coupling’
(e.g. in a cultural festivity). In sparse domains, the material tends to be
elementary and its observation less informative, so calculation is prominent; in
rich domains, the reverse holds.
87.
The respective sciences might thus be described on a scale from ‘sparse’
toward ‘rich’. Fig. 11 shows a selection of the ‘natural
sciences’ to the left, and of the ‘human sciences’ to the right.
Implicitly
at least, each natural science refers in its foundations to the sparser one(s)
to its left: physics referring to mathematics, chemistry to physics, and biology
to chemistry and physics. This referral can reinforce
institutional authority, insofar as mathematics and physics seem the most
austere and impregnable to
challenge, and less implicated in sensitive ecological and commercial issues
than chemistry and biology (cf. I.97).
88.
Mathematics
plainly has the sparsest source domain, its data concerning quantities and
relations. It studies virtual objects or events having a pure data substrate and
no material substrate and thus not being manifested or observed as real objects
or events, such as the lines, planes, and solids in Euclidian geometry, or the
polynomial and linear functions of calculus. So its theories are consummately
abstract; and, before supercomputers introduced simulations, its practices
ranked calculation far above observation. However, its practices of
representation and measurement can apply to most observed phenomena of the other
sciences, e.g., for dimensions and frequencies; and doing so can be an eminent
cognitive strategy for certifying the ‘realness’ of manifest objects.
89. Physics has a richer domain, though still a relatively sparse one, its data concerning the most elementary forms of matter and energy. Its phenomena, such as mesons and baryons, or fermions and bosons, are manifested as real objects; the material substrate is hard-coupled to the data substrate such that an elementary particle is directly determined by sparse information like mass, charge, and spin. Observation relies on high technology like photo-ionization spectroscopy or laser interferometry, which heralds an impressive rise in accuracy and reliability; and theoretical calculation grows increasingly ind