Friday, April 28, 2006
Resisting the Paradigm Shift
In thinking about scientific revolutions - and why they can be slow - you have to examine the phenomenon of change resistance. My first thought was that the more time and effort that a person has expended on building, defending and studying a particular model of the world, the less likely they are to want to let go of it and "remodel". This seems intuitive. Of course, intuitive theories can be wrong.
Thomas Kuhn's book speaks a lot of this resistance. Many other books focus on it. Pinker's The Blank Slate loudly complains about the resistance of the nurture folk to the idea that nature was a big factor after all. Same for The Bell Curve - which whines about resistance to the notion that I.Q. is inherited.
So, the question is "Why the resistance, even in the face of convincing evidence?". Shouldn't cognitive scientists take a cogsci view of this? What's going on in the human mind in this case? It seems quite difficult to study true significant paradigm shifts and the resistance to them. It violates "the prime directive" of non-interference. Who could devise an experiment that would seriously attempt to dislodge a core belief system of real human beings, measuring what's going on there, that would pass an ethics review? And you can't study this in animals easily - they don't seem to form models in the same way that we do.
Some questions that would be interesting to answer are:
Some of the answers to this puzzle are related to the understanding of belief. Psychologists who study religion - like Dennett, Atran and Damasio - know something about what it takes to people fervent and devoted believers. There are some interesting aspects of this that support my "effort thesis". The more someone sacrifices for their belief - through tithing, fasting, scorn, etc. - the firmer their belief. It is also very effective to add a "poison pill" to the belief structure - "doubting will damn you to hell". In the academic world of science, the equivalents are the sacrifices of graduate study and the fear of a ruined career.
It seems to me that some scientific disciplines are more doctrinaire than others. And disciplines seem to go through doctrinaire periods and more open periods. What's happening here? This could be studied - as a population study.
Why would you want to understand this better? Is it worthwhile trying to grease the wheels of science? It seems to me that it would be preferable to decrease the resistance to letting go of scientific models that are apparently invalid, especially if they are being propped up for reasons that are unscientific - like fear or greed. Science attempts to overcome the foibles of human nature - the emotional needs of people and logical and perceptual flaws - to develop truer and truer models of the world. This goal has no real room for supporting flawed models once their flaws are exposed.
In thinking about scientific revolutions - and why they can be slow - you have to examine the phenomenon of change resistance. My first thought was that the more time and effort that a person has expended on building, defending and studying a particular model of the world, the less likely they are to want to let go of it and "remodel". This seems intuitive. Of course, intuitive theories can be wrong.
Thomas Kuhn's book speaks a lot of this resistance. Many other books focus on it. Pinker's The Blank Slate loudly complains about the resistance of the nurture folk to the idea that nature was a big factor after all. Same for The Bell Curve - which whines about resistance to the notion that I.Q. is inherited.
So, the question is "Why the resistance, even in the face of convincing evidence?". Shouldn't cognitive scientists take a cogsci view of this? What's going on in the human mind in this case? It seems quite difficult to study true significant paradigm shifts and the resistance to them. It violates "the prime directive" of non-interference. Who could devise an experiment that would seriously attempt to dislodge a core belief system of real human beings, measuring what's going on there, that would pass an ethics review? And you can't study this in animals easily - they don't seem to form models in the same way that we do.
Some questions that would be interesting to answer are:
- Is the resistance to change proportional to the personal investment in the model? (I suspect somewhat)
- What techniques are the most effective?
- Can you detect the tipping point when the old model breaks?
- How long does it take to incorporate a new model? What are the stages?
Some of the answers to this puzzle are related to the understanding of belief. Psychologists who study religion - like Dennett, Atran and Damasio - know something about what it takes to people fervent and devoted believers. There are some interesting aspects of this that support my "effort thesis". The more someone sacrifices for their belief - through tithing, fasting, scorn, etc. - the firmer their belief. It is also very effective to add a "poison pill" to the belief structure - "doubting will damn you to hell". In the academic world of science, the equivalents are the sacrifices of graduate study and the fear of a ruined career.
It seems to me that some scientific disciplines are more doctrinaire than others. And disciplines seem to go through doctrinaire periods and more open periods. What's happening here? This could be studied - as a population study.
Why would you want to understand this better? Is it worthwhile trying to grease the wheels of science? It seems to me that it would be preferable to decrease the resistance to letting go of scientific models that are apparently invalid, especially if they are being propped up for reasons that are unscientific - like fear or greed. Science attempts to overcome the foibles of human nature - the emotional needs of people and logical and perceptual flaws - to develop truer and truer models of the world. This goal has no real room for supporting flawed models once their flaws are exposed.
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