One dimensional man
About: This article is published in Philosophical Books.The article was published on 1965-05-01. It has received 2842 citations till now.
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TL;DR: Considering science as a self-organizing system allows a more integrative approach to the relationship of induction/deduction, actors/structures, internal/external factors, and continuity/discontinuity of science.
Abstract: Four basic problems that a theory of science has to deal with concern epistemology, structure, causality, and dynamics of science. These problems deal with the relationship of induction/deduction, actors/structures, internal/external factors, and continuity/discontinuity. Traditionally they have been solved one-sidedly. Considering science as a self-organizing system allows a more integrative approach. Science is a complex, nonlinear system that is made up of two moments: scientific actors and scientific structures. Scientific self-organization operates synchronously and diachronically. Synchronous scientific self-organization is a mutual production process between scientific actors and structures. Scientific systems are self-organizing units that perform the production of theories and truths by the way of a productive, circular causal duality of scientific actors and scientific structures. Science is a dynamic system where research practices produce and reproduce structures that produce and reproduce research practices. Scientific structures are medium and outcome of scientific actions. At the action level one can find a systemic hierarchy that is made up of individual researchers, research groups, scientific communities, and the overall scientific community. Scientific structures include theories, research institutions, technologies, journals, publications, science funds; norms, values, and rules of scientific conduct. The main scientific practices can be categorized as genuinely scientific practices (innovation, dissemination, scientific interchange, funding-related activities, teaching), cultural practices (public discourse), political practices (science policy), and economic practices (action related to scientific knowledge as commodities, patents, science-industry-partnerships, sponsorship). Science is an open system that is structurally coupled to other subsystems of society, it is neither internally, nor externally determined, its development is caused by a complex interplay of internal and external factors, it is a relatively autonomous system. Systems in nature and society act as a sort of data for the scientific system, research processes establish an informational relationship between the scientific system and its environment in the sense that theories are complex, non-linear reflections of environmental processes. Due to the fact that all complex systems are informational, one can say that science produces information about information systems. Science is a 2nd order information system, it produces meta-information. Philosophy of science is a science of science, it produces information about information about information, it is a 3rd order information system. The metaphor of science as a grand hypertext refers to the self-referential character of scientific texts. A scientific text by the way of citation refers to other scientific texts, it incorporates part of the history of science, and methodologically discusses other texts. The formation of scientific knowledge can be described as a double-process of induction and deduction, abstraction and concretization, where scientific knowledge consists of both empirical knowledge and theoretical knowledge and is formed in loop that consists of two self-organization processes. The self-organization of scientific knowledge is a mutually productive relationship between experience and theory. Scientific knowledge is a unity of experience and theory. The self-organization of scientific knowledge is a dialectical cycle where signals from material reality are transformed into experienced data that is interpreted and results in hypotheses and theories which are transformed into methods and technologies that are employed in order to cause effects in material reality that can again be observed as data. In this self-organization process there is the bottom-up-emergence of theoretical knowledge and the top-down-emergence of experiences and material effects. Each scientific theory is a truth claim, but one that is based on a systematic methodology, permanent evaluation and correction, and conflict-based discourse. Hence scientific truths are not absolute truths, they are truths-in-question, truths-in-discourse, and truths-in-conflict, and truths-in-development. One can distinguish formal, adequate, discursive, and practical truth of a theory. Due to the fact that the knowledge-based society is a high risk society, practical truth of science in the form of an ethically responsible science is of central importance. Diachronic self-organization of science means that dominant scientific paradigms at some point of time loose their effectiveness, paradoxes and instabilities show up, science enters crisis, a new dominant paradigm emerges. If a large gap between scientific theory and the problems posed for science by itself and by society emerges, the dominant structural patterns are increasingly questioned. This can have scientific or wider societal causes, or a combination of both. The resulting crisis is a process of creation and destruction. The whole process is one of the emergence of scientific order from noise. Variation is a permanent phenomenon of scientific evolution, but in phases of instability where the self-organization of science shifts from self-reproduction to order from noise the degree of variation and development by chance is much larger.
15 citations
03 Apr 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the European Union's recent impetus to enhance military capacity building by funding the research and development of new and emerging technologies such as dual-use drones.
Abstract: This article examines the European Union (EU)’s recent impetus to enhance military capacity building by funding the research and development of new and emerging technologies such as dual-use drones...
15 citations
Cites background from "One dimensional man"
...What critical technology theory can bring new in understanding the EU’s drone policy is a deeper analysis of this technology as a form of power and as a socially constructed technological artefact (Feenberg 1996, 1999, 2003, 2017; Marcuse 1998, 2006; McCarthy 2018)....
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...Marcuse’s foretelling words at the beginning of ‘One Dimensional Man’ are illuminating from this point of view: ‘political power asserts itself through its power over the machine process and over the technical organization of the apparatus’ (Marcuse 2006, 5)....
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...A closer engagement with critical theoretical approaches and authors such as Michel Foucault (1977, 1980, 1986, 2008), Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1991), Herbert Marcuse (1998, 2006), and Andrew Feenberg (1999, 2003) helps provide a deeper understanding of the strategic narratives and communities of experts at the EU level that normalize benign ways of thinking about emerging drone technologies and their civil–military applications....
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...Europeanized technocrats and security professionals have had the ‘vested interests’ (Marcuse 2006, 5) in maintaining a level of urgency concerning both the EU’s security and defence fragility and the potential loss of superiority in the arms race over high-end technologies such as drones....
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...…drone policy and the EU’s interest in emerging security technologies, because the ‘government of advanced industrial societies can maintain and secure itself only when it succeeds in mobilizing, organizing, and exploiting the technical, scientific, and mechanical productivity’ (Marcuse 2006, 5)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the interrelationships among the concepts "modern industrialism," "bureaucracy, " and "ideology, " a general ideology of modern administration emerges, anchored in a concept of technical rationality which treats solely means arranged in such a way as to attain most efficiently and effectively ends which are understood as " given."
Abstract: By tracing the inter-relationships among the concepts "modern industrialism," "bureaucracy, " and "ideology, " a general ideology of modern administration emerges. This ideology is anchored in a concept of technical rationality which treats solely means arranged in such a way as to attain most efficiently and effectively ends which are understood as " given." This ideology ascribes the attribute of rationality to organizations, not to men. Here a contradiction arises in thought (for what is efficient and effective for the organization may be the reverse for its members) and in the administrative practice guided by this thought (what are referred to as the "internal" and "external" contradictions). By reviewing American and Soviet administrative literature, a pattern of parallel responses to the contradiction in administrative practice is reconstructed. These "special" ideologies of administration resolve symbolically the contradictions noted in practice and explain to administrators how and why they shoul...
15 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on information and communication phenomena within one industrial organisation and use Kuhn's (1962) concept as a descriptive and analytical tool for evaluating the cultural perspective.
Abstract: This research is focused on information and communication phenomena
within one industrial organisation. From its intellectual situation
within the interpretive epistemological tradition the thesis seeks to
demonstrate the utility of the case study approach combined with the
style of qualitative analysis known as 'grounded theory' for scholars
interested in furthering their understanding of the information
dimension of complex organisations. More specifically, a preliminary
examination of the data set in conjunction with a theoretical position
which posited the socially and cognitive constructed nature of
organisations quite naturally led to the case study material being
interpreted through the prism of the cultural metaphor.
Chapter 1 provides an account of the methodological and research
design principles, issues and assumptions on which this research has
been predicated. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the data collected in
the form of brief summaries of the central themes which have been used
to analyse the case study organisation. The cultural perspective on
organisations is then presented in Chapter 3. Acquaintance with the
content of the cultural approach to Complex organisations is required
in order to facilitate the reader's understanding of Chapters 4-10 in
which the data are examined and analysed.
Chapter 4 gives a short introduction to the case study organisation at
which the research was conducted. Chapters 5-8 are detailed case
study analyses of four of the organisation's principal subsidiaries.
These are followed by a macro-organisational analysis which examines
the cultural and information/communication profiles that have been
developed for the subsidiaries within the total socio-organisational
context. Chapter 9's emphasis on the core categories omits some
important aspects of the organisation's culture (its strengths,
weaknesses, the issue of control and its relative stability) which are
dealt with in Chapter 10. Chapter 11 provides a description and
analysis of a new product launch conducted by the organisation: the
chapter seeks to evaluate the merits of using an approach which
emphasises information/communication and cultural variables for the
understanding and analysis of organisational behaviour.
Finally, Chapter 12 sets out some of the conclusions that can be drawn
from this research project. It takes a critical look at the research
design and methodology employed and introduces Kuhn's (1962) concept
of a paradigm which is used as a descriptive and analytical tool for
evaluating the cultural perspective. Some further conceptualisation
of the cases and the new product launch is attempted and process
models of complex organisations in general and organisational culture
in particular are derived and explained. The inter-relation of
information and communication phenomena and organisational culture is
further elaborated first normatively in the form of typologies and
second prescriptively in terms of the use value of culture for
information and communication studies. The conclusions are then
summarised and recommendations for further research are made.
15 citations
References
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined accounts of travelers in terms of Erving Goffman's front versus back distinction and found that tourists try to enter back regions of the places they visit because these regions are associated with intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences.
Abstract: The problem of false consciousness and its relationship to the social structure of tourist establishments is analyzed. Accounts of travelers are examined in terms of Erving Goffman's front versus back distinction. It is found that tourists try to enter back regions of the places they visit because these regions are associated with intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences. It is also found that tourist settings are arrenged to produce the impression that a back region has been entered even when this is not the case. In tourist settings, between the front and the back there is a series of special spaces designed to accommodate tourists and to support their beliefs in the authenticity of their experiences. Goffman's front-back dichotomy is shown to be ideal poles of a continuum, or a variable.
2,627 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: Casey as discussed by the authors explored the effects of contemporary practices of work on the self and found that changes currently occuring in the world of work are part of the vast social and cultural changes that are challenging the meta trends of modern industrialism.
Abstract: Despite recent interest in the effects of restructuring and redesigning the work place, the link between individual identity and structural change has usually been asserted rather than demonstrated. Through an extensive review of data from field work in a multi-national corporation Catherine Casey changes this. She knows that changes currently occuring in the world of work are part of the vast social and cultural changes that are challenging the meta trends of modern industrialism. These events affect what people do everyday, and they are altering relations among ourselves and with the physical world. This valuable book is not only a critical analysis of the transformations occurring in the world of work, but an exploration of the effects of contemporary practices of work on the self.
540 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors interpret critical urban theory with reference to four mutually interconnected elements: its theoretical character; its reflexivity; its critique of instrumental reason; and its emphasis on the disjuncture between the actual and the possible.
Abstract: What is critical urban theory? While this phrase is often used in a descriptive sense, to characterize the tradition of post‐1968 leftist or radical urban studies, I argue that it also has determinate social–theoretical content. To this end, building on the work of several Frankfurt School social philosophers, this paper interprets critical theory with reference to four, mutually interconnected elements—its theoretical character; its reflexivity; its critique of instrumental reason; and its emphasis on the disjuncture between the actual and the possible. On this basis, a brief concluding section considers the status of urban questions within critical social theory. In the early 21st century, I argue, each of the four key elements within critical social theory requires sustained engagement with contemporary patterns of capitalist urbanization. Under conditions of increasingly generalized, worldwide urbanization, the project of critical social theory and that of critical urban theory have been intertwined a...
356 citations
TL;DR: The authors provide an overview of the key images of identity in organizations found in the research literature, including self-doubters, strugglers, surfers, storytellers, strategists, stencils and soldiers.
Abstract: This article provides an overview of the key images of identity in organizations found in the research literature. Image refers to the overall idea or conceptualization, capturing how researchers relate to — and shape — a phenomenon. Seven images are suggested: self-doubters, strugglers, surfers, storytellers, strategists, stencils and soldiers. These refer to how the individual is metaphorically understood in terms of identity, that is, how the researcher (research text) captures the individual producing a sense of self. The article aims to facilitate orientation — or encourage productive confusion — within the field, encourage reflexivity and sharpen analytic choices through awareness of options for how to conceptualize self-identity constructions.
289 citations