Ken,
First I'd like to say that I enjoyed reading Murphy's inaugural lecture and
appreciate him collecting together the evidence in that lecture. My
criticism of the lecture is of his reasoning about causal issues leading
to his conclusions.
You wrote ' Peter Murphy is not claiming causal relationships.' I feel you
are mistaken.
In his inaugural lecture, Murphy is clearly discussing causal relationships.
The main theme in Murphy's lecture is a claim that larger arrangements for
research and creativity *cause* poorer outcomes, or conversely, that having
small numbers of researchers and creative practitioners *causes* better
outcomes. The evidence Murphy presented, is merely the support to that
reasoning and claim. It would be surprising if Murphy didn't focus on
causes. Identifying causal relationships is essential for making theory.
There are many examples of Murphy's focus on causal issues in the copy of
his inaugural lecture you posted on Academia. I've collected some of them
below.
Regards,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Director, Love Services Pty Ltd
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
[log in to unmask]
--
List of causal phrases in Murphy's Inaugural lecture:
'Not only government investment in ideas that has been, to a significant
degree, fruitless. '
' The Failure of Big Inquiry. Why is this so? There are several key factors.
The phenomenon is not mono-causal. Yet all of the factors influencing it are
directly or indirectly related to the factor of scale. Simply put, the arts,
the sciences and the universities have grown too large. The bigger creative
sectors have become, the more they have expanded beyond an optimal point,
the lower the incidence of per capita creativity and the more that the rate
of unique discovery in the arts and sciences has slowed.' ' The
implications of Price's Law are significant. It means that good science is
small science. This is true as much for the arts as it is for the sciences.
And for the creative arts it is doubly true '
' Employing more researchers and creators cannot reverse the law of small
numbers. If anything, it intensifies it. '
' Declining predictive power is a sign of sciences that are in trouble. '
[good science causes prediction]
' Related to the fascination with falsification is the desire to dispense
with truth as a skeptical check on claims to knowledge. Consequently today
many fake facts and spurious explanations flourish. One reason for this is
that invalid findings of scientific studies are accepted as valid at the
time they are produced because no one bothers to test or double-check them '
' The past forty years has seen a significant decline in the arts and
sciences. This is, directly and indirectly, the predicted effect of the
operation of Price's Law. In 1963, Price forecast the eventual entropy of
all intellectual fields in the sciences due to the spiritual dominance of
each field's periphery.22 What he predicted for the natural sciences is
equally true of the social sciences, the creative arts, and the humanities.
As a field grows rapidly or exponentially for a time, its long tail and its
shallow margins eventually overshadow and dilate the strong yet always tiny
core. Nominally, knowledge may be produced in greater quantities yet this
occurs with diminishing intellectual returns. As a field grows, knowledge is
stripped of imagination. Emphasis tacitly falls on dissemination in place of
creation. Knowledge becomes characterized incrementally by ever-larger
portions of tepidness, ineffectuality, and inhibition.23 In such a context,
fewer and fewer great works are incubated. The ecology of dissemination is
different from the ecology of creation. The larger the field grows, the
larger becomes the gap in numbers between core and peripheral contributors.
Dissemination, interpretation, and spreading-the-word are crucial to
inquiry. Researchers need readers. Yet there is a point at which
dissemination feeds back into the discovery core and corrodes it.
Intellectual fields are like super-nova stars. Beyond a certain point, their
growth is the prelude to entropy and eventual extinction. These fields burn
their creative fuel. They die out. This is what is happening to contemporary
research. '
' Nature abhors a vacuum, and so it appears do the arts and sciences. This
means that as major areas of research have declined or flat-lined, marginal
areas have risen up. '
' Growth is an unambiguous plus in modern economies. Growth in major
economies in the past two centuries has been unprecedented. There is nothing
else like it in human history. One of the reasons this happened is that
major growth economies were successful at translating science into industry
technology and social science into industry organization. '
' Simply put: big science does not work, big social science does not work,
the big humanities and the big arts do not work. Above all big universities
and big university sectors do not work. The big university works no more
than big government does.' [big causes things to not work]
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Wednesday, 6 November 2013 6:40 PM
To: Colleague
Subject: Re: Murphy's analysis
Dear All,
While it seems to me that Terry is mistaken in his reading of Peter Murphy's
inaugural lecture, I don't want to debate this. I offered some comments to
Terry off-list, but I am unwilling to post an argument here without
substantiating my views.
The one issue that should be clear is that Peter Murphy is not claiming
causal relationships. He is observing and describing empirical facts,
offering some interpretations of those facts, and questioning the way we
approach research funding and higher education. Murphy builds a careful
argument and substantiates his argument with carefully referenced data. I
would be far more inclined to consider and debate Terry's analyses if he
offered greater substantiation for his views. Terry and I have debated that
issue before. In my view, Terry demands greater rigour in the arguments of
those whom he disputes than he offers in his own analysis and disagreement.
Murphy may be wrong, but he provides evidence for his assertions. This
allows each reader to decide on the quality of Murphy's data and arguments.
If you wish to reach your own conclusions, you can read the inaugural
lecture for yourself, and see the PowerPoint slide show. I have posted both
in PDF format to my Academia.edu page in the "Teaching Documents" section:
http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Murphy is both a social scientist and a scholar in the humanities who
examines social phenomena to draw conclusions based on social facts. He is
not simply applying abstract mathematical analysis to social facts to seek
truths in power laws. Terry writes as if most of this is a matter of social
technology determined by reinforcing loops and balancing loops. It may be
the case that Terry is right, but he does not offer any demonstration for
his claims. If he wishes to persuade me of his views, he will eventually
have to provide evidence rather than abstract claims to an abstract version
of social engineering or systems thinking.
If this seems blunt, I apologise, but Terry's argument with respect to Peter
Murphy's work resembles his earlier claims concerning power laws. Given the
lack of evidence, there is no way to know whether Terry is right or wrong.
In his earlier reply on power laws, Terry did not provide well argued
evidence for his position. He presented links to a series of papers that
simply demonstrated the point that power laws exist in many places, along
with examples of power laws in specific cases. He never demonstrated any
reason to believe that his hypothesis is correct. It seems to me that the
current argument is of a similar hypothetical nature. I've made it clear
that I disagree and I've said why. Writing the argument to support Murphy's
views takes time and work I can't invest at this time. Fortunately, I don't
need to support Murphy's views. Anyone who is interested can read Peter
Murphy's inaugural lecture to reach his or her own conclusion. Again, the
lecture and slides are available in the "Teaching Documents" section of
http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor |
Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia |
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462 | Home Page
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<h
ttp://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page
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Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University |
Shanghai, China
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