Science and the Taxonomy
An Architecture for Consciousness
THEE has been generated through an objective scientific approach to a single field: whatever is personal, organizational or social in endeavours. I call this: psychosocial reality. It is a metaphysical field where consciousness reigns supreme. It excludes everything that is purely technical, reflex, automatic, biological or physical.
Identifying elements in this field scientifically is a slow, lengthy process based on:
- Action-based research:
more
Assisting individuals and groups to achieve their goals over years has enabled research that is utterly unlike snapshot lab or survey studies. The subjects are: (1) genuinely and fully committed, (2) likely to discuss their thoughts on problematic issues, (3) aware of the duration. If a responsible person uses and persists with ideas or a model to alter their own psychosocial reality, that is indicative of value. But much more is needed to generalize and confirm validity.
See my early views in and .
- Relevant literature: more
The literature is essential, because there is no other way to uncover and appreciate phenomena that cross human systems, academic disciplines, cultures and historical periods. The relevant literatures are diverse and include writings of practitioners and thinkers, as well as social scientists and philosophers. Because a taxonomy is not a theoretical entity, theories are either useful pointers to significant elements or themselves objects to be categorized.
- Reflective awareness: more
The elements of endeavour are accessed through personal experience i.e. becoming conscious of them. If you are unable to get a distance from your own personal feelings and preferred paradigms, then you will be unable to recognize and value the experiences of others.
As a result, you are advised not to depend either on the literature, or on anything posted on the website, as authoritative until you have thought it through for yourself. Unfortunately, like myself, you may have to overcome blind-spots and biases. This applies as much to scientists as to others.
Plus an Extra Aid: For the first 15 or so years, inquiries took place almost in the dark and started from a zero base and worked from first principles. In more recent times, structural principles and formulae generated by the Taxonomy have played a major part in guiding and expediting new discoveries. This is much like the way discovery of new chemical elements followed acceptance of the Periodic Table.
See The Hub for details of taxonomic development, including similarities and contrasts with various standard scientific approaches. Below is a brief listing of relevant scientific issues.
Standard Scientific Features
Simplification
As in physical sciences, instances are always messy and complicated. It is necessary to simplify by abstracting what these instances have in common. A meaningful simplification ensures that each taxonomic element is straightforward and obvious. Inevitably, putting many simple features together produces something complicated, and even unexpected. Another simplifying method is analytic focus: which can be disturbing if it gives the impression that important aspects are being neglected.
Precision
Precision in formulating function, properties and relationships for any particular element serves the scientific goal of unequivocal and shareable discrimination. This precision applies independently of concepts developed in academic social science disciplines. Psychosocial matters are typically handled loosely in everyday writing, with fuzzy concepts that merge into each other. Because you are used to that, precision in the use of terms can make reading Topics difficult at times.
Comprehensiveness
The architecture enables identification of hundreds of frameworks and thousands of entities. However, the question remains open as to whether it does indeed cover everything that can come into awareness for endeavour. It may do so insofar as the model originates from a unification. On a practical basis, it regularly appears that everything relevant within a framework is included. If something seems to be missing, it typically belongs in a related framework or sometimes in a distant part of the Taxonomy.
Validity
THEE and its component frameworks are judged valid on a variety of grounds, primarily predictive, pragmatic, consensual, logical, and structural. However, the validity of specific frameworks and formulations within the Taxonomy naturally varies in accord with the depth of study and extent of testing. This is a large topic: read more about it in Taxonomy Development.
Prediction
Prediction is the most desired form of validation. THEE as a model is predictive because its formula-system has enabled the discovery of previously unknown psychosocial entities (cf. the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements). Its frameworks may also predict the evolution of social situations. Undesirable outcomes may also be predicted from observations of the wilful violation of taxonomic principles in social life.
Error Correction
Scientific outputs have mistakes and limitations, and findings must be able to be checked and tested for error. The Taxonomy has had numerous errors along the way: in naming, in properties, and in structures . These have been identified and corrected on the basis of new evidence, tests in practice, literature reports, and logical grounds (i.e. inconsistency, incoherence). See further comments below.
New Discovery
While it is unlikely that any structure found so far will turn out to be wholly invalid, additional properties and relations will surely be discerned. New formal structures within existing patterns, or allowing linkages between them, are almost certainly waiting to be discovered. A world of discoveries can flow from conjectures.
Recent Examples
#1: During study of communicative elements, the oscillating duality that differentiates odd and even levels in the hierarchy seemed to let itself be forcibly reversed. This was checked in other Primary Hierarchies and found to apply there generally (but not to other taxonomic hierarchies). A surprising new pattern emerged in this inquiry. This led to the identification of a new class of framework, whose relevance and potential usefulness is undeniable.
#2: The Politics Satellite, developed relatively recently, includes a Structural Hierarchy dealing with political activities in society. I noticed that the groupings (levels) seem to show a correspondence with and some influence from levels in the Root Hierarchy. Other Structural Hierarchies developed over 15 years earlier appear to confirm this. The correspondence was unexpected and unpredictable. The pattern has been investigated in the Architecture Room.
Usefulness
THEE is a useful taxonomy because it can resolve confusions amongst similar things, and highlight easily overlooked but necessary relationships between things. The Taxonomy may seem overly abstract at times, especially if you have no need for the distinctions. However, when a personal or social need for clarity emerges, the same formulations become down-to-earth and highly practical.
Read more about usefulness.
Present Status
Scientific work operates more or less like this:
1. Make observations and establish them as valid.
2. Find regularities in the observations and confirm them as valid.
3. Offer explanations for observed regularities and test conjectures till falsified.
THEE is a set of regularities in observations that have been checked and confirmed as valid. However:
Re 1: Opinions will vary as to whether particular observations are sufficiently well-established and sufficiently validated. Some certainly seem to be; while others definitely need further study. See the Errors box below.
Re 2: Confidence in the regularities in the architecture is another matter. Having worked for decades in this field, I am confident in many of the frameworks, and regard the architecture as broadly valid.
Re 3: Given THEE is now well-developed, it is essential to explain its unexpected and often unusual architectural features. These investigations commenced in the Architecture Room in 2013. Biological and evolutionary conjectures with implications for current brain-mind research have been developed.
Watch Out for Errors
Despite broad validity and useful applications, the posted frameworks will contain errors. Making mistakes is the norm in scientific work. It is inevitable in the present endeavour where the range of topics is so varied and my experience and expertise necessarily limited.
My goal in publishing via a website was to extend the taxonomy as rapidly as possible by providing formulations that were pointing in the right direction. Perfectionism would have bogged down the project. Equally importantly, I hoped to involve visitors to become reflective users—peer reviewers as it were—who would identify and correct errors. As it turned out, visitors have been hesitant to criticize and contribute.
The resulting situation is therefore somewhat embarrassing. My recourse at present since 2014 has been to progressively review and revise frameworks, primarily in the light of conceptual conjectures. A major naming (or re-naming) exercise was completed in 2015-2016.
I continue to seek others willing to assist in correcting, refining and improving frameworks and developing the Taxonomy as a whole.
Explore Further
Originally posted: July 2009; Last amended: 7-Oct-2016.