Week 34: Enabling new thinking: What Social Sciences can learn from Computer Technology

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In a world where teamwork is sacrosanct, piecemeal “conveyor belt” division of labor and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are considered “THE” standard approach to productivity; it may sound odd that this framework hinders if not negatively affecting the productivity of knowledge workers!

The value of knowledge workers (such as coders, engineers, web designers or researchers) is coming up with new ideas, a new perspective of looking at issues – creating something that may not exist today. A work routine, though good for checking off repetitive predictable assignments, measures short in igniting ideas. For this, organizations need to stretch the bandwidth for knowledge workers to shape their time and space, redefine the problem and the approach to solving; and ultimately take pride in their output – their new idea.

This is not entirely radical thinking. Computer technology companies such as AT&T and Google are well cited from late 1990’s as providing flexible working hours, working spaces and even individual choice in generating projects and modes of execution. The practice has since infused in many technology organizations with a vindicating outcome – exponential growth in technological advancement.[1]

Contrastingly, innovation (new thinking) in the social science lags at snail pace. The acceptance and legitimization of odd, non-mainstream ideas is still subjected to the boiler plate approach of referencing prior authors and ‘building on’ existing theories with a pervasive assumption that human behavior can be causated, mathematized and generalized. Radical thinking that often come from the periphery continues to struggle to be recognized. 

For instance, the dominant framing of human behavior as predictable, determinable and replicable is widely critiqued as generating blinding paradigms such as that of simplistic causal chains which Susan Oyama in 1989 describes as “the Central Dogma of one-way flow of causality”[2]. In this dominant framing, human interaction is simplified to mechanistic “making a cup of tea” with Measured Input-> Process -> Determined output.

Interestingly, this critique was mooted in social sciences over a century prior (as early as 1913) with German social scientist Karl Jaspers[3] noting that in psychopathology causal relationships do not run one way but have a reciprocal effect. He expressed the German concept “wechselwirkung” [a compound expression of both the “wechsel” – exchange and the ‘wirkung’ – force].

The call to innovate a “new science” that reflects the real world and connects to the non-linear complex reality was registered as early as the beginning of the 20th century by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (lived from 1896 – 1934).[4]

In her book 1924 “Creative Experience” Mary Parker Follett eloquently expressed this new thinking of social science: 

In human relations, this is obvious:
 
I never react to you but to you-plus-me; 
or to be more accurate, 

it is I-plus-you reacting to you-plus-me. 

“I” can never influence “you” because you have already influenced me; that is, in the very process of meeting, by the very process of meeting, we both become something different. It begins even before we meet, in the anticipation of meeting. We see this clearly in conferences. Does anyone wish to find the point where the change begins? He never will. 

Every movement we make is made up of a thousand reflex arcs and the organization of those arcs began before our birth. On physiological, psychological and social levels the law holds good: response is always to a relating.

The question of how this new thinking remains peripheral and social sciences remains captive to old thinking a century later is dumbfounding.

Perhaps this is the point social science could learn from computer technology world. To re-design the productivity conveyor belt such that researchers have a latitude to proceed atheoretically and redescribe the problem as experienced in the real world. This calls for higher acceptance of a grounded theory approach in social science research.

Ton Jorg[5] points to the opportunity presented by the present day crises in the social world where modelled boilerplate solutions provide an ill-fit. This is allowing for collective reflection with the potential of building enough momentum to catapult the new thinking into mainstream praxis.

[1]“How fast is technology advancing? [2022]: growing, evolving, and accelerating at exponential rates” By Abby McCain - Apr. 19, 2022. Accessed on 16 August 2022, https://www.zippia.com/advice/how-fast-is-technology-advancing/ [2] Oyama, S. (1989). Ontogeny and the central dogma: Do we need the concept of genetic programming in order to have an evolutionary perspective? In M. R. Gunnar & E. Thelen (Eds.), Systems and development (pp. 29). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [3] Jaspers (1883–1969) work General Psychopathology was published in 1913. [4] Vygotsky, L. (1987b). In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), Collected works: Vol. 1. Problems of general psychology. New York: Plenum Press. [5] Jörg, Ton. New thinking in complexity for the social sciences and humanities: A generative, transdisciplinary approach. Springer Science & Business Media, 2011. *This writing is also based on review of this book