MERELY A NUMBERS GAME?

Much has been made of the differences between traditional thinking and modern, scientific thinking. And, in truth, there are significant differences between them, but in one regard, they have a significant similarity: both have an intolerance for indefiniteness. Both seek assurance. One does so through traditional beliefs such as religious beliefs or old cultural myths and the other through observation, measurement, and objective generalizing that is based on those observations and measurements. This posting is a comment on positivist rationalism.

In our modern world, we have given much credence to the value of rational thought. Philip Selznick¹ identifies two forms of rational thought: axiomatic rationalism and positivist rationalism. In this posting, in trying to describe positivism, I will begin by distinguishing it from axiomatic rationalism or idealism. Just to place some context to this attempt, I wrote of axiomatic rationalism a few postings ago – you are invited to click on that posting entitled A Step Toward Reasoned Argument.

The foundation of axiomatic rationalism is the mind and ideas. Unlike with axiomatic rationalism, for positivist rationalism ideas, qua ideas, are struggled against. With axiomatic rationalism, there is a commitment to hit upon objective standards for determining morals and truth. As I described in the previous posting, this type of rationalism is, in the end, based on postulates and assumptions. As such, there is, by necessity, a limit on the determinant quality one can associate with axiomatic rationalism. We believe in rights, for example, because we assume that “all men are created equal.” Such a foundation to a moral belief is unprovable, at least, against the real, observable world – it's simply “self evident.” This type of claim is not so much seeking determinacy in either the domain of morals or in the domain of truth.

Instead, positivist rationalism rejects such reliance, in the long term, on postulates or assumptions. They take on a more limited temporary role, but in the end are subject to being questioned and tested. Truth and morals are sought after in the real experiences of people, not their ideas. This approach strives to be precise in its meanings and to eliminate vagueness. The aim is to be able to test beliefs either through scientific research, in terms of objective reality, or utilitarian calculations, in terms of morals. In this posting, my attention is limited to the scientific methodology.

Part and parcel of this approach is to reduce beliefs or findings to more basic realities; that is, to view the area of interest in a more simple form – in a more definite elemental context. For example, biological knowledge is sought to be reduced to chemical explanation, or to reduce sociological knowledge to psychological explanation. If successful, the knowledge is more widely applicable; that is more powerful. This whole approach has obviously been very beneficial to human progress in terms of material understanding and well-being. But through this reductionism, positivism and our over- dependence on it has led to oversimplifying complex reality, especially when we are concerned with that aspect of reality that pertains to consciously reactive beings – human behavior.

Let me illustrate this problem by pointing out one area with which I am particularly familiar. School reform has been a topic much highlighted in our public discourse. Too many would-be reformers have been reliant on positivist rationalism to come up with the solutions to our unrelenting school problems. Not enough students are learning those things we believe are essential to being productive and participating citizens and workers. Reductionist thinking has led to one “silver bullet” solution after another with little change in school success rates. I have written of these failed answers before and I will skip over the merits or limitations of these “reforms.” What I will express is that educational challenges in our nation might be helped by scientific approaches, but ultimately final solutions will take a lot of complex qualitative study that will be more akin to historical, literary, linguistic, philosophic, and other not so determinant modes of research. Those scholars who have delved into more cultural areas of concern, such as anthropologists and historians, have long ago realized that measuring, numbers, and reductive logic often overlook those factors, developments, nuances, relationships, and norms that don't lend themselves to measurements per se. Story telling skills often are more useful in such research than fancy statistical analysis. Let me share Philip Selznick's words on this issue:

These assertions stem from a general perspective – a nominalist ontology – not from the closely reasoned findings of focused inquiry. They reflect positivism's impatience with the more complex and elusive aspect of social and psychological reality.²

That is, the shortcomings of positivist research stem from its tendency to reduce social phenomena to being the exclusive result of individuals and their choices. By so doing, understanding is likely to be sacrificed as I believe has been the case in our efforts to understand our nation's schools. The subtle facts of relations and their intertwined complications are easily missed by reductionist logic. We even have a difficult time measuring success when it comes to schools. Who is responsible for a child's success or failure? Is it a current teacher, parents, administrative policy, neighborhood conditions, past teachers, etc.? Or is it a combination of factors with immeasurable levels of influence? Is success merely the performance of students on tests or is it a varied compilation of results that include beyond cognitive achievements strong families, safe neighborhoods, honest employees and business persons? All of these are emblematic of viable school systems.

I have already made the claim in this blog that positivist logic is the chosen approach of those who adhere to the natural rights construct – the prominent mental construct of our political and governmental thinking. As such, positivism plays an influential role in how we teach civics and government, as this posting, I hope, makes clear; that's good and bad. It is good in that it encourages our students to take a realistic look at political and governmental activities. There is value in measuring things including the processes and results of our political and governmental efforts. But we need to be vigilant of oversimplifying what we are looking at and remember these are human activities that are the most complex bit of phenomena we can study. We need to be vigilant against promoting an overly individualistic view of social life that feeds more narcissistic attitudes. Often, responsible social research calls for methodology that, while trying to be objective, remembers that what is being looked at is motivated by highly emotional factors. You can, for example, explain why a sports team wins a championship by looking at performance statistics – passing completion rates, batting averages, field goal percentages, greens in regulations, and the like – but you can gain understanding only by appreciating the human ambitions, teammate interactions, family support, and the like that escape the ability of the statistician to observe and measure. That's why we read both reports and scientific studies and why we also read novels.

1Selznick, P. (1992). The moral commonwealth: Social theory and the promise of community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

2Ibid., p. 51.