The technical and managerial topics discussed elsewhere on this site are closely related to themes that are traditionally associated with philosophy and psychology. I am interested in the latter disciplines for both professional and personal reasons.
The following concepts are of particular interest to me:
- Change: A fundamental distinction can be made, roughly speaking, between those who look at the world through snapshots, describing objects and relationships at a fixed point in time; and those who look at the world from a dynamic perspective, treating phenomena as intrinsically time-dependent and evolving. Such a profound distinction applies to the time evolution of quantum systems as well as to the time evolution of firms and industries.
- Interpretation: While there is much emphasis in modern science on the importance of data, and rightly so, data alone does not equate to knowledge. Even simple hypotheses with seemingly obvious data to support them require a degree of interpretation. Interpretation becomes all the more important when dealing with complex hypotheses and ambiguous data. The philosophical school of phenomenology deals with questions of interpretation — with much overlap into psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics. Insights from such disciplines on the question of interpretation are highly relevant to natural and social sciences alike.
- Integration: The interpretation of phenomena often requires integration of different types of knowledge from different types of disciplinary domains. Integration of previously disconnected concepts can yield new theories and views with categorically novel outcomes. In other words, integration can yield results that are more than the sum of their parts. The concept integration is thus related to the notion of emergence.
Philosophy, psychology, and linguistic literatures speak to the above-mentioned issues and I find it helpful to engage with these disciplines. These issues are as relevant to our personal lives as they are to the evolution of industries and fields, and decision-making in labs and companies.
More specifically, my interest in language is rooted in the fact that language is a prime example for the need of interpretation. Moreover, psychology enters since all decision-making is affected by the decision maker. Psychology presents us with models and explanations of how and why decision-making might differ depending on the traits of the decision makers.
My blog posts speak — to various degrees — to the issues raised above.