Like many people I’m pondering the intensifying COVID-19 infectious disease crisis, with daily life here in Australia (I live in Melbourne) beginning to transform as governments implement policies which upend daily life and many industries. Initial forecasts suggest we’re likely to see the worst level of unemployment since the Great Depression. I have no idea … [Read more…]
Reading Roger Pielke Jr’s review of David Wallace-Wells’ new book The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future got me thinking about a process described by Pielke Jr as the transformation of “carefully caveated scenarios of the future” produced by scientific communities into “most likely futures” (or related future-oriented claims). He writes: The scientific community … [Read more…]
Though my doctoral research began as a fairly straightforward impact evaluation of forward-looking interventions (which I call “prospective exercises”), it evolved into a more complex piece of research and theory-building. Two of the ideas that emerged from this broader inquiry are: To understand the use and impacts of a prospective exercise (or similar future-oriented research) … [Read more…]
In his book The Invention of Science David Wootton argues that “the idea of discovery is … a precondition for the invention of science” (p.54) and, linked with this, that the idea of discovery itself had to be invented. He points to the works of Francis Bacon which “built a philosophy of science around the … [Read more…]
Last week I received a letter from University of Technology Sydney (UTS) stating that the Graduate Research School at UTS has recommended (to the Academic Board) that I be admitted to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (the degree will be conferred in March). This letter more formally marks the completion of what has been … [Read more…]
One of the outputs of my PhD research is the concept of prospective knowledge practices. The purpose of this post is to outline this concept and some of its potential benefits versus other terms that are commonly used (e.g. “foresight practices”, “futures research”, etc.). My introduction to the concept of knowledge practices – which informs … [Read more…]
This post also began as a research “memo” (written to myself as part of my PhD journal) entitled “on the effects of diversity”. I was prompted to write it by Richard Crisp’s book The Social Brain: How Diversity Made the Modern Mind (Robinson Books, 2015) – also see an earlier blogpost. In contrast to the more … [Read more…]
This post began as a research “memo” (written to myself as an entry in a reflective PhD journal) entitled “on psychological plausibility”. I was prompted to write it by a couple of pieces written by David Roberts on current debates about 100% renewable electricity and the feasibility of such goals (see link, link) and other … [Read more…]
A new book popularising and discussing cognitive science, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, recently got my attention. It focusses on recent research findings that people tend to radically overestimate how much they know and, linked with this, greatly overestimate their knowledge of how things work (e.g. fairly simple things like how modern … [Read more…]
Our capacity as a society and individuals to deal with novel, complex problems can be hampered by our tribal groupishness. That’s a key claim made by some psychologists who argue that our brains were designed for a tribal way of life. They argue that our capacity for moral reasoning developed to enable within-group cooperation … [Read more…]