Without ever meaning to, I’ve managed to collect a fairly large number of theoretical books with “method” in their titles: After Method, Beyond Method, Against Method, For and Against Method, Truth and Method.

What is interesting about all these books is that they equate method with algorithmic techniques for capturing, analyzing and evaluating data. And they seem to either ignore or underplay the non-algorithmic principles of practice. They seem to be in battle with vestiges of a modernism that has lost much of its predominance in the last decade. They’re all beginning to feel as historically situated as they almost unanimously admit they are.

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Having just been through a project with too little method, I have to admit that I prefer having a little too much method to having not enough.

But I’m becoming sensitive to the fact that this is not a uni-dimensional continuum. Method is a complex set of practices of different kinds. “Too much” usually means imposition of unhelpful algorithms, where “too little” means having insufficient heuristic guidance (to use Roger Martin’s deeply flawed but nevertheless hugely useful “knowledge funnel” framework. And the flaw is assuming 1) the knowledge autonomously “evolves” from heuristic to algorithm, when in fact these are separate dimensions of practice, and 2) that algorithm is always, or even usually, more desirable than heuristic.)

Some ways to anticipate the future:

• Identifying the salient facts and dynamics of the present and modeling their development.
• Diagnosing the present in terms of a stage of development in a predictable cycle.
• Intuiting how things are going and where they are heading.
• Being the first to experience and articulate something that others will soon experience.
• Being the first to acknowledge and articulate something everyone is experiencing but cannot or will not speak about.

Calculations, heruristics, hunches, sensitivity and courageous self-reflection all give us different kinds of access to the future.

Phil Spector did not mask his monstrous nature with romantic sweetness; we just don’t know what a monster’s face looks like.

Rationalism versus irrationalism is beside the point. What really matters is this: what is the scope of what can be achieved with rational thought?

Today, every reasonable person accepts that we cannot reason out what nature is and how it ought to behave and expect nature to conform to our conclusions. (However, through various combinations of skillful manipulation grounded in understanding and force we can compel nature to conform to our wishes.)

A smaller but still significant number of people accept that we cannot reason out what human beings are and how they ought to behave and expect actual human beings to conform to our conclusions. (However, as with nature, through various combinations of skillful manipulation grounded in understanding and force we can compel people to conform to our wishes.)

But these days I am having trouble believing even that reason alone can bring groups of people to agree on any important matter.

This is not to say that reason is dispensable. On the contrary, it is completely crucial. However, reason alone is not sufficient. To resolve important matters we cannot just speak knowledgeably about the matters in question (let alone speculate on them!), but involve the matter itself in our dialogue and give it a voice and interact with it. This is true of predominantly material questions, predominantly subjective questions, and questions involving combinations of material and subjective factors, which are far and away the most common and most important questions we face.

We must experiment together in collaboration with the very realities that are in question. To put it in business slang, we must “keep the reality in the loop.”

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Maybe dialogue is at its height when it comes to agreement not on truth itself, but on experiments that ought to be performed to determine an as-yet-undetermined truth.

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For many years we all thought experimentation was a cure for the disease of delusion, when in fact experimentation is a fitness regimen to grow and maintain agreement.

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Two forms of tyranny: rule of algorithm and rule of intuitive whim. The former reduces human beings to tools; the latter, toys.

This is not a condemnation of algorithms or of whims. It is a condemnation of either dominating the other. Freedom consists of interplay of algorithms and whims.

The world is overflowing with erudite loners with unique access to truth. They draw considerable strength from the tradition of disdaining tradition. Without this tradition they would be as solitary as they pretend to be, and would suffer the true consequences of isolation, which no human being can want.

Contexts exist where it is ethically required to adopt a positivist stance, epistemologically and methodologically — but never ontologically.

When he looked back on his disagreement, he no longer agreed with himself. But did he reverse his position? No: he agreed with his adversary still less.

Looking back on his disagreement, he no longer thought it was important. Does this mean he should have let it go? No: disagreement matters only when agreement has value.

Some apologies demand apology, but they must be eaten.

When you look at an eye you do not see its sight; to know what a thinker thinks is not the same as knowing his thought.

To many, epiphanies seem impossible because they can’t foresee what they’ll be. But this is one essential quality of an epiphany.

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An imminent epiphany is not dark; it is invisible.

An imminent epiphany is not indistinct or fuzzy; it is nothing.

An imminent epiphany is not tiny in the distance; it is nowhere.

An imminent epiphany does not announce its impending arrival; it is not in transit.

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In the world of epiphanies, “fuzzy front end” happens late in the process, after the hardest work has been done.

Inspired people make inspired things. Inspired things tends to inspire people who work on them. Inspiration begets inspiration.

Often people think of duty as a person does in the absence of inspiration. But with problems demanding inspired solutions it is one’s duty to find, generate, protect and transmit inspiration. Doing one’s duty dutifully won’t do.

To be persuaded of something is not the same as being compelled to accept it.

Reason persuades.

Logic compels. Logic is the law of thought.

Reason is lawful, and it honors logic’s laws. But reason honors more than logic, and it has resources that extend far beyond logic.

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Logic is a courtroom, and it judges what goes on beyond its walls. The court cannot predict or determine the possibilities of life or the cases that might be brought before it.

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Logic can be abused.

It can be brandished and used as an instrument of intimidation. Used skillfully it can show the limits of another man’s intelligence. And it can also be used to wear a person down. It can detain and exhaust and irritate, like a filibuster.

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Being sued and taken to court is a painful process. Even if you think you are right, it can interrupt your life, strain your patience, drain your resources, and grip you with anxiety, because, despite your convictions, you might lose. The lawyer will do his best to make you settle out of court…

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Next time someone tries to persuade you, pay attention: Is this using reason to show you a way to understand in a new way? Or is this person brandishing logic (or its cousin mathematics) to get you to settle for something?

If you think reality has the last laugh on an ostrich who dies with its head still buried, you do not understand ostrich logic.

It is very hard to think clearly about problems, and it is for this reason — and this reason alone — that people so industriously focus on solutions.

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Muddling: trying to answer unasked questions or resolve undefined problems.

Muddling is the great vice of large organizations who have tons of resources to waste. Big groups of people get together and decide what to do without clarifying why something needs to be done.

People act like the sense that a problem exists and needs solving. Everyone kinds of agrees something needs to be done. Good enough!: what is that something, so we can get to work doing it? Let’s ideate on what to do, and make a plan!

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When I hear someone generalize about “ideas”, assessing the value of ideas versus things, or groups, or actions, or plans, etc., I immediately know that person has an impoverished sense of ideas.

For such people, ideas are just anticipations of things that can be made, groups that can be formed, actions that can be performed, plans that can be executed, etc. Ideas are mere mental images of entities that can be brought into other kinds of existence.

Yet, people like this call themselves “idea people” — and have no idea how wrong they are.

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What is true of “idea people” is doubly true of visionaries.

The world is stuffed with “visionaries” who imagine things, actions, plans, organizations, goals (and other stuff you can picture in your mind) — who then mentally sketch out what they imagine, so that others can picture it in their minds, too. The whole group sees the same image, now.

That’s what a visionary does, right? This is, at best, half right.

But what else could a visionary be?

Are you unable to envision anything beyond that? There it is: that beyond that you cannot envision until the moment you finally glimpse it — that beyond is the visionary’s element.

It would be difficult enough if the ocean bottom were just deep. However, it is also dark, heavy, ambiguous with debris, silt and vegetation, and populated with ferocious eyeless creatures that bite, grab and crush anything that lives.

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Monophonic or harmonious difficulties rarely occur outside the domain of games. In real life, there’s nothing, nothing… then deafening cacophony of trouble.

Some people listen to other people because they are genuinely kind. They want to allow the other person to feel heard and to experience dignity and belonging. What is experienced is charity.

Some people listen to other people because they’re trying to be good listeners. They imitate the genuinely kind. Occasionally they seem kind. Others listen in order to flatter. Occasionally they seem respectful.

Some people listen to other people in order to learn the things other people have to teach them. Such people are curious.

Some people listen to other people in order to be liberated from themselves: they want an alternative truth to escape into. They run into the front door, through the house, and straight out the back door.

Some people listen to other people, even to people who are clearly deluded and confused, not in order to enter their delusion or confusion, but to learn just enough to find their way out of their own old truth. Even to you, they listen intently, only for the silences.

Some people listen to other people as an ascetic discipline: the vacuum that stands between understandings hurts us. Steadfast suffering of perplexity makes a soul strong and clean. Perplexity is a desert, and listening leads us there.

Some people listen to other people because they can find a seminal idea hidden in any mind, of any kind, and in their fertile soul grow this insight into an unprecedented idea.

Outrageous: a rebel can no longer expect to be rewarded for refusal to cooperate.

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In a glut, nothing is better than something.

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Diets are counter-natural. Yet nature demands them.

Some people need to be given tasks to do.

Other people need to be given things to make.

Other people need problems to solve.

And finally, some people are only happy finding new problems.

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Each of the four types of worker will turn whatever work they have into the kind of work they do.

A task-oriented person (whether that person is a fry-cook or CEO) faced with the requirement to make a thing, or the need to solve a problem, or a chaotic situation pregnant with opportunity, will play a matching game. He will look for cases that resemble the one he is facing. Then he will find processes (“best practices”) meant to bring that category of case to a successful conclusion. Only when he has strung together a series of algorithmic steps and begun executing them will he feel in his element, and feel like he is really working. For the task-oriented worker, working is executing techniques.

A craftsperson (again, this could be any role ranging from custodian to executive) will try to turn whatever situation he faces into the need for some kind of artifact. It might be a product, or a slogan, or a presentation… whatever it is, it will require him to roll up his sleeves and start carving, sanding, tweaking, polishing — and now he is working. For the craftsman, working is making.

A problem-solver (of whatever role) wants to understand the end-goal, the clear objective, of what he is doing. All his efforts are trained on “moving the needle” and accomplishing what he has set out to do. To this end, he will use processes and he will use the crafting of things to get him there, only feels like he is working when he sees progress toward a goal. For the problem-solver, working is accomplishing.

A problem-finder is unlikely to be anything other than an entrepreneur or a hermit, and is not really worth discussing.

What a great quote!:

“Our age’s good fortune. — There are two respects in which our age may be called fortunate. With respect to the past we have enjoyment of all the cultures there have ever been and of their productions, and nourish ourselves with the noblest blood of every age; we still stand sufficiently close to the magical forces of the power out of whose womb they were born to be able to subject ourselves to them in passing with joy and awe: whereas earlier cultures were capable of enjoying only themselves, with no view of what lay outside — it was as though they lay beneath a vaulted dome, of greater or less extent, which, though light streamed down upon them from it, was itself impenetrable to their gaze. In respect to the future there opens out before us, for the first time in history, the tremendous far-flung prospect of human-ecumenical goals embracing the entire inhabited earth. At the same time we feel conscious of possessing the strength to be allowed without presumption to take this new task in hand ourselves without requiring supernatural assistance; indeed, let our undertaking eventuate as it may, even if we have overestimated our strength, there is in any case no one to whom we owe a reckoning except ourselves: henceforth mankind can do with itself whatever it wishes.”

You can’t lose with a quote like this. Whether or not it is factually true, it is morally true: it reveals a hope worth cultivating: a pluralist interpretation of e pluribus unum.

He came, rested and prospered, and went on,
Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,
And over each one its own particular sky,
Not the great rounded sky through which he journeyed,
That went with him but when he rested changed.
His mind was full of names
Learned from strange peoples speaking alien tongues,
And all that was theirs one day he would inherit…