A Simple Path for Science
The Need for Simplicity in Social Science
Simplicity has been extensively praised as a paramount virtue for science. Albert Einstein once affirmed that “the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible,” echoing Ockham’s razor principle of parsimony, according to which “assumptions introduced to explain a thing must not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Yet all too often our scientific practices, particularly in the social sciences which I know best, appear to produce theories imbued with multiple hidden presuppositions, all the while remaining inadvertently blind to foundational elements.
Instead of paving the way for the discovery of new scientific laws, these theories occasionally transmute into all-explaining ideologies that acquire a life of their own, ultimately shaping a fabricated reality that ends up being superimposed onto the real world. As proof of their disconnect from the reality on the ground, suffice it to note their fruitlessness in anticipating forthcoming real-world developments, as in the case of standard economic theory and the great financial crisis of 2008.
This problematic situation could be partly related to our human inclination toward wishful thinking, i.e., wanting to see what is most desired in the reality of things. It could also be inherent to a purely reductionist scientific practice, i.e., one that is very powerful at deconstructing the empirical reality under observation (i.e., analytical examination, at the surface level) but does not help when it comes to reconstructing the whole through deep comprehension (i.e., synthetic understanding, at the foundations). Multiple interpretations might be generated from trying to reconcile the observed superficial features and details, but once “lost” in them it might prove very hard for us scientists to recognize their underlying drivers.
It appears to me that, by its very nature, analytical science does a vital job in dissecting and explaining many aspects of our complex social reality, but not in understanding it at a fundamental yet simple level. Hence its tendency to generate faulty prognoses, problematic recommendations, or no recommendation at all, leaving the void to be filled by all sorts of scientific and non-scientific ideas and ideologies. Social scientific theories could lead us in many conflicting directions, as evidenced by conflicts between schools of thought; crystallizing the ultimate rationales of life manifestations is instead likely to illuminate a simple way forward.
The Unsolvable Puzzle of Causality
Borrowing the words of Ludwig Boltzmann:
“Nothing is more practical than a good theory.”
It is nonetheless the case that practitioners sometimes lament that many theories—academic as well as non-academic—are irrelevant, unrealistic, simplistic, overly rational, or naïve. Even if they find our analyses very useful, practitioners may at the same time argue that we, as social scientists, “don’t fully understand what we are talking about,” for the simple reason that we have not directly, subjectively, and emotionally experienced the complex processes we claim to know.
To frontline practitioners, social scientific theories might also appear counterintuitive, i.e., defying the practical logic of things. The way things work in practice is by means of a chain of actions that are consequential, constructive, and goal-oriented: I do A in order to expect B and then reach my goal C at the end of the process. On the other hand, when operating as analytical scientists, we view the world as a set of variables, highly or loosely correlated, in a way that structurally ignores causality and finality. We “freeze reality in time” in order to analyze it, dispossessing it of its dynamic component and engendering chicken-and-egg dilemmas (What comes first? What has caused what?).
It seems to me that, by its very nature, reductionist science “enforces” static properties onto a dynamic reality, and as a result it loses touch with the world’s dynamism, causality, and finality. Reductionist science relies heavily on mathematics and regression analysis to address this problem. Yet to me, these remain tools to model—not understand—the reality under observation. By focusing too much on method and ignoring the why of things, reductionist science might eventually empty the world of a sense of purpose, and hence also of the possibility for human beings to scientifically determine it and align with it.
The Risk of Overcomplicating the World
Our reductionist scientific operations might not help us discern ultimate purposes and higher-level values, but human beings still manifest a strong need for them. By shunning them from our objectivity-oriented practices, we might paradoxically pave the way for scientific ideologies, for all sorts of value-laden judgments are in any case put forward when shaping new research questions, explaining research results, and eventually advancing recommendations based on them. Science risks falling into relativism, and its resulting disorderly expansion overcomplicates the social world we live in.
If our hyper-modern world is the outcome (among other things) of a reductionist scientific ideology and “operating system,” then it is probably no surprise that it also appears so complicated, disorienting, or wasteful. Without a clear understanding of what is beneficially simple, we human beings might tend toward overdoing in order to regain a sense of control—overreacting, over-theorizing, over-informing, over-medicating, over-recommending… over-everything. Does this anxiety lead us modern people to do much more than is needed, distancing us from common sense?
“Over-Languaging” as Potential Barometer for an Ideologized Science
Science takes shape in language, and through language it is also modified. Within the realm of the social sciences, words and expressions are fraught with meaning, hiding implicit assumptions deep within them. While many have a direct reference to the real world, others appear to be artificial inventions that make sense only within the ideologies that beget them. For example, while the economic notions of cost and benefit are likely to be understood even by children, concepts like opportunity cost or externality might appear counterintuitive to most people.
Let us take a closer look at the notion of opportunity cost. This conceptualization implies that a certain action is perceived as a cost for the economic agent that performs it, to the extent that the time and resources employed in it prevent the same agent from doing something else. But isn’t this idea unnatural and counterintuitive? Why can’t economic agents just focus on what they are doing and be content with it? Why self-inflict a need or desire to do something else instead? The notion of opportunity cost appears to stem from an arbitrary view of reality, namely one generated by theoreticians who were, for better or worse, enmeshed in an opportunistic ideology of the world.
Similar observations could be made about the notion of externality, which implies that the positive or negative repercussions generated by the actions of economic agents on third parties and on the rest of society are reframed as external to them. But why characterize this sort of phenomenon as an externality? Why not call it what it is, i.e., a positive or negative impact? Why shouldn’t economic actors own the consequences of their actions instead of reframing them as external? Once again, the concept of externality appears to arise from an opportunistic ideology that artificially segregates economic agents from the environment in which they operate. But isn’t this impossible in real-world terms? In both the natural and social worlds, no actor is ever separated from its environment and cannot do without the multiple ecosystems to which it belongs.
Ultimately, I ask myself: is this science? Does the language of the economics discipline closely reference the manifested world, or does it rather provide—as the word itself suggests—a disciplined way to look at it? Rather than mirroring the empirical world, economic theoreticians seem to construct an idealized reality they end up falling in love with for its “magic” properties. In these cases, instead of limiting ourselves to operate as detached observers of the empirical world, it seems to me that we scientists synthesize it through the filter of our own ideologies, and by “over-languaging” reality we lose touch with its underpinning logic and simplicity. Once these dynamics get going, isn’t it inevitable that academic disciplines become self-referential and self-perpetuating? They might start growing despite—rather than according to—the simple underpinning order of things, like a tumor. Without full awareness of the process, things will soon become complicated, and practitioners will find themselves confronting the tumor that we theorists, despite our best intentions, have helped create.
A Simple Path for Science: Rediscovering Analogies, Experience, and Common Sense
It is perhaps no coincidence that I have used the tumor analogy to imagine how scientific knowledge might grow. Analogies highlight fundamental properties shared by otherwise distant entities, including a common raison d’être and purpose, that is, the function they perform at a systemic level. Analogies are widely used in biology and in farmers’ idiomatic expressions, often implying normative connotations that allude to positive or negative consequences. In this respect, I hypothesize that enlightened and beautiful analogies might illuminate a safe way forward.
Another pathway to reveal the rationale of things seems to pass through subjective human experience. Compared to detached scientific knowledge, unmediated experiential knowledge may lack objectivity but is richer in other respects, as it arises from first-hand emotional and intellectual engagement with the full context of events. If ivory tower science does indeed abstract events from their contexts, personal experience exposes practitioners to their normativity, by means of a wide range of subjective emotions that are inherently directional (i.e., tending toward fulfillment or toward pain).
By experiencing the world directly, practitioners might also become tacitly aware that every part reflects the whole, in that the raison d’être of all practical details lies in their common purpose and they make sense only within it.
Finally, I hypothesize the existence of a simple and higher-order universal heuristic encoded in each human being, also definable as good and universal common sense. It subsumes all other forms of knowledge and works like a compass (analogy!), pointing all of us in the same direction, that is, survival, life, and positivity in general. It represents a universal force for good, and its existence might be evidenced by the fact that, across all times and cultures, we all seem to have a primordial preference for the same things, namely those positively connoted: good (vs. bad), beautiful (vs. ugly), real (vs. illusory), bright (vs. dark), complete (vs. deficient), and presumably many others.
This good and universal common sense is most often hidden beneath many layers of learned beliefs and reactions, but it can naturally surface when us human beings retain or regain a substantial degree of our original purity of heart and clarity of mind. It is our ultimate source of contextual wisdom, one free from cultural superstructures and fully aligned with our clearest sight. It was, again, Albert Einstein who affirmed:
“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”
Afterword by the Author
This paper did not result from a structured research project, but from a flow-of-consciousness moment and insight that I had after many years of reading, unmediated experiences, and deep reflections on the topic. This essay does not, by any means, have the ambition to be exhaustive, completed with examples, or fully referenced, also considering the variety of general subjects that are touched upon and connected to each other. On the other hand, I hope that it can serve to trigger a much-needed debate on the foundational limits of reductionist science and on how to overcome them, toward the emergence of a more holistic and truthful paradigm of knowledge creation.
Notes
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Arguably, the absence of higher-level purposes leads reductionist science practitioners to elevate objectivity in their place. From being a means, objectivity becomes the end itself, turning science itself into an ideology.
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Culturally and historically determined common sense is advisedly considered an obstacle in the path of truth by social scientists, for it might represent a form of arbitrary preference if not prejudice. In my view, this type of common sense can nonetheless be distinguished from a higher form of logical intuition, which is presumably related to the ability of all human beings to contextually distinguish what is holistically beneficial from what is not (I expand on this hypothesis in the conclusive section of this essay).
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When applied to the real world, theoretical ideas give rise to real consequences, functioning as self-fulfilling prophecies.
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It is interesting to realize that the word analogy derives from the ancient Greek “ἀναλογία”, that is proportional calculation. According to Vitruvius—the great architect of ancient Rome and one of the intellectual fathers of Renaissance Humanism—proportionality is the true measure of beauty. Analogies could be considered holistic forms of knowledge, precisely because they express the proportionality embedded in the universe.
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Italian author and philosopher Tiziano Terzani once wrote, “Only if we manage to see the world as a single entity, in which every part reflects the whole and whose great beauty lies precisely in its variety, will we be able to understand exactly who and where we are.” Terzani also wrote, “Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time, sit in a teahouse watching the passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut. You pick up a thread—a word, a meeting, a friend of a friend of someone you have just met—and soon the most insipid, most insignificant place becomes a mirror of the world, a window on life, a theatre of humanity.”
