| Type of Thinking | Link to Context? | Isolated? | Aspects? | Useful in .. | Can use .. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Everyday Thinking | Yes | No | Tacit | Practice: Intervening in real-life situations; Doing. | Lower Abstraction |
| Lower Abstraction | Yes | No | Aware | Understanding situations; reflecting on situations, problems, etc. Decision support. 'Research' into situations. | Theories derived from higher abstraction. Also experience from everyday thinking. |
| Higher Abstraction | No | Yes | Isolated | Understanding laws; Scientific research to discover laws and express them as theories. | Data from aspectually-constrained situations. |
In everyday living we function in all the aspects in a more or less integrated way, without being aware of any ot them. Whatever knowledge of the aspects we employ, we do so tacitly. Even though we might focus our attention on a single thing, we are open to and aware of the the context of that thing. For example, I might be trying to prune a rose in my garden, carefully because it is a rare variety, and getting ready for the visitors we are having tonight. My attention is on the rose and the pruning, but I am also awere of things around me such as my children playing down the garden or the state of the football match on the radio beside me, or I might also be aware that the visitors expected are experts on rose care and I want to avoid criticism.
Note that I am just *doing* all this, not often thinking about any particular aspect of the situation as such, and often not planning ahead. It is rather like what the philosopher Michael Polanyi called The Tacit Dimension (1967), in which we make use of tools or knowledge without realising it; they become 'part' of us in a very real way. The knowledge about how I am doing each piece of functioning has been 'compiled' (using a computing metaphor) into my mind and I function without awareness of the details of what I am doing.
That is everyday functioning. And it is more successful the more we integrate all the aspects in what we are doing and go with rather than against their laws. It can be allied to intuition. (See more on intuition.)
One important characteristic of this kind of thinking is that it is integrative. It integrates all aspects, and may be said to allow us knowledge of the whole, a holistic sort of knowledge, as opposed to abstractive forms of knowledge that 'parcel up' what we focus on. Many thinkers have recognised this, such as:
Lower abstraction is when we are involved with something and aware of one or more aspects in which that something functions. Out in the garden, I might appreciate the beauty of my rose or its cost or its symbolism, for example. But appreciation of the aspect is still within the context.
Lower abstraction might be used when I want to understand a situation, for example. Why, I wonder, is the rose growing this way rather than that? I reflect on processes of the biotic aspect, which qualifies the rose as such. But I might decide, "Oh well, it doesn't matter; what really matters is that it looks nice" (which is perhaps viewing the rose from the aesthetic aspect).
In a more complex situation we can use lower abstraction to understand the situation and analyse it. We discern which aspects play an important part in the situation and in the functioning of the various entities involved, and link them together. Mike Winfield's MAKE (Multi-Aspectual Elicitation Method) is useful here.
Thus lower abstraction can be useful in those kinds of 'research', such as action research, where we investigate situations rather than investigating laws of aspects. It can make use of theories that derive from higher abstraction, and it might derive 'theories' of its own, but these are more propositions about things and their connections rather than true theories, which arise from higher abstraction.
Higher abstraction, on the other hand, involves isolation an aspect from all the others (and from its context), and focusing our attention solely on that aspect. Isolation can occur of either the law- or the subject-side; only the former is abstraction. Isolation of the subject-side (entity-side) is what happens when I focus so intently on a thing or an activity that we forget the context, and it is usually detrimental. I might, for example, be so intent on the physical aspect of pruning (making the cut, the way the secateurs slice through material, etc.) that I forget the biotic aspect and cut the rose in the wrong place. Such isolation is often harmful, if allowed to occur in everyday living.
But isolation of an aspect occurs when I want to study and discover the laws of that aspect without my study being contaminated by other aspects: for example I want to study a chemical reaction in the test tube ( physical aspect) and believe that economic things like the cost of the reagants, nor biotic factors like what I had for breakfast, should not affect the outcome. So I isolate the aspect from all others (as far as I can). That is what is meant by higher abstraction.
Higher abstraction yields theories. Or, rather, it yields general theories that express laws of the aspect. It can do so because the effects that we observe as we study the material in front of us is an effect that arises solely in response to the laws of the aspect we are studying (together with any earlier aspects on which it might depend, of course). So we can derive knowledge about the laws of that aspect. Doing this is the essence of science.
Reiterate, however, that higher abstraction studies, not types of entity, but types of law. Thus, under Dooyeweerd's view, a science is not of a type of entity but of the laws of an aspect. Therefore, for example, anthropology, the study of Humankind, is really a study of the aspects in which Humankind functions (all of them!) and is thus a multi-science. Dooyeweerd argues that there can be no 'science of human behaviour' as such, for similar reasons.
For more detailed discussion, see Choi's exposition of Dooyeweerd's view on presupposition. Also our outline of the ground motives.
The implications of this view are now spelled out. A further and different discussion of science is given in science.
Since the laws of the later aspects are not determinative, and each has a different kind of normativity, we have a variety of sciences. Thus we escape both reductionist and positivist approaches to science, and yet we acknowledge the contribution of positivist approaches in some of the sciences.
Argyris, in his book Inner Contradictions of Rigorous Research (Academic Press, 1980) discusses the differences between everyday and theoretical thinking, especially in regard to the difficulty of attempting to use 'rigorous' methods in the social sciences. We aspire to state as precisely as possible the relationships between (usually quantitative) variables. Several problems identified:
This gives a good view on multi- or inter-disciplinary thinking, acting, research, teaching, etc. Inter-disciplinary does not just mean pushing two disciplines together; it means acknowledging one aspect in its proper context among the others.
The application of the results of scientific endeavour is not uni-aspectual; it is multi-aspectual. It is 'everyday' thinking and acting. If this is so then the methods and stances found in science are not appropriate to the application of our knowledge. That is why 'ivy-towered' academics are so often out of touch and are poor guides in the real world.
Dooyeweerd's and Clouser's view restores some dignity to 'everyday' thinking. For centuries - even millenia - 'pure' science (aspect isolation) has been seen as higher and more refined than 'applied' science. But, under this scheme, multi-aspectual thinking and acting is a far richer thing than is uni-aspectual science - and thus it is everyday living that is higher than scientific thinking.
Compiled by Andrew Basden. You may use this material subject to conditions.
Written on the Amiga with Protext.
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