I. Theory and practice

1. In broad terms, theory is how matters get represented, whereas practice is how matters get done. The relations between theory and practice could logically be a genuine dialectic, defined here as a dynamic cycle between two processes guiding each other along. The practice is theory- driven, and the theory is practice-driven; the theory envisions and expounds the practice; and the practice 

specifies and implements the theory (Fig. 1). The output from theory is top- down, whilst the output from practice is bottom-up. The more ‘theoretical’ the operation, the more steady and and precise the ‘practical’ guidance needs to be.2. However, in several scenarios the dialectic goes out of alignment. In one, theory runs ahead of practice, e.g., devising abstract plans and goals from the top down without concrete methods to implement them from the bottom up. So you proceed with partial approximations of a practice: reasoning from previous experience with similar practices, and trying to adapt and implement ones that worked before. The practice can undergo ‘tuning’ and become steadily more effective as the practice catches up with the theory.

3. In the converse scenario, practice runs ahead of theory, e.g., engaging in sundry activities with no sound conception of plans and goals. Here, you proceed on partial approximations of a theory, reasoning from previous knowledge of similar theories, and trying to rethink them for new situations. The theory can undergo tuning and become steadily more rational as it catches up with the practice.

4. In a more radical scenario, theory runs away from practice, e.g., ‘theorizing’ from the top down and disregarding practical consequences or applications. Theorizing becomes its own goal, and ‘theoreticians’ claim an independent and superior authority over ‘practitioners’ handling practical matters (I.23, 34; II.187). A theory may indeed be valued precisely for its distance from practice.

5. In the converse radical scenario, practice runs away from theory, e.g., using methods that baldly ignore or contradict the professed theory. You invoke a false theory which presents you in a favourable perspective, and disclaim responsibility for your true and unfavourable actions.

6. In the first pair of scenarios, you retain the potential to make theory and practice converge, as when a novice gradually becomes a veritable expert. In many domains, however, a total convergence of theory with practice could only be a state of utopia — an ultimate, unreachable goal. To keep proceeding toward the goal, heartened rather than daunted by the unlimited space for progress, is a hopeful utopia; to abandon your search for the goal in despair is a hopeless utopia.¹ Unhappily, the ‘hopeful utopian’ is far more easily transformed into a hopeless one — switching from selfless to selfish, from idealist to cynic, from benefactor to exploiter, from liberator to tyrant — than vice-versa.

7. But in the more radical pair of scenarios, theory and practice cannot converge. Instead, an official theory is publicly declared but does not guide practice, whereas an operational theory is not publicly declared or is flatly denied but does guide practice. In parallel, official practice is spuriously claimed to be what gets done, whilst operational practice truly gets done but does not get admitted.

8. The present Introduction will be building on the basic terms and concepts just proposed, using a method we might call concentric frames, working inward from general to specific, or outward from specific to general (Fig. 2a-b). Theory and practice constitute the outermost frame; then theory and practice in society; then theory and practice in some institution of society, such as education or science; and finally at the centre, theory and practice in some specific concern of that institution, such as language education or language science.

Each issue is thus situated within concentric contexts, e .g., how a society based on inclusive theory but exclusive practice sustains a corresponding contradiction in science and education despite well-intentioned projects for inclusion. Recovering a genuine dialectic requires making explicit both the ‘theoreticalness’ of human practices and the ‘practicality’ of human theories.

I.A. Theory and practice in society

9. Democracy, the currently dominant official theory of the state, envisions, in abstract terms, universal inclusion and equality for every citizen, and calls for such institutions as free elections and universal education as the operational means. In return, the practices of such institutions specify, in concrete terms, how to implement inclusion and equality, e.g., by conducting voter registration at election time or standard examinations at the end of school terms. A total convergence of theory with practice in a democracy would be perhaps the most obvious utopia. But a ‘democracy’ truly merits the name only as a hopeful utopia that vigorously promotes its theory in its practices, e.g., by means of ‘equal rights legislation’ and ‘equal opportunity employment’. A society that endemically restricts the human rights of women or minorities cannot be a ‘democracy’, no matter how loudly it calls itself so and no matter how many elections and school exams it can boast.

10. The agenda of ecologism upholds genuine democracy through a dialectical convergence between inclusive theories and inclusive practices that promotes the expansion of human potential. We can accordingly define social progress as inclusive practice converging with inclusive theory, versus social regress s as exclusive practice diverging from inclusive theory (Fig.3).²

By these terms, many events or processes labelled ‘progress’ in public discourse do not qualify, such as the ‘economic progress’ benefiting only the top classes of society and neglecting the rest (cf. I.23f; VII.1; VIII.51-54).

11. Four factors could be described in corresponding terms. In the factor of social roles, inclusion produces insiders in a group, whereas exclusion produces outsiders (Fig. 4). People can naturally

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occupy both roles as insiders for some groups and outsiders or others. The vital question for ecologism is how these roles can strengthen equality and respect for human rights through the mutual treatment of insiders and outsiders.

 12. In the factor of human interaction, solidarity interacts outward on equal levels amongst insiders, whereas power interacts downward on unequal levels against outsiders. Inclusion in a power group can empower the insiders and disempower the outsiders. Whereas solidarity is a restful state promoting human rights and drawing people into supportive co-operation, power is a restless state demoting human rights and impelling people into divisive conflicts, typically over money and property

(Fig. 5). The ecological practice for a power group would be to empower outsiders and resolve conflicts — and not, as commonly occurs, to exploit and foment.

 13. In the factor of human potential, actualisation frees you to realise and build your potential in meaningful activities selected by your own free inclination, whereas alienation limits your potential to meaningless activities dictated by others (Fig. 6).³ 

Becoming alienated and disempowered is an inner ‘regress’ that excludes steadily more aspects of your human potential, thus engendering and aggravating inner conflicts among the perpetrators who alienate and the victims who get alienated, and maybe culminating in violence (cf. I.18, 38).

14. The counterpart term ‘actualisation’ is far less familiar, no doubt being rarer in ‘modern’ societies. Becoming actualized and empowered is inner ‘progress’ that includes steadily more aspects of your human potential, and thus reconciles inner conflicts and promotes mutual respect. Ecologism holds that actualisation should be recognised as an essential human right for democracy to advance, especially in adapting the design of its educational systems to reflect more progressive insights on such concepts as ‘intelligence’ (cf. I.57ff, 74).

15. In the factor of ideology, defined here neutrally as a framework of ideas that legitimise what is ‘natural’, ‘normal’, ‘proper’, and legitimise what is not,⁴ a left-wing ideology holds that human rights are inclusive and equal in theory, even though, short of utopia (in the sense of I.6), social conditions create exclusions and inequalities in practice. The borders between insiders and outsiders should be attenuated; conflicts should be reconciled; and the empowerment for actualisation should be actively nurtured. Social progress (in the inclusive sense of I.10) is a sound investment, and constitutes a significant duty of the state and its institutions, as professed for instance by the ideology of ‘socialism’.

16. A right-wing ideology holds that human rights must be exclusive and unequal in both theory and practice, in exact proportion to each individual’s share of wealth and power, no matter how these were acquired. The borders between insiders and outsiders should be accentuated to keep people in their ‘proper places’; conflicts should be ‘manfully fought’ until ‘victory or death’ to ensure the ‘survival of the fittest’; those who prove ‘unfit’ are wholly to blame for any disempowerment and alienation they suffer. Social progress is a reckless experiment, and constitutes an irresponsible intrusion of the state, as professed for instance by the ideologies of the ‘free market’ and ‘social Darwinism’.

17. The social practices legitimised by left-wing theories are predictably ‘illegitimised’ by right-wing theories, and vice versa; when political power shifts sides, social policies may get abolished or reversed. The right speaks for the economic top (the rich and powerful ‘elites’), and the left speaks for the economic bottom (the ‘working masses’) (VII.1). A different opposition pervades their cognitive and discursive styles. Left-wing theory is complex and intellectual, and respects multiple viewpoints, with the unhappy side-effects of talking over the heads of the masses and of dividing its own practitioners into clans and factions who debate and dispute when they should unite against challenges from the right. The left argues for resolving social and economic problems and helping the victims — those without homes or jobs, or in jail — because the social order is unjust in alienating human potential; but their arguments are frankly complicated.

18. In contrast, right-wing theory is simplistic and anti-intellectual, and respects only its own viewpoint, thus uniting its adherents into a single faction (or ‘klan’) to attack and silence its immense gallery of ‘enemies’ (cf. VII.27ff). The right advocates blaming social and economic problems on scapegoats who are ceaselessly accused of an evil conspiracy to destroy the sacred values of family, home, and homeland — intellectuals, artists, minorities, gays, immigrants, foreigners, and now Muslims. The right blames the victims of social problems,⁵ saying they richly deserve their sufferings, whereas the social order is just; and the arguments are frankly simple-minded. Indeed, the right converts victims into perpetrators⁶ — scroungers, anarchists, agitators, terrorists, etc. etc. — and hence into legitimate targets of spontaneous or state-sponsored violence. The discursive reduction of human potential thus legitimises the physical reduction (cf. I.38).

19. Using the four social factors outlined here — with their correlated polarities between insider and outsider, power and solidarity, alienation and actualisation, right-wing, and left-wing — we might tentatively describe three basic stages in social evolution. A pre-modern society (the term ‘traditional’ is too loaded) with a hierarchical organisation (e.g., the Egypt of the Pharaohs) restricts power to an aristocracy of insiders determined by static criteria like birth, rank, and class, and sustains an official right-wing ideology like the divine authority of kings or priests. A few families control the politics and economy, though their ties may be invidious and insidious in scheming for power against each other. The economy centres on slave labour extracted to supply the opulent wants of the elite, such as ornaments, villas, temples, and palaces, enlisting primitive technology. The environment is regarded as a reservoir of vast wealth and as a backdrop for sumptuous rituals that mediate between heaven and earth. Alienation and social disorders are taboo topics, and their agents or critics get persecuted or executed.

20. A pre-modern society with an egalitarian organisation (e.g., the cultures of the Amazon rainforest) attributes little value to criteria like birth, rank, and class. Families have the small size the environment can support, and their ties are strong and durable, e.g., in caring for the young, the aged, and the sick. The economy centres on communal labour, such as hunting in the wild or harvesting in the fields. The environment is regarded as an extended home to be respected and preserved, and perhaps as a home to protective spirits too. Technology is minimal and serves directly essential needs, such as weapons and tools. Alienation and social disorders are rare, and their agents get ritually reintegrated.

21. A modern society mixes hierarchical and egalitarian modes of organisation, and relies on dynamic criteria like education, initiative, and enterprise. Families are smaller than the environment could support and their ties are weaker and more fragile; care for the young, the aged, and the sick is consigned to institutions like ‘rest homes’. The grouping of insiders and outsiders, and the distribution of power, follow the right-wing and left-wing oscillations of state ideology. The economy organises manual (‘blue-collar’) labour into large enterprises, and interposes layers of (‘white-collar’) management to oversee and ‘motivate’ them. In response, labour forms unions to attenuate the social divide between the ‘working class’ and the ‘middle class’, and propagates patterns of inclusive consumption of lower-priced commodities like ‘compact cars’. Unions can also protect jobs during expansions of technology, as when assembly lines get partially mechanised by robots. The environment is regarded as a resource for commerce and industry to exploit, regardless of depletion and pollution. Alienation and social disorders are common, and their agents get isolated in mental wards or prisons, or dumped on the streets.

22. A post-modern society sharpens the tension between hierarchical and egalitarian modes of organisation. The grouping of insiders and outsiders, and the distribution of power, are subject to abrupt and radical changes. Social diversity flows from multiculturalism and multilingualism, but finds expression mainly in superficial ‘life styles’ like fashions in pop music, clothing, and, recently, body-piercing. Few societies have yet seriously faced the diversity by reaffirming equality in human rights, and many quietly or openly seek to deny or repress it, e.g., by drastically restricting immigration. The operational theory of ‘democracy’ juggernauts off to the far right as whole governments and national economies fall under the power of immense multinational banks and corporations. Labour and capital are ‘globalised’ as these power groups circle the planet on the trail of ‘favourable conditions’, which, in the discourse of corporate cynicism, means government incentives, privatisations, abysmal wages, hazardous working conditions, and an absence of labour unions, public health care, environmental safeguards, and (above all) taxes (II.119ff). Workers see their buying power melt away, and much of the middle class sinks down into the ‘working poor’, who are redundant and irrelevant as consumers when the economy shifts over to the exclusive consumption of high-priced commodities like ‘luxury cars’. Families are pressured to reassume social burdens such as care for the young, the aged, and the sick, whilst the ‘social safety net’ is legislated away and social services are shut down because taxes are ‘cut’ and taxable wealth is ‘sheltered’ or ‘moved offshore’. The natural environment gets intrusive competition from the ‘virtual realities’ where alienation is released by ‘vaporising aliens’. Social disorders grow intense, swelling the legions of jobless vegetating in overcrowded prisons or desolate streets.

23. These basic stages, as described here in theory, can assume a variety of forms in practice. Egalitarian pre-modern societies sustained a close association between theoretical and practical knowledge. Modern societies, in contrast, have proliferated theoretical knowledge apart from practical knowledge, and elaborately dissociated ‘theoreticians’ from ‘practitioners’ (cf. I.4, 34). Post-modern societies are managed by tiny groups of publicly inaccessible theoreticians within commerce and technology whose theories and practices equate ‘economic progress’ with rises in executive salaries, stock prices, and shareholder profits, full stop (cf. I.10).

24. Such dissociations perfectly suit a society whose official theories are inclusive and operational practices are exclusive. This unsettling polarity can line up with those of ‘freedom’ versus domination; of ‘equality’ versus discrimination; of ‘economic growth’ of the few versus economic shrinkage of the many; and of ‘peace-keeping’ versus war-mongering. The dissociated society glibly professes the one and lives by the other, all of which burdens the social order with a smouldering underside of social disorder that must eventually erupt (I.32; VII.38).

25. ‘Modernisation’ might be roughly described by the four scenarios in I.2-7. Theory runs ahead of practice, as when a country abolishing colonialism names itself a ‘democracy’ but makes no fundamental provisions to guarantee comprehensive human rights. A new elite supplants the old in battening on the masses whose lives barely improve. Further social inequalities may mirror divisions by region (e.g., urban or rural, coast or interior), education (e.g., A-level or O-level, tertiary or secondary), and profession (e.g., bureaucrat or farmer, manager or clerk).

26. In the converse scenario, practice runs ahead of theory, as when new technologies are introduced with no conception of how they may affect the social order. They typically generate moneyed ‘technology elites’ whose access to global communication and information distances them ever further from the masses.

27. In a more radical scenario, theory runs away from practice, as when post-colonial nations pass legislation granting full ‘official’ status to indigenous languages yet continue to conduct official business and economic activity in the language of the former ‘colonial masters’.

28. And in the converse radical scenario, practice runs away from theory, as when a new ‘democracy’ retains the secret police of the old dictatorship under a new name like ‘information management bureau’. The operational practices are secretly augmented to suppress the publicly legalised opposition.

29. Despite the labels, pre-modernism, modernism, and post-modernism need not form any uniform or precise historical sequence. Substantial leeway inheres in assigning a date to the onset of modernism, and, even more, to its presumed transition into post-modernism. What I am calling ‘modernism’ in hindsight gradually crystallised from a complex of social, political, economic, demographic, and technological trends whose timetables differed appreciably among countries, regions, institutions, or social classes. In the basic ‘Western’ model followed here, these trends generally included migrating from rural to urban regions; decentralising power; expanding commerce and trade; raising efficiency in production; forming new specialisations; and institutionalising national languages. Even these trends have often focused on fairly specific sectors of society, and encountered entrenched resistance from sectors who stood to lose through processes of change, notably the centralist authorities of church and state.

30. Post-modernism in turn is generally associated with such trends as degrading urban centres and migrating to suburbs; transferring state power to corporate power; painfully cutting back social services; globalising commerce and trade; rationalising production and destroying jobs; concentrating new specializations in high technology and communication; and expanding English world-wide over local languages. The focus here has been still more specific, focused on the economic top, and resistance is difficult mount, let alone consolidate.

31. By this account, both modernism and post-modernism have been practices running well ahead of theories; and their retrospective ‘theorisation’ has been mostly undertaken by academics who are not in control of the trends and, if neutralised by ‘conservative’ mass media as ‘fringe radicals’ (VII.30ff), exert little impact on public discourse or private practice. Nor are the vast majority of the world’s citizens, holding no explicit theories at all of those trends, remotely in control of their own practices. They are easily misled to equate ‘progress’ with innovative trends (like ‘digital cameras’ and ‘plasma television’) that are highly exclusive and should thus count as ‘regress’ in the socially oriented sense of I.10.

32. The new millennium seems destined to endure the full strain of post-modernism being injected into societies that still embody a vertiginous mix of pre-modernism and modernism, so that the term ‘democracy’ for a whole society signifies at best a mosaic and at worst a euphemism. Diverse populations live in dramatically disparate stages of evolution — as in the ‘luxury condo’ with ‘high-tech workstations’ surrounded by hovels without running water or electricity. This mixing gets spread all round the world by globalisation, and threatens to foster explosive breakdowns in communication and interaction, and thus in social cohesion, human responsibility, and democratic principle (Ch. VII).⁷

33. The response of ecologism might be to promote a lively dialectic of deconstruction and reconstruction by analysing discourse to determine which social practices are implied by the official theory; how they diverge from the operational practices; and how more inclusive alternatives might help theory and practice converge for real social progress (I.10; II.182ff). As ecologist agents, we would also seek convergence between our dual social roles. As theoreticians, our discourse could expound practice-driven theories for social progress, e.g., a theory of text and discourse centred on strategies for enhancing equality (Ch. VI); and to deconstruct impractical theories unsuited for social progress, e.g., a theory of ‘language by itself’ (cf. II.41f). As practitioners, our discourse could model and implement theory-driven practices to take account of new discoveries, and to propose future theories, e.g., classroom methods using new insights into language due to large corpora of authentic data (II.202); and to deconstruct anti-theoretical practices which ignore new discoveries and shun contact with theories, e.g., classroom methods preaching purist ‘rules’ far from authentic usage (II.13f, 18f).

34. Finally, we might analyse discourse to show how ‘theoreticians’ and ‘practi-tioners’ possess complementary kinds of knowledge, and deconstruct discourses attributing great knowledge to the former and little to the latter (I.4, 23). We can retrace the devaluing of practical knowledge from divisive historical processes of modernisation, specialisation, and education; and show it to be patently misplaced in a post-modern society whose survival depends on united initiatives in practical knowledge to protect and restore our human and natural environment.

I.B. Language and discourse as theory and practice

35. Again in the broadest terms, a language is a theory of cognitive knowledge and social experience (what language users know and live), and discourse is its practice (how they talk about it),⁸ both sides interfacing the linguistic, cognitive, and social domains (cf. II.84, 111, 143). A text (lower case) would be a communicative event that contributes to a discourse as a set of mutually relevant texts, usually a conversation; a Text (upper case) would be a communicative unit produced by a discursive event and recorded in some prosodic or visual medium. Any relevant sub-unit, such as a Phrase, Clause, or Paragraph, can be called a Stretch of Text to remind us where it belongs. Still, the Text is not just a series of units but rather a tri-modal system that integrates the sub-systems of Lexicogrammar, Prosody, and Visuality (Chs. III-V). Thus, a text can deploy not just language, but also tone of voice, gesture, facial expression, imagery, photographs, cinema, or some combination of such resources.

36. Here at least, the dialectic between theory and practice, stated to be fundamental at the outset (I.1), is well secured. The practices are richly ‘theory-driven’ because discourse draws upon language as a ‘theory’ — or indeed a vast network of ‘theories’ — for ‘representing’ our ‘world’ and ourselves, and for constructing alternative states of the world, or even, as in literary discourse, whole alternative worlds (II.175, 182). Participants must ‘theorise’ extensively about what words mean, what people intend, what makes sense, and so on. Meanings are especially theoretical entities, like ‘mini-theories’ we can’t prove, though they generally suffice for practice. We understand each other insofar as our language-theories have a parallel construction which becomes tuned during discourse. And this tuning steadily maintains the language in the dynamic process of being both confirmed and constituted by discursive practices (cf. II.21, 157, 178; VI.3, 10.3).

37. By this account, discourse is the most theoretical practice humans can perform, and the most efficient and effective in using the least effort for the most goals. In return, language is the most practical theory humans can devise — an unlimited ‘theory of everything’ offering resources to shape and guide almost any practical activities. Yet language as theory also runs ahead of discourse as practice by fore-shadowing some further certainty and precision beyond what is attained on any one occasion. As I shall be showing later on, a ‘critical’ analysis of a text or discourse regularly uncovers some uncertainty and imprecision — a natural reflex of the openness of language for an unlimited range and variety of expressions.

38. By a similar reasoning, language is the most inclusive theory humans can devise, and thus the most ‘progressive’ for integrating people as insiders. The practices of discourse navigate our social relations within the family, peer group, school, and career. Of course, language can exclude people as outsiders, but I submit that doing so turns language against its natural potential. Consider how frankly the discourses of radical exclusion as in racism and colonialism, reduce and debase the language in order to reduce and debase human beings with hatespeak smears like ‘scum’, ‘animals’, ‘savages’, ‘niggers’, ‘coolies’, ‘towelheads’, etc. (cf. VII33ff). Consider too how often a refusal to use language is a glaring act of exclusion or an ominous prelude to violence, which constitutes the ultimate reduction of the human potential of both perpetrators and victims (cf. 0.2; I.13, 18). The essential nature of language, and the fundamental rationale of its very existence, must be inclusion.

39. This reasoning leads to a vision of language being our foremost hopeful utopia with a limitless potential for improving our knowledge and understanding, and sharing them with an ever wider community. Even the single text is ‘work in progress’ in the special sense (proposed here) of moving toward more inclusive theory through more inclusive practice (cf. 0.13; II.134). The utopian challenge to the sensitive speaker or writer is to sustain a clear direction of progress throughout the ‘textual work’ of production until the text is judged sufficiently efficient, effective, and appropriate (cf. II.113).

40. However, inclusion in theory and practice is vitally sensitive to social equality and inequality, as

suggested in Fig. 7.Linguistic equality could advance social equality with the theory that all the world’s languages have equal potential for expressing or communicating relevant any content; none is definitive- ly superior or inferior. Such is firmly sustained by the official theory of linguistics (II.38), which has, however, not generated a really practical programme for social equality through discursive equality.

41. In contrast, linguistic inequality could advance social inequality with the theory that some languages are definitively superior and deserve the most respect. Such was long firmly sustained by the official theory of colonialism, the ideology empowering ‘higher cultures’ to govern ‘lower cultures’, occupy their territories, and extract their labour and resources. The indigenous peoples were declared ‘unfit to govern themselves’, their ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ languages being unsuited for ‘expressing civilised ideas’. Forced to communicate with their ‘colonial masters’ on earthy matters, they improvised varieties that came to be known as ‘pidgins’ and ‘creoles’.⁹ Even after independence, these remained the practical media for discursive inequality between the ‘masses’ and the ‘standard’-speaking ‘elites’

.42. I would accordingly describe social equality and inequality as the leverage points deciding whether and whom the dialectic between language as theory and discourse as practice empowers or disempowers. Yet by an ironic reversal, inequal-ities in language and discourse are being exploited today as justifications for social inequality, such as denial of employment.¹⁰ Now that other modes of discrimination are prohibited, speakers of ‘inferior’ languages or varieties are routinely disempowered and deprived of the right to be heard. Should they manage to switch to ‘superior’ ones, they may find themselves alienated from friends and family.¹¹

43. Evidently, the official theory of linguistic equality presently fails to guide practices of discursive equality, whilst operational theory guides practices of both linguistic and discursive inequality. The ecologist agenda seeks practical theories of equality to guide practices toward linguistic and discursive equality. On the ‘theory-side’ of language, we can help to design practical models for rendering the supposedly superior languages or varieties more reliably teachable and learnable to promote inclusion in socially strategic domains of discourse, such as access to new technologies. In parallel, we can help to design practical models for exploiting the capacities of the supposedly inferior ones to accommodate those domains, such as technical terminologies, which should improve public attitudes. On the ‘practice-side’ of discourse, we can help to map out inclusive strategies which favour social equality and reconcile inequality, and which deconstruct undemocratic attitudes about superiority and inferiority.

44. Expressed in terms of the social factors aired for theory and practice in I.A, we should explore how strategies of discourse include hearers or readers as insiders, or exclude them as outsiders, or do both at once, e.g., by addressing a group of outsiders who aspire to become insiders although only a select few will be genuinely included, as in higher education (I.49, 55).

45. Further, we can explore how strategies of discourse either promote solidarity for joining with others on equal terms; or else promote power for controlling others on unequal terms; and how such strategies either empower people to actualise their potential, or else disempower them to be alienated by others. We may expect solidarity in friendly conversations; empowerment in user-friendly presentations of special knowledge; and disempowerment in strenuously technical presentations. Even purporting to objectively ‘speak the truth’ or ‘report the facts’ can be an unobtrusive and effective move for discursive power.

46. A key question in our explorations is whether the participants in discourse must choose between moves of including or excluding, between solidarity or power; or can remain neutral. Isolated Words or Phrases can seem neutral, but longer and richer Stretches of Text rarely are, due to the agenda of intentions and the factor of attitudes.¹² Ostensibly neutral discourse may prove to be camouflaged discourse of power. Still, inclusion and exclusion could be relative rather than total, and could be intended or accepted to varying degrees in discourse. Or, those moves could remain largely below our awareness whilst enacting unequal roles, such as parent and child, employer and employee, master and servant, landlord and tenant, bureaucrat and citizen.

47. For its agenda of promoting the solidarity that unites and deconstructing the power that divides, ecologism can derive its firmest grounds for a hopeful utopia from the fundamentally inclusive essence of language (I.38f). We are not bending language and discourse to some private politics or personal philosophy for our own advantage; indeed, we would probably reap greater material benefits from dryly ‘academic’ or purely ‘theoretical’ studies. We are merely progressing toward an ecological ambience where language and discourse are steadily more empowered to actualise their natural potential for inclusion.

48. Furthermore, I would argue that many implicit human theories resemble language in implying a hopeful utopia and endlessly seeking some higher certainty, finality, or completeness. Science, philosophy, and religion are three monumental utopian theories for intellectual and spiritual discovery; and democracy is one for the social order. To widen our chances for improving human lives, we must strive to acknowledge and revitalise the ‘utopian’ dimensions of democratic societies as conceived by their founders and articulated in their constitutions.

I.C. Theory and practice in ‘modern education’

49. Among the institutions in a society, education is an eminently cognitive, social, and linguistic enterprise. Yet its authority is served by appearing as a pre- dominantly cognitive enterprise whose linguistic and social domains are secondary or incidental (cf. I.58, 77; VII.55). In official theory, education includes all cognitive outsiders who ‘lack knowledge’ by converting them into cognitive insiders who ‘possess knowledge’; in operational practice, inclusion is mostly secured for linguistic insiders whose home language or variety is approved in schooling; and for social insiders who hail from secure, well-to-do families. The discrepancy reflects the historical legacy whereby private education for insiders furnished the enduring model for education at large. The dominant pre-modern methods since antiquity have featured rote memorisation and repetition of authorised information, such as ‘classic’ texts — an approach to ‘education’ with remarkable longevity (I.53, 59f, 64, 74, 108; II.200).

50. To appraise cognition more precisely, I would propose a key distinction. Knowledge is more dynamic and integrative. Its content is characteristically practical, and naturally acquired from lived experiences and directed intuitions among a cultural community. The operations for storing, retrieving, and using it are relatively effortless. When not in active use, it can undergo spontaneous evolution and elaboration in mental storage and generate more of itself. New knowledge being entered can reverberate through associated prior knowledge and update its specifications. Or, old knowledge can be creatively modified and adapted for unfamiliar or novel applications.

51. By contrast, information is more static and compartmentalised. Its content is characteristically theoretical, and consciously acquired from specialized activities. The operations for storing, retrieving, and using it are relatively effortful. When not in active use, it can undergo spontaneous conflation or degradation. New information being entered is unlikely to be integrated with prior information unless the mutual associations are expressly constructed. And old information can be difficult to modify or adapt to unfamiliar or novel applications.

52. A pre-modern society is mainly knowledge-based, oriented toward manual labour and the production of essential commodities in harmony with the environ-ment (cf. I.19). But as specialisation leads toward the modern society, information steadily intensifies until the society is mainly information-based, and information emerges as a commodity for sustaining wealth and power.¹³ Today, the constant production of information closes the circle by enforcing a heavy reliance on ‘information technology’, without which you are doomed to the status of outsider.

53. The emphasis on memorisation and repetition in education essentially fosters methods that treat knowledge as information — static, compartmentalised, theoretical, and consciously acquired. This trend too has intensified during the evolution of ‘modern education’, so that new knowledge in the sciences and the arts has, with a routine time lag, been converted to information for uses in education. The more ‘modern’ the latter becomes, the greater the volume of information being ‘taught’ which is distinct from knowledge and is unlikely to become knowledge. Instead, it degrades over time and becomes inaccessible.

54. A dualism arises in the relation between the theory and practice of education itself — what it believes to be doing and what it is doing — and the relation between the theoretical information it values and the practical knowledge it devalues. The official theory of ‘modern education’ is left-wing and functionalist in its ideology, holding that all learners deserve and receive the ‘same’ chances for success within the ‘same’ curriculum, which equips them all to be ‘well-informed citizens’ in practical life (but cf. I.58). The schools should work to ensure success; learners with problems should receive special help to include them in the process. Yet the operational theory of modern education is more often right-wing and formalist, holding that only the ‘superior’ learners merit the ‘benefits of education’, which should be chiefly academic and theoretical, set apart from practical life. A wide-ranging scale of success and failure is judged normal and natural, as in the social Darwinism of ‘survival of the fittest’ (cf. I.16); learners with problems should be sternly warned or severely punished, and, should they fail to ‘improve’, excluded altogether. As in other domains of society, the practices legitimised by the left are ‘illegitimised’ by the right, and vice versa (I.17); and spiralling conflicts over matters of policy can stymie any real progress in the system and thus result in a default victory for the regressive right.

55. Insofar as a modern society sustains inclusive theories but exclusive practices (I.24), education takes on the split functions of including insiders and excluding outsiders along much the same lines as society itself. The split drives the operational right-wing theory known as the hidden curriculum:¹⁴ converting selected outsiders into insiders by a process so difficult and arbitrary as to leave a significant portion of aspiring learners either included only along the margins or else excluded as life-long outsiders, whilst representing the process as eminently fair. Flagrantly undermining the official theory of democracy, the curriculum must be kept hidden, where it can unobtrusively deflect left-wing projects to render education more inclusive and democratic.

56. The hidden curriculum favours practices of testing to yield moderate rates of high success and low failure, and to place a large contingent in the middle as ‘average’, which is invidiously interpreted as ‘mediocre’ or even ‘inadequate’. As long as a modern society refuses to grant equal merit that entitles equal benefits in adult life in such areas as employment, wages, or housing, the schools and colleges are obligated to make children appear unequal at ages when their human potential is still rudimentary and emergent. A profound reorientation is demanded:

[4] Schools [should empower] children whose different talents are developing at different speeds to have experiences which will boost their confidence and give them a taste of success — rather than seeing themselves labelled as comparative failures in the ‘three Rs’, [lest they get] ‘switched off’ education before they even reached secondary school, especially from ‘challenged’ families (Tim Brighouse, in BBC News).

Children get thoroughly tested and ranked long before they can actualise the linguistic, cognitive, and social skills that constitute genuine merit in the real world; and many whom the tests dump at lower ranks become alienated and cease to strive for such skills, engulfed in a monstrous waste of human potential (I.62):

[5] They are catalogued, measured and deemed wanting the moment they enter school; they are tested before they are instructed. The teacher becomes a judge; the class’s standing in reading and arithmetic is a yardstick of collective failure; and the fear of inadequacy pervades the classroom, suffocating teacher and pupil alike.¹⁵

Even successful learners may be encouraged by testing to focus on vacuous but easily testable topics, like doing ‘long division’ or reciting historical dates.

57. The emphasis on testing strategically rationalises success or failure as products of the merit of the individual learners, who are confronted with massive information and left to their own devices about how to absorb it for testing. In one account, merit is decided by your individual intelligence and aptitude, which you have derived chiefly from nature or genetics and so cannot really control (VII.51). In the other account, merit is decided by your diligence and obedience, which you can and jolly well ought to control. To paper over the patent incompatibility between the two accounts, schooling might piously assume that intelligence is the material cause of diligence, or that diligence is the direct proof of intelligence.

58. Yet substantial evidence suggests that, barring cases of severe physical or mental disability, young children entering school are all fairly equal in their cognitive abilities and potential — their real intelligence and aptitude. Where they are manifestly not equal is in their linguistic and social abilities. Camouflaging the hidden curriculum behind an image of fairness therefore accords with representing education more as a cognitive enterprise than as a linguistic or social one (I.49). The ‘same’ information gets presented in the ‘same’ lectures or textbooks to all prospective learners who do the ‘same’ tasks, tests, and so on (cf. I.54) — all of which might in reality be experienced as radically different among learners from disparate linguistic and social backgrounds.

59. Due to this latent contradiction between sameness and difference, the estimates of ‘intelligence’ and ‘aptitude’ inferred from rigid, uncreative test-taking skills are more properly products of schooling than its preconditions.¹⁶ The hidden curriculum requires education not merely to manifest and confirm differences in ‘merit’ (the official theory), but also to devise and entrench them (the operational theory). Social uniformity and neutrality are simulated by constructing a special cognitive and linguistic framework remote from social life. In such schooling, a formalist approach whereby abstract theoretical information, preferably facts and figures, gets learned for its own sake with utmost precision, is favoured over a functionalist approach whereby concrete practical knowledge is learned for its human interest and its applicability in later life. In parallel, the academic or technical discourse that is valued above ordinary conversation foments commun-icative bottlenecks and encourages memorizing and reciting the discourses of lectures or textbooks without needing to genuinely understand them. Learners are challenged to assimilate themselves to an artificial sheltered environment, where some will feel socially unwelcome or displaced. The conventional social values for this assimilation emphasise courtesy, punctuality, neatness, and cleanliness; the cognitive values emphasise verbal and mathematical skills; and the linguistic ones emphasise Standard English with punctilious spelling, punctuation, and penman-ship. The heavily mainstream middle-class orientation of these values is tacitly deemed universal and unquestionable, and conspicuous defiance may lead to denying ‘merit’ and forfeiting the ‘benefits of education’.

60. The emphasis on testing also imbues the whole system with a negative orientation. Arbitrary theoretical norms or standards are imposed from the top down to distinguish between ‘right and wrong answers’. Evaluation routinely assigns an equally arbitrary number of ‘points’ to each answer on the test, and subtracts the ‘lost points’ from the total. Since most modern societies have a decimal mentality, the standard total is ‘100’, and the ‘grades’ are descending blocks of 10: ‘90-100’ for ‘excellent’, ‘80-89’ for ‘good’, ‘70-79’ for ‘average’, ‘60-69’ for ‘poor’, and ‘59’ and below for complete ‘failure’. Especially when learners didn’t know just what information would be tested, they recite memorised discourse from textbooks or lectures, or fudge and guess in hopes of hitting on the ‘right answer’. Yet the ‘grade’ concocted out of these chancy practices is solemnly construed to reveal how ‘good’ or ‘poor’ the learners themselves are. In effect, products of alienation undercut the prospects for actualisation (cf. I.13f, 56, 61f, m 68, 82).

61. To produce clear distinctions in merit, tests and problems need to present substantial difficulties and provide ample opportunities for wrong answers. In cognitive terms, testing demands not just a theoretical capacity like ‘intelligence’, but a practical capacity to operate near the threshold of overload. This condition sets in when the demands upon physical or mental processing overtax available resources, and performance enters degradation, notably affecting the rapid and precise recall of complex information. Learners who do quite well in a relaxed, co-operative, and actualising environment with the freedom to check and revise their work might well suffer overload and do quite badly in a high-pressure, isolating, and alienating environment.

62. And such is just the typical ambience of the conventional examination, especially a large-scale test for a whole school term. It is too long and laborious to be done with real safety or thoroughness in the time allowed; anxieties run high, given the threat of failing; the test takers are often jaded or exhausted from swotting and cramming; help from classmates is sternly forbidden, as is the use of even rudimentary aids, such as dictionaries or pocket computers. Quite plausibly, the results seriously underestimate real abilities; the test situation shears off or flattens out potential peaks of success and produces artificially deflated scores. Yet those same scores are certified to be the best indicators, if not the only indicators, of the learners’ ‘achievement’, or indeed of their ‘potential for achievement’. The very examinations treated as the key to classifying young people as ‘high achievers’ or ‘low achievers’ are the tools most prone to misrepresent them. The ‘low’ ones can marshal no effective defence against the alienating image, which they are left to accept and internalise until they ‘tune out’ or ‘drop out’ — which, I maintain, betokens a monstrous waste of human potential (I.56).

63. If all learners were totally equal at the start, a high-pressure testing system running near overload would produce random results, with ‘merit’ being accorded or denied by pure chance, like throwing dice. But if learners are equal only in their cognitive potential, the results will mirror inequalities in their social and linguistic background (I.70). In official theory, children from the ‘lower classes’ of society are ‘free to rise up by achieving merit’. In the operational practice, doing so essentially demands assimilating yourself to mainstream middle-class culture and language at the risk of being alienated from your home culture and language (I.42).

64. The precise and detailed quantification of ‘merit’ is managed through the ‘grading system’, which entails several right-wing administrative theories abetting the hidden curriculum. The theory of the ‘right answer’ holds that the every item of ‘school knowledge’ (i.e., information) corresponds to a single ‘right answer’ clearly distinguished from all ‘wrong answers’; and that teachers or test-markers are fully ‘informed’ to judge the distinction. The practice accords undue reverence to the exact wording of the answers and so to the rote memorisation of educational discourse — a pre-modern method in a modernist setting (I.49, 53, 59f; II.200).

65. The theory of the ‘grade average’ holds that fluctuations among the individ-ual grades of a learner should be balanced out, the low ones bringing down the high, and the high bringing up the low. This theory ignores a basic imbalance. A low grade may be merely accidental when learners are feeling too tired, anxious, or distracted to perform at their true potential, and so succumb to overload. A high grade, on the contrary, demands deliberate and concentrated effort and a staunch resistance to overload, and is therefore a far better indicator of learner’s potential. So when grades are averaged, minor accidents can cancel out major achievements.

66. The theory of the ‘grade curve’ holds that the results of a test or assignment should be spread across a consistent pattern: some ‘high grades’ near the top, some ‘low grades’ near the bottom, and a cluster of ‘average grades’ near the middle (cf. I.68). In rigorous practice, pretexts may be invented for giving lower grades than the learners actually earned. When a large portion performs near the top, their grades may get squeezed and manipulated downward — a travesty of fairness the learners will readily perceive and resent. And, as I have noted, being ‘average’ may be taken to mean not ‘normal’ or ‘typical’, but ‘mediocre’ or ‘inadequate’ (I.56).

67. The cycle of right-wing reasoning is completed by the theory of ‘grade inflation’, holding that a ‘balanced’ grade curve is natural and necessary; a notable proportion of high grades thus indicates not the success of learners in performing the test, but the failure of teachers in not maintaining ‘high standards’ and ‘discipline’. The term ‘inflation’ artfully hints that teachers have been artificially pumping the grades up to levels not justified by performance. But the conventional procedures of grading by high-pressure tests under conditions near overload would actually foster grade deflation by scoring learners below their real potential (cf. I.69). If so, progressive teaching methods to support the actualisation of that potential will naturally produce results falling significantly over the statistical mean within an otherwise alienating programme. Such methods do not burden assess-ment with an unfair inflation but rather free it from an unfair deflation.

68. Whereas ordinary examinations and their grades implicitly claim to deter-mine personal ability, ‘aptitude tests’ bearing anagrams like ‘SAT’, ‘PSAT’ and ‘NMSQT’ do so explicitly. These are advertised to provide an objective and accurate measure of general human potential that reflects how well you will succeed in ‘higher education’ and beyond in your future profession. For some years, applicants to prestigious universities in the US were compelled to undergo these tests, and the results could decide whether and where you would be admitted. To encourage schools in using the tests, the dominant ‘Educational Testing Service’ (ETS) charged not them but the captive test-takers, amassing annual profits over $100,000,000 whilst listing itself as a ‘non-profit organisation’. ¹⁷

69. Progressive research on the ETS tests themselves has roundly invalidated its advertisements. The tests predict academic success marginally better than throwing dice; they are (no surprise) biased toward mainstream middle-class culture; they exaggerate abstract theoretical reasoning in ‘math’ and ‘verbal skills’; they are far longer than even the speediest freak can finish; the wrong answers are subtracted from the right answers rather from the total of possible answers; the questions are craftily designed to fool or mislead the unwary; and the scores can be suspiciously improved after expensive special coaching. All these findings reveal that the tests unlikely are to produce a reliable assessment of human aptitude; and that the results are even more unfairly deflated than conventional examinations.

70. A comparison with athletic sports might be helpful. There, novices participate in situated learning¹⁸ with experts on a playing field. The criteria for success or failure are clearly defined, e.g., strength, speed, or distance in lifting, throwing, running, and scoring. Efforts can be strategically focused, e.g., practicing key movements and doing exercises to strengthen key muscles. Positive achievements are clearly recognised among both novices and experts, and a rewarding sense of progress is sustained. Even when your team loses a match, you have their support and the will to go on and surpass yourself in another match. Moreover, the rules of competition sports strictly prohibit and penalise unfair advantages, such as ingesting steroids; and unfair disadvantages to harm your opponents, such as inflicting bodily injuries.

71. Academic education, in contrast, abounds with advantages for insiders and disadvantages for outsiders, depending whether your home language variety resembles the preferred academic variety; or whether your family can afford a high-powered home computer or a private tutor. The more education strives to be ‘standardised’ and to discount the rising cultural and linguistic diversity of post-modern society, the more this unfairness serves to divide insiders from outsiders — in effect, confirming how society has already divided their families (cf. I.55).

72. We might predict that learners who come from alternative or non-traditional cultures and whose language variety is judged ‘non-standard’ will excel frequently in practical athletics but rarely in the more theoretical and academic subjects. Similarly, they will regard sports as the most promising channels to professional success in later life and the safest arenas to offset disadvantages in their academic schooling. And the evidence confirming these predictions is incontrovertible.

73. So far, I have highlighted the more regressive right-wing currents in conven-tional education because they most glaringly point up the disparities between its official theories and its operational theories and serve the ‘hidden curriculum’ of preparing children to acquiesce in social inequality within an official ‘democracy’ (cf. I.54f). Moreover, these currents are largely responsible for the ‘educational crisis’ periodically castigated in the public media, with right and left in their usual deadlock. Right-wing commentators hotly deny the very existence of the hidden curriculum, and attribute the crisis to irresponsible teachers and learners refusing to respect the core values of hard work, diligence, obedience, and so on; the solution is stricter discipline, harsher punishments, and frequent expulsions. Left-wing commentators highlight the alienation engendered by the hidden curriculum, and attribute the crisis to forceful resistance within a broader social and economic crisis when a diploma no longer promises social rewards.

74. Whatever the causes, the schools incur greater risks as the social division between the few insiders and the many outsiders grows explosively wide and acute. Alienating right-wing methods, such as rote memorisation and repetition, still predominate among large public schools in poorly funded inner-city districts, where many learners come from families of outsiders and are destined to stay outside.¹⁹ Meanwhile, progressive left-wing methods have gained in small private schools, with projects that are more learner-centred, creative, interactive, and responsive to cultural differences. Model schools like the Harvard Project Zero²⁰ and programs like LOGO²¹ prove that learners who were once classified with ‘low intelligence and aptitude’ by conventional schools are capable of impressive success after trading an alienating environment for an actualising one. These practical findings corroborate the theory that ‘intelligence’ and ‘aptitude’ are more the products of schooling than its preconditions and can be significantly enhanced through progressive practices that fulfil the official democratic theory of education.

75. The issues raised in this section should indicate why education deserves a central place on the agenda of ecologism. Progress toward inclusion and equality can only be achieved if the majority of our young people have not spent their formative years being been channelled through a system that legitimises exclusion and inequality, engenders alienation, disengagement, cynicism, or frank hostility, and endangers the general credibility of social institutions and civic responsibility.

76. In an ecologist agenda, the process of ‘getting educated’ does not consist merely of acquiring specialised information and then reciting it on tests or parading it in the technical discourse of insiders. Instead, the process must work to convert specialised information into relevant knowledge and integrate it with general knowledge for communicating with outsiders whose interests are at stake, e.g., citizens menaced by environmental pollution. A ‘highly educated’ person is not one who hoards specialised knowledge for personal status, but one who can share it to empower others. By this definition, communicating knowledge, and not just hoarding information, is the crucial measure of how ‘educated’ anyone deserves to be considered (II.112, 209). Knowledge is one possession that you increase for yourself by giving it to others; explanation for them can bring clarification and renewal for you (I.49, 84; II.113). Such could be the benefits of practices for ‘progress’ toward a convergence with an ecologist theory of education for promoting free access to knowledge and society.

I.D. Theory and practice in ‘modern science’

77. Among the institutions of modern society, science is an eminently cognitive, linguistic, and social enterprise. Yet even more than education (I.49), it is typically represented as a predominantly cognitive enterprise whose linguistic and social dimensions are secondary or incidental; the term ‘science’ itself is emblematically derived from the Latin ‘scientia’, meaning ‘knowledge’. If this representation lends education an aura of fairness (I.58), it lends science an aura of authority.

78. As evidence of a cognitive emphasis, I would cite the collocations — typical word combinations we shall explore later on²² — in the British National Corpus (BNC), a data bank of 100 million words of contemporary British English texts (II.153ff). There, the Modifier ‘scientific’ often appears with cognitive terms, such as ‘knowledge’ (160 occurrences), ‘theory’ (95), ‘understanding’ (24), ‘thinking’ (19), ‘thought’ (16); ‘research’ (250), ‘study’ (84), ‘investigation’ (57), ‘inquiry’ (24), ‘discovery’ (44); ‘evidence’ (114), ‘data’ (36), ‘observation’; (9), ‘principle’ (33), ‘idea’ (27), ‘concept’ (17); ‘objectivity’ (13), ‘fact’ (20), ‘truth’ (12), ‘proof’ (13). Occurrences are rarer with linguistic terms, such as ‘paper’ (68), ‘language’ (12), ‘terms’ (12), ‘communication’ (9); ‘writing’ (7); ‘lecture’ (5), ‘discussion’ (4); and with social terms, such as ‘work’ (58), ‘activity’ (39), ‘achievement’ (8); ‘cooperation’ (20), ‘collaboration’ (2). Intriguingly, ‘scientific’ never occurs in the BNC with ‘responsibility’, nor with ‘error’ or ‘mistake’.

79. The cognitive emphasis fits the public image of science as an enterprise producing ‘scientific theories’ that can be tested and proven ‘true’ or ‘false’ apart from the language of the discourses that express them and from the social status of the theoreticians that advance them. The practices feature calculating or observing ‘scientific data’ which your theories purport to explain or even predict, rather than deploying your powers of persuasion or your leverage and prestige. But if, as I assert, all human activity integrates the cognitive, linguistic, and social (cf. I.35, 49), this decorum merely camouflages the real power of persuasion and prestige.

80. The reputation of science as the ‘most theoretical’ domain in society is somewhat misconceived. The ‘theoreticalness’ of science is undeniably the most explicit and formal, but far less complex and elaborated than the implicit and informal theories members of society hold about the general organisation of the world. The most theoretical entity of all is in fact our language, and discourse is the most practical test, but not a proof (cf. I.B). And whereas the scope of most scientific theories is expressly limited, the scope of language is unlimited (I.37).

81. The term classical science²³ has been used for ideology holding that the theory and practice of science constitute ‘objective’ explorations of ‘classical reality’ fully governed by determinacy and causality, such that any phenomenon can be explained by a sole ‘valid theory’ — the heavyweight institutional equivalent of the sole ‘right answer’ in education (cf. § I.64). The influential family of related ideologies includes realism: the real and concrete is more valid or true than the ideal and abstract; empiricism: all knowledge is derived from sensory experience; positivism: statements have meaning only if they can be verified or falsified; physicalism: scientific explanations should refer only to observable prop-erties of physical objects; unified science: all sciences should be unified within the purview of physics plus formal logic; mechanism: all biological process should be described in terms of physics and chemistry; and behaviourism: humans and animals are to be studied through observable and measurable behaviour. In their more radical discourses, these ideologies are characteristically assertive, reductive, or exclusive, witness the foundational discourse quoted in [6].

[6] physical language is the basic language of all science [and] a universal language comprising the contents of all other scientific languages. […] Closely associated with physicalism is the doctrine of the unity of science: that there are no logical distinctions to be drawn between the different branches of science. (Rudolf Carnap)²⁴

On the opposite side are arrayed such ideologies as idealism: the ideal and abstract is more valid or true than the real and concrete; and mentalism: human knowledge and activity are based upon representations in the mind. But these are more at home in philosophy than in science proper.

82. The 20^th century saw the downfall of classical science among scientists, due to challenges from general relativity, quantum theory, chaos theory, superstring theory, and so on. But the classical image persists in public discourse and education to sustain the authority of experts and teachers. Science is ‘taught’ in the schools as ‘information’ reserved for especially ‘smart’ people’ who become ‘experts’ and either cultivate pure theory free from practice, or else turn science into policies the society must accept.

83. The most discussed version of classical science is normal science, wherein a dominant ‘paradigm’ informs both theory and practice. The currently accredited theory sets the approved framework for ‘theorising’ and the suitable practices for solving specific types problems we might call ‘puzzles’, like sets of prefabricated pieces to assemble. Every puzzle solved implicitly reconfirms the theory; mean-while, the theory elides unwelcome or potentially disruptive issues. The cognitive aspects follow well-fenced channels, while the linguistic aspects obey the terminology propagated for the theory, and the social aspects favour the ‘scientific community’ sharing the paradigm. So all three aspects sustain the theory regarding high technology, funding agencies, editorial boards, conference calendars, university programmes, and so on. Insiders find normal science reassuring and rewarding, whereas outsiders (my own customary role) find it complacent and myopic.

84. In an ecologist account of science, ‘theory’ would be a representation of nature

designed to yield explanation, whilst ‘practice’ would be the objects and events of

nature that constitute the data to be explained. This account sees a genuine dialectic wherein the theory explains current data and predicts future data by means of theory-driven, top-down input, whereas the data either confirm or refute the theory by means of data-driven, bottom-up input (Fig. 8).

By highlighting ‘explanation’ and not just ‘knowledge’ or ‘discovery’, this account reunites the cognitive aspects with the linguistic and social aspects of science as dynamic activity. Achieving knowledge is just preliminary to communicating it to society; knowledge is the main possession you increase for yourself by sharing it with others (I.76). Science constitutes an eminently ‘hopeful utopia’ (in the sense of I.6): despite occasional grandstanding about the ‘end of science’ or the ‘final answer’, the space for new discoveries is inexhaustible. However, I detect isolated strains of hopeless utopia in my own science of linguistics, as in the pronouncement that ‘speech cannot be studied’ ‘for we cannot discover its unity’ (see II.40).

 85. A second dialectical cycle relates a ‘theory-driven’ explanation giving input from the top down and highlighting calculation, with a ‘data-driven’ explanation giving input from the bottom up and highlighting observation (Fig. 9).

These terms can be broadly understood as general processes of ‘tuning’ by humans or machines (or both operating in co-ordination). As complementary cognitive moves, calculation uses prior data to tune current data, whilst observation uses current data to tune prior data; the tuning can deploy qualifying, quantifying, calibrating, adjusting, reformulating, and so on. How these cognitive moves and their outcomes can be efficiently and effectively represented in discursive moves is a complex issue which scientists have rarely resolved, preferring the notion that the ‘findings speak for themselves’, or relying on narrowly prescriptive conventions, e.g., organising the text into sections called ‘method’, ‘results’, ‘discussion’, and so forth.

86. For observable phenomena, a third dialectic relates the ‘material substrate of matter and energy with the ‘data substrate’ of information. The material substrate manifests and determines properties, such as the quantities and polarities of subatomic particles like neutrons, protons, and electrons, whereas the data substrate registers and identifies those properties, such as the atom identifying an element as hydrogen or lithium (Fig. 10).

This dialectic operates in distinctive ways for each science. Some sciences like physics have a ‘sparse domain’ with general and uniform constraints whereby material and data are related by ‘hard coupling’ (e.g. in a collision of particles); others like anthropology have a ‘rich domain’ with specific and diversified constraints, where material and data are related by ‘soft coupling’ (e.g. in a cultural festivity). In sparse domains, the material tends to be elementary and its observation less informative, so calculation is prominent; in rich domains, the reverse holds.

87. The respective sciences might thus be described on a scale from ‘sparse’ toward ‘rich’. Fig. 11 shows a selection of the ‘natural sciences’ to the left, and of the ‘human sciences’ to the right.

Implicitly at least, each natural science refers in its foundations to the sparser one(s) to its left: physics referring to mathematics, chemistry to physics, and biology to chemistry and physics. This referral can reinforce institutional authority, insofar as mathematics and physics seem the most austere and impregnable to challenge, and less implicated in sensitive ecological and commercial issues than chemistry and biology (cf. I.97).

88. Mathematics plainly has the sparsest source domain, its data concerning quantities and relations. It studies virtual objects or events having a pure data substrate and no material substrate and thus not being manifested or observed as real objects or events, such as the lines, planes, and solids in Euclidian geometry, or the polynomial and linear functions of calculus. So its theories are consummately abstract; and, before supercomputers introduced simulations, its practices ranked calculation far above observation. However, its practices of representation and measurement can apply to most observed phenomena of the other sciences, e.g., for dimensions and frequencies; and doing so can be an eminent cognitive strategy for certifying the ‘realness’ of manifest objects.

89. Physics has a richer domain, though still a relatively sparse one, its data concerning the most elementary forms of matter and energy. Its phenomena, such as mesons and baryons, or fermions and bosons, are manifested as real objects; the material substrate is hard-coupled to the data substrate such that an elementary particle is directly determined by sparse information like mass, charge, and spin. Observation relies on high technology like photo-ionization spectroscopy or laser interferometry, which heralds an impressive rise in accuracy and reliability; and theoretical calculation grows increasingly indispensable. Some phenomena, like the positron, i.e., the positively charged twin of the negatively charged electron, were calculated before they were ever observed; others, like the graviton, i.e., the particle responsible for the force of gravity, have only been calculated, and physicists yet hope to observe them. Still others, like the elementary quarks strongly ‘glued’ together by gluons, can be calculated but never observed in principle, or at least never isolated; so physics tries to circumvent nature by creating something similar we can observe (I.110).

90. The dialectic of material and data portrayed back in Fig. 9 is intriguingly confirmed in recent models of the interaction between ‘matter particles’ (the fermions) and ‘messenger particles’ (the bosons). The four fundamental forces in the universe can be recalculated as ‘interchanges of messenger particles’: photons for the electromagnetic force; gluons for the strong force holding the nucleus of the atom together; W and Z bosons for the weak force regulating radioactive decay; and gravitons for gravity.²⁵

91. Physics is the science whose ‘theoreticalness’ is most prominent and may account for its pre-eminent status. Theory has been pushed the farthest, surpassing the boundaries of scientific observation in the conventional sense. There, the functions of confirming or refuting are taken over by calculation, with the referral to mathematics made quite explicit. In particular, ‘superstring theory’, sometimes hailed as the ‘theory of everything’ or the ‘end of physics’, could be tested by direct observation only at Planck energy of 10²⁸ gigavolts, as compared with the roughly 100 gigavolts attainable today.²⁶ But, startlingly enough, the conditions are amenable to calculation, and to the degree of precision needed to determine the properties of ‘strings’ twenty powers of ten times smaller than a proton.

92. Chemistry has a domain with an internal transition from sparser data on its ‘inorganic’ side more allied with physics, over to richer data on its ‘organic’ side more allied with biology. Its phenomena, such as elements and compounds, or polymers and proteins, are manifested as real objects in nature; the coupling of material and data is not so hard, thanks to ‘emergent properties’, e.g., those of water as compared to hydrogen and oxygen; and observation is usually much more tractable. The most significant referral to physics exploits the latter’s capacity to describe matter and energy in previously unimaginable dimensions of size and speed. Whereas in physics high technology extends calculation and observation for increasingly tiny particles, in chemistry it extends the famous periodic chart with a sequence of increasingly heavy ‘transuranium’ and ‘transactinide’ elements at the top end, where the ‘mass numbers’ (i.e., total numbers of neutrons and protons) become immense.²⁷ They are fabricated by practices adapted from physics, mostly by bombarding lower-mass elements like lead or plutonium with neutrons or ions. So great was the success that the need for new terminology fomented problems. At first the new elements received names of early pioneering scientists (einsteinium, rutherfordium), then of more recent scientists (seaborgium, meitnerium), and finally just Latinate versions of their atomic numbers (ununquadium at 114, ununhexium at 116). As the numbers rise, the properties become purely theoretical, predicted from the lower elements of the same series (seaborgium from tungsten, meitnerium from iridium). Observation must contend with extremely short half-lives — for ununhexium, only 0.0006 seconds. Ghostly ununoctium at 118 (half life of 0.0001 second) turned out to be a false observation and was booted out of the periodic table in 2001 (good job it wasn’t named after anybody).²⁸

93. Chemistry also devises novel methods of observation, using ‘femtosecond’ technology. In keeping with the term — a ‘femtosecond’ being one quadrillionth of a second — the technology deploys ultrafast-pulse lasers for accurate observation of chemical processes in real time, even capturing the motions of atoms within molecules.²⁹ Moreover, these lasers can control and modify the processes as well as observe them. In ‘photoexcitation’, the pulses deposit large amounts of energy in a molecule, leading to ‘photodissociation’³⁰ — the reverse of the celebrated ‘photo-synthesis’ — when the molecule flies apart into fragments, which can then recombine into a mutated molecule.

94. In practical applications, chemistry manifests immense diversity and ingenuity. New technologies treat its elements and compounds like ingredients in a vast cookbook of novel substances with extraordinary properties and commercial uses, for which discursive evidence abounds. As of July 2003, the Internet searched through AltaVista for the key words ‘industry’ or ‘industries’ together with ‘chemical’ returned 137,880 results and with ‘chemistry’ 3320; compare just 48 with ‘physical’ and 41 with ‘physics’; or again 562 with ‘biological’ and 143 with ‘biology’. One website named InnoCentive offers cash rewards for industrially viable solutions to arcane-sounding problems in chemistry, e.g., ‘can you synthesize this protected unnatural amino-acid in its enantiomerically pure form?’³¹ And the commodities produced by chemistry and offered on the Internet are beyond all count. Still, website discourse indicates that consumers aren’t eager to know just how many chemicals they consume; no website advertises ‘chemical beauty aids’, a ‘chemical shirt’, or a ‘chemical breakfast’, even though many such items contain chemical products.

95. Biology has the richest source domain among the natural sciences. Its data concern the least elementary and most complex forms of matter and energy, living things; the coupling of material and data is quite soft, because the emergent properties include ‘life’ itself. Its phenomena, such as plants and animals, are naturally manifested as real objects, and observation is normally straightforward. Yet like chemistry, biology keeps enhancing its powers of observation by exploiting the resources of physics for operating in infinitesimal dimensions. For example, the CAT (‘Computed Axial Tomography’) scan takes numerous two-dimensional images created by electromagnetic radiation (x-rays) in a rotating cylinder and generates a three-dimensional image of the human lying inside. Whereas ordinary x-rays just show bones and large organs like the heart with any accuracy, the CAT scan gives precise images of soft tissues such as muscles, organs, nerves, and blood vessels.³²

96. The really daunting frontier for calculation and observation in both biology and chemistry may lie in ‘nanotechnology’, where theory and practice proceed on the scale of the ‘nanometer’, i.e., one billionth of a meter. As on the even smaller scale of femtotechnology, new molecules can be constructed by manipulating their atomic composition. The foremost practical product comes from ‘dry’ nanotech-nology based on surface science and physical chemistry, namely the carbon molecule called the Buckyball (after Buckminster Fuller), and forming ‘nanotubes’ with superconductivity and superstrength (more than 100 times as strong as steel at less than one fourth the weight). ‘Wet’ nanotechnology, based on biological systems existing primarily in water environments, focuses on how human cells are constructed and how they could interact in practice with ‘nanomachines’ or ‘nanites’, tiny computers that might combat diseases or reverse ageing.³³

97. Even more than chemistry, biology figures in website discourse as a topic of attention and application, and a fiercely disputatious one. Evidently, a spectrum of social groups become vocal when ‘life’ is at issue. Left-wing ideology opposes the genetic manipulation of food plants to resist parasites and drought, fearing harmful side-effects to human consumers.³⁴ Right-wing ideology opposes cell cloning of humans, ostensibly reserving for their ‘God’ the sole prerogative to create life. Both sides tend to drift from scientific issues into political ones and from cognitive issues into social ones, until scientific issues may be judged by people who lack knowledge of research, not by validity but by popularity or expedience (cf. VII.79).

98. Because they address the essential organisation of matter and energy, these four natural sciences, more than the others like geology, astronomy, or meteor-ology, have decisively shaped the modern conception and discourse of ‘science’. They interact so extensively that moving among them might be analogous to translating among distinct but closely related languages, especially when formulas are used; or to moving among different levels of the same language: the particles of physics (like Phonemes), the atoms and molecules of chemistry (like Morphemes), and the nucleotides of biology (like Words) all acquire suitable meanings in combinations and contexts. The analogy seems singularly apt for the DNA sequence in the human chromosome, where billions of pairs of just four phosphate nucleotides with ‘letters’ (A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine, T for thymine) ‘spell out’ detailed ‘instructions’ for the growth and life of the organism.³⁵ Devastating diseases, like myeloid leukaemia, Di George syndrome, and schizophrenia, all linked to chromosome 22, are like malevolent ‘messages’ spelling out cancer, heart disease, and mental derangement; we can only rewrite or delete them once we manage read them.

99. The ratios of sparse to rich among the natural sciences apparently correspond to trade-offs between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’. The sparser the science, the more it deals with simple components participating in complex events. Physics deals with the very simplest components of matter and energy, e.g., all electrons being identical, or all photons, and so forth. The complexity is concentrated in the methods for relating calculation to observation by means of physical events, e.g., to isolate electrons and track their behaviour. As physics moves downward in scale, this complexity rises sharply, e.g., in requiring linear accelerators to bombard atoms with ions and knock out extremely short-lived subatomic particles. Isolating the apparently most basic particles, the quarks and their gluons that ‘glue’ them together, would also be the most complex operation, if it can be done at all. So physicists are colliding atoms stripped of electrons into each other at staggeringly high energies, squeezing the protons and neutrons together and trying to make them melt into a ‘quark-gluon plasma’ so hot they can’t stick together. This superhot goo is theorised to occur in the core of neutron stars (where it obviously can’t be observed), which are ‘so dense that a piece the size of a pinhead would weigh as much as a thousand jumbo jets’.³⁶ Its theoretical significance lies in representing a state of matter and energy fairly close to the aboriginal state of the universe shortly after the ‘big bang’.

100. Chemistry deals with somewhat more complex components and maps the relations and transitions between elements and compounds, whereby emergent properties are gained (I.92). A reaction such as ‘catalysis’ to cause or speed up chemical changes is rather complex in itself but can rely on simple components. The famous ‘Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction’³⁷ uses an acid catalyst to convert bromate or bromide ions into compounds of bromine, as in this simple ‘recipe’:

[7] sulfuric acid + malonic acid + cerium ammonium nitrate + sodium bromate =>

      carbon dioxide + dibromoacetic acid + bromomalonic acid + water.³⁸

Yet the reaction is wondrously complex, producing a ‘chemical oscillator’, observable in colours switching back and forth for quite some time. Each colour is engendered by a component reaction, the one being less fast and efficient than the other, and each, at a certain level of concentration, creating the conditions that ‘catalyse’ the other — a self-organising process of ‘autocatalysis’. Instead of being uniform or random, the solution thus manifests ‘periodic behaviour’. Its theoretical significance lies in representing the automatic production of complexity, which at some primordial stage must have enabled the evolution of inorganic matter into organic and created the basis for life systems.

101. Biology in turn deals with substantially more complex components in simpler reactions. Each cell contains microscopic assembly sites called ‘ribosomes’ that glue amino acids together with ‘peptide bonds’ (a bit like quarks and gluons) to manufacture protein molecules. These are at first long, thin molecules, but they quickly and spontaneously fold into distinctive shapes.³⁹ This complex shape prepares a simple chemical reaction, as in digestion, that fits the protein molecule into a receptor site precisely shaped for it. In effect, the function of the protein is anticipated and determined in folding its shape, like forming a key to switch an operation on or off. The organisation is achieved before the start of the reaction, which can in turn be simple; no complex sorting and searching are needed, as they would be if the protein molecules themselves were simpler. Here again, a self-organising process helps sustain life systems in automatic operation.

102. Now, extending this account at the sparse end, we might say that mathe-matics deals with the simplest components of all, numbers and symbols, in events of pure calculation whose apparent complexity is the product of abstraction (referring to pure relations rather than objects) and compression (representing relations, quantities, values, and so on in symbols and formulas). Mathematics is essentially a language (or set of languages) that acquires generality and precision by abstracting away from all the physical, chemical, and biological properties of real objects and events. For example, the well-known ‘Chapman-Kolmogorov equation’ expresses the probability of transitions between any two ‘states’ in a sequence called a ‘Markov chain’, which is a radically simple system.⁴⁰ The set of possible is states is fully fixed and fully known, as are their frequencies of past occurrence; the only relevant data for a state are its position and timing inside the chain; the states are discrete and so cannot form even the simplest blends or combinations. And since each state is related only to the ones right before and after it, the system does not build a history or memory. Even causality is suspended because we don’t consider why one state leads to the next but only how probable it might be to do so; thus the system appears ‘stochastic’, that is, constituted by a random sequence. An equation might appear complex, e.g.:

[8] p(x₃,t₃|x₁t₁) = òdx₂ p(x₃,t₃|x₂t₂) p(x₂,t₂|x₁t₁)⁴¹

where p is the probability, x is a state, t is a time, and ò is the ‘integral’ for the ‘differential function’ between the two ‘variables of state and time’. But, as I have said, the complexity is a by-product of compression. The equation states that the probability of getting to state 3 at time 3 from state 1 at time 1 equals the differential function between the probability of getting to state 3 at time 3 from state 2 at time 2 and the probability of getting to state 2 at time 2 from state 1 at time 1. Decompressing (or ‘deconfining’) into ordinary discourse reveals the deeper simplicity of the statement. The real complexity begins when the equation gets fitted to a real system, e.g., to express the probabilities of a machine failing at a given time, which is a causal event, e.g., due to heat or fatigue in the materials.

103. Extending the account at the rich end brings us to the human sciences. Their superior richness over the natural sciences has in the past been under-estimated by projects like ‘unified science’ to force them into the same ‘classical’ mould (cf. I.81; II.35). All the same, the discourse of the human sciences might well progress by taking seriously the status of human beings as biological, chemical, and physical entities. For example, the origin of human language might be accounted for not as a sudden invention by Caveman Og but rather as a gradual evolution from the internalised chemical and biological codes into externalised linguistic codes.⁴² Or, the operations of language and cognition could be explored in relation to recent discoveries in biology about patterns of neurotransmission, e.g., their effects on mental attention and concentration.

104. My scale of trade-offs plausibly suggests that the human sciences all exceed biology in dealing with processes that appear simple because enormous complexity is built into the human system, e.g., by cognition, socialisation, and language acquisition. However, I would not see any comparably systematic scale of referrals or trade-offs among the human sciences, which is why Fig. 11 shows the three of them vertically rather than horizontally. We might say that they represent alternative branchings of divergent but equal complexity, each one viewing human beings in its own perspective. Moving among them might again be like translating among distinct but closely related languages.

105. They are most comprehensively related in referring to society, as is attested by the popular alternate term ‘social sciences’ and by the firm establishment of fields like ‘social anthropology’ and ‘social psychology’.⁴³ Yet their differences are attested by the insecurity of most other fields generated by applying one of them to another. Judging from the Internet, ‘sociological psychology’ and ‘sociological anthropology’ are too rare to count as established fields; the same holds for ‘psychological sociology’ and ‘anthropological sociology’. All but the last of these have an isolated academic presence as a single university course or research project on the Internet, whereas ‘psychological anthropology’, which ‘investigates the psychological conditions that encourage endurance and change in social systems, with the goal of better understanding the relationship between culture and the individual’,⁴⁴ is a stable subfield with its own journal, its own society inside the American Anthropological Association, and plentiful university courses. Applying psychology to anthropology, e.g., in ‘cross-cultural perspectives on the human mind’,⁴⁴ seems reasonably straightforward; nor can we be surprised at the success of the younger and smaller subfield of ‘cognitive anthropology’ that ‘investigates cultural knowledge’ ‘embedded in words, stories, and in artefacts’.⁴⁵ In contrast, trying to apply either anthropology or sociology to psychology might stumble over the latter’s tendency to isolate its studies from culture and society (I.108).

106. Historically, all three sciences shown in Fig. 11 were consolidated in the 19^th-century Europe, substantially later than the natural sciences, mainly respond-ing to the sweeping social evolution of ‘modernisation’ and to the ensuing social change and stress. Anthropology assumed that culture might be reassessed by studying pre-modern societies (in the sense of I.19), most expediently ones under the domination of European colonialism whose methods of exploitation were also being modernised. The early anthropologists went to live and work in the society under study, aspiring to move from being total outsiders over to commanding insight into the cultural world-view of insiders. The aspiration is laden with paradox, since you can never erase your own cultural memories; as if in compen-sation, many have assumed that ‘Western science’ is the transcendent cognitive, linguistic, and social framework capable of understanding and describing all cultures.⁴⁶ Moreover, anthropological work has unintentionally opened some societies to contact and modernisation if not destruction through Western culture.

107. Sociology began as the study of both pre-modern and modern societies, and gradually became focused on the latter. Whereas anthropology has highlighted the uniformity of society, sociology has highlighted the diversity, especially between social classes. The outlook was thus more overtly political in raising the capital question of whether class divisions are natural and just (right-wing ideology) or unnatural and unjust (left-wing ideology) (I.17f); and applications were more prone or indeed intended to influence public policies, which may merely conceal class divisions (right-wing) or may seek to reconcile them (left-wing). The outcomes have remained uncertain, probably because the social theories of sociology have largely run ahead of social practices in modern societies (cf. I.25).

108. Psychology seems to have stemmed from a curious dual alliance: a humanist one in philosophy, and a medical or clinical one in psychoanalysis. In early stages, both sustained an active interest in culture and society. Later on, mainly in North America, the field became more self-conscious about its scientific status and its disciplinary boundaries, and set about creating a strenuously sparse ambience of ‘laboratory experiments’ abstracted away from culture and society (I.105). By implication, the psychological traits under study are universal to humankind if they prove to be ‘statistically significant’ — a key referral to mathematics. Radical behaviourism, which made its own key referral to biology, even proposed to study traits that are universal to both humans and animals, famously, dogs, cats, and rats. Education in turn referred to behaviourist psychology, introducing ‘scientific’ labels like ‘conditioning’ and ‘reinforcement’ for the familiar routines of rote memorisation, repetition, and evaluation (cf. I.49).

109. I find the terms ‘human science’ and ‘social science’ also being applied in university programmes to fields like economics, business administration, geography, and political science, as well as to subfields like government, public affairs, international relations, industrial relations, social welfare, and environ-mental science. Each of these fields approaches the ‘human’ situation from its own standpoint of theory and practice and seeks to influence the theory and practice of society in its own ways. They seem closer to sociology than to anthropology or psychology; and, aside from economics, they are less self-conscious about the criteria for ‘science’. They are predominantly practical insofar as they were expressly created to direct and support applications. However, their own theories can still run well ahead of social practices outside the academic setting, especially when science conflicts with powerful corporate interests (cf. VII.78f, 88).

110. Such applications return us to the social and discursive aspects of science, which bear upon the complex and circuitous motivations of society for supporting science. The populace may still be optimistic that ‘scientific progress’ leads to ‘social progress’. But if the latter designates a movement toward greater inclusion and equality (I.10), recent advances in science are noticeably leading to ‘social regress’ toward exclusion and inequality through expensive ‘high technologies’ and exclusive ‘banks of information’. And cynical uses of science gave us the fiercest threats to human life imaginable — chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

111. Moreover, the content of science is largely an exclusive commodity, due mainly to two factors. First, science is ‘taught’ in many schools as a denatured aggregate of facts and figures, theories and experiments, that does not relate it meaningfully to ordinary knowledge and seems reserved for ‘exceptionally smart’ learners (cf. II.139).⁴⁷ Indeed, science best serves the preference of schooling for abstract theoretical information over concrete practical knowledge (cf. I.59). Science teachers involuntarily abet the hidden curriculum of a significant portion of aspiring learners getting only marginally included or else entirely excluded (I.55).

112. Second, the discourses of science are often gratuitously jargonised (cf. VII.8), for example in economics, e.g. [9]. From studying the wider text, I concluded that [9a] was probably meant.

[9] The pooling effect enables capacity purchasers to take advantage of the disparate temporal requirement for flexible capacity and avoid the cost of capacity constrained operation and low asset utilization that often face firms to which capacity is dedicated. (Coordination of Global Manufacturing)

[9a] A pool of competing providers with flexible capacity helps purchasers save time and

 money when operations would otherwise be constrained and assets insufficiently utilized.

Both factors sustain the exclusive power of ‘experts’ who invoke ‘sound science’ when imposing policies and measures upon the whole society (cf. VII.88).

113. On the bright side, access to the knowledge of science is becoming more inclusive, thanks to Internet websites such as Physics 2000 designed at the University of Colorado, whose goals include

[10] to make physics more accessible to students and people of all ages and to counter its current negative image; to demonstrate the connection between modern technology and earlier basic research; to foster an appreciation of the accomplishments of 20th century physics, as we approach the year 2000.^www

I am also encouraged by the signal increase in outstanding popular books on sciences like physics, biology, and astronomy, useful for marshalling public interest and support to meet the soaring costs of scientific technology. I surmise that the authors come away from the writing experience with a clearer under-standing of their own science (cf. I.76; II.113).

114. But I am most encouraged by the resolve of scientists to deal with social and ecological issues beyond the confines of conventional of ‘normal’ science. The Committee of Concerned Scientists is ‘an independent organization of scientists, physicians, and engineers dedicated to the protection and advancement of the human rights and scientific freedom’,⁷⁷ witness the discourse of [11] addressing ‘an alarming development’ in Turkey’s ‘educational system’:

[11] A Statute [of] High School Education Institutions states that ‘proof of un-chastity’ is valid cause for expulsion of females from the formal educational system. Deeply troubled by these incursions on the human rights of women, we wrote to governmental authorities concerned, pointing to violations inherent in these regulations of several international human rights instruments to which Turkey is a State Party.^www

As we shall see in VIII.90f, ‘concerned scientists’ are also taking a firm stand against the destruction of the environment, recognising that science is the most powerful institution for resolving the problems created by the abuse of scientific knowledge. The options have never been so clearly drawn as they are today between ecological action and anti-ecological inaction, between sustenance and violence, and ultimately between humanity and inhumanity (Ch. IX).

Notes to Chapter I

1   I owe the conception of the two ‘utopias’ mainly to José Antonio de Ortega y Gasset, ‘Miseria y esplendor de la traducción’, in Obras Completas (Madrid: Revista del Occidente), vol. V, 1966, 431-52; and Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Penguin, 1972).

2    I was pleased to find the same contrast of terms in Jim Hightower’s vastly entertaining screed There ‘s Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Arma-dillos (NY: Harper, 1997), p. 284.

3   The familiar term ‘alienation’ is aptly derived from Latin ‘alius’ meaning ‘other’ — like being forced to act like somebody else than who you want to be. The distinction between ‘actualisation’ versus ‘alienation’ comes from ‘third force psychology’. Its main texts are Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts (NY: Norton, 1945); and Neurosis and Human Growth (NY: Norton, 1950); and Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being (NY: Nostrand, 1968); and Motivation and Personality (NY: Harper and Row, 1970).

4   See especially Teun van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Study (London: Sage, 1998).

5   Well described by William Ryan in Blaming the Victim (NY: Knopf, 1976).

6   I am rendering the German term and concept ‘Opfer-Täter-Umkehr’ in Ruth Wodak, Wir sind alle unschuldige Täter (Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbank, 1989).

7   See Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schuhmann, Die Globalisierungsfalle: Der Angriff auf Demokratie und Wohlstand (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1997); Joseph Stiglitz. Globalization and its Discontents (NY: Norton, 2002).

8   Compare M.A.K. Halliday, Language in a Changing World (Sydney: Australian Assoc-iation of Applied Linguistics, 1994).

9   My own account is in my New Foundations for a Science of Text and Discourse (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1997), section VI.C

10   Several ominous judgements were reported by Susan Emlet Crandall, ‘Speaking freely: A constitutional right to language?’, CATESOL Journal, Fall issue 1992, 7-17.

11   See Signithia Fordham, ‘Racelessness as a factor in black students’ school success: Pragmatic strategy or pyrrhic victory?’, Harvard Educational Review 58/1, 1988, 54-85.

12   Compare Dwight Bolinger, Language: The Loaded Weapon (London: Longman, 1980).

13   See now Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999).

14   See John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (Phildelphia: New Society, 1991); and Eric Margolis, The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education (London: Routledge Falmer; 2000).

15   Vera John and Eleanor Leacock, ‘Transforming the structure of failure’, quoted in Rajiv Rawat, ‘The Return of Determinism? The Pseudoscience of the Bell Curve’, Cornell Science & Technology Magazine 3, 1995, 10-13.

16   For a detailed discussion of ‘intelligence’ and ‘aptitude’ as products of education, see my New Foundations (sections VII.E-G) (Note 9), and references there.

17   For a no-nonsense exposé of the ETS, see Allan Nairn, The Reign of ETS: The Corporation That Makes Up Minds (Washington, DC: Ralph Nader, 1980).

18   See Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Partici-pation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990).

19   On the inequalities of private and public schools, see Jean Anyon, ‘Social class and school knowledge’, Curriculum Inquiry 11/1, 1981, 3-42.

20   See Howard Gardner et al., Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice (NY: Basic Books, 1993).

21   See Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Computers, Children, and Powerful Ideas (NY: Basic Books, 1980).

22   On ‘collocations’ as typical combinations of lexical items, compare II.66, 153ff, and Note 156 to Ch. II. Where applicable, these figures include Singular and Plural forms.

23   The term ‘classical science’ has also been used for the sciences of ‘classical’ antiquity, such as Ptolemaic astronomy; and for early modern science (17^th to 19^th centuries).

24   Translated from Syntax als Methode der Philosophie, 1934 Lecture to the ‘Vienna Circle’, some of whose antiquated adepts attended my own public lectures to the Vienna Language Society in the 1990s and made wondrously pedantic comments.

25   I follow Murray Gell-Mann’s wonderfully readable The Quark and The Jaguar (London: Little, Brown, 1994).

26   See Norma Sanchez and Antonino Zichichi (eds.), String Gravity and Physics at the Planck Energy Scale (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996).

27   The classic work is Glenn Seaborg, The Transuranium Elements (NY: Addison Wesley, 1958); see now Lester R. Morss and Joachim Fuger (eds.), Transuranium Elements: A Half Century (Washington DC: American Chemical Society, 1992).

28   ‘Element 118 disappears two years after it was discovered’, reported on Physics Web, 02/08/2001.

29   Compare Claude Rulliere (ed.), Femtosecond Laser Pulses: Principles and Experiments (NY: Springer, 1998).

30   See Reinhard Schinke, Photodissociation Dynamics: Spectroscopy and Fragmentation of Small Polyatomic Molecules (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995).

31   www.innocentive.com. ‘Enantiomeric’ has two isomers as mirror images of each other.

32   See Jonathan Dine Wirtschafter, Magnetic Resonance Imaging And Computed Tomog-raphy (San Francisco: American Academy of Ophthalmology, 1992).

33   Compare K. Eric Drexler, Nanosystems (NY: Wiley, 1992); ‘Scoring with Buckyballs’, Scientific American 02/04/1997; and Erika Jonietz, ‘Buckyball Cures’, Technical Review.^www

34    See especially Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We’re Experts (NY: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001).

35   Jerry Bishop and Michael Waldholz, Genome (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1990).

36   CERN, ‘ALICE – A Large Ion Collider Experiment.^www See now Ulrich Heinz and Maurice Jacob, ‘Evidence for a new state of matter: An assessment of the results from the CERN Lead Beam Programme’’.^www

37   For the original sources, see Selbstorganisation chemischer Strukturen (Leipzig: Geest & Portig, 1987).

38    Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin, ‘Redundant complexity’. ^www

39    David Brown, ‘Deciphering the message of life’s assembly’.^www See now Roger H. Pain (ed.), Mechanisms of Protein Folding (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000).

40    See Osamu Watanabe (ed.), Kolmogorov Complexity and Computational Complexity (NY: Springer, 1992).

41    Joerg Lemm, ‘Chapman-Kolmogorov-Gleichung’.^www

42   Compare Gerald Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire (NY: Basic Books, 1992).

43   The UNESCO volume by Pierre de Bie et al., The University Teaching of Social Sciences (Paris: UNESCO, 1955) indicates that sociology and anthropology can be academically integrated, along with social psychology, the latter being quite a different enterprise from psychology proper.

44   ‘An introduction to psychological anthropology and cross-cultural perspectives on the human mind’.^www Compare Philip K. Bock (ed.), Psychological Anthropology (West-port, CT: Praeger, 1994).

45   Roy D’Andrade, The Development of Cognitive Anthropology (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), p. xiv.

46   See Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1988).

47   For a critique of these methods, see Papert, Note 20. For evidence from extensive observation of classroom practices, see Jay Lemke, Talking Science (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1990).

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