Re: What is a theory? LO3672

Jim Michmerhuizen (jamzen@world.std.com)
Sat, 11 Nov 1995 20:29:36 +0001 (EST)

Replying to LO3659 --

On Tue, 7 Nov 1995, John O'Neill wrote:
[ after some preliminary discussion, which I've snipped: ]

> Questions here include:
> - what are the "generic" components of theories
> - how do we reuse these components across theories
> - how do we know whether we can/cannot use these components (i.e. the scope
> or context of a component)

It'll be interesting, certainly, to see what responses the group comes up
with here. Being, myself, strictly an armchair thinker, I have the
luxury of being able to see, right off the bat, that each of these
questions is "complex", like asking "are you still beating your wife". In
other words:

- *are* there generic components of theories? (I think not)
- if there are such things, *can* they be reused?
- if they can, can this be known? (In general, I think not)

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I'll get out of the way. Let someone
speak who holds some more positive outlook on things.

> In organisations, I see strategic planning as being one mechanism for
> developing new theories. The question I have is what is more important,
> the theory developed, or the analysis that produces the theory?

I guess I'll stick around a bit. I was going to make the same point
about this question (it's complex) when it clicked into relationship with
what I've been thinking about story/law on the Ishmael thread. The big
click goes something like this:

"strategic planning" is an activity. Therefore, in my sense, it's a
story. One of the component threads of that story is an analysis (your
word) that produces a theory. The analysis I take also to be a sequence
of actions, and therefore a story. The resulting theory, however, is not.

BUT: that THIS group of people (the team, the managers, the board of
directors, whatever) arrives at THIS theory as the result of THIS
analytical exercise undertaken in the course of THIS strategic planning
initiative: that _is_ a singular event in a story. What you're calling
"the theory developed" is an _attribute_ of that event.

On this analysis, the "theory" cannot be evaluated separately from the
process that produces it. (We can distinguish them in discourse and
thought, of course, but they do not as it were lead separate lives.)

--
Regards
     Jim Michmerhuizen    jamzen@world.std.com
     web residence at     http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
...........................................................................
. . . . There are far *fewer* things in heaven and earth, Horatio,  . . . .
 . . . . .       than are dreamt of in your philosophy...        . . | _ .