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Known and Unknown
Aug. 5th, 2009 05:28 pmI finished my final set of colony observations today. Even if my sample size is too small, I will not watch another set. In this quest to gain some small insight into these miniature societies, there are and always will be so many unknown things. I do not know what has become of small ant pink-green-silver-green, who made only sporadic appearances. I do not know why white-orange-silver-blue felt compelled to walk around the foraging container, poking and prodding at leaves in various states. I do not know at what point fungus is fungus, and at what point it becomes trash instead. I do not know how well my quick snapshots of each ant's actions will actually capture what's happening in the colony as a whole, over time, or even what's happening to each ant as a whole, over time. But I will take the data that I have collected--volumes and volumes of it--and will focus my questions and search for patterns.
I am still in the middle of reading a nonfiction book, The Dialectical Biologist, by the Richards Levins and Lewontin. It was recommended to me by a social scientist friend and colleague who had interviewed Levins for part of his dissertation research on how ecologists think.
The whole story is fairly interesting, so long as one does not get bogged down in the intellectual minutae. Apparently there are two camps of thinkers at Harvard that do not speak to each other. I am somewhat well-acquainted with one camp by association with my research, for one of the most prominent figures is E.O. Wilson, renowned ant biologist; Levins is in the opposite camp, and The Dialectical Biologist is helping me clarify why. As I said, the intellectual minutae of the reason is somewhat complex and is tied to worldviews, so I don't know if I'm up to the task of summarizing it. But I will note that Levins is more closely a philosopher than an empiricist, and as such his agenda differs from mine--he scrutinizes the frameworks and assumptions used by people like me, pulls them apart and forces me back on the question of, "Of what use?" He is aware that this ground is uncomfortable, but there's no advantage to ignoring it. He shakes his head at general linear models.
A lot of what he writes resonates with me. A lot of what he writes puts me into a soporific stupor. D and I marveled over the extent of the coauthorship of Levins and Lewontin (Lewontin I know better from in-depth explorations of his work in a course a good five years ago). But I keep plowing onward through the book, with the optimistic hope that something good will come from it. Perhaps I will know something by the time I am finished; perhaps I will simply enhance my awareness of the depth of my ignorance.
I am still in the middle of reading a nonfiction book, The Dialectical Biologist, by the Richards Levins and Lewontin. It was recommended to me by a social scientist friend and colleague who had interviewed Levins for part of his dissertation research on how ecologists think.
The whole story is fairly interesting, so long as one does not get bogged down in the intellectual minutae. Apparently there are two camps of thinkers at Harvard that do not speak to each other. I am somewhat well-acquainted with one camp by association with my research, for one of the most prominent figures is E.O. Wilson, renowned ant biologist; Levins is in the opposite camp, and The Dialectical Biologist is helping me clarify why. As I said, the intellectual minutae of the reason is somewhat complex and is tied to worldviews, so I don't know if I'm up to the task of summarizing it. But I will note that Levins is more closely a philosopher than an empiricist, and as such his agenda differs from mine--he scrutinizes the frameworks and assumptions used by people like me, pulls them apart and forces me back on the question of, "Of what use?" He is aware that this ground is uncomfortable, but there's no advantage to ignoring it. He shakes his head at general linear models.
A lot of what he writes resonates with me. A lot of what he writes puts me into a soporific stupor. D and I marveled over the extent of the coauthorship of Levins and Lewontin (Lewontin I know better from in-depth explorations of his work in a course a good five years ago). But I keep plowing onward through the book, with the optimistic hope that something good will come from it. Perhaps I will know something by the time I am finished; perhaps I will simply enhance my awareness of the depth of my ignorance.
