What Do I Think?

18vii26

This thread began with David MacInnes's Question:

what do you think
about using aggregate rational behaviour
patterned by
climate change, population dynamics and technology
as the agent in
social evolutionary
theory?

to which my reply was

it's complicated...

because I realized that each of the elements was something that I had thoughts about... and that led to a string of days of seeking the architectonics of an elucidation of that complexity

...the doing of which led to a landscape of rabbit holes too tempting not to sniff at, the sort that have always be-guiled me and often led me astray... "pixie-led"

Google AI sez

Pixie-led is an old British and Cornish folklore term describing a person who has been magically led astray or confused by pixies. In legend, these mischievous fairies create illusions or mists to disguise familiar landscapes, causing travelers to walk in circles. Traditional remedies to break the spell include turning an article of clothing inside out or backward.

(bout of Informing Others Against Their Will; ritual apologies)

❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧

What follows is more a record of my own thinkage than a next act of reply to the conversation with David MacInnes, which began with my response to reading his ms., and his answers that continued the correspondence. The texts below are my record of my own efforts to generate an answer to "...what do you think...?", following the maxim

How can I know what I think
until I see what I say?

DisclaimerI can't imagine that what I think, and how I think, could be of much use to you, coming as it does from an I who is 20+ years retired from (and so utterly out of touch with) the milieu of Academia, and an octogenarian "independent scholar" who claims identity as "an anthropologist", fancied myself as a Teacher (though really my skills were as a Learner), and then added Librarian to the identity in mid-career, and since 2005 have been educating myself without let or hindrance, indulging self with Curiosity and Imagination as the primary guides, in scholarly play for no audience. I am a Member of no community of record, nor do I seek membership...

This summary will be digressive, as I try to reconstruct and curate my steps, and collate some of my encounters and findings. The primary audience is my own very very self, though all are welcome to wander within.

Here's some of the territory I have traversed in the last fortnight, sort of a quodlibet of subjects I've engaged with:

• rational behavior
  
• patterned by
  
• Agent and 'agency' and add to Agent
  
• social evolution
  
• 'population dynamics' ==> Ecology
  
• Technology: material and non-material toolkits

• the Anthropocene as my temporal focus
  
• Contact and the aftermath
  
• Jared Diamond and other overview summaries (William McNeill, etc.)

• paradigms
  
• Models
  
• Theory

• Stanford 1967-1972
• Marvin Harris The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968)
  
• Clifford Geertz
  
• Spindler's Question
  
• "butterfly collecting"

Thus we see that David's Question has unleashed a torrent of memories and scrag-ends and realizations, stretching back over 60+ years, under the current rubric of Octogenarian Reckoning. A lot of territory to attempt to cover, and uncover.

29vii26

a thought experiment re: David's Question

16viii26

In response to my noting my encounters with

...a landscape of rabbit holes too tempting not to sniff at, the sort that have always be-guiled me and often led me astray... "pixie-led" David said

.The pixie led confusion is common unless the words we use are carefully defined which is partly what the chapter on assumptions and theory is about. Without carefully defined words, the logic is transformed into pixie dust. That is often what post processuals do when they redefine concepts and assumptions used in a logical discussion to mean something else followed by a further step into nihilism. That reduces all logic to nothing while leaving only perception and poetic or artistic experience behind in the purposefully constructed pixie dust confusion.

... I argue that all evidenced based conclusions should be prefaced by definitions, assumptions and "givens" in the geometry proof sense. Otherwise, the debate about the conclusions is just about semantics that descends into nihilism

David also proposes substituting 'pragmatic' for 'rational'

...Ah, but if they both mean the same thing why does it matter and why do I think it might make sense to make the change?

...and there's the sticking point: for me they don't mean the same thing at all... which led to a morning of attempting to discover what I think about pragmatic.

I think there's an irreconcilable difference in our takes on Meaning (which I consider to be the proper domain of semantics). He believes in the authority of Definition, and its necessity in "logical discussion". I think that discourse is most interesting in the "perception and poetic or artistic experience" it enables. These are fundamentally different styles of thinking, and tend to look askance at one another's methods and findings. I don't think there's much middle ground, and I know which side appeals more to octogenarian me. I'd say disinclination to authority is less nihilism than anarchism...

Here's a 2-page spread from my Elevenses: a sportive metaramble... (2019):