Abstract
On the subject of growth in the modern age: as far as it is a doctrine of power, we agree. As far as it is a doctrine of knowledge, we disagree. For it can be shown that a critical conflict emerges between the foundational principles of knowledge and the direction of the whole system of development under which we now live.
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Notes
For excellent accounts of this history see Ian Hacking’s The Taming of Chance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
Alain Desrosières’s The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
Gigerenzer, et al. noted, “The law of errors had originally been used to describe such things as the distribution of repeated measurements of a particular object or event. In applying the law of errors to human variation, Quetelet understood variation within species as something very akin to measurement error, or rather, replication error.” Gigerenzer et al., The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 142.
See David Howie’s Interpreting Probability (2002: 36). Here he describes how this view developed from science: “Where in the astronomical case the mean of the distribution represented the true value, and the scatter the errors of observation, so in the social case the mean must represent the human archetype, and the variation a sort of mistake due to perturbing factors.” Howie, InterpretingProbability: Controversies and Developments in the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
It is of course well known that Einstein believed in the concept of a causal universe. As Porter noted, Einstein believed “that statistical laws were based on causal assumptions and reflected a causal reality.” Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 218.
For detailed history on the rise of the testing industry, please see Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).
Peter Sacks’s Standardized Minds: The High Price of America’s Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It (New York: Perseus Publishing, 2001).
Howard Bowen, Burton Clark, Clark Kerr, Brian MacArthur, and John Millett, 12 Systems of Higher Education: 6 Divisive Issues (New York: International Council for Education Development, 1978), p. 7.
Carol Dwyer, Catherine Millett, and David Payne, A Culture of Evidence: Postsecondary Assessment and LearningOutcomes (Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 2006).
Richard Ingersoll, Who Controls Teachers’ Work? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
Jurgen Habermas, On the Logic of the Social Sciences, S.W. Nicholsen and J. Stark, trans. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), p. 96.
The originator of TQM is William Deming (1900–1993). Two of his works are worth noting: Out of the Crisis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Robert Kaplan and David Norton, “The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance,” Harvard BusinessReview (January-February, 1992), pp. 71–80; Kaplan and Norton, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996).
21._Behaviorism may manifest in different sectors of the education market but it usually entails a reductionism. James McClellan testifies to its application to pedagogy: “Reductionism is thriving because of its fusion with the vilest form of behaviorism, pedagogical behaviorism: the doctrine that teaching can be defined and described in terms which are purely behavioral in reference. The political strength of pedagogical behaviorism lies in a complex of bureaucrats and testers who understand education as something that can be predicted, measured, and controlled through mechanisms of political power. The dangers as well as conceptual confusion inherent in pedagogical behaviorism are obviously enormous.” McClellan, Philosophy of Education (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1976), p. 8.
Jacques Monod said it this way: “The cornerstone of the scientific method is the systematic denial that ‘true’ knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes—that is to say, of ‘purpose’” (quoted in Huston Smith’s Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief [New York: HarperCollins, 2001], p. 55).
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© 2009 Steven R. Loomis and Jacob P. Rodriguez
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Loomis, S.R., Rodriguez, J.P. (2009). The Epistemological Disabilities of Growth: How Expanding Markets Exchange Knowledge for Ignorance. In: C.S. Lewis. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230100589_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230100589_4
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