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system vs. particular
Feynman on Simplicity
Feynman-thoughts on simplicity:
You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right – at least if you have any experience – because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in. Sympathetic Vibrations
When I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real, I wasn’t upset; rather, I was relieved that there was a much simpler phenomenon to explain how so many children all over the world got presents on the same night! The story had been getting pretty complicated. It was getting out of hand. What Do You Care What Other People Think?
We can’t define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: “You don’t know what you are talking about!”. The second one says: “What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?” The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I, 8-2
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. The Character of Physical Law
Break with Tradition
America is a nation of immigrants. Their forefathers and -mothers left everything they knew behind: country, language, customs, family, friends, traditions. Because they broke with the past – their own very personal past – they have less inhibition to further break away from traditions in order to plot a new course.
Between 1881 and 1920 two of the largest waves of immigration hit the United States. In those years more than 23 million immigrants arrived, the majority of them were from eastern and southern Europe. They were a long way from home.
Overqualification
According to a recent study, almost half of all employed Americans with college degrees are overqualified for their jobs. In 2010, 15% of taxi drivers had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 1% in 1970, and 25% of retail sales clerks had bachelor’s degrees, compared to 5% in 1970.
In fact, U.S. overqualification has become such a large problem that in 2013, The Globalist published an article titled “The U.S. Overqualification Crisis: Why the United States is looking to Germany for answers on higher education.”
Now, many degree programs encourage American students to avoid doctorates and/or other certifications because having these will make it harder for the students to find jobs. Engineers are warned not to get certified as Professional Engineers (PEs,) because companies typically hire only a handful of licensed PEs, but hire many more unlicensed engineers.
American employers have several reasons why they avoid hiring people who are overqualified for a position. Some of their biggest reasons include:
Higher salary expectations – someone with more qualifications is likely to expect to be paid more money.
Promotion expectations – someone with more qualifications might accept a job that’s “beneath them” only because they expect to be promoted quickly to a job that’s more deserving of their higher skills.
Upstaging – someone who has more qualifications and/or experience than their boss might have difficulty following orders.
Short term – someone who is overqualified is likely to lose interest in their position, and won’t stay for very long.
Native American Oral Tradition
When European explorers and settlers first arrived in America, there were hundreds of different American Indian nations. Although these tribes had different languages and cultures they shared a rich oral tradition.
The stories that these nations passed down recorded everything from history to cultural beliefs and even to science and technology. Studies by anthropologists David Pendergast and Clement Meighan have shown clear evidence that Native American oral traditions contain real history, and Stephen J. Augustine, the Hereditary Chief and Keptin of the Mi’kmaq Grand Council, has said about the oral tradition that
“(The Elders) did joke with each other and they told stories, some true and some a bit exaggerated, but in the end the result was a collective memory. This is the part which is exciting because when each Elder arrived they brought with them a piece of the knowledge puzzle.
They had to reach back to the teachings of their parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. These teachings were shared in the circle and these constituted a reconnaissance of collective memory and knowledge. In the end the Elders left with a knowledge that was built by the collectivity.”
Many of the newcomers to America came from cultures that preferred written factual documents over spoken storytelling, and contact with the natives soon blended the two traditions. Now most education and oration in the US contains both forms of information: anecdotal and factual.
“Academics don’t like journalists“
It’s certainly a cliché in Germany to say that academics don’t like journalists. German universities are no longer just ivory towers of knowledge, for degree programs in Wissenschaftsjournalismus – literally academic-journalism – are helping the broader public to understand complex academic and scientific material.
More and more academics, including those from the natural sciences, are teaming up with journalists not only to communicate their findings, but also to gain public relations value for their themselves and their work.
Nonetheless, there are many academics who cringe at thought of being interviewed by journalists. They find it painful to hear from journalists that their work needs to be communicated publikumsgerecht – understandable for the public, for the “man on the street.”
For the academic, for the scientist, this can only mean dumbing down. They fear that the complexity will be so oversimplified that the public will not understand the overall message, its interconnections and mutual interdependencies.
Which is why German academics will always preface their statements with: “If put in a simplified way, the ….” or “In reality it is far more complex than this, but ….”
“Thought too short!“
If a German wants to discredit the statements made by another person, he can say (among other things): Das ist von Ihnen zu kurz gedacht! – literally that was “thought too short”, meaning that was not (fully) thought through.
That kind of criticism is damaging even if it is not backed up by specific points. For it accuses the other party of not having considered all possible factors in a given situation, in a decision made, in an action taken. The person criticized did not adequately analyze the situation, did not take a systematisch approach.
That certain (unimportant) factors should be ignored is not relevant to the critique. The criticism sticks: the other person didn’t consider the connections and interdependencies.
Turned on its head
The Germans are criticized for “thinking things to death”, for overanalyzing. Deep analysis has a long and honored tradition in Germany, however. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, just as one example, wanted to turn Hegel’s philosophy “on its head.”
It is the goal of all great thinkers to explain reality as it is, and not the other way around, to force reality into their theories. All new situations and phenomena should be explainable, at a minimum placed in some logical perspective.
Thinking in systems, in connections and in mutual interdependencies is a red thread (a constant theme) in German philosophy, from Kant to Hegel to Max Weber on to Karl Popper and others of today. It is stressed in schools and universities in all subject areas.
Bismarck’s Treaty System
Otto von Bismarck was Chancellor of the German Reich from 1871 until 1890. He is best known for a complex web of treaties with the other European powers – France, Great Britain, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Tsarist Russia. These treaties allowed Germany to grow industrially and militarily without provoking attack by any combination of those rival powers.
Bismarck’s diplomacy ending the Balkan Crisis of 1879 increased Imperial Germany’s international prestige, at the same time limiting Czarist Russia‘s influence in that region. Anticipating a frustrated Moscow, Bismarck wisely sought protection from Austro-Hungary via a mutual defense treaty signed in 1879, a treaty relationship which would hold until the end of the First World War.
In 1881 Bismarck pulled off another diplomatic coup by reducing tensions with Tsarist Russia and signing a treaty of mutual defense with Moscow, thereby preventing a possible anti-German coalition between Russia and France. Bismarck extended this system of alliances in 1882 by crafting a treaty involving the German Reich, Austro-Hungary and Italy, adding Rumania in 1883, defending against a possible French-British alliance against Germany.
Unfortunately, this complex, brilliantly devised system of treaties would fall apart not long after the young and impulsive Kaiser, Wilhelm II., took power and decided that Bismarck‘s time had come to an end. Wilhelm II. went on to antagonize and provoke Europe‘s powers in all the ways in which Bismarck had worked so hard to avoid. In August 1914 the Great War began.
Warning: It’s complicated.
Theory
The analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another; abstract thought; the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art; a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action; an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances; a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena; a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation.
Germans feel very comfortable using theory to explain the relationships and interdependencies of particulars. Theory allows for understanding the “big picture.“