Monthly Archives: March 2009

Fatalist access to scientific knowledge: a case study

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The  way academic and scientific knowledge becomes accessible online has been a hot subject for some time. I want to suggest that this process is structured according to the four cultures identified by Grid-group cultural theory. Here I am focussing on the  idea that there may be a Fatalist paradigm of knowledge sharing at work, which provides access in a capricious manner – and I make a tentative suggestion as to how this particular deficiency in the availability of access may be overcome . Continue reading →

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Towards an institutional understanding of the ‘cultural agoraphobia’ bias

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As seen on the Public Library of Science blog, Prof James Boyle has been arguing in his book The Public Domain (read for free) and a recent talk for Arcadia that society is biased against openness.

Grid-group cultural theory contributes a number of factors to this discussion, as follows… Continue reading →

Chaos theory and fourcultures

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More on Chaos theory, evolution and fourcultures.

Meika recently posted a piece about brain research, bias and chaos theory.

And DK asked:

How does chaos complicate or enrich evolutionary theory in biology? How does the nonlinearity that chaos features interact with mutation/drift/natural selection? Is there a canonical text (or at least something authoritative & comprehensive) on this?

I think one of the key texts on this subject is going to be Continue reading →

Bias, learning to walk at the edge of Chaos

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This is a guest post by Meika, for which, many thanks.

Cambridge-based researchers recently published a study providing experimental data which supports the idea that the human brain lives “on the edge of chaos”.
Its press release ends:

According to [co-author] Kitzbichler, this new evidence is only a starting point. “A natural next question we plan to address in future research will be: How do measures of critical dynamics relate to cognitive performance or neuropsychiatric disorders and their treatments?”

Well, taking that ‘cognitive performance’ a bit more specifically to include learning, and learning to walk in particular, the following story leads in an interesting direction for us fourculture fans.
Five years ago… Continue reading →