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A Christian Nation?
There are some folk who insist that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. There are others who insist that it in no way was ever a Christian nation.
Both groups are right. And they are both wrong.
Oh, and before I continue, let me note that I am not a Christian.
Much of the exploration and colonization of the New World was driven by religious motives. While it is fashionable among a certain breed of "historian" to paint Christopher Columbus as a monster, driven solely by a lust for gold and seeing in the natives a ready source of forced labor (slaves) who could be easily conquered, the reality is far from that narrative. Yes, Columbus was seeking what he believed was a shorter route to the East by sailing westward–this based on a wildly erroneous estimate of the diameter of the world (well known as a globe by educated men of his day)–to open trade routes that would be profitable for Europe. However, his dealings with the natives–actual dealings not the spin created by certain popular "historians"–was based on his own Christian belief and a desire to bring the benighted locals to God.
Some that came after Columbus had much more venal motives. And some that came after didn't. It was a mixed bag, as was often the case in history.
It is not my intent here to attempt to give an account of the colonization and conquest of the Americas, so I'll leave that simply to set the stage for the founding of what would become the United States.
The first English Colony in North America was the Roanoke Colony, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh. It was actually two colonies. The first, founded on Roanoke island in 1585 promptly failed. The second, founded in 1587 also failed and vanished into the mists of history when a resupply mission was delayed by the Anglo-Spanish war.
The Roanoke colony had been intended as a supply base for Raleigh's real interest, which was the Caribbean and particularly raiding Spanish shipping.
It would not be until 1607 until the first successful English colony–Jamestown–would be settled in America. Jamestown was another colony based on pure economic motives and it struggled for years, nearly failing in 1610, muddling along for several years trying to find something profitable to keep it going before developing tobacco as a cash crop in 1613.
Back in England, the suggestion was made that the failure of Roanoke and the difficulties of Jamestown was because they were purely military or economic ventures and lacked religious purpose. This was soon to be tested with the expedition of the Pilgrims to what would begin the settlement of New England.
The Pilgrims, a branch sect of a branch sect–being an offshoot of the Puritans, who themselves were an offshoot of the Church of England. They settled at what would become Plymouth in 1620. They, like the other colonies before them, had initial problems but they soon flourished. They were soon followed by other Puritan groups, also coming to New England to set up explicitly religious colonies.
While most of the New England colonies were religious separatists–"We grant those of other faiths the liberty to stay away from us"–a particular group who took the idea of individual conscience, and the idea of religious freedom that follows from that, and founded what would become Rhode Island.
So things would continue for some time. The English colonies in what would become the United States were a mix of religious communites, such as those in New England, and those founded for economic purposes such as those in Virginia.
The first rumblings of discontent with British rule over the English colonies, however, was very much religious in nature. It started with the English Civil War. Charles I's marriage to the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France and the treaty which allowed her to freely practice her religion in England were not popular with the Puritans in England and in the New World. Then followed the English Civil War itself, which deposed Charles I. The Restoration put Charles I's son, Charles II, on the throne and all seemed well, but then Charles II died and James II, a Catholic, ascended to the throne.
James II revoked the charter of the Massachusetts colony, created the Dominion of New England in its stead and appointed Edmond Andros, a foe of Puritanism as its governor. Andros ruled practically as a dictator, outlawing town meetings and stripping clergy of the power to marry among other things. Needless to say, the New Englanders used to running things to suit themselves were quite unhappy with this arrangement.
Thus, the first real stirrings of discontent with British rule were over religious matters. Things settled after the Glorious Revolution which ousted James II and enthroned William and Mary as the rulers of England.
In the 1730s and 1740s the Great Awakening swept Britain and the colonies, the first of many religious revivals that would affect the New World. It was into this environment that many of the key Founding Fathers of the US were born, including George Washington (1732), John Adams (1735), Thomas Jefferson (1743), Patrick Henry (1736), and so on. Samuel Adams (1722) grew to adulthood in the Great Awakening, and Benjamin Franklin (1706) was already an adult when it started.
Thus, many of the Founding Fathers were steeped in religion when they were forming the nascent United States. Individually, they spanned from Calvinist to Congregationalist to Deist to possibly outright atheist, but the culture and society which shaped them was decidedly Christian and largely Puritan at that.
However, when circumstances conspired to drive an irrevocable wedge between the colonies and the mother country of Great Britain, a rising tide of secularism was cresting. Folks of religious fervor found it necessary to work alongside folk of lesser religious feeling. Folks of different religious views needed to find common ground for the new government. The result was that they had to focus on matters other than religion. Even ardent "anti-Papists" like Samuel Adams were forced by circumstance to modify their views at least in government matters.
And so, as a result, the actual legal structures of the newly formed United States avoided either endorsing or denying particular religious views, from the most devout believers to the most determined atheist. They explicitly rejected religious tests for public office. One could not use a person's religious belief or lack thereof as a condition of holding any office of public trust. Later, with the Bill of Rights, they forbade Congress for creating a State-supported church (Congress shall pass no law…respecting an establishment of religion) and from interfering in the practice of religion by the people (nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof).
So, while the culture and society which lead to the creation of the United States was strongly religious and overwhelmingly Christian, the legal founding of the nation steered clear of either endorsing or rejecting any particular religious belief or non-belief.
So the folk who say the United States is a Christian Nation and those who say it is not are both right. And they are both wrong. It is a quantum entanglement of both.
Author thewriterinblackPosted on October 31, 2019 October 30, 2019 Categories Uncategorized6 Comments on A Christian Nation?
I'll go further than that, actually, a law in violation of basic human rights, regardless of whether it's explicitly called out in the Constitution or not, is no law at all.
So, on the Book of Faces, there was this:
People keep making up new rules, for their own convenience (although I kind of like the one given in the response to Mr. Rubin). And they never seem to be bothered by the old rules. You know, like the Constitution which is supposed to spell out certain specific enumerated powers of Congress, the President, and the Courts and none beyond those specified. Further, in the Bill of Rights, certain things are intended to be made off limits to Congress.
It's popular in certain circles to claim that the Constitution is a "living document" and thus to be reinterpreted to suit the political whim of the moment. Try doing that with any other legal document (like, say, your mortgage contract) and see where that gets you. It's even more popular, in much the same circles to flat out lie about what it means. No, the Second Amendment was not about letting the government, whether State or Federal, arm its own troops. That's not what the "militia clause" means. I have discussed this elsewhere. Notably here, here, and here.
Living Constitution folk claim that we can never really know what the Founding Fathers actually meant. We can't get inside their heads and read their minds. Thus, any modern interpretation of the words they wrote is as good, as valid, as any "original intent." That's a pure smokescreen. We don't need to "read their minds." They used certain words and constructions which had well understood meanings at the time the Constitution was written, and again as each of the various amendments were added. We can take their "intent" in the words they wrote–that what they said, in the words they used according to the way those words were normally understood at the time, is what they meant. That is what "original intent" is. It's not rocket science. It might take some study of how words and constructions were used at the time (phrases like "establishment of religion" and "well-regulated militia" had meanings quite at varience with what modern "interpreters" try to inflict upon them).
Moving away from the Constitution itself, and as an excuse for violating it, people will mumble about "will of the people" and the "right" of the "people" to pass whatever laws they want but, well, if you follow that logic, that anything government does is okay so long as it follows whatever process it has to passing laws, then the very idea of rights is lost. Once again, I've discussed this here.
That's the general case where "law" does not mean "right" but in the special case where the government exercises powers not granted to it by the Constitution (or amendments thereto), and particularly when it involves things specifically forbidden to the government, then it is not even "law" in truth because the government has no authority to pass such law. It may have all the appearances of law in that Congress held a vote saying "the government can do this", the President may have signed it, police may arrest people who violate it, and the courts may allow their conviction to stand. But in all of that, it is the government that is breaking the law because that's what the Constitution is, the Supreme Law of the Land. Period.
That's the ideal. Unfortunately we live in the real world. And while ideally, the Constitution should be all the "gun permit" I should ever need. No, even more basic than that, the basic right to life, and thus the right to defend that life against threats, and thus again the right to effective tools to defend that life, should be all the "permit" I need. But if I try to act on that, then Men With GunsTM will come and throw me in jail or outright kill me (depending on if they see me as an immediate threat). And while the government is wrong to deny me that right, all I would accomplish at this juncture is my own end.
And so the government breaks the law, the Supreme Law of the Land, on a regular basis. And most people sit and watch, waiting. Nobody wants to be the first to take direct action against the illegal actions of the Federal and State governments. Act too soon and at best, you're John Brown, hanged for treason. You may become a name people rally around later but…hanged for treason.
And so people wait. As Jefferson put it:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But that people continue to suffer evils, and raise at most vocal outcries as Federal and State governments continue to illegally assert powers not granted by the Constitution, does not make those actions in violation of the Constitution legal any more than any criminal, able to get away with his crimes for an extended time is not a criminal.
So, old rule: If you're passing laws in violation of the Constitution, you are the lawbreaker. Not me.
Author thewriterinblackPosted on October 30, 2019 October 26, 2019 Categories Uncategorized4 Comments on Old Rule: A Law in Violation of the Constitution is No Law at All.
Elara of the Elves: A Snippet
A snippet:
The steel hummed happily under Elara's hand as she ran the polishing cloth over the bowl of the ladle. She held the ladle up and examined her distorted reflection in the steel. That morning, her maids had exclaimed in dismay over the shadows under her eyes–she had not slept well the night before–but she had waved away their ministrations with paints and ointments. Instead she had hastened to the forge, to the only solace she had found since the elves had slain her family and brought her here to be their queen.
Elara heard a complaint from the steel, a small one, and turned it. Her reflection wavered as it crossed a small ripple in the bowl. She glanced at the forge then shook her head.
"Cold, I think."
Elara set the ladle over the horn of the anvil and selected a hammer. Carefully, she turned the ladle until its voice in her mind told her she had the right spot. One, two, three taps of the hammer and the steel almost sighed in relief.
When Elara raised the ladle to examine her work the marks left by the hammer obscured her reflection but the steel was clearly happier. She turned to a polishing wheel and began to pump the treadle.
"Highness?" The voice of one of Elara's guards came from the doorway.
"What?" Elara said without looking up from her work.
"The human, Corden, is without. He begs audience with your highness."
"Very well. Bid him enter."
"As your highness wishes."
Elara turned her head, catching the guard's eye before he could withdraw. "Bid him enter alone."
The guard hesitated. "But…Regent Odarin…"
Elara frowned. "Must I explain every time? This speaks to my choice of consort. No one may interfere. And he is no more threat to me today than he was yesterday."
The guard's sigh was clearly visible from where Elara stood. After a moment, he nodded. "As your highness wishes."
Elara returned to polishing the ladle. Shortly thereafter Corden entered.
"Good morrow, Your Highness."
"And good morrow to you, Lord Corden."
"I see your project is near complete."
Elara held up the ladle and examined the result of her handiwork. A few swipes of the polishing cloth removed the grit from the polishing wheel and the steel underneath shown mirror-bright with no rippling in her reflection as she turned the ladle.
Elara turned and held the ladle out toward Corden. "A gift for you."
Hesitantly, Corden took the ladle. He held it up to examine.
"It is beautiful. It seems a shame to paint such work."
"Why paint it?" Elara tilted her head.
"Such a ladle is meant to be used, not kept oiled on a shelf merely to look at. I would hate to see it rust."
Elara laughed. "The steel is happy. Happy steel does not rust."
Corden looked from the steel to Elara and then back again. "That is an orkish trick, making steel that doesn't rust without magic or careful cleaning and oiling."
"You have heard my tale, have you not."
"There are rumors, of course."
"They are true. I was raised by orcs. I learned to work steel from them." Elara shrugged. "The elves do not understand, but I can hear the voice of steel, what will make steel happy. Most steel has no particular calling but when it does–" she tapped the ladle. "–it will serve willingly in that form. It will not break unless abused and it will not rust."
"Then I am honored, truly honored, by your gift." Corden clutched the ladle to him and bowed.
Elara smiled. "What brought you to me this morning?"
"I have received word that my father is ill. His secretary bids me return with all haste. I had hoped that you would grant assurance of respect for the neutrality of Thorgrim's Reach so that I might depart on the morrow."
Elara laughed sourly. "They call me queen but I am in many ways a prisoner. I can promise only that I will speak with the regent and urge him to grant you such assurance. What weight my voice carries, I will lend to you."
"Then you have my thanks, Highness. And for the gift as well."
At Elara's gesture of permission, Corden departed. Alone once more, Elara turned to the stock of iron in the back of the smithy, looking for steel that called the form it desired. But no weapons. She would not forge steel weapons for the elves to use against the orcs. She would not.
Author thewriterinblackPosted on October 29, 2019 October 29, 2019 Categories Uncategorized2 Comments on Elara of the Elves: A Snippet
My Personal Electronics Odyssey.
I got my first cell phone some 20 years ago, a Motorola "Startac" flip phone. Some years later, I picked up one of John Ringo's books form the library and it came with one of the Baen CD's.
Now, I had just had a string of several overseas business trips where I had experienced the frustration of running out of reading matter in a language I could read. I'd packed several books but it wasn't enough. The Baen CD, with a bunch of books in various ebook formats, was a godsend. I looked around and got myself a Sony Clie (my then wife, being Japanese, had urged me to buy Sony) Palm OS device, the Mobipocket reader, and I was good to go, particularly once I followed up with the Baen Free Library.
Not long after, I upgraded the Clie to a later model which had sound via a headphone jack. I added music to it but ended up dissatisfied because when used as a music player the battery life was atrocious. This led to my getting a dedicated MP3 player.
So, not long after I got my first cell phone, I was regularly carrying three electronic devices with me: The phone, the Palm device, and the MP3 player.
Time passed and I went through several of each of the items. Sony stopped selling the Clie for the international market so I went to the Palm Tungsten series. My various flip phones got smaller, more reliable, and less affected by "roaming" charges and less limited in minutes (remember "night and weekend minutes"?) as plans changed. I changed reader programs from the Mobipocket system to one called Stanza. Otherwise things remained much the same for several years.
Eventually the Palm series dead ended and I had to look for a replacement. I ended up with an iPod Touch. Battery life was good enough that I combined the MP3 player and ereader into one device. I started to appreciate browser and email features at places where I had wifi access. Still, I remained resistant to going "smart phone" because data plans were too expensive for my taste.
Eventually, the iPod started to die. It would lock up solid and I'd have to hard restart it, often several times, before I could get it back. At that time the price of data plans had come down and so when I was next ready for a phone upgrade by my provider I went with a smartphone. After much consideration I chose Android.
Sometime back in the 80's I think it was Samsung had run an add campaign with a Korean guy dressed up as "Uncle Same" with the white goatee and all in the pose of the classic posters with the caption "Uncle Samsung wants you." I had found that so offensive that I swore off any Samsung products. However, when I was looking at smartphones there really wasn't anything else that provided the same level of price and features. Eventually I sighed and decided it was time to let it go and got my first smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S4. And now I had music, reading, and phone all in one device.
Since then, I've upgraded the phone a couple of times. I've gone from a 6GB/month data plan to 10GB (shared with my then wife and daughter on their phones) then to Unlimited (shared with my daughter).
All because I kept running out of reading matter while overseas.
Author thewriterinblackPosted on October 28, 2019 October 24, 2019 Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on My Personal Electronics Odyssey.
Massively parallel processing.
By Carlos Jones/ORNL – https://www.flickr.com/photos/olcf/42957291821/in/photolist-NsW4ML-25mPCpZ-JkN2vk-28rZmfr-YYYjk1-282ZTzq-271XTpf-271XZao-26JSfsB-25mPBPa-287nqxR-FENxmy-22HVvNY-227b4AU-XgBEPE-W6iPRi-XZZrnP-28rxs9o-XqcFKR-28rZmpK-H4EmiH-27ZDEwH-26JSngB-279g4ti-25moRES-28vVuuM, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73905694
In 1964, Control Data Corporation built the world's first supercomputer, the CDC6600. It ran at 40 MHz and could perform up to three million floating point operations a second.
Last Year, Oak Ridge National Laboratories unveiled the "Summit" a supercomputer that could perform two hundred quadrillion floating point operations a second, making it more than 70 billion times as fast as the old CDC6600. By comparison, the Summit is more of a leap from the CDC6600 than the CDC6600 is from an abacus.
However, it is interesting to look at just how Summit got to be so powerful. Yes, the processors used are more powerful than that of the old CDC6600. Time marches on and technology improves. But there is more to it than that. The Summit contains within it 37,000 separate processors. 28,000 of these are graphics processors produced by NVidia (the same company that makes the graphics processors and adapters in many home and office computers–including my own). In addition there are 9,000 conventional processors made by IBM. The Summit gets its power from massively parallel processing–dividing the task among many processors each only dealing with a small portion of the task and how that portion connects to neighboring parts of the problem which other processors handle.
It makes the Summit more powerful than any single processor system can ever hope to be.
This is much like how an economy works in a free market with prices allowed to function by supply and demand. In a centrally planned command economy of whatever flavor–socialist, communist, fascist, Nazi, whatever–a single, or small number of decision makers, "processors" make all the myriad decisions involved in the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. Labor, raw materials, land, time.
In the free market, however, each individual need only worry about those specific resources (their own time and labor, raw materials under their control, their particular skills, and so on) that are under their own personal direct control. They have a small part of the total problem and can work on maximizing their own part without knowing, or needing to know, the overall problem. Information about other parts of the problem are carried through prices. If desire for a certain product increases, people bid up the price. This signals others to provide more of it. If desire drops, people aren't willing to pay as much and either the price falls or amount sold at the current price falls. If something becomes more difficult to produce or obtain, the price rises and people either buy less, divert resources from elsewhere to produce or obtain more, or some combination of the two.
It's a massively parallel processing operation only instead of a few thousand or even a few tens of thousands of processors, it's millions, or even billions of individuals, each bringing to bear far more knowledge, far more understanding, far more "human computing power" than any small group of "central planners", no matter how smart or how well educated, can ever hope to possess.
There are some small handful of things, as I have discussed elsewhere, where this massively parallel processing cannot handle well, things where the problem cannot effectively be divided (such as national defense) or things where the division is unclear (external costs and benefits), but for the vast majority it works and works well to provide the most value as determined by society as a whole.
It's why the free market will always be more efficient than centrally planned economies.
Author thewriterinblackPosted on October 27, 2019 October 24, 2019 Categories Uncategorized2 Comments on Massively parallel processing.
Why are you so obsessed with… A Blast from the Past
Whenever folk like me object to erosion of long-held rights, people often ask why we're "obsessed" with that right, why it's so important. Why we're not more worried about whatever other thing they bring up as a distraction. It's actually not hard to understand.
There is a tale I heard told about the ancient Greek Philosopher Socrates. According to the tale a young man came to Socrates and asked how he might become as knowledgeable as Socrates. Socrates bid the man to follow him and led him to the shore and out into the water. Puzzled, the man followed. When they were out where the water was about chest deep Socrates, being a strong and vigorous man (ancient Greece tended to mix athleticism with its philosophy, that whole "strong mind in a strong body" thing) and no doubt being aided by surprise, grabbed the young man and ducked him under the water. There he held the man against his struggles until the young man passed out.
Socrates then dragged the man to shore where he left him and went on his way.
In time, the young man awoke and sought out Socrates. "Why did you do that?" the young man asked. "I nearly lost my life."
"What did you want most while you were under the water's surface?" Socrates asked.
"Air!" the man replied.
"When you want knowledge exactly as much as you wanted air, nothing in the universe can prevent you from getting it."
There is more than one lesson to be learned from that little tale. There is, of course, the obvious one that the key to gaining knowledge is to want it badly enough to do what it takes to get it. (Long hours of study. Tracking down sources. Doing research–and I don't mean Googling a few key terms but actual scientific research–to find answers that nobody else has found yet.)
But consider also what the man wanted. He wanted air. Why could Socrates not simply tell him at the start that when he wants knowledge as much as he wants air, then he'll get it? Of course the answer is before the escapade down at the sea shore he didn't want air particularly. He had it in plenty and didn't even have to think about it.
It was only when he was deprived of air that he suddenly found it to be important to him.
So it is with long held rights like, for instance, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA). (I could talk about other rights under assault, but this one is much in the news recently, and frankly, the assault on it has been running a long time and is deeply entrenched.) In the early history of the United States it was the normal state. People didn't have to think much about RKBA. It was just there. Oh, there were certain inroads made on it. Georgia passed one of, if not the first "gun control" laws in the US in 1837. That law was ruled Unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court. Part of the reason that the Dred Scott decision decided that "the negro race" could not be recognized as having full rights was that they could then buy arms and carry them wherever they went. And a little bit here and there.
Slow inroads on the existing RKBA made over time, but still, for the majority of people it was like air to the young man before Socrates drowned him. Want to buy a Gatling Gun? No problem. A Maxim Gun? Again, no problem. Cannon? If you've got the money. Now, most people didn't because there was no need. A rifle or shotgun (or both) for hunting. A revolver for personal protection if one felt the need (and more likely to be used against snakes than against desperadoes). But most anyone could.
Air to the young man of Socrates' acquaintance.
Then more strict and more widespread gun laws started being enacted. Prohibition saw a rise in the use of automatic weapons by gangs to shoot up rival's illegal drinking establishments, which led to other uses by criminals. That lead to the National Firearms Act of 1934. Still not too bad by most people's lights. It's not like the various controlled weapons were banned. You just had to pass a strict background check, pay a tax, and get your local head Law Enforcement Officer to sign off on it. You could still get them if you want. You just had to jump through a few hoops first. It's not like you are denied them. Really.
But then other restrictions went into place. And folk started finding out that "get your local head Law Enforcement Officer to sign off on it" meant "be politically connected, people without considerable political pull need not apply." The hoops became smaller, lit on fire, and raised way up in the air.
And the young man is sputtering, still not quite underwater, but getting a lot of water in his mouth with each breath.
Then further laws and restrictions. The Gun Control Act of 1968. No interstate commerce in guns except via dealers with Federal Firearms Licences (FFL). No shipping of firearms except to and from FFL holders (and a few select exemptions such as shipping firearms back to the manufacturer for repair).
The Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act, preventing any further automatic weapons being added to the registry for legal private ownership. What was then currently registered was all there was and all there ever would be.
The rise of organizations dedicated to the banning of some or all privately owned firearms. People organized for the express purpose of ending RKBA.
The young man's barely getting any air at all, now.
Then the "Brady Bill" which implemented a national 7 day waiting period on handgun purchases "so the police would have time to perform a background check" and the federal "Assault Weapons Ban"
And now the young man is completely under water and really wanting his air.
So why is RKBA so important to us? Because you're trying to take it from us. The only reason you want to dismiss its importance is to make it easier for you to take it.
Through most of our history, people never really thought much about RKBA. But when it comes down to it, of the three "unalienable rights" Jefferson called out in the Declaration of Independence–two of which are echoed again in the Fifth Amendment–every single one is meaningless without the right to defend them and without the right to effective means to defend them. To deny RKBA is to deny right to life and right to liberty.
I would love to go back to it not being "an obsession." For it to just be "there" with no need to worry about it. Like air to the young man before Socrates took him to the sea.
But you won't let me.
Author thewriterinblackPosted on October 26, 2019 October 23, 2019 Categories Uncategorized4 Comments on Why are you so obsessed with… A Blast from the Past
Insulation from Feedback.
There are more ways to be wrong than to be right. Indeed, since the ways to be right are generally limited but the ways to be wrong unlimited, there are infinitely more ways to be wrong than to be right. Don't think so? Okay, think of a number between zero and ten. Ready?
You're wrong.
I can say, with pretty good confidence, that nobody guessed (sqrt(2)/cuberoot(97))^e.
There are infinite real numbers between zero and ten, between any two numbers really. Without some kind of hint, say if I'd said "integer" or "whole numbers" the "correct" answer gets lost in an endless sea of wrong answers.
This isn't so important in things like "guess the number" but becomes vital in trying to figure out the world around us. In science, this is why a key element is testing our theories. We look for what must happen, and what cannot happen, if our ideas are right and then we look. And if something our theory says must happen does not, or something it says cannot happen does, why then we know our theory is wrong and we go back to try to figure out a better idea.
That feedback is essential in the effort of trying to get closer to "right" than not. The mismatch between our ideas and what happens in reality is a guidepost to keep from going astray.
The problem comes when people insulate themselves from feedback. You have an idea, you expect a certain result. Then, when you try out the idea something else happens, often in direct opposition to what one set out to do with the idea. Instead of re-examining the idea and considering that maybe it was wrong, you instead find, or invent, reasons why the idea was really correct and it's the results that are "wrong" in some way.
We saw this happen in the sixties and onward in the criminal justice system. Folk started talking more about "rehabilitation" rather than "punishment" and about addressing the "root causes" of crime. And so penalties started being reduced, in practice if not in law. More and more extensions of "rights" were "discovered" by the courts in the interest of "fairness" so that the least clever criminal could be as likely to evade punishment as more clever or connected criminals. And, in the meantime, millions, then billions, then trillions of dollars were poured into programs intended to alleviate poverty, the key "root cause" of crime (It Says HereTM).
And yet crime persisted in going up not just for years but for decades.
Excuses? There were all kinds of excuses. "Less crime is happening but more of it is being reported." (Except murder, where you usually have a dead body, was going up right along with everything else. There isn't exactly a lot of room for their to be that much previous "unreported murder". Some, yes, but not enough to explain it.) "We didn't do enough." (As Robert Heinlein once said: "You can make water flow uphill if you pray hard enough. How hard? Hard enough to make water flow uphill.") And a perennial favorite. "It would have been even worse without our changes." (Notice that no evidence is required. It's just assumed.)
Nowhere in that is the question of whether maybe their original ideas were right examined. Nowhere do they say "Maybe we were wrong and we need to try something else instead."
They have insulated themselves from all feedback. The excuses are so general, so sweeping, that anything that happens at all can be explained away. There is no possible way, so long as those excuses are accepted, to differentiate between their being wrong and their being right. It's the falsifiability problem again. They are completely insulated from any feedback that might challenge their beloved ideas.
Rudyard Kipling wrote a collection of stories called "just-so" stories. These were tales that gave fanciful explanations for how various things came about: How the camel got his hump, how the leopard got his spots, and so forth.
Well, that's what we've got today: politics by "just-so" story.
Edit: That Feynman pic represents this piece much better than the previous.
Author thewriterinblackPosted on October 25, 2019 October 26, 2019 Categories Uncategorized3 Comments on Insulation from Feedback.


An accidental tourist? Caracalla's fatal trip to the temple of the Moon at Carrhae/Harran.
Hekster, Olivier and Kaizer, Ted (2012) 'An accidental tourist? Caracalla's fatal trip to the temple of the Moon at Carrhae/Harran.', Ancient society., 42 . pp. 89-107.
The circumstances surrounding Caracalla's death in AD 217 remain confusing. In particular the presence of the emperor near the famous temple of the Moon at Carrhae-Harran has led to much scholarly speculation. Often a preference for 'the East' has been put forward to explain Caracalla's actions. This paper discusses the various possibilities why he decided to visit this specific temple, and argues that the episode ought to be understood through a combination of religious notions and individual, 'political' needs and conveniences which would have made it impossible for this emperor not to go to a deity whose local cult stood for total, universal power. In the process, this article also provides some clarity regarding the contradictory sources describing the events.


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A new primary school and nursery with capacity for more than 200 children has been touted for a village close to Norwich - replacing its existing one.
Norfolk County Council has applied to itself for planning permission to build a new school in Trowse with Newton, on a hectare of land off White Horse Lane.
The new school has been proposed to help ease the strain on others in the area, as housing developments look to bring more families to the village.
The project's design and access statement states that once complete, the main school will provide space for 210 pupils, with the nursery providing capacity for 24 pre-school children.
The plans set out for a seven-classroom building, with a multi-purpose hall and library.
However, the plans have also been prepared with a view to the school expanding further, should demand increase in years to come.
The statement says: "In an effort to 'future proof' the external works proposals, the landscape masterplan allows for a possible expansion to a 1.5 form entry school.
It is hoped the new school will be completed by spring 2020, subject to planning approval.
Meanwhile, the existing - a grade two listed building - could be turned into a free school.
A Norfolk County Council spokesman said: "We will follow the required process which involves offering the site as a potential free school to the Department for Education.


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Introduction to Communication Theory
recent advertisement for the AT&T cellular service has a bold headline that asserts, If only communication plans were as simple as communicating. We respectfully disagree with their assessment. Cellular communication plans may indeed be intricate, but the process of communicating is infinitely more so. Unfortunately, much of popular culture tends to minimize the challenges associated with the communication process. We all do it, all of the time. Yet one need only peruse the content of talk shows, classified ads, advice columns, and organizational performance reviews to recognize that communication skill can make or break an individuals personal and professional lives. Companies want to hire and promote people with excellent communication skills. Divorces occur because spouses believe that they no longer communicate. Communication is perceived as a magical elixir, one that can ensure a happy long-term relationship and can guarantee organizational success. Clearly, popular culture holds paradoxical views about communication: It is easy to do yet powerful in its effects, simultaneously simple and magical.
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APPLYING COMMUNICATION THEORY FOR PROFESSIONAL LIFE
The reality is even more complex. Good communication means different things to different people in different situations. Accordingly, simply adopting a set of particular skills is not going to guarantee success. Those who are genuinely good communicators are those who understand the underlying principles behind communication and are able to enact, appropriately and effectively, particular communication skills as the situation warrants. This book seeks to provide the foundation for those sorts of decisions. We focus on communication theories that can be applied in your personal and professional lives. Understanding these theories, including their underlying assumptions and the predictions that they make, can make you a more competent communicator.
This text is concerned with communication theory, so it is important to be clear about the term communication. The everyday view of communication is quite different from the view of communication taken by communication scholars. In the business world, for example, a popular view is that communication is synonymous to information. Thus, the communication process is the flow of information from one person to another (Axley, 1984). Communication is viewed as simply one activity among many others, such as planning, controlling, and managing (Deetz, 1994). It is what we do in organizations. Communication scholars, on the other hand, define communication as the process by which people interactively create, sustain, and manage meaning (Conrad & Poole, 1998). As such, communication both reflects the world and simultaneously helps to create it. Communication is not simply one more thing that happens in personal and professional life; it is the very means by which we produce our personal relationships and professional experiencesit is how we plan, control, manage, persuade, understand, lead, love, and so on. All of the theories presented in this book relate to the various ways in which human interaction is developed, experienced, and understood.
WHAT IS THEORY?
The term theory is often intimidating to students. We hope that by the time you finish reading this book, you will find working with theory to
be less daunting than you might have expected. The reality is that you have been working with theories of communication all of your life, even if they havent been labeled as such. Theories simply provide an abstract understanding of the communication process (Miller, 2002). As an abstract understanding, they move beyond describing a single event by providing a means by which all such events can be understood. To illustrate, a theory of customer service can help you to understand not only the bad customer service you received from your credit card company this morning, it can also help you to understand a good customer service encounter you might have had at a restaurant last week. Moreover, it can assist your organization in training and developing customer service personnel. At their most basic level, theories provide us with a lens by which to view the world. Think of theories as a pair of glasses. Corrective lenses allow wearers to observe more clearly, but they also impact vision in unforeseen ways. For example, they can limit the span of what you see, especially when you try to look peripherally outside the range of the frames. Similarly, lenses can also distort the things you see, making objects appear larger or smaller than they really are. You can also try on lots of pairs of glasses until you finally pick one pair that works the best for your lifestyle. Theories operate in a similar fashion. A theory can illuminate an aspect of your communication so that you understand the process much more clearly; theory also can hide things from your understanding or distort the relative importance of things. We consider a communication theory to be any systematic summary about the nature of the communication process. Certainly, theories can do more than summarize. Other functions of theories are to focus attention on particular concepts, clarify our observations, predict communication behavior, and generate personal and social change (Littlejohn, 1999). We do not believe, however, that all of these functions are necessary for a systematic summary of communication processes to be considered a theory. What does this definition mean for people in communication, business, and other professions? It means that any time you say that a communication strategy usually works this way at your workplace, or that a specific approach is generally effective with your boss, or that certain types of communication are typical for particular media organizations, you are in essence providing a theoretical explanation. Most of us make
APPLYING COMMUNICATION THEORY FOR PROFESSIONAL LIFE Three Types of Theory Example Never date someone you work withit always ends up badly. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The more incompetent you are, the higher you get promoted. Audience analysis should be done prior to presenting a speech. To get a press release published, it should be newsworthy and written in journalistic style. Effects of violations of expectations depend on the reward value of the violator (expectancy violations theory). The media do not tell us what to think, but what to think about (agenda-setting theory).
Table 1.1 Type of Theory Commonsense theory
Working theory
Scholarly theory
these types of summary statements on a regular basis. The difference between this sort of theorizing and the theories provided in this book centers on the term systematic in the definition. Table 1.1 presents an overview of three types of theory. First, the summary statements described in the table are what are known as commonsense theories, or theories-in-use. This type of theory often is created by an individuals own personal experiences, or such theories might reflect helpful hints that are passed on from family members, friends, or colleagues. They are useful to us and are often the basis for our decisions about how to communicate. Sometimes, however, our commonsense backfires. For example, think about common knowledge regarding deception. Most people believe that liars dont look the person they are deceiving in the eyes, yet research indicates that this is not the case (DePaulo, Stone, & Lassiter, 1985). Lets face it: If we engage in deception, we will work very hard at maintaining eye contact simply because we believe that liars dont make eye contact! In this case, commonsense theory is not supported by research into the phenomenon. A second type of theory is known as working theory. These are generalizations made in particular professions about the best techniques for doing something. Journalists work using the inverted pyramid of
story construction (most important information to least important information). Filmmakers operate using particular shots to invoke particular effects in the audience, so close-ups are used when a filmmaker wants the audience to place particular emphasis on the object in the close-up. Giannetti (1982), for example, describes a scene in Hitchcocks Notorious in which the heroine realizes she is being poisoned by her coffee, and the audience sees this realization through a close-up of the coffee cup. Working theories are more systematic than are commonsense theories, because they represent agreed-on ways of doing things for a particular profession. In fact, they may very well be based on scholarly theories. Such theories more closely represent guidelines for behavior rather than systematic representations. These types of theories are typically taught in content-specific courses (such as public relations, media production, or public speaking). The type of theory we will be focusing on in this book is known as scholarly theory. Students often assume (incorrectly!) that because a theory is labeled as scholarly, it is not useful for people in business and the professions. Instead, the term scholarly indicates that the theory has undergone systematic research. Accordingly, scholarly theories provide more thorough, accurate, and abstract explanations for communication than do commonsense or working theories. The down side is that scholarly theories are typically more complex and difficult to understand than commonsense or working theories. If you are genuinely committed to improving your understanding of the communication process, however, scholarly theory will provide a strong foundation for doing so.
THE THEORYRESEARCH LINK
Although theory and research are related, we have not yet articulated the exact nature of this link, in part because there is some debate about the theoryresearch relationship that is akin to the classic question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? In this case, scholars disagree as to what starts the process, theory or research. Some scholars say that research comes before theory. This approach is known as inductive theory development. Also known as grounded theory, scholars using inductive theory development believe that the best theories emerge from the results of systematic study
(Glaser & Strauss, 1967). That is, these scholars study a particular topic, and, based on the results of their research, they develop a theory; the research comes before the theory. If someone wanted to develop a theory about how management style affects employee performance, then that person would study management style and employee performance in great depth before proposing a theory. Preliminary theories may be proposed, but the data continue to be collected and analyzed until adding new data brings little to the researchers understanding of the phenomenon or situation. On the other hand, some scholars believe in deductive theory development. Deductive theory is generally associated with the scientific method (Reynolds, 1971). The deductive approach requires that a hypothesis, or a working theory, be developed before any research is conducted. Once the theory has been developed, the theorist then collects data to test or refine the theory (i.e., to support or reject the hypothesis). What follows is a constant set of adjustments to the theory with additional research conducted until evidence in support of the theory is overwhelming. The resulting theory is known as a law (Reynolds, 1971). In short, deductive theory development starts with the theory and then looks at data. As an example, a researcher might start with the idea that supportive management styles lead to increased employee performances. The researcher would then seek to support his or her theory by collecting data about those variables. As indicated earlier, these two approaches represent different starting points to what is in essence a chicken or the egg type of argument. The reality is that neither approach advocates a single cycle of theorizing or research. Instead, both approaches suggest that theories are dynamicthey are modified as the data suggest, and data are reviewed to adjust the theory. Accordingly, the model in Figure 1 is the most accurate illustration of the link between theory and research. In this model, the starting points are different, but the reality of a repetitive loop between theory and research is identified.
Thus far, we have talked about the nature of communication and the nature of theory. Next we turn our attention to the question of what
Introduction to Communication Theory Figure 1.1 The TheoryResearch Link
Deductive
counts as research. Frey, Botan, and Kreps (2002) described research as disciplined inquiry that involves studying something in a planned manner and reporting it so that other inquirers can potentially replicate the process if they choose (p. 13). Accordingly, we do not mean informal types of research, such as reflections on personal experience, off-the-cuff interviews with acquaintances, or casual viewing of communication media. When we refer to research, we mean the methodical gathering of data as well as the careful reporting of the results of the data analysis. Note that how the research is reported differentiates two categories of research. Primary research is research reported by the person who conducted it. It is typically published in academic journals. Secondary research is research reported by someone other than the person who conducted it. This is research reported in newspapers, popular or trade magazines, handbooks, and textbooks. Certainly, there is value to the dissemination of research through these media. Textbooks, for example, can summarize hundreds of pages of research in a compact and understandable fashion. Newspaper articles or news broadcasts can reach thousands of people. Trade magazines can pinpoint the readers who may benefit most from the results of the research. Regardless of whether the source is popular or academic, however, primary research is typically valued more than secondary research as a source of information; with secondary research, readers risk the chance that the writers have misunderstood or distorted the results of the research.
RESEARCH METHODS IN COMMUNICATION
The sheer volume of research we are exposed to in our daily lives is formidable and growing (Crossen, 1994, p. 17). Even if you arent an academic, even if your job doesnt require you to conduct research, we are all inundated with research facts, both at work and at home. Politicians cite polls and surveys to bolster their platforms. Advertisers cite research studies that indicate their product is superior. Organizations use research to make decisions for strategic planning. Even if you never conduct a research study in your life, understanding how research is performed will help you make more informed personal and professional decisions. This section focuses on the four research methods commonly used in the development of communication theory. When reading about these methods, pay particular attention to the types of information revealed and concealed by each method. This approach will allow you to be a better consumer of research. Experiments When people think of experiments, they often have flashbacks to high school chemistry classes. People are often surprised that communication scholars also use experiments, even though there isnt a Bunsen burner or beaker in sight. What makes something an experiment has nothing to do with the specific equipment involved; rather, experimentation is ultimately concerned with causation and control. It is important to emphasize that an experiment is the only research method that allows researchers to conclude that one thing causes another. For example, if you are interested in determining whether friendly customer service causes greater customer satisfaction, whether advertisers use of bright colors produces higher sales, or whether sexuality in film leads to a more promiscuous society, the only way to determine these things is through experimental research. Experimental research allows researchers to determine causality because experiments are so controlled. In experimental research, the researcher is concerned with two variables. A variable is simply any concept that has two or more values (Frey et al., 2002). Sex is a variable, because we have men and women. Note that just looking at maleness is not a variable because there is only one value associated with it; it doesnt vary, so it isnt a variable. Masculinity is considered a variable,
however, because you can be highly masculine, moderately masculine, nonmasculine, and so on. Returning to our discussion of experimental research, then, the research is concerned with two variables. One of the variables is the presumed cause. This is known as the independent variable. The other is the presumed effect. This is known as the dependent variable. If you are interested in knowing whether bright colors in advertisements cause increased sales, your independent variable is the color (bright vs. dull) and the dependent variable is the amount of sales dollars (more, the same, or less). The way the researcher determines causality is by carefully controlling the study participants exposure to the independent variable. This control is known as manipulation, a term which has a negative connotation but is not meant in a negative fashion in the research world. In the study of advertisements just described, the researcher would expose some people to an advertisement that used bright colors and others to an advertisement that used dull colors, and she or he would observe the effects on sales based on these manipulations. Experiments take place in two settings. Laboratory experiments take place in a controlled setting, so that the researcher might better control his or her efforts at manipulation. In the communication field, laboratories are often rooms that simulate living rooms or conference rooms. Typically, however, they have two-way mirrors and cameras mounted on the walls to record what happens. For example, John Gottman has a mini apartment at the University of Washington. He has married couples move in to the apartment during the course of a weekend, and he observes all of their interaction during that weekend. Some experiments dont take place in the laboratory, and these are called field experiments because they take place in participants natural surroundings. These sorts of experiments often take place in public places, such as shopping malls, libraries, or schools, but they might take place in private areas as well. In all cases, participants must agree to be a part of the experiment to comply with ethical standards set by educational and research institutions. Survey Research The most common means of studying communication is through the use of surveys. Market research, audience analysis, and organizational
audits all make use of surveys. Unlike experiments, the use of surveys does not allow researchers to make claims that one thing causes another. The strength of survey research is that it is the only way to find out how someone thinks, feels, or intends to behave. If you want to know what people think about your organization, how they feel about a social issue, or whether they intend to buy a product after viewing an advertising spot you created, you need to conduct a survey. In general, there are two types of survey research. Interviews ask participants to respond orally. They might take place face-to-face or over the phone. One special type of interview is a focus group, which is when the interviewer (called a facilitator) leads a small group of people in a discussion about a specific product or program (Frey et al., 2002). Questionnaires ask participants to respond in writing. They can be distributed by mail or administered with the researcher present. Particular types of research are more suited for interviews rather than questionnaires. Interviews, for example, allow the researcher to ask more complex questions because he or she can clarify misunderstandings through probing questions. Questionnaires, however, might be more appropriate for the collection of sensitive information because they provide more anonymity to the respondent (Salant & Dillman, 1994). The key concepts associated with either type of survey research are questioning and sampling. First, the purpose of a survey is quite simple; surveys provide a means to ask questions of a group of people to understand their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Questionnaires might take two forms. Open-ended questions allow respondents to answer in their own words, taking as long (or short) as they would like. For example, a market researcher might ask study participants to describe what they like about a particular product. Or an interviewer might ask someone to respond to a hypothetical situation. Closedended questions require respondents to respond using set types of answers. In this case, a market researcher might say something like, Respond to the following statement: product X is a useful product. Would you say you strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree? Neither method is better than the other; the two types of questions simply provide different kinds of data that are analyzed using different means. The second key concept associated with survey research is sampling. Researchers are typically concerned with large groups of people
when they conduct surveys. These groups are known as a population, which means all people who possess a particular characteristic (Frey et al., 2002). For example, marketing firms want to study all possible consumers of a product. Newspaper publishers want to gather information from all readers. Pharmaceutical industries want to study everyone with a particular ailment. The size of these groups makes it difficult simply to study everyone of interest. Even if every member of the population can be identified, which isnt always the case, studying all of them can be extremely expensive. Instead, survey researchers study a sample, or a small number of people in the population of interest. If the sample is well selected and of sufficient size, the results of the survey are likely also to hold true for the entire group. Random samples, in which every member of the target group has an equal chance of being selected, are better than nonrandom samples, such as volunteers, convenience samples (people who visit a particular physician), or purposive samples (people who meet a particular requirement, such as age, sex, race, etc.). Essentially, a random sample of consumers is more likely to give representative information about brand preferences than a convenience sample, such as stopping people at the mall on a particular day to answer a few questions. Textual Analysis The third method used frequently by communication scholars is textual analysis. A text is any written or recorded message (Frey et al., 2002). A television show, a transcript of a medical encounter, and an employee bulletin can all be considered texts. Textual analysis is used to uncover the content, nature, or structure of messages. It can also be used to evaluate messages, focusing on their strengths, weaknesses, effectiveness, or even ethicality. So textual analysis can be used to study the amount of violence on television, how power dynamics play out during doctorpatient intake evaluations, or even the strategies used to communicate a corporate mission statement. There are three distinct forms that textual analyses take in the communication discipline. Rhetorical criticism refers to a systematic method for describing, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating the persuasive force of messages (Frey et al., 2002, p. 229). There are numerous specific types of rhetorical criticism, including historical criticism
(how history shapes messages), genre criticism (evaluating particular types of messages, such as political speeches, or corporate image restoration practices), and feminist criticism (how beliefs about gender are produced and reproduced in messages). Content analysis seeks to identify, classify, and analyze the occurrence of particular types of messages (Frey et al., 2002). It was developed primarily to study mass mediated messages, although it is also used in numerous other areas of the discipline. For example, public relations professionals often seek to assess the type of coverage given to a client. Typically, content analysis involves four steps: the selection of a particular text (e.g., newspaper articles), the development of content categories (e.g., favorable organizational coverage, neutral organizational coverage, negative organizational coverage), placing the content into categories, and an analysis of the results. In our example, the results of this study would be able to identify whether a particular newspaper has a pronounced slant when covering the organization. The third type of textual analysis typically conducted by communication scholars is interaction analysis (also known as conversation analysis). These approaches typically focus on interpersonal or group communication interactions that have been recorded, with a specific emphasis on the nature or structure of interaction. The strength of this type of research is that it captures the natural give-and-take that is part of most communication experiences. The weakness of interaction analysis, content analysis, and rhetorical criticism is that actual effects on the audience cant be determined solely by focusing on texts. Ethnography Ethnography is the final research method used by scholars of communication. First used by anthropologists, ethnography typically involves the researcher immersing him- or herself into a particular culture or context to understand communication rules and meanings for that culture or context. For example, an ethnographer might study an organizational culture, such as Johnson & Johnsons corporate culture, or a particular context, such as communication in hospital emergency rooms. The key to this type of research is that it is naturalistic and emergent, which means that it must take place in the natural environment for the group under study and that the particular methods used will be adjusted on the basis of what is occurring in that environment.
Typically, those conducting ethnographies need to decide on the role they will play in the research. Complete participants are fully involved in the social setting, and the participants do not know that the researcher is studying them (Frey et al., 2002). This approach, of course, requires that the researcher knows enough about the environment to be able to fit in. Moreover, there are numerous ethical hurdles that the researcher must overcome. Combined, these two challenges prevent much research from being conducted in this fashion. Instead, participant observer roles are more frequently chosen. In this case, the researcher becomes fully involved with the culture or context, but she or her has admitted his or her research agenda before entering the environment. In this way, knowledge is gained firsthand by the researcher, but extensive knowledge about the culture is not necessarily a prerequisite (Frey et al., 2002). Researchers choosing this strategy may also elect which to emphasize more, participation or observation. Finally, researchers may choose to be complete observers. Complete observers do not interact with the members of the culture or context, which means they do not interview any of the members of the group under study. As such, this method allows for the greatest objectivity in recording data, while simultaneously limiting insight into participants own meanings of the observed communication. In sum, communication scholars use four primary research methods. These methods include experiments, which focus on causation and control; surveys, which focus on questioning and sampling; textual analyses, which focus on the content, nature, or structure of messages; and ethnography, which focuses on the communication rules and meanings in a particular culture or context. A summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the four methods is summarized in Table 1.2.
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES
Communication has been described as both an art and a science (Dervin, 1993). On one hand, we respect the power of a beautifully crafted and creatively designed advertisement. On the other hand, we look to hard numbers to support decisions about the campaign featuring that advertisement. Although art and science are integrally related in the everyday practice of communication, in the more abstract realm of theory the two are often considered distinct pursuits. This concept
APPLYING COMMUNICATION THEORY FOR PROFESSIONAL LIFE Four Methods of Communication Research What It Reveals Cause and effect What It Conceals Whether the cause effect relationship holds true in less controlled environments Cannot establish causality; cannot determine what people actually do The effect of the message on receivers May provide a highly subjective (and therefore biased) view of the culture or context
Research Method Experiment
Respondents thoughts, feelings, and intentions
The content, nature, and structure of messages Rules and meanings of communication in a culture or context
can be traced to distinctions between the academic traditions of the humanities (which includes the arts) and the social sciences. You might have some ideas about the terms humanistic and social scientific, because most college students are required to take some courses in each of these areas. The distinctions between the humanities and social science are based on more than just tradition, however; they are based on very different philosophical beliefs. With regard to the humanities, the interpretation of meaning is of central concern (Littlejohn, 2002). Meaning is presumed to be something that is subjective and unique to the individual, even though meanings are likely influenced by social processes. For individuals trained in the humanistic tradition, subjectivity is a hallmark; ones own interpretation is of interest. Think about the study of English literature, a discipline at the heart of the humanities. English scholars study the interpretation of texts in an effort to understand the meaning of the object of study. On the other hand, objectivity is a central feature of social science. Social scientists believe that through careful standardization (i.e., objectivity), researchers can observe patterns of communication that can hold true for all (or most) people, all (or most) of the time. These patterns that
Introduction to Communication Theory Table 1.3 Issue Belief about human nature Goal of theory Process of theory development Focus of research Research methods Differences Between Social Scientific and Humanistic Approaches to Communication Social Science Determinism Understand and predict Deductive Particularism Experiments; quantitative survey and textual analysis Humanities Pragmatism Understand only Inductive Holism
Ethnography; qualitative survey and textual analysis
hold true across groups, time, and place are known as generalizations. To illustrate, psychology is a discipline rooted in the social sciences. As such, psychology scholars seek to explain general principles of how the human mind functions. These principles are intended to explain all people, all over the world, throughout history. Because the humanities and social sciences have different areas of interest, they treat theory and research differently. Table 1.3 seeks to identify some of those distinctions. The first area of difference is the philosophical commitment to understanding the nature of human beings and the extent of their free will. Certainly, no one believes that human beings are mere puppets that have no choice in how they behave. Communication theorists vary, however, in the extent to which they believe people act versus react to communication situations. For example, social scientists tend to take a deterministic stance, which means that they believe that past experience, personality predispositions, and a number of other antecedent conditions cause people to behave in certain ways. Accordingly, deterministic approaches to human interaction propose that people in general tend to react to situations. Social scientists tend to look at the causes and effects of communication, such as what causes a marriage to fail or the effects of a particular marketing campaign. Conversely, most humanists believe that people have control over their behavior; they believe that people make conscious choices to communicate to meet their goals. Theorists taking this stance are called
pragmatists because they believe that people are practical and that they plan their behavior. In short, pragmatists believe that human beings are not passive reactors to situations, but dynamic actors. Humanists, then, tend to focus on the choices that people make, such as the communication strategies a company such as Exxon chose to enact in the face of a corporate crisis. A second way to differentiate between humanistic and social scientific scholarship is through a focus on why theories are developed. For example, the goal of social scientific theory is both to understand and predict communication processes. Because social science is interested in generalizations, the ability to predict is paramount; if a theorist understands the general pattern that is at the heart of a social scientific theory, then she or he should be able to predict how any one individual might communicate. Those in the humanities, however, believe that interpretations are always subjective; they are unique to the individual. Accordingly, humanists believe that theorists can never actually predict how a person will behave; all that can be done is to try to understand human communication. Although not directly related to the distinction between social science and the humanities, we note that some theories strive to do more than simply predict or understand. A special group of theories, called critical approaches, seeks to improve the world through social change. The goal of critical theory is to empower people in their professional and personal lives. For more information about critical communication theory, see Craig (1999). The third difference between social science and the humanities is the process of theory development. Recall our discussion of the theoryresearch link discussed earlier in the chapter. Deductive theory is based on the scientific method, so it should be no surprise to you that the social scientific approach to theory development is deductive. Those in the humanities, however, tend to start with data and subsequently develop theory. For example, scholars of English literature would start with reading Shakespeares plays before developing a theory about them. Thus, those in the humanities tend to use inductive theory development. Finally, the focus and methods of research also vary in the social scientific and humanistic approaches. Regarding the focus of research, the social scientific method requires standardization and control. Because of these objectives, social scientists incrementally study narrowly defined
areas at a time, believing that the whole picture will be uncovered eventually. This approach is known as particularism. Humanists, on the other hand, believe in looking at the big picture; they propose that all pieces of the puzzle contribute to an understanding of the problem. Accordingly, they utilize holism, looking at the situation in its entirety, as the focal point of research. Given the different areas of focus, its not a surprise that the final difference between social scientists and humanists are the research methods they use. Earlier in this chapter, we discussed the four research methods used by communication scholars. Of the four, one is clearly social scientific, and one is clearly humanistic. Experimental methods, with their concern for causation and control, are uniquely suited for the social sciences. Remember that social science seeks to make predictions, and the best way to do that is to have research that supports particular causes and effects. Similarly, ethnography is uniquely suited for humanistic research. Ethnography leans to the understanding of communication in contexts and cultures, which is appropriate for theory that uses holism in its quest for interpretation of communicative events. The uses of survey research and textual analysis cannot be easily classified. Instead of the methods themselves being associated with either social science or the humanities, the specific way data are analyzed determines whether the method is social scientific or humanistic. The two methods of data analysis are quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative methods are adapted from those used in the hard sciences, such as chemistry and biology. Accordingly, quantitative methods are associated with social science. Qualitative methods are those that have historically been used by the humanities. Quantitative methods typically rely on numbers or statistics as the source of data (Reinard, 1998). These data and statistics are generally explanatory and comprehensive in nature; they seek to predict what will happen for large groups of people. To accomplish this, researchers control the study by identifying the variables of interest before data collection takes place and trying to prevent extraneous influences from affecting the data. As described earlier, these commitments allow social scientists to make generalizations. Qualitative methods reject the limitations on individual interpretation that control requires. Moreover, qualitative research eschews the use of numbers and uses verbal descriptions of communicative
phenomena. Typically, the data are in the form of extended quotes or transcripts of communication. Finally, qualitative research typically centers on a description or critique of communication rather than on generalizations (Reinard, 1998). In summary, then, social scientists tend to use quantitative surveys or textual analyses. For example, theyll collect data about how many people prefer a new formulation of a product versus a previous formulation of a product or how frequently a manager uses a particular communication strategy in interaction. Humanists tend to use qualitative surveys and textual analyses. They ask participants to respond at length to questions in their own words about a particular product or they identify various communication themes evident in a corporate brochure. A final note should be made about the distinctions between social science and the humanities. The purpose of talking about these two academic traditions is because communication is both social scientific and humanistic. As such, you shouldnt view these distinctions as dichotomies, but as continua. Individual theories may be more or less social scientific or humanistic (not eitheror), with elements borrowed from both traditions.
EVALUATING THEORY
The final topic of this chapter is evaluating theory. Earlier we suggested that all theories have strengths and weaknesses; they reveal certain aspects of reality and conceal others. An important task that students and scholars face is to evaluate the theories that are available to them. We are not talking about evaluation in terms of good versus bad, but evaluating the usefulness of the theory. Each of you is likely to find some of the theories presented in this text more useful than others. Such a determination is likely due at least in part to your own background and experiences, as well as your profession. We would like to challenge you to broaden your scope and consider not just the usefulness of each theory to you personally, but the usefulness of the theory for peoples personal and professional lives in general. A number of published standards can be used to evaluate theories (e.g., Griffin, 2003; Littlejohn, 2002; West & Turner, 2000). All are appropriate and effective tools for comparing the relative usefulness of a
Introduction to Communication Theory Table 1.4 Criteria for Evaluating Theory What to Look For
Area of Evaluation Accuracy Practicality Simplicity
Has research supported that the theory works the way it says it does? Have real-world applications been found for the theory? Has the theory been formulated with the appropriate number (fewest possible) concepts or steps? Does the theory demonstrate consistency within its own premises and with other theories? To what extent does the theory make clear an otherwise complex experience?
given theory. Because this text is geared toward working professionals, however (or those who wish to soon be working in the profession of their choice), we believe that the following five criteria best capture the way to assess the relative usefulness of communication theories in the communication, business, and related the professions. Note that we are talking about the relative usefulness of the theory. We are not talking about eitherorsgood or bad, weak or strong. Instead, we hope you look at these distinctions as continua that range from very useful at one end to not particularly useful at the other end. A description of these criteria are in Table 1.4. The first area of focus is accuracy. Simply put, the best theories correctly summarize the way communication actually works. Recall, however, that we are referring to scholarly theories. As such, we do not mean accuracy in terms of whether the theory accurately reflects your own personal experience (although we would hope that it does!). Instead, when we use the term accuracy we are suggesting that systematic research supports the explanations provided by the theory. Thus, in assessing this quality, you should look at research studies that have used the theory and see whether the research supports the theory or fails to find support for it. A second way to evaluate theories is practicality. The best theories can be used to address real-world communication problems; in fact,
Lewin (1951) said there is nothing so practical as a good theory (p. 169). Clearly, there are some profound theories that have changed the way we understand the world that arent actually used by most people on a daily basis (Einsteins theory of relativity, or Darwins theory of evolution, for example). In terms of communication theories, however, theories that are accurate but cant be used in everyday life are not as good as theories that have great practical utility. For example, a theory that can help a person make better communicative decisions in his or her interactions with coworkers is better than a theory so abstract that it cannot be used by an individual in daily communication. Thus, a theory with more applications is better than a theory without practical uses. In assessing this criterion, you should look for how the theory has been used in the research literature, as well as whether the theory has made the leap to professional practice. Simplicity is the third way to evaluate a good business or professional communication theory. This does not mean that the theory is easy to understand; because the world is complex, theories trying to explain the world are often fairly complex as well. What we mean by simplicity is that the theory is formulated as simply as possible. The three bears analogy works here. Theories that have extra steps or include variables that dont help us to understand real-world experiences would be considered overly complex. Theories that do not have enough steps, that dont delve beneath the surface, or that dont have enough variables to understand real-world problems are too simple. Theories that include no more nor no less than necessary to understand a phenomena thoroughly are just right; they have a useful amount of simplicity. The best way to think of simplicity is to compare how much of communication is explained by the theory versus how many concepts are being used to explain it. The fourth way to evaluate a theory is to consider its consistency. The most useful theories have both internal and external consistency. By internal consistency, we mean that the ideas of the theory are logically built on one another. A theory that proposes at one point that cooperation among team members guarantees success and at a different point proposes that competition is more effective than cooperation has a logical flaw. Similarly, theories that skip steps do not have much internal consistency. A theory predicting that age is related to the experience of jealousy and that ones expression of jealousy affects the future of the relationship, but then fails to tell us how the experience of
jealousy is related to the expression of jealousy, has a logical gap. As such, it does not have strong internal consistency. External consistency, on the other hand, refers to the theorys consistency with other widely held theories. If we presume that the widely held theories are true, then the theory under evaluation that disagrees with those believed supported theories also presents a logical problem. As such, the notion of consistency, whether internal or external, is concerned with the logic of the theory. The most useful theories are those that have a strong logical structure. The final area for evaluation is acuity. Acuity refers to the ability of a theory to provide insight into an otherwise intricate issue. Earlier we said that theories that are simple are not necessarily easy to understand, because the real world is often complex. A theory that explains a difficult problem, however, is better than a theory that explains something less complex. For example, a theory that explains a complex problem such as how organizational cultures can influence employee retention is a more useful theory than a theory that explains a relatively straightforward problem such as how to gain attention in a speech. Those theories that explain difficult problems show acuity; those that focus on fairly obvious problems demonstrate superficiality.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
In this chapter, we discussed the popular perception of communication, which suggests that the communication process is paradoxically simple yet powerful. We defined communication as the process by which people interactively create, sustain, and manage meaning. Next, we discussed the nature of theory. The distinctions between commonsense theories, working theories, and scholarly theories were addressed. Because scholarly theory must be researched, regardless of whether the research precedes or follows the initial formulation of a theory, we then turned our attention to the nature of research. We differentiated between primary and secondary research. We also identified the four primary research methods used by communication scholars: experiment, survey, textual analysis, and ethnography. In addition to describing the key elements of each of these methods, the chapter focused on what each reveals and conceals about communication. Next we turned our attention to the differences between social scientific and humanistic
approaches to theory and research, centering our discussion on beliefs about human nature, the goal of theory, the development of theory, the focus of research, and the research methods used. Finally, we provided a means by which scholarly theories of communication can be evaluated, including accuracy, practicality, simplicity, consistency, and acuity.
Case Study 1 Theory and Research in Communication Consulting Community General Hospital was facing a crisis. As a small, urban hospital, it was having difficulty balancing its budget. The Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 reduced Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, which typically make up nearly twothirds of billed hospital charges (Jones, 2001). Accordingly, revenues are down. The Balanced Budget Refinement Act (BBRA) of 1999 has restored some of the budget cuts, but small rural hospitals have benefited over urban hospitals (Freeman, 2002). Moreover, the nationwide hospital workforce shortage has caused high turnover and vacancy rates, which costs the hospital money; inpatient and outpatient care capacity is reduced, surgeries are delayed, and laboratory and X-ray work has to be sent off-site (American Hospital Association, 2001). Bruce Norris, the chief administrator of the hospital, has recognized the crisis and is committed to doing something about it. He has sought the advice of two consultants, one of whom was trained in the social sciences and one of whom was trained in the humanities. Here is their advice. Consultant A I believe that reducing costs is not feasible, so the hospital needs to work on increasing demand. A possibility is to create a niche specialty so that Community General is the first place people consider when they need that type of medical care. Hospital marketing staff members should conduct a marketing survey and gather statistics about the particular health needs of people in the community. Then they should look at the services provided by their competitors and determine which niche Community General is not filling sufficiently. By creating a niche in the saturated health care market, Community General can develop a communication campaign that emphasizes how it stands out from the crowd; increased demand will mean increased revenues.
Consultant B This problem is complex and needs to be understood in the context of the entire health care industry in the United States, which is undergoing a major transition. Before assuming what the problem is, we need to understand thoroughly the challenges and motivations of all of the hospitals stakeholders: members of the local community, the hospitals staff and administration, suppliers, government agencies, and current and past patients. In so doing, the unique strengths and weaknesses of Community General should emerge. Once we uncover these qualities, we can develop a campaign that shares this vision with the necessary stakeholders. Questions for Consideration 1. Both Consultant A and Consultant B are operating on generalizations about how to market the hospital. These generalizations could be considered commonsense theories. Look at the advice each provides and develop a description of the commonsense theory each is using (i.e., create a name and prediction for the theories). Then recall the metaphor of theories as glasses (p. 3). What concepts do these commonsense theories highlight? What might be hidden or distorted because of the theory being used? 2. One of these consultants is demonstrating social scientific assumptions, and the other is demonstrating humanistic assumptions. Which is which? Which specific elements of their advice have led you to these conclusions? (Hint: See Table 1.3 for the key distinctions between these approaches.)
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Cesar Santos-(b. 1982) Cuban-American, studied at Miami Dade College and the New World School of the Arts before travelling to Florence, where he trained at the Angel Academy of Art under the tutelage of Michael John Angel, a student of Pietro Annigoni. He returned to Miami, where he developed his philosophy of marrying both the classical and the modern juxtaposed within one painting. His influences range from the Renaissance to the masters of the nineteenth century to Modernism. With superb technique, he infuses a harmony between the natural and the conceptual to create works that are provocative and dramatic. He has been the recipient of numerous accolades including a first place award from a competition sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Santos has had exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America, including the Villa Bardini Museum in Florence, Italy, the National Gallery in Costa Rica and the Frost Art Museum in Miami, Florida.
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