Thread by @swardley

A weird generalisation that I've become conscious of many times with maps over the years.

Humanities students tend to ask me how do I know if the map is right?

Physicists / Engineering students tend to ask how to make a better map?

I don't know if it's just chance or something I noted and then repeatedly reinforced through confirmation bias or there is some fundamental difference between how we teach the subjects i.e. a desire to find a truth rather than a less imperfect model.

It also occurs in a slightly different setting when people tell me that "the map is not the territory".

This is often said as a negative but "the map is not the territory" is fundamental to the power of maps. They are an imperfect representation of something.

I have the same issue with culture, where for over a century anthropologists and business gurus have attempted (and failed) to define culture. The problem is (as Mead pointed out) is that words are part of culture ...

.... i.e. you could never create a universally agreed and perfect definition or model of culture with words because words are part of the model. No model can ever be true and complete within itself (Godel) ...

... but maps inherently are imperfect, they are a representation of a space and not the space itself ... you can create an definition of culture with a map, the question now becomes can you make a less imperfect one?

The process of making a less imperfect map by observing changes is part of a system of learning.

We can take an environment, propose to make a change (i.e. in value or enablement systems), run a pre-mortem, make the change, run a post mortem and learn.

The use of stories, the politics of stories, text analysis to find patterns and a desire to find a truth are very poor ways of learning about a landscape.

It's not just strategy that suffered from this, culture seems awash with secrets of success, stories and magic thinking.

So why a difference between Engineering and Humanities? I don't know whether there is. I can only speak from a scientific tradition.

In science there is a rejection of truth as a value (there is no truth) and it is replaced with a constant pursuit of less imperfect models ...

... this can often cause problems in general policy if people seek a "truth" to write policy around. The best in Science we can achieve is a consensus to what the least imperfect models are.

But I realise that I actually know very little about how the humanities operate as a discipline.

Do they share the same values i.e. there no truth just a constant pursuit of less imperfect models or do people believe that there can be a truth?

X : The purpose of the subject was to train you to be persuasive within the rules of the game
Me : Persuasion? Seriously? That's a terrifying basis for any discipline to be built upon.