Thread by @SteB777

Further to my point about this, and it is really crucial for understanding the climate and ecological emergency we are in, and the failure of our system to change direction, is what Kuhn says about paradigm shifts and the structure of scientific revolutions.🧵

https://twitter.com/SteB777/status/1453343615376363520

Thomas Kuhn says science textbooks give the false impression that science is a slow accumulation of knowledge and so the new big picture science portrays, the new paradigm is consistent with past understandings of science. Kuhn says this is not the case.

Kuhn says each time there is a major paradigm shift, that the new paradigm is often incommensurate with previous scientific views of the world. That it creates an entirely different view of the world we live in.

Therefore, rather than science being a slow accumulation of knowledge, there are a series of discontinuous new scientific revolutions, which entirely overturn our previous views of the world we live in. This is often overlooked, and it's implications are massive.

Since the Enlightenment in the 17th Century most academic works, whether they be in economics, political science, political ideologies and philosophy, have been based on the scientific knowledge of the time, and the big picture of the world in which we live.

This picture of paradigm shift in science by Kuhn in the early 1960s has been hugely influential and most concede that something like this is actually the case, even if they don't agree with all the details of Kuhn's exposition of this phenomenon.

As I say, the implications of this series of discontinuous jumps to entirely different world views is massive. It not only means that the old scientific views of the world become completely obsolete, but that of all the other academic disciplines based on these world views.

This is especially the case for classic economics, and political theory. Most of the economic and political theory our modern society runs on, is based on ideas from a long time back, early in the 20th Century, the 19th Century or older.

However, the complete change in the big picture of the world we live in, presented by science, is totally at odds with the old world view on which modern economics and political theory is based.

What I am saying, is this change in scientific world view created by our knew knowledge of climate breakdown, biodiversity and it's decline and structure, most especially ecology and systems, was not available when this economic theory was formulated.

This means most economic theory is not merely out of date, but it is very dangerously misguided as it makes assumptions about the world we live in that are totally false. This accounts for the problems in classic economics @ProfSteveKeen has highlighted.

This is why economics doesn't just need a slight update, it needs a totally new start from something like doughnut economics that @KateRaworth has developed. Because economics has not gone through the same paradigm shifts science has, even though it was based only old science.

To use an analogy. It is like a modern high tech aircraft or spaceship, being controlled by old obsolete software and hardware, that has since been found to be dangerous and unreliable.

Our modern society is being piloted by politicians, bureaucrats, business leaders etc, whose total knowledge of the world, and their world views, are based on mistaken ideas of the world from 100-300 years ago.

These older world views on which modern economics, financial theory and political theory, are based on, are ideologies and ideas that knew nothing about sustainability, modern climate science, ecological science and systems theory etc.

It isn't that when the basics of economic, financial and political theory were founded, that they had only a dim view of this modern scientific understanding. They had no knowledge of these sciences at all, and presumed the world was entirely different than it actually is.

Scientific ecology only started to emerge as a subject in the first part of the 20th century. Climate science, emerged in a similar time frame. Likewise, systems thinking only started to emerge just prior to WW2. These fields of knowledge, totally transformed everything.

Our knowledge didn't gradually accumulate. There was simply no trace of this understanding of the world in the 19th Century, and yet the foundations of our modern economic, financial and political systems had already been set in stone before the end of the 19th Century.

This is why our 21st Century system, its economics, politics, financial and business structure are totally unable to cope with the challenges of addressing the climate and ecological emergency, because it is based on world views incommensurate with the modern scientific views.

This is what @GretaThunberg and other young thinkers mean, when they say the politics and system to deal with the climate and ecological emergency, do not yet exist. All this old economic, financial and political thinking, is totally obsolete, fit only for the scrap heap.

It's not that our economic, financial and political theory and structure is just a bit out of date, it is totally mistaken, dangerously delusional, based on ideas of the world from long ago, that were totally false.

Undoubtedly, this is my most important tweet thread, based on 50 years of deep thinking and research, but unfortunately I think it will go over the heads of many. However, it is the real TRUTH.

It is not based on certainties of how things actually are, BUT THE ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY THAT THE VIEWS OUR MODERN SYSTEM IS BASED ON, ARE TOTALLY FALSE AND PROVEN WRONG. This is the most certain type of knowledge available to us. Knowing what is definitely wrong.

This explains all the points many other thinkers and scientists have observed, and why the climate and ecological emergency cannot possible be addressed with our modern system.

@GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg @ClimateHuman @KevinClimate @JKSteinberger @LeoHickman @dpcarrington @GreenRupertRead @adamvaughan_uk @NaomiAKlein @NaomiOreskes @KateRaworth @ProfSteveKeen @theAliceRoberts

Please tag anyone in you think might be interested in this and please RT. I am not asking people to accept the exactness of what I say, or to see this as my idea. But we must discuss this. We must think about this and have dialogue about these phenomenon.

@threadreaderapp Please unroll?