The Tyranny of Evidence

Is it time to end our affair with evidence?

A central aspect of my philosophical work these days is this: to warn against over-estimating, for example, how much one can learn from past financial crises, in thinking about future financial crises. How much, to put it in more general – and philosophical – terms, one can learn inductively. There is plenty one can learn; but there is also a severe limit on what one can learn. There is a limit, in other words, on the value of evidence.

The danger of not being continually aware of this point is that one may think, at least unconsciously, that there are specific lessons to learn and that, once one has learnt them, then one's job is done and one has genuinely ensured as best one can that there will not be further such crises in the future.

This would be a hubristic stance. Hubris, in the long run, inevitably leads to nemesis.

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David Morey 2 21 August 2015

Good stuff. Control, reducing potential outcomes, doing controlled experiments give us good science, but natural reality is very different being unmeasurably complex, open, involving meaning, interpretation, emergent phenomenon, creative responses, emotions, desires and one off contingencies; so good idea to recognise the limits and context in which we can try and apply whatever knowledge we are able to muster. Every event starts off being new, unique and surprising, until it does the same again and forms a pattern.