soros...
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I call the passive relationship the “cognitive function” and the active relationship the “participating function,” and the interaction between the two functions I call “reflexivity.” Reflexivity is, in effect, a two-way feedback mechanism in which reality helps shape the participants’ thinking and the participants’ thinking helps shape reality in an unending process in which thinking and reality may come to approach each other but can never become identical. Knowledge implies a correspondence between statements and facts, thoughts and reality, which is not possible in this situation. The key element is the lack of correspondence, the inherent divergence, between the participants’ views and the actual state of affairs. It is this divergence, which I have called the “participant’s bias,” which provides the clue to understanding the course of events. That, in very general terms, is the gist of my theory of reflexivity.
The theory has far-reaching implications. It draws a sharp distinction between natural science and social science, and it introduces an element of indeterminacy into social events which is missing in the events studied by natural science. It interprets social events as a never-ending historical process and not as an equilibrium situation. The process cannot be explained and predicted with the help of universally valid laws, in the manner of natural science, because of the element of indeterminacy introduced by the participants’ bias. The implications are so far-reaching that I can’t even begin to enumerate them. They range from the inherent instability of financial markets to the concept of an open society which is based on the recognition that nobody has access to the ultimate truth. The theory gives rise to a new morality as well as a new epistemology. As you probably know, I am the founder—and the funder—of the Open Society Foundation. That is why I feel justified in claiming that the theory of reflexivity has guided me both in making and in spending money.
But is it possible to come up with a valid new theory about the relationship between thinking and reality? It seems highly unlikely. The subject has been so thoroughly explored that probably everything that can be said has been said. In my defense, I did not produce the theory in a vacuum. The logical indeterminacy of self-referring statements was first discussed by Epimenides, the Cretan philosopher, who said, “Cretans always lie,” and the paradox of the liar was the basis of Bertrand Russell's theory of classes. But I am claiming more than a logical indeterminacy. Reflexivity is a two-way feedback mechanism, which is responsible for a causal indeterminacy as well as a logical one. The causal indeterminacy resembles Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, but there is a major difference: Heisenberg’s theory deals with observations, whereas reflexivity deals with the role of thinking in generating observable phenomena.
I am thrilled by the possibility that I may have reached a profound new insight, but I am also scared because such claims are usually made by insane people and there are many more insane people in the world than there are people who have reached a profound new insight. I wonder whether my insight has an objective validity or only a subjective significance. "
http://www.geocities.com/ecocorner/intelarea/gs1.html
I think the source, of instability, is the individual quest for peak experience....
It does appear, that colin wilson, is, ahead of the game, in many ways.
