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I. Theory and practice

1. In broad terms, theory is how matters get represented, whereas practiceis howmattersgetdone

Therelationsbetweentheory andpractice couldlogicallybeagenuinedialectic, definedhere asa

dynamiccyclebetweentwo processes guiding eachotheralong.Thepractice is theory- driven, and

the theory is practice-driven; the theory envisions and expounds the practice; and the practice

specifiesandimplementsthe theory(Fig. 1). The output from theory is top- down, whilst theoutput

frompractice isbottom-up.The more theoreticalthe operation, the more steady and and precise thepracticalguidance needs to be.2. However, in several scenarios the dialectic goes out of alignment. In

one, theory runs ahead of practice, e.g., devising abstract plans and goals from the top down without

concrete methods to implement them from the bottom up. So you proceed withpartial approximations o

a practice: reasoning from previous experience with similar practices, and trying to adapt and implemen

ones that worked before. The practice can undergo tuningand become steadily more effective as the

practice catches up with the theory.

3. In the converse scenario,practice runs ahead of theory,e.g., engaging in sundry activities with no

sound conception of plans and goals. Here, you proceed onpartial approximationsof a theory,

reasoning from previous knowledge of similar theories, and trying to rethink them for new situations. Th

theory can undergotuning and become steadily more rational as it catches up with the practice.

4. In a more radical scenario, theory runs away from practice, e.g., theorizingfrom the top down and

disregarding practical consequences or applications. Theorizingbecomesitsowngoal,and

theoreticiansclaimanindependentand superior authority over practitionershandling practical matters

(I.23, 34; II.187). A theory may indeed be valued precisely for its distance from practice.

5. In the converse radical scenario,practice runs away from theory, e.g., using methods that baldly

ignore or contradict the professed theory. You invoke a false theory which presents you in a favourable

perspective, and disclaim responsibility for your true and unfavourable actions.6. In the first pair of scenarios, you retain the potential to make theory and practice converge, as when a

novice gradually becomes a veritable expert. In many domains, however, a total convergence of theory

with practice could only be a state of utopia an ultimate, unreachable goal. To keep proceeding

toward the goal, heartened rather than daunted by the unlimited space for progress, is a hopeful

utopia; to abandon your search for the goal in despair is a hopeless utopia.1Unhappily, the

hopeful utopianis far more easily transformed into a hopeless one switching from selfless to selfish,

from idealist to cynic, from benefactor to exploiter, from liberator to tyrant than vice-versa.

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7. But in the more radical pair of scenarios, theory and practice cannot converge. Instead, an official

theoryis publicly declared but does not guide practice, whereas an operational theoryis not

publicly declared or is flatly denied but does guide practice. In parallel, official practiceis spuriously

claimed to be what gets done, whilst operational practice truly gets done but does not get admitted

8. The present Introductionwill be building on the basic terms and concepts just proposed, using a

method we might call concentric frames, working inward from general to specific, or outward from

specific to general (Fig. 2a-b). Theory and practice constitute the outermost frame; then theory and

practice in society; then theory and practice in some institution of society, such as education or science;

and finally at the centre, theory and practice in some specific concern of that institution, such as

language education or language science.

Each issue is thus situated within concentric contexts, e .g., how a society based on inclusive theory bu

exclusive practice sustains a corresponding contradiction in science and education despite well-

intentioned projects for inclusion. Recovering a genuine dialectic requires making explicit both the

theoreticalnessof human practices and the practicalityof human theories.

I.A. Theory and practice in society

9. Democracy, the currently dominant official theory of the state, envisions, in abstract terms,universal inclusion and equality for every citizen, and calls for such institutions as free elections and

universal education as the operational means. In return, the practices of such institutions specify, in

concrete terms, how to implement inclusion and equality, e.g., by conducting voter registration at

election time or standard examinations at the end of school terms. A total convergence of theory with

practice in a democracy would be perhaps the most obvious utopia. But a democracytruly merits the

name only as a hopeful utopia that vigorously promotes its theory in its practices, e.g., by means of

equal rights legislationand equal opportunity employment. A society that endemically restricts the

human rights of women or minorities cannot be a democracy, no matter how loudly it calls itself so and



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no matter how many elections and school exams it can boast.

10. The agenda of ecologismupholds genuine democracy through a dialectical convergence between

inclusive theories and inclusive practices that promotes the expansion of human potential. We can

accordingly define social progressas inclusive practice converging with inclusive theory, versus

social regresss as exclusive practice divergingfrominclusive theory (Fig.3).2

By these terms, many events or processes labelled progressin public discourse do not qualify, such as

the economic progressbenefiting only the top classes of society and neglecting the rest (cf. I.23f; VII.1VIII.51-54).

11.Four factorscouldbe described incorresponding terms. In the factor of social roles,inclusion

producesinsidersin a group, whereas exclusion produces outsiders (Fig. 4). People can naturally

.

occupy both roles as insiders for some groups and outsiders or others. The vital question for

ecologism is how these roles can strengthen equality and respect for human rights through the

mutual treatment of insiders and outsiders.

12.Inthefactorofhumaninteraction,solidarityinteracts outward on equal levels amongst

insiders, whereas powerinteracts downward on unequal levels against outsiders. Inclusion in a power

group can empowerthe insiders and disempowerthe outsiders. Whereassolidarity is a restful statpromoting human rights and drawing people into supportive co-operation, power is a restless state

demoting human rights and impelling people into divisive conflicts, typically over money and property



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(Fig. 5). The ecological practice for a power group would be to empower outsiders and resolve conflicts

and not, as commonly occurs, to exploit and foment.

13. In the factor of human potential, actualisationfrees you to realise and build your potential in

meaningful activities selected by your own free inclination, whereas alienationlimits your potential to

meaninglessactivities dictated by others (Fig. 6).3

Becoming alienated and disempowered is an inner regressthat excludes steadily more aspects of you

human potential, thus engendering and aggravating inner conflicts among the perpetrators who alienate

and the victims who get alienated, and maybe culminating in violence (cf. I.18, 38).

14. The counterpart term actualisationis far less familiar, no doubt being rarer in modernsocieties.

Becoming actualized and empowered is inner progressthat includes steadily more aspects of your

human potential, and thus reconciles inner conflicts and promotes mutual respect. Ecologism holds that

actualisation should be recognised as an essential human right for democracy to advance, especially inadapting the design of its educational systems to reflect more progressive insights on such concepts as

intelligence(cf. I.57ff, 74).

15. In the factor of ideology, defined here neutrally as a framework of ideas that legitimise what is

natural, normal, proper, and legitimise what is not,4a left-wing ideologyholds that human rights

are inclusive and equal in theory, even though, short of utopia (in the sense of I.6), social conditions

create exclusions and inequalities in practice. The borders between insiders and outsiders should be

attenuated; conflicts should be reconciled; and the empowerment for actualisation should be actively

nurtured. Social progress (in the inclusive sense of I.10) is a sound investment, and constitutes asignificant duty of the state and its institutions, as professed for instance by the ideology of socialism.

16. A right-wing ideologyholds that human rights must be exclusive and unequal in both theory and

practice, in exact proportion to each individuals share of wealth and power, no matter how these were

acquired. The borders between insiders and outsiders should be accentuated to keep people in their

proper places; conflicts should be manfully foughtuntil victory or deathto ensure the survival of the

fittest; those who prove unfitare wholly to blame for any disempowerment and alienation they suffer.

Social progress is a reckless experiment, and constitutes an irresponsible intrusion of the state, as

professed for instance by the ideologies of the free marketand social Darwinism.



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dynamic criteria like education, initiative, and enterprise. Families are smaller than the environment

could support and their ties are weaker and more fragile; care for the young, the aged, and the sick is

consigned to institutions like rest homes. The grouping of insiders and outsiders, and the distribution of

power, follow the right-wing and left-wing oscillations of state ideology. The economy organises manual

(blue-collar) labour into large enterprises, and interposes layers of (white-collar) management to

oversee and motivatethem. In response, labour forms unions to attenuate the social divide between

the working classand the middle class, and propagates patterns of inclusive consumption of lower-

priced commodities like compact cars. Unions can also protect jobs during expansions of technology,

as when assembly lines get partially mechanised by robots. The environment is regarded as a resource

for commerce and industry to exploit, regardless of depletion and pollution. Alienation and social

disorders are common, and their agents get isolated in mental wards or prisons, or dumped on the

streets.

22. A post-modern societysharpens the tension between hierarchical and egalitarian modes of

organisation. The grouping of insiders and outsiders, and the distribution of power, are subject to abrup

and radical changes. Social diversity flows from multiculturalism and multilingualism, but finds

expression mainly in superficial life styleslike fashions in pop music, clothing, and, recently, body-piercing. Few societies have yet seriously faced the diversity by reaffirming equality in human rights, an

many quietly or openly seek to deny or repress it, e.g., by drastically restricting immigration. The

operational theory of democracyjuggernauts off to the far right as whole governments and national

economies fall under the power of immense multinational banks and corporations. Labour and capital

are globalisedas these power groups circle the planet on the trail of favourable conditions, which, in

the discourse of corporate cynicism, means government incentives, privatisations, abysmal wages,

hazardous working conditions, and an absence of labour unions, public health care, environmental

safeguards, and (above all) taxes (II.119ff). Workers see their buying power melt away, and much of the

middle class sinks down into the working poor, who are redundant and irrelevant as consumers when

the economy shifts over to the exclusive consumption of high-priced commodities like luxury cars.

Families are pressured to reassume social burdens such as care for the young, the aged, and the sick,

whilst the social safety netis legislated away and social services are shut down because taxes are cut

and taxable wealth is shelteredor moved offshore. The natural environment gets intrusive competition

from the virtual realitieswhere alienation is released by vaporising aliens. Social disorders grow

intense, swellingthelegionsofjoblessvegetatinginovercrowded prisons or desolate streets.

23. These basic stages, as described here in theory, can assume a variety of forms in practice.

Egalitarian pre-modern societies sustained a close association between theoretical and practicalknowledge. Modern societies, in contrast, have proliferated theoretical knowledge apart from practical

knowledge, and elaborately dissociated theoreticiansfrom practitioners(cf. I.4, 34). Post-modern

societies are managed by tiny groups of publicly inaccessible theoreticians within commerce and

technology whose theories and practices equate economic progresswith rises in executive salaries,

stock prices, and shareholder profits, full stop (cf. I.10).

24. Such dissociations perfectly suit a society whose official theories are inclusive and operational

practices are exclusive. This unsettling polarity can line up with those of freedomversus domination; of

equalityversus discrimination; of economic growthof the few versus economic shrinkage of the many



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and of peace-keepingversus war-mongering. The dissociated society glibly professes the one and live

by the other, all of which burdens the social order with a smouldering underside of social disorder that

must eventually erupt (I.32; VII.38).

25. Modernisationmight be roughly described by the four scenarios in I.2-7. Theory runs ahead of

practice, as when a country abolishing colonialism names itself a democracybut makes no

fundamental provisions to guarantee comprehensive human rights. A new elite supplants the old in

battening on the masses whose lives barely improve. Further social inequalities may mirror divisions by

region (e.g., urban or rural, coast or interior), education (e.g., A-level or O-level, tertiaryorsecondary),

and profession (e.g., bureaucrat or farmer, manager or clerk).

26. In the converse scenario,practice runs ahead of theory, as when new technologies are introduced

with no conception of how they may affect the social order. They typically generate moneyed

technology eliteswhose access to global communication and information distances them ever further

from the masses.

27. In a more radical scenario, theory runs away from practice, as when post-colonial nations pass

legislation granting full officialstatus to indigenous languages yet continue to conduct official business

and economic activity in the language of the former colonial masters.28. And in the converse radical scenario,practice runs away from theory, as when a new democracy

retains the secret police of the old dictatorship under a new name like information management bureau

The operational practices are secretly augmented to suppress the publicly legalised opposition.

29. Despite the labels, pre-modernism, modernism, and post-modernism need not form any uniform or

precise historical sequence. Substantial leeway inheres in assigning a date to the onset of modernism,

and, even more, to its presumed transition into post-modernism. What I am calling modernismin

hindsight gradually crystallised from a complex of social, political, economic, demographic, and

technological trends whose timetables differed appreciably among countries, regions, institutions, or

social classes. In the basic Westernmodel followed here, these trends generally included migrating

from rural to urban regions; decentralising power; expanding commerce and trade; raising efficiency in

production; forming new specialisations; and institutionalising national languages. Even these trends

have often focused on fairly specific sectors of society, and encountered entrenched resistance from

sectors who stood to lose through processes of change, notably the centralist authorities of church and

state.

30. Post-modernism in turn is generally associated with such trends as degrading urban centres and

migrating to suburbs; transferring state power to corporate power; painfully cutting back social services;

globalising commerce and trade; rationalising production and destroying jobs; concentrating newspecializations in high technology and communication; and expanding English world-wide over local

languages. The focus here has been still more specific, focused on the economic top, and resistance is

difficult mount, let alone consolidate.

31. By this account, both modernism and post-modernism have been practices running well ahead of

theories; and their retrospective theorisationhas been mostly undertaken by academics who are not in

control of the trends and, if neutralised by conservativemass media as fringe radicals(VII.30ff), exert

little impact on public discourse or private practice. Nor are the vast majority of the worlds citizens,



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holding no explicit theories at all of those trends, remotely in control of their own practices. They are

easily misled to equate progresswith innovative trends (like digital camerasand plasma television)

that are highly exclusive and should thus count as regressin the socially oriented sense of I.10.

32. The new millennium seems destined to endure the full strain of post-modernism being injected into

societies that still embody a vertiginous mix of pre-modernism and modernism, so that the term

democracyfor a whole society signifies at best a mosaic and at worst a euphemism. Diverse

populations live in dramatically disparate stages of evolution as in the luxury condowith high-tech

workstationssurrounded by hovels without running water or electricity. This mixing gets spread all

round the world by globalisation, and threatens to foster explosive breakdowns in communication and

interaction, and thus in social cohesion, human responsibility, and democratic principle (Ch. VII).7

33. The response of ecologism might be to promote a lively dialecticofdeconstructionand

reconstruction by analysing discourse to determine which social practices are implied by the official

theory; how they diverge from the operational practices; and how more inclusive alternatives might help

theory and practice converge for real social progress (I.10; II.182ff). As ecologist agents, we would also

seek convergence between our dual social roles. As theoreticians, our discourse could expound practic

driven theories for social progress, e.g., a theory of text and discourse centred on strategies forenhancing equality (Ch. VI); and to deconstruct impractical theories unsuited for social progress, e.g., a

theory of language by itself(cf. II.41f). Aspractitioners, our discourse could model and implement

theory-driven practices to take account of new discoveries, and to propose future theories, e.g.,

classroom methods using new insights into language due to large corpora of authentic data (II.202); and

to deconstruct anti-theoretical practices which ignore new discoveries and shun contact with theories, e

g., classroom methods preaching purist rulesfar from authentic usage (II.13f, 18f).

34. Finally, we might analyse discourse to show how theoreticiansand practi-tionerspossess

complementary kinds of knowledge, and deconstruct discourses attributing great knowledge to the

former and little to the latter (I.4, 23). We can retrace the devaluing of practical knowledge from divisive

historical processes of modernisation, specialisation, and education; and show it to be patently

misplaced in a post-modern society whose survival depends on united initiatives in practical knowledge

to protect and restore our human and natural environment.

I.B. Language and discourse as theory and practice

35. Again in the broadest terms, a languageis a theory of cognitive knowledge and social experience

(what language users know and live), and discourseis itspractice (how they talk about it),8both side

interfacing the linguistic, cognitive, and social domains (cf. II.84, 111, 143). A text(lower case) would

be a communicative eventthat contributes to a discourseas a set of mutually relevant texts, usually a

conversation; a Text(upper case) would be a communicative unitproduced by a discursive event and

recorded in some prosodic or visual medium. Any relevant sub-unit, such as a Phrase, Clause, or

Paragraph, can be called a Stretch of Textto remind us where it belongs. Still, the Text is not just a

series of units but rather a tri-modal systemthat integrates the sub-systems of Lexicogrammar, Prosody

and Visuality (Chs. III-V). Thus, a text can deploy not just language, but also tone of voice, gesture,

facial expression, imagery, photographs, cinema, or some combination of such resources.



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36. Here at least, thedialecticbetween theory and practice, stated to be fundamental at the outset

(I.1), is well secured. The practices are richly theory-drivenbecause discourse draws upon languag

as a theoryor indeed a vast network of theoriesfor representingour worldand ourselves, and

for constructing alternative states of the world, or even, as in literary discourse, whole alternative worlds

(II.175, 182). Participants must theoriseextensively about what words mean, what people intend, what

makes sense, and so on. Meanings are especially theoretical entities, like mini-theorieswe cant prove

though they generally suffice for practice. We understand each other insofar as our language-theories

have a parallel construction which becomes tuned during discourse. And this tuning steadily maintains

the language in the dynamic process of being both confirmed and constituted by discursive practices (cf

II.21, 157, 178; VI.3, 10.3).

37. By this account, discourse is the most theoretical practicehumans can perform, and the most

efficient and effective in using the least effort for the most goals. In return, language is the most practica

theoryhumans can devise an unlimited theory of everythingoffering resources to shape and guide

almost any practical activities. Yet language as theory also runs ahead of discourse as practice by fore-

shadowing some further certainty and precision beyond what is attained on any one occasion. As I shal

be showing later on, a criticalanalysis of a text or discourse regularly uncovers some uncertainty andimprecision a natural reflex of the openness of language for an unlimited range and variety of

expressions.

38. By a similar reasoning, language is the most inclusive theoryhumans can devise, and thus the mos

progressivefor integrating people as insiders. The practices of discourse navigate our social relations

within the family, peer group, school, and career. Of course, language can exclude people as outsiders,

but I submit that doing so turns language against its natural potential. Consider how frankly the

discourses of radical exclusion as in racism and colonialism, reduce and debase the language in order

to reduce and debase human beings with hatespeak smears like scum, animals, savages, niggers,

coolies,towelheads, etc. (cf. VII33ff). Consider too how often a refusal to use language is a glaring ac

of exclusion or an ominous prelude to violence, which constitutes the ultimate reduction of the human

potential of both perpetrators and victims (cf. 0.2; I.13, 18). The essential nature of language, and the

fundamental rationale of its very existence, must be inclusion.

39. This reasoning leads to a vision of language being our foremost hopeful utopiawith a limitless

potential for improving our knowledge and understanding, and sharing them with an ever wider

community. Even the single text is work in progressin the special sense (proposed here) of moving

toward more inclusive theory through more inclusive practice (cf. 0.13; II.134). The utopian challenge to

the sensitive speaker or writer is to sustain a clear direction of progress throughout the textual workofproduction until the text is judged sufficiently efficient, effective, and appropriate (cf. II.113).

40. However, inclusion in theory and practice is vitally sensitive to social equality and inequality,

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suggested in Fig. 7.Linguistic equalitycould advancesocial equalitywith the theory that all the worlds

languages have equal potential for expressing or communicating relevant any content; none is definitive

ly superior or inferior. Such is firmly sustained by the official theory of linguistics (II.38), which has,

however, not generated a really practical programme for social equality through discursive equality.

41. In contrast, linguistic inequalitycould advance social inequalitywith the theory that some

languages are definitively superior and deserve the most respect. Such was long firmly sustained

by the official theory of colonialism, the ideology empowering higher culturesto govern lower

cultures, occupy their territories, and extract their labour and resources. The indigenous peopleswere declared unfit to govern themselves, their primitiveor savagelanguages being unsuited

for expressing civilised ideas. Forced to communicate with their colonial masterson earthy

matters, they improvised varieties that came to be known as pidginsand creoles.9Even after

independence, these remained the practical media for discursive inequalitybetween the masses

and the standard-speaking elites

.42. I would accordingly describe social equality and inequality as the leverage points deciding whether

and whom the dialectic between language as theory and discourse as practice empowers or

disempowers. Yet by an ironic reversal, inequal-ities in language and discourse are being exploitedtoday as justifications for social inequality, such as denial of employment.10Now that other modes of

discrimination are prohibited, speakers of inferiorlanguages or varieties are routinely disempowered

and deprived of the right to be heard. Should they manage to switch to superiorones, they may find

themselves alienated from friends and family.11

43. Evidently, the official theory of linguistic equality presently fails to guide practices of discursive

equality, whilst operational theory guides practices of both linguistic and discursive inequality. The

ecologist agenda seeks practical theories of equality to guide practices toward linguistic and discursive

equality. On thetheory-side

of language, we can help to design practical models for rendering the

supposedly superior languages or varieties more reliably teachable and learnable to promote inclusion

in socially strategic domains of discourse, such as access to new technologies. In parallel, we can help

to design practical models for exploiting the capacities of the supposedly inferior ones to accommodate

those domains, such as technical terminologies, which should improve public attitudes. On the practice

sideof discourse, we can help to map out inclusive strategies which favour social equality and reconcile

inequality, and which deconstruct undemocratic attitudes about superiority and inferiority.

44. Expressed in terms of the social factors aired for theory and practice in I.A, we should explore how

strategies of discourse include hearers or readers as insiders, or exclude them as outsiders, or do both



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at once, e.g., by addressing a group of outsiders who aspire to become insiders although only a select

few will be genuinely included, as in higher education (I.49, 55).

45. Further, we can explore how strategies of discourse either promote solidarity for joining with others

on equal terms; or else promote power for controlling others on unequal terms; and how such strategies

either empower people to actualise their potential, or else disempower them to be alienated by others.

We may expect solidarity in friendly conversations; empowerment in user-friendly presentations of

special knowledge; and disempowerment in strenuously technical presentations. Even purporting to

objectively speak the truthor report the factscan be an unobtrusive and effective move for discursive

power.

46. A key question in our explorations is whether the participants in discourse must choose between

moves of including or excluding, between solidarity or power; or can remain neutral. Isolated Words or

Phrases can seem neutral, but longer and richer Stretches of Text rarely are, due to the agenda of

intentions and the factor of attitudes.12Ostensibly neutral discourse may prove to be camouflaged

discourse of power. Still, inclusion and exclusion could be relative rather than total, and could be

intended or accepted to varying degrees in discourse. Or, those moves could remain largely below our

awareness whilst enacting unequal roles, such as parent and child, employer and employee, master anservant, landlord and tenant, bureaucrat and citizen.

47. For its agenda of promoting the solidarity that unites and deconstructing the power that divides,

ecologism can derive its firmest grounds for a hopeful utopia from the fundamentally inclusive essence

of language (I.38f). We are not bending language and discourse to some private politics or personal

philosophy for our own advantage; indeed, we would probably reap greater material benefits from dryly

academicor purely theoreticalstudies. We are merely progressing toward an ecological ambience

where language and discourse are steadily more empowered to actualise their natural potential for

inclusion.

48. Furthermore, I would argue that many implicit human theories resemble language in implying a

hopeful utopia and endlessly seeking some higher certainty, finality, or completeness. Science,

philosophy, and religion are three monumental utopian theories for intellectual and spiritual discovery;

and democracy is one for the social order. To widen our chances for improving human lives, we must

strive to acknowledge and revitalise the utopiandimensions of democratic societies as conceived by

their founders and articulated in their constitutions.

I.C. Theory and practice in modern education

49. Among the institutions in a society, education is an eminently cognitive, social, and linguisticenterprise. Yet its authority is served by appearing as a predominantly cognitive enterprise whose

linguistic and social domains are secondary or incidental (cf. I.58, 77; VII.55). In official theory, educatio

includes allcognitive outsiders who lack knowledgeby converting them into cognitive insiders who

possess knowledge; in operational practice, inclusion is mostly secured for linguistic insiders whose

home language or variety is approved in schooling; and for social insiders who hail from secure, well-to-

do families. The discrepancy reflects the historical legacy whereby private education for insiders

furnished the enduring model for education at large. The dominant pre-modern methods since antiquity



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have featured rote memorisation and repetition of authorised information, such as classictexts an

approach to educationwith remarkable longevity (I.53, 59f, 64, 74, 108; II.200).

50. To appraise cognition more precisely, I would propose a key distinction. Knowledgeis more

dynamicand integrative. Its content is characteristicallypractical, and naturallyacquiredfrom lived

experiences and directed intuitions among a cultural community. The operations for storing, retrieving,

and using it are relatively effortless. When not in active use, it can undergo spontaneous evolutionand

elaborationin mental storage and generate more of itself. New knowledge being entered can

reverberate through associated prior knowledge and update its specifications. Or, old knowledge can be

creatively modified and adapted for unfamiliar or novel applications.

51. By contrast, informationis more staticand compartmentalised. Its content is characteristically

theoretical, and consciously acquiredfrom specialized activities. The operations for storing, retrieving,

and using it are relatively effortful. When not in active use, it can undergo spontaneous conflationor

degradation. New information being entered is unlikely to be integrated with prior information unless the

mutual associations are expressly constructed. And old information can be difficult to modify or adapt to

unfamiliar or novel applications.

52. A pre-modern society is mainly knowledge-based, oriented toward manual labour and the productioof essential commodities in harmony with the environ-ment (cf. I.19). But as specialisation leads toward

the modern society, information steadily intensifies until the society is mainly information-based, and

information emerges as a commodity for sustaining wealth and power.13Today, the constant production

of information closes the circle by enforcing a heavy reliance on information technology, without which

you are doomed to the status of outsider.

53. The emphasis on memorisation and repetition in education essentially fosters methods that treat

knowledge as informationstatic, compartmentalised, theoretical, and consciously acquired. This tren

too has intensified during the evolution of modern education, so that new knowledge in the sciences

and the arts has, with a routine time lag, been converted to information for uses in education. The more

modernthe latter becomes, the greater the volume of information being taughtwhich is distinct from

knowledge and is unlikely to become knowledge. Instead, it degrades over time and becomes

inaccessible.

54. A dualism arises in the relation between the theory and practice of education itself what it

believes to be doing and what it is doing and the relation between the theoretical information it values

and the practical knowledge it devalues. The official theoryof modern educationis left-wingand

functionalistin its ideology, holding that all learners deserve and receive the samechances for success

within the samecurriculum, which equips them all to be well-informed citizensin practical life (but cf.I.58). The schools should work to ensure success; learners with problems should receive special help to

include them in the process. Yet the operationaltheoryof modern education is more oftenright-wingan

formalist, holding that only the superiorlearners merit the benefits of education, which should be

chiefly academic and theoretical, set apart from practical life. A wide-ranging scale of success and

failure is judged normal and natural, as in the social Darwinism of survival of the fittest(cf. I.16);

learners with problems should be sternly warned or severely punished, and, should they fail to improve

excluded altogether. As in other domains of society, the practices legitimised by the left are illegitimised

by the right, and vice versa (I.17); and spiralling conflicts over matters of policy can stymie any real



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progress in the system and thus result in a default victory for the regressive right.

55. Insofar as a modern society sustains inclusivetheories but exclusive practices (I.24), education

takes on the split functions of including insiders and excluding outsiders along much the same lines as

society itself. The split drives the operational right-wing theory known as the hidden curriculum:14

converting selected outsiders into insiders by a process so difficult and arbitrary as to leave a significant

portion of aspiring learners either included only along the margins or else excluded as life-long

outsiders, whilst representing the process as eminently fair. Flagrantly undermining the official theory ofdemocracy, the curriculum must be kept hidden, where it can unobtrusively deflect left-wing projects to

render education more inclusive and democratic.

56. The hidden curriculum favours practices of testingto yield moderate rates of high success and low

failure, and to place a large contingent in the middle as average, which is invidiously interpreted as

mediocreor even inadequate. As long as a modern society refuses to grant equal merit that entitles

equal benefits in adult life in such areas as employment, wages, or housing, the schools and colleges

are obligated to make children appear unequal at ages when their human potential is still rudimentary

and emergent. A profound reorientation is demanded:

[4] Schools [should empower] children whose different talents are developing at different speeds tohave experiences which will boost their confidence and give them a taste of success rather than

seeing themselves labelled as comparative failures in the three Rs, [lest they get] switched off

education before they even reached secondary school, especially from challengedfamilies (Tim

Brighouse, in BBC News).

Children get thoroughly tested and ranked long before they can actualise the linguistic, cognitive

and social skills that constitute genuine merit in the real world; and many whom the tests dump a

lower ranks become alienated and cease to strive for such skills, engulfed in a monstrous waste

of human potential (I.62):[5] They are catalogued, measured and deemed wanting the moment they enter school; they are

tested before they are instructed. The teacher becomes a judge; the classs standing in reading and

arithmetic is a yardstick of collective failure; and the fear of inadequacy pervades the classroom,

suffocating teacher and pupil alike.15

Even successful learners may be encouraged by testing to focus on vacuous but easily testable topics,

like doing long divisionor reciting historical dates.

57. The emphasis on testing strategically rationalises success or failure as products of the merit of the

individual learners, who are confronted with massive information and left to their own devices about how

to absorb it for testing. In one account, merit is decided by your individual intelligenceand aptitude,

which you have derived chiefly from nature or genetics and so cannot really control (VII.51). In the other

account, merit is decided by your diligenceand obedience, which you can and jolly well ought to control

To paper over the patent incompatibility between the two accounts, schooling might piously assume tha

intelligence is the material cause of diligence, or that diligence is the direct proof of intelligence.

58. Yet substantial evidence suggests that, barring cases of severe physical or mental disability, young

children entering school are all fairly equal in their cognitive abilities and potential their real

intelligence and aptitude. Where they are manifestly notequal is in their linguistic and social abilities.



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Camouflaging the hidden curriculum behind an image of fairness therefore accords with representing

education more as a cognitive enterprise than as a linguistic or social one (I.49). The sameinformation

gets presented in the samelectures or textbooks to all prospective learners who do the sametasks,

tests, and so on (cf. I.54) all of which might in reality be experienced as radically different among

learners from disparate linguistic and social backgrounds.

59. Due to this latent contradiction between sameness and difference, the estimates of intelligenceand

aptitudeinferred from rigid, uncreative test-taking skills are more properlyproductsof schooling than it

preconditions.16The hidden curriculum requires education not merely to manifest and confirm

differences in merit(the official theory), but also to devise and entrench them (the operational theory).

Social uniformity and neutrality are simulated by constructing a special cognitive and linguistic

framework remote from social life. In such schooling, a formalistapproachwhereby abstract theoretical

information, preferably facts and figures, gets learned for its own sake with utmost precision, is favoured

over a functionalistapproachwhereby concrete practical knowledge is learned for its human interest an

its applicability in later life. In parallel, the academic or technical discourse that is valued above ordinary

conversation foments commun-icative bottlenecks and encourages memorizing and reciting the

discourses of lectures or textbooks without needing to genuinely understand them. Learners arechallenged to assimilate themselves to an artificial sheltered environment, where some will feel socially

unwelcome or displaced. The conventional social values for this assimilation emphasise courtesy,

punctuality, neatness, and cleanliness; the cognitive values emphasise verbal and mathematical skills;

and the linguistic ones emphasise Standard English with punctilious spelling, punctuation, and penman-

ship. The heavily mainstream middle-class orientation of these values is tacitly deemed universal and

unquestionable, and conspicuous defiance may lead to denying meritand forfeiting the benefits of

education.

60. The emphasis on testing also imbues the whole system with a negative orientation. Arbitrary

theoretical norms or standards are imposed from the top down to distinguish between right and

wrong answers. Evaluation routinely assigns an equally arbitrary number of pointsto each

answer on the test, and subtracts the lost pointsfrom the total. Since most modern societies

have a decimal mentality, the standard total is 100, and the gradesare descending blocks of

10: 90-100for excellent, 80-89for good, 70-79for average, 60-69for poor, and 59and

below for complete failure. Especially when learners didnt know just what information would be

tested, they recite memorised discourse from textbooks or lectures, or fudge and guess in hopes

of hitting on the right answer. Yet the gradeconcocted out of these chancy practices is

solemnly construed to reveal how goodor poorthe learners themselves are. In effect, products

of alienation undercut the prospects for actualisation (cf. I.13f, 56, 61f, m 68, 82).

61. To produce clear distinctions in merit, tests and problems need to present substantial difficulties and

provide ample opportunities for wrong answers. In cognitive terms, testing demands not just a

theoretical capacity like intelligence, but a practical capacity to operate near the threshold of overload.

This condition sets in when the demands upon physical or mental processing overtax available

resources, and performance enters degradation, notably affecting the rapid and precise recall of

complex information. Learners who do quite well in a relaxed, co-operative, and actualising environmen



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with the freedom to check and revise their work might well suffer overload and do quite badly in a high-

pressure, isolating, and alienating environment.

62. And such is just the typical ambience of the conventional examination, especially a large-scale

test for a whole school term. It is too long and laborious to be done with real safety or thoroughness in

the time allowed; anxieties run high, given the threat of failing; the test takers are often jaded or

exhausted from swotting and cramming; help from classmates is sternly forbidden, as is the use of even

rudimentary aids, such as dictionaries or pocket computers. Quite plausibly, the results seriously

underestimate real abilities; the test situation shears off or flattens out potential peaks of success and

produces artificially deflated scores. Yet those same scores are certified to be the best indicators, if not

the onlyindicators, of the learnersachievement, or indeed of their potential for achievement. The ver

examinations treated as the key to classifying young people as high achieversor low achieversare

the tools most prone to misrepresent them. The lowones can marshal no effective defence against the

alienating image, which they are left to accept and internalise until they tune outor drop outwhich,

maintain, betokens a monstrous waste of human potential (I.56).

63. If all learners were totally equal at the start, a high-pressure testing system running near overload

would produce random results, with meritbeing accorded or denied by pure chance, like throwing diceBut if learners are equal only in their cognitive potential, the results will mirror inequalities in their social

and linguistic background (I.70). In official theory, children from the lower classesof society are free to

rise up by achieving merit. In the operational practice, doing so essentially demands assimilating

yourself to mainstream middle-class culture and language at the risk of being alienated from your home

culture and language (I.42).

64. The precise and detailed quantification of meritis managed through the grading system, which

entails several right-wing administrative theories abetting the hidden curriculum. The theory of the right

answerholds that the every item of school knowledge(i.e., information) corresponds to a single right

answerclearly distinguished from all wrong answers; and that teachers or test-markers are fully

informedto judge the distinction. The practice accords undue reverence to the exact wording of the

answers and so to the rote memorisation of educational discourse a pre-modern method in a

modernist setting (I.49, 53, 59f; II.200).

65. The theory of the grade averageholds that fluctuations among the individ-ual grades of a learner

should be balanced out, the low ones bringing down the high, and the high bringing up the low. This

theory ignores a basic imbalance. A low grade may be merely accidental when learners are feeling too

tired, anxious, or distracted to perform at their true potential, and so succumb to overload. A high grade

on the contrary, demands deliberate and concentrated effort and a staunch resistance to overload, andis therefore a far better indicator of learners potential. So when grades are averaged, minor accidents

can cancel out major achievements.

66. The theory of the grade curveholds that the results of a test or assignment should be spread

across a consistent pattern: some high gradesnear the top, some low gradesnear the bottom, and a

cluster of average gradesnear the middle (cf. I.68). In rigorous practice, pretexts may be invented for

giving lower grades than the learners actually earned. When a large portion performs near the top, their

grades may get squeezed and manipulated downward a travesty of fairness the learners will readily

perceive and resent. And, as I have noted, being averagemay be taken to mean not normalor



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typical, but mediocreor inadequate(I.56).

67. The cycle of right-wing reasoning is completed by the theory of grade inflation,holding that a

balancedgrade curve is natural and necessary; a notable proportion of high grades thus indicates not

the success of learners in performing the test, but the failure of teachers in not maintaining high

standardsand discipline. The term inflationartfully hints that teachers have been artificially pumping

the grades up to levels not justified by performance. But the conventional procedures of grading by high

pressure tests under conditions near overload would actually foster grade deflationby scoring learners

below their real potential (cf. I.69). If so, progressive teaching methods to support the actualisation of

that potential will naturally produce results falling significantly over the statistical mean within an

otherwise alienating programme. Such methods do not burden assess-ment with an unfair inflation but

rather free it from an unfair deflation.

68. Whereas ordinary examinations and their grades implicitly claim to deter-mine personal ability,

aptitude testsbearing anagrams like SAT, PSATand NMSQTdo so explicitly. These are advertised

to provide an objective and accurate measure of general human potential that reflects how well you will

succeed in higher educationand beyond in your future profession. For some years, applicants to

prestigious universities in the US were compelled to undergo these tests, and the results could decidewhether and where you would be admitted. To encourage schools in using the tests, the dominant

Educational Testing Service(ETS) charged not them but the captive test-takers, amassing annual

profits over $100,000,000 whilst listing itself as a non-profit organisation.17

69. Progressive research on the ETS tests themselves has roundly invalidated its advertisements. The

tests predict academic success marginally better than throwing dice; they are (no surprise) biased

toward mainstream middle-class culture; they exaggerate abstract theoretical reasoning in mathand

verbal skills; they are far longer than even the speediest freak can finish; the wrong answers are

subtracted from the right answers rather from the total of possible answers; the questions are craftily

designed to fool or mislead the unwary; and the scores can be suspiciously improved after expensive

special coaching. All these findings reveal that the tests unlikely are to produce a reliable assessment o

human aptitude; and that the results are even more unfairly deflated than conventional examinations.

70. A comparison with athletic sports might be helpful. There, novices participate in situated

learning18with experts on a playing field. The criteria for success or failure are clearly defined, e.g.,

strength, speed, or distance in lifting, throwing, running, and scoring. Efforts can be strategically

focused, e.g., practicing key movements and doing exercises to strengthen key muscles. Positive

achievements are clearly recognised among both novices and experts, and a rewarding sense of

progress is sustained. Even when your team loses a match, you have their support and the will to go onand surpass yourself in another match. Moreover, the rules of competition sports strictly prohibit and

penalise unfair advantages, such as ingesting steroids; and unfair disadvantages to harm your

opponents, such as inflicting bodily injuries.

71. Academic education, in contrast, abounds with advantages for insiders and disadvantages for

outsiders, depending whether your home language variety resembles the preferred academic variety; o

whether your family can afford a high-powered home computer or a private tutor. The more education

strives to be standardisedand to discount the rising cultural and linguistic diversity of post-modern



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society, the more this unfairness serves to divide insiders from outsiders in effect, confirming how

society has already divided their families (cf. I.55).

72. We might predict that learners who come from alternative or non-traditional cultures and whose

language variety is judged non-standardwill excel frequently in practical athletics but rarely in the more

theoretical and academic subjects. Similarly, they will regard sports as the most promising channels to

professional success in later life and the safest arenas to offset disadvantages in their academic

schooling. And the evidence confirming these predictions is incontrovertible.

73. So far, I have highlighted the more regressive right-wing currents in conven-tional education

because they most glaringly point up the disparities between its official theories and its operational

theories and serve the hidden curriculumof preparing children to acquiesce in social inequality within

an official democracy(cf. I.54f). Moreover, these currents are largely responsible for the educational

crisisperiodically castigated in the public media, with right and left in their usual deadlock. Right-wing

commentators hotly deny the very existence of the hidden curriculum, and attribute the crisis to

irresponsible teachers and learners refusing to respect the core values of hard work, diligence,

obedience, and so on; the solution is stricter discipline, harsher punishments, and frequent expulsions.

Left-wing commentators highlight the alienation engendered by the hidden curriculum, and attribute thecrisis to forceful resistance within a broader social and economic crisis when a diploma no longer

promises social rewards.

74. Whatever the causes, the schools incur greater risks as the social division between the few insiders

and the many outsiders grows explosively wide and acute. Alienating right-wing methods, such as rote

memorisation and repetition, still predominate among large public schools in poorly funded inner-city

districts, where many learners come from families of outsiders and are destined to stay outside.19

Meanwhile, progressive left-wing methods have gained in small private schools, with projects that are

more learner-centred, creative, interactive, and responsive to cultural differences. Model schools like the

Harvard Project Zero20and programs like LOGO21prove that learners who were once classified with

low intelligence and aptitudeby conventional schools are capable of impressive success after trading

an alienating environment for an actualising one. These practical findings corroborate the theory that

intelligenceand aptitudeare more the products of schooling than its preconditions and can be

significantly enhanced through progressive practices that fulfil the official democratic theory of

education.

75. The issues raised in this section should indicate why education deserves a central place on the

agenda of ecologism. Progress toward inclusion and equality can only be achieved if the majority of our

young people have not spent their formative years being been channelled through a system thatlegitimises exclusion and inequality, engenders alienation, disengagement, cynicism, or frank hostility,

and endangers the general credibility of social institutions and civic responsibility.

76. In an ecologist agenda, the process of getting educateddoes not consist merely of acquiring

specialised information and then reciting it on tests or parading it in the technical discourse of insiders.

Instead, the process must work to convert specialised information into relevant knowledge and integrate

it with general knowledge for communicating with outsiders whose interests are at stake, e.g., citizens

menaced by environmental pollution. A highly educatedperson is not one who hoards specialised

knowledge for personal status, but one who can share it to empower others. By this definition,



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communicating knowledge, and not just hoardinginformation, is the crucial measure of how educated

anyone deserves to be considered (II.112, 209). Knowledge is one possession that you increase for

yourself by giving it to others; explanation for them can bring clarification and renewal for you (I.49, 84;

II.113). Such could be the benefits of practices for progresstoward a convergence with an ecologist

theory of education for promoting free access to knowledge and society.

I.D. Theory and practice in modern science

77. Among the institutions of modern society, scienceis an eminently cognitive, linguistic, and social

enterprise. Yet even more than education (I.49), it is typically represented as a predominantly cognitive

enterprise whose linguistic and social dimensions are secondary or incidental; the term scienceitself is

emblematically derived from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge. If this representation lends

education an aura of fairness (I.58), it lends science an aura of authority.

78. As evidence of a cognitive emphasis, I would cite the collocationstypical word combinations

we shall explore later on22in the British National Corpus (BNC), a data bank of 100 million words of

contemporary British English texts (II.153ff). There, the Modifier scientificoften appears with cognitive

terms, such as knowledge(160 occurrences), theory(95), understanding(24), thinking(19),

thought(16); research(250), study(84), investigation(57), inquiry(24), discovery(44);

evidence(114), data(36), observation; (9), principle(33), idea(27), concept(17); objectivity(13)

fact(20), truth(12), proof(13). Occurrences are rarer with linguistic terms, such as paper(68),

language(12), terms(12), communication(9); writing(7); lecture(5), discussion(4); and with

social terms, such as work(58), activity(39), achievement(8); cooperation(20), collaboration(2).

Intriguingly, scientificnever occurs in the BNC with responsibility, nor with erroror mistake.

79. The cognitive emphasis fits the public image of science as an enterprise producing scientific

theoriesthat can be tested and proven trueor falseapart from the language of the discourses thatexpress them and from the social status of the theoreticians that advance them. The practices feature

calculating or observing scientific datawhich your theories purport to explain or even predict, rather

than deploying your powers of persuasion or your leverage and prestige. But if, as I assert, all human

activity integrates the cognitive, linguistic, and social (cf. I.35, 49), this decorum merely camouflages the

real power of persuasion and prestige.

80. The reputation of science as the most theoreticaldomain in society is somewhat misconceived. Th

theoreticalnessof science is undeniably the most explicit and formal, but far less complex and

elaborated than the implicit and informal theories members of society hold about the general

organisation of the world. The most theoretical entity of all is in fact our language, and discourse is the

most practical test, but not a proof (cf. I.B). And whereas the scope of most scientific theories is

expressly limited, the scope of language is unlimited (I.37).

81. The term classical science23has been used for ideology holding that the theory and practice of

science constitute objectiveexplorations of classical realityfully governed by determinacyand

causality, such that any phenomenon can be explained by a sole valid theorythe heavyweight

institutional equivalent of the sole right answerin education (cf. I.64). The influential family of related

ideologies includes realism: the real and concrete is more valid or true than the ideal and abstract;



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empiricism: all knowledge is derived from sensory experience; positivism: statements have

meaning only if they can be verified or falsified; physicalism: scientific explanations should refer only

to observable prop-erties of physical objects; unifiedscience: all sciences should be unified within

the purview of physics plus formal logic; mechanism: all biological process should be described in

terms of physics and chemistry; and behaviourism: humans and animals are to be studied through

observable and measurable behaviour. In their more radical discourses, these ideologies are

characteristically assertive, reductive, or exclusive, witness the foundational discourse quoted in [6].

[6] physical language is the basic language of all science [and] a universal language comprising the

contents of all other scientific languages. [] Closely associated with physicalism is the doctrine of th

unity of science: that there are no logicaldistinctions tobedrawnbetweenthedifferentbranchesof

science. (Rudolf Carnap)24

On the opposite side are arrayed such ideologies as idealism: the ideal and abstract is more

valid or true than the real and concrete; and mentalism: human knowledge and activity are

based upon representations in the mind. But these are more at home in philosophy than in

science proper.

82. The 20thcentury saw the downfall of classical science among scientists, due to challenges

from general relativity, quantum theory, chaos theory, superstring theory, and so on. But the

classical image persists in public discourse and education to sustain the authority of experts and

teachers. Science is taughtin the schools as informationreserved for especially smartpeople

who become expertsand either cultivate pure theory free from practice, or else turn science into

policies the society must accept.

83. The most discussed version of classical science is normal science, wherein a dominant

paradigminforms both theory and practice. The currently accredited theory sets the approved

framework for theorisingand the suitable practices for solving specific types problems we might callpuzzles, like sets of prefabricated pieces to assemble. Every puzzle solved implicitly reconfirms the

theory; mean-while, the theory elides unwelcome or potentially disruptive issues. The cognitive aspects

follow well-fenced channels, while the linguistic aspects obey the terminology propagated for the theory

and the social aspects favour the scientific communitysharing the paradigm. So all three aspects

sustain the theory regarding high technology, funding agencies, editorial boards, conference calendars,

university programmes, and so on. Insiders find normal science reassuring and rewarding, whereas

outsiders (my own customary role) find it complacent and myopic.

84. Inanecologistaccountofscience,theory

wouldbearepresentationofnature

designedtoyieldexplanation,whilstpracticewould be the objects and events of

naturethatconstitutethedatatobeexplained.Thisaccountseesagenuinedialectic whereinthetheory

explains current data and predicts future data by means of theory-driven, top-down input, whereas the

data either confirm or refute the theory by means of data-driven, bottom-up input (Fig. 8).



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By highlighting explanationand not just knowledgeor discovery, this account reunites the cognitive

aspects with the linguistic and social aspects of science as dynamic activity. Achieving knowledge is jus

preliminary to communicating it to society; knowledge is the main possession you increase for yourself

by sharing it with others (I.76). Science constitutes an eminently hopeful utopia(in the sense of I.6):

despite occasional grandstanding about the end of scienceor the final answer, the space for new

discoveries is inexhaustible. However, I detect isolated strains of hopeless utopia in my own science of

linguistics, as in the pronouncement that speech cannot be studiedfor we cannot discover its

unity(see II.40).

85. A second dialectical cycle relates a theory-drivenexplanation giving input from the top downand

highlighting calculation, with a data-drivenexplanation giving input from the bottom upand highlighting

observation (Fig. 9).

These terms can be broadly understood as general processes of tuningby humans or machines (or

both operating in co-ordination). As complementary cognitive moves, calculation uses prior data to tune

current data, whilst observation uses current data to tune prior data; the tuning can deploy qualifying,

quantifying, calibrating, adjusting, reformulating, and so on. How these cognitive moves and their

outcomes can be efficiently and effectively represented in discursive moves is a complex issue which

scientists have rarely resolved, preferring the notion that the findings speak for themselves, or relyingon narrowly prescriptive conventions, e.g., organising the text into sections called method, results,

discussion, and so forth.

86. For observable phenomena, a third dialectic relates the material substrate ofmatterand energy with

the data substrateof information. The material substratemanifestsanddeterminesproperties,such as

the quantities and polarities of subatomic particles like neutrons, protons, and electrons, whereas the

data substrate registers and identifies those properties, such as the atom identifying an element as

hydrogen or lithium(Fig. 10).



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This dialectic operates in distinctive ways for each science. Some sciences like physics have a sparse

domainwith general and uniform constraints whereby material and data are relatedby hard

coupling(e.g. in acollision of particles); others like anthropology have a rich domainwith specific anddiversified constraints, where material and data are related by soft coupling(e.g. in a cultural festivity).

In sparse domains, the material tends to be elementary and its observation less informative, so

calculation is prominent; in rich domains, the reverse holds.87. The respective sciences might thus be described on a scale from sparsetoward rich. Fig. 11

shows a selection of the natural sciencesto the left, and of the human sciencesto the right.

Implicitly at least, each natural science refers in its foundations to the sparser one(s) to its left: physics

referring to mathematics, chemistry to physics, and biology to chemistry and physics. This referral can

reinforce institutional authority, insofar as mathematics and physics seem the most austere and

impregnable to challenge, and less implicated in sensitive ecological and commercial issues than

chemistry and biology (cf. I.97).

88.Mathematicsplainly has the sparsest source domain, its data concerning quantities and relations

It studies virtual objects or events having a pure data substrate and no material substrate and thus notbeing manifested or observed as real objects or events, such as the lines, planes, and solids in

Euclidian geometry, or the polynomial and linear functions of calculus. So its theories are consummately

abstract; and, before supercomputers introduced simulations, its practices ranked calculation far above

observation. However, its practices of representation and measurement can apply to most observed

phenomena of the other sciences, e.g., for dimensions and frequencies; and doing so can be an

eminent cognitive strategy for certifying the realnessof manifest objects.

89. Physicshas a richer domain, though still a relatively sparse one, its data concerning the most



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elementary forms of matter and energy. Its phenomena, such as mesons and baryons, or fermions and

bosons, are manifested as real objects; the material substrate is hard-coupled to the data substrate suc

that an elementary particle is directly determined by sparse information like mass, charge, and spin.

Observation relies on high technology like photo-ionization spectroscopy or laser interferometry, which

heralds an impressive rise in accuracy and reliability; and theoretical calculation grows increasingly

indispensable. Some phenomena, like the positron, i.e., the positively charged twin of the negatively

charged electron, were calculated before they were ever observed; others, like the graviton, i.e., the

particle responsible for the force of gravity, have only been calculated, and physicists yet hope to

observe them. Still others, like the elementary quarks strongly gluedtogether by gluons, can be

calculated but never observed in principle, or at least never isolated; so physics tries to circumvent

nature by creating something similar we can observe (I.110).

90. The dialectic of material and data portrayed back in Fig. 9 is intriguingly confirmed in recent models

of the interaction between matter particles(the fermions) and messenger particles(the bosons). The

four fundamental forces in the universe can be recalculated as interchanges of messenger particles:

photons for the electromagnetic force; gluons for the strong force holding the nucleus of the atom

together; W and Z bosons for the weak force regulating radioactive decay; and gravitons for gravity.2591. Physics is the science whose theoreticalnessis most prominent and may account for its pre

eminent status. Theory has been pushed the farthest, surpassing the boundaries of scientific

observation in the conventional sense. There, the functions of confirming or refuting are taken

over by calculation, with the referral to mathematics made quite explicit. In particular, superstring

theory, sometimes hailed as the theory of everythingor the end of physics, could be tested by

direct observation only at Planck energy of 1028gigavolts, as compared with the roughly 100

gigavolts attainable today.26But, startlingly enough, the conditions are amenable to calculation,

and to the degree of precision needed to determine the properties of stringstwenty powers often times smaller than a proton.

92. Chemistryhas a domain with an internal transition from sparser data on its inorganicside

more allied with physics, over to richer data on its organicside more allied with biology. Its

phenomena, such as elements and compounds, or polymers and proteins, are manifested as rea

objects in nature; the coupling of material and data is not so hard, thanks to emergent

properties, e.g., those of water as compared to hydrogen and oxygen; and observation is usually

much more tractable. The most significant referral to physics exploits the latters capacity to

describe matter and energy in previously unimaginable dimensions of size and speed. Whereasin physics high technology extends calculation and observation for increasingly tiny particles, in

chemistry it extends the famous periodic chart with a sequence of increasingly heavy

transuraniumand transactinideelements at the top end, where the mass numbers(i.e., total

numbers of neutrons and protons) become immense.27They are fabricated by practices adapted

from physics, mostly by bombarding lower-mass elements like lead or plutonium with neutrons or

ions. So great was the success that the need for new terminology fomented problems. At first the

new elements received names of early pioneering scientists (einsteinium, rutherfordium), then of



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more recent scientists (seaborgium, meitnerium), and finally just Latinate versions of their atomic

numbers (ununquadium at 114, ununhexium at 116). As the numbers rise, the properties become

purely theoretical, predicted from the lower elements of the same series (seaborgium from

tungsten, meitnerium from iridium). Observation must contend with extremely short half-lives

for ununhexium, only 0.0006 seconds. Ghostlyununoctium at 118 (half life of 0.0001 second)

turned out to be a false observation and was booted out of the periodic table in 2001 (good job it

wasnt named after anybody).2893. Chemistry also devises novel methods of observation, using femtosecondtechnology. In keeping

with the term a femtosecondbeing one quadrillionth of a second the technology deploys ultrafast

pulse lasers for accurate observation of chemical processes in real time, even capturing the motions of

atoms within molecules.29Moreover, these lasers can control and modify the processes as well as

observe them. In photoexcitation, the pulses deposit large amounts of energy in a molecule, leading to

photodissociation30 the reverse of the celebrated photo-synthesiswhen the molecule flies apart

into fragments, which can then recombine into a mutated molecule.

94. In practical applications, chemistry manifests immense diversity and ingenuity. New technologiestreat its elements and compounds like ingredients in a vast cookbook of novel substances with

extraordinary properties and commercial uses, for which discursive evidence abounds. As of July 2003,

the Internet searched through AltaVista for the key words industryor industriestogether with

chemicalreturned 137,880 results and with chemistry3320; compare just 48 with physicaland 41

with physics; or again 562 with biologicaland 143 with biology. One website named InnoCentive

offers cash rewards for industrially viable solutions to arcane-sounding problems in chemistry, e.g., can

you synthesize this protected unnatural amino-acid in its enantiomerically pure form?31And the

commodities produced by chemistry and offered on the Internet are beyond all count. Still, website

discourse indicates that consumers arent eager to know just how many chemicals they consume; no

website advertises chemical beauty aids, a chemical shirt, or a chemical breakfast, even though

many such items contain chemical products.

95.Biologyhas the richest source domain among the natural sciences. Its data concern the least

elementary and most complex forms of matter and energy, living things; the coupling of material and

data is quite soft, because the emergent properties include lifeitself. Its phenomena, such as plants

and animals, are naturally manifested as real objects, and observation is normally straightforward. Yet

like chemistry, biology keeps enhancing its powers of observation by exploiting the resources of physics

for operating in infinitesimal dimensions. For example, the CAT (Computed Axial Tomography

) scan

takes numerous two-dimensional images created by electromagnetic radiation (x-rays) in a rotating

cylinder and generates a three-dimensional image of the human lying inside. Whereas ordinary x-rays

just show bones and large organs like the heart with any accuracy, the CAT scan gives precise images

of soft tissues such as muscles, organs, nerves, and blood vessels.32

96. The really daunting frontier for calculation and observation in both biology and chemistry may lie in

nanotechnology,where theory and practice proceed on the scale of the nanometer, i.e., one billionth

of a meter. As on the even smaller scale of femtotechnology, new molecules can be constructed by

manipulating their atomic composition. The foremost practical product comes from drynanotech-nolog



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based on surface science and physical chemistry, namely the carbon molecule called the Buckyball

(after Buckminster Fuller), and forming nanotubeswith superconductivity and superstrength (more than

100 times as strong as steel at less than one fourth the weight). Wetnanotechnology, based on

biological systems existing primarily in water environments, focuses on how human cells are constructe

and how they could interact in practice with nanomachinesor nanites, tiny computers that might

combat diseases or reverse ageing.33

97. Even more than chemistry, biology figures in website discourse as a topic of attention andapplication, and a fiercely disputatious one. Evidently, a spectrum of social groups become vocal when

lifeis at issue. Left-wing ideology opposes the genetic manipulation of food plants to resist parasites

and drought, fearing harmful side-effects to human consumers.34Right-wing ideology opposes cell

cloning of humans, ostensibly reserving for their Godthe sole prerogative to create life. Both sides tend

to drift from scientific issues into political ones and from cognitive issues into social ones, until scientific

issues may be judged by people who lack knowledge of research, not by validity but by popularity or

expedience (cf. VII.79).

98. Because they address the essential organisation of matter and energy, these four natural

sciences, more than the others like geology, astronomy, or meteor-ology, have decisively shaped

the modern conception and discourse of science. They interact so extensively that moving

among them might be analogous to translating among distinct but closely related languages,

especially when formulas are used; or to moving among different levels of the same language:

the particles of physics (like Phonemes), the atoms and molecules of chemistry (like

Morphemes), and the nucleotides of biology (like Words) all acquire suitable meanings in

combinations and contexts. The analogy seems singularly apt for the DNA sequence in the

human chromosome, where billions of pairs of just four phosphate nucleotides with letters(A for

adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine, T for thymine) spell outdetailed instructionsfor the

growth and life of the organism.35Devastating diseases, like myeloid leukaemia, Di George

syndrome, and schizophrenia, all linked to chromosome 22, are like malevolent messages

spelling out cancer, heart disease, and mental derangement; we can only rewrite or delete them

once we manage read them.

99. The ratios of sparse to rich among the natural sciences apparently correspond to trade-offs

between simpleand complex. The sparser the science, the more it deals with simple

components participating in complex events. Physics deals with the very simplest components of

matter and energy, e.g., all electrons being identical, or all photons, and so forth. The complexity

is concentrated in the methods for relating calculation to observation by means of physical

events, e.g., to isolate electrons and track their behaviour. As physics moves downward in scale

this complexity rises sharply, e.g., in requiring linear accelerators to bombard atoms with ions an

knock out extremely short-lived subatomic particles. Isolating the apparently most basic particles

the quarks and their gluons that gluethem together, would also be the most complex operation,

if it can be done at all. So physicists are colliding atoms stripped of electrons into each other at



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staggeringly high energies, squeezing the protons and neutrons together and trying to make

them melt into a quark-gluon plasmaso hot they cant stick together. This superhot goo is

theorised to occur in the core of neutron stars (where it obviously cant be observed), which are

so dense that a piece the size of a pinhead would weigh as much as a thousand jumbo jets.36

Its theoretical significance lies in representing a state of matter and energy fairly close to the

aboriginal state of the universe shortly after the big bang.

100. Chemistry deals with somewhat more complex components and maps the relations andtransitions between elements and compounds, whereby emergent properties are gained (I.92). A

reaction such as catalysisto cause or speed up chemical changes is rather complex in itself but

can rely on simple components. The famous Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction37

uses an acid

catalyst to convert bromate or bromide ions into compounds of bromine, as in this simple recipe

[7] sulfuric acid + malonic acid + cerium ammonium nitrate + sodium bromate =>

carbon dioxide + dibromoacetic acid + bromomalonic acid + water.38

Yet the reaction is wondrously complex, producing a chemical oscillator,observable in colours

switching back and forth for quite some time. Each colour is engendered by a componentreaction, the one being less fast and efficient than the other, and each, at a certain level of

concentration, creating the conditions that catalysethe other a self-organising process of

autocatalysis. Instead of being uniform or random, the solution thus manifests periodic

behaviour. Its theoretical significance lies in representing the automatic production of complexity

which at some primordial stage must have enabled the evolution of inorganic matter into organic

and created the basis for life systems.

101. Biology in turn deals with substantially more complex components in simpler reactions. Eac

cell contains microscopic assembly sites called ribosomesthat glue amino acids together with

peptide bonds(a bit like quarks and gluons) to manufacture protein molecules. These are at firs

long, thin molecules, but they quickly and spontaneously fold into distinctive shapes.39This

complex shape prepares a simple chemical reaction, as in digestion, that fits the protein molecule

into a receptor site precisely shaped for it. In effect, the function of the protein is anticipated and

determined in folding its shape, like forming a key to switch an operation on or off. The

organisation is achieved before the start of the reaction, which can in turn be simple; no complex

sorting and searching are needed, as they would be if the protein molecules themselves were

simpler. Here again, a self-organising process helps sustain life systems in automatic operation.

102. Now, extending this account at the sparse end, we might say that mathe-matics deals with

the simplest components of all, numbers and symbols, in events of pure calculation whose

apparent complexity is the product of abstraction (referring to pure relations rather than objects)

and compression (representing relations, quantities, values, and so on in symbols and formulas)

Mathematics is essentially a language (or set of languages) that acquires generality and

precision by abstracting away from all the physical, chemical, and biological properties of real

objects and events. For example, the well-known Chapman-Kolmogorov equationexpresses the



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probability of transitions between any two statesin a sequence called a Markov chain, which is

a radically simple system.40The set of possible is states is fully fixed and fully known, as are the

frequencies of past occurrence; the only relevant data for a state are its position and timing insid

the chain; the states are discrete and so cannot form even the simplest blends or combinations.

And since each state is related only to the ones right before and after it, the system does not

build a history or memory. Even causality is suspended because we dont consider why one state

leads to the next but only how probable it might be to do so; thus the system appears stochasticthat is, constituted by a random sequence. An equation might appear complex, e.g.:

[8]p(x3,t3|x1t1) = dx2p(x3,t3|x2t2)p(x2,t2|x1t1)41

wherepis the probability,xis a state, tis a time, and is the integralfor the differential

functionbetween the two variables of state and time. But, as I have said, the complexity is a by

product of compression. The equation states that the probability of getting to state 3 at time 3

from state 1 at time 1 equals the differential function between the probability of getting to state 3

at time 3 from state 2 at time 2 and the probability of getting to state 2 at time 2 from state 1 attime 1. Decompressing (or deconfining) into ordinary discourse reveals the deeper simplicity of

the statement. The real complexity begins when the equation gets fitted to a real system, e.g., to

express the probabilities of a machine failing at a given time, which is a causal event, e.g., due to

heat or fatigue in the materials.

103. Extending the account at the rich end brings us to the human sciences. Their superior

richness over the natural sciences has in the past been under-estimated by projects like unified

scienceto force t

ch1 de beagrande 1 newintrchone

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