The negative principle: it seems like in a huge number of domains people are often defaulting to positivist accounts or representations of things, yet when we look at the history of big ideas in STEM I think we see a lot of progress happening from people thinking about whatever the inverse of the positivist account is. The most famous example I know of is information theory, where Shannon solved a long standing confusion by thinking in terms of uncertainty reduction. I think language tends to be positivist in its habitual forms which is why this is a recurring blind spot.
Levels of abstraction: Korzybski, Marr, etc.
Everything is secretly homeostasis
Modal analysis: what has to be true about the world for a claim to have any meaning at all i.e. what are its commitments
The negative principle: it seems like in a huge number of domains people are often defaulting to positivist accounts or representations of things, yet when we look at the history of big ideas in STEM I think we see a lot of progress happening from people thinking about whatever the inverse of the positivist account is. The most famous example I know of is information theory, where Shannon solved a long standing confusion by thinking in terms of uncertainty reduction. I think language tends to be positivist in its habitual forms which is why this is a recurring blind spot.
Levels of abstraction: Korzybski, Marr, etc.
Everything is secretly homeostasis
Modal analysis: what has to be true about the world for a claim to have any meaning at all i.e. what are its commitments
Type systems for uncertainty