When I read the great books, such as Jean Christopher by Romain Rolland, or Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, I realize that it is almost impossible to bridge the details that are needed in analyzing the life/thought of individual and the abstraction sought by theorizing and scientific research. When I was doing the statistical analysis of economic/social data, it was just not possible to capture and model the intricate human/psychological decision making process mathematically. That deficiency really exposes the mordern economist and social scentists who relies so much on the questionaires, census, GDP and interest rate data. However, the often necessary depiction and bisecting done by Freud, Habermas and Steven Pinkers alike also lack the classification, abstraction and logical inference to go beyond simple explanation to conclusive prediction or even basis for confident action. In this sense, the two men I admire, Noam Chomsky and Ray Kurzweil are at least interdisplinary enough to bridge some of the gap in their own thinking, (from linguist to politician and activist in fomer and from inventor to futuristic philopher in latter.)
My plan is to follow the footstep of practical problem solving (bottom up approach) by creating “product” and “experiment” to validate the complex pattern hypothesis of social evolution.
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