Too much metatheory will kill you, just as sure as none at all.
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Metatheory
1 min read
The article centers on metatheory and the author's decision to join the editorial board of a journal focused on it. Understanding the formal concept of metatheory - theories about theories - would give readers foundational context for the philosophical territory the author is navigating.
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Kurt Lewin
15 min read
The article quotes Lewin's famous dictum 'nothing is as practical as a good theory' and credits him with originating action research. His work in organizational psychology and social psychology fundamentally shaped how we understand the theory-practice relationship the author is exploring.
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Intelligence quotient
2 min read
The article uses IQ theory as a detailed example of how theories carry hidden assumptions, worldviews, and paradigmatic biases. Understanding the history and controversies around IQ testing would illuminate the author's broader argument about theory's embedded assumptions.
If you want to buy a pet, you should go to a pet shop. If you want to buy a pet shop, you should go to a pet shop shop. And if you want to buy a pet shop shop shop…well, that’s just silly.
A comedian said this somewhere. I wish I could trace the source because it’s brilliant in its simple advice to refrain from getting carried away. The mirth arises partly from the absurdity of having pet shops in the first place; places where consumerism shapes the relationship between humans and the rest of nature by domesticating socially acceptable aspects of it, while hiding its shadow, for instance, with stacks of frozen chicken packed in the aisles of the supermarket next door. Pets, almost by definition, are denatured nature, which is not to say humans are not part of nature, nor that domestication is not a natural process, nor that my family shouldn’t get a dog (we’re thinking about it). And there’s a subversive dig at financial capitalism in there too, because doubtless there are investors in pet shop consortia, but they almost certainly don’t work in shops, as such. So the joke also speaks to the unconscious grief of delocalisation, the long arms of rentier capitalism, and the perennial story of how power hides itself.
The statement comes to mind now, on being invited to join the editorial board at Integration - The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice, hosted by the relatively new Institute of Applied Metatheory. I am grateful for the invitation, and earlier today I accepted it. This post is about ‘showing my working’, including my hesitation, and the title of the post is a good excuse for a nostalgic sharing of an old Brian May/Queen song: Too Much Love Will Kill You, which includes the lyric:
Too much love will kill you,
Just as sure as none at all,
It’ll drain the power that’s in you,
Make you plead and scream and crawl…
I believe the same might be said of metatheory.
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We should not be too quick or too conclusive in our understanding of what theory is, because that’s part of the task of metatheory. In general, I’d say something like: a theory is a system of interrelated ideas that help us to perceive, describe, and explain a phenomenon. Those ideas might be concepts or frameworks, ...
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