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This chapter is about evidence and whether we can, or should, know our impact, the effect we have in the world. It addresses the difficulties as well as the possibilities of evidence for innovators and politicians, civil servants and head teachers, charities and doctors. I also touch on the question at the level of daily life, the moral question of whether we help those around us to be healthier, happier and more prosperous. Knowing our own impacts is, I argue, as much a moral prerogative as the traditional philosophical injunction of knowing ourselves.The enlightenment storyMany of us imbibed from an early age what can be called the enlightenment story. In this story new knowledge is steadily accumulated, mainly in universities and from academic journals. Theories are invented, tested, refuted and then improved. Scepticism helps to refine them and, as Wittgenstein wrote, the child first learns belief and only then learns doubt. You could say that at school we learn knowledge, and then at university we learn to question that knowledge.Belief is strengthened precisely because it has already been knocked down. And so, accumulating knowledge shows that this medicine, that economic policy or this teaching method works and many others don’t. The successful method then spreads, because when you design a better mousetrap the world beats a path to your door. It spreads because people are rational and want to do better and are persuaded by evidence. And so, the world progresses. Light replaces darkness. Effective solutions displace failed ones.It's easy to mock the enlightenment story. The sociologists of science have shown a much messier pattern of change – full of barriers, wilful resistance and peer pressure. But the old enlightenment story contains a good deal of truth and is preferable to the alternatives. Because of intense pressures to act on evidence, and habits of doubt among maintenance staff and engineers, aircraft do not drop out of the sky. Smoking made the slow progress from evidence of harm, through taxes and warnings to full-scale bans, and millions of lives were saved.Experimental methods have been used for many decades.
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In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity.One of the fascinating features of the history of science is how often new ways of seeing preceded new insights. The achromatic-lens microscope in the early 19th century paved the way for germ theory, and X-ray crystallography in the early 20th century played a vital role in the later discovery of the structure of DNA. In the same way flows of data – for example, about how people move around a city, or how blood cells change – can prompt new insights.But how important is measurement to social change? Many people are attracted to metrics and indices of all kinds. But, as my colleague Mark Moore used to warn, ‘do you really think the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were counting the placards or measuring the decibels of their cries for human rights?’ In social change, as in our own daily lives, measurement often feels inappropriate for the things that matter most.This chapter examines some of the history of social observation as a tool for public policy, social innovation and social change, and I suggest where it might lead in the future. Without some means of measurement, it can be hard to know if a social innovation is good. It may feel good to the beneficiaries – but still be less effective than an alternative. Or it may work well for one group but not another. And, even if it may not be appropriate to measure the passions of movements, once these ideas become part of the mainstream, and are transformed into the cool logic of laws, regulations and programmes, measurements do start to matter a lot, as the Civil Rights Movement discovered.A short history of measurementFor centuries, governments have sought to map and measure social phenomena in order to better exercise control over them. In the modern era these attempts can be traced back to figures like Sir William Petty in England and the cameralists in Prussia.