David Clarke's aphorisms
Assorted aphorisms and slogans, mostly relating to Psychology
* The essence of the natural sciences is taking things to bits to see what they are made of; the essence of psychology is piecing things together to see what they are part of.
* I spent the first half of my career trying to make simple things seem complicated; and the second half trying to make complicated things seem simple.
* The three most important things are faith, hope, and clarity; but the greatest of the three is clarity. (For writers of PhD theses and the like. After Paul's first letter to the Corinthians 13:13)
* The methods we typically use in research are designed to elicit from people the information we need for our purposes; not to provide them with the information they need for their purposes.
* If we (as psychologists) cannot take account lay-people's beliefs in what we do; why should they take account of our beliefs in what they do?
* If I lived on a hill and wanted to see further, I would build a tower on the hill. I wouldn't build my tower in the valley, and hope that one day it would be even taller than the hill. (What we know as scientists should be designed to complement what we know as ordinary people; not substitute for it.)
* All (exceptionless) generalisations are wrong. (And of course this is one.)
* Two thirds of psychology is common-sense, and the other third is nonsense. (This only applies to certain parts of the discipline, and I am not going to say which I think those are!)
* The scientific way to peel an onion is to start in the centre, and remove one layer at a time until you reach the outside. (This refers to the strategy in 'hypothetico-deductive science' of jumping imaginatively to the heart of what you want to discover, and then systematically working back, by logical inference, to the things that can be observed in order to check.)
* Doing science is like making a map. And like a map, science needs to be accurate, complete, consistent, coherent, up-to-date, and so on. But in spite of all that, like a map, it can still be useless in practice, if it is lacking the little red arrow labelled "You are here". (We need to frame our scientific version of psychology in such a way that we can see where it links up with ordinary life experience.)
* The brain is a time machine: It sees the world (largely) in terms of rates, durations, frequencies, sequences, and phase relations.
* The brain wears its heart on its sleeve. (Many key functions are carried out in relatively superficial structures which are accessible by techniques like TMS - Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.)
* Classical science teaches us that the whole derives its properties from the parts; but now we are increasingly dealing with phenomena where the parts derive their properties from the whole.
* Events (at least as they are treated in sequence analysis) are like beads on a string - they come in all shapes and sizes; but they do not overlap, merge, leave gaps, or occur in parallel.
* Experimental Psychology is to life as chess is to war.
* Hypothesis testing research can be focused on things you care about (although they may turn out to be untrue). Inductive, or data-driven, research picks out everything it can find that is true (although they may turn out to be things you don't care about).
* Students who get C-range marks and want to improve should spend more time reading; students who get B-range marks and want to improve should spend more time thinking.
* Psychology is full of rigorous studies and important issues, although sadly it is often the case that the rigorous studies don't deal with important issues, and the studies of important issues are not very rigorous.
* Neural network modelling is a technique for turning problems we don't understand into solutions we don't understand.
* People don't react to what is happening around them, but to what they think is happening around them.
* It is much better to understand what you don't fully remember, than to remember what you don't fully understand. (For exam purposes especially.)
* There are no right answers, only good answers. (Also mainly for exam purposes.)
* Methods which are usually used to describe patterns in time can interesting be applied to patterns in space (eg Power Spectral Analysis and Fourier Analysis); and conversely methods which are usually used to describe patterns in space can interesting be applied to patterns in time (eg state spaces and transition maps).
* It is better to be thought-provoking than to be right (in academic debate, sometimes, in the long run).
* Science is not just 'the art of the possible', but the art of making things possible.
* A person with an overly restrictive view of research methods may find that only the trivial is tractable.
* Sometimes our narrow conception of scientific 'rigour' leaves us with nothing but problems we can't solve on the one hand; and problems that are not worth solving on the other.
* You can’t do ‘static science’ on a dynamic phenomenon, unless you locate a ‘stationary’ level of description or abstraction. (For instance, the position of an object free-falling under gravity does not make an enduring finding – the position keeps changing. Its speed does not make an enduring finding – the speed keeps changing. But its acceleration does make an enduring finding, a ‘law of nature’ – the acceleration is always the same.)
* To people trained in the natural sciences, sequence analysis seems so basic they can’t see the novelty; to people trained in psychology it seems so radical they can’t see the point. (The basic idea behind Behaviour Sequence Analysis is the ‘Markov Chain’, dating from around 1906.)
* Planning your research career is about choosing a method, not choosing a problem. Choosing a method that is wrong for you means choosing the wrong life. Choosing a problem that is wrong for you just means you will have some reading to catch up on when you change.
* A new PhD student has to learn to work various important pieces of equipment effectively. One of them is called a supervisor.
* When you go into a lecture theatre and get ready to speak, remember two things: (1) lecture, and (2) theatre.
* A good lecture does not just convey information; it brings it to life, showing what it means, why it matters, why it is interesting, fun, and (sometimes) funny.
* The great thing about being at home is that you don't have to worry about how to get home.
* Sometimes managers and governments have only two options: leave things alone or make them worse (often preferring the latter).
* I jot things down all day long. This is not to remember them but to forget them.
* The secret of happiness is getting more enjoyment out of things you have, rather than having more things you can enjoy.
* At school, education is a still picture; at university it is a movie.
* As a retired person, I only take on work if the ratio of enjoyment / effort exceeds a critical value.
* I used to spend my days thinking “what should I do next?”. Increasingly the question has become “what did I do last?”
* All simple things are different; all complicated things are the same. (This is not exactly true, of course, but it is a nod to the spirit of General Systems Theory, pointing out that complexity in itself confers certain properties that complex systems tend to share.)
* In research, being a bit ahead of your time is good; but being way ahead of your time is bad.
* In my younger day, when I had more energy and courage than I have now, I would look at all the problems in the world and wonder how I could solve them. Now I just wonder how I can avoid them.
* I used to think age was a between-subject variable. Some people were young, and others were old. Sadly, it turns out to be a within-subject variable, and with the passage of time the young ones turn into old ones.
* I keep trying to come up with an answer to 'the replication crisis', but every time I seem to arrive at a different solution.
* All quantitative methods are different; all qualitative methods are the same.
* There is often more joy to be had when a bad thing stops, than when a good thing starts.