All Life Is Problem Solving

Occasionally, someone in KM brings up the question of whether the discipline is a science. And then the arguments start. Some dislike the idea of science and deny that KM has anything to do science. Others identify science with knowledge that successfully describes, predicts and explains; and they conclude that the discipline of KM with its body of highly questionable and disputed knowledge, is in no way a science.

Still others think that science is not a matter of approach, but rather is a matter of “method” and that while Knowledge Management may not be science right now, it can easily become one, if only its practitioners will develop knowledge in the field by using the Scientific Method. Then they boldly assert that KM is a science since they are pursuing it using the scientific method.

My own view on this issue is that it is a “red herring.” First, there is much disagreement among scientists and philosophers about the definition of science, and there is no truly authoritative definition. Second, unless we want to define “science” as a body of knowledge that works, and is clearly established; a definition that would have excluded most of today’s scientific disciplines in their early days, it makes no sense to require “success” before we apply the name “science.” This is even more clear if we reflect on the idea that we will probably want to be able to talk about “successful science” and “unsuccessful science,”which by itself suggests that such a definition won’t work. Third, what about defining science as a “method,” why won’t that work? Simply because there isn’t an agreed upon scientific method extending across all disciplines. As Popper said in the 1956 preface to his Realism and the Aim of Science, there is no scientific method and he ought to know because for some time, at least, he was “the one and only professor of this non-existent subject within the British Commonwealth.” And fourth, what does it matter what we call KM as long as the pattern of inquiry we find in it, is the most effective we can devise. That is what counts; not whether the label we place on that pattern is “science.”

So it seems to me here that the real issue is not whether KM is a science, but rather the kinds of norms and practices of inquiry KM should be fostering both in terms of its own problem solving, and the problem solving of others in an enterprise whose performance KM is trying to enhance. Recently, I’ve written a lot about that in my blog series on Problem Solving Pattern Management, and also in my series on National Governmental Knowledge Management. So, I’ll leave you here with some links to those, and leave it to posterity to resolve the “red herring” issue of whether what I’m suggesting for KM is “scientific” or not.