September 2008
The Science of the Nudge:
Minimalist Intervention and the Nature of Change
a one-year introductory course
on the philosophical and scientific understanding of change
and its application in rapidly pinpointing minimalist interventions
This course will be offered as nine sessions
consisting of lectures followed by seminar discussion
at The New York Academy of Medicine
September 2008 through May 2009
Faculty
Dr James Wilk
University of Oxford
Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine
Convenor
Jo Ivey Boufford, MD
New York University
President of the New York Academy of Medicine
Open to Fellows and Professional Staff of the Academy.
In addition, a limited number of places on the course will be made available to academics, postgraduate students, and others, on application.
Change is at the center of the presidential campaign debate, and health care reform remains an urgent—and elusive—national priority. Meanwhile, a recent surge of books testifies to the need to understand key factors underlying change in society, nature, organizations and our own lives. Whether probing complexity or randomness, unraveling ecosystem dynamics, exposing self-defeating policies and actions, spotting tipping points or devising effective ‘nudges’, the search is on for ways of fathoming complex issues to achieve change effectively.
Dr James Wilk is a new Fellow of the Academy whose career has been dedicated to investigating the dynamics of change in nature and human affairs. His scientific work has yielded a rigorous approach for pinpointing tiny interventions that swiftly catalyze the precise transformation desired—with minimum resistance, effort and risk. He has wide experience applying these minimalist approaches successfully to major issues in the world of affairs, where he has long advised leading CEOs, and he has worked extensively with health sector leaders in the US and UK.
For those interested in change, whether within institutions or in the wider environment, this introductory course is a unique opportunity to explore an intriguing new scientific perspective and conceptual framework. Offered as nine lectures with seminar discussion, the course will present these ideas in depth and explore how they are applied in identifying the smallest actions sufficient to secure any given desired state-of-affairs.
Course Structure and Prerequisites
This course will be held at the Academy and run for the Fall and Spring Terms. It will consist of nine lectures each followed by seminar discussion, and will be held on one Wednesday evening per month, from September 2008 through May 2009. Participants are registered for the complete course, not for individual sessions. With the exception of the first session (and perhaps the second) the lectures are not self-contained and for the most part do rely systematically on material covered in earlier sessions.
The first, extended session on 10th September is a more informal, introductory session. The remaining 8 lectures, however, are more formal, academic lectures, followed by seminar discussion (as opposed to debate), systematically introducing a large number of powerful, often exciting, but initially unfamiliar concepts drawn from the presenter’s wide-ranging investigations spanning a host of disciplines, from neuroscience, cybernetics, theoretical biology, complexity theory, perceptual control theory, theoretical and clinical psychology, organizational behavior, psychoanalysis, sociology, social psychology and psychotherapy, to artificial intelligence, hermeneutics, semiotics, General Semantics, communication theory, cognitive science and, perhaps above all, analytic philosophy. And so there are no specific prerequisites. For we could hardly expect participants to arrive with a working knowledge of the technical armamentarium of all of these academic disciplines!
In any case, no one will be expected to be familiar with any of the concepts covered, beyond what would have been acquired in almost any undergraduate degree. All concepts will be introduced and defined from scratch and derived from first principles as we proceed.
The only real prerequisites are an open mind, an interest in new ideas, a degree of comfort and fluency in operating with abstract concepts applied to concrete situations (perhaps second nature to anyone with a scientific training, but equally the province of humanists), and a love of acquiring new ways of looking at things, and a keen willingness to challenge one’s own dearly held assumptions. A tall order perhaps, but more a question of will than background.
Note on expectations and resources
There will be little or no required reading for the course as we proceed, although as much—accessible—further reading as possible will be provided (or where copyright permissions cannot be obtained in time, helpful further reading will at least be cited along with where to find it).
Much of the supplementary reading, and the reading suggestions and other course materials, will be accessible to course members through this site. Where necessary, passwords will be provided.
Registered participants may email the instructor at any time for further reading suggestions or clarifications, which will be posted similarly so that other course members may benefit.
Indicative Course Syllabus
Do not be alarmed by the details of the following indicative syllabus. Don’t look for ideas you already know about or in which you are already interested. Little or none of the material outlined should appear to cover familiar ground—because it doesn’t.
Although the material is highly technical, it will be presented in as non-technical a manner as possible, and the sessions should be challenging but accessible, lively and fun.
A new and fertile vocabulary is introduced throughout the course, along with a radical new conceptual framework. After all, as the founder of modern science, Francis Bacon said in 1620, “It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried,” and here the means required involve a new method of analyzing events, and with it a new and unfamiliar perspective on the familiar.
The Practical Upshot
This course will be highly theoretical, by the nature of the subject matter, but “there is nothing so practical as a sound theory,” and these concepts have all been derived—and the analytical framework itself developed—in the course of empirical as well as theoretical investigation.
So why bother with all of this unfamiliar theory? As far as the practical upshot of all this work is concerned, let me enumerate a few of the more unsettling things my colleagues and I have found, and have had to come to terms with, in the course of some decades of research:
a.Change does not take time.
b. The scale and scope of a problem, and the amount of time it has persisted, are irrelevant to what it will take to dissolve it.
c.Problems don’t come in sizes; there are no big problems and small problems, only lesser and greater consequences.
d.Optimal solutions are almost invariably irrelevant, in terms of content, to the problems they solve, or the changes they bring about.
e.Any significant change can be achieved instantly and painlessly if it can be achieved at all.
f.The desired change can always be found to be already immanent in the existing situation and needs merely to be released by pinpointing a tiny, minimalist intervention.
g.This rarely involves more than a subtle, innocuous single communication, often delivered to a single individual, or at most, to a few individuals.
h.The result is an all-or-none flip from existing state to desired state all at once, with nothing in between.
All of this should make sense by the time we get to the end of the course.
And so to the syllabus itself:
Indicative Course Syllabus
Part I (Fall Term 2008)
1.A Brief History of the Nudge—the First Thirty Years of Metamorphology
and Minimalist Intervention (Extended Introductory Evening)
The metaphor of ‘the butterfly effect’—but merely as a metaphor. The phenomena of minimalist intervention. Creating major change rapidly and reliably by means of small, precisely pinpointed, topically irrelevant, catalytic interventions or “nudges”. How can we identify, in advance of acting, the smallest action that we can take that will trigger a flip from the existing state-of-affairs to the desired state-of-affairs?
“The power of the nudge”—the first 30 years of identifying nudges: theory and practice. Applications in the psychiatric field. Clinical epistemology. Applications in the world of affairs. Identifying effective nudges in less than four hours, reliably, irrespective of the presenting problem, ready for immediate implementation. Commonalities amongst the thousands of successful nudges designed to date.
Metamorphology as the science of change. The method of science—explaining the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar. Example of the rectilinear propagation of light. The Hippo Principle.
Aims and overview of the course. Learning the rudiments of a new discipline and a new point of view. The intellectual revolution—Bateson’s assessment. A new set of conceptual skills and tools, not dueling paradigms or abstract intellectual debate. Seeing the world through a new perspective. Unlearning rather than just learning. The platter on the tortoise’s back. All knowledge as contentious and defeasible. Emptying your cup; Wittgenstein and “a question of will.” What we will be covering, not covering. Technical terminology.
Note on history, influences, disciplinary frameworks, literatures. Resources and course reading. Guidelines and expectations. Example of psychoanalysts and astronauts. An introduction only—a synoptic view of unfamiliar territory; not “how-to” but “what’s-what.” Invitation to new perspectives with a whirlwind tour of core concepts.
2.Observation
What is involved in observation? Differentia vs. distinctions. Drawing a distinction. Tagging and qualification. Domain vs. universe of discourse. The concept of measurement; numeric scales; magnitudes, units and numerics. Non-numeric (qualitative) scales. Non-compossibility, qualifications and the generic concept of a scale; scales and dimensions. Descriptive dimensions; descriptive spaces and representative points. The nature of description. Aspect vs. attribute. Addresses. ‘Point of view’ logically defined. Arrests in description. Abstraction. Abstraction ladders. Principle of Relative Equivalence. Description and satisfaction. Satisfaction, specification and designation. The concept of design. Design spaces. Design constraints. Negative specification. Objectivity and subjectivity. Temporal spaces. Observation.
3. Intervention
Map vs. territory. Beyond the map-territory distinction. Assemblies. Agent and patient. Free fall (Stewart). Free fall in temporal spaces. The reciprocal definition of free fall and intervention. The nature of change. Change and point of view. Change and time. The agent-patient dyad. Agent space vs. patient space. Minimalist intervention formally defined. The Apollo Principle. Imparities. The illusion of lag-times. The ‘system’ fallacy. Mapping vs. filtering. Practical-mode description. Neutral mode. Video description (Segal, Wilk, O’Hanlon). Principle of Unanimity (Quine). Natural-mode description. The Principle of Irrelevance. Magical thinking and epistemological voodoo. Relevance and irrelevance. Action.
4. Action
The concept of action. Action and abstraction. Action, conduct, behavior. The agent’s situation. The nature of complexity. Situations, complexity and filtering. Inventory. The desired state-of-affairs. Desired present or desired future? The Crystal Ball Technique (Erickson). The Miracle Question (Wilk). The existing state-of-affairs. Conative analysis. Difficulties, quandaries, problems. Attempted solutions as the problem (Fisch et al.). The Cobbler’s Predicament. Constructing solutions; problems as scaffolding. Solution and dissolution. The futility of problem solving and the fallacy of self-help. The perils of relevance. Effective action. The patient side of the story.
Part II (Spring Term 2009)
5. Passion
The agent assembly and the patient assembly. Fractal agent-patient dyads. The Principle of Opacity. The nature of passion; patient as agent. The patient space. The nature of agency; patient determination of agency. Negotiation of points of view; shimmering. The Principle of Irrelevance again. The Principle of Conservatism. The Catherine Wheel. The Principle of Immanence. The myth of resistance to change. The need for advocacy as symptomatic of under-designed solutions. The myth of power. Vested interest (Crano). Utilization (Erickson & Rossi). Manipulation vs. coercion. “Ties and sandwiches.” Irrelevance and idiosyncrasy. The intervention space and design constraints. The myth of the technological provenance of change. From Maslow’s Hammer to Pandora’s Toolbox. The nature of scientific objectivity. Fructifera and lucifera (Bacon). Importance of distinguishing cognitive domains (Maturana, Varela). Coding and the illusion of coding.
6.Behavior
What is behavior? The abstractness of the concept of behavior. Avoiding the plural. Normative aspects. The behavior of the patient as a function of the agent’s point of view. Behavior vs. conduct. Behavior observed vs. behavior emitted vs. behavior engaged in. Black’s epiphany. Negative feedback. Cybernetics and the nature of control. Error signal and reference level. The zero-error condition. What behavior is (Powers) and how behavior means (Scheflen). Behavior as the control of perception (Powers). Perceptual control theory. Animate vs. inanimate matter (James). Exit from the causal nexus. Behavior as autonomous and uncaused. Naturalizing purpose. Imparities (Stewart) in the mechanics of the universe. Hierarchical control systems. Neuronal recruitment and downward causation. The fallacy of reductionism. Laplace’s Boast and Wilk’s Toast. Hume’s Law as anti-reductionist in its implications (Stewart). Autonomy and autopoeisis (Maturana and Varela). The closure of the nervous system (Maturana). The windowless, non-interactive character of monads. The Principle of Cancellation. The Principle of Tractability. Violence and coercion.
7.Constraint
The abrogation of cause-and-effect. Figure-ground reversal of persistence and change. From persistence-and-causality to flux-and-constraint. Negative explanation. The concept of constraint. The draper’s notion of a “repeat.” Constraint, invariance, redundancy, pattern. Information and redundancy. Exhibiting constraint (Ashby). Explanation and the exclusivity of explanation. Comparison of negative explanation with a reductio ad absurdum. Local constraint. Ubiety and idiosyncrasy. From object-and-forces to form-and-pattern. The concept of fit. Pattern intervention. Explanation and varieties of pseudo-explanation. The question-relativity of truth. A note on Ternality Theory (Stewart). Filtering to identify constraints. Flipping from one pattern to another by removing old constraints and inserting new ones. Pattern change as all-or-none. A pattern is a pattern is a pattern. Scope, scale and history of a problem as immaterial.
8.Context
The nature of contexts. History of the field; counter-intelligence work and disinformation; Watzlawick’s contribution; “The Man Who Never Was,” Ali-Baba’s wife, King Christian’s yellow star, the boy who cried wolf. Contexts and context-markers (Bateson). Context-determination. Communication and interaction amongst windowless monads. Context intervention. Point of view vs. vantage point. Frame and context. Context intervention. Contextualization, decontextualization and recontextualization. Shifting contexts. Framing, deframing and reframing. The structure of reframing.
9.Minimalist Intervention
Putting it all together. The Cobbler’s Predicament again. Amnesia and the paradoxes of learning. A synoptic view of the filtering process. The stages or ‘moments’ of filtering—recapitulation. Metamorphological analysis and conative analysis. Utilization again. The theatre of change. Insight and epiphany. The psychoanalysis of the physical world. Solution spaces. The nature of change.
Index of Topics Covered
abstraction
abstraction ladders
action, concept of
agency, nature of (patient determination of)
agent-patient dyad
agent and patient
agent space and patient space
amnesia and the paradoxes of learning
Apollo Principle
assemblies
aspect and attribute
autonomy
autopoiesis
behaviour, abstraction of
behaviour, concept of
behaviour vs. conduct
behaviour as autonomous and uncaused
Catherine Wheel
causal nexus, exit from
cause and effect, abrogation of
change
cobbler’s predicament
coding
cognitive domains, importance of distinguishing
communication
constraint
context
context determination
context intervention
context-markers
decontextualization
deframing
clinical epistemology
complexity
conative analysis
conduct
control
crystal ball technique (Erickson)
cybernetics
description
descriptive dimensions
descriptive space
design
design constraints
design space
desired present vs. desired future
desired state of affairs
differentia
difficulties
dissolution
distinction
epiphany
equivalence of particulars from a point of view
error signal
exclusivity of explanation
exhibiting constraint
existing state-of-affairs (does not exist)
explanation
figure-ground reversal (of persistence and change)
filtering
filtering, stages of, and synoptic view
fit
flux-and-constraint
form
fractal dyads
framing
free fall and intervention
futility of problem solving and the fallacy of self-help
Hippo Principle
idiosyncrasy
illusion of lag-times
imparities
information
intervention
intervention space
invariance
inventory
irrelevance
knowledge as contentious and defeasible
locality of constraint
magical thinking
magnitude
manipulation
mapping vs. filtering
measurement
metamorphological analysis
metamorphology
method of science—familiar in terms of unfamiliar
minimalist intervention, defined
miracle question (Wilk)
natural mode description
negative explanation
negative feedback
negative specification
negotiation of points of view
neutral mode
non-compossible predicates
numeric
objectivity and subjectivity
observation
patient as agent
patient determination of agency
patient space
pattern
pattern intervention
perception
perceptual control theory
persistence
point of view
practical mode description
Principle of Cancellation
Principle of Conservatism
Principle of Immanence
Principle of Irrelevance
Principle of Opacity
Principle of Relative Equivalence
Principle of Tractability
Principle of Unanimity
problems
pseudo-explanation, some varieties of
purpose
qualification
question-relativity
recontextualization
recruitment, neuronal
rectilinear propagation of light, example of
reductionism
redundancy
reference level
reframing
relevance, perils of
representative point
resistance, myth of
satisfying a description
scaffolding
scale
scientific objectivity
shifting contexts
shimmering
situations
solution
specification, designation
system fallacy
tagging
technological provenance of change, myth of
temporal space
ternality
territory-as-mapped
theatre of change
ubiety
unit
utilization
vantage point
video description (Segal, O’Hanlon, Wilk)
violence and coercion
windowless, non-interactive character of monads
zero-error condition
Faculty Bio
Profile: James Wilk, MA(Oxon), MSc, PhD, FCybS
Philosopher and scientist, academic and clinician, Dr James Wilk is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and Senior Advisor to the President of the Academy, Jo Ivey Boufford, MD. He is based at the University of Oxford in the Faculty of Philosophy, where he teaches and pursues his research in a number of areas including the philosophy of neuroscience. philosophy of psychiatry, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of science.
Originally trained at the University of Oxford as both a neuroscientist and philosopher and then in social science and social policy at postgraduate level, Wilk went on to complete further postgraduate work in philosophy, psychology and biological cybernetics as well as qualifying and practicing as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. He is an experienced and accomplished clinician in the psychiatric field, and he was one of the more influential pioneers in the field of brief psychotherapy.
Throughout his career, Wilk’s research—spanning the social and natural sciences as well as academic philosophy—has been dedicated to investigating the nature and dynamics of change in nature and human affairs, along with the significant social, practical, and clinical applications of his findings. Wilk has been the principal architect of the groundbreaking ‘minimalist intervention’ methodology resulting from this research—a sophisticated armory of technologies for rapidly filtering complexity to pinpoint small, catalytic interventions or “nudges” resolving intractable problems and creating major change rapidly and reliably in the world of affairs.
Wilk heads an independent, international scientific think-tank, based in London, devoted to the rigorous study of the phenomena of “directiveness”—including control, intervention, evolution, adaptation, purpose, design and complexity—in nature and in human affairs. This work has given rise not only to powerful new concepts and methods of philosophical and scientific analysis but also to pioneering practical methodologies yielding impressive results, particularly in the world of affairs, and on a grand scale. Government, multi-governmental agencies and major multinationals on both sides of the Atlantic have funded over a decade of extensive research and development on the practical applications of his theoretical work.
Dr Wilk has served for many years as chief adviser to a number of distinguished CEOs in the public and private sector, as well as in the not-for-profit and non-governmental sectors, not least in health policy, health care delivery, and medical research, applying his scientific and philosophical methods, conceptual analysis and the fruits of his philosophical work to the analysis of major, often formerly intractable, complex and sensitive issues and creating major change successfully and sustainably in ‘impossible’ timeframes.
Outside the private sector the long-term focus of Dr Wilk’s advisory work has been on health care delivery, public health, social administration and health policy, and he has acted as adviser to the King’s Fund, London. Over a period of many years he worked closely and intensively with the King’s Fund and a number of National Health Service Trusts and other bodies (including medical research organizations) at Chief Executive level, analyzing a wide range of policy and implementation issues and co-designing successful solutions for resolving major intractable problems and creating rapid, sustainable change.
He is the author of a number of publications on psychotherapy and related psychological topics in peer-reviewed journals, including an influential book on brief psychotherapy, clinical epistemology and integrative psychotherapy as well as published conference papers in philosophy and cybernetics, pure and applied, and he served for many years on the editorial boards of peer-reviewed academic journals in the psychological field.
Wilk has taught and supervised postgraduate psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals in the U.S. and U.K. in psychotherapy and clinical epistemology, as well as teaching a number of other clinical and scientific subjects including topics in biological cybernetics. He has developed and led a number of innovative new training programs for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, and he has served on the clinical and scientific staff and scientific advisory boards of institutes of behavioral science in both the US and UK.
He is currently Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, teaching Epistemology, Ethics, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Neuroscience, Philosophy of Psychology, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Social Science, the Philosophy of Wittgenstein and other subjects both to Oxford University undergraduates and to Visiting Students from American universities including Princeton, Williams College, University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins and Brown. He teaches Philosophy for Exeter College, Oxford and Mansfield College, Oxford as well as at St Edmund Hall.
He is a Fellow of the Cybernetics Society (UK), elected in recognition of his work in applying cybernetic understanding and analysis to the study of psychological and behavioral change in psychological medicine, organizational behavior and society, and he has been a frequent presenter at scientific meetings and conferences on cybernetics and related areas of scientific research.
He is a Member of the American Psychological Association, and a Clinical Member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. He is also a Member of the APA’s Division of Psychotherapy (29), Division of Health Psychology (38) and Division of Psychoanalysis (39), as well as Division 39’s Section V: Psychologist-Psychoanalyst Clinicians; he is a Member of APA Division 39, Section VIII—Psychoanalysis and Family Therapy, a Member of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (APA Division 24), a Member of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, a Member of the Institute of Philosophy in the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and founding Senior Member of the Oxford University Socrates Society—Oxford’s students’ “café philo” or informal philosophical debating society.
In addition to teaching philosophy at Oxford University and in New York and pursuing his pure and applied philosophical and scientific research in both places, he is currently preparing two books for publication on the results of his long-term original research into the philosophical and scientific foundations of change in nature and in human affairs. At the same time he continues to advise CEOs and policy leaders in the health care field as well as CEOs in other sectors, particularly in finance and digital convergence, from New York to Helsinki.
