The Fourth Revolution

How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality

Luciano Floridi

 Considers the influence information and communication technologies (ICTs) are having on our
world

 Describes some of the latest developments in ICTs and their use in a range of fields

 Argues that ICTs have become environmental forces that create and transform our realities

 Explores the impact of ICTs in a range of areas, from education and scientific research to
social interaction, and even war

Who are we, and how do we relate to each other? Luciano Floridi, one of the leading figures in
contemporary philosophy, argues that the explosive developments in Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs) is changing the answer to these fundamental human questions.

As the boundaries between life online and offline break down, and we become seamlessly connected
to each other and surrounded by smart, responsive objects, we are all becoming integrated into an
"infosphere". Personas we adopt in social media, for example, feed into our 'real' lives so that we
begin to live, as Floridi puts in, "onlife". Following those led by Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud, this
metaphysical shift represents nothing less than a fourth revolution.

"Onlife" defines more and more of our daily activity - the way we shop, work, learn, care for our
health, entertain ourselves, conduct our relationships; the way we interact with the worlds of law,
finance, and politics; even the way we conduct war. In every department of life, ICTs have become
environmental forces which are creating and transforming our realities. How can we ensure that we
shall reap their benefits? What are the implicit risks? Are our technologies going to enable and
empower us, or constrain us? Floridi argues that we must expand our ecological and ethical approach
to cover both natural and man-made realities, putting the 'e' in an environmentalism that can deal
successfully with the new challenges posed by our digital technologies and information society.

Luciano Floridi, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford

Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, Senior
Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. Among his
recognitions, he has been appointed the Gauss Professor by the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, and
is recipient of the APA's Barwise Prize, the IACAP's Covey Award, and the INSEIT's Weizenbaum Award.
He is an AISB and BCS Fellow, Editor in Chief of Philosophy & Technology and of the Synthese Library,
and was Chairman of EU Commission's 'Onlife' research group. His most recent books are: The Ethics of
Information (OUP, 2013), The Philosophy of Information (OUP, 2011), Information: A Very Short
Introduction (OUP, 2010), and The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (CUP,
2010).
Scientific reductionism is the idea of reducing complex interactions and
entities to the sum of their constituent parts, in order to make them easier
to study.
One form of scientific reductionism follows the belief that every single process in nature can be
broken down into its constituent parts and can be described scientifically.
The broadest sense of the term upholds the idea that science can be used to explain everything, and
that nothing is unknowable. By looking at the individual constituent processes, scientists can gain an
understanding of the whole process.

For example, a reductionist believes that the complexity of the human brain is a result of complex
and interacting physical processes. If scientists research and understand these underlying chemical
reactions, then they can explain intelligence, emotion and all of the other human conditions.

The Limitations of Scientific Reductionism

Ecologists and biologists often use scientific reductionism, because trying to explain every simple
process needed for a scientific experiment is often difficult.

However, many opponents attack the process, believing that biological organisms are too complex
to explain by numbers alone.

In humans, where emotions may be too difficult to assess empirically by physiology, scientific
reductionism stands accused of vast oversimplification. Social scientists may find that the
sophisticated interactions behind the functioning of societies and populations are too unpredictable
to describe by formulas or observations of individuals.
Even physicists are finding that the quest for fundamental particles making up matter and governing
the laws of the universe may be much too difficult to study, without looking at the model as a whole.

Unlike Newtonian physics, modern research takes into account the complex interactions between
the particles, rather than looking at them individually.

Chaotic systems, such as turbulence, weather patterns and even the behavior of crowds are difficult
to explain by the process of scientific reductionism.
In addition, isolating one phenomenon and studying it often changes its behavior. For example, it is
impossible to measure both the position and speed of an electron, because measuring one affects
the other. Therefore, the very purest reductionist principles cannot be used to describe anything.

The common consensus seems to be that scientific reductionism is too flawed to act as a valid
philosophical viewpoint. Aside from the problems involved in applying the idea to abstract ideas such
as emotion and being, it is very impractical. Many areas, such as quantum physics, are too
complicated to describe by studying the individual parts, and doing so does not always give the best
picture.

Think about it this way: If you want to measure the efficiency of a car engine, is it better to break it all
down and measure each component part individually, or just measure the efficiency of the engine as
a whole. Whether the idea is valid or not becomes irrelevant, because it is an impractical
undertaking.

Scientific Reductionism - Still a Useful Tool

In many other areas, the principle is sound. Modeling the weather or understanding genetics are well
served by the principle, but it does have distinct boundaries where looking at the whole principle is
much more accurate.

If a looser terminology is used, it can be argued that chemistry and biology are merely reductions of
physics, allowing a fuller picture to be gleaned by looking at specific cases.

One area that uses reductionism extensively is computer modeling. For example, if a scientist
designs a computer program to model and predict weather patterns, they cannot possibly include
every single permutation of such a vast and complicated system. Instead, they simplify many of the
elements to allow the program to work without losing the accuracy.
This is related to ‘Black Box’ science, where part of a system is regarded as a box. The scientist
knows that any data inputted into the box results in a certain output, so they do not need to model
every last process within the box.

Scientific reductionism is not a viable theory in modern science, because the processes governing
the universe are so complex and intertwined that they can never be understood fully. Despite this,
reductionist thinking does have some uses, and allows complex processes to be teased apart and
understood.

Full reference:
Martyn Shuttleworth (Apr 15, 2008). Scientific Reductionism. Retrieved Jan 22, 2020 from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/scientific-reductionism
 A scientific paradigm is a framework containing all the commonly accepted views
about a subject, conventions about what direction research should take and how
it should be performed.
The philosopher Thomas Kuhn suggested that a paradigm includes “the practices that define a
scientific discipline at a certain point in time." Paradigms contain all the distinct, established patterns,
theories, common methods and standards that allow us to recognize an experimental result as
belonging to a field or not.
Science proceeds by accumulating support for hypotheses which in time become models and
theories. But those models and theories themselves exist within a larger theoretical framework. The
vocabulary and concepts in Newton’s three laws or the central dogma in biology are examples of
scientific “open resources" that scientists have adopted and which now form part of the scientific
paradigm.

Paradigms are historically and culturally bound. For example, a modern Chinese medical researcher
with a background in eastern medicine, will operate within a different paradigm than a western
doctor from the 1800s.

Where Does a Paradigm Come From?

Kuhn was interested in how the overarching theories we have of reality itself influence the models
and theories we make about reality within that paradigm.

A paradigm dictates:

 what is observed and measured

 the questions we ask about those observations
 how the questions are formulated
 how the results are interpreted
 how research is carried out
 what equipment is appropriate
Many students who opt to study science do so with the belief that they are undertaking the most
rational path to learning about objective reality. But science, much like any other discipline, is subject
to ideological idiosyncrasies, preconceptions and hidden assumptions.
In fact, Kuhn strongly suggested that research in a deeply entrenched paradigm invariably ends up
reinforcing that paradigm, since anything that contradicts it is ignored or else pressed through the
preset methods until it conforms to already established dogma.

The body of pre-existing evidence in a field conditions and shapes the collection and interpretation of
all subsequent evidence. The certainty that the current paradigm is reality itself is precisely what
makes it so difficult to accept alternatives.

Though Kuhn focused on the sciences, his observations about paradigms apply to other disciplines.
Foucault was famous for his dissection of discourse, which can be understood as the language and
symbols used to cement a paradigm. Many modern historians are able to talk cogently about
paradigms of the past – naturally an easier task once they are no longer in those paradigms!

What is a Paradigm Shift?

"The successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual
developmental pattern of mature science" - Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific
revolutions

It is very common for scientists to discard certain models or pick up emerging theories. But once in a
while, enough anomalies accumulate within a field that the entire paradigm itself is required to
change to accommodate them.

Kuhn believed that science had periods of patiently gathering data within a paradigm, mixed in with
the occasional revolution as the paradigm matured. A paradigm shift is not a threat to science, but
rather the very manner in which it progresses.
Normal science is the step-by-step scientific process, which builds patiently upon previous research.
Revolutionary science, often 'fringe science' questions the paradigm itself. Kuhn believed that a
paradigm would make a sudden leap from one to the next, called a shift, where the new paradigm
didn’t build on the foundations of the old, but completely change the rules for that “building."
An Example of a Paradigm Shift
Many physicists in the 19th century were convinced that the Newtonian paradigm that had reigned for
200 years was the pinnacle of discovery and that scientific progress was more or less a question of
refinement. When Einstein published his theories on General Relativity, it was not just another idea
that could fit comfortably into the existing paradigm. Instead, Newtonian Physics itself was relegated
to being a special subclass of the greater paradigm ushered in by General Relativity. Newton’s three
laws are still faithfully taught in schools, however we now operate within a paradigm that puts those
laws into a much broader context.
Interestingly, Kuhn’s theory itself was something of a game changer at the time, since scientists
were not accustomed to thinking of what they were doing in such metaphysical terms. Kuhn’s
theories are today understood to be part of a greater paradigm shift in the social sciences, and have
also been modified since their original publication.
Kuhn later conceded that the process of scientific advancement might be more gradual. For
example, Relativity did not completely prove Newton wrong, but merely reframed his theory. Even
the Copernican revolution was a little more gradual in replacing Ptolemy's beliefs.

The concept of paradigm is closely related to the Platonic and Aristotelian views of knowledge.
Aristotle believed that knowledge could only be based upon what is already known, the basis of the
scientific method. Plato believed that knowledge should be judged by what something could
become, the end result, or final purpose. Plato's philosophy is more like the intuitive leaps that cause
scientific revolution; Aristotle's the patient gathering of data.

Full reference:
Martyn Shuttleworth, Lyndsay T Wilson (Oct 24, 2008). What Is A Paradigm?. Retrieved Jan 22,
2020 from Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/what-is-a-paradigm