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"Absence of normative judgement - anything but 'neutral'"
Why do you think, from your very personal involvement with cultural thinking, that a topological approach can help understand contemporary cultural dynamics? I am a mathematician who thinks about but has not really worked on cultural issues. I have the feeling that the project has the potential to open new grounds in the understanding of contemporary cultural dynamics. In particular, I find that the development of a theory that aims at identifying invariant variables across the "space of culture" and at the construction of qualitative rather than quantitative models for the evolution of such invariants in time can be of value.
As far as you can say already, what might your involvement in this project be? I guess that I could offer some advice on the interface of the project with mathematics and science. What do you expect from it?I have a strong interest in the project's targets. I would like to see the project resulting in new ways of thinking about culture.
If change is one main feature of culture today, why is this approach helpful in conceptualizing or understanding cultural change? In science, understanding reality is essentially equivalent to understanding its "change" and evolution in time. Physical sciences are often concerned with the identification of variables that characterise a dynamical system, and with modelling these variables' (random) evolution in time. Maybe the project can provide a step in the direction of introducing such a way of addressing the study of cultural issues.
Can everything in culture really be measured in numbers? Absolutely nothing in culture can be understood or measured in numbers, and any attempt to move in this direction should be resisted.
One idea of the approach is that it avoids normative judgements. Is that not risky, or might it lead to a "neutral" and ultimately empty understanding of culture? Absence of normative judgement in the study of culture is anything but "neutral". In fact, the lack of a normative approach or categorisation is the key to a universe of concepts, relations and perspectives in a study of culture. My worry is that progress in this direction can result in the adoption of reactionary policies.
CV: Mihail Zervos is Professor of Mathematics at the London School of Economics. He received his PhD degree in stochastic control and optimisation in 1995 from Imperial College, London. From 1995 until 2000, he was a lecturer at the Department of Statistics, University of Newcastle. He then joined King's College, London, as a lecturer and a reader in the Department of Mathematics. His current research interests include stochastic analysis, stochastic control and optimisation, optimal stopping problems, valuation of investment decisions and investments in real assets, real options, options of American type, derivative pricing in incomplete markets, and weather derivatives.
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