Template:Form and substance capsule

Form versus substance in a nutshell

Form is the map; substance the territory. Form is simplified, rationalised, modularised: it establishes through followable rules, a safe passage through the incomprehensible thickness of the jungle. It tries to reduces complexity to complication by prescribing fixed rules and procedures which maybe followed even by those with no particular experience or expertise of the territory. The only judgment made of one in a formal system is, did you faithfully follow the rules?

Substance

The modern world is blighted by the comforting embrace of tickable boxes, checkable checklists, and auditable trails, all of which give their comfort by taking the easy road: rather than evaluate the qualities of your organisation, tally up its countable dimensions, however superficial they are.

There is a logic to this: the power of big data is their emergent properties: you can extract from a mass of data qualities you can’t see from individual instances. That one kettle goes on at 4:30 in the afternoon signifies nothing in particular; that fourteen million do tells you it’s half time in the football.

This is a correlation, though, not causation, and it won’t flow the other way. Just because you put the kettle on at 4:30 doesn’t mean you were watching the football, however likely it might seem. Probability is an is, not an ought.

Hume: you cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”.

The JC: you cannot derive an “is” from an “ought”.