The Hedgehog and the Fox
A Srinivas Rao
23 October 2011
“The fox knows a great many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing” wrote Archilocus a Greek poet, making scholars down the centuries scramble to decipher those dark words. Probably all he meant was that the hedgehog’s single great defence was better than the varied wiles of the fox. It was the polymath Isiah Berlin who gave a plausible interpretation to them. Berlin believed that scholars and thinkers and human kind in general are divided on a deep chasm of contesting visions. On the one hand are those who hold a central vision, one system, and one single organising principle in terms of which all they say and think revolve around, more or less coherent and on the other hand lay those who pursue a diversity of ends often unrelated and disparate, connected only fleetingly, unrelated to any moral or aesthetic purpose. Berlin’s essay was really about dividing writers into two camps; on the one hand were the hedgehogs Plato, Proust, Hegel, Dante, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen and on the other were the foxes Aristotle, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Joyce etc. Berlin’s concern was where to place the complex figure of Tolstoy who he concludes was probably a fox who tried to be a hedgehog.
While this classification may be facile it has tickled the imagination of many people since Isaiah Berlin’s essay. At the lowest level it refers to how we access and process information and knowledge. While the hedgehog attempts to weave a continuing synthesis to maintain a consistent vision, the fox simply stores individual fragments to be accessed as the situation demands. In its interpretation Berlin doesn’t privilege (despite its dichotomous ring) the hedgehog over the fox as more desirable. As St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out wisely “Hominem unius libri timeo” meaning “I fear the man of one book”. This caution is immensely befitting the hedgehog view of the world which often tends to become obsessive with ideology and theory and over time rigid in what it enshrines as dogma bordering on totalitarianism. Some of the extreme versions of the Church and Left wing doctrines belong to this camp as probably Marx and his historical determinism. The fox driven by pragmatism to local theorising generally is more flexible in exploring a more diverse range of options and accommodates human fallibility. Indian thinking on the whole given its grand diversity is more driven by fox like assumptions in its capacious accommodation of diverse thought, moral relativism, and pragmatic if not loose ethical codes. The judgement that it is too otherworldly and spiritual is more simplistic and overlooks historical facts and probably the outcome of an “Orientalist” discourse. Its social hierarchies and stratifications were porous for a considerable length of time before they ossified into the great ‘Nakushi’ of caste and gender discrimination.
It may be interesting to classify human endeavour as hedgehog versus fox. Russell in his History of Western Philosophy portrayed the contesting dichotomous visions as the worship of Dionysus and Orpheus. The bacchanalian and impulsive urges of man were embodied in the Dionysian view a carry over of the hunter gatherer impulses of human antiquity (that considers supply/production in reaction to demand) and the Orphean view was more thoughtful and probably mystical even melancholic that embodies the transition to settled agriculture (in contrast considers production in anticipation of demand). These two ideals represented the two contesting tendencies in man. The fox yet represented the hunter gatherer and the hedgehog the pastoralist agrarian.
The contest between the Sciences and the Humanities was also viewed as the contest between hedgehog and the fox with the humanities for a considerable while holding court to questions of being, meaning and purpose and the sciences accounting for the wide and diverse natural phenomena governed by causation. Indeed as pointed out by Berlin, Tolstoy’s “accursed questions” of life, meaning, action and thought like “why are we here? What must we do? How should one live; seek answers in a history or rather historical inevitability. Tolstoy’s historical theorising was being assessed for its value against its general perception of fatalist history. However the hedgehog and fox conundrum seemed to fit more things than its original author intended. Yet that too maybe simplistic as we have scientific disciplines which would be hedgehog like and fox like. The theoretical sciences of particle physics and the quest for unification are more hedgehog like while historical sciences like biology are more fox like. It is not that fox like disciplines lack a central core of organising principles but that their emphasis is on strong explanatory power to limited phenomena at local/regional levels often with genius in explanation that is pragmatic than idealistic. But they don’t attempt any grand narrative explanations as the theory of everything. Evolutionary biology, a historical science, whose concerns are fragmentary collections of the past to posit an explanation of limited phenomenon and has a weak theoretical apparatus, despite significant visibility in the popular press. Its grand explanations using it to explain belief, morality, political choice etc is really like Tolstoy being really a fox but trying to impersonate a hedgehog.
In my own discipline of management the metaphor takes rather facile stereotypes of the flexible and adaptive fox that uses a wide variety of approaches to changing business ecology versus the rigid though ideologically pure hedgehog who may be prisoner to a specialised or bureaucratic environment. Obviously the metaphor is borrowed from biology where a generalist species is better adapted to survival over a range or alternative resources while specialist species are exclusive in their use of resources. If one were Australian the animals of choice would be a Koala and a Racoon. Leadership as a phenomenon I believe would be of both kinds, probably at more local and regional levels it would be more the fox kind while at a global level it may take a hedgehog shape
It is likely that the central idea that is embedded in the hedgehog and fox is an aesthetic than rational principle. It is likely that we choose among alternative theories on an aesthetic principle. The quest for simplicity, symmetry and unity underlies all that we aspire for in our aesthetic selves; like Keats immortal line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know”. The idea of simplicity in aesthetics is related to beauty, elegance, purity, while in theory simplicity is an ideal of the Occam’s Razor where ceterus paribus the theory which is simpler is more likely to be true. In other words one must not burden a theory with too many explanatory variables. As for symmetry in aesthetics it could mean a harmonious sense of balance, like the Golden Mean (where the ratio of the sum of quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one i.e. 1.61803) or self repeating patterns. Symmetry in physics for example is defined as invariance or lack of change to any kind of transformations. So central is symmetry in physics that it would be not overstating the case that all laws of nature emerge in symmetries. A Nobel laureate once maintained that “it is slightly overstating the case that physics is the study of symmetry”. As indeed all laws of conservation are derived from that idea. Unity is a singularity, a single central principle. Unity in mathematics reflects a similar invariance; a unity is identity under multiplication, its own factorial, square or cube. The ultimate dream of physicists is to seek the grand unification of gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear interactions; the Grand Unification (GUT). Einstein dreamt of a unification of gravity (general theory of relativity) with electromagnetism to keep a firm grip on physics slipping between his fingers from determinism to uncertainty, a prospect he fought until the end. The theory of everything (TOE) had to contend with reconciling the disparate gravity with quantum mechanics. Even as we explore approaches to such unification through string or other theories we wonder whether such unification is an aesthetic goal than representative of reality.
Another way of examining the hedgehog and fox literary puzzle is to look at Nobel laureate P W Anderson’s notion of symmetry in physics. Anderson in his accessible enough (whew!) essay on More is Different in Science 1972 presented the contest of the hedgehog and fox as one of reductionism versus constructionism. Reductionism seeks its solitary goal of explaining phenomena in terms of its component or fundamental laws, while constructionist views tend to apply the known laws to unexplained or explainable phenomena. He maintains that the traditional view of scientific research is of two kinds, “intensive research” which attempts to excavate the fundamental laws that govern phenomena and “extensive research” which extrapolates or applies known fundamental laws to explain phenomena. It would be a fallacy to think that the constructivist (fox) begins where the reductionist left (hedgehog). Anderson maintains that constructionist views fail when they encounter scale and complexity. The behaviour of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles for instance cannot be based on extrapolations of laws governing fundamental particles. As systems theory suggests each level of a system or complexity new interactions emerge which in turn demand the discovery of their fundamental laws, or rather local or regional laws. Anderson then proceeds to list how the insights of science at one level are dependent on those discovered by another more fundamental level (field), creating thereby a hierarchical structure of science. For example solid state physics derives from elementary particle physics, chemistry draws from solid state physics, molecular biology draws from chemistry, cellular biology draws from molecular biology, psychology draws from physiology, and social sciences from psychology. At each stage new laws, concepts and generalisations are necessary that synthesise and apply the insights from a more fundamental level. This marks a shift from a quantitative to qualitative differentiation which Anderson calls ‘broken symmetry’. In other words it is probably hedgehogs and foxes all the way down at each level until the Great Hedgehog is found-the theory of everything! Quite possibly there is no Great Hedgehog at the end quite like the Wizard of Oz.
Isaiah Berlin admitted that his essay on the Hedgehog and the Fox was intended to be playful and not cause much consternation but was surprised at its popularity. Probably one may conclude that the way we wish to see things will determine the way we divide things and probably the converse is also true. Probably the hedgehog and fox puzzle is quite like A. K. Ramanujam’s idea of India whose unity and diversity tickled him to humorously give an analogy of a child who when asked by his teacher whether trousers was singular or plural replied “trousers are singular at the top and plural and the bottom”; a whole unto itself, more than the sum of parts.
A Srinivas Rao
23 October 2011
“The fox knows a great many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing” wrote Archilocus a Greek poet, making scholars down the centuries scramble to decipher those dark words. Probably all he meant was that the hedgehog’s single great defence was better than the varied wiles of the fox. It was the polymath Isiah Berlin who gave a plausible interpretation to them. Berlin believed that scholars and thinkers and human kind in general are divided on a deep chasm of contesting visions. On the one hand are those who hold a central vision, one system, and one single organising principle in terms of which all they say and think revolve around, more or less coherent and on the other hand lay those who pursue a diversity of ends often unrelated and disparate, connected only fleetingly, unrelated to any moral or aesthetic purpose. Berlin’s essay was really about dividing writers into two camps; on the one hand were the hedgehogs Plato, Proust, Hegel, Dante, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen and on the other were the foxes Aristotle, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Joyce etc. Berlin’s concern was where to place the complex figure of Tolstoy who he concludes was probably a fox who tried to be a hedgehog.
While this classification may be facile it has tickled the imagination of many people since Isaiah Berlin’s essay. At the lowest level it refers to how we access and process information and knowledge. While the hedgehog attempts to weave a continuing synthesis to maintain a consistent vision, the fox simply stores individual fragments to be accessed as the situation demands. In its interpretation Berlin doesn’t privilege (despite its dichotomous ring) the hedgehog over the fox as more desirable. As St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out wisely “Hominem unius libri timeo” meaning “I fear the man of one book”. This caution is immensely befitting the hedgehog view of the world which often tends to become obsessive with ideology and theory and over time rigid in what it enshrines as dogma bordering on totalitarianism. Some of the extreme versions of the Church and Left wing doctrines belong to this camp as probably Marx and his historical determinism. The fox driven by pragmatism to local theorising generally is more flexible in exploring a more diverse range of options and accommodates human fallibility. Indian thinking on the whole given its grand diversity is more driven by fox like assumptions in its capacious accommodation of diverse thought, moral relativism, and pragmatic if not loose ethical codes. The judgement that it is too otherworldly and spiritual is more simplistic and overlooks historical facts and probably the outcome of an “Orientalist” discourse. Its social hierarchies and stratifications were porous for a considerable length of time before they ossified into the great ‘Nakushi’ of caste and gender discrimination.
It may be interesting to classify human endeavour as hedgehog versus fox. Russell in his History of Western Philosophy portrayed the contesting dichotomous visions as the worship of Dionysus and Orpheus. The bacchanalian and impulsive urges of man were embodied in the Dionysian view a carry over of the hunter gatherer impulses of human antiquity (that considers supply/production in reaction to demand) and the Orphean view was more thoughtful and probably mystical even melancholic that embodies the transition to settled agriculture (in contrast considers production in anticipation of demand). These two ideals represented the two contesting tendencies in man. The fox yet represented the hunter gatherer and the hedgehog the pastoralist agrarian.
The contest between the Sciences and the Humanities was also viewed as the contest between hedgehog and the fox with the humanities for a considerable while holding court to questions of being, meaning and purpose and the sciences accounting for the wide and diverse natural phenomena governed by causation. Indeed as pointed out by Berlin, Tolstoy’s “accursed questions” of life, meaning, action and thought like “why are we here? What must we do? How should one live; seek answers in a history or rather historical inevitability. Tolstoy’s historical theorising was being assessed for its value against its general perception of fatalist history. However the hedgehog and fox conundrum seemed to fit more things than its original author intended. Yet that too maybe simplistic as we have scientific disciplines which would be hedgehog like and fox like. The theoretical sciences of particle physics and the quest for unification are more hedgehog like while historical sciences like biology are more fox like. It is not that fox like disciplines lack a central core of organising principles but that their emphasis is on strong explanatory power to limited phenomena at local/regional levels often with genius in explanation that is pragmatic than idealistic. But they don’t attempt any grand narrative explanations as the theory of everything. Evolutionary biology, a historical science, whose concerns are fragmentary collections of the past to posit an explanation of limited phenomenon and has a weak theoretical apparatus, despite significant visibility in the popular press. Its grand explanations using it to explain belief, morality, political choice etc is really like Tolstoy being really a fox but trying to impersonate a hedgehog.
In my own discipline of management the metaphor takes rather facile stereotypes of the flexible and adaptive fox that uses a wide variety of approaches to changing business ecology versus the rigid though ideologically pure hedgehog who may be prisoner to a specialised or bureaucratic environment. Obviously the metaphor is borrowed from biology where a generalist species is better adapted to survival over a range or alternative resources while specialist species are exclusive in their use of resources. If one were Australian the animals of choice would be a Koala and a Racoon. Leadership as a phenomenon I believe would be of both kinds, probably at more local and regional levels it would be more the fox kind while at a global level it may take a hedgehog shape
It is likely that the central idea that is embedded in the hedgehog and fox is an aesthetic than rational principle. It is likely that we choose among alternative theories on an aesthetic principle. The quest for simplicity, symmetry and unity underlies all that we aspire for in our aesthetic selves; like Keats immortal line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know”. The idea of simplicity in aesthetics is related to beauty, elegance, purity, while in theory simplicity is an ideal of the Occam’s Razor where ceterus paribus the theory which is simpler is more likely to be true. In other words one must not burden a theory with too many explanatory variables. As for symmetry in aesthetics it could mean a harmonious sense of balance, like the Golden Mean (where the ratio of the sum of quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one i.e. 1.61803) or self repeating patterns. Symmetry in physics for example is defined as invariance or lack of change to any kind of transformations. So central is symmetry in physics that it would be not overstating the case that all laws of nature emerge in symmetries. A Nobel laureate once maintained that “it is slightly overstating the case that physics is the study of symmetry”. As indeed all laws of conservation are derived from that idea. Unity is a singularity, a single central principle. Unity in mathematics reflects a similar invariance; a unity is identity under multiplication, its own factorial, square or cube. The ultimate dream of physicists is to seek the grand unification of gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear interactions; the Grand Unification (GUT). Einstein dreamt of a unification of gravity (general theory of relativity) with electromagnetism to keep a firm grip on physics slipping between his fingers from determinism to uncertainty, a prospect he fought until the end. The theory of everything (TOE) had to contend with reconciling the disparate gravity with quantum mechanics. Even as we explore approaches to such unification through string or other theories we wonder whether such unification is an aesthetic goal than representative of reality.
Another way of examining the hedgehog and fox literary puzzle is to look at Nobel laureate P W Anderson’s notion of symmetry in physics. Anderson in his accessible enough (whew!) essay on More is Different in Science 1972 presented the contest of the hedgehog and fox as one of reductionism versus constructionism. Reductionism seeks its solitary goal of explaining phenomena in terms of its component or fundamental laws, while constructionist views tend to apply the known laws to unexplained or explainable phenomena. He maintains that the traditional view of scientific research is of two kinds, “intensive research” which attempts to excavate the fundamental laws that govern phenomena and “extensive research” which extrapolates or applies known fundamental laws to explain phenomena. It would be a fallacy to think that the constructivist (fox) begins where the reductionist left (hedgehog). Anderson maintains that constructionist views fail when they encounter scale and complexity. The behaviour of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles for instance cannot be based on extrapolations of laws governing fundamental particles. As systems theory suggests each level of a system or complexity new interactions emerge which in turn demand the discovery of their fundamental laws, or rather local or regional laws. Anderson then proceeds to list how the insights of science at one level are dependent on those discovered by another more fundamental level (field), creating thereby a hierarchical structure of science. For example solid state physics derives from elementary particle physics, chemistry draws from solid state physics, molecular biology draws from chemistry, cellular biology draws from molecular biology, psychology draws from physiology, and social sciences from psychology. At each stage new laws, concepts and generalisations are necessary that synthesise and apply the insights from a more fundamental level. This marks a shift from a quantitative to qualitative differentiation which Anderson calls ‘broken symmetry’. In other words it is probably hedgehogs and foxes all the way down at each level until the Great Hedgehog is found-the theory of everything! Quite possibly there is no Great Hedgehog at the end quite like the Wizard of Oz.
Isaiah Berlin admitted that his essay on the Hedgehog and the Fox was intended to be playful and not cause much consternation but was surprised at its popularity. Probably one may conclude that the way we wish to see things will determine the way we divide things and probably the converse is also true. Probably the hedgehog and fox puzzle is quite like A. K. Ramanujam’s idea of India whose unity and diversity tickled him to humorously give an analogy of a child who when asked by his teacher whether trousers was singular or plural replied “trousers are singular at the top and plural and the bottom”; a whole unto itself, more than the sum of parts.
ohh Sir!! What a Piece!! You have travell from Literature to Physics to Management and where all. I cannot sayI understood all of this but this tells me maybe I should start re- reading all these books which I have lost touch with.
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