Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 110

Indeterminate Zone of Practice

to detect logical
Logico-Scientific
Situations
fallacies when
Standards
Requiring
proposed by
the uniqueness of
Interpretation
Paul and Elder
situations require
Clarity
observer-specific
Opaque
(settled
Ambiguous
Consensus
(weak signal)
narrative interpremeaning)
tations. Indeed,
such sensemaking
Accuracy
Opinion
Inaccuracy
(True)
(argument)
(untrue)
situations may be
mapped better along
continua, rather
Precision
“Ballpark”
Complex
Imprecision
(certainty)
(”grid square”)
(uncertain)
(random)
than according
universal categories,
as depicted by my
Irrelevance
Indirect
Relevance
rendition of Schön’s
(chaotic)
Relevance
indeterminate
zones of practice
Limited
Depth
Shallow
(see figure). Here,
Depth
(profound)
(superficial)
reflective practice
requires that the
Breadth
Partial
Narrow
observer, “think
(holistic)
Scope
(abductive)
critically about the
thinking that got
Foreign
Logic
Illogical
Incommensurate
(counterus into this fix or
(makes sense)
(nonsense)
(paradoxical)
cultural)
this opportunity;
and we may, in the
Fairness
Somewhat
Unfair
process, restructure
(equity)
Fair
(inequity)
strategies of action,
understandings of
phenomena, or ways
The Logico-Scientism-Interpretivism Continuum
of framing … .”10
Finding meaning in the situation while acknowlauthoritative, institutionally coded understandings that
edging that indeterminate zones of practice exist will
we call military doctrine. Our doctrinal functions such
always fall somewhere along the continua between the
as intelligence, maneuver, and sustainment enable us to
poles of pure logico-scientism and pure interpretivism.
develop repeatable practices (such as tasks, conditions,
This is not a Paul and Elder fallacy, as we teach our
and standards), and expect sameness in future practice
officers at our war colleges and staff schools; rather,
(generalizability for training and equipping purposes).
the situation is too complex to exclusively employ one
At the same time, the interpretivist in us remains critparadigmatic pole or the other. Hence, the proposed
ical of any claims to objectivity and suspicious of overparadigmatic duality provides an important complereliance on epistemological reference to generic lessons
mentary, more fluid, and continuous sense of knowllearned, best practices, or other such doctrines. Our
edge creation and destruction. In short, critical inquiry
interpretivist view is doubtful of claims of prediction
demands oscillating between both paradigms.
associated with such categorical thinking. Professor
Having both paradigms at our service, we may
Karl E. Weick explains concisely why both paradigms
achieve richer forms of professional practice as we
have to work together in professional practice:
may use each polar view to critically reflect on the
[As] complexity increases, people shift from
other. The logico-scientific paradigm seeks to settle on
perceptually-based [interpretive] knowing
108

November-December 2014  MILITARY REVIEW