healthcare epistemocrat: Honoring Dave Lull

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Honoring Dave Lull

After 25 years we're sad to see Dave leave but he's earned it! Happy retirement! pic.twitter.com/4IsQb2V9R4

— DuluthPublicLibrary (@duluthlib) July 24, 2015

Serendipity tends to strike unexpectedly.

Blessings sometimes emerge unpredictably.

In 2007, I started this simple blog with my first post:

http://epistemocrat.blogspot.com/2007/11/thinking-about-thinking-in-medicine.html

Soon thereafter, Dave Lull, a librarian and an information scientist, reached out to me and started sharing with me links to articles, interviews, books (and book reviews), and other fascinating leads for reading, learning, and reflecting. In turn, many of these leads led to writing as I integrated ideas through the process of composing blog posts as drafts in thinking, hashing it out, attempting to sort things out. I enrolled in Dave Lull University (DLU), with NNT's Black Swan serving as the mascot.

Over time, this process of attempting to connect-the-dots via writing led to new avenues of interest and inquiry, supporting me in a contemplative (Jesuit-spirited) journey. And it's this journey that I'm commemorating today:

Dave Lull retired (from one role). His unique legacy (which is still in the making) as an information scientist is one of friendly, thoughtful, humble, honest, and curious inquiry into the human condition. Numerous people have benefitted tremendously from his research and sharing as he has served communities both locally and globally, from his library to the blogosphere and beyond.

Dave is a thinkerer, thinking and tinkering with thoughts and perspectives, with the concrete and the abstract, with histories and with futures, and with the here and the now. As a deductivist, he has practiced epoche with epistemic humility, permitting a special type of empathy:

Openness to holding multiple hypotheses simultaneously.

And in holding these (even-seemingly-contradictory) hypotheses, there's space to admit that we all have faith in something; that taking opportunities to contemplate this faith intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually often provides room for personal growth opportunities amidst our individual journeys.

I'm thankful that blogging-serendipity connected me with Dave Lull; and, eight years later, as I think back on all the blessings that have emerged from my friendship with him, I am honored to have received the fruits of his information science expertise and hobbyist-volunteerism. From the blogosphere to the on-the-ground-sphere, the world is a better place because of Dave Lull's grace.

#Thx2DL

What is an Epistemocrat?

Caveat: Individuality is the spice of life ... Cura Personalis.

History: In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb defines an epistemocrat as "someone of epistemic humility, who holds his own knowledge in greatest suspicion." For Jerome Groopman, this person continues to search for answers by asking, "What else could it be?" Richard Feynman recommends to "keep the door to the unknown ajar." From Chester Newland's perspective, an epistemocrat never stops "searching for human dignity." Like Socrates said, "Wisdom is knowing how little we know."

Epoche, a Greek word that translates as "suspending judgment," lies at the heart of an epistemocrat's quest.

Today, an epistemocrat is a person who, concerned with what he or she does not know, engages in life-long learning and erudition to hedge dynamically against and to embrace uncertainty.

Essentially, an epistemocrat is a practitioner (a thinker and a doer; a Jesuit-spirited "contemplative in action") who respects (via paradoxes) the humble limits of being human and searches (via thinkering) for practical, real-world solutions that help us live and grow together in our increasingly complex and recursive world: diversify.

What is m=1/n=1 thinkering?

Thinking + Tinkering = thinkering.

It's an approach to searching and acting that combines m=1 personal my-thology and n=1 self-experimentation. Personal my-thology encompasses all the unique thoughts, feelings, inklings, beliefs, and reflections that flow through your stream of consciousness each day: your m=1 thinking. Self-experimentation is awareness of all the feedback and insights perceived from daily experiences: your n=1 tinkering. Hybridizing these two activities produces the bimodal modus operandi of thinkering.

The m=1/n=1 notation captures and respects individuality when it comes to the art and science of living gracefully.