1.4 Western Scientific Models

In many ancient traditional cultures, much of the activity of the people was experienced as being determined by forces beyond their control, forces often assumed as originating outside the realm of experience available to the human senses. Decisions such as when to plant, how to cope with disease and when to change living sites were regarded as a function of these forces — the gods, the planets or other entities whose processes were either capricious or at least beyond human comprehension.

Western scientific models, in contrast, are grounded in the realm of sensory experience. By claiming sense phenomena as their structural elements or building blocks, scientific models derive the generalizations they offer as guiding principles for human behavior from a domain of experience that is available, potentially at least, to all members of the human species. Observations and/or experiments are conducted to determine whether aspects of patterning (often required to be measurable or quantifiable) can be discovered. The attitude implicit in the scientific model is that any portion of our experience can be understood and eventually controlled if we are willing to study the processes which underlie that experience. Technology, the systematic application of scientific principles to obtain useful outcomes, evolves as we discover how our behavior affects a particular set of structural elements in the context of each new scientific discovery. Useful applications may be many steps removed or only indirectly related to the immediate frame of reference of a new discovery, but practical uses or outcomes often become evident if the search is undertaken.

As a result of this process, more and more dimensions of experience from the class of environmental variables have been shifted to the class of decision variables. Not long ago in our historical past, waterfalls — though considered awe–inspiring and beautiful— were thought to be a hindrance to the spread and development of industry and commerce because they prevented rivers from being utilized for transportation and communication. Today we have learned to use them as sources of hydroelectric power which, in turn, has paved the way to greatly increased choices with respect to transportation and communication. Again, we once viewed the appearance of mold on bread as a sign that the bread was useless. We learned, however, to use the mold itself by deriving penicillin from it — one of the most brilliant and useful medical discoveries in history. The principle of inoculation in preventive medicine involves the transformation of bacteria and viruses associated with the onset of particular diseases into weakened forms whose introduction into the human body stimulates our immunological systems to protect us from those same diseases.

Such examples could easily be multiplied, and they all share a common pattern: phenomena which at one point in history were considered a nuisance, an obstacle or even a danger have been studied and understood sufficiently to allow us to utilize them in ways that benefit us. We have expanded or changed our models to transform problematic phenomena thought to be outside our control into valuable contributions to human well–being, within our control. Each of the examples in the previous paragraph, taken in its historical context, involved the shift of a portion of our experience from the class of environmental variables into the class of decision variables by reframing or restructuring the way a problematic phenomenon fit into our models. It is the continuation of this process, the shifting of environmental variables into decision variables by sorting and punctuating the way the variables fit into context, that is the goal of neurolinguistic programming. In our modern technologically oriented culture we have developed a large number of machines and devices which we use in our everyday activities. Nearly without exception these machines embody one or more of the forces of gravity, electricity or magnetism as an integral part of their functioning. Yet an adequate theory of these primary forces remains an elusive goal for the scientist. Fortunately effective models which secure the outcomes for which they are designed do not require complete and satisfactory theories. The reader will search in vain for any theory of human perception, communication and experience within these covers. Our goals here are much more modest — a model of a portion of these complex human activities which works.

Throughout the development of western scientific models there has been a major limitation imposed on the possible outcomes of human behavior, a limitation buried deeply in the empirical heart of scientific methodology itself. If we imagine ourselves stepping into the scientist's shoes, slipping into a crisp white lab coat and looking through the scientist's eyes, we may picture a universe of phenomena neatly interconnected by formulas, laws, theories and hypotheses — all "out there," either already discovered and explained or waiting to be discovered and explained. What's missing? To find out we remove the lab coat, step out of the scientist's shoes, take three steps back and look again. The scientist is missing. The model–maker, observer, measurer, mathematician, inventor of laws, theories and hypotheses — gone. According to its own empirical constraint, the syntax of science simultaneously defines an external model of "reality" and banishes the scientist from that model. By definition, the locus of behavioral control is "out there" in the model, not in us.

This pattern is particularly evident in the model of modern medicine. This model postulates that internal disorders such as tumors, infections, diseases and other pathological conditions inside the individual are caused primarily by environmental variables (such as germs, viruses, smog, heat, cold, ultraviolet light, etc.) and necessarily require external remedial treatment to restore the human body to health. Rather than utilize ways in which the biologicial system could be altered, regulated or adapted by the individual himself to change the pathological condition. Simplified, the remedial treatments of choice reduce to adding or subtracting something from the biological system — i.e., chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery or some combination of these. In this model even behavioral disorders such as schizophrenia are thought to originate from causes outside the behavior of the individual and to require external remedial treatment.

On the other hand, phenomena like the placebo effect, statistically important in all clinical drug research, are generally ignored because they can't be adequately explained in the context of the current medical model. When a patient responds to a placebo, a "fake" pill or injection of chemically inactive ingredients, by recovering from an ailment, he or she is considered an oddity who has been fooled by the fake medicine. Such cases are generally filed and forgotten, rather than being taken seriously as pointing in the direction of an alternative model of medicine. If the behavior of those who respond well to placebos can be modeled, their strategies for self–healing might be taught to others, an option for recovery that wouldn't require the ingestion of chemically active drugs with their typically undesirable side–effects. In the current medical model, the patient places the locus of behavioral control in the physician; the physician places it in the model. The placebo effect suggests that "getting sick" and "getting well" are, in fact, behaviors and, further, that the locus of behavioral control is in the individual — that sickness can be a decision variable for the individual.

This pattern of placing behavioral control outside ourselves has undoubtedly evolved from the fact that scientists have always looked outside themselves for variables and for sources of instrumental control that more easily lend themselves to measurement and reproducible results. The original model of behavioral science, like that of modern medicine, adopted the pattern of locating behavioral control outside the individual. Because the internal sensory–motor processes of the organism aren't measurable by the instruments available to the behavioral scientist, they are not considered to be part of the domain of the model.