In December 2000, Steve Denning hosted a dialogue on Planet IT on knowledge management for the confidence impaired. 
    The main contributions on knowledge management were on the following topics:
          - anyone for KM?
          - who's confidence impaired and why?
          - branding
          - measurment

Anyone for KM?

SUBJECT: Anyone for KM?
FROM: Steve Denning - December 20, 2000
MESSAGE: Anyone awake out there?
This roundtable is the most active of the roundtables currently taking place on Planet IT. 
Yet much of the discussion has gone into issues that are aspects of knowledge management, which is after all supposed to be the subject of the discussion here. The threads directly related to KM haven't attracted much traffic.
So what's going on here? 
Does it mean that no one is tuning into the discussion? 
Or that no one is interested in knowledge management?
Or that KM has morphed into something else, e.g. storytelling? Customer relationship management? Ebusiness? Or something else? 
Is this a fad that has had it's day?
So this post is a request: if there is anyone reading this discussion and wants to raise an issue directly related to knowledge management, please let us know and we can then discuss it.
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com 
REPLY
SUBJECT: Emotions in knowledge management
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 20, 2000
MESSAGE: Steve,

I think the jolly season coupled with the emphasis on intellect and rationality in the very term 'knowledge management' may have something to do with the cooling off.

Now, if we can show that the sexiest people are best knowledge management exponents - well that might gain some exposure.

In 1999 at a KMOL conference in London Michael Earl finished his survey of people holding position of Chief Knowledge Officer (and similar) by describing them as
FUN PEOPLE DOING FUN JOBS!

That needs to come through more in our conversations.

Just my two pennies worth.

Lilly 
SUBJECT: Having fun?
FROM: Steve Denning - December 20, 2000
MESSAGE: Lilly
Thanks for your jolly seasonal message. I agree that KM has been fun for me and most of my colleagues.
Is anyone else having fun in KM? Or have any fun ideas?
Steve 
REPLY

SUBJECT: Having fun
FROM: George Trudel - December 28, 2000
MESSAGE: I've always had fun participating in this evolution that is now titled Knowledge Management, but then again, I have fun at everything. I read a quote within the last month, and although I didn't see an author, I applaud her/his words:
"Laughter is the sound knowledge makes when it is born". 

That sums it up for me! 
REPLY
SUBJECT: Are we having fun yet?
FROM: Steve Denning - December 28, 2000
MESSAGE: George
Thanks for the news that at least someone else is having fun. Phew! Had me worried there for a bit. But then again, you also are the sort of person who is always having fun. 
I love your definition of laughter. Really wonderful.
A really nice note to close out this dialogue!
All the best for the new year to any intrepid KMers who are still with us! 
May there be many laughs for all of us!
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com 

Who s confidence impaired & why?

SUBJECT: Who's "confidence-impaired" and why?
FROM: Steve Denning - December 05, 2000
MESSAGE: Hi all,
Having agreed to lead this dialogue, I'd be interested in knowing whether there are any folk out there feeling "confidence-impaired" (in respect of KM, that is) and if so why? Is it the jargon? or the hype? or the hard-sell going on? or what?
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com 

SUBJECT: Impared but in what way
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 06, 2000
MESSAGE: Steve and all,

I am not "confidence-impared" as "jaded" by jargon! The hype seems to be the latest in the long line of IT developments. 

Having been around for a few years, I remember Software Engineering, followed by Artificial Intelligence, then Expert Systems and CASE to get to Business Process Reengineering and now Knowledge Management. 

Yet, through all some very important ideas and concepts are developing. I hope we will tease what these are here.

Any takers?

Lilly

SUBJECT: Put off by jargon
FROM: Steve Denning - December 06, 2000
MESSAGE: Steve
You point to the jargon as an irritation, including the sequence from "Software Engineering, followed by Artificial Intelligence, then Expert Systems and CASE to get to Business Process Reengineering and now Knowledge Management". 
I couldn't agree more that these terms don't help. 
For knowledge management, most firms that I know are switching to something like "knowledge sharing" which is much easier to understand. Not perfect but better. And I agree that underlying this idea is something quite profound and useful.
Other jargon terms that really put me off include "leverage our knowledge". Whenever I hear this, I know I'm listening to someone who is bullshitting.
"Tacit knowledge" is another mystifying term that started out as something possibly quite profound, but has since degenerated into a blur. It's true that we don't always know what we know, but calling it tacit knowledge doesn't always seem to help.
"Intellectual capital" also bothers me, as "intellectual assets". This is really about the stuff that we know. So why call it such pompous names?
When I don't understand a term, I try to make a point of saying that I don't understand it, and invariably I find that others don't understand it either.
So we can all fight jargon by calling foul when we hear it!
I'm probably guilty myself of using jargon words and I hope I'll have it pointed out to me when I do.
Is this responsive?
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com
 

SUBJECT: being responsive
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 07, 2000
MESSAGE: Wonderful reminder that it is up to us to use the words that have a better chance of transmiting the meanings we have in mind.

Thank you Steve for the reminder to ask people I speak to whether the terms I use make sense and then to inquire as to what they mean to them.

That is surely a very good starting point for true knowledge sharing.

I also think the last two messages are related to Change Agents thread as well.

Lilly

lillyevans@ftnetwork.com 

Incentives

SUBJECT: Experience with incentives for KM?
FROM: Steve Denning - December 09, 2000
MESSAGE: A participant has asked me the following question: what is your experience as to the most successful incentives for supporting knowledge management?
There is a short summary of my thinking on this on my website, and here is an excerpt:
It is important that knowledge sharing be designated as one of a small number of core behaviors, that are rewarded in the performance review system. Getting agreement across a large organization to focus on knowledge sharing, as one of a small number of core behaviors is not easy, and even when accomplished, does not have any instant effect. In the short run, there is often cynicism and posturing, but the experience of organizations, particularly the large consulting firms, is that over time such a change sends an unmistakable signal throughout the organization, which does accelerate the intended behavioral change. 
In practice, informal incentives, in the form of recognition by management, and visibility within the organization can often be more powerful incentives than the formal incentive system. 
While the establishment of formal incentives is important for the long-run sustainability of a knowledge management program, it is easy to over-estimate the value of incentives. The absence of formal incentives in the early days of knowledge sharing can become a pretext for not implementing the program. The establishment of rewards for individual knowledge sharing activities can signal the importance of knowledge sharing, but also run the risk of creating expectations of rewards for behavior that should be part of the normal way of conducting the business of the organization. 
In the long-term, however, the establishment of incentives through the regular personnel and reward system of the organization can establish a clear value framework that confirms that knowledge sharing is not a mere management fad, but rather part of the permanent fabric of the organization.
Do others have useful or different experience with incentives for KM?
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com

SUBJECT: cultural dimension of incentives
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 11, 2000
MESSAGE: Steve,

Your suggestions seem to fall mainly in the change of cultural frame category. 

Would you say that is the most important focus on incentives for now? 

How would you see it changing over time?

Lilly 
SUBJECT: Cultural dimension of incentives
FROM: Steve Denning - December 11, 2000
MESSAGE: Lilly,
Yes, I would agree with you that the most important effective measures in terms of incentives relate to establishing the organizational framework - strategy, budget, personnel, organization etc - that will support the changes in behavior.
How will that change over time?
Organizations change slowly, hence the measures need to be kept in place for a number of years, if they are to be effective.
How many years? Surely at some point, people say, the changes will be fully internalized in the organization and then you can stop any active measures and get rid of the CKO etc?
This remains to be seen. There is the recent and notorious example of a major oil company that, in the midst of a merger, disbanded the central knowledge management unit on the grounds that the knowledge sharing was fully internalized in the way the business was being done. This was after about four years of implementation of KM, combined with recognition as being one of the very best implementers of knowledge management.
One year later however the knowledge sharing arrangements had unraveled in the absence of any central support, and the company started asking itself, how they could have made such a mistake, and had to begin again a rather painful process of rebuilding the approach.
Moral of the story: it takes a number of years to grow a tree. It takes less than an hour to chop it down.
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com 
 
Branding

SUBJECT: New economy, knowledge and branding
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 11, 2000
MESSAGE: I have spent best part of friday and saturday at a fascinating workshop on New Economy held at University of London. It was almost entirely attended by economists who were mostly also the contributors. It included UK, USA, French and German presenters. Though academics predominated, of about 45 people 10 or so were based in banks, consultancies, multinationals, governmental or international institutions and a few practitioners. 

Of specific relevance to this conversation are some of the observations put forward by Nigel Thrift, University of Bristol. He suggests that the concept "new economy" has been constructed by interested financial stakeholders as a brand and incarnated into the business through media.

As I listened to him summarise his perspective and give examples I found myself getting a new insight into the openings that have become available in institutions like World Bank for storytelling. Or the rise in demand for poets like David White on management conferences circuit. 

Nigel suggested that the whole new economy is a kind of passion play of a new market culture which is framed by a new set of metrics that both produce it and discipline it.

He finally identifies information and communication technology as a technological forced march again pushed by what he calles 'cultural circuit of capital'.

I know this may sound far fetched or incomprehensible when summarised like this. I want to assure you that it made perfect sense in an hour presentation and discussion. It was also devoid of complaint or ideology - just a reasoned analysis from, at least for me, a totally new perspective.

If you are interested, I will be happy to provide more details on this and other contributions.

Finally, I was very surprised that the issue of knowledge management was quite low on the agenda. Where addressed, it was in the methodological sense to help with the higher analytical task. So, here the knowledge is simply a new means of production or an asset depending on the side of equation one may be looking at!

Yet, some told fascinating sstories in support of their analysis!

Lilly 
SUBJECT: New economy, knowledge and branding
FROM: Steve Denning - December 11, 2000
MESSAGE: Lilly,
Thanks for a very interesting posting!
If you could get us all a web link to, or handout from, Nigel Thrift, that would be very helpful.
I would tend to agree that there are some aspects of the IT business which resemble a technological forced march. If you take, for instance, the trillion dollar investment involved in solving the "Y2K problem". The problem turned out to be either a non-problem or a problem of such trivial dimensions that it certainly hadn't required a trillion dollar investment to solve. Yet in the aftermath of such incredible unnecessary investment, there is a conspiracy of silence about the whole "forced march" of so many companies and executives. The one book on the subject exposing the debacle - Tom Davenport's - has attracted little attention. The thing is too embarrassing to talk about. 
I am not surprised that economists have knowledge management low on their totem pole. By and large, they have difficulty understanding it for several reasons.
Traditionally, in economics, information and knowledge were a free good. Information and knowledge were assumed to pass instantly and costlessly among market players as part of the concept of the perfect market. Accordingly knowledge and information were invisible in economics - they didn't exist in the economic models. The obvious fact that this didn't happen in real life didn't seem to bother the people playing with these mathematical models. It is only recently, that these assumptions are beginning to be adjusted, but grudgingly, as an annoying inconveience to the simplicity of the models.
More seriously, the knowledge sharing relates to a market for knowledge, but it is not the usual kind of transaction market that economists are used to dealing with. In a transaction market, I buy some goods from you and I pay you for that transaction at the time. The market is a sequence of such transactions. 
The knowledge market works differently. It is a gift economy in which I share some knowledge with you, as part of a community, or dialogue space or other kind of interpersonal arrangement, and I (usually) don't get anything back in return at the time but I am expecting as part of the arrangement that at some point in the future, I will, as part of the interpersonal arrangement, get something back in return. I don't know how much I will get back, or even whether I can rely on getting something back at all. And I may withdraw from the arrangement if I see that I am never going to get anything back. But the point is that the returns that I may get don't happen at the time of the transaction but at some later point, and they are not one for one, tit for tat, arranagements, as in the normal market that economists have studied all this time. As there are no transactions in the gift economy, and no money changes hands, economists often can't see that it is a market at all.
As to the new economy being a passion play, I am not so sure. The new economy is driven by three simple shifts -- that the unit costs of computing, communications and transactions are falling precipitously towards zero. Those who take advantage of these shifts prosper. Those who don't, die. These are simple economic forces.
The new economy is a playing out of these forces. The underlying forces are simple but the way in which they get played out are complex and unpredictable.
This unfolding of the new economy is quite different from the Y2K experience. It is happening for real economic reasons. The Y2K was a forced march undertaken for no real economic reason and merely served the interests of those who promoted it: a lot of unnecessary equipment and services were sold.
In the new economy, there may be dramas taking place in organizations, in and around the playing out of these forces which may resemble passion plays in some respects, as some individuals who master the underlying forces experience triumph and others who don't experience tragedy, but the passion plays are not driving things. It's the underlying shifts in costs that is driving things here.
Any one have other reactions to Lilly's interesting posting?
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com 
SUBJECT: Knowledge in economics
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 11, 2000
MESSAGE: Steve,

Thanks for a long and heart felt response. This is obviously a topic of importance and personal interest to you, as it is to me.

I agree that there is paucity of exploration of the role of knowledge in economics. However, if one dusts off the cobwebs from some 1940's writings of Freidrich Hayek, the Austrian school economist who was at LSE and later at University of Chicago, some real gems can be found. You can get the text of his paper entitled "The Use of Knowledge in Society" which appeared in American Economic Review, XXXV, No.4, Sept. 1945 on the web athttp://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Economics/HayekUseOfKnowledge.html

This is another example of Kondratieffs long cycle! But that is another story.

As for the teatricality of the presentations, I do think there is something in it. Nigel's point was that this arises from the business need to focus on performance and who best to show them how to perform but 'performing arts'. In fact, this evening starts a radio programme on BBC Radio 4 devoted to looking into the bluring of boundaries between business and art - with sponsorship being the main trust.

My conundrum in all this is as follows:
If we are really in the gift economy with respect to knowledge sharing, then what is this big raise in Intellectual Property rights being granted for concepts like business models?

Lilly 
SUBJECT: Knowledge economy
FROM: Steve Denning - December 13, 2000
MESSAGE: Lilly
You ask: "If we are really in the gift economy with respect to knowledge sharing, then what is this big raise in Intellectual Property rights being granted for concepts like business models?" 
I am not sure that I would say that "we are in the gift economy". What I would say is that we are simultaneously in a transaction economy (most of the time) and (sometimes) in a gift economy (when knowledge sharing is taking place). 
These are not alternatives and clearly most of the world is operating principally in the transaction mode. But the web and email have enormously extended the capacity to share knowledge and hence operate in the gift economy mode. This dialogue itself would be an example, but it doesn't mean I don't go down to the shop and buy a cappucino and exchange money in a purely transaction mode.
The efforts by companies to patent processes is not a particularly edifying one. I have heard of one company for instance even trying to patent a form of storytelling. My reply to them was that if they did that, I would patent the English language and sue them for infringement. My guess is that the courts will eventually say that some of this has gone way too far, and disallow the more extreme of such efforts.
Is this responsive?
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com 

SUBJECT: Patenting - what and who decides
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 14, 2000
MESSAGE: Steve,

I agree with your observations. However, it is thus incumbent on us who can see these different types of exchanges in action to engage our respective Patent Office decision makers in exploring the issues of what should be protected and why.

How would you gp about getting them interested?

Lilly 
SUBJECT: Patenting - what and who decides
FROM: Steve Denning - December 14, 2000
MESSAGE: Lilly
You ask what would be involved lobbying for changes in patent law.
It would take a lot. This is a highly contentious field with huge commercial interests at stake. When the World Bank's World Development Report on knowledge in 1998 wandered into this territory and started asking questions about the public interest, there was a huge commotion and the eventual report hints at the issues without saying much.
So lobbying in this area would take a huge effort and lot of smarts to make any impact.
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com

SUBJECT: Economics and knowledge
FROM: Steve Denning - December 13, 2000
MESSAGE: Lilly 
Thanks for the links to these old Hayek papers.
The first link didn't work for me but the second one did.
The paper reads a little quaintly now with its focus on what's involved in establishing economic equilibrium. 
These days it's all too obvious that the economy is not in equilibrium but is steadily evolving into something different.
Another source on the gift economy is Reynold's wonderful book on the Linux phenomenon called "The Cathedral and The Bazaar". It's focused on a hacker culture, but if you read and mentally replace "hacker" with "knowledge worker", you have a very good description of the modern knowledge economy. It has much wider implications than just Linux.
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com
SUBJECT: CatB review
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 14, 2000
MESSAGE: Steve,

Thanks for the economics points clarification - you have probably guessed I am not an economist so could not judge where thate of art in the subject is now!

Also, I followed your link to Linyx history book - you may want to read a review of it in First Monday e-journal (an exceptional resource and truly multidisciplinary - uses technology to the fullest and publishes very good papers while staying open and free). Link is

http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_12/bezroukov/index.html

Lilly 
SUBJECT: CatB review
FROM: Steve Denning - December 14, 2000
MESSAGE: Lilly
Thanks for the link to the review of The Cathedral and The Bazaar. Very interesting, although my sense is that the author is perhaps excessivly negative and critical of the whole experience, as though in some way wanting to prove that it couldn't have happened like that, that the world is inherently hierarchical and transactional by nature, and anything that indicates to the contray is either an illusion or a deception. If we look at the world through hierarchical spectacles, all we will see are hierarchies. If we look at things with more of an open mind, we might be surprised. There is an old Talmudic saying: "We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are." Seems appropriate here.
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com 

Measurement

UBJECT: Measuring knowledge management
FROM: Steve Denning - December 13, 2000
MESSAGE: It's an old saying (myth? legend?) that you can only manage what you can measure.
Can you measure knowledge management?
Some thoughts are set out below. Does anyone have different ideas?
Steve Denning
www.stevedenning.com

Organization-wide knowledge sharing programs require significant investments and will entail major management effort, as well as behavioral changes throughout the organization over a significant period of time. In large organizations, an underground current of information sharing and water-cooler conversations will provide a running commentary on the progress of implementing the initiative. In this flow of anecdotal information, it will be difficult for anyone in the organization to get an accurate sense of what is happening, given the likely large scale of activity, unless systematic efforts are in place to provide reliable information on both the progress and shortfalls in performance. Without measurement, there is an ever-present danger of premature abandonment of successful efforts, or alternatively, of complacent continuation of unsuccessful efforts when course correction is needed. 
Putting in place a system for measuring progress will therefore be an essential step for a sustainable knowledge-sharing program. The organization must be prepared to accept some ambiguity, or at least to rely on non-traditional measures, when it tries to evaluate the impact of knowledge-sharing. Measuring that impact, either in terms of return on investment (for private companies) or development impact (for public sector institutions), remains problematical. In principle, inputs lead to activities, which generate outputs, which in turn produce outcomes, which in turn result in overall impact. But each link of this chain poses its own measurement difficulties, and measurement becomes the art of the possible. 
In the early stages of the program, the focus will inevitably be on inputs (such as dollars invested, or staff recruited) and activities (such help desks or communities established, or knowledge resources made available). 
As the program gathers momentum, the focus of measurement will increasingly shift to outputs (numbers of queries responded to, amount of material downloaded from the web, or usage of electronic tools) and outcomes (such as changes in turnaround times or unit costs, or comparisons with competitors). 
Ideally, one would like to be able to go on to measure the impact of knowledge sharing, but it is important to recognize that few, if any, organizations, have been able to establish the clear causal links between inputs and outcomes that would convincingly demonstrate impact. 
One can show correlations between inputs and outcomes, but the causal links between the inputs and outcomes are particularly difficult to ascertain in a corporate environment when many factors and changes are simultaneously at work, and the management is trying to integrate the elements, not differentiate them. 
There is thus a measurement paradox: the more the organization is successful in mainstreaming knowledge sharing as the normal way of conducting the business of the organization, the more difficult it will be to isolate the impact of any particular actions or expenditures in knowledge management. Nevertheless, the measures of inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes can go a long way to reassure skeptics that the effort to share knowledge is worth it. 
Are the difficulties in measurement a fatal flaw in knowledge management? Not necessarily. Once there is a realization that the choices facing a global organization are binary - either to share knowledge or to die - the task becomes, not one of justifying whether to undertake knowledge sharing, but rather how to conduct it more effectively. 
There is a need for better measures to track progress, but measurement again is the art of possible, rather than the application of old measures to new kinds of activities: As Karl-Erik Sveiby says, "If we measure the new with the tools of the old, we will not "see" the new. Knowledge flows and intangible assets are essentially non-monetary. We need new proxies." 
Nevertheless efforts to apply old and inappropriate measures to knowledge as a thing that can be measured continue unabated. Knowledge managers will be expected to talk of knowledge as something that can be valued (even if not absolutely) and tracked by accountants as a form of intellectual capital, something that can be traded for a certain value, something that accountants can put on the balance sheet and track from quarter to quarter, a resource that can be extracted from stores of information, the way a precious mineral is extracted from a rock. Whatever the truth of the matter, they will be pressed to present knowledge as though it is an object, rather than what it really is, namely, a living, dynamic volatile aspect of human activities. 
Reference: 
http://www.sveiby.com.au 

SUBJECT: Scientific method in knowledge management
FROM: Lilly Evans - December 30, 2000
MESSAGE: Steve,

every so often I am lucky to pick up an old book and discover pertinent inputs to current questions. So, this holiday season I came across one of the university texts used by my father in law. The book is by Karl Pearson "The Grammar of Science". It was written in 1892. As I read it I had to marvel at the wisdom and relevance of the material. The venerable professor has answers for your question here in a number of ways. 

First is fundamental and relates to the scientific method. Namely, Pearson contends that the only way one gains knowledge is by rigorously applying scientific method. This means the following: 

"What is necessary is the THOROUGH knowledge of some small group of facts, the recognition of their relationship to each other, and of the formulae or laws which express scientifially their sequences."

"THE CLASSIFICATION OF FACTS, THE RECOGNITION OF THEIR SEQUENCE AND RELATIVE SIGNIFICANCE IS THE FUNCTION OF SCIENCE, and the habit of forming a judgement upon these facts unbiased by personal feeling is characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind."

Pearson asserts:

"THE UNITY OF ALL SCIENCE CONSISTS ALONE IN ITS METHOD, NOT IN ITS MATERIAL."

So, when it comes to measurements of knowledge, it seems to me obvious that unless we are satisfied to stay with pseudo-science or in the arena of a dogma, we need to apply scientific method to its study. Hence, all our observation need to start with facts. And the facts we should focus on are those whose observation will enlighten and deepen our understanding.

Second point from the book relates to the topic area - namely mental and social facts. I should remind you that this was written in 1892:

"We begin to see indisputable sequences in groups of both mental and social facts. The causes which favour the growth and decay of human societies become more obvious and more the subject of scientific investigation. Mental and social facts are thus not beyond the range of scientific treatment, but their classification has not been so complete, nor for obvious reasons so unprejudiced, as those of physical or biological phenomena."

The author goes on to identify the major obstacle on the route to the spread of scientific knowledge in any discipline which is one of the very common current moras:

"There is a certain school of thought which finds the laborious process by which science reaches truth too irksome; the temperament of this school is such that it demands a short and easy cut to knowledge, where knowledge can only be gained, if at all, by the long and patient toiling of many groups of workers, perhaps through several centuries."

Pearson continues:
"Wherever science has succeeded in ascertaining the truth, there, according to the school we have referred to, are the 'legitimate problems of science'. Wherever science is yet ignorant, there, we are told, its method is inapplicable; there some other relation than cause and effect (than the same sequence recurring with the like grouping of phenomena), some new but undefined relationship rules. In these fields, we are told, problems become philosophical and can only be treated by the method of philosophy."

"The philosophical methodseems based uponan analysis which does not start with the classification of facts, but reaches its judgement by some obscure process of internal cogitation. It is therefore dangerously liable to the influence of individual bias; it results, as experience shows us, in an endless number of competing and contradictory systems."

As to the stage of development of the science relevant to the arena of knowledge management:
"Science stands now with regard to the problems of life and mind in much the same position as it stood with regard to cosmical problems in seventeenth century. Then the system-mongers were theologians, who declared that cosmical problems were not the 'legitimate problems of science'."

Lest you think that the earlier mention of "centuries" needed to gain good classification and sequencing framework was widely off the mark, please note that the position statement on where we stand on the life and mind related sciences was written over one century ago!

Final quote:
"Wherever ther is the slightest possibility for the human mind to KNOW, there is a legitimate problem of science. Outside the field of actual knowledge can only lie a region of vaguest opinion and imagination, to which unfortunately men too often, but still with decreasing prevalence, pay higher respect than to knowledge."

"The fields of inquiry where science has not yet penetrated and where the scientist still confesses ignorance, are very like the alchemy, astrology and witchcraft of the Middle Ages. Either they involve facts which are in themselves unreal - conceptions which are self-contradictory and absurd, and therefore incapable of analysis by the scientific or any other method - or, on the other hand, our ignorance arises from an inadequate classification and a neglect of scientific method."

Happy new 2001 and remember plus ca change! We just have to take the long view.

Lilly