What is Not-ism?
Philosophers have always attempted to explain how the world truly is. Socrates had his ‘world of ideas’. Nietzsche mentioned ‘will to power’.
In 2022, I introduced Not-ism, coming from the idea that “perhaps it’s not possible to fully describe reality.”
It’s a bit like knowing where my house is in relation to my neighbors, my children’s school, and my workplace. But I have no clue about where exactly in the universe my house is located.
This means that I can only describe things (e.g., the location of my home) based on all the other things I know (neighbors, school, workplace, etc.). To describe something fully would require me to know everything in the entire universe, which I cannot.
Local and temporal (no-universality)
This means that absolute, universal, or objective knowledge is beyond our human reach.
The principles of Not-ism also apply to Not-ism: That Not-ism cannot be absolute, universal, or objective, but only personal.
This means that you don’t have to understand Not-ism as I do, and I don’t have to understand Not-ism as you do. But we can have each our own versions.
Not-ism and testing
Before we can observe to objects, there needs to be a difference or a border between them. If we can’t see any difference or border, then we will only experience a single object.
This is the foundation of many test techniques, such as equivalent classes, where we see what different properties an object has or how many objects there are.
Boundary value analysis is also in this category, because we look, where something starts and ends, by looking at, when a difference happens. We test:
- below the minimum to test, that something hasn’t started yet,
- the minimum to test something has started,
- the maximum to test it hasn’t ended yet,
- above the maximum to test it has ended.
We can even prove mathematics with Not-ism, but that will be in another article.
(I have written about it in my book Not-ism, it’s okay not to know).
The Spiritual Dimension of Empirical Science
Empirical science for me is spiritual.
Something spiritual can be seen something beyond our consciousness or language. An experience we can’t fully describe, but still can sense it.
We can explore the phenomena with experimentation. When we can reproduce it, then we can become conscious about it. When we can make other people reproduce it, then it can become part of our language. Something we then can discuss and share.
This is why I’ve made the Test Driven Oracle Cards open-ended, with the option to create custom cards.
By doing so, we all have the opportunity to explore our selves, and things we are not conscious about. A process to refine our understanding. A process to grow our body of knowledge.