Experience, the mother of sciences


Proverbs often put across vividly the 'commmon sense' learned through generations. Unfortunately, proverbial common sense often collects conflicting and incompatible versions of reality. And sciences emerge to test these versions of reality in the form of stories or 'hypothesees'. In that way, scientists gradually sort out the wheat from the chaff, the grains of truth from the window dressing of yesterday's headlines.

Common sense and science share a common interest in addressing problems sensibly. What science adds to contributions of 'common sense' is the discipline of clarifying what people are talking about, of gathering the evidnece appropiate to check out what they are saying and of reaching a balanced, considered judgment in the light of available evidence.

There will always be debate about how reliable and valid evidence of human behaviour is. In fairness, although there remains a lot of scope for improvement, considerable progress has been made by qualified psychologists in dealing with evidence about people during the past fifty years.

Stories we offer and stories we live

Just as with anyone else, the stories we live through our work are bigger than stories we offer. We co-ordinate our stories as best we can so that they fit into the stories lived by others in ways that improve their livews. Stories we tell through words are what we say to make senese of the stories of our working lives, the patterns of actions we take.

The science of psychology: a particular kind of storytelling

Since the end of the nineteenth century, psychology has developed as a science of human behaviour and experience. It offers a host of stories about how people perceive realities, memorise and recall, make decisions (some of them in error), communnicate, co-operate or get into conflict and so on.

Evidence about human behaviour can be gathered, atlhough it is mroe difficult to do this than collecting evidence about minerals, plants or the behaivour of other human animals. Reliable and valid evidence about human experience is also the field of study of psychologists. As you might expect, they go about it with quite a different approach to the approaches of poets, novelists or dramatists since their purposes are different.

In the way you would expect from a dedicated dental or medical practitioner, we make every effort to display these attributes in how we use the human potential economics. In practice, this means that we do more than offer 'new wine in old bottles' by playing our part in making newly-validated techniques, discovered through research and dialogue, available to clients.

How we apply principles of science

Behind the scenes, so to speak, we carry out research and development necessary to work as 'common sense scientists', by implementing these nine principles.

Useful Afetr taking time to understand your concerns, we make every effort to offer practical guidance or insight. Provided you also make 100% effort, there's every chance you'll make desired progress within the agreed timescale.
Attentive to theory We are guided by the opinion of the influential economist, Maynard Keynes, there is nothing as good as a good theory', as a theory is a way of making sense out of a disturbing situation. You can use a good theory to figure out likely reasons for behaviour and experiences as well ss to explore 'what if?' possibilities of change. In that sense, you can use it like a map, or a lens, or even a mirror.
Evidence-based Using whatever methods are necessary to gather evidence you need to make a decision and to communicatte as effectively as you can in your situation.
Logical Our science and our solutions make sense. Based on clear reasoning, they combine the logic of induction and deduction with the logic about how people negotiate the social world they construct together.
Transparent Because there is clear evidence and scientifica attention to validity. Our attention to how well people negotiate the world we construct sparks and sustains practical understanding of tough issues about diversity, wellbeing and mental toughness at work.
Measureable Ensuring that what we provide and how we assess is precise and, where appropriate, quantified.
Verifiable The scientific underpinning of our methods are reproducible according to standard canons of scientific testing, validation (or invalidation) and qualification.
Open We draw from a large body of scientific psychological and ergonomic research and, through conferences, workshops and writing, have contributed to that knowledge and professional practice
Reflective We continually invest time to learn from the scientific communities of psychology and ergonomics to advance our understanding and application of science, and to learn from clients to understand the changing world of work and improve solutions we offer.
Ethical We take care to apply psychological and ergonomic science from from bias against any group merely on the basis of race, gender, age, disability, religion, political belief or nationality.