Abstract [working] Hodges’ model as a mathematical object, a lens for social care and inclusion: category theory or category mistake?
There's a clearer idea now - an abstract - something to aim for in July:
Not yet fully fledged, but then Spring [N] still beckons ...
Hodges’ model as a mathematical object, a lens for social care and inclusion:
category theory or category mistake?
The health and social care sectors include disciplines that inevitably fall under the combined aegis of the sciences and humanities. This paper examines social inclusion across Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’. The method is interdisciplinary and descriptive utilising a generic conceptual framework known as Hodges’ model. Rather than Hodges’ model acting as a model of, and for care, here the model is used to investigate how social care can be better conceptualised. While mathematics is a mandated competency in healthcare, the subject, as for the general population, is one preferably left at school. The question posed is: What happens when Hodges’ model is treated as a mathematical object? A challenge for reader and author alike, the purpose is to seek new insights into social inclusion, value, values and development through a relational and dialectic strategy with diagrammatic support, also signposting future avenues of study.
Given ongoing demographic pressures for many nations, is there an additional danger of two intergenerational cultures? Is prevention enough; and can we improve understanding of what can be termed ‘legacy issues’ in health and social care? Can we simultaneously reduce the focus to Simmel’s ‘dyad’, and yet open new avenues for discourse and description? Can we expose the epistemological and ontological dimensions of social inclusion and the life (and death) experience of older adults? Inclusion and exclusion are implicit parameters within the model, its original purposes being person-centredness and recognition of health as political. References and resources, in the form of a template and bibliography are provided.
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Still much more to do ... heaven knows what the result will be - and do? Even as I keep the call 'in mind', it may not 'fit' the intended journal at all. Non-predatory, and no article processing charges is essential. Brevity, conciseness ... the order of the day. I can't even hide behind "A little knowledge is a ...": I know nothing - but I'm sure there is some-thing here and in #h2cm.
If anyone is interested in writing something quite different and challenging, then please get in touch. There may (realistically imho) be two-three papers here?
From the call:
"As Rapoport highlighted in the 1960s, however, translating the unified view of prevention associated with public health into social welfare is inherently problematic. This remains the case. Preventative social care and support necessarily operate in complex and dynamic systems, generally where knowledge of causation and the consequences are unclear, and an imaginative application of care needs and contexts is required.
Though current policy direction across many countries suggests opportunities for re-imagining how prevention may be best conceptualised, numerous studies have highlighted that there remains considerable confusion and disparity in how this plays out in practice."
I have held on to the following article from Computing, March 19th 1987 and still learning from Durham and colleagues' journalism:
"Sometimes a highly abstract, unifying mathematical theory underlies a whole set of scientific or engineering subjects. ...
Category theory is one such subject. Sometimes described as an algebra of algebras, it plays a unifying role in discrete mathematics. Discrete mathematics is a general heading for all the mathematical subjects which deal with jumpy, lumpy entities. Most of the mathematics used in the theory of digital computing is of this kind.
Another unifying subject, homology theory or differential topology, is less well known to computer scientists ... Homology theory is a unifying theory in continuous mathematics, which is the name given to everything that deals with smooth and stretchy entities.
[According to Bowden,] 'category theory and homology theory are fairly close things. The big difference is that homology theory includes information about the topology of the space that it describes.
Durham, T. (1987) Over the Horizon.
Working out the algebra of algebras, Computing, 19 March. pp.28-29.Category theory is just about information. Homology theory is about information and structure, the structure of something.'
Space itself is not something we usually think of as possessing structure. But space does impose limitations on the kinds of behaviour that can be exhibited by things like electric fields and currents, or electromagnetic waves." p.28.
Durham, T. (1987) Over the Horizon. Working out the algebra of algebras, Computing, 19 March. pp.28-29. (Sorry no issue / volume nos.).
See also:
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965