Steve and his associates seem to have trouble understanding this relationship. They suggest, for example, that I am offering SLAM+Humanities as an alternative to STEM education. That makes no sense. Rather, I am suggesting that SLAM+Humanities should be the default ground in a figure-ground relationship with STEM (For the reasons why see Kenneth Burke’s short essay, Literature as Equipment for Living). Similarly, the relationship between word and deed, language and ‘reality’, is a ‘both…and’ reciprocal one. Action leads to words and words prompt actions.

I should add that these paradoxical ‘both…and’ relationships are fully compatible with the latest research and thinking on human cognition from the likes of Andy Clark (predictive processing) and Karl Friston (active inference). That’s why The Next Management Canon will not be a movement from one canon to a new one but a dynamic synthesis of the old and the new, the conservative and the radical. The dynamic has been described as a dance, but the ‘both…and’ nature of the humanistic perspective, means that it must always embrace and contain the ‘either/or’ scientific view. It’s always both ‘either/or’ and ‘both…and’!