“Did you ask me why a surgeon writes? I think it is because I wish to be a doctor.”
Knowledge is a determining factor to the success of any contemporary trading business. Aristotle describes three approaches to knowledge: epistêmê (know why), technê (know how), and phronesis (practical wisdom) in “The Nicomachean Ethics”. However, according to the French philosopher Michel Foucault, “in any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one epistêmê that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice.”
As computer scientists, we are naturally interested in the quest for an alternate epistêmê that can describe the mechanistic workings of the financial markets, to which we could then apply the engineering “know how” within our storehouse to open up a whole new frontier for technological innovation.
It is relatively easy to focus on what we know, yet the wonder of the world, the cosmos, is never greater when we contemplate all that we don’t know. So it is here that we wish to share what we do not yet know (and believe me, there is much about finance and trading that a computer scientist doesn’t know!). We ask for your indulgence to muse and offer spontaneous remarks on sundry aspects of the financial trading business as we first encountered.
Be forewarned though: parables abound, where mastery of facts is shaky, or when a good fitting quote escapes memory, as we seek to capture the essence of something too complex to be understood any other way. This marks the beginning of a series of blog posts covering topics of interest to us, as we find time to write in between research tasks ongoing.
To make sense of things, this world, the universe; if anyone cares to ask. Just that. Nothing more.
“An expert is a person that has his ignorance organized.”