In my opinion action without theory or theory without action is useless. What I see happening presently is that people just do actions without understanding the why and how the underlying processes occur. Although this can be alleviating in the short term, it can be very dangerous in the long run.
By acting without understanding, people if they are lucky, they might hit the ball, but most likely they will miss it. If they fail, the consequences might not be apparent in the short term but they will be in the long run. By understanding, we for sure will decrease the likelihood of failure. This applies to any field of human knowledge including: science, medicine, business, politics, administration, the economy, etc. I think this is in big part the reason of the malaise we see these days.
Adolfo Cotter, MD
Jul 02/2012