First some REALLY important news. Splash! NASA moon strikes found significant water. Having an abundance of water on the moon would make it easier to set up a base camp for astronauts by providing drinking water and the ingredients for rocket fuel.
No one could be more proud than I am, to see a great scientist's theory play out and be proved before the world. All the more so for a discovery as important as finding water on the moon (in deep-shaded craters at the south pole), which fact may help open the solar system to all humanity. So let me brag right here that this possibility was first broached back in the 1980s by UCSD Professor Jim Arnold, who at the time ran the California Space Institute and honored me by serving on my doctoral committee. (I was studying the mechanism by which the water might have got there in the first place -- comets.)
And while we’re ‘out there’... Apparently, the European Space Agency scanned science fiction stories for ideas that could be used in future space missions - this is the project's report. Further details about the study, together with the fact sheets, images and sources, can be found at
http://www.itsf.org
Name That Decade...
Sure, science has been marching on. But what else?
David Segal of the New York Times quoted me in an article about “what to name the decade that’s about to end.” My suggestion -- the Noughty Aughts signifies what a great big set of zeroes we’ve been living in, since 2000, wallowing amid self-righteousness and self-pity, instead of innovating and looking toward the future. I distinguish “noughty” (meaning zero-ish) from “naughty”... which would imply that at least we had some fun, by being a bit bad! (Alas.)
Note that I don’t single out any particular group to blame for this plague of gloomy self-indulgence. Indeed, lefty-Hollywood seems almost as much at fault - for putting out endless droves of future-hating films -- as the neocons are for their travesty-betrayal called Culture War. Somehow, I hope we can rediscover our capacity, as adults, to restart the can-do spirit of innovation, negotiation and faith in tomorrow.
More Science... High!
So, what would it take for human intelligence to march forward, even during the Noughty Aughts? And might we start sharing the gift of intelligence with others soon? (As in “uplift”?)
”If humans are genetically related to chimps, why did our brains develop the innate ability for language and speech while theirs did not? Scientists suspect that part of the answer to the mystery lies in a gene called FOXP2. When mutated, FOXP2 can disrupt speech and language in humans. Now, a UCLA–Emory University study reveals major differences between how the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 work, perhaps explaining why language is unique to humans.”
Might a simple modification of this one gene have interesting effects upon chimps? Would that fascinating prospect justify germ-line experiments on a great ape? Nobody mentions this question in the article, for obvious reasons. The first person to even broach the idea will meet a firestorm. And yet, it is obvious.
Ah, but always be willing to follow up! See this dissent-critique of the whole FOXP2 “speech gene” thing as a possibly grotesque oversimplification. In fact, we should all be wary of “this is the gene for that”. Yes, defects in single point genes can remove a capability. But single point additions seldom have a direct turn-on effect. Phenotype depends on genotype in the most convoluted and nonlinear ways.
A Pause of Optimism?
Ah, but now, for those who doubt the possibility of progress:“Since the 1950s, while Earth’s population has grown to more than 6 billion people, the large fraction suffering from malnutrition has shrunk from one-third to one-sixth. And although the total number of people suffering from malnutrition remained the same—one billion—this means some 5 billion people, more than ever by far, get enough food to eat today.”
Good news for liberal progressives, who really want to save the world, who are willing to admit that sometimes good news happens, and who think it is no sin to admit it. TERRIBLE news for lefty grouches, who just want to complain and bitch and whine. (When will liberals ever wake up and cut their ties to those jerks? Ah, but I am MUCH harsher on the right. See below.)
BTW, note. The virtuous fish to eat is tilapia. All right, it is kind of bland and needs to be seasoned. (Costco sells nicely spiced frozen tilapia.) But it is the farmed fish with the greatest food efficiency and lowest eco-impact. And, as a vegetarian fish, it accumulates the fewest metals out of the food chain.
Ah, but now for some bad news....
The Decline of the West Correlates With That Of Science Fiction
Doubt it? Take this I just received from my friend, scientist and SF scholar Joe Miller:
”Today I cancelled my 48 yr old membership in the SF Book Club. The woman who answered the phone asked me why. I told her that the club does not seem to do SF anymore--horror, fantasy, DVDs, tv series, everything but. So she asked me for the names of authors who had not appeared recently. I said Greg Benford, Greg Egan, Greg Bear, David Brin, Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge, etc. She said she did not recognize any of these authors. So I asked her who she would consider a SF author. Her reply was Anne Rice! QED!”
Yipe. Maybe Spengler was right, after all.
News from the Front.. in the War on Science...
Ah, but continuing re civilization’s decline... a new study by the Pew Research Center finds that the GOP is alienating scientists to a startling degree.
Only six percent of America's scientists identify themselves as Republicans; fifty-five percent call themselves Democrats. By comparison, 23 percent of the overall public considers itself Republican, while 35 percent say they're Democrats. This may seem unsurprising, given the red-meat troglodytism of recent years. Still a startling figure. Moreover, since we are talking ablout inarguably the nation’s smartest and most learned people, the Fox-propeled culture warriors have to find some way to wave off what thie implies -- that their movement is nothing less than the rebirth of the infamous Know Nothing Party.
As it turns out, there is only one recourse for rationalizers of the Right to fall back on...
... to preach that “being smart and knowledgeable doesn’t necessarily make one wise.”
Well, when you put it that way, sure. Duh. We all have known bright fools. It’s a truism with some basis in fact.
Ah, but what Fox and Murdoch and the new right culture war machine have done next shows genuine, feral canniness. As a subtext underlying alomost every narrative, they extrapolate this basic truism into a completely new message:
“Being smart and knowledgeable automatically makes someone unwise.”
Sound ridiculous? Absurd? But that is precisely the message being pushed by culture warriors. It is absolutely essential, in order to justify dismissing the consensus held by 99% of the atmospheric scientists in the world, regarding global climate change. It underlay the subordination of science to politics, during the Bush Administration.
In fact, let me be so bold as to claim that this is an unnoticed underpinning to the entire movement, propping up almost everything that the Neocons have pushed, for this last decade, and longer. For, without exactly this foundation assumption, there could be no venom-driven hatred of the Civil Service, or contempt for the advice of well-informed experts.
Let’s take this farther. Leaders of the GOP used to brag that their party was more than a year ahead of Democrats in average education levels. Okay. That seemed obvious and easy to explain. Remember, for generations the dems have included most of the immigrants and the poor. That, alone, affected the averages.
Only now? According to surveys taken across much of the last decade, the average Republican is now behind the average Democrat by more than a year of schooling -- and this despite the Democrats still representing society’s poor and underprivileged.
What could this mean? Other than reflecting a party-migration by nearly everybody in America with real expertise or a post-graduate degree? Including, lately, a great many members of the US military’s Senior Officer Corps. (Except for MBAs, of course. Funny -- they still tilt toward the Grand Old Party.)
Seriously, might the “Republican War on Science” and George Bush’s war against the US Civil Service, plus Culture War animosity in red counties toward Urban America, all be rooted in something deeper and more fundamental than anything that's spoken aloud? Deeper than the run of the mill talking points?
At this juncture, I am willing to wager that Culture War has almost nothing to do with race, or even region. Certainly not classic “conservative” policies, since Barry Goldwater would be a democrat, today. No, it is -- to some large extent -- about something puerile and basic.
Hating smartypantses.
Some Politically Redolent Items
Oh, while we’re in rant mode, see Russ Daggatt's latest!
You’ve all heard my riff -- about how the democrats ought to rediscover the “first liberal” Adam Smith, and steal him from the Republicans, who have warped and perverted and reversed almost everything that Smith wrote and stood for. (Seriously, dems, he’s almost a poster boy for your side!) Now see a wonderful article in which Salon “interviews” Adam Smith -- one of the founders of Classic Liberalism. (And see my letter that follows it.)
Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano called for closer collaboration with foreign partners, more intensive cooperation with local law-enforcement officials, and greater involvement by citizens in watching for and responding to terrorist threats."For too long, we've treated the public as a liability to be protected rather than an asset in our nation's collective security"... a line that seems lifted almost verbatim from one of my many essays on this topic.
Meanwhile... illustrating my point about a possible “Tsunami of McVeighs”... we’ve seen plenty of action on the far right. Just to remind folks it can come from the other direction, too. (Though, in this case, what does “right-left” even mean?)
Salon Magazine offers a cogent look at Archie Brown's major new book “The Rise and Fall of Communism. At minimum, read the review. I find it depressing, in conversations with so many contemporaries, how little people know about that fantastic, huge, failed experiment in politics, economics and - ultimately - human nature.
See a clear comparison of red states vs blue states, when it comes to rates of divorce, teen pregnancy and subscription to online porn. Some pretty astonishing placings!
PJ O’Rourke “tweets” the US Constiution!
And finally, from the ridiculous to the sublime -- Stefan Jones found an archive site containing Patrick Farley’s brilliant online strip “Spiders.” I wish even 10% of the folks I have met at CIA, DTRA NSA or ODNI had as much insight into the core problem -- and its ultimate solution -- as Farley exhibits here.
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Runaway Serfer
Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com
Comments
As kids we KNEW what the existing science was. We got this information almost by osmosis, from the magazines in the checkout aisle, from the people on TV, and if we were lucky, from reading material in our own homes.
Nowadays, when I say something about that whiz-bang new arm I saw on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago, I get blank stares and "That's nice." It's not NICE, it's REVOLUTIONARY! There should be dancing in the streets!
That's scary. What's also scary is that American students aren't studying any kinds of science. I recruit specialized IT nerds and can't fine Americans with the skills my clients need.
Have the bullies made it impossible for smart people to survive high school? Have colleges given up trying to point smartypantses at science? Scary
Really? So all those birds chirping really is just musical nonsense for the human ear to enjoy? All those squeaks and squeals by dolphins and whales nothing more than auditory enjoyment for humans? The grooming of chimps and other animals is not a form of speech and language??
Now, of course, this is not a form of speech or language that humans can understand. But, to say that these forms of communication is not language is absurd. By that premise, a child who cries when he needs fed or needs his diaper changed has no language or speech, but is very much communicating. A dog who barks when she needs to let outside is not communicating through language.
And we won't even go into how deaf children communicate before they learn sign language.
Sorry, I just don't buy it
Communication and language are NOT the same thing however even PLANTS communicate. To say that language is what separates humans from "lower" species is a bit of a stretch when you consider that other species communicate with humans without benefit of a common language. Don't believe me? You've obviously never had a pet.
My eldest is in his fourth year on the school's FIRST Robotics League team (look it up!) Dean Kamen's huge(!) nationwide program to make nerdiness not only exciting but actuall ycool & popular on campus. And it works at our school (admittedly a bit of a non-jock school.
Oh, sure, this trend is bucked by others, like the War on Science and the dismal lessons of the entertainment industry. But there's plenty of good out there, too.
Placebost... you are doing something that the conservatives rightfully ridicule... thrusting your own definitions forward, posing them as absolute givens, and then using those axioms as a basis to simplistically ridicule an "opponent."
First, you would not attack me thus, if you knew a thing about my Uplift Universe of science fiction novels, which explore animal language capabilities and characteristics in profound depth. Secondly, you KNOW damn well that your definition of "language" is the unusual one, not the one I used. Your version is so vague as to be useless.
But if you insist upon it, then please give us a name for what "language" USED TO MEAN. hm? Then take that made up word, insert it in my posting, and press CONTINUE READING.
Oh, please, please have a look at recent scientific studies showing that self-righteous indignation is precisely equivalent to taking drugs like cocaine or heroine.
http://www.davidbrin.com/addiction.htm
I was simply responding to this quote from your piece:
”If humans are genetically related to chimps, why did our brains develop the innate ability for language and speech while theirs did not?
The author(s) of this are the ones who seem to define language and speech as only something that humans can understand, because the examples I listed are forms of language and speech that other animals do apparently understand, even if we don't.
In other words, how do we know for an absolute fact that us not understanding a bird chirping or a cat meowing or a dog barking is different from us not understanding French or Chinese or Greek? We simply don't know, and for all we do know, that may well be a fair comparison
I agree that there is no absolute distinction between human and animal communication. Some of the sea-mammals, like dolphins, may indeed have independently arrived at a language as sophisticated as ours, and many terrestrial animals and birds appear to have communication abilities which are more advanced than previously thought. Evolution is beautiful in that it allows innumerable solutions to the same problem. The genetic underpinnings of dolphin "speech" are no doubt different from our own.
This does not take away from David's point that human language is an order of magnitude more sophisticated than chimp language-- the proof is in the fact that apes who use sign languages do not use more than 3-word sentences and do not have the ability to communicate abstract concepts. Therefore, the fact that a single loss-in-function mutation at a single genetic locus makes humans without sophisticated language IS significant.
David's main point, which you missed, is that the reverse is not necessarily true. Just because you can disable human speech with a point mutation does not mean that you can enable chimp speech with the opposite mutation. This is because speech is based on more than just the one gene!
The problem with that theory is that you come to a situation where one could draw the conclusion that a genetic mutation could give a 3 year old, who has only the ability to communicate in 2-3 sentence fragments, the ability to speak with the language ability of Einstein. How do we know that, with time and evolution, chimps and other "lower animals" won't be able to learn to communicate with the same depths we do, without the genetic manipulation that is being proposed. The same way that sci-fi writers often propose that more highly evolved aliens have taught less evolved humans the basics of our society, ie those who believe that The Pyramids or other architectural structures that predate known technology came from alien species. Of course, scientists now know that previous cultures DID have technology that we did not previously believe they had, but it has only been recently discovered. And similarly, it may one day yet be discovered that the evolution of language is simply a matter of evolution and not forced genetic manipulation
YES! Great analysis, and spot on!
"The problem with that theory is that you come to a situation where one could draw the conclusion that a genetic mutation could give a 3 year old, who has only the ability to communicate in 2-3 sentence fragments, the ability to speak with the language ability of Einstein. How do we know that, with time and evolution, chimps and other 'lower animals' won't be able to learn to communicate with the same depths we do, without the genetic manipulation that is being proposed."
Did you read my conclusion above?:
"... the reverse is not necessarily true. Just because you can disable human speech with a point mutation does not mean that you can enable chimp speech with the opposite mutation. This is because speech is based on more than just the one gene!"
David is absolutely not arguing for anything like the scenario you describe. It is much easier to break a car than it is to build one. We could have a good grasp of the genetics of human speech and still be unable to induce that through genetic engineering in non-humans. Why? Because of epigenetics-- the complex way that the genetic code is "interpreted" by the developing organism. It is analogous to the way that a text is interpreted by the reader. Different genes are activated and deactivated at different times in the life of an organism. If the epigenetic factors are even slightly different in chimp development, then human genetic code could be interpreted in a decidedly chimp-like context and result in an unpredictable outcome.
Could a chimp or chimps eventually develop speech by other means than human intervention. Absolutely! This is an entirely different matter than the subject of this post.
my point is that the statement, ”If humans are genetically related to chimps, why did our brains develop the innate ability for language and speech while theirs did not?" is a faulty premise, which you *appear to* agree with me on. And once you begin with a faulty premise, everything after that is irrelevant, because all you can do is make assumptions based on said faulty premise. If the premise had been logical and made room for the fact that there is a possibility that human language and animal language are the same, then there could be better discussion about the how and why of the differences (ie genetics), but when you begin with the premise that they are different, you come to different conclusions that may be completely invalid if you were to test them vs a theory that compared their similarities, not their differences
http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/main.html
It's all good, but the "Thanksgiving Special" and "Terrors of the Night" are especially good.
Here is what he's resurrected of The Spiders:
http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/spiders/
The book was adapted for the screen as "Soylent Green."
I'll have to check out the seasoned tilapia fillets. The plain ones I bought last year were indeed pretty bland.
"Ah, but always be willing to follow up! See this dissent-critique of the whole FOXP2 “speech gene” thing [hyperlink] as a possibly grotesque oversimplification."
The straw man you are attempting to make out of David is not even David himself, but one of his sources, with which he has engaged critically as any responsible scholar should.
My point is not to critique your ideas. It is your rhetoric which is misplaced.
Postmodernism and its associated ealms have been a curse upon western civilization. Preening with self-righteous fury and taking over many soft studies departments, it has proved that the left (as opposed to liberalism) can be anti-science too.
You see this in the tendency to redefine old, perfectly usable words, for reasons of political correctness. Thus "truth" becomes "anything that you and your culture happen to find redolent or meaningful."
Likewise, "intelligence" becomes entirely detached from ability to evaluate your environment and solve problems therein -- the process by which we GAINED our intelligence, in nature. And "language" becomes any means by which any creature, of any kind, communicates with others, even though biologists already had perfectly good terminology for that.
Anyone who criticizes this crummy trend toward intellectual dishonesty is automatically a fascist, even though I have fought the neocon madness and the quasi-feudalist/oligarchic putsch as hard as anybody. My novels explore many aspects of animal pre-intelligence and quasi-language use.
In fact, this is all rooted on an overcompensatory incantatory system (akin to religion) called Tolerance Fetishism, in which our highly laudable Enlightenment trend toward ever-greater inclusiveness -- that I talk about in my book OTHERNESS -- gets warped into a reflex to extoll anything that is non-western, non-male, non-white, non-human as inherently and automatically better.
Naturally, this reflex has HELPED the neoccons, by giving them ample material to use for strawman ridicule of "liberals".
In fact, Tolerance Fetishism is no more necessary than postmodernism's insane declaration that science and objective reality are mere "oppressive patriarchal narrative systems."
As I said in this very posting, Adam Smith showed that ever-increasing levels of tolerance, inclusion, rights and opportunities for everybody are easily justified and propeled by simple, straightforward optimization practicality. By the blatant fact that most forms of oppression waste human talent and potential that should be added to the churning, creativity maelstrom of joyfully competitive and truly un trammeled markets. Smith urged public education because such state intervention is necessary to compensate for the advantages the rich give their kids.
The same logic applies to most reasonable interventions to overcome injustice. And hence, the absurd religionization of tolerance-chic is not even necessary. We certainly do NOT have to put up with attempts to bully us over PC terminology usages.
Sorry if this seemed confrontational. Placebo. You seem a smart and well-intentioned person.
But chimps do not have human equivalent language abilities. They may be fascinating creatures (I find them so) and merit protection and study and sympathy. But they are by definition not our equals in the essentially human activities that we value most.
Your complete redefinition of "language" is just like redefining "tree-climbing" as any ability to stand on a piece of wood... and hence, all land species can do it just as well as any chimp can! Hell, even a fish can climb a tree, by that definition.
Phthalate Exposure Linked to Less-Masculine Play by Boys
"A study of 145 preschool children reports, for the first time, that when the concentrations of two common phthalates in mothers' prenatal urine are elevated their sons are less likely to play with male-typical toys and games, such as trucks and play fighting."
Maybe this will be the issue that makes concerns over toxins crossover to convervativeland. Yes, these plastics are turning your sons into sensitive nancy-boys who are no good at sports!
"Postmodernism and its associated ealms [?] have been a curse upon western civilization. Preening with self-righteous fury and taking over many soft studies departments, it has proved that the left (as opposed to liberalism) can be anti-science too."
I love your post, but I must respectfully and firmly disagree here.
Who exactly are you crusading against here? It sounds a lot like "Red"-baiting.
My background is in anthropology, and as a generalist, I have a lot of training in both the "hard"-science and "soft"-science or humanities-tinged subdisciplines of what is admittedly a schizophrenic discipline.
Postmodern epistimology is not the boogieman that some empirical positivists (along with nearly all the intellectual rightwingers) consistently make it out to be.
True enough, influential postmodernists (not "ism") have been guilty at various times of aloofness and obtuseness, and neglected the needs of a broader audience while preaching to an exclusive choir. However most sectors of academe have been guilty of similar crimes.
Social constructivism may be taken to absurdist extremes by postmodernists. So can most scholastic methodologies.
The old-school attempts to force hard-science methodologies onto soft-sciences were misguided. Universal sociocultural laws were once presumed to exist, and none have been proven.
Postmodernism has become a convenient straw-man for some. It is simply a theoretical paradigm like any other; it has it's place, and it has contributed in valuable ways to important theoretical debates.
Phthalate Exposure Linked to Less-Masculine Play by Boys
"A study of 145 preschool children reports, for the first time, that when the concentrations of two common phthalates in mothers' prenatal urine are elevated their sons are less likely to play with male-typical toys and games, such as trucks and play fighting."
I am well aware of the dangers posed by estrogen mimicking compounds; however a postmodernist critique of the above study would challenge the decision to use play with supposedly "masculine" toys as a litmus test for degree of masculinity.
That is problematic on a number of levels. It appears to represent a noble but misguided attempt by hard-scientists to associate use of socially constructed artifacts in gendered play, with the biological category of sex. The behavioral indicators by themselves are not compelling enough. This alone does not render the study invalid in my view, but insufficient.
And you are free to agree or disagree with the above critique without tarring it as "a curse upon western civilization".
By the way, what exactly is "western civilization" anyway? World-historians have acknowledged some degree of hemispheric integration since the Bronze Age. Was there ever a time when you could cross the Bosphorus and the nature of civilization was altogether different?
1) The neoconservative movement shared with postmodernism a near absolute spite toward science, and even the very concept of objective reality. While both groups rage against each other , their shared emotional, personality and memic sets are overwhelming and plain.
Both use quasi- incantation verbal chains to try to sound"logical" -- without ever demonstrating a clear, semantic phenomenology that offers falsifiable statements. A sin originating in both Marx and Ayn Rand.
Both proclaim that scientists are an oppressive elite bent on propagandizing an agenda, rather than truth.
2) Although "aloofness and obtuseness" are crimes, they are not the principal ones. Indeed, aloofness and obtuseness is almost always a sure sign that an intellectual hasn't a clue what he's talking about.
3) Conflating scholasticism with science is a true sign that you need to talk to scientists more. Scholasticism has a few limited uses, e.g. in fields like history. Otherwise, it was a nostalgia-driven intellectual dead-end that is despised by most scientists.
4) Postmodernism makes no bones about being all about the incantations. Its practitioners obsess upon the incantatory process -- exactly as witch doctors and priests and platonists did, for thousands of years. They are part of that tradition, and thus not romantic "rebels" at all.
It is enlightenment science that is still the rebel, against the foul habits of the past. Self-delusion is the one universal human genius trait, and it has taken us many thousands of years to finally admit it. That "truth" actually has meaning, rooted not in universally malleable subjectivity (as other cultures thought) but in comparison to an objective reality that exists, is important, and that is our only hope of ever dropping smug self-hypnotic fantasies.
This appkies in the area of social justice, too, a realm where PM guys try to claim moral superiority. Only, it was the enlightenment that began us down the road of human rights, and I have shown that pragmatists have stronger reasons to push for justice. By comparison, those fixated on incantation are part of the memic tradition that excused every great crime of the past 4,000 years.
Sure, attempts to apply "objective" scientific rigor to the soft fields, like sociology and psychology, have often been dramatic busts, steaming with self-indulgent just-so stories and failure to anchor anything in reality.
So? The culprit here is not science, but the fantastic/incredible complexity of the human animal. Something for which we really ought to be grateful. Thank God we aren't the simpleminded cretins portrayed by Marx, or Freud, or (for that matter) Isaac Asimov in his "psychohistory" field, described in the Foundation series.
(I actually finished off that series, tying all the loose ends! In Foundation's Triumph.)
That complexity doesn't mean that we are better understood by terminology-juggling mystics who take every possible tactic to make themselves obscure and incomprehensible. What is DOES mean is that we need to follow fairly simple rule sets, out of which human diversity then creates the kinds of justice and creativity and generalized sanity that we seek.
These simple rule sets were discovered NOT by priests and such, but by the practical reformers of the Enlightenment, like Adam Smith and Ben franklin, who knew as a fundamental premise what self-deluders human beings are. And hence, no single person will ever be completely right. And hence, the method known as Reciprocal Accountability, by which we catch each others' mistakes...
...via democracy, science, markets. These simple rule sets allow us to be as complex as we want to be, as staggeringly interesting cellular automata who keep improving the models by which we judge Objective Reality.
The truly depressing thing about postmodernists is their utter contempt for these methods, which have brought humanity out of the darkness, within reach of the dreams of science fiction.
However, I am still struggling to figure out whose ideas exactly you are attacking. To trace postmodern "incantations" (huh?) back to Marx of all people (I guess because they are both politically Left??) displays ignorance about the historical relation between Marxian, structuralist, and post-structuralist thought. It was precisely the failure of Marx's social-justice predictions, in pragmatic terms, which led to the development of post-structuralism. To simply dismiss a large and diverse body scholarship with the claim that pragmatists are the good-guys while "chanters" (?) are the bad guys (and responsible for numerous atrocities too! Wow!) does not recognize the numerous epistimological debates on these very issues which cross-cut the postmodern camps in virtually every discipline where such camps exist.
There is more to postmodernism than the caricature you are painting of it, David.
You should know as well as anyone to debate the issues rather than using character assassinations. It is possible to be a scientist and to embrace aspects of postmodern theory. People do it all the time.
Tell me more about this "objective reality" of which you speak. I thought science was about falsification, probability, and levels of uncertainty, not identifying absolute truth. That is for religious authorities to do.
I think the attempt to get the social-sciences to "tow-the-line" and conform to a hard-science model, reflects the phenomenon of "physics-envy" - the attempts by other disciplines to inject greater certitude into their own work. Ironically, it is in the absurd conundrums of theoretical physics where the quest for absolute truth becomes the most fraught with difficulty.
Do you think that Asimov's rationalist epic of the Foundation trilogy really reflects the bright future of the social sciences? The Encyclopedia Galactica project was based on the principle that at a large enough scale, human behavior is as predictable as chemical behavior in a laboratory setting. The converse of this, of course, that at a small enough scale, atomic particles may behave as irrationally as people.
FYI- My last post was started before you posted your last comment- so I would have tempered my critique a little had I read that first.
Isn't it funny that we both hit on the Foundation trilogy? (I had noticed you referenced it in your profile).
Sound ridiculous? Absurd? But that is precisely the message being pushed by culture warriors. It is absolutely essential, in order to justify dismissing the consensus held by 99% of the atmospheric scientists in the world, regarding global climate change. It underlay the subordination of science to politics, during the Bush Administration. Brin
Isn't that the American way? De Toqueville observed this trait of Americans to dismiss intellectuals with little to no respect. It looks like nothing has changed.
http://books.google.com/books?id=hsyA7hmDEqYC&pg=PA146&lpg=PA146&dq=Brin+Plato+galileo+chair&source=bl&ots=z_mLUcTf2t&sig=kqmhxZPhdMz3BrhKASXmeCR3CWI&hl=en&ei=m-UBS5imApTQtAOasvyHCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false
or google "Brin Plato galileo chair transparent" And see an imagined conversation tween plato vs galileo
No, I don't worship OR. Indeed, it is forever out of our sight, as Plato correctly points out. But the falsifiability process nevertheless lets us CORNER OR, with ever greater precision. And OR does serve a function that not of the old gods ever did.
Denying that OR even exists, and calling science an oppressive, subjective patriarchy-chauvinist narrative may have been uttered only by some of the PM sages, and not others. But the morass of such bullshit is so immense that the purported "good guys" in such a movement are the ones who bear a burden of proof...
...that their entire exercise is anything more than an obscurantist, razzle-dazzle incantatory system that evades ever making a single prediction, falsifiable statement or anything useful at all.
http://www.marssociety.org/portal/ZubrinStatementLCROSS/
I am split on this (as on any subject I've really given some thought). I would love to see a human presence on Mars. I would love even more for that presence to be me. But is it really cost-effective way to explore our neighbor planet? Probably not.
Phobos.
The Russians are sending a probe there.
Incredibly valuable real estate. Key to everything.
Here we go again with the sweeping dismissal without engaging with any particular idea.
Anyone could level such charges at any number of philosophical and ethical "systems" and no one could prove 'em wrong, because it is effectively an un-faslsifiable statement.
It doesn't accomplish anything in a debate. It's like the old man telling the kid to get a haircut and a job. You just point and say "irrational! irrational!" without saying what it is you are talking about.
A postmodernist who says "there is no such thing as objective reality" is on thin ice in the same way that a philosopher who says "there is an objective reality" is. Both statements are not provable and are entirely faith based.
Postmodernism has been abused and has real flaws like any other systems, but it has also provided very important critiques of the overreach of scholarly language, (generally NOT in the hard science disciplines, except when those fields make ham-handed forays outside their purviews, i.e. by attempting to quantify masculinity based on preference for toy trucks).