Sciences and humanities : ne'er the twain shall meet?

[Mr. Tea]

Ahh, OK - by 'make logical sense' I meant 'is consistent with logic and mathematics'. I did *not* meant 'conform to common sense', which has very little to do with logic (eg. computers operate on principles of pure logic, yet they have no common sense whatsoever).

For example, Newton's laws made perfect logical 'sense' when he formulated them, even though they violated the 'common sense' view at the time that a moving object will eventually stop if there's no force pushing it along.
Two hundred years later Newton's ideas (which had become 'common sense' to physicists) were superceded by Einstein's, who'd found that logical inconsistencies arise if you try to combine the Newtonian idea of absolute space and time with Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism. Einstein's theories, which were at first deeply counterintuitive despite being logically sound, eventually became 'common sense' (again, to physicists), and so on and so forth.

It's the fact that accepted scientific ideas evolve (largely) through rational processes that distinguish them from religion, which does not really 'evolve' at all (Christians today largely believe the same things they did 1,900 years ago: scientists do not), but changes by the 'random mutation' of schisms, wars and so on (like Henry VIII breaking away from Rome so he could divorce his first wife and get his hands on the monasteries' cash, leading to the creation of the Church of England).

 

[nomadologist]

Yup.

 

[gabriel]

One of the bigger and most-reported claims is that women use three times as many words in a given day than men do. Unsurprisingly, this is bunk

the guardian newspaper in england did a thing on this a few months back where they got a bloke known for being a bit shy, not very talkative, and a woman whose friends thought of her as quite a chatterbox, then taped them each for a day, counted the words they spoke, and found no significant difference at all. here it is - http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1957827,00.html

ben goldacre's bad science column (in the guardian) and website deserve a mention here too - http://www.badscience.net/

 

[nomadologist]

that one study isn't enough to indicate what happens in general, though, gabriel. i'm sure that idea about words spoken per day is complete bull--but probably especially as you take a bigger and bigger data set

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

I'm looking forward to Manuel Delanda's latest hitting my doormat in the next few days. It appears to tackle ideas in this thread.

"Manuel DeLanda is a distinguished writer, artist and philosopher. In his new book, he offers a fascinating look at how the contemporary world is characterized by an extraordinary social complexity. Since most social entitles, from small communities to large nation-states, would disappear altogether if human minds ceased to exist, Delanda proposes a novel approach to social ontology that asserts the autonomy of social entities from the conceptions we have of them. This highly original and important book takes the reader on a journey that starts with personal relations and climbs up one scale at a time all the way to territorial states and beyond. Only by experiencing this upward movement can we get a sense of the irreducible social complexity that characterizes the contemporary world."

Most interesting for me at least "as a secondary task a sustained criticism of the primacy of post-modernist linguistic analysis in social science (the theory of the linguisticality of experience)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Philosophy_of_Society:_Assemblage_Theory_and_Social_Complexity

 

[shudder]

that one study isn't enough to indicate what happens in general, though, gabriel. i'm sure that idea about words spoken per day is complete bull--but probably especially as you take a bigger and bigger data set

well, yeah, it wasn't really a study at all (sample size = 2, and both participants knew the point of the experiment), but various language log posts have looked at actual literature on the subject, and done corpus analyses... Unsurprisingly, men and women seem to use roughly the same number of words per day, with men having a slightly higher mean, and with within-group variation being much wider than between-group variation.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I've found one of the most interesting, and telling, case studies is the recent attempts to establish that there is some sort of universal ideal of the female body that constitutes 'attractiveness'.

Beyond the thin/fat issue, I dare say that there are characteristics that are universally unattractive (or universally highly likely to be unattractive):

- (highly) unsymmetrical features
- signs of disease
- signs of disability

In any case, the very fact that we find things attractive/unattractive at all tells us that attraction is not just determined by culture.

 

[John Doe]

Beyond the thin/fat issue, I dare say that there are characteristics that are universally unattractive (or universally highly likely to be unattractive):

- (highly) unsymmetrical features
- signs of disease
- signs of disability

In any case, the very fact that we find things attractive/unattractive at all tells us that attraction is not just determined by culture.

My point was that this is little more than aesthetics masquering as science.

As for your list: who is this 'we' that wouldn't find such features attractive? That was the point of my post: that such universalisation is little more than a totalising strategy designed to impose a contemporary western model (in this case of beauty) across all cultures at all times. Even the smallest familiarity with any evidence shows it to be nonsense.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I can't think of any cultures where signs of disability or disease would be considered actively attractive, can you?

I guess the cosmetic scarring common in some cultures might look like a disease to the uninitiated, that's different because it's deliberate. I suspect if you'd never seen a tattoo or an ear-piercing before they'd look pretty weird, too.

Also, Marilyn Monroe had a famously asymmetric face.

/my 2 cents

 

[DigitalDjigit]

I can't think of any cultures where signs of disability or disease would be considered actively attractive, can you?

The fevered imagination of J.G. Ballard and Cronenberg and anyone who watches the latter's movie and enjoys it.

I don't think a mole counts as assymetry.

 

[nomadologist]

she did have an assymetrical face--her profile is different on different sides

 

[Mr. Tea]

The fevered imagination of J.G. Ballard and Cronenberg and anyone who watches the latter's movie and enjoys it.

I'm talking about human cultures that have arisen naturally, not sci-fi obsessed nerds who get off on the idea that they disgust other people.

I don't think a mole counts as assymetry.

No, her actual face was asymmetric. There are images made by taking 'mirror images' of one side of her face or the other, they both look totally different from what she actually looked like.

 

[John Doe]

I can't think of any cultures where signs of disability or disease would be considered actively attractive, can you?

I guess the cosmetic scarring common in some cultures might look like a disease to the uninitiated, that's different because it's deliberate. I suspect if you'd never seen a tattoo or an ear-piercing before they'd look pretty weird, too.

Also, Marilyn Monroe had a famously asymmetric face.

/my 2 cents

Disease might not be considered attractive - it has little to do with aesthetics and is irrelevant to this debate. As for disability, well there's plenty of testaments from amputee prostitutues or those born with congenital defects (eg lack of legs) about their multiple successes with countless clients. On the level of the individual, it seems, anything and everything can be constituted as 'attractive' albeit in a festishistic fashion (although all 'beauty' when you think of it can be considered fetishistic on the level of both the individual and the culture).

On the cultural level the operation of constructing ideals of beauty remains specific to that culture. It is not universal nor is it a-historical. In what are termed 'cultures of scarcity' for example there are many examples today where the ideal womanly body would be termed, by our culture as at best voluptuous, at worst overweight. And my point of citing Marilyn Monroe was to illustrate that our own culture's ideal of beauty changes constantly with time: only 50 years ago she was considered the most beautiful and attractive woman in the world*: her body type today would not be considered ideal but would be judged wanting (legs too short, waist and backside too wide, breasts too big etc). Beauty and attractiveness are fluid concepts between cultures and within cultures over time - as I've said, even the most cursory familiarity with the subject illustrates this.

Edit: * by our culture, obviously...

 

[John Doe]

I'm talking about human cultures that have arisen naturally.

Human cultures that have arisen naturally??? Hmm, that's a new one on me. Human cultures, surely, arise culturally, otherwise they're not cultures, are they?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Human cultures that have arisen naturally??? Hmm, that's a new one on me. Human cultures, surely, arise culturally, otherwise they're not cultures, are they?

Yes, but if you want to have the two concepts separate, nature must 'precede' culture - if not, there is an infinite regress (which cannot stand, as obviously humans must have come into existence at some point - at which point human 'culture' did not exist to show them how to behave). This is where social constructivism is revealed as being capable of only shallow explanations.

In any case, the two terms are not separable. As we are natural animals, 'culture' is merely nature revealing our natures. Part of our nature is the hard-wired inclination to find beauty in something, which drives the 'beauty culture.'

There was an interesting study recently that found that those feted for their good looks (Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie etc) had faces that were closest to the mean of everybody's faces ie had the best genes - no hint of congenital disease/disability.

Bear in mind that Tom Cruise and Angelina would be rejected for the present-day catwalk, so there are limits to seeing the 'size zero' type as the consensus view on beauty, especially since the models in fashion are merely asexual hangers for the designers' clothes. In fact, Marilyn Monroe is very much the type that is still found most attractive - the busty beauties in Zoo, Nuts or on page 3 are more reliable indicators of what men find attractive than fashion shows. (Science says a high bust:waist ratio is also linked to fertility - and just look at the old fertility goddesses!)

A challenge for the dyed-in-the-wool social constructivist would be to see if they can 'learn' to find their most unappealing type the most appealing eg. go from Monroe to McManus (with an eye missing).

 

[Guybrush]

There was an interesting study recently that found that those feted for their good looks (Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie etc) had faces that were closest to the mean of everybody's faces ie had the best genes - no hint of congenital disease/disability.

This reminds me of this image:

These women do not exist. They each are a composite of about 30 faces that I created to find out the current standard of good looks on the Internet.
On the popular Hot or Not web site, people rate others’ attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10. An average score based on hundreds or even thousands of individual ratings takes only a few days to emerge.
I collected some photos from the site, sorted them by rank and used SquirlzMorph to create multi-morph composites from them. Unlike projects like Face of Tomorrow or Beauty Check where the subjects are posed for the purpose, the portraits are blurry because the source images are low resolution with differences in posture, hair styles, glasses, etc, so that I could use only 36 control points for the morphs.
What did I conclude about good looks from these virtual faces? First, morphs tend to be prettier than their sources because face asymmetries and skin blemishes average out. However, the low score images show that fat is not attractive. The high scores tend to have narrow faces. I will leave it to you to find more differences and to do a similar project for men.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

In the same way, what *direct* consequence does quantum mechanics have for society, beyond enabling the microchips that have led to the 'information revolution'?

Current digital microchips/CPUs have no connection with quantum mechanics, but are based on simple binary exclusion [on/off bits]. Quantum mechanical computers [still at the very early experimental stage] measure data by vectors of qubits (quantum bits) that utilise such quantum phenomena as entanglement and superposition. In the classical digital computer, the memory is made up of bits, where each bit represents either a one or a zero, and computation occurs by manipulating those bits, that is. by transporting these bits from memory to and from different logic gates. On the other hand, a quantum computer contains a vector of qubits, each of which can hold a one, a zero, or, most importantly, a superposition of these, so enabling the number of classical states encoded in a quantum register to grow exponentially with the number of qubits. But no fully working quantum computer has yet been convincingly demonstrated.

As for societal impacts, this is what many of the posts at the previous Baudrillard thread were attempting to demonstrate [but which you have conveniently bypassed by starting another thread], for example, the direct correspondence [ indeed, almost viscerally astonishing association] between Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the inaccessibility of the Real, as previously noted by K-punk in that thread, here:

Now Baudrillard's point about the real is to do with the inability to get to a real 'in itself'. Modern culture is fixated upon 'reality', Baudrillard says, but it is faced with paradoxes whenever it attempts to confront that reality in the raw as it were. The obvious example is reality TV; Baudrillard's example is the 'fly on the wall' documentary. Do such documentaries give us an accurate picture, or has the presence of the camera completely altered how people behave? The situation is undecidable. But if such cultural products - ostensibly stripped of all artifice and fictionality - do not give us 'reality' what would?

Another example. The opinion poll. Do opinion polls simply reflect or represent a pre-existing reality? No - even if they accurately record people's views, that very recording cannot but intervene in the very process they are supposedly only representing.

Both these examples are what Baudrillard means by hyperreality. Not the departure, the diminution, the evaporation of reality, but its metastization - the more real than real.​

One of the direct societal implications being that ...

There Is No Such Thing As Representation ...

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Why does Baudrillard stop at the use of media to record? Surely the real or imagined gaze of the Other is enough to affect behaviour? The effect of the real/imagined Other is produced by society (the present or past presence of the concrete Other). In any case, the social (directly/indirectly observed) me is just as 'real' as the asocial me (if such a thing can exist - even feral children act under observation).

Re opinion polls, polls don't just 'intervene' in the process of the 'real', they 'create' the 'real' - eg. ppl might be led to settle upon a view that they previously didn't hold. But yet again, that's just a societal interaction effect - which effects, per se, cannot be expunged to leave some kind of pristine noumenal 'realness' (which Kant rightly said cannot be apprehended directly anyway).

I reckon it's just cos he doesn't like Davina McCall.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Current digital microchips/CPUs have no connection with quantum mechanics, but are based on simple binary exclusion [on/off bits].

That's not true at all. All semiconductor electronics are based on technology that could only be developed once physicists had a fully quantum-mechanical theory of solid-state physics.

 

[John Doe]

Yes, but if you want to have the two concepts separate, nature must 'precede' culture - if not, there is an infinite regress This is where social constructivism is revealed as being capable of only shallow explanations.

In any case, the two terms are not separable. As we are natural animals, 'culture' is merely nature revealing our natures. Part of our nature is the hard-wired inclination to find beauty in something, which drives the 'beauty culture.'

There was an interesting study recently that found that those feted for their good looks (Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie etc) had faces that were closest to the mean of everybody's faces ie had the best genes - no hint of congenital disease/disability.

A challenge for the dyed-in-the-wool social constructivist would be to see if they can 'learn' to find their most unappealing type the most appealing eg. go from Monroe to McManus (with an eye missing).

Nature may well 'precede' culture (and as Levi Strauss points out, the moment when food moves from the raw to the cooked is the moment 'nature' ends and 'culture' begins) but to state that 'culture' is merely 'us' (who's is this us you keep mentioning?) revealing our 'nature' is laughable. Oh really? Seeing as human cultures are astonishingly and infinitely diverse either our 'natures' are utterly multi-faceted, polymorphous and dizzyingly diverse, or your argument is nonsense. You mention that our nature is 'hard wired to find beauty'. Is it? I would have thought it is hard wired to reproduce (which is not the same thing at all). The 'beauty culture' as such is the projection and realisation of desire in culture (which is not, and should not be confused with, whatever 'hard wired' reproductive drives we possess as a species). You ethno biologists have no adequate explanation/account for desire at all: as it is always desire which is both formed by and within culture (culture preceding our desire) then it is evident that our figures of desire are by definition shaped and specific to that culture. Ehtno biologists avoid this question: they are obsessed with attempting to define norms [of beauty in this case] that are universal and a-hisotrical (witness your nonsense about face shapes, asymmetry etc) in order to make the point that what is specific to our time and culture is somehow 'natural'. And as Roland Barthes said, whenever culture masquerades as nature, what it hides is ideology. You don't have to be the most perceptive of cultural critics to identify the ideology that lies behind the ethno-biologist project.