critiques of science

[Mr. Tea]

Well with regard to climate science in particular, you've got a somewhat funny situation. Sure, there are piecemeal regulations here and there to promote this emission-reduction target or that tree-planting initiative, but 90% of the time it's business-as-usual, with most of our electrical energy and transport fuel being derived from fossil fuels, and largely unabated tropical deforestation. The industrial establishment is perfectly happy with this, of course, even if it grumbles about "unreasonable" environmental regulations. It's the scientific establishment that's pointing out the effects of industry and land use on the climate.

Something that's very dangerous here is the "voice from the wilderness" fallacy, whereby the dissenting minority voice is given more credence than the far larger establishment voice. You know, the whole "They said Galileo/Einstein/[whoever] was wrong but he turned out to be right, therefore [this guy] who everyone says is wrong must actually be right". See also: AIDS denialism.

 

[Patrick Swayze]

But to create art to support ideology doesn't immediately make it less 'artistic'.

only because it's extremely hard to define 'artistic' or say whether one thing is more 'artistic' than another. defining something as 'scientific' is much easier.

personally I think propaganda is a corruption of art in that it brings scientific standards to bear on it. in the same way data must be 'produced' (in various senses) to support a scientific theory, propaganda subordinates art to ideology. art is produced to support it. it becomes the product of necessity rather than inspiration.

I'd say this isn't terribly likely, because science is constantly peer-reviewed.

but that Curtis doc is all about how a scientific theory that was insufficiently challenged at the time (and accepted as a basis for early environmental science) became integral to a particular ideological understanding of society and power.

 

[Mr. Tea]

See also: AIDS denialism.

This is intimately linked to the psychology of conspiracy theories and is very popular amongst various segments of the tinfoil-hatted community.

 

[IdleRich]

"I disagree, I think it's only one element of any religious movement that demands dogma. the majority usually favour some level of debate (through interpretation), at the very least over the church's stance on social issues. this mirrors the way data is often reinterpreted (or new data sets created) when a particular scientific finding has huge social ramifications (MMR/Autism 'link', bird flu, MRSA...). Both institutions are/were subject to a dialectic of competing narratives based on interpretation of available data. and both have strict rules concerning the methodology of interpreting that data."

I see the discussion has moved on a bit but I just wanted to say that debate by interpretation of a holy text is still a different kind of debate from what most scientists (in fact people) would call debate. You might tenuously argue that it mirrors the way that data is sometimes reinterpreted but it clearly is totally different from new data being created, that's exactly what it's not.

 

[Patrick Swayze]

I see the discussion has moved on a bit but I just wanted to say that debate by interpretation of a holy text is still a different kind of debate from what most scientists (in fact people) would call debate. You might tenuously argue that it mirrors the way that data is sometimes reinterpreted but it clearly is totally different from new data being created, that's exactly what it's not.

old 'data' is reinterpreted to produce new conclusions/paradigms

that's the link.

 

[IdleRich]

"old 'data' is reinterpreted to produce new conclusions/paradigms
that's the link."

Yeah, I understand what you're saying, I just don't agree with it. There is no equivalence in most religions (the main ones) for the new data which in science is at least as important in producing new paradigms as reinterpreting old data.

 

[baboon2004]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/jul/21/jesus-food-sightings

 

[Patrick Swayze]

Yeah, I understand what you're saying, I just don't agree with it. There is no equivalence in most religions (the main ones) for the new data which in science is at least as important in producing new paradigms as reinterpreting old data.

if we take the data as the words in a given holy book, I'm pretty sure they change with each new publication.

 

[Mr. Tea]

if we take the data as the words in a given holy book, I'm pretty sure they change with each new publication.

In presentation, yes. But not substantially. Christianity's central tenet - that God's Son died and lived again to save humans from sin - is the same today as it was nearly 2,000 years ago, whereas physical cosmology has radically transformed our idea of what the universe is made of and its likely ultimate fate within the last decade and a half.

 

[Patrick Swayze]

In presentation, yes. But not substantially. Christianity's central tenet - that God's Son died and lived again to save humans from sin - is the same today as it was nearly 2,000 years ago, whereas physical cosmology has radically transformed our idea of what the universe is made of and its likely ultimate fate within the last decade and a half.

theologians have been debating the possible meanings of those terms for 2000 years.

 

[zhao]

i think looking for similarities in particulars is ok, but mainly it is the similar ways religious doctrine and the sciences are revered as master narratives and omnipotent explanatory models of the entire universe that is the real issue.

 

[Mr. Tea]

theologians have been debating the possible meanings of those terms for 2000 years.

...in terms that come and go according to intellectual and cultural fashions of the day, not because new empirical evidence favours one interpretation and deprecates another.

People believed in god(s) thousands of years ago and they still believe in god(s) today. Even if your average modern Christian has a different idea of what God is from a mediaeval Christian, we're still talking about a supernatural being that created the universe and takes a personal interest in what one particular species on one particular planet gets up to.

Phlogiston, the luminiferous aether, Lamarckian evolution, steady-state cosmology and the caloric theory of heat have been discarded not because they fell out of fashion but because they were empirically disproven.

 

[IdleRich]

"if we take the data as the words in a given holy book, I'm pretty sure they change with each new publication."

I'd still call that a different interpretation of the source data - that's literally what it is isn't it? Surely you wouldn't say that that is analagous to a discovery that creates a new paradigm in science. As, eg, the recent discovery of particles travelling faster than light would have done.... if it hadn't turned out to be due to a measuring cock-up.

"theologians have been debating the possible meanings of those terms for 2000 years."

But that's what you said before, it's still messing round with an old data set. An introduction of new data to a religion will either be rejected or create a heresy/schism, it's anathema to the religion itself. Unless you want to argue that the arrival of Jesus is an injection of new data into Judaism and the beginning of a new paradigm.

 

[Mr. Tea]

i think looking for similarities in particulars is ok, but mainly it is the similar ways religious doctrine and the sciences are revered as master narratives and omnipotent explanatory models of the entire universe that is the real issue.

40% of Americans believe in literal Biblical creation and a further 38% believe God "played a role" in evolution [2010].

So much for "master narrative". Science has a long way to go before it replaces or even seriously challenges religion as far as a lot of people are concerned - and this is in the USA, which has completely owned science for decades but is rapidly losing ground, in part precisely because of a widespread hostility to science by the establishment and consequently the general public.

 

[zhao]

So much for "master narrative". Science has a long way to go before it replaces or even seriously challenges religion as far as a lot of people are concerned

that's a superficial reading of the world today, and not how it works.

all or even most members of a society does not have to actually subscribe to an ideology for it to be the basic shaping principle of that society.

and you are forgetting that today's religious fundamentalism is entirely reactionary in nature, meaning it is a reaction and (skewed) rebellion against modernization, post-industrial global capitalism, etc. (funnily, as is industrial music)

 

[Patrick Swayze]

40% of Americans believe in literal Biblical creation and a further 38% believe God "played a role" in evolution [2010].

So much for "master narrative". Science has a long way to go before it replaces or even seriously challenges religion as far as a lot of people are concerned - and this is in the USA, which has completely owned science for decades but is rapidly losing ground, in part precisely because of a widespread hostility to science by the establishment and consequently the general public.

LOL those 'posters' remind me of this

 

[Mr. Tea]

LOL those 'posters' remind me of this

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I assume that poster is fake? So you're implying the Unabomber poster is fake too, or what? You're naive if you think the Christian Right in America doesn't produce some pretty unpleasant propaganda, and much of it is aimed at science/scientists.

Or is the rape tourism poster real and you're just pointing out that people in lots of countries make dickish posters?

 

[Mr. Tea]

that's a superficial reading of the world today, and not how it works.

all or even most members of a society does not have to actually subscribe to an ideology for it to be the basic shaping principle of that society.

and you are forgetting that today's religious fundamentalism is entirely reactionary in nature, meaning it is a reaction and (skewed) rebellion against modernization, post-industrial global capitalism, etc. (funnily, as is industrial music)

I think you're missing the point. Not only are a great majority of the American public at best ambivalent about science - if not actively suspicious of and hostile to it - but the American establishment itself, to a large degree, is the same. Americans are hostile to the idea that humans evolved from apes, that stem cells could be used to treat diseases and that industry and land use are changing the climate because many of their political representatives have the same views.

And there has always been a fundamentalist religious strain in America, right from the very beginning. In more modern times it's a reaction against all sorts of things - feminism and gay rights, for instance. I hope I don't have to point out that being a religious zealot is hardly incompatible with capitalism. In fact the economic hard right in America goes pretty much hand-in-hand with the (overwhelmingly Christian) social hard-right, doesn't it?

But really, I'm not sure there's much point getting bogged down in this argument for the hundredth time, I mean each of us could pretty much write the other's line for him by now. I just think the picture you're painting - of a world where the scientific-rationalist worldview has basically won the day, with theists fighting a desperate rearguard action - is patently untrue, even in the country that has led the world in science and technology at least since WWII.

 

[Patrick Swayze]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I assume that poster is fake? So you're implying the Unabomber poster is fake too, or what? You're naive if you think the Christian Right in America doesn't produce some pretty unpleasant propaganda, and much of it is aimed at science/scientists.

Or is the rape tourism poster real and you're just pointing out that people in lots of countries make dickish posters?

the one I posted is fake as far as I know. or it's at least shopped onto that background.

well the bottom one you posted looks like it's been edited onto that billboard and the middle one isn't a poster, that's why I used the ' '

I just found them funny I wasn't trying to challenge your knowledge of poster campaigns.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I just found them funny I wasn't trying to challenge your knowledge of poster campaigns.

Right, I getcha. But they are all real, I'm pretty sure.