In his book The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan writes, “The siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.” The book was published in 1988, when trickle-down economics and alien abductions were all the rage, and it is hard to imagine anything more appropriate today.
The last six years or so have proven Sagan right in a way I doubt even he could have imagined. In 2006, nearly twenty years after those words were penned, we have an American President who is a fundamentalist Christian and who seems to believe that science and highfalutin book-larnin’ never did nobody a lick of good; anti-intellectualism is rampant in American society and politics; and people are actually arguing about “Intelligent Design”–Intelligent Design, fer Chrissakes!–as if it were something for real that should, y’know, be taught in schools.
And frankly, it all pisses me right the fuck off.
Shelly tends to get frustrated with me, because I get so frustrated whenever I see credulous, anti-intellectual claptrap spewing out of some hole somewhere. And, to be quite blunt, it’s everywhere. It’s as if somebody plugged all the sewers in New York City, and all this brown stuff is bubbling up out of the manhole covers and flooding the streets, and nobody notices.
Hell, people seem to like it.
And it pisses me off. It pisses me off because these people should know better. It pisses me off because gullibility and credulity are corrosive to society; the United States today dominates the world politically, socially, and economically largely on the strength of our belief that the world is knowable and comprehensible, and that the pursuit of reason is a valuable undertaking. (I’m sure the Chinese, who could not hope to compete with us otherwise, are more than happy to see us abdicate our global leadership as a powerhouse of knowledge and research; they don’t have to defeat us; we’re happy to defeat ourselves!) It pisses me off because reason is the greatest single gift that humankind has, the thing that sets us apart from all the rest of nature, and to squander that gift–to fritter away our reason, to exchange knowledge and understanding for faeries and pixie dust–is a travesty beyond imagining.
Faeries and pixie dust are remarkably seductive. In the book Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (which is on my Amazon wish list if anyone cares…), Michael Shermer says there are five reasons why people turn away from reason for faeries and pixie dust: to console themselves, to get instant gratification, because the real world is too complicated, because they want to draw moral lessons from their experiences, and because they just plain WANT to believe.
I would add a sixth: because people are really, really lazy.
Reason is a tool. It is a tool whose task is to understand the workings of the physical world. And it does that job far, far better than every other tool that has ever been tried. It is no accident that every time some religious faith has tried to contradict science–every time, without exception–on some matter of empirical fact, the religious faith has been wrong. Every goddamn time.
But this tool has a price. You have to work to master it. Like all tools, it must be learned.
On a forum unrelated to this one, I have been growing increasingly testy about a conversation thread related to vaccination. Now, I have no particular emotional investment in vaccination per se; I was vaccinated as a kid, back when I was still afraid of needles, and I am immune to pediatric diseases. If someone infected with polio or measles or some such thing gets in my face, it doesn’t mean squat to me; I’m not going to get sick.
But what does raise my ire is people who do not have the faintest idea how the human body works, who do not understand the first thing about immunity or medicine, who can not seem to muster the resources to use Google, quoting wildly innacurate and in many cases demonstrably, provably wrong nonsense about how vaccination does not work and whatnot, without doing even the bare minimum of fact-checking.
It came to a head when someone in that conversation thread stated that there is no way to know whether or not vaccination works.
There is no way to know if a vaccination works. It is a Mystery, beyond the realm of human knowledge. We can never hope to understand the truth; the reality of how disease works, of how the human body works, is beyond our grasp, forever shrouded in night.
I think this mindset is absolutely, utterly fascinating.
To me, this speaks of a person who lives in a world controlled by vague, incomprehensible forces forever beyond human knowledge, a demon-haunted world where things just sort of happen and we can never really know how or why. Viruses and bacteria, faeries and pixie dust; choose your curtain, ladies and gentlemen, it’s all pretty much the same.
The truth is, we can know whether or not a vaccination works. We can know what causes disease. We can know how our bodies work. There is no magic in it; it is the basic operation of immutable natural law, machinery operating on a scale of complexity that is very high and a scale of size that is very tiny, but machinery nonetheless.
One might just as well say we can never really know how a wristwatch operates. Actually, we can. Take the back off and have a look; this lever pushes on this gear, which moves and rotates this gear, simple parts operating in simple and comprehensible ways, making up a whole that is just as comprehensible.
When I was majoring in neurophysiology, back in my ill-spent college days, I was amazed at how mechanical it all was. The machinery of life is vastly complex, and composed of a mind-boggling array of parts which work together in profoundly intricate and subtle ways…but ultimately, each part is very simple, and the way each part operates is very simple. This protein fits into that protein, and bends it just so, and it latches onto this ion channel, which opens, and releases its contents…a complicated system, but complicated only by its number of parts, and each operating in ways that are simple and knowable.
There is no Grand Mystery to the operation of antibodies, no dim and incomprehensible, shadowy miracle behind the workings of a T cell. The human body is not completely understood, but that does not mean there are not things which we do know.
People like to believe that science destroys spirituality, that science robs the world of color, that faeries and pixie dust are what makes life worth living. Albert Einstein himself is famous for saying “imagination is more important than knowledge.”
But the kind of imagination is important. Einstein’s imagination let him see into the mysteries of the physical world, let him conceive of a world in which time does not move at the same rate for everyone, in which matter and energy are two different forms of exactly the same thing. What gave his imagination value is the fact that, when he imagined these things, he then set about testing them, probing them, seeing if they were true. We know that general and special relativity have meaning because we can test them, because they hold up when we poke them. Imagination to Einstein was what let him make the world comprehensible, what brought it into focus, not what made it dim and mysterious and unknowable.
We can know that time does not pass at the same rate for everyone; in fact, it’s an inconvenient reality for the men who designed the Global Positioning System, because time does not pass for the satellites that make it work the same way as it does for us on the surface, and they have to account for that in the system. We can know that subatomic particles are indeterminate and maddeningly fuzzy, and can exist in different places at the same time and zap from place to place without crossing the space in between; in fact, this makes life very inconvenient for the men who designed the processor chip inside the computer you are using to read this right now, because it imposes limits on how small the circuits in that chip can be, and how closely together those circuits can be packed.
We can know these things.
Ironically, Einstein’s imagination failed him. The man who spoke of the importance of imagination lived the last fifteen years of his life as a monument to himself, achieving nothing new, because his imagination would not let him see the value of quantum theory. His religious belief stopped him from accepting the truth of the world.
Every time religion disagrees with science on matters of empirical fact, religion is wrong. Every time.
Einstein believed that God would never leave anything to chance. He believed that God would not make a universe in which uncertainty played a part. Because of that religious belief, he rejected quantum mechanics. He could not imagine that such a weird and nonintuitive thing could underlay the universe; could not imagine that God would do that. And he was wrong.
Hell, the laser in your DVD player works on quantum principles. It is a “quantum well” device, a crystalline lattice that traps electrons in a bizarre zero-dimensional state, forcing them to yeild up photons of light in precisely thus-and-such a frequency, precisely in lockstep.
People live in a demon-haunted world, whose fundamental forces are shrouded in shadow…we cannot know, we cannot know. The real knowledge is complicated, and takes work to understand; to understand physics, you have to work at it, and to understand the human immune system, you have to work at it. How much easier and how much more satisfying to those who want the quick answers to imagine that you just have to chant the right words or, I don’t know, wave a magic crystal over your head or something, and you’ll be cured of disease. How much less satisfying to know that all people are slightly different from one another, sometimes in subtle ways, and that this difference leads to subtle differences in the way the body responds to drugs or vaccinations, and sometimes they don’t work in some people the same way they do in others.
Why worry about all that, when all you really have to do is wave a magic crystal over your head?
And people find this misty, demon-haunted world comforting. If they do not know something, they find comfort in the notion that it cannot be known. Why deal with complexities and uncertainties when you can throw up your hands, abdicate reason, and say We Cannot Know?
And besides, science takes away magic, right? Science takes away wonder, right? There is delight in faeries and pixie dust, right? Science replaces imagination and joy and wonder with cold, sterile, boring fact, leaving no room for the human spirit, right?
If only they knew.
Not only does science fill the world with wonder, it is all the more wonderous and incredible precisely because it is real. And it is far more wonderous and far more amazing than the puny human imagination can dream.
We used to imagine ourselves in the center of the universe, the stars overhead the light of Heaven streaming through thousands of tiny pinpricks in the dome of the sky. Today, we know that our universe is more vast and more broad in its scope and sweep and more amazing and more varied than any human being can ever imagine. There is a photograph, taken by Hubble’s deep-field telescopes, that shows thousands and thousands and thousands of galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions or billions of stars..and that photograph represents one square millimeter of sky. It’s that way everywhere, no matter where you look–wonders upon wonders upon wonders, until it exceeds our ability to count. Galaxies in collision, releasing more energy than our sun will release in ten thousand of its lifetimes; globular clusters blazing with the light of newborn suns; all this incredible majesty and wonder, and all our ancestors could come up with is a really big sphere with a bunch of holes in it.
Pshaw.
Human imagination always looks feeble and pathetic compared to reality. What are leprechauns and pixies and gnomes but little versions of us? We can’t even imagine anything different in any meaningful way from ourselves! The best we can do in this modern age for monsters is Bigfoot…a big hairy ape living in Ohio? The deep-sea geothermal vents are home to entire ecosystems richer and weirder and more varied than anything we imagined, who have metabolisms unlike anything we’ve ever known…but the best we can come up with when we think of strange creatures is a big hairy ape, just like the apes we see in the zoo only bigger?
Pathetic.
How’s this for wonder: There is a type of bacteria living in the oceans called cyanobacteria, or “blue green algae,” which float around and convert sunlight to energy. These bacteria have problems, just like we do; they can be infected by a type of virus (yes, even something as simple as a bacterium can be infected by viruses), and the virus takes over the cell and uses it to make copies of itself until the cell dies.
Only this virus is special. This virus has the ability to infect a dead cyanobacterium and bring it back to life, repairing or replacing damaged cellular mechanisms and jolting the quiescent metabolic machinery back into operation, before going about the business of replicating itself. How’s that for wonder? Think about what that means; on a cellular level, death itself isn’t necessarily permanent.
And people think that science drains the wonder and spirituality out of the universe. Ha! I’ll take that over some short tart with wings. Pixie dust? Nowhere near as magical as a humble virus.
But the people in the anti-vaccination community turn their backs even on viruses, making the rather ludicrous claim that bacteria and viruses do not cause disease. ‘Cause, really, how can we even know?
The TV show “The X Files” had a motto: “I want to believe.” That motto is the creed for those who abandon reason for flim-flam and make-believe. Groom Lake, Nevada, houses a secret Air Force base, a base referred to as “Area 51,” where Lockheed and other defense contractors test-fly new prototypes of supersecret combat aircraft. Up in the sky above Groom Lake, I see something I do not recognize. It must be…space aliens!!!!!!!
I believe that the world is a knowable and comprehensible place. I do not believe in a demon-haunted world; I believe in a world that operates according to principles that are the same everywhere. I believe that we do not know everything about this world, or indeed even most things about this world…but there are some things we do know. I believe the tools that let us sort truth from bunk are learned tools–tools which, sadly, many people choose not to master. Indeed, some people choose to vilify those who master them, preferring make-believe and comfortable illusions over reason and knowledge, preferring a world where we simply can not know over a world where knowledge takes hard work.
Carl Sagan wrote, “It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” Sadly, that seems to be a minority opinion.
You are a heretic and a blasphemer — we ought to burn you!!! Just kidding. 😉
You make very great points and I agree. I didn’t know that about the bacteria-reviving virus. That’s an interesting fact I will learn more about. Go-go-gadget-Google!
You are a heretic and a blasphemer — we ought to burn you!!! Just kidding. 😉
You make very great points and I agree. I didn’t know that about the bacteria-reviving virus. That’s an interesting fact I will learn more about. Go-go-gadget-Google!
Lovely rant, dear Franklin, and I very much enjoyed reading it aloud to my husband until my voice gave out about 2/3 of the way through. However, just for the sake of those who are picky about said things, would you consider putting it behind a cut tag?
I second both the appreciation of the thoughts, and the request to cut-tag.
The tag, she has been cut. 🙂
It took me about an hour and a half to write that, and by the time I was done, I had no idea how long it had become…
Thank you.
Lovely rant, dear Franklin, and I very much enjoyed reading it aloud to my husband until my voice gave out about 2/3 of the way through. However, just for the sake of those who are picky about said things, would you consider putting it behind a cut tag?
A lovely rant, and very true. Thanks for reminding me of The Demon-Haunted World, another great book I need to re-read. The Shermer book looks quite interesting, and reasonably short. I’m becoming more and more a fan of books that can make their point in a few hundred pages. Anyway, the Shermer book looks like just the thing for in-flight reading for one of my US trips this year.
On the subject of Einstein, I’m reminded of the (in)famous “God does not play dice” quote. It’s unfortunate that so many know that one, and yet so few know Bohr’s simple reply: “How do you know?”.
“Einstein, stop telling God what to do.” – Neils Bohr
A lovely rant, and very true. Thanks for reminding me of The Demon-Haunted World, another great book I need to re-read. The Shermer book looks quite interesting, and reasonably short. I’m becoming more and more a fan of books that can make their point in a few hundred pages. Anyway, the Shermer book looks like just the thing for in-flight reading for one of my US trips this year.
On the subject of Einstein, I’m reminded of the (in)famous “God does not play dice” quote. It’s unfortunate that so many know that one, and yet so few know Bohr’s simple reply: “How do you know?”.
Is it any wonder that Carl Sagan was my hero growing up?
Great post.
Hehe.. I love appropriate timing. Fritz just sent me this link to an interesting study about the coorelation between education and believing in things like pixie dust:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060120/sc_space/highereducationfuelsstrongerbeliefinghosts
Not exactly the coorelation I would think, however.
Wow, interesting.
Ultimately, I think what this shows is that education teaches people facts, but it does not give people tools…specifically, it does not grant people the tools of skepticism and analytical reasoning. That does surprise me a bit; after all, it seems to me that one of the goals of education should be to teach people how to think, and how to master the cognitive tools that let people understand the physical universe. But apparently, I’d be wrong about that.
I would have to say that, quite honestly, as a very spiritual and an increasingly educated person (though I’ve always been an autodidact) that an old addage applies:
“The more you learn, the less you know.”
The more I learn about things in general (let alone the specifics of any field), the more holes I see in various places, or just simply see assumptions made about basic principles because they don’t fit the current model. I’m more of a Kuhnian or perhaps a Lakatosian when it comes to scientific progress in many respects, so I look at history, and I look at now, and I’m not entirely certain we really have a better understanding of how things “work” – but I’ll certainly admit that we’ve come up with all sorts of ways to measure all sorts of things, some of which might even matter.
Is it any wonder that Carl Sagan was my hero growing up?
Great post.
I’d consider getting your post tattooed on my body were it not for the fact that I have nowhere near enough surface area to fit it all. 😉
Well written and spot on. It may interest you to know that at Dragon*Con this year there was a panel on this very subject titled “The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark”. I bring this to your attention primarily for selfish reasons, as there are only 224 days until the next D*C. [nudge nudge!]
I’d consider getting your post tattooed on my body were it not for the fact that I have nowhere near enough surface area to fit it all. 😉
Well written and spot on. It may interest you to know that at Dragon*Con this year there was a panel on this very subject titled “The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark”. I bring this to your attention primarily for selfish reasons, as there are only 224 days until the next D*C. [nudge nudge!]
I second both the appreciation of the thoughts, and the request to cut-tag.
thought-provoking and relevant as usual
To me, this speaks of a person who lives in a world controlled by vague, incomprehensible forces forever beyond human knowledge, a demon-haunted world where things just sort of happen and we can never really know how or why. Viruses and bacteria, faeries qand pixie dust; choose your curtain, ladies and gentlemen, it’s all pretty much the same.
you might be interested in what i’m taking a break from reading right this minute: Spiral Dynamics by Chris Cowan and Don Beck, based on the work of Clare Graves, a psych researcher from upstate NY in the 60s.
it’s a very complicated theory, one Graves himself called, “The Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of Adult Biopsychosocial Systems Development.” heheh. the basic gist is that human psychological development on every level, individual, communal, tribal, national, global, etc. moves up and down a spiral of ways of thinking which in turn influences behaviors.
The levels of the spiral are color-coded for ease of description; Graves used letter combinations that I find confusing and some people use the numbers, which denotes a hierarchy that isn’t necessarily accurate. It moves from totally primal survival instincts (BEIGE) to wide-reaching global consciousness (YELLOW and TURQUOISE).
What you’re describing above sounds like some monstrous conglomeration of all the most toxic aspects of the first-tier vMEMEs (or values-memes, which is what Beck & Cowan call them) in a desperate resistance to the jump to 2nd-tier society:
“And when a person experiences `change’ by repairing old systems, strengthening others, or even awakening new ones, the total social atom will be disturbed. No wonder leaps forward are often preceded by desperate regressive steps backward.” (p. 75)
frustrating, yes. but understood from this perspective, perhaps it gives hope that the jump will occur. interestingly enough, Carl Sagan is listed on p. 47 as an example of YELLOW thinking. (use the “search inside” and look for “carl sagan” and you can read the 3 pages that describe the vMEMEs in somewhat greater detail, although later in the book each gets it’s own chapter, basically.)
Re: thought-provoking and relevant as usual
Have you read any Ken Wilbur? These themes seem very similar to the ideas he presents. Particularly in his easy to read and accesible summurazation A Theory of Everything. Sounds like Wilbur may have been influenced at least by this theory.
Re: thought-provoking and relevant as usual
Yeah, i was reading Boomeritis (which is about GREEN gone toxic) last year, but got tired of the “plot” and just wanted the philosophy/theory stuff. i’m not too fond of his writing style in that book & haven’t tried anything else. but yes, it’s the same theory. i think he and don beck both work for the same organization.
thought-provoking and relevant as usual
To me, this speaks of a person who lives in a world controlled by vague, incomprehensible forces forever beyond human knowledge, a demon-haunted world where things just sort of happen and we can never really know how or why. Viruses and bacteria, faeries qand pixie dust; choose your curtain, ladies and gentlemen, it’s all pretty much the same.
you might be interested in what i’m taking a break from reading right this minute: Spiral Dynamics by Chris Cowan and Don Beck, based on the work of Clare Graves, a psych researcher from upstate NY in the 60s.
it’s a very complicated theory, one Graves himself called, “The Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of Adult Biopsychosocial Systems Development.” heheh. the basic gist is that human psychological development on every level, individual, communal, tribal, national, global, etc. moves up and down a spiral of ways of thinking which in turn influences behaviors.
The levels of the spiral are color-coded for ease of description; Graves used letter combinations that I find confusing and some people use the numbers, which denotes a hierarchy that isn’t necessarily accurate. It moves from totally primal survival instincts (BEIGE) to wide-reaching global consciousness (YELLOW and TURQUOISE).
What you’re describing above sounds like some monstrous conglomeration of all the most toxic aspects of the first-tier vMEMEs (or values-memes, which is what Beck & Cowan call them) in a desperate resistance to the jump to 2nd-tier society:
“And when a person experiences `change’ by repairing old systems, strengthening others, or even awakening new ones, the total social atom will be disturbed. No wonder leaps forward are often preceded by desperate regressive steps backward.” (p. 75)
frustrating, yes. but understood from this perspective, perhaps it gives hope that the jump will occur. interestingly enough, Carl Sagan is listed on p. 47 as an example of YELLOW thinking. (use the “search inside” and look for “carl sagan” and you can read the 3 pages that describe the vMEMEs in somewhat greater detail, although later in the book each gets it’s own chapter, basically.)
And besides, science takes away magic, right?
Science just renames magic. I don’t understand why electricity and magnetism aren’t considered magic. Is it because we understand how they work? So what? Magic is understood in most mythologies, too, at least by magicians.
Groom Lake, Nevada, houses a secret Air Force base, a base referred to as “Area 51,” where Lockheed and other defense contractors test-fly new prototypes of supersecret combat aircraft. Up in the sky above Groom Lake, I see something I do not recognize. It must be…space aliens!!!!!!!
The funny thing is, the alien crowd never mentions the other significance of the area. I’ve known about the air force base at Groom Lake, aka “Dreamland”, from military fiction since I was about 12. I’ve been hearing the alien conspiracy theories since I was about 15. I was 25 or so before I realized that Area 51 was Dreamland.
Excellent point.
And besides, science takes away magic, right?
Science just renames magic. I don’t understand why electricity and magnetism aren’t considered magic. Is it because we understand how they work? So what? Magic is understood in most mythologies, too, at least by magicians.
Groom Lake, Nevada, houses a secret Air Force base, a base referred to as “Area 51,” where Lockheed and other defense contractors test-fly new prototypes of supersecret combat aircraft. Up in the sky above Groom Lake, I see something I do not recognize. It must be…space aliens!!!!!!!
The funny thing is, the alien crowd never mentions the other significance of the area. I’ve known about the air force base at Groom Lake, aka “Dreamland”, from military fiction since I was about 12. I’ve been hearing the alien conspiracy theories since I was about 15. I was 25 or so before I realized that Area 51 was Dreamland.
…as a tried and true alien, I take point at your insinuation of *gasp* lazy!
nay I say, how about incapable?
I am glad to say I had professor Sagan as a teacher in college and to be in the presence of his brilliance was an experience never to be forgotten.
aliens unite!
…as a tried and true alien, I take point at your insinuation of *gasp* lazy!
nay I say, how about incapable?
I am glad to say I had professor Sagan as a teacher in college and to be in the presence of his brilliance was an experience never to be forgotten.
aliens unite!
Re: thought-provoking and relevant as usual
Have you read any Ken Wilbur? These themes seem very similar to the ideas he presents. Particularly in his easy to read and accesible summurazation A Theory of Everything. Sounds like Wilbur may have been influenced at least by this theory.
Re: thought-provoking and relevant as usual
Yeah, i was reading Boomeritis (which is about GREEN gone toxic) last year, but got tired of the “plot” and just wanted the philosophy/theory stuff. i’m not too fond of his writing style in that book & haven’t tried anything else. but yes, it’s the same theory. i think he and don beck both work for the same organization.
Excellent point.
Hehe.. I love appropriate timing. Fritz just sent me this link to an interesting study about the coorelation between education and believing in things like pixie dust:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060120/sc_space/highereducationfuelsstrongerbeliefinghosts
Not exactly the coorelation I would think, however.
“Einstein, stop telling God what to do.” – Neils Bohr
Ironically, Einstein’s imagination failed him. The man who spoke of the importance of imagination lived the last fifteen years of his life as a monument to himself, achieving nothing new, because his imagination would not let him see the value of quantum theory. His religious belief stopped him from accepting the truth of the world.
You betray your ignorance of both Einstein and quantum theory with this. Einstein was on the side of a mechanistic, deterministic universe. It was physics itself that accepted the “mystery” of a model of reality that could do no better than probabilistic models of phenomena, without positing that the statistics arose from some underlying structure whose details were not yet known. This is the view that gives rise to crap like What the Bleep Do We Know?, which is exactly the sort of bogosity you’re railing against here. I suggest you read more about the history of physics, and look for Gary Drescher’s upcoming book, Good and Real, in which (among other things) he gives an explanation of quantum theory that both Bohr and Einstein would have liked. I predict that you will like it as well.
Ironically, Einstein’s imagination failed him. The man who spoke of the importance of imagination lived the last fifteen years of his life as a monument to himself, achieving nothing new, because his imagination would not let him see the value of quantum theory. His religious belief stopped him from accepting the truth of the world.
You betray your ignorance of both Einstein and quantum theory with this. Einstein was on the side of a mechanistic, deterministic universe. It was physics itself that accepted the “mystery” of a model of reality that could do no better than probabilistic models of phenomena, without positing that the statistics arose from some underlying structure whose details were not yet known. This is the view that gives rise to crap like What the Bleep Do We Know?, which is exactly the sort of bogosity you’re railing against here. I suggest you read more about the history of physics, and look for Gary Drescher’s upcoming book, Good and Real, in which (among other things) he gives an explanation of quantum theory that both Bohr and Einstein would have liked. I predict that you will like it as well.
The tag, she has been cut. 🙂
It took me about an hour and a half to write that, and by the time I was done, I had no idea how long it had become…
Wow, interesting.
Ultimately, I think what this shows is that education teaches people facts, but it does not give people tools…specifically, it does not grant people the tools of skepticism and analytical reasoning. That does surprise me a bit; after all, it seems to me that one of the goals of education should be to teach people how to think, and how to master the cognitive tools that let people understand the physical universe. But apparently, I’d be wrong about that.
Thank you.
I would have to say that, quite honestly, as a very spiritual and an increasingly educated person (though I’ve always been an autodidact) that an old addage applies:
“The more you learn, the less you know.”
The more I learn about things in general (let alone the specifics of any field), the more holes I see in various places, or just simply see assumptions made about basic principles because they don’t fit the current model. I’m more of a Kuhnian or perhaps a Lakatosian when it comes to scientific progress in many respects, so I look at history, and I look at now, and I’m not entirely certain we really have a better understanding of how things “work” – but I’ll certainly admit that we’ve come up with all sorts of ways to measure all sorts of things, some of which might even matter.
“And besides, science takes away magic, right?”
I believe James Whistler toasted Oscar Wilde with, “To Isaac Newton, the man who killed the rainbow!”
Whistler was half-kidding, making a joke in a point. These others, these crystal-wearing, boogieman chasing, salt tossing, wood knocking, 13 avoiding, crack not-stepping (and mama’s back not-breaking) freakazoid non-logicians will continue to know that things come in threes (mostly celebrity deaths), that good thoughts (or prayers, if the thoughts are given celestial addressees) bring good fortune, that the unknowable will remain exactly that in order that it be worth anything.
I do take solace in the fact that they can be very easily manipulated. As long as you sound authoritative, you can get them to believe anything. I had a coworker in rapture as I described how Big Lots, a clearance chain, only sold items that were undersold, defective, or radioactive. He even asked a few others what they knew about the warehouses in Chernoble, and if they knew about the exposed products being shipped east through China to be relabled by robots and ultimately sold in the US. He’ll never admit to it, once he knew something was amiss, but another coworker saw him peering at a Big Lots domino in a closet to see if, as I said, it would glow in the dark.
Fear them, loathe them, and definitely suspect them, but do, by all means, have some fun with them as well.
Glad you turned onto the Shermer book. Next, you’ll be subscibing to Skeptic!
“And besides, science takes away magic, right?”
I believe James Whistler toasted Oscar Wilde with, “To Isaac Newton, the man who killed the rainbow!”
Whistler was half-kidding, making a joke in a point. These others, these crystal-wearing, boogieman chasing, salt tossing, wood knocking, 13 avoiding, crack not-stepping (and mama’s back not-breaking) freakazoid non-logicians will continue to know that things come in threes (mostly celebrity deaths), that good thoughts (or prayers, if the thoughts are given celestial addressees) bring good fortune, that the unknowable will remain exactly that in order that it be worth anything.
I do take solace in the fact that they can be very easily manipulated. As long as you sound authoritative, you can get them to believe anything. I had a coworker in rapture as I described how Big Lots, a clearance chain, only sold items that were undersold, defective, or radioactive. He even asked a few others what they knew about the warehouses in Chernoble, and if they knew about the exposed products being shipped east through China to be relabled by robots and ultimately sold in the US. He’ll never admit to it, once he knew something was amiss, but another coworker saw him peering at a Big Lots domino in a closet to see if, as I said, it would glow in the dark.
Fear them, loathe them, and definitely suspect them, but do, by all means, have some fun with them as well.
Glad you turned onto the Shermer book. Next, you’ll be subscibing to Skeptic!
Amen, my friend. People are emotionally, spiritually and intellectually lazy, and reach for the nearest readily-available conclusions so they can get on with their mundane lives. Why think for yourself when you can repeat black-and-white answers verbatim from an old book, or even a new one? Great rant. Memories’d.
(by the way, I’m, the dude who keeps bugging you to process his Onyx registration).
Amen, my friend. People are emotionally, spiritually and intellectually lazy, and reach for the nearest readily-available conclusions so they can get on with their mundane lives. Why think for yourself when you can repeat black-and-white answers verbatim from an old book, or even a new one? Great rant. Memories’d.
(by the way, I’m, the dude who keeps bugging you to process his Onyx registration).