Wampum

Well said. The casual arrogance expressed in that ludicrous statement you quote really is impressive -- with the wave of a hand, millenia of human thought can be dismissed, just like that. I can only wonder what it would be like to be that omniscient.

I guess I can't read Shakespeare sensibly. It seems pretty good stuff nevertheless.

Boy, what I must be missing.

Umm, don't hate me for being squat & stupid. I suspect Scholasticism? But we don't suspect that 'empiricism is the norm in private life -- few people diagnose faulty washing machines with the aid of witch doctors...'. Nay almost every family to this day still uses their household 'witchdoctors' to diagnose all sorts of ills, and often w/o the benefit of training, and empirical knowledge or inquiry. The 'twilight of the Middle Ages' is never too far off, eh? Cheers, 'VJ'

I don't get it. I think you're parsing Tristero's words in a way he didn't intend. He can assert that it is an absurd notion that tiny lights in the sky control human destiny, but be perfectly able to understand that other people maintain and act on a belief that they do. A cultural artifact can have meaning in and of itself, no matter what its origin. Asserting that that origin is entirely vacuous isn't the same as saying that the artifact doesn't exist or have meaning and even profound effect on other people.

I have to admit, "Tristero" rubs me the wrong way sometimes, and I earnestly believe that Digby made a mistake in co-blogging with him. To me, their "voices" are very different, and not in a complementary way. But for all that, Digby remains Digby, so I am a regular reader of Hullabaloo even though I skip over Tristero's entries as often as not.

I saw that yesterday. Go back and look at that post, because those are not Tristero's words, rather he was quoting another (ahem) "A-lister" (speaking of undermining blog-partners).

I saw that yesterday and just kept scrolling down, as this is not the first time the Tristero has waded into the science/religion wars and reduced everything into science and not-science.

I read Digby for Digby (whoever that person is, the voice is "real" and that counts for a lot in my book).

Dear wcw,

When the stars are aligned, but not otherwise, read The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. W. Tillyard.

Dear VJ,

I look forward to a techpub, from Maytag or anywhere else, with a diagnostic section that begins "First, kill a chicken". Or "Write 'washer heal thyself' on the lid". Or "When Cleansing Properties end, simply load with clean clothes to restore Cleansing Properties." Or ... Mind, if "fry up a couple of thighs and think about what you know and how you know it, and those things your kid put in the washer, and why you really should empty pants and shirt pockets, and separate whites from coloreds, and not bunch up the sheets, while eating lunch", it would be a techpub of some note.

Dear Idle,

I've deleted the gratuitous outing. You're very generous to the writer, but s/he managed to write that creationism and astrology are bunk, and his or her scienticism isn't. As his or her scienticism is not "science" or "mathematics", except for some similarity of words or phrases in isolation, his or her belief system is principally distinguished from creationism and astrology, not by demonstrable correctness, but by simply being his or hers. Or Aristotle's.

EBW, I "outed" no one. Digby and Tristero have both admitted to Tristero's real-life identity on several occasions. ("Admitted to" is putting it mildly; when some major performances of his works happened a few months ago, both he and Digby provided links and discussed them at some length.) If I thought "Tristero" were anything but a literary pseudonym, I wouldn't even have hinted at his "real-life" identity. Far from being gratuitous, I thought that mentioning the man's artistic works would illustrate that he has a much greater appreciation for the role of meaning and belief than you give him credit for.

Although there are definitely people who fetishize science, I don't think it should be treated as just another belief system. Rather, scientific empiricism is a means for evaluating what is to be believed, and what isn't. Astrology would become a science overnight (though not immediately accepted as such by many) if it established sufficient empirical foundation. The same with all the other -isms: science demands only that they be able to be tested (i.e. be falsifiable), and that the results of such tests be broad and consistent enough to support belief, and not undermined by contrary evidence. Outside of such a domain science has no claims over and above those of any system of belief. Now, you can reject any special status for empirical inquiry and so claim that science has no more basis than any other system of belief. You can claim that it's all circular -- belief build on top of belief, regress without end. In that case, I don't think there is any common ground here for discussion. At that point, the status of ones belief is simply the vehemence with which one claims it and the number of people one marshalls to agree to it.

Dear Idle,

I wasn't aware that "Tristero" and "Digby" had disclosed the identity of "Tristero". It isn't any of my business, but disclosures here are. Now on to the issue. Sort of.

There is a difference between the practice of science and mathematics, that is, what is published in the specialist literature, and the imitation of science and mathematics, that is, what is published in the non-specialist literature. We are discussing the latter, not the former. Were we discussing the former, we'd be using the language of the specialist literature, which I'm happy to do.

I suppose I should point out that as mathematics really is a creation of the human mind, the attachment placed upon it by non-mathematicians in support of their efforts to model the observable, external physical phenomena, are slightly suspect.

This is not however a critique of empiricism, merely a caveat on the nature of consistency of a system. Thank you for suggesting that holding Tristero up by a hind leg and attempting to sex it through all of its fur and finding precious little but attitude is a rejection of empiricism. It is something to keep in mind.

Dear Sunrunner,

I think the quote is from Tristero, not Jane Hamsher, who I wouldn't read if paid to. But thanks for suggesting I check the attribution.

My careless misread (I think I mistook the asterick for a quote). He linked to her in the sentance above, and I guess I assumed what followed was hers. Anyway, I don't read her either . . . !

Now, I have to say something about this:

"Astrology would become a science overnight (though not immediately accepted as such by many) if it established sufficient empirical foundation."

In fact, astrology--which was not differentiated from astronomy until about 400 years ago (actually, the cut-off isn't all that neat, but its a good more or less) was a science for a lot longer than it has not been a science, and that was based upon an empiracal foundation. It was the Queen of Sciences. Now I am not trying to say that what generally passes for astrology these days is a science, or even that the various forms of astrology which was practiced for thousands of years was a science by today's standards, however it was according to the criteria of those times and cultures. It has played a pivotal role in the history of science (and many other ideas) as the whole idea of making a scientific prediction comes right out of practice and study of astrology (eg: Ptolemy & Kepler). And for those who have studied it and understand it, it has its own internal consistency.

After thoughts while cleaning the car ...

Vine DeLoria and I had a back-and-forth on the distinction between "science" as a culturally specific, and oppressive construct, and "science" as something that is something else. Vine's starting point was that anthropoligists are bad, begin generally europeans engaged in ranking activities in european academia with a limited theory of knowledge, and generally distinguished from looters by ... very little if anything at all. He was right, but then again, his cousin was an academic anthro, and my partner is an academic anthro, and for both Dee and MB, and the tribes who employ Dee and MB and other anthropologists, native or non-native, is whether (a) they can do less damage than the run-of-the-mill predator in cap-and-gown, and more importantly, (b) can Indians engage in the study of Indians?

This gets to the question of whether there is Indian Intellectualism, and if so, what is it? See Robert Allen Warrior's "Tribal Secrets" for one view, and Vine's "Red Earth" for another, a work I profoundly disagree with, but value what he attempts (google wampum).

When we last communicated, before his untimely passing, Vine was still of the view that science, the scientific method, and cultural anthropology, were inherently eurocentric. I'd hoped to collaborate with Vine on the second, or third volume of the series that began with Red Earth, to make the case for Indigenous assimilation of, and also independent pre-Conquest invention of, what we call the scientific method. See my prior post on Parkinson's.

Gads, the kids leave things defy description. Brown, sticky, suggestions of granularity ...

I accede to your clever qualification, "some understanding."

Europe has tribes, too. My father well recalls participating in winter solstice fire rituals. I do not believe he was very exercised when school textbooks indicated his pushing glowing coals down cliff faces did not in fact induce the sun to return for another year.

Your Bavarian/Slovene correspondent,

Interesting thread guys. But my contention was not to the contents of tech publications, which today are indeed still all too loosely based on empirical observations and questions, but to what the denizens of that household 'do' when machine 'X' breaks down? As often as not it IS 'let it alone the g_ds are still playing with it', or let momma work it she has the 'magic touch' or 'no one but Beth understands that particular spin cycle, so don't dare use it'. And yes, 'it'll heal itself if given the right prayers and rest' is often right there at the top of the heap as far as household level diagnostics are concerned. Cheers & Good Luck! 'VJ'

And of course for the seasonal aspect of the question there's this from the CBC: [http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2006/10/27/tech-ghosts.html].
Cheers, 'VJ'

In fact, astrology--which was not differentiated from astronomy until about 400 years ago (actually, the cut-off isn't all that neat, but its a good more or less) was a science for a lot longer than it has not been a science, and that was based upon an empiracal foundation.

This is only true for a non-standard definition of science. Astrology, alchemy and many other things were excluded when science began to be defined. It was actually the exclusion of these things that started science as we know it today.

It doesn't mean that some scientists didn't have an interest in these subject, and tried applying scientific ideals to them, but just because Newton also studied theology, doesn't make theology science.