Honorable Discoursers, et al:
The Quest, questioning, begins, ideally, within (the self and the oikos),
free of egocentrism. It is a struggle. "Peer" review, in the days of
Socrates, was simply part of discourse, not a tool for one-upsmanship or
competitive advantage or self-adulation; it was (and remains as chinks in
the academic armor) a rather relaxed joint effort in the direction of
refining understanding of reality--in the full knowledge that perception may
be the ultimate irony; no one perceives it from every direction
simultaneously. Time was, there was delight in discovery of a new
perspective, one differing from one's present one which was happily shucked
off like a snake skin--until further intellectual development required
another shucking, ad infinitum.
Time was, one was concerned with what one thought of oneself, not so much
with what others thought of one. In the fantasy world of hustle, where you
are what your publicity says you are, what "paradigm" you hold or defend,
what brands you are able to afford, defines the boundaries of one's
insecurity. In the earth of reality, at the root of Gut, there is no need to
pay a king's ransom for a pair of worn-out jeans, one can wear old tweeds or
anything else without fear--or without fear of THAT being a mere pretense.
In the final analysis, there is no final analysis, and we stand naked, just
as we actually are, with "only" substance remaining.
One has a choice, if only he or she will make it. To be, or not to be,
remains the question. And, I suspect, the answer.
WT
PS: When facts are provisional, what refuge doth opinion offer?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Waldron" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2009 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] SCIENCE as intellectual discipline An open
discussion Authority Is it compatible with science?
I've found myself thinking about this a lot recently. This has not been a
noble metaphysical endeavour on my part, don't nobody get me wrong. I
started from a forum question I was going to post myself: Should journal
editors be tasked to distinguish between referees who simply don't agree
with an idea (and so reject a paper), and genuine refereeing that recognizes
that data and methods are sound, but will always be open to differences in
interpretation?
Currently, I don't think there is any such hard and fast distinction.
We would like to think that today, Galileo would be published in Science,
because we are so raised in nobility that we will immediately recognize and
promote new ideas.
I think not. Old hands in this field are constantly commenting on those of
their colleagues who are also Lords of Science, but who have developed such
a strong world view that everything is read through the lens of their
opinion.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. There is in Literature
circles something called "reader theory", asserting that human being are
incapable of reading something without interpreting it according to their
own beliefs and prejudices. The idea of our being raised above our
predecessors in intellectual nobility, essentially asserts that scientists
are immune from reader theory. If so, then why is the idea of a "paradigm",
that highest exemplar of the lens of belief and prejudice, an invention that
took place in my own lifetime? I could even play Devil's Advocate here, and
suggest that Kuhn and Capra made such a meal out of the idea of paradigms,
because of their enormous prevalence in the time that we are living.
Galileo wouldn't be tortured today (no Bush jokes please). But he would be
serving blended coffee drinks to harried businessmen, having failed to
achieve even pre-tenure status on a blank publication record.
I'm not enough of a historian to assert whether we are getting better. But I
can say that, from my contemporary experience, personal viewpoints are held
religiously by scientists as strongly as by non-scientists. We live in a
belief-driven society, not one in which everyone goes around weighing the
truth of each opinion with careful objectivity. Belief is faster
operationally, an evolutionary efficiency that allows us to make snap
decisions in a dangerous world. The faster and more complex the world, the
more belief's Gut will take over from objective consideration. It would
certainly seem that our world is the fastest and most complex that the human
brain has had to deal with yet.
Anthony Waldron
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:44:35 -0700
From: [email protected]
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] SCIENCE as intellectual discipline An open discussion
Authority Is it compatible with science?
To: [email protected]
Honorable Forum:
At the suggestion of one subscriber, I am taking the initiative in posting
this on Ecolog initially to get the Open Discussion (OD) started. When it
appears to fizzle, those interested can continue off-list if they wish, by
emailing Meiss or myself.
Martin Meiss' most fundamental (no pun intended) point seemed to be:
". . . we should be looking for something better than "Does this have the
stamp of approval of people who think like I do?" We should be looking
for
something that is not just an encodement of "Does this violate the
doctrine
of my faith?" --Martin M. Meiss, Ecolog post, 7-9-2009
While Meiss was referring to publishing, his comment is fundamental; it
harkens to principle, a crucial divide that cleaves through human
consciousness and behavior from the beginnings of culture to the present.
And how we interpret this dichotomy may well be pivotal for our future and
that of much of life on earth. But it is as fully understandable as it is
tragic. Even our courts (or more accurately, especially our courts) court
and countenance countless miscarriages of justice, not to mention every
shred of human affairs and the systems they affect and effect.
Authoritarianism is recognizable as the ultimate evil in fascism and
Nazism,
but embraced as the Holy Grail when sanctified by authority in the name of
science.
There is some ratio of high-level fakery to honest intellectual enquiry
today as in, say, the time of Copernicus, but we don't know just what it
is
or was or whether it was greater then than now. Of course, wanting to save
face for ourselves and ridicule the dead (save our heroes), we presume
that
we are more advanced today. But I wonder how the trajectory of integrity
throughout history might be graphed? Is it a straight-line function of
continuous betterment through time, or has it had its ups and downs? Have
disciplines become more or less disciplined, more or less honest? What is
the credibility quotient of science? Of the discipline of ecology?
At one time, I suspect that ecologists were more monk-like, eschewing the
grand life for the simple life, dedicated to the pursuit of understanding
what the hell is actually going on out there. Maybe it was in Clements'
time, for better or for worse, or maybe it is now, as ecologists struggle
mightily in cyberspace impoverished and unappreciated. Maybe they are
still
monk-like. But maybe there are charlatans and knaves today as yesterday,
foisting off cyber-alchemy upon the kings in exchange for a larger and
larger largesse in the form of grants, secure in tenure, surrounded by
indentured and obedient students, struggling to breathe free. I am not
suggesting that all is going to hell in a handbasket, but I am suggesting
that there just may be more Emperors sans raiments that we might prefer to
imagine.
I do not deign to revise Meiss' remarks, only to extend them--and to
invite
others to offer up answers to Meiss' "something better" than the fraction
of
science that remains or perhaps accelerates more deeply into the tyranny
of
Authoritarian Hierarchy. To put it another way, is "a scientific
certainty"
compatible with science as a feedback loop question? Is the sky falling or
is all well or where in-between do we fall or stand? Is much of science,
after all, yet another religion?
WT
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