Vincent has written an interesting OP about an essay that George Orwell wrote: what is science?
Orwell distinguishes between science as a method and science as a body of facts. I think most of us accept that. Both Orwell and Vincent seem to be in favour of teaching the method but not the facts.
The demand for more science education, as Orwell astutely perceived, reflects an underlying political agenda, based on the naive belief – falsified by history –
Although what those facts are has changed. Vincent writes:
In Orwell’s day, it was seen as a Good Thing that students should learn about “radioactivity, or the stars, or the physiology or their own bodies”; nowadays, educating our young about Darwinian evolution, sexual health for kindergartners, and global warming is deemed to be the latest Good Thing. The focus has changed; but sadly, the paternalistic mindset of the “powers that be” hasn’t.
And the reason is we should avoid teaching scientific facts is because all science is political and the naive belief – falsified by history – that we’d all be better off if scientists ruled the world
The first thing to say is Orwell need not have worried. Our countries continue to be ruled by people with humanities degrees and lawyers. Most scientists seem to be happy not to be politicians. Western governments worry incessantly about the poor level of science education in the population. Science non-facts thrive from MMR to homeopathy to YEC. If someone has a political agenda that we’d all be better off if scientists ruled the world then they have been remarkably unsuccessful.
But I would also argue strongly that the population would benefit from knowing a good level of science fact. Governments often argue for it from an economic and practical point of view. We need basic science teaching to generate enough science and technology graduates for industry. But I think it goes deeper. Without understanding about electromagnetics television becomes magic, without understanding about DNA and genetics the very discussions we have here and on UD would not be possible. We need to know science just as we need to know about arts and humanities and economics. It is part of our culture.
I suspect Orwell might well have changed his mind had he lived another 50 years. He was writing shortly after the first atomic bombs were dropped and he is quite open about his fear and disapproval of the project. This leads to him to write some things that by his standards are rather childish:
Just before writing this, I saw in an American magazine the statement that a number of British and American physicists refused from the start to do research on the atomic bomb, well knowing what use would be made of it. Here you have a group of sane men in the middle of a world of lunatics. And though no names were published, I think it would be a safe guess that all of them were people with some kind of general cultural background, some acquaintance with history or literature or the arts – in short, people whose interests were not, in the current sense of the word, purely scientific.
Actually Oppenheimer, for example, had an extraordinarily broad and deep education. And:
In England, a large proportion of our leading scientists accept the structure of capitalist society, as can be seen from the comparative freedom with which they are given knighthoods, baronetcies and even peerages. Since Tennyson, no English writer worth reading- one might, perhaps, make an exception of Sir Max Beerbohm – has been given a title.
Scientists do get titles but nowadays so do artists, sports stars, bankers, academics.
Had he lived through the next 50 years he would have seen first the rise of scientific and technological optimism in the 50s and 60s (still ruled by humanities graduates and lawyers) and then the disillusionment of the 70s and 80s and the subsequent rise of anti-science and pseudo-science.
Vincent is concerned about the teaching of evolution, climate-change and sexual health for kindergartners. But does he oppose the teaching of radioactivity, or the stars, or the physiology of their own bodies i.e. the things which concerned Orwell? He seems to muddling the case for teaching science facts from disputes about what are the facts and when it is best to teach them. Yes some science has political implications. If climate change is true then there are political consequences. And faulty science has been taught for political reasons. But the answer to this is not stop teaching science facts. We need both facts and method.
Anti-bias mechanisms are intrinsic to the scientific process. It isn’t perfect, and science would likely benefit from more diversity of scientists. However, it is better than anything else.
Orwell was quite right out to point out that students should be taught the importance of scientific methods in the broad sense, as in the application of repeatability, location independent results, honesty, transparency, peer review, attempts to falsify, making clear predictions, empirical investigation, and so on.
VJ Torley’s conclusion that the lay person should doubt scientifically established facts is a non-sequitur, and a travesty to Orwell’s original article.
Torley’s downplaying of a 1.5 degree rise in global temperatures is misinformed and dangerous.
It is in no way surprising that Torley fails to turn the critical beam on theology.
I think the fundamental science fact that that needs to be taught in science education is that there are no facts, there are data and models, and that all models are provisional and incomplete.
Once you have that in place, you can teach which models have huge support and which have less.
You can even tell people that the former are regarded as “facts”.
davehooke,
I didn’t want to make the OP over long but I also noticed there are important differences between each of Vincent’s examples.
Evolution as a general principle (of course there are interesting debates about the role of epigenetics, horitzontal gene transfer, genetic drift etc ) is accepted by the global scientific community almost with exception and outside the USA has little political significance . It should be no more controversial than teaching the periodic table.
Climate change has more scope for debate (how much warming, what will be the consequences) and has strong political consequences internationally. I think we have to be careful how we teach the subject and avoid being too paternalistic. It is more than science.
Teaching about sex to kindergarten students seems to be simply teaching the right subject at the wrong time.
The idea that this is all some kind of paternalistic power grab by scientists is a figment of the UD community’s collective imagination. Orwell was right that scientists are no better morally than any other group and no better at making decisions outside their area of expertise. But scientists don’t in practice have a lot of power. How many leading politicians in the UK and the USA are scientists?
Lizzie,
Lizzie – I think maybe you are thinking of teaching future scientists (who are the population you typically deal with)? I am thinking more of all the people who will not become scientists and probably only study it to GCSE. I would think it would be very hard and potentially confusing to start off GCSE science with the concepts of data and models and then go on to teaching the periodic table and Newton’s laws.
That’s not really what I have in mind, Mark.
I’m thinking of starting right in primary school, as the UK science curriculum currently does (it’s excellent, at least in principle, although the current Educational Secretary may take us back to the dark ages) where hypothesis-testing is introduced as the starting point (“Change one variable at a time…”). It gets crowded out with body-of-facts stuff later, but could still be more emphasised in the curriculum in my view, and would be if the exam system didn’t emphasise multiple-choice papers over more discursive questions (“how would you design an experiment to show that….”) which is perfectly possible even at HS level (it was the basis of Nuffield Science).
In fact I’d say it makes teaching stuff like the periodic table a lot easier because you can then present the history of the developing model. I remember seeing film strips on Lavoisier when I was I was doing chemistry at HS, and I never forgot the fascinating story of how the phlogiston model was developed then falsified. Same with Dalton.
I remember Grammar School and 1964 (I think) being first exposed to the Nuffield curriculum, previously having been taught effectively history of chemistry as a way into the subject. Getting to do real experiments with new kit was exciting and stimulating.
I remember the same without the visual aids. Perhaps it had something to do with my chemistry teacher being in his retirement year but the Nuffield course (the following year) was a breath of Spring air.
Lizzie,
Interesting. I have never taught school children but I have spent a lot of my life teaching relatively uneducated (and often uninterested) adults about IT. I have always found it essential to start with concrete particulars that affect their lives and then move to more general principles and abstractions – even though I am more interested in the principles. I realise hypothesis testing need not be abstract but it must be hard to relate it to the children’s lives whereas the facts of science impinge on them all the time.
Still I guess this not so much about how to teach but what to teach. In the end it comes down to a combination of method and accepted science – both are important. I would be rather disappointed if my sons had learned the experimental method and still had no idea how old the earth was. And as neither of them have any desire to be scientists I have to say that if I had to choose between them learning the two things I would go for the latter.
Orwell’s understanding of what “science” is seems really quite muddled. I realize that the term “science” can just mean “knowing” or some such thing, and can apply to good thinking about politics and society, but much of what he’s discussing is rather tied into values and beliefs. Animal Farm may well involve good thinking, but it’s not science in the sense of being universal, something that Chinese and British scientists would all agree with even when all the facts are known.
Whether or not the socialism can work, or the Manhattan Project was appropriate, let alone whether the Bomb should have been dropped on Japan, are not simply matters of good thinking, and good thinkers don’t necessarily agree with Orwell throughout. It seems to me that he’s trying to illegitimately claim the certitude of science for his generally well-considered opinions, while other well-considered opinions could very well be very different. For myself, I can’t imagine how the Manhattan Project was anything but appropriate, given that we didn’t know that Nazi Germany would be unable to get close to building the bomb. Is the risk of Hitler having a nuclear monopoly worth taking?
No, Orwell simply didn’t have the corner on truth, whatever he thought. Science gets to the truth of physics and other “natural phenomena,” without being unduly affected by opinion (at least after a while), but politics and the social realm, while subject to some real numbers and capable of some universally-compelling conclusions, remains well beyond the near-certainties of science on a host of issues.
It seems to me that the term “science” as he considered his thinking to be is not at present typically considered to be such even in intellectual circles today, at least in the US. The British (I think) CP Snow seemed not to really bother with that sense of “science,” either, when he criticized non-science intellectuals for not knowing science, and blamed, seemingly to a lesser degree, scientists for not knowing culture. I think that Snow probably would not have exempted Orwell from his criticism.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
Yes CP Snow was British. And I agree he would not have been at all sympathetic to Orwell’s essay. I can’t help wondering if Orwell would have been sympathetic to his essay if he had lived a bit longer (a bit of science would certainly have helped there – he died of TB)
Whether it fits CP Snow’s definition of science or not, Orwell’s call for privileging “a method of thought which obtains verifiable results by reasoning logically from observed fact” is sensible. In the UK at least, secondary school education has indeed over the last sixty-odd years seen a shift away from rote learning towards giving students tools to make evaluations.
His example of ‘moral insanity’ is indeed debatable, but what he is saying is not so much that scientists should agree with him, but that an all round education encourages awareness of political and even ethical issues. His thrust is not that scientists (in 1945) accept(ed) political structures such as capitalism erroneously, but that they do not tend to question them.
Favour for his own politics aside, Orwell’s essay actually prefigures CP Snow’s lecture on the two cultures.
In the US, attempts to improve the science curriculum are always met with political opposition from sectarian groups.
The launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik in 1957 renewed attempts in the US to revamp the entire science curriculum, and that stirred a huge political backlash from fundamentalists that gave us the Institute for Creation Research and the ID/creationist political movement.
All the current efforts in the US to set some higher national standards in science are also being opposed by fundamentalists and the ID/creationist movement.
If there has been any pattern of opposition to science that stands out above all others in the US, it is fundamentalist religion and its ID/creationist movement.
As someone who has spent most of my life in research working with people from many nationalities and diverse backgrounds, I don’t find any scientists who want to rule the world. But most of them wish politicians and the general public were more aware of the importance of understanding science and what it can tell us about the human impact on the environment. Science permeates everything from health, to the environment, to feeding the population, to monitoring the weather and asteroids, to all of the technology we love so much, to national defense.
Most of the scientists I know want the public to be far more aware of the impacts of science on society. The scientific process itself is an intense exchange of doubts and peer review; and scientists want that sort of knowledgeable understanding from the public as well.
Politicians who are knowledgeable about science are extremely rare in US politics, but the politicians who are mind-numbingly stupid almost always seem to dominate the conversation. Of course, part of the reason for that is the media’s fascination with political idiots.
And investigative reporting could use a massive infusion of the scientific spirit. Everything in the news is portrayed as two sides of an issue, each given equal weight no matter how stupid one or the other side is.
“Our countries continue to be ruled by people with humanities degrees and lawyers. Most scientists seem to be happy not to be politicians.” – Mark Frank
Not sure what ‘our countries’ refers to. Angela Merkel has a chemistry degree, as did Margaret Thatcher. China’s president Hi Jinping has a degree in chemical engineering. Belgium’s PM has a PhD in chemistry and Latvia’s has a masters in physics. Oh yeah, and Pope Francis has a masters in chemistry too.
As for my country of birth, the Canadian PM has a degree in what the Bank of Sweden – Nobel committee calls ‘economic sciences.’ That’s not ‘humanities’ as usually understood in the anglo-saxon tradition.
Are you in the UK? Are you familiar with the work of J.D. Bernal? The 1931 meeting on the History of Science in London was significant for the contact with Nikolai Bukharin and Boris Hessen (both of whom were killed within 7 years, in a Union that prided itself in scientific atheism), which impressed him with socialism. The debates Bernal had with Michael Polanyi on planned science vs. freedom in science are still very relevant today.
Btw, Mark, how many scientific methods do you suppose there are anyway? No need to offer an exact number, as long as you don’t think there is only a single one called ‘THE’ scientific method. That position is outdated and unsupportable today, even though many laypersons still hold to it. Trickle down fro HPSS hasn’t happened in the USA and UK public understandings of ‘science’ just yet.
Oh, and my two quid: the problem is not with teaching biological evolutionary theory or even evolutionary cosmology (as long as it stops short of OoL speculation); the problem is teaching evolutionism as an ideology. Wouldn’t you agree? Unfortunately, the slippery slope still seems to be too slippery such that many natural scientists fall headlong into evolutionistic ideology, not knowing how to adequately draw limitations on where science, philosophy and theology/worldview overlap and where they must be understood as being sovereign in their own realms. When science becomes ideological, as in the case with evolutionism, it should be called out for what it is and the scientists who perpetrate it should be disciplined and educated for their (political or worldview) error.
Indeed, biologism (von Bertalanffy 1950) is imo a desperately needed topic for discussion these days, and one you likewise probably won’t see much of at UD.
Who teaches evolutionism as ideology?
To add to Gregory’s list. The only American president with a science degree. Jimmy Carter.
from wiki
After high school, Carter enrolled at Georgia Southwestern College, in Americus. Later, he applied to the United States Naval Academy and, after taking additional mathematics courses at Georgia Tech, he was admitted in 1943. Carter graduated 59th out of 820 midshipmen at the Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree with an unspecified major, as was the custom at the academy at that time.[13] After serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific U.S. Submarine Fleets, Jimmy Carter attended graduate school majoring in reactor technology and nuclear physics
That’s what I would like to know.
I’ve known hundreds of teachers over the years, and not one of them does any such thing.
But, man, they are frequently accused of it by fundamentalists.
Mike Elzinga,
Mike and Dave,
Do either of you or both admit that there *is* such an ideology as ‘evolutionism’? If so, do you know anyone who writes about it, given that neither of you seem to believe it is taught in your nation’s universities? Please provide a couple of names if you have such knowledge (other than R. Dawkins). And if you deny it, on what basis?
This is a bit off-topic, of course. The main theme I raised, aside from Bernal and heads of state who are scientists, is when science becomes ideological. To suggest that science *never* becomes ideological or that ideology is never entangled in scientific theories is a convenient fiction that only persons who are completely ignorant of HPSS could possibly entertain.
Thanks,
Gregory
p.s. I am not a ‘fundamentalist’ (or a ‘creationist’), so I’d appreciate it Mike, if you wouldn’t imply any such association simply because I’ve raised the problem of ‘evolutionism’
Nobody was accusing you of being a fundamentalist.
No, I don’t admit that. Every teacher and professor I have known, thousands of them over the years, are very professional and don’t drag politics and ideology into the classroom.
The term “evolutionism” is a term that takes place outside the classroom and in the political world. When a few of these teachers and professors have entered the political activities in their communities, it has been my observation that they try to educate the politicians and the community about the relevant science, not to preach “evolutionism” or any other kind of “ism.”
However, in something like 50 years of observing the socio/political tactics of ID/creationists in education, I have observed that is has always been the fundamentalists who engage in attacks on teachers, and creationist teachers who introduce sectarian dogma by stealth. There have even been instances of this in a presumably progressive community in which I live. I know some of the people who do this. It has always been these people who inject “evolutionism” into the wars that they start.
You may be thinking of people like PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins who have taken the war to the ID/creationists. But remember, it was the creationists who planned and started the war; most of the science and academic communities were blindsided by the creationists back in the 1970 and 80s. I was there; I saw it as it was happening.
I personally don’t mind that there are people willing to rough up some of these ID/creationist bullies in the public arena. Duane Gish used to appear uninvited in the classrooms of biology teachers and badger and humiliate them in front of the students. A good friend of mine was a multi-award winning biology teacher who was aggressively attacked by Gish. My last conversation with her was a few years ago, just days before she died of cancer. The pain of those encounters with Gish was still with her even though they had occurred nearly 40 years earlier.
It is always the ID/creationists who inject “evolutionism” and other pejorative labels into the public sphere. They do it in their letters to the editors of local newspapers, they accuse teachers of teaching “ideology,” and they ramp up the political rhetoric when knowledgeable people push back. ID/creationists come from authoritarian subcultures, and they don’t like people pushing back; so they get nasty.
So if ID/creationists get “slapped around” in the public sphere by people like PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, I think this an example of how people should stand up to bullies. Most other people are too polite and allow ID/creationists to get away with too much bullying.
No, no, Gregory.
You’re the one who thinks there *is* such an ideology as ‘evolutionism’.
Fine, now get to work and prove that there actually is, with specific examples. Names, dates, places.
Cannot possibly be the job of anyone else to prove your case for you, nor even to bother to deny your case, when you haven’t made any case to begin with other than bare unsupported assertions.
You know better than that.
As a good man famously said, “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
You know that.
P.S. Of course you’re a “creationist” by any reasonable definition; you don’t think evolution could have been sufficient for life as we know it; you believe with a high degree of certainty that something else (that is, someone else, to be honest) must have of necessity designed/interfered/meddled/manufactured/implemented/created – at the bare minimum – the very first life … if you think it’s possible that Evolutionary Theory is sufficient to explain life’s success after that first creation, that makes you smarter than the fundamentalists who stupidly deny evolution altogether, but it still doesn’t make you not a creationist. Sorry.
See definitions:
and
(minor edits to the above definition, for clarity)
Gregory,
There is the odd leader with a science degree which does not make them a scientist. However, the overwhelming majority of politicians and leaders are not scientists.
USA
Among the 435 members of the House there are one physicist, one chemist, one microbiologist, six engineers and nearly two dozen representatives with medical training.
UK
There is just one scientist in the UK House of Commons</p
I can't be bothered to look up any more …..
“the overwhelming majority of politicians and leaders are not scientists.”
Right, that’s because they’re scientists, not politicians. Scientists can and are leaders too in various spheres. Were you aware of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugwash_Conferences_on_Science_and_World_Affairs?
Could you simply clarify what you meant by ‘our countries’ – was this ‘people who participate at TSZ, assuming that to mean USA and UK?’ I’m interested in clear communication. Thanks.
The USA is a highly legalistic culture, which partially explains why so many lawyers/legal scholars become politicians. It seems to me that other countries are more balanced in terms of their political leaders’ backgrounds. Then again, both Putin and Medvyedev are law graduates, so perhaps there is a law-gov’t trend worldwide.
Since you cite Orwell, I’d highly recommend Feyerabend, who wasn’t born in the USA but lived there:
And here: http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43842
You are welcome for noting J.D. Bernal, who is indeed a significant player in the conversation of “What is Science?” from a UK perspective, in case that is where you are.
True. None of us would dream of doing that.
Dawkins has not taught in decades, so if Gregory wants to try to use him to show how the supposed
then Gregory picked a piss-poor example!
That’s even if we conceded for the sake of argument that Dawkins does believe in the “ideology” of “evolutionism” – which he doesn’t. Dawkins’ non-ideological stance on evolution is clear in his writings and speeches.
As for PZ Myers, yes, he’s teaching now. But there’s no evidence that he’s teaching “evolutionism as an ideology.” I know he makes no secret in public that he thinks religion – all religion – is foolish and un-evidenced, and I’m sure his college students are at least aware of his background views. That’s no reason to suspect that, in class, Myers indoctrinates his students in any ideology. There’s no need for any ideology whatsoever when teaching cancer biology. The cell does what it does with no need for demons or angels to explain what it does, and likewise no need to deny the possibility of demonic/angelic explanation for what it does.
Why do you recommend that? What makes that random statement anything other than yet another tedious example of bare assertion without evidence?
It’s not as if you think Feyerabend is gospel; it’s not as if you have any reason to take his unsupported word as truth, much less reason to expect us to accept it at face value. It’s worthless as it stands.
.
You can do better, Gregory.
I asked: “Do you either or both admit that there *is* such an ideology as ‘evolutionism’?”
Mike answered: “No, I don’t admit that.”
But then Mike answered: “The term “evolutionism” *is* a term that takes place outside the classroom and in the political world.” (my stars and emphasis added)
I must confess confusion as to what I’ve read. No/Yes? Well, which one?
Likewise, “a term that takes place” is vague. People use terms. I was asking for names if you know any.
And my interest is not in IDists/creationists simply labelling people (pejoratively or not) as advocates of ‘evolutionism’. I was asking if “you know anyone who writes about it,” iow, persons who display the ideology of ‘evolutionism’ in their writings. Not critics of it, but rather proponents of it.
I’m not in the USA (nor the UK). I’m not trying to start any war. Just trying to clearly and coherently, in line with the OP, unpack how ideology gets entangled in science and how science can become ideological. Evolutionism is a clear and present example of this for anyone with eyes to see and/or ears to hear.
Btw, Mike, ‘ideology’ is not just a feature of politics, but also of philosophy and worldview. 3 examples: naturalism, realism and positivism.
Your “something like 50 years” experience re: ID/creationism is fine. I’ve read lots about it in your country, though obviously without the same direct personal experience. But I’m not a fundamentalist, not a creationist and not an IDist and I’m identifying that evolutionism is a serious problem. And as one of your countrymen used to say: ‘it ain’t bragging if you can back it up.’
To the question “What is Science?” Evolutionism is *not* science. But there are some people who deny, deny, deny that ‘evolutionism’ is even possible, is even a reality, is even perpetrated, is even taught at universities and published in academic journals and in the mainstream media in their countries.
p.s. I already mentioned R. Dawkins and said not to use him as one of your names. But you used him, Mike. There are other significant ideologues of ‘evolutionism.’ Could you possibly mention some of them too (and perhaps ones more distinguished as scholars than P.Z. Meyers)? I could help, but that wouldn’t be any fun. 😉
The audience is laughing and groaning in stitches! 😛
And word gaming is one of THE primary identifying features of ID/creationism; among a few others.
I suspect you may not know why.
Until you define what you mean by “ideology”, you are not likely to get any good answers.
Be careful with that. “Realism” is used with multiple different meanings. When somebody says that he is a realist, he might merely be saying that he takes evidence seriously.
You seem to be a very ideological sociologist.
I think Gregory has firmly placed himself in company with that other UD denized who favors the word evolutionism.
Gregory,
Ideological evolutionism has as much meaning to me as ideological Lorentzcontractionism.
I don’t know of anyone who teaches that either.
From the OP:
*sigh*
Really?
Glen Davidson posted this among other things:
Apologies for the following rant.
Orwell was one of the least muddled intellectuals of his generation (to be regarded as an intellectual should, in my opinion, be a mark of distinction).
There are few writers in the history of English who wrote so clearly about what they believed, and about what they believed should be done. If you want to read one of the best books ever written about why a person should confront injustice, and how to do it, then read Homage to Catalonia.
Orwell was disgusted by two phenomena of the 1930s and 1940s: fascism and Stalinism (when he went to Spain, he joined the Trotskyist militia known as the POUM, though not being a Trotskyist himself. When he came back to England he joined the Independent Labour Party).
In his own world of English letters, he was disgusted by the intellectuals of the right who wrote Hitler into the role of saviour of capitalism, and the intellectuals of the left who were prepared to pretend that Stalin was not murdering those millions of kulaks.
Read any of Orwell’s work and you find yourself confronted with the question that every one of us has to answer – why should you believe what you are told?
Orwell is the patron of skepticism, and the patron of its sensible consequence – a commitment to act when you are convinced.
One of the results of writing clearly is that it is also clear when you are wrong. On the strength of the original post, Orwell wrote a silly thing about the nature of science.
On the strength of other things that he wrote, I think we should be confident that, had he been granted penicillin and another twenty years, he would have continued to be the champion of free thought, socialism and the value of beauty.
Rant ends.
Well said, Sir.
Alan Fox,
I think I may have mis-spoke myself in that last sentence. I should have said:
“I think we should be confident that, had he been granted penicillin and another twenty years, he would have continued to be the champion of science, free thought, socialism and the value of beauty.”
Orwell was in no way an opponent of scientific knowledge. He was always a champion of the march of science over the fields of ignorance. He simply doubted that a blind reliance on the good sense of the nuclear scientists of his day would yield us an undeniable truth. Which, given what happened, is a reasonable position.
To insist that a knowledge of history and literature is an essential part of being a modern human, which he did, is to do no more than point out the obvious.
Minor nitpick. Wasn’t it streptomycin rather than penicillin?
Comment sent to guano. Please could everyone separate the substantive from the abusive and put them in separate comments to ease the moderation burden. 😉 I know you can’t send the abusive bit straight to guano but you could always consider not posting the abusive bit at all.
merci de votre compréhension
ETA Yes I know it’s grammatically incorrect but it is current vernacular.
Alan Fox,
I think you are right about the streptomycin treatment. There is a passage in his biography (grrr – where is that damn book) about the struggle his wife went through to get him treated with antibiotics, but there wasn’t a sufficient supply of strep in post-war England.
So he died.
But so, of course, did a lot of other people who should have survived tuberculosis.
Really didactical! the same word for two meanings. The best way to make everything right or wrong according the circumstances.
What do you mean by fact? What do you mean by “facts”?
What “support means? When support is “huge”?
If you check my link, there quite a bit about it. Seems Orwell may have had to come off the drug due to side effects:
He was given 1 g of Streptomycin daily and appeared to be making some clinical response, but after a few weeks he developed a severe allergic reaction with dermatitis and stomatitis. He wrote an excellent description of this in his notebook, he could not receive any more of this drug.
page 3
Who wrote that biography? I’ve got it here somewhere.
timothya,
I agree with all of this. I said in the OP that I suspect Orwell might well have changed his mind had he lived another 50 years. It might well have been much less. It seems to be one of the weaker things he wrote. I was particularly disappointed by the sentence:
“And though no names were published, I think it would be a safe guess that all of them were people with some kind of general cultural background, some acquaintance with history or literature or the arts – in short, people whose interests were not, in the current sense of the word, purely scientific.”
This is not scepticism. It is conjecture and a false one in the sense that they were no more roundly educated than the scientists who supported the bomb.
Mark, just curious if you’re going to answer the question above about multiple ‘scientific methods’ vs. a single monolithic ‘THE Scientific Method’. It should be quite uncontroversial, while nevertheless important.
“the scientists themselves would benefit by a little education.” – Orwell
Yes, when it comes to philosophy and ideology, this is obviously still the case. Mike Elzinga may be a scientist, but he is undoubtedly in denial about ‘evolutionism’. He doesn’t want to admit that such an ideology exists. Do people at TSZ wonder why this is? The evidence of evolutionists’ advocacy of evolutionism betrays him, but he doesn’t seem to mind that. Why not? Perhaps because he is himself an ‘evolutionist’?
I have found in my up close and personal studies of scientists in biology, chemistry, astronomy, cosmology, physics and several other natural scientific fields (because anglo-saxons usually actually mean ‘natural-physical science-only’ when they use the word ‘science’) that they are predominantly highly underdeveloped in recognising ideology when it occurs, even in their own thinking.
This is demonstrated adequately in this thread by Mike Elzinga, davehooke, cubist and petrushka who are probably not used to this topic in their typical conversations with American observers of evolutionism, creationism and intelligent design. So perhaps they should be forgiven for simply not knowing that the evidence was there all along, but they just didn’t realise it. In fact, NCSE’s book “Evolution and Creationism” shows that they likewise don’t even acknowledge ‘evolutionism’ which is there nevertheless, staring them blankly in the face if they’d do a little research.
“It is always the ID/creationists who inject “evolutionism” and other pejorative labels into the public sphere.” – Mike
Always?! This is plainly a false statement that should be retracted, if Mike would commit himself to learning the truth about ‘evolutionism’. Would providing evidence convince Mike Elzinga and others at TSZ? Somehow, I don’t think evidence will make a difference either way. Mike would rather label me something I’m not, as a creationist (just as one person in this thread has done) or IDist, and angrily walk away from facing the facts of science turned into ideology, which happens all too often with evolutionism.
It feels a bit like I’m sitting on a park bench on a hot late-summer day enjoying an ice cream. Then an ‘enlightened’ skeptic, a scientist trying to claim the role of ‘new class of priest’ walks up to me, minding my own business and asks what I’m doing. “I’m eating ice cream,” I respond. “No you’re not,” she says dryly and without fun in reply. “There’s no such thing as ice cream according to science.” I guess the thought momentarily crosses my mind, “why bother responding?” and then just go back and enjoy eating the ice cream.
What causes this deafness and blindness to reject openly ackowledging ‘evolutionism’ as a problematic ideology, especially for the Americans participating here? There is a strong psychological mechanism of some kind in place to deny reality. It’s a mystery to the rest of the truth-loving world how extreme the denial is involved here.
Names? For starters: Stephen Sanderson, Robert Carneiro, Joseph Lopreato, David S. Wilson, E.O. Wilson, Gerhard Lenski, Donald T. Campbell, Marvin Harris, Marshall Sahlins, Talcott Parsons, Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward B. Tylor – *ALL* proponents of ‘evolutionism’ and *NONE* of them creationists or IDists. And if you think this conversation of ‘science’ is mainly about ‘biological science,’ then sadly, it will take some upgrading of your current interpretation.
http://www.stephenksanderson.com/documents/EvolutionismanditsCritics-JWSR.pdf
What excuses will be made to discount such evidence of evolutionism and those who promote it by those who pride themselves on holding a ‘scientific’ attitude of mind/heart? Will asking for a definition of ‘ideology’ or vindictively opening a thread in someone else’s name suffice?
I can explain that. It is because Mike, much like the rest of us, hasn’t a clue as to what you are going on about. And you have ignored requests to clarify.
For the present, I am assuming that you are trying to create a phony controversy. And I decline to engage in that.
But perhaps if you explained what it is you are talking about, you might see different responses.
Neil, Your ‘explanation’ is empty. Sadly, this seems to be a pattern. You don’t answer questions, not even about ridiculous things you have said here at TSZ.
This thread should ring a bell: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=2941
You wrote: “Philosophers, as a group, tend to look at things from what I consider a[n] intelligent design perspective.” And what evidence did you give for this? Zero. No names. No links to papers. Just empty talk and vague ‘suggestions’.
And now you have the crassness to claim here that I’m “trying to create a phony controversy” by citing an actual ideological problem, rank and obvious in the country you live in? Get real, Neil. Wake up to your distortions and evasions.
I just gave you 12 names and a link!
All you’ve got to do is try scholar.google. I count 23,700 hits just checked for ‘evolutionism’. http://scholar.google.pl/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=evolutionism [And goodness, I forgot Marion Blute, after having visited her in her office several years back.] There’s a considerable number of evolutionists promoting, advocating and yes, even teaching ‘evolutionism,’ after all. Biological evolution isn’t a major problem, but evolutionism as an inflated worldview obviously is.
You see, Neil, many people who hold opinions about evolutionism, creationism and intelligent design are lazy, in each of the ‘camps.’ Evolutionists are not above laziness or ignorance. They often don’t want to read positions that may challenge their own or admit evidence that contradicts their view that “there’s really no such thing as ‘evolutionism’ – it’s just a creationist conspiracy!” 😛
Here is a case where folks DENY outright the topic of evolutionism by scholars in a variety of fields and only hear it being used in the words of ID/creationists. That is called selective attention, Neil.
Spin your rhetoric and ask for whatever you want to pat yourself on the back and avoid facing the facts. If you sincerely “haven’t a clue” what I’m talking about re: the ideology of evolutionism, then get off your laziness and go do some actual research. The evidence is there waiting for you. Just take 30 minutes today or someday soon and start to open your eyes! You may be surprised at how problematic evolutionism actually is, which was the simple point I made earlier in this thread.
If you asked me to list what I perceive as errors in religionism, I could name a dozen bits of dogma that I think are untrue.
I consider it annoying that you choose not to do so for evolutionism.
Just list the major errors.
Gregory,
I waded through the first 30 or so hits from your Google Scholar search on ‘evolutionism’ and didn’t find anything pertaining to biological evolutionary theory. Virtually all of the hits are from non-biologists arguing points about “social evolutionism” which seems to be some bizarre offshoot of anthropology.
Kinda shot yourself in the foot with that one ace.
Thanks.
I’ll take that as “No, I won’t explain what I am talking about.”
Why does biological evolutionary theory supposedly have a monopoly over the term ‘evolution’? I don’t priviledge biology and see little reason for other non-biologists to do so either. Again, you do recall above my suggestion for careful study of ‘biologism’? (But that’s probably another term you’ll deny has any communicative value, even though, as far as I’ve been able to discover, it was coined by a biologist!)
It might also help knowing something about the Latin roots of the term ‘evolvere’ and the first uses of the term ‘evolution’ in English. Hint: it didn’t start in ‘bio-logy’.
Indeed, you unintentionally tripped over the key point, sport: anthropology is the most important field on the topic of evolutionism, creationism and intelligent design. But that’s a secret for most people, so whatever you do, be skeptical and don’t trust me about that! 😉
The ‘shooting’ is through each of the five ‘aces’ you’ve got tucked inside your sleeve. Try reading some of those scholar.google articles. You might be surprised to learn something.
It’s true; I don’t know what he is talking about. Apparently we are all idiots.
The only thing I can figure is that he swaggered into this bar, got himself drunk, and is trying to pick a fight with everyone.
Boy, it wouldn’t hurt for you folks to take a little effort and read. Ya know, education, learning, knowledge?
The texts are out there. The authors are out there. I’ve started to point you to them. A considerable number of these people are still living. Quite a number of evolutionists work in the Academy these days.
You’re like the monkeys with hands over their eyes, ears and mouths. I take no blame for your unwillingness to explore and discover what you obviously either don’t know or won’t allow yourselves based on worldview presuppositions to think is even possible.
Evolutionism is a grave ideological problem in many ‘western’ universities and societies today. (But then again, so is creationism in America, so we are likely at least in agreement there, right?)
As for ‘swaggering into the bar,’ I started this thread to Mark Frank wrt world leaders who are trained in science, acknowledged the work of J.D. Bernal in HPSS and added an aside based on Torley’s comment. YOU FOLKS jumped on me because you are too entrenched in your views to even allow yourselves to consider the possibility, indeed, the easily discoverable reality, that evolutionism is a ripe topic in the Academy with a coloured history. And as I’ve suggested, it is an ideological problem that you are very aptly demonstrating by your denials that it even exists.
Thanks TSZers!
Yours are delusions of the philosophically illiterate, Neil.
Thanks. I’ll take that as a high compliment.