If an Aunt gives a child Tylenol and a kind word rather than a home-brewed poultice, is she less valid? If one mother has a name for the placebo effect and another mother doesn't, but both use it to comfort a child, where is the dehumanization?
I think science has provably given people the tools to be better aunts and fathers.
I just don't see where science undermines people. It undermines myths, but that just demands that we come up with better myths.
Boddi
On 10/2/06, ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org> wrote:
> At around 2/10/06 11:19 am, Chris Doss wrote:
> > Why do you hate science, Ravi?
> >
>
> ;-)
>
> Do not all charms fly
> At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
> There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
> We know her woof, her texture; she is given
> In the dull catalogue of common things.
> Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
> Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
> Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine--
> Unweave a rainbow.
> -- John Keats, Lamia, 1820
>
> ;-) No, I am kidding about that. Actually, my first problem is the issue
> of what science is... I am not sure we all mean the same thing when we
> use that word. Its kind of like the way Republicans use words like
> "freedom", "values", and "liberal".
>
> I do not of course hate science (what I understand as science). I do not
> even hate the scientistic. What worries me greatly is systems of elite
> power.
>
> My aunt died last year at the age of about 83 (I am not sure we know her
> exact age). She lost her husband to cancer when she was in her early 30s
> and with a little help from her family and a lot of hard work she raised
> her two daughters quite successfully. She was a strong woman who played
> a vital role in raising the majority of us (her sisters' sons and
> daughters), to the point where some of my cousins referred to her as
> "mother". She knew all sorts of little things... how to give a bath to a
> baby. What to do when he won't stop crying in the middle of the night.
> What little concoction might relieve some annoying ailment. Stories
> short enough to keep our attention but full of mystery and virtue. She
> died with hardly a dollar in her possession and without any luxuries of
> retirement.
>
> My father passed away 10 years ago. Even in his time, he was an
> anachronism. A devoted Gandhian, he not only participated in the
> movement, but adhered to its principles to the last day (only briefly
> considering wearing western clothes in order to visit me). He went to
> work at around the age of 17 and worked till a few years before his
> death. He put his older brothers through college and his younger
> brothers through school, helped build a house for the family of which he
> was later denied his share. He did not have the money or the time to go
> to college, yet his large library of books introduced me to Koestler,
> Isherwood, Dickens, Orwell, Tagore, Huxley, Shakespeare, even Homer. He
> managed the finances of my mothers' sisters but never cared for his own
> much.
>
> There are a billion such stories. And they all end the same way.
> Under-appreciated and under-valued. There are forces that rob these
> stories of their value, rob these humans of their significance, enable
> us to not just treat them with disrespect and dismissal, but as
> irrelevant. This would be palatable if it were at least true that their
> contributions could be replaced with the alternatives. But the
> alternatives do not truly fulfil that function. All they do is provide
> the tools and most important the attitude to tear these things down, and
> tear down the things (tolerance, kindness, and so on) that nurture a
> community that contains and produces them.
>
> I tend to be fairly repetitive, and here is something I might already
> have written about. The mathematician Doron Zeilberger, writing about
> Alan Sokal's prank on postmodern philosophy, recalls an episode (perhaps
> that never happened, but nonetheless is of use here) where Euler (at
> the behest of Catherine the Great) sneeringly "refutes" Diderot's
> atheism thus:
>
> Sir, (a+b^n)/n=x, hence God exists; reply!
>
> Well, at least he played a language game to back up his sneering
> attitude. Some, as Gabriel Stolzenberg (another mathematician) points
> out, just make do with the sneering alone:
>
> > What's this, Polus?
> >
> > Socrates: What's this, Polus? You're laughing?
> > Is this yet another kind of refutation which has you laughing at
> > ideas rather than proving them wrong? (Plato's Gorgias 473e,
> > Waterfield translation)
>
> As seen on the discussion even here on LBO regarding alternate stories
> of 9/11, or even questions, it now suffices merely to label ("conspiracy
> theory") and laugh at others (or call them "fucking wackos").
>
> How this answers your question, I hope, is obvious?
>
> --ravi
>
>
> P.S: In the case of Polus though, I think he was on the right track.
>
> P.P.S: This is still not a response, much due, to Carrol's criticism of
> my use of 'scientism'.
>
> --
> Support something better than yourself: ;-)
> PeTA: http://www.peta.org/
> GreenPeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/
> If you have nothing better to do: http://platosbeard.org/
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