> I wrote yesterday: ". . . the most noticeable "critical thinkers" are those
> who deny the validity of evolution."
>
> Note: For the vast majority of us, the content (and methods) of the
> biological and physical sciences are a mystery. The temptation of the
> "critical thinker," therefore, is to think critically in respect to this
> _Authority_ the grounds of which she/he cannot really grasp. Evolution, the
> age of the universe, global warming, etc therefore have to be accepted on
> faith! I am of course quite aware that science in the past _and_ in the
> present has often been utilized to support the ugliest social programs:
> e.g., eugenics. But the attempts of non-scientific intellectuals to
> construct their own critique of science are usually bumbling and
> incompetent.
You'd have to say more about this to convince he that it is correct. I know you put the word "usually" in the sentence to provide wiggle room for empirical counter-examples but this doesn't mesh with the history of these things as I've learned them. I'll get to more on this issue below but you - the person who advocates for, and provides clear evidence of your knowledge about, the capacity of non-experts to learn technical fields "remarkably" quickly and with depth - would seem to be the last person I'd expect to be making this argument. Furthermore, a mass of great research on risk, pubic understanding of science, medical activism, anti-GMO struggles and environmental justice support the idea that non-experts in pretty much any field can become well-versed in the science itself whenever driven to self-educate, particularly if they are collectively self-educating.
Now, granted, I have a BA in Biology and was a low level bench scientist/technician for a few years, but evolution - even at a fairly high level of complexity - is not that hard to understand, nor is the science of climate change, nor are uncertainties and potentials associated with genetically modified crops, nor are the weaknesses of eugenics, IQ, "The Bell Curve", etc. My sense is that you have the "authority" issue exactly backwards. The authority of science is most often challenged because of commitments to other authorities or priorities rather than on scientific grounds not because people cannot engage with the science but because honestly engaging the science would challenged their commitments, priorities and authorities. Furthermore, your comment sounds like it implicitly embraces a Sokal-like critique of science studies where the Physicist's accusation was that the "post-modernists" didn't understand the science and therefore generated a BS critique. Andrew Ross and the collective may not have handled the editorial process at all well nor made it clear to Sokal what their reasons for publishing his hoax were but the argument that the leading folks in science studies don't understand the science has to ignore the fact that they do - particularly since a number of them have advanced degrees in the sciences or have spent time, as researchers, working as scientists.
Additionally, though I doubt you're actually saying this, one reading of what you have hear is that the scientists actually understand the social settings, the power relations, the power/knowledges - if you will - within which they operate... much less the ways that these relations enable certain kinds of basic and applied scientific research and constrain others. Your comment really seems to equate and homogenize the different kinds of critiques of science, doing so in a manner which equates criticisms of evolution from those committed to creationism/intelligent design with criticisms of the political contradictions and scientific limits of the conventional power/knoweldge practices embedded in global climate science as evidenced in IPCC reports.
> Non-scientists did eventually 'overthrow' eugenic -- but not by
> criticizing or even paying any attention to science; they did it by facing
> the fire-hoses, by rioting in the central cities; by making life
> uncomfortable for the white majority until it became socially inappropriate
> to spew forth eugenics. At which point scientists discovered that eugenics
> was horseshit.
I don't think the history of science bears this last bit out and perhaps Ravi can chime in here as well to back me up or not. My sense is that there has always been robust scientific critique of things like eugenics, sociobiology, etc. but that the alliances between political, cultural and economic elites/progressives and eugenicists, sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists, behavioral economists, etc. has meant that the scientific critiques - no matter how strong - are unable to construct equally strong networks of association to overcome the first group... until they are reinforced, become associated with, or are appropriated by social movements.
> Scientists quite properly reject with contempt lay efforts
> directly to "criticize" sciences -- but like the Supreme Court, they do
> read
> the elections returns (or the action in the streets) & clarify their
> thinking accordingly.
>
In my experience, many scientists have so little respect for the critiques that they simply don't understand them... their contempt isn't proper in any way shape or form. It is the scientists, experts and gov't/corporate officials who treat critics/protestors as hysterical when, in fact, it has been shown in instance after instance - most clearly in anti-GMO and environmental justice struggles - that the more people know about GMOs and environmental health, the less they accept the boundary practices and norm and power-laden statistical cut-off points and standards of the scientists.
Even more important, the resistance to many scientific developments
additionally comes from two places: first, the truly shitty teaching/simplification of science - which is more than reasonable to reject, and second, the failure of reductionist science to account for a wide range of associated phenomena... in this case, for example, many people who resisted the legalization of GMOs in Europe did so not because they doubted the agricultural science (though, as one who has looked at this stuff very closely, there was a great deal to doubt about Monstanto-/Novartis-/etc- and USDA-funded research) but because they were concerned about the political economic, cultural and rural community/landscape consequences of the kinds of productivity/efficiency associated with genetically modified crops (or fish-farmed fish, or...)
The scientists repeatedly treated these forms of resistance as arising from idiotic, anti-modern, hysterically romantic foolishness... an utterly despicable and more intellectually and scientifically moribund practice than that of the resistors.
> Hence critical thinking almost _always_, when applied to science, is
> toothless to correct the real defects of science at a given time but very
> powerful in rejecting valid science. Global-Warming doubters are the most
> vivid example today of the results of critical thinking.
>
> Carrol