Saturday, January 16, 2021

The approach of the World Socialist Web Site to science — Bryan Dyne

Somethings to think about now that the US is at the point of change and faces emergent challenges requiring science — the pandemic and climate change. Is "the market knows all" the way to go, or something else.

The problem with so-called natural approaches is that when "nature takes its course" the "weak" get culled. And on the way, immiseration increases and along with it social unrest and systemic dysfunction.

WSWS
The approach of the World Socialist Web Site to science
Bryan Dyne

41 comments:

Matt Franko said...

LOL non science people talking about science...

Peter Pan said...

In terms of "solutions", it's mostly been a market oriented approach.

Peter Pan said...

WSWS is guilty of spreading Covid hysteria - because it allows them to criticize the pandemic response.

Matt Franko said...

Here I have Science degree and have no idea what any of this means: “ Such studies are all the more necessary in a world dominated by the incessant glorification of irrationalism, whether through the cultivation of backwardness and religious obscurantism or the promotion of postmodernism. ”


Such studies are all the more necessary in a world dominated by the incessant glorification of irrationalism (have no idea what that is) , whether through the cultivation of backwardness (have no idea what that is) and religious obscurantism (have no idea what that is) or the promotion of postmodernism ( have no idea what that is)....

No Science trained person can even know what this guy is even talking about....

Most everybody working at an industrial firm already has a science degree .., or at least everyone of significance there does... so I guess if what the guy is saying is to get rid of the Artists trying to do material work than I might agree with him... but I can’t even understand what the guy is trying to say here..,

Matt Franko said...

“As many recent scientific papers on the topic have stressed, the only real solution to halting global warming and all its ongoing and oncoming catastrophes is through a reorganization of the world’s energy production and transportation infrastructure and the development of new technologies to immediately halt carbon emissions.”

Yo, Everybody who came up with the design/construction/operation/maintenance of our current systems of energy generation and transportation had/has Science degrees..,, wtf is this guys point we’re not using Science?

We ALREADY ARE using science and this is what we science people have come up with.... so now Art degree people are saying it’s not going to work? They have no relevant training to be able to make that type of determination...

Tom Hickey said...

but I can’t even understand what the guy is trying to say here..,

You do know how to search the Internet, don't you.

But to be serious, some people using the Internet don't, actually. And I know some of them. They are pretty savvy people otherwise but analog trained and never got a handle on digital.

Tom Hickey said...

To be more specific.

You’re a data scientist at a local hospital and you’ve been asked to present to the physicians on communicating statistical information to patients. What should you say?

1. Science has to be explained to non-scientists and other scientists not in the same field. That means using language they can understand to convey basic ideas.

Socrates described philosophy as rational inquiry in the sense of reflection on experience. This is called "going meta." Meta is a Greek term meaning "after," comparable to Latin "post." First, one experiences something and then thinks about it reflectively, e.g., who, what, where when, why, how, etc. Or one reflects first about something and then does something.

So, philosophy of science, for instance, is "about science," in the sense of inquiring into the foundations of science. One such inquiry is how science is done, for instance, e.g., what constitutes scientific method. This is not agreed upon by all, including scientists. Then there is the normative aspect of reflection involving should and ought, e.g., bioethics.

The WSWS post is meta and normative. It is a reflection on how science is used in a society and prescription for using it better from the social POV.

2. A lot of what we talk about is not "science" in the sense that all terms are defined technically as in math, or operationally, connecting them with measurement, as in science. In fact, most of what we talk about is not.

So the meta question becomes, how does this works, which is the subject of logic broadly speaking. One could say that math deals with what can be quantified, science with what can be quantified and measured, and logic deals with everything else. Human can communicate meaningfully about matters that cannot be quantified at least yet or in principle, and that cannot be measured yet or in principle. There are methods for dealing with this area of knowledge. But this area is controversial.

A good example is Chomsky's criticism of Derrida, deconstructionism and po-mo, in which Chomsky said Derrida did know what was talking about. The other side came with Chomsky is obtuse. Both sides had a point. It was more than a clash of methods. It was a clash of world views. But what criteria might these kinds of argument be decided? The question is meta.

3. Obviously, if something fits into the quantifiable and measurable domain it likely falls under science. Who argues against that on rational grounds. But much of what is interesting and of interest in life doesn't.

Where issues arise is at the interface of knowledge/belief that divides the naturalistic, which is potential subject matter for science, and that which does not. This might create some cognitive dissonance for scientists that are also believers that fall into the fundamentalist category of accepting the literal meaning of scripture. But most people adjust so that their categories mesh enough not create a double-bind.

Andrew Anderson said...

that are also believers that fall into the fundamentalist category of accepting the literal meaning of scripture. Tom Hickey

Is anything in the Bible to be taken literally, Hickey?

Tom Hickey said...

Tom Hickey Is anything in the Bible to be taken literally, Hickey?

That which is evidential.

There are essentially three epistemological categories in ancient records, 1) evidential, 2) mythological (teaching story), 3) legend as a combination of 1 and 2. Some teaching stories are incompatible with scientific reasoning, e.g., creation myths.

This doesn't mean that myths don't convey profound knowledge, if one knows the intent of the teaching story as analogy or allegory, for example. See Pardes.

Scholars debate about where these categories fall in relation to particular records. It is a controversial area in scholarship and also fluid as new developments occur, e.g., archeological finds.

This can be viewed as a challenge in distinguishing wisdom from superstition, whereas some hold that it's all superstition and others that it is all literally true.

Tom Hickey said...

In these types of argument, the weight of the argument is generally presumed to fall with the preponderance of qualified opinion. But that is not enough to make the conclusion compelling. This is a reason that knowledge is fluid and research continues.

Peter Pan said...

No Science trained person can even know what this guy is even talking about....

Politics.
Science trained people should know how politics uses science.
For example, how a dire scientific consensus gets watered down before reaching the public.

Andrew Anderson said...

This might create some cognitive dissonance for scientists that are also believers that fall into the fundamentalist category of accepting the literal meaning of scripture. Tom Hickey

Actually, there's little disagreement between modern science and a literal reading of the Bible - except where the text is clearly not to be taken literally (but maybe anyway?) For example both agree that:

1) Time had a beginning (Genesis, Big Bang theory).
2) Space is expanding ("The Lord stretches out the heavens", Big Bang Theory).
3) The Sun DOES go around the Earth if one's coordinate system is Earth centered.
4) PI DOES equal 3 to 1 significant digit.

Dr. Hugh Ross, Phd in Astrophysics finds no contradiction between modern science and the Bible. And btw, he systematically read the scriptures of ALL the world's major religions and found none of them holds a candle to the Bible wrt science.

Andrew Anderson said...

Bad link for Ross. this instead: www.reasons.org

Tom Hickey said...

Tell that to the people who hold that creation took place in literally six days and that God "rested" on the seventh, so modern science has to be mistaken about the time frame as well as the cause.

Dr. Hugh Ross, Phd in Astrophysics finds no contradiction between modern science and the Bible. And btw, he systematically read the scriptures of ALL the world's major religions and found none of them holds a candle to the Bible wrt science

I'll raise you six. :)

6 Famous International Physicists who were influenced by Hindu Dharma — Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Carl Sagan, Nikola Tesla

I could go on but it is rather pointless, since it decides nothing without connecting the creation story with modern science operationally, and that has not been done. And if it had been, the issue would be resolved. So far, it's on the level of analogy. A lot of people are working on this issue. In fact, last evening I was reading an argument by a theoretical physicist against another theoretical physicist that claimed to have accomplished this.


Andrew Anderson said...

And if it had been, the issue would be resolved. Tom Hickey

It appears that God is not interested in proving His existence beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Still the evidence is, per the Bible, adequate to leave us without excuse.

Ahmed Fares said...

Tom Hickey,

"Tell that to the people who hold that creation took place in literally six days..."

Paraphrasing the Sufi Ibn Arabi, and bearing in mind that a "day" in Semitic languages can be any length of time, the days of creation begin on Sunday and appear on Saturday, which is the "fruitless day", as nothing comes after it. This is because the world then disappears and the cycle of creation begins anew. In that sense, every day is Saturday.

You do not see this creation because you are not here when the world is being created. But the gnostics, when in their state of unveiling, see this creation because they stand outside it.

This is the Muslim Ash'arite position, based on the Qur'an:

Everything is perishing except His Face —Qur'an 28:88

In accordance with their theology of possibility, Ashʿarites also lean toward the idea of the constant re-creation of the world in order to keep the moments of the cosmic history discrete. The constant re-creation of the world anew at each moment negates the need for a causal glue between two consecutive events. The Ashʿarite world continuously pulsates between existence and nonexistence. The only thing that connects past, present, and future is the divine will and power. The relationship between two consecutive moments is, therefore, not necessary but possible.

A short bio for Jonathan Edwards:

Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758) was an American revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian. Edwards is widely regarded as one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians.

Here is Oliver Crisp writing about Jonathan Edwards:

Oliver Crisp summarizes Edwards's view: "God creates the world out of nothing, whereupon it momentarily ceases to exist, to be replaced by a facsimile that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time. This, in turn, is annihilated, or ceases to exist, and is replaced by another facsimile world ... and so on."

The doctrine of continuous creation, as I just discovered a few days ago, appears earlier than Islam in a Buddhist sect called Sautrāntika. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia article:

As explained by Jan Westerhoff, this doctrine of momentariness holds that each present moment "does not possess any temporal thickness; immediately after coming into existence each moment passes out of existence" and that therefore "all dharmas, whether mental or material, only last for an instant (ksana) and cease immediately after arising".

lastgreek said...

“Meta is a Greek term meaning "after," comparable to Latin "post."”

Meta (μετά) is a preposition. In the accusative case it means “after”; in the genitive case, it means “with” :)


Matt Franko said...

“You do know how to search the Internet, don't you.”

My point is I didn’t have to know what any of that is to get a Science degree...

All the people who are doing all of this stuff don’t even know what any of that is,,,, yet we went to the moon...

Matt Franko said...

Greek what does ‘diabolos’ mean?

Matt Franko said...

‘dia’ is through,,,

Matt Franko said...

“and bearing in mind that a "day" in Semitic languages can be any length of time, the days of creation begin on Sunday and appear on Saturday,”

Interesting... probably what the scripture means then is that it took ‘God” one interval between rest days to do it,,,

Matt Franko said...

"Tell that to the people who hold that creation took place in literally six days..." = “ "Tell that to the people who hold that reserve balances are literally lent out”

It’s the same cognitive error of reification...

All this BS about “money!” is probably a tip off towards these more profound matters,,,, which then it pisses me off that all these moron MMT people want to simply politicize all of this “money!” shit...

“Trillion dollar coin!” .... go F yourself there is already almost twice that in the Treasury account morons...

Ahmed Fares said...

re: every day is Saturday

Further to my comment and in the interest of clarity, a quote:

Space-time and creation in six days

So this means that we - along with all of manifest creation, at all times - are now living in this ‘Seventh Day’, but the riddle is how we can at the same time still be viewing the other Days of the week, including Saturday itself. Ibn ‘Arabi himself remarks that ‘it is rather amazing that the Days, among which is Saturday, are (all) happening in Saturday; because it is one of these Days and they are appearing in it’ [II. 444. 7]


source: Ibn Arabi - Time and Cosmology

Matt Franko said...

I don’t have any problem understanding it... this is all happening on a Saturday in figurative terms... I don’t think this conflicts with the Genesis account...

Matt Franko said...

Tom, it’s pretty difficult for “workers of the world, unite!” when the government won’t let workers go to work....

I think this guy may be starting to realize this...

Matt Franko said...

“the idea of the constant re-creation of the world in order to keep the moments of the cosmic history discrete”

That’s another reification error ... the guy is believing the real conforms to the mathematical abstraction...

https://brilliant.org/wiki/discrete-mathematics/

The guy thinks the abstractions are real... this is the same as the morons going all around saying “lending out the reserves!” or “lending out the deposits!”... “borrowing from China!”...

Tom Hickey said...

These are teaching stories. For example, exactly what Al-Shayah Al-Akbar actually intended from his level is impossible for ordinary consciousness to grasp at the level of the gross physical. The sages dumb it down to our level. It's kind of like trying to explain something like QM to those who are mathematically innumerate, or sex to five year old. That's why little kids used get the stork story and now may get, daddy put you inside mommy. Of course, the little kid thinks, WTF for?

Teaching stories are knowledge systems that encapsulate profound wisdom and are designed to unfold that wisdom as one works with it and grows in "wisdom and understanding" on the way to realizing knowledge (gnosis). Sort of like how a child learns math and then after many years of study learns how to apply it to a field.

Teaching stories are not all stories in the sense of prose or poetry. Many are also graphic symbols like the Taijitu of Taoism, which contains the whole teaching. The I Ching unpacks it somewhat. This is also expressed symbolically in the Tree of Life of Qabalah, for example, which is a graphically represented teaching story, comparable to such devices in Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. The Tree of Knowledge in Hinduism is upside down with its roots in the heavens. (This also occurs in Norse myth.)

Sages can transmit that knowledge directly, and sometimes do, although rarely, or else explain it in detail but that generally only happens "in the closet," that is, privately as an oral teaching, so this is also rare. The rest get to read, hear or see the representation of the stories and that's what they have to work with at the stage they are at. This is how wisdom unfolds — from here to there (realization) through gradual unfolding.

There are two forms of reproduction, individual reproduction through sex that transmits generic material across generations, and social reproduction through knowledge that transmits knowledge across generations culturally and institutionally. Some cultures recognize this through ancestor worship and veneration of wisdom traditions.

The first are genetic strains that result in ethnicity. The second are the various traditions underlying cultures and civilizations. Ultimate knowledge is one so the inner teaching of the sages is the same across time and space. However, the sages have to communicate in term of time and place, which accounts for the superficial differences.

Matt Franko said...

“These are teaching stories.“

Yes but there are other ways to teach besides hearing or reading the figurative... there is ofc the literal .... and then there is the technical abstractions which you can train in... etc...

Abstraction has been much more successful... in material matters anyway...

Matt Franko said...

“Sages can transmit that knowledge directly,”

Via what methodology? and don’t say the figurative because that is not direct....

Tom Hickey said...

Via what methodology?

Conventional knowledge can't explain it and ordinary language cannot describe it either. This dimension is considered supernatural because it cannot be quantified and operationalized. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Sages transmit knowledge by the same power that Saul of Tarsus was snatched up to the third heaven and transformed into Paul. Or, how Buddha's disciple Mahakasyapa was immediately enlightened when Buddha held up a flower. Did the flower have anything to do with it? No. However, "transmission of knowledge" doesn't mean intellectual knowledge. It means experiential knowledge, e.g., intense love. Wisdom traditions have conceptual models for understanding this experience in terms of a holistic system.

Wisdom traditions purport to be based on peoples' experience — masters and mystics, saints and sages, and prophets, for example. They underlie all civilizations at the foundational level.

There are many such reports recorded, and many more that go unrecorded, and one either accepts at least some of them as credible or one rejects the whole notion of transcendental wisdom, as many do, some on the basis of scientific naturalism.

It's a choice. There is no logically compelling argument on either side. Usually it requires openness but some just have a spontaneous experience, out of the blue so to speak, like Paul did. Some like Paul, either rejected or doubted, previous to the experience.

Science ends where its assumptions lead. Naturalism is a methodological assumption. It works well in explanation of that which can be operationalized, but it doesn't imply that what cannot be operationalized yet or in principle does not exist and can't be experienced. Science cannot yet operationalize mind or consciousness, for example, so some scientists claim that neither exists. Most people's reaction to that is, WTF?

continued

Tom Hickey said...

continuation

But few who have experienced something of this order doubt it. For example, most who practice Oriental martial arts have experienced "chi," "qi" or "ki" as the vital force, even though it cannot be measured. Based on this, they invest valuable time and energy on developing it and acquiring knowledge about it. Many people in the West now meditate and some report non-ordinary experience.

And there are actually different orders of experience and knowledge as the confluence of experience and understanding, with experience and knowledge of the gross physical being the lowest and more commonly experienced. Experience and knowledge of the gross is horizontal, on the gross level only.

There are many levels. Experience and knowledge are also vertical — gross, subtle, mental or causal, and transcendent. This is all documented in the wisdom traditions and now scientists are trying to figure out now to deal with it operationally. So far this pretty much involves correlating psychological reports with physiological measurement of things like neurological patterns, biochemistry, and other measurables. Of course, hard nose scientists have no interest in this and regard it as superstitious. But a whole lot of people have had experiences that qualify as "mystical" in the sense of non-ordinary and unexplainable by conventional methods.

Wisdom traditions have no problem with explaining such things in terms of their epistemological paradigms. In the West normative institutional religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — have tended to downplay or even suppress this. so it is not widely known and until recently literature was not very available either. The mystical schools of Qabalah and Sufism are well-developed however, but these have been closet teachings. In Western Christianity, that is, that is, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, the opposition has been even greater, although it is more welcome in Eastern Orthodoxy.

This is significant since science is largely a Western phenomenon, so the West has been largely in the dark about transcendental wisdom other than peripherally, e.g, through Western occultism, which has been an underground phenomenon, or by reading the Christian mystics.

But once one starts looking it is everywhere. No the question is separating the genuine from the bogus. Some of the bogus is charlatanism and some simply self-delusion or mistaking some experience for what it is not.

end

Ahmed Fares said...

Blaise Pascal was a great mathematician. He was also a mystic.

It was November 23rd, 1654 and Blaise Pascal was at home alone. The sun was set and all was dark. He was most likely preparing for bed when, suddenly, at around 10:30pm, something supernatural happened. It’s not clear exactly what he saw, but the amazing mystical experience lasted for a full two hours. As soon as it was over, he grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down what was swirling through his head.
Here’s what he wrote:

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology. Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others. From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have departed from him:
They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.
My God, will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from him forever.
This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.
Let me never be separated from him.
He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.
May I not forget your words. Amen.

Wow! Whatever he saw, it sounds amazing.

He then took the piece of paper with the story and carefully sewed it into the inside of his jacket, which he kept with him the rest of his life. This was not discovered until after his death.

Matt Franko said...

Paul described it as “revelation” in English translation .. the word is ‘apokalupseos’ or from-covering in the original language...

imo implies the knowledge is always there but it is somehow covered....

Galatians 1:12 King James

“For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught [it], but by the revelation”

Received is parelabon. beside-got (I read imitation method)
Taught is edidachthEn. (i read didactic method)
Revelation is apokalupseOs (from-covering)

So he ruled out imitation method and the didactic method.... said it was a ‘from-covering’

imo it’s covered... something is covering it...

lastgreek said...

“Greek what does ‘diabolos’ mean?“

The devil.

Matt Franko said...

But Is it ever used as a plain personal pronoun? designating a type of person? ... iow in English it would not be capitalized...

Not the proper noun “Devil” or “Satan” in the figurative form of that literal translation of the biblical personification used in the Hebrew .... that is a well known translation...

Matt Franko said...

iow does it have a literal usage?

Matt Franko said...

“ GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.”

Yeah no kidding....

Took another 200 years till those people gave the world Charles Darwin telling them their grandparents were chimpanzees till they finally shit canned the whole lot...

Peter Pan said...

Deviled ham?

lastgreek said...

"Slanderer"

The verb διαβάλλω: I slander, defame

The noun διαβολή: slander, defamation
,
The adjective διαβολικός: diabolical, fiendish

lastgreek said...

δια preposition meaning "through" "across"

βάλλω the verb "to throw/cast/put/place"

lastgreek said...

This is an excellent place to start:

https://www.amazon.ca/Homeric-Greek-Beginners-Clyde-Pharr/dp/0806141646