This is a fun place to joust with the physicists, and as an ex-astrophysics myself (I really have too many hats...) I have some skin in this game. I like how you come at this, but I might put this all together slightly differently, as ever, without this undermining or contradicting your account.
I would begin by pointing out that whatever the nature of scientific process, it is entitled to hypotheticals provided it then makes an effort to investigate. In many idealised versions of scientific practice, the scientist aims to prove their own hypotheticals false - that one always gives me a giggle, but it's a fine ideal as far as it goes. So dark matter, dark energy - I like your 'dark stuff', brilliant! - is hypothetical. No problem there.
The problem comes with the positivistic metaphysics being evoked by some (but not all) physicists that lurks, largely unseen, behind all this - and you hit this nail quite squarely here. If your metaphysics tell you that you only believe in the demonstrable, and then you clearly start having ontological faith in hypotheticals, how are we to judge your beliefs...? Well, we'd certainly judge them a lot more forgivingly if you weren't simultaneously raging at others who believe in 'different hypotheticals'...
For myself, I like to come at this problem via Pluto, since it is evident with the slightest reflection on the matter that there can be no evidential basis for declaring that Pluto is or is not a planet, and really the only reason to pick 'not a planet' at all as a proposition is to be able to defend the idea that 'astrophysicists know how many planets there are'. (Forgive me if you've heard this one from me before - I do love it so!)
What it all comes down to is hermeneutics. Religions are acutely aware of the unavoidable hermeneutic dimension in dealing with sacred texts... We've seen it all, so many of us (by no means all) are acutely sensitive to this dimension. Positivists, since their metaphysical position begins with an inchoate faith in something unquestionable named 'Science', generally cannot see how hermeneutics could be anything but lies - and therefore could not possibly admit that *the sciences too must engage in hermeneutics.* Otherwise, how could it arise that we could ask 'is Pluto a planet...?' Honestly, its so perfect that it makes me smile whenever I think about it.
This actually dovetails with Nietzsche's "The Madman" again - and I have not forgotten your request for me to write for Analogy on this topic. It is in the to-do list, and I hope to get there this Summer, when work has settled down a little bit, but regardless I would enjoy writing this, I just need to find the time and mental space to do so.
I hear you on all counts, Chris. The Pluto example is indeed wonderful. Thanks for sharing that one! One of the difficulties with my present subject matter is keeping in mind what I mean by Science or TheScience. I rarely remind myself and my readers who exactly I'm critiquing... I suppose because it's understood that I'm invariably talking about pop science, science culture, corrupt science, corporate science, sloppy science, pretenders to science... the whole carpetbag... Unfortunately, too many excellent scientists have no idea any of this chicanery is going on, and therefore maintain a blind faith in all of it (with an understanding that some fraud goes on, but that it's rare and pathological).
I don't think I've read an article on the subject of dark stuff that presented it with any qualification. It's invariably presented as hard fact. And of course, I have no problem with the hypothesis per se. But some acknowledgement of the immense inconvenience this presents to naturalism is needed. It really is having your cake and eating it too, to have an unobservable, perhaps untestable phenomena that still gets to be matter and energy. There's a convenience there that's too clever for its own good. I love metaphysics... and I love language (and hermeneutics) and guaranteed this hypothesis is bunk. It's embarrassing that there's no ongoing public discussion about these matters. Science is so much more interesting when it's part of a dialogue. And a lot less interesting when it's telling us what's what. Wouldn't be great if the scientific community came and said, "Today we broke science. We need your help to put the pieces together. If this is your passion, come study at our lab!"
Ha ha ha, I do wish that willingness to break everything were still alive among researchers. The sciences were far stronger when Kant was part of the reading list, alas, but that will never return now.
One more thing on this point: another example along the lines of 'dark stuff' is the Everett-Wheeler 'many universes' interpretation of quantum mechanics. Good luck coming up with an experiment that will test that puppy! 😂
Aye. I mentioned that in "The Flaws of Probability" as a hallucination of the math... and I intend to bring it up again in another piece on math and archetypes. The many worlds hypothesis is wonderfully original and great fodder for sci-fi, but c'mon... And this too is often presented in pop-science as an actual theory, something more than a wildly fun hypothesis.
Your latest essay resonates with an idea I've been reading about that the study of history can help a decadent society understand its present and maybe brighten the dark future it seems headed for. That we have enduring archetypes to aid in our search for truth finds correspondence, I think, in the notion that the past is always present. Benedetto Croce said that "all history is contemporary history," and a quote attributed to Mark Twain draws a beautifully coherent analogy between history and poetry: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." The past and present, for example, is brimful of tyrants who think they understand history and so can shape it and direct it to a preferred outcome through their anti-human ideologies, and Clive James already wrote in 2006 that the West was renewing a "familiar pattern . . . of despotism and terror that so often succeed the collapse of a representaive system." There's something holographic, it seems, about the way this pattern connects to so many points in history, like a reference wave. And since I also share with my fellow human beings the widespread habit of repeating mistakes that encourage self-destruction, the concept of a living past feels very real to me in both an inner and outer sense, and worth exploring in a way that could benefit the future.
Reading history is one of my great joys. It's so vast! And indeed it does rhyme, driven, it would seem, by archetypes. I've been speculating that civilisations must die... (or pass). It's part of the natural flow. All organisms come into being, grow, evolve, reach their apogee, grow corrupt, decline, fester, fall, and feed coyotes, or fertilise the earth. (Except us humans of course.)
I'm a fan of the hologram notion. Thanks for bringing that up!
I wonder what the right word is to describe what happens when a civilization dies. There's often some kind of 'passing on', a 'transmitting' of some parts of the dying culture that become absorbed somehow into succeeding generations. That said, I agree there's no way that humans fertilise the earth, but at least we can spread germ plagues with our breath.
<sigh> So much in these articles. Impossible to comment efficiently and completely…
“…when things don’t add up, it’s not the phenomena that require correction, nor is it the job of science to make stuff up so the math works. The conclusions must show correspondence with the observed phenomena…”
This. Is. It.
Period.
We found Reality too intractable, but since we invent/discover/“own“ Mathematics, that’s the pit we have fallen into. (I’m not entirely a crank, here: I have 1 degree in physics and another one in advanced mathematics. I love the stuff...)
A la Turner and Lakoff, I think we see and use *metaphor* to help develop our correspondences … basically an infinitely rich linguistic construct.
With the death of proper poetry in science our Science withers as well. I basically see most ‘science’ these days as engineering refinement, not extending our core understanding of the Universe.
Thank you, RDM! I agree... it's looking a lot like we sidelined the potential innovators and just brought aboard the technicians. I'm reminded of Damien Hirst's spot paintings, which he jobs out with a formula that ensures no colour is repeated twice on any given canvas.
Insightful and helpful. Seeing this pointed out, I realize how often I settle for a figurative explanation of something just because the figure helps me understand what is going on. I was locked in a stairwell years ago and later went around telling people I had felt like a rat in a trap. Ridiculous, of course, to say such a thing, but people laughed and I felt that I had expressed something about my experience. I don't even know what experience I had. I only felt that I had to say that it was "like" something and that was enough. I don't know what my "inner" experience was; I was satisfied with the "outer" experience, which was hardly a "reality" at all.
Thanks for sharing this, Allen... So you didn't viscerally feel like a rat in a trap. It was simply a figure of speech. This understanding goes some way toward explaining why it can be so difficult to parse a figure of speech with a 101 literature class. Students 17-20 years old have immense difficulty distinguishing between the surface meaning and the implicit meaning... which of course they take to be "the surface"... because to them it's the primary meaning. As a teacher, I thought easing into poetry with figures of speech would jump start the process for them; but, to my surprise, it seemed just as confusing as poetry to them. Take for instance "to fall off the wagon." Students in my class would assert that the surface meaning was *to relapse.* When asked to explain how *falling off a wagon* implied *relapse,* they had immense trouble wrapping their heads around it. The phrase was essentially nonsensical to them and simply stood as a sign for *relapse.* I was like, "But you folks use metaphor all the time." Turned out I was wrong.
Having failed numerous times to help students see a joke or wry comment in a medieval text (Chaucer's works being full of subtle humor), I used to tell friends that irony was wasted on the young. Metaphors too seem beyond the young. Some are obvious. But the wagon business is not obvious--water, cleaning streets, on the wagon meaning drinking water vs. alcohol, and so on; it requires a short historical investigation. Saying one thing, meaning another--not every student saw the merit of that approach.
You're right that the wagon analogy isn't obvious, but I didn't teach it that way. I tried to get them to imagine simply falling from a wagon, which ought to be much more obvious. You're travelling along smoothly, maybe a few bumps along the way, until bam! you're thrown from the platform. It's like hitting rough times and falling and hurting yourself. Pretty straightforward.
Imagine, though--a wagon? I wonder if they could imagine a wagon you could fall from. Your analogy is very clear, I agree--to me. We had all kinds of wagons on the farm in Iowa. But for young people today, what is a wagon? And isn't dad pulling the wagon? You fall off it? Why didn't he do is job? Do kids still ride in wagons? I would expect that they have been declared unsafe. Kids would have to wear helmets, possibly other protective gear. Dad would need insurance, a permit, perhaps a designated path on the sidewalk.
Unfortunately, I haven't much to tell. It was all bureaucrats and feminists and some creepy version of "community." . . . That said, I'm happy to take questions if you have any.
Hi Asa,
This is a fun place to joust with the physicists, and as an ex-astrophysics myself (I really have too many hats...) I have some skin in this game. I like how you come at this, but I might put this all together slightly differently, as ever, without this undermining or contradicting your account.
I would begin by pointing out that whatever the nature of scientific process, it is entitled to hypotheticals provided it then makes an effort to investigate. In many idealised versions of scientific practice, the scientist aims to prove their own hypotheticals false - that one always gives me a giggle, but it's a fine ideal as far as it goes. So dark matter, dark energy - I like your 'dark stuff', brilliant! - is hypothetical. No problem there.
The problem comes with the positivistic metaphysics being evoked by some (but not all) physicists that lurks, largely unseen, behind all this - and you hit this nail quite squarely here. If your metaphysics tell you that you only believe in the demonstrable, and then you clearly start having ontological faith in hypotheticals, how are we to judge your beliefs...? Well, we'd certainly judge them a lot more forgivingly if you weren't simultaneously raging at others who believe in 'different hypotheticals'...
For myself, I like to come at this problem via Pluto, since it is evident with the slightest reflection on the matter that there can be no evidential basis for declaring that Pluto is or is not a planet, and really the only reason to pick 'not a planet' at all as a proposition is to be able to defend the idea that 'astrophysicists know how many planets there are'. (Forgive me if you've heard this one from me before - I do love it so!)
What it all comes down to is hermeneutics. Religions are acutely aware of the unavoidable hermeneutic dimension in dealing with sacred texts... We've seen it all, so many of us (by no means all) are acutely sensitive to this dimension. Positivists, since their metaphysical position begins with an inchoate faith in something unquestionable named 'Science', generally cannot see how hermeneutics could be anything but lies - and therefore could not possibly admit that *the sciences too must engage in hermeneutics.* Otherwise, how could it arise that we could ask 'is Pluto a planet...?' Honestly, its so perfect that it makes me smile whenever I think about it.
This actually dovetails with Nietzsche's "The Madman" again - and I have not forgotten your request for me to write for Analogy on this topic. It is in the to-do list, and I hope to get there this Summer, when work has settled down a little bit, but regardless I would enjoy writing this, I just need to find the time and mental space to do so.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
I hear you on all counts, Chris. The Pluto example is indeed wonderful. Thanks for sharing that one! One of the difficulties with my present subject matter is keeping in mind what I mean by Science or TheScience. I rarely remind myself and my readers who exactly I'm critiquing... I suppose because it's understood that I'm invariably talking about pop science, science culture, corrupt science, corporate science, sloppy science, pretenders to science... the whole carpetbag... Unfortunately, too many excellent scientists have no idea any of this chicanery is going on, and therefore maintain a blind faith in all of it (with an understanding that some fraud goes on, but that it's rare and pathological).
I don't think I've read an article on the subject of dark stuff that presented it with any qualification. It's invariably presented as hard fact. And of course, I have no problem with the hypothesis per se. But some acknowledgement of the immense inconvenience this presents to naturalism is needed. It really is having your cake and eating it too, to have an unobservable, perhaps untestable phenomena that still gets to be matter and energy. There's a convenience there that's too clever for its own good. I love metaphysics... and I love language (and hermeneutics) and guaranteed this hypothesis is bunk. It's embarrassing that there's no ongoing public discussion about these matters. Science is so much more interesting when it's part of a dialogue. And a lot less interesting when it's telling us what's what. Wouldn't be great if the scientific community came and said, "Today we broke science. We need your help to put the pieces together. If this is your passion, come study at our lab!"
Ha ha ha, I do wish that willingness to break everything were still alive among researchers. The sciences were far stronger when Kant was part of the reading list, alas, but that will never return now.
One more thing on this point: another example along the lines of 'dark stuff' is the Everett-Wheeler 'many universes' interpretation of quantum mechanics. Good luck coming up with an experiment that will test that puppy! 😂
All the best!
Aye. I mentioned that in "The Flaws of Probability" as a hallucination of the math... and I intend to bring it up again in another piece on math and archetypes. The many worlds hypothesis is wonderfully original and great fodder for sci-fi, but c'mon... And this too is often presented in pop-science as an actual theory, something more than a wildly fun hypothesis.
Your latest essay resonates with an idea I've been reading about that the study of history can help a decadent society understand its present and maybe brighten the dark future it seems headed for. That we have enduring archetypes to aid in our search for truth finds correspondence, I think, in the notion that the past is always present. Benedetto Croce said that "all history is contemporary history," and a quote attributed to Mark Twain draws a beautifully coherent analogy between history and poetry: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." The past and present, for example, is brimful of tyrants who think they understand history and so can shape it and direct it to a preferred outcome through their anti-human ideologies, and Clive James already wrote in 2006 that the West was renewing a "familiar pattern . . . of despotism and terror that so often succeed the collapse of a representaive system." There's something holographic, it seems, about the way this pattern connects to so many points in history, like a reference wave. And since I also share with my fellow human beings the widespread habit of repeating mistakes that encourage self-destruction, the concept of a living past feels very real to me in both an inner and outer sense, and worth exploring in a way that could benefit the future.
Reading history is one of my great joys. It's so vast! And indeed it does rhyme, driven, it would seem, by archetypes. I've been speculating that civilisations must die... (or pass). It's part of the natural flow. All organisms come into being, grow, evolve, reach their apogee, grow corrupt, decline, fester, fall, and feed coyotes, or fertilise the earth. (Except us humans of course.)
I'm a fan of the hologram notion. Thanks for bringing that up!
I wonder what the right word is to describe what happens when a civilization dies. There's often some kind of 'passing on', a 'transmitting' of some parts of the dying culture that become absorbed somehow into succeeding generations. That said, I agree there's no way that humans fertilise the earth, but at least we can spread germ plagues with our breath.
<sigh> So much in these articles. Impossible to comment efficiently and completely…
“…when things don’t add up, it’s not the phenomena that require correction, nor is it the job of science to make stuff up so the math works. The conclusions must show correspondence with the observed phenomena…”
This. Is. It.
Period.
We found Reality too intractable, but since we invent/discover/“own“ Mathematics, that’s the pit we have fallen into. (I’m not entirely a crank, here: I have 1 degree in physics and another one in advanced mathematics. I love the stuff...)
A la Turner and Lakoff, I think we see and use *metaphor* to help develop our correspondences … basically an infinitely rich linguistic construct.
With the death of proper poetry in science our Science withers as well. I basically see most ‘science’ these days as engineering refinement, not extending our core understanding of the Universe.
Great article…geez….Thank You.
Thank you, RDM! I agree... it's looking a lot like we sidelined the potential innovators and just brought aboard the technicians. I'm reminded of Damien Hirst's spot paintings, which he jobs out with a formula that ensures no colour is repeated twice on any given canvas.
Insightful and helpful. Seeing this pointed out, I realize how often I settle for a figurative explanation of something just because the figure helps me understand what is going on. I was locked in a stairwell years ago and later went around telling people I had felt like a rat in a trap. Ridiculous, of course, to say such a thing, but people laughed and I felt that I had expressed something about my experience. I don't even know what experience I had. I only felt that I had to say that it was "like" something and that was enough. I don't know what my "inner" experience was; I was satisfied with the "outer" experience, which was hardly a "reality" at all.
Thanks for sharing this, Allen... So you didn't viscerally feel like a rat in a trap. It was simply a figure of speech. This understanding goes some way toward explaining why it can be so difficult to parse a figure of speech with a 101 literature class. Students 17-20 years old have immense difficulty distinguishing between the surface meaning and the implicit meaning... which of course they take to be "the surface"... because to them it's the primary meaning. As a teacher, I thought easing into poetry with figures of speech would jump start the process for them; but, to my surprise, it seemed just as confusing as poetry to them. Take for instance "to fall off the wagon." Students in my class would assert that the surface meaning was *to relapse.* When asked to explain how *falling off a wagon* implied *relapse,* they had immense trouble wrapping their heads around it. The phrase was essentially nonsensical to them and simply stood as a sign for *relapse.* I was like, "But you folks use metaphor all the time." Turned out I was wrong.
Having failed numerous times to help students see a joke or wry comment in a medieval text (Chaucer's works being full of subtle humor), I used to tell friends that irony was wasted on the young. Metaphors too seem beyond the young. Some are obvious. But the wagon business is not obvious--water, cleaning streets, on the wagon meaning drinking water vs. alcohol, and so on; it requires a short historical investigation. Saying one thing, meaning another--not every student saw the merit of that approach.
You're right that the wagon analogy isn't obvious, but I didn't teach it that way. I tried to get them to imagine simply falling from a wagon, which ought to be much more obvious. You're travelling along smoothly, maybe a few bumps along the way, until bam! you're thrown from the platform. It's like hitting rough times and falling and hurting yourself. Pretty straightforward.
Imagine, though--a wagon? I wonder if they could imagine a wagon you could fall from. Your analogy is very clear, I agree--to me. We had all kinds of wagons on the farm in Iowa. But for young people today, what is a wagon? And isn't dad pulling the wagon? You fall off it? Why didn't he do is job? Do kids still ride in wagons? I would expect that they have been declared unsafe. Kids would have to wear helmets, possibly other protective gear. Dad would need insurance, a permit, perhaps a designated path on the sidewalk.
So true!
Would sure be interesting to hear a lot more stories from your times as a metaphor engineer!
Unfortunately, I haven't much to tell. It was all bureaucrats and feminists and some creepy version of "community." . . . That said, I'm happy to take questions if you have any.