In keeping with your views here, I see that "Science" magazine reports that of the 1500 "climate policies" so far adopted world-wide, 63, or 4%, reduced emissions. Even when the science that produced these policies is proven ineffective, more such science is funded and put into effect. Science is right, even when it is wrong.
Thanks Allen! This is a great example of something I've been considering. Since reading up on germ theory and discovering the lack of independent and even dependent variables in the experiments, I've been reprocessing a lot of how I approach so-called "scientific" claims. Theories are supposed to be falsified by the failure of an independent variable (like a germ) to prove causal in every case. In other words, if you find the same variable in a healthy subject as you do in a sick one, it cannot be the cause. It's that simple. If we couple that with the work I've done on statistics, we can see how science went off the rails with the notion of "statistical significance" - which is rubbish and modern superstition. I'll be writing about this soon.
I learn a lot in these posts, which have me thinking about things I simply accepted. English majors like me look closely at texts but defer (at least I do) to whatever is invoked under the rubric of "science." Cultural change ("my truth," etc.) has helped me become more skeptical, and I find your arguments very helpful as a result.
Hi Asa, I've just returned from a long trip abroad that felt revitalizing in many ways and I thought that when I returned I'd be eager to resume confronting many of the cultural and spiritual dilemmas you describe with renewed vigour. But on my return last night, I felt depressed to be back home in a place I've come to despise for its rigid orthodoxies. However, reading your essay this morning has helped return things to their proper perspective, reminding me why I took the trip in the first place, the work I have ahead of me, and that the inspiration I found by visiting different places with different ways of seeing and the work I have to resume now to engage with the world in a meaningful, constructive way is precisely what makes life worth living. I thank you wholeheartedly for that.
This is a wonderful summary of one of the key metaphysical issues of our day, in particular the positivist confusion that distorts people into thinking in terms of 'science vs religion' - an impenetrable ideological bubble for those with no religious background, who buy into all the dime store definitions required to uphold this ludicrous and misleading simplification.
The ever-growing total misunderstanding of scientific process, perfectly captured in the hilarious adage that "In this house, we believe in science"(!), has begat so many disasters in recent years, all descending from this same confusion. One does not 'believe in science' if one wishes to conduct effective scientific processes - indeed, such 'belief' is bizarrely but tellingly misplaced. Precisely the merit of solid scientific processes is that one does not need to uncritically believe in their outcomes, and (worse) to do so is to throw away any hope of practicing effective investigative processes and to adopt instead a very contemporary form of naïve superstition.
I have much I should like to say about this, but having only just returned to Nashville I will try and curtail my remarks so I have time for some unpacking(!). One point I should like to engage upon further here, however:
"No doubt the corporatist-consumerist context is paramount."
I'm not convinced about this, I see this as 'downstream' from the metaphysical realignment. Thus while the commercial entertainment industries do much to reinforce the quasi-religious ideology (or non-religious ideology, it amounts to the same thing) I see the broken metaphysics as both happening first and as clearing a path for this.
When I compare, to give just two examples, Doctor Who in the 1960s to New Who in the 2000s, and Star Trek in the 1960s to TNG in the late 80s/early 90s, what I find is a transition from the imaginary worlds that the writers live within. In the 1960s and early 70s, Christianity - while lurking in the background - still provides that culturally distributed background of understanding. God and Jesus crop up here and there in passing, at least until the 1980s (e.g. Star Trek: "Bread and Circuses", Doctor Who: "The Three Doctors"). After this, there is a demonstrable shift in the metaphysical assumptions.
To give just one illustrative example, here's my piece on the 1989 TNG episode "Who Watches The Watchers":
The section 'Words' being the relevant part. This perspective, eaten up gladly by TNG fans at the time, is not 'paving the way' in any significant sense. It is walking down an already opened path that is so well-trodden nobody watching even has the conceptual resources to question it.
I might also reference an obscure BBC sci-fi 'Play for Today' from 1980, "The Flipside of Dominic Hyde", in which the author imagines religion declining to the point of mere scatterings of monk-ish hermits by the 2000s. This was hilariously wrong. But it was also a widely accepted viewpoint in the UK, one that gradually seemed to spread into the US through various influences. The mythos that 'the time of religion has passed, the time of science is now' descends from many preceding sources, most of which you are already familiar with (Weber, for instance).
Of course, you may mean 'paramount' in a different sense to the one that I have taken it. The corporate media certainly provides endless reinforcement of the unquestioned assumptions. But I thought I would share these remarks all the same, as I think that all in all they are supportive of your general position here.
I suppose I meant by *paramount* that folks are softened by the repeated exposure to the perspective. People don't like it when you question something they've heard from Richard Attenborough or Neil deGrasse Tyson (though maybe Tyson is less popular nowadays). They've watched a "documentary" on climate change and the subject is closed. The evolution of the eye is settled goddammit! Neil told me. He knows better than you! What are your qualifications? It's just how brainwashing happens. But I do follow that up with the fact that it doesn't account for all the appearances. There has indeed been a metaphysical realignment, but it's a mishmash and not clear at all what it is other than--at this point--a political divide regarding reality itself and what's constructed and mutable and what's hardwired... with both sides arguing that what the other side thinks is hardwired is in fact not, indeed may not even exist. Reality itself is up for grabs right now.
In keeping with your views here, I see that "Science" magazine reports that of the 1500 "climate policies" so far adopted world-wide, 63, or 4%, reduced emissions. Even when the science that produced these policies is proven ineffective, more such science is funded and put into effect. Science is right, even when it is wrong.
Thanks Allen! This is a great example of something I've been considering. Since reading up on germ theory and discovering the lack of independent and even dependent variables in the experiments, I've been reprocessing a lot of how I approach so-called "scientific" claims. Theories are supposed to be falsified by the failure of an independent variable (like a germ) to prove causal in every case. In other words, if you find the same variable in a healthy subject as you do in a sick one, it cannot be the cause. It's that simple. If we couple that with the work I've done on statistics, we can see how science went off the rails with the notion of "statistical significance" - which is rubbish and modern superstition. I'll be writing about this soon.
I learn a lot in these posts, which have me thinking about things I simply accepted. English majors like me look closely at texts but defer (at least I do) to whatever is invoked under the rubric of "science." Cultural change ("my truth," etc.) has helped me become more skeptical, and I find your arguments very helpful as a result.
Hi Asa, I've just returned from a long trip abroad that felt revitalizing in many ways and I thought that when I returned I'd be eager to resume confronting many of the cultural and spiritual dilemmas you describe with renewed vigour. But on my return last night, I felt depressed to be back home in a place I've come to despise for its rigid orthodoxies. However, reading your essay this morning has helped return things to their proper perspective, reminding me why I took the trip in the first place, the work I have ahead of me, and that the inspiration I found by visiting different places with different ways of seeing and the work I have to resume now to engage with the world in a meaningful, constructive way is precisely what makes life worth living. I thank you wholeheartedly for that.
And welcome back!
Thank you, Harry. Couldn't hope for more! Maybe we'll learn something about your travels in a future Substack of your own...
That's the plan!
Dear Asa,
This is a wonderful summary of one of the key metaphysical issues of our day, in particular the positivist confusion that distorts people into thinking in terms of 'science vs religion' - an impenetrable ideological bubble for those with no religious background, who buy into all the dime store definitions required to uphold this ludicrous and misleading simplification.
The ever-growing total misunderstanding of scientific process, perfectly captured in the hilarious adage that "In this house, we believe in science"(!), has begat so many disasters in recent years, all descending from this same confusion. One does not 'believe in science' if one wishes to conduct effective scientific processes - indeed, such 'belief' is bizarrely but tellingly misplaced. Precisely the merit of solid scientific processes is that one does not need to uncritically believe in their outcomes, and (worse) to do so is to throw away any hope of practicing effective investigative processes and to adopt instead a very contemporary form of naïve superstition.
I have much I should like to say about this, but having only just returned to Nashville I will try and curtail my remarks so I have time for some unpacking(!). One point I should like to engage upon further here, however:
"No doubt the corporatist-consumerist context is paramount."
I'm not convinced about this, I see this as 'downstream' from the metaphysical realignment. Thus while the commercial entertainment industries do much to reinforce the quasi-religious ideology (or non-religious ideology, it amounts to the same thing) I see the broken metaphysics as both happening first and as clearing a path for this.
When I compare, to give just two examples, Doctor Who in the 1960s to New Who in the 2000s, and Star Trek in the 1960s to TNG in the late 80s/early 90s, what I find is a transition from the imaginary worlds that the writers live within. In the 1960s and early 70s, Christianity - while lurking in the background - still provides that culturally distributed background of understanding. God and Jesus crop up here and there in passing, at least until the 1980s (e.g. Star Trek: "Bread and Circuses", Doctor Who: "The Three Doctors"). After this, there is a demonstrable shift in the metaphysical assumptions.
To give just one illustrative example, here's my piece on the 1989 TNG episode "Who Watches The Watchers":
https://wamtng.substack.com/p/who-watches-the-watchers
The section 'Words' being the relevant part. This perspective, eaten up gladly by TNG fans at the time, is not 'paving the way' in any significant sense. It is walking down an already opened path that is so well-trodden nobody watching even has the conceptual resources to question it.
I might also reference an obscure BBC sci-fi 'Play for Today' from 1980, "The Flipside of Dominic Hyde", in which the author imagines religion declining to the point of mere scatterings of monk-ish hermits by the 2000s. This was hilariously wrong. But it was also a widely accepted viewpoint in the UK, one that gradually seemed to spread into the US through various influences. The mythos that 'the time of religion has passed, the time of science is now' descends from many preceding sources, most of which you are already familiar with (Weber, for instance).
Of course, you may mean 'paramount' in a different sense to the one that I have taken it. The corporate media certainly provides endless reinforcement of the unquestioned assumptions. But I thought I would share these remarks all the same, as I think that all in all they are supportive of your general position here.
Stay wonderful,
Chris.,
I suppose I meant by *paramount* that folks are softened by the repeated exposure to the perspective. People don't like it when you question something they've heard from Richard Attenborough or Neil deGrasse Tyson (though maybe Tyson is less popular nowadays). They've watched a "documentary" on climate change and the subject is closed. The evolution of the eye is settled goddammit! Neil told me. He knows better than you! What are your qualifications? It's just how brainwashing happens. But I do follow that up with the fact that it doesn't account for all the appearances. There has indeed been a metaphysical realignment, but it's a mishmash and not clear at all what it is other than--at this point--a political divide regarding reality itself and what's constructed and mutable and what's hardwired... with both sides arguing that what the other side thinks is hardwired is in fact not, indeed may not even exist. Reality itself is up for grabs right now.
"Reality itself is up for grabs right now"
Another candidate for 'T-shirt message that captures where we are'. 🙂
I also like:
"Those who deny metaphysics are doomed to be enslaved by metaphysics."
David McGrogan suggested this as a T-shirt slogan when I mentioned it in this original form:
"The contemporary crisis remains, for me, one of denying metaphysics and therefore being enslaved by it." 🙂
Thanks for the clarification here! Appreciated.
Chris.