The Greatest Intellectual Feat of Mankind
I love science. All science and sciences. I've spent a lifetime reading every popular science book I could get my hands on in every imaginable discipline. And in fields in which I was intensely interested I read the textbooks and the journal articles. Science as a way to understanding has been my passion. It therefore gives me great pain to entertain the possibility that the institution of science is yet another failed institution of Homo calidus.
The recognition of the process of science and, in particular, the scientific method has to stand as humanity's greatest intellectual success. The notions of objectivity, observation, empirical methods, data, analysis, and provisional interpretation as the only reliable means of gaining knowledge have been woven into a beautiful tapestry of process that has proven its value over and over again. Ideologies (beliefs without actual verification) and religious dogma served a purpose to hold groups together by sharing common ideas and beliefs when our species emerged from the basic biological nexus as sentient, social self-conscious beings. Some purely practical beliefs took their origin in observations of nature that were repeatable and therefore the basis of prediction. Where the game could be found, when the rains would come, where the predators lurked, all of these kinds of regular happenings were the basis for repeatability. Each foray out to hunt was an experiment testing the hypothesis of that belief. But the existential questions that came with self-consciousness were not answerable by observations of nature. It would take the discovery of Darwinian evolution by natural selection before we could even begin to approach such questions.
And therein is the reason that ideologies and religions still exist today; that and the likelihood that the further evolution of eusapience was stymied after the invention of settled agriculture.
Even so, agriculture provided a significant boost to what would one day become science. Observation of many variables associated with plant and animal husbandry, and the application of those observations in controlled ways was incipient science at work. Large-scale agriculture gave rise to number systems for accounting, and, eventually, writing — using abstract symbols to express speech. Both were essential for codifying knowledge gained. Number systems and accounting (plain arithmetic) gave rise to mathematics when architects were commanded to build complex monuments and cities. Science (observing and interpreting) and engineering (exploiting knowledge to design and construct artifacts) were already developing as practical but unconsciously performed practices. As civilization progressed it enabled more areas to come under scrutiny and, in turn, allow civilization to progress further. Astrology (an attempt at answering existential questions) morphed eventually into astronomy and enabled long-range navigation and exploration.
The greatest accomplishment for humans was the eventual recognition of the process and its formal codification, transforming it from natural philosophy into a rigorous disciplinary method for obtaining knowledge. There were many steps in this process over a number of centuries. Aristotle had advocated what would become the empirical methods of observation. Roger Bacon, in the 13th century would advocate further for empirical observation as the basis for gaining truth. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries the Scientific Revolution crystallized and science emerged as a recognized process distinct from philosophy or religion.
And what a revolution it was. Mostly in terms of the pickup of the pace. Discoveries and exploitation came at accelerating rates. The invention of the printing press made it feasible to get it all recorded and disseminated. The institution of science would rapidly evolve.
Today science is an established institution overlaid on universities, government agencies, foundations, and industry. Money flows to researchers who conduct peer-reviewed projects with definite goals laid out. The granting institutions decide what the worthy pursuits will be and the investigators compete to show that their projects are relevant and likely to succeed. If a neuroscientist pursues an National Institutes of Health grant to study some aspect of brain function, she is required (if she wants a chance to win) to mention how her research could lead to a better understanding of Alzheimer's disease. Failure to delineate how a line of research is going to lead to solving the energy crisis or cure cancer is a death sentence in the highly competitive fields of the modern practice of science.
The line between science and engineering has become blurred. Today engineering PhDs need to do research, ostensibly applied, to push the boundaries of what artifacts they can develop and what those artifacts can do. As in the above paragraph, scientists doing ostensibly pure research are obliged to mention the practical applications. The gaining of knowledge has come down to a gaining of new forms of wealth and wealth creation, not of gaining understanding of nature. If that happens from time to time it is a by-product, not the main goal. Put simply the funding model has changed the purpose of science and turned it into Über-engineering — finding solutions to problems. Science is now an industry*.
The universities, for their part, are producing copious PhDs in sciences and engineering even while the corporations complain that there aren't enough. There aren't enough of the Über-engineers based on the fact that the level of competition in innovative product development is staggeringly high. Today what counts as science is a discovery of how to cram more transistors on a chip of silicon.
And as often happens when you over produce a product you turn it into a commodity. The crops of PhDs and Master's degreed people coming out of second and third tier universities have flooded the markets. They look for jobs as adjunct “instructors” or lecturers rather than full time, tenure-track positions in departments with active research agendas. Thanks to the societal meme that everyone should have a college degree, the subsequent rapid expansion of higher education institutions, and the demand for instructors, this has resulted in a positive feedback loop that produces stamped out of the mold products (PhDs) who then take whatever job they can get. A PhD in a science is no longer about science or the level of intellectual sophistication that it had been at the beginning of the 20th century.
A Two-Edged Sword
Science has been used for good and evil for its whole history as a human endeavor. I count evil as those acts of violence such as wars that make humanity worse off. Science has given us medicines but it also gave us the means of maiming soldiers so that they would require those medicines. Radioactive isotopes and atom smashers have been extremely useful in medical and investigative work but nuclear bombs have been a curse. And now, industrial grade agriculture is feeding billions (though some not so well) it is also poisoning our bodies, our soils, our air, and our waters. And not just our species is suffering.
Up until the mid 20th century science was mostly perceived as a force for good and progress. Very few people could or would question this proposition. But a few started to wonder about the negative effects that they began to suspect and later observe. Rachel Carson and her “Silent Spring” is a poster child of this thinking. But there were others and many even before Ms. Carson. The sword had become that of Damocles to them. We enjoyed the benefits of science and engineering, but most people were either ignorant of or simply ignored the threats hanging just over their heads as they sat on the throne of progress.
Unfortunately the warning voices were drowned out by the din of exclamations about the wonders of science. As I was just coming into more adult-level awareness, having been brought up on Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and (later) Star Trek, the Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58) was a site where adulation of our knowledge of atomic energy was on display. I had been born exactly on the day the first atomic bomb had been used to kill people in Japan 13 years earlier. So I found myself conflicted over the science of atomic energy; on the one hand producing such horror, and on the other producing what seemed, at the time, like a promise of prosperity. By my senior year in high school and continuing in my first years of college, I wondered how this could be. What kind of creatures were we that we could do this to ourselves?
Ironically I would come to live in Seattle, WA. less than a decade after the Seattle World's Fair where the expectations of progress and the great promise of science was the major theme. I had grown up reading mostly science fiction tales about space travel. Men had landed on the moon just before I came to Seattle so it looked like we were on our way to the Gordon/Rogers/Trek era. The optimism surrounding what would be possible given our mastery over science was palpable throughout the western world (as long as you could suppress thinking about the Cold War and nuclear Armageddon). To this day I like to visit the Pacific Science Center on the grounds of that fair, with the towering Space Needle a constant reminder of the notion of progress. I still love science, with its ability to produce meaningful knowledge of how the universe works. But I have developed considerable doubts about its payoff for humanity given our propensity to see that knowledge as only valuable if it increases our profits or helps us kill our enemies.
The Failure
Science itself, as a means for gaining knowledge, is not a failure. As a process it is not inherently a two-edged sword. It is not evil. It is the use of science that has turned evil. I hinted at this above.
By evil I don't mean in a spiritual sense. I mean in the effect on human life sense. As a species we are bound to protect our interests in survival so anything that does so in the evolutionary framework is good, anything that threatens us is evil. Unfortunately in mankind's exploitation of the knowledge we gained from science we find increasingly more evil than good. The knowledge itself is, of course, neutral. It is just knowledge. The problem is that we do not have the meta-knowledge of how to use knowledge for the long-term benefit of humanity. We have, instead, learned to exploit science, through engineering, for immediate gains without thinking about the long-term consequences. So knowledge of heat engines is used to engineer machines that propel us rapidly from point A to point B. We individuals in the here-and-now “profit” by getting places faster. Our time is then in surplus, our personal energies conserved. Why should we worry about the consequences of burning fossil fuel to achieve this short-term profit? Isn't it easy to believe this trend will go on and on forever, that our children, and their children, will have even more profit from science and technology?
Knowledge of how to use knowledge for the long-term good of humanity is wisdom. That knowledge is not explicit nor are we necessarily consciously aware of it when it influences our intuitions. It just comes up from our subconsciousness as a feeling about the right path to follow, the right thing to do. Wisdom is also veridical knowledge. It must be valid, consistent, holistic, and morally motivated. It comes only from the experiences of a lifetime that consolidate into mental models of deep reality. It is knowledge ultimately based on evolutionary truth. It cannot be otherwise since evolutionary fitness objectively requires the species to be operating in accordance with the rules of the environment.
Evolution itself is the wisdom of ordinary biology. For every prior species that has ever existed evolution made the strategic decisions through variation and natural selection. Species improved in fitness until the environments changed radically enough to require new strategies. Variation in the genetic pools provided the raw material for selection to cause both incremental improvement, to adjust the phenotypes to shifting environments, and novelty, when needed to launch a new line, so to speak. And if the changes in environments were too extreme, as in a major die-off, evolution started over with whatever remained — the rest went extinct.
Humans emerged as a species with an expanded capacity to imagine the future by taking into account environmental changes that were possible and feasible. They began to formulate their own strategies and improve their own fitness. They figured out how to control fire, how to make artificial fur out of animal hides. They learned how to survive in inclement climates. Cultures became the new ‘species’ (or sub-sub-species). But as with any emerging property or behavior, strategic thinking started out fairly weak and only a few variant members of a population ever achieved anything close to what would eventually be needed as the cultures continued to evolve. Group selection is now being recognized as the selection process that deepened our eusocial nature, but also promoted the ascension of a few wiser leaders in early human tribes. The tribes with the most dominance of cooperation and with the wisest elders were more fit than those who were less cooperative or failed to have sufficiently wise elders.
The basis of eusociality, primarily empathy and language, along with strategic thinking ability are the roots of sapience and wisdom. Stronger sapience (i.e. genetic variants that boosted expansion of the necessary brain components in fetal development) led to more successful groups, which in turn favored the increase in sapience. But it just didn't progress far enough or fast enough to build the kind of wisdom — knowledge of how to use knowledge — needed to manage the growth and use of simple knowledge.
Ergo here we stand today, overrun with some knowledge of the natural world (including ourselves) and lots of knowledge about stuff (the human-built world) and we haven't a clue as to how to use it appropriately to bring balance between the two realms. What passes as science today is a mere shadow of what it was and what role it played in discovering how the universe works. There are still, fortunately, a large number of scientists who keep to the old ways. But they are generally the older members of the community. Often they are the ones who have gained wisdom. They are the ones who tend to write books about what the science they practice means in the larger sense. But their voices are barely heard at all against the clatter and banging of the modern industrialized, politicized institution we call science.
Science, as it originated, still stands as an ultimate intellectual achievement. As a method for gaining knowledge, when practiced with wisdom it stands unsullied. It is the process that uses science, the low-sapient human society, that is failed. Society creates institutions that process information and use it for supposed human uses. Something has gone terribly wrong in the institutionalized science of modern times, and that something is the lack of wisdom in humans themselves.
* Lest I be accused of painting with too broad a brush I should hasten to point out that there are still many scientific fields that are pursued for the sake of gaining knowledge without a profit motive. I'll name one, cosmology. I don't think cosmologists and astronomers need to justify their grant proposals with anything immediately profitable or curing a disease. However, it has been getting harder and harder to get sufficient grants as national budgets are strapped and priorities increasingly focus on “practical” work. Ask any Republican congressman if he/she thinks it valuable for the NSF to fund a project to find out if there is life on other planets and see how they respond. Ask the same person how valuable it is to research the next major weapons system and you will likely get a totally different response. My feeling is that whatever funding is going toward pure research in these fields is on the basis of momentum and tradition more than choice.
i'm with you on science George, but must point out that human knowledge is (and has been for centuries) misused for the very purposes you end your essay on, that of personal gain and/or weaponization: from the advancement of mathematics to gunpowder to genetics. Our great leaps in knowledge are controlled and misused or squashed (how about the history of the electric car) by TPTB, large corporations, and the military.
Sometime you may want to examine why the psychopaths always seem to rise to positions of power and decision-making in society in one of your essays.
Lastly, major knowledge by scientists is completely ignored, muddled with misinformation and shouted down like that of Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and many others pointing out how the climate is rapidly changing due to our misapplication of chemistry to agriculture (without thinking about nitrogen run-off) and the entire "bug-control" business, in energy production (with respect to particulates and radiation) and the list goes on and on. We always seem to jump right on new knew knowledge to maximize profit without any consideration for consequences of any kind.
Posted by: Tom | July 15, 2013 at 03:22 AM
The scientists discover and describe reality. The tightly attached limbic system with a little engineering help finds ways to grow into and consume the resource gradients. Science is wonderful and acceptable as long as it does not interfere with our primitive emotions, but let science cross the limbic divide and put a damper on the consumption party and it becomes an evil to be resisted. Limbics think science is evil if it suppresses their desires to consume and rational thinkers think science is evil if it only equips the limbics to do untold damage to their environment and themselves. The temporary advantages bestowed upon us by engineering tools for growth, consumption and life extension, working within that scientifically described world, will turn out to be a significant mistake.
Posted by: James | July 15, 2013 at 03:52 AM
Here's another take on how we get bogged down with language, law, rights and so many other issues when just trying to do the "right" thing.
http://themonkeycage.org/2013/07/12/climate-change-and-political-scientists-defining-a-research-agenda/#comments
Posted by: Tom | July 15, 2013 at 04:28 AM
You might find 'The Moral Landscape' by Sam Harris an interesting read. In this book Harris proposes a scientific approach to morality - a way to use the engine of science to fix not only itself, but everything else (it's only a first step, but at least it's a step in what looks to be a good direction).
Posted by: arch1 | July 15, 2013 at 08:29 PM
It's not just Homo Calidus' lack of Wisdom which causes the failure of science as a paradigm, it is inherent blowback and feedback loops in the biological system. Easy example is in Medicine, where you say great strides have been made say in creating anti-biotics, but the result of that is evolution of MRSA and assorted other Superbugs. Utilizing more Energy has "improved" the standard of living for a portion of humanity, but utilizing more energy INHERENTLY creates more Waste and uses up the Resource base faster. No amount of Wisdom could stop that, it is basic thermodynamics.
I used to be a fan of Science, I was reading Tom Swift when I was 5, and my Dad's Popular Science and Scientific American magazines besides. Today, I find science and what it has wrought on the Earth to be revolting. We were better off without it, and without Ag also.
Anyhow Mobusfans, I'll cross post this article on the Diner tomorrow, along with Part 2 of George's Podcast.
RE
http://doomsteaddiner.net
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | July 16, 2013 at 09:46 PM
Oops, make that Part 3, Part 2 already up. Typo.
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | July 16, 2013 at 09:50 PM
All,
There are a few examples of science in the hands of more sapient scientists. Such people are able to derive big integrative ideas out of pure research. Several examples come to mind, like E.O. Wilson or Jane Goodall. I think Carl Sagan was in this category from what I was able to tell while he was alive.
To RE's points: Biology is not inherently at fault. The example you cite is just evolution working. In earlier posts I have explored the role of cooperation in the evolution of social organization (e.g. eukaryotic cells, multi-cellular organisms, eusocial organisms, etc.) I think that if Homo manages to survive and further evolve, that his eusocial nature, tied very strongly to eusapience, will make the new species capable of the wise use of science to gain knowledge without necessarily using it to exploit one another or the Ecos. We cannot judge what might be in the future based on what we have seen (and think we understand) from the past. Our species has abused its capabilities to expose reality. But that need not be the case for a much more cooperative species - one with much higher capacity for strategic and systemic thinking.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | July 17, 2013 at 11:09 AM
Placing things in the context of the long history often shines light on forgotten dimensions. I'm a regular reader of your posts since a few years already and often resisted the temptation to comment but your present post was irresistible.
My take is that biological evolution (competition) is paralleled by societal evolution (culture). Biology implies the individuals making up a species. Society implies the collective arrangement of the individual energies.
Science as a method to make sense of reality emerges from the success of "the reason of capital". Over the 500 years preceding the age of philosophic rationalism in the 18th century "the reason of capital", applied to long distance trade, bestowed on the merchants an aura of financial success that seemed irresistible to most observers of the European societal scene. Intellectuals were not only dabbling in concepts and theories. Many of them were also involved in applied research hoping to benefit from large financial returns. Those intellectuals were relying on their personal resources. This changed in the 19th century with the advent of economic massification when capital started financing the early scientific community and this is when scientists lost control of the bulk of the decision making process about what to research. In this light one understands why science could indeed end up being, as your title states, a "failed institution". But there is something a lot deeper going on here.
The emergence of "the reason of capital" in the minds of the early merchants that followed in the footsteps of the crusades is what ultimately unleashed modernity that followed the age of religions (in the West) and philosophies in the East. What I mean is that, seen from the perspective of the long history, societal evolution is characterized by successive "worldviews". Over the last 100,000 years societies around the world have been glued through the sharing by their citizens of a common worldview or a set of ideas about the working of reality that acted as instruments to foster societal cohesion which, in the last instance, is the ultimate condition for ensuring societal reproduction (let's remember that no societal reproduction = no individual survival). The creation of ideas about the working of reality was the prerogative of "the men of knowledge" who were respected by all as detaining the "truth" about the working of reality and their ideas were widely spread among the citizens through visual representations or what we have come to call art in modernity.
- animism (shaman). Tribal matriarchal societies without the idea of power and without states.
- religions and/or philosophies emerge after the development of agriculture and the emergence of patriarchal power with the early kingdoms and empires. The men of knowledge are the priests in the West or the "wise men" in the East.
- modernity emerges as the set of ideas imposed upon the merchants by the "reason of capital": individualism and private property. The financial success of the early merchants unleashes greed and the envy of all which leads to the emergence of philosophic rationalism and the scientific method.
Let's observe that, contrary to past worldviews, modernity never got a commonly accepted narrative to be shared by all citizens. One could imagine that scientists would be the men of knowledge of modernity. But no. On the level playing field of the market for ideas scientists are left to compete for eyeballs with all kinds of charlatans... Science does not have a grand narrative about reality that could be shared by all. Science is a method and as such the knowledge it conveys evolves. So on the level playing field of the market for ideas scientists have not the slimmest chance to convince the large majority of citizens in their societies. When our late modern societies leave scientists to compete with charlatans for eyeballs this clearly illustrates that science is not a shared worldview.
Now this inevitably leads to:
- the loss of societal cohesion... Societal fragmentation concluding in societal atomization which implies no societal cohesion left and thus the ir-reproducibility of late modern societies. That explains perhaps why our powers to be envisage authoritarianism as a last instance societal stabilizer. But that belief is merely an illusion bound to flounder.
- about your concept of sapience. I think that the combination of societal evolution with biological evolution offers a path where the concept of sapience is not really necessary any longer to make sense of humanity's lack of wisdom. What you perceive as a lack of individual sapience can easily be construed as being a societal aberration. But I'm afraid that leaving that societal aberration behind implies the death of modernity and the emergence of a whole new worldview in "after modernity".
We are, kind of, unconscious prisoners of the foundational axioms our civilizational houses are built upon. We Westerners approach anything in dualistic terms while positioning ourselves on the side of one of the opposites. In late-modernity this takes the form of ultra-individualism and the rejection of its opposite collective forms. In reality, glancing at the Eastern axioms of civilization we discover a radically different take on the working of things. Opposites are not seen in dualistic terms but are conceived as the polarities of a same unity. So individuals and societies are seen as the polarities of the human species and their "dancing" around each other is understood as the powering of the march forward of the unity (change and time). In this understanding an imbalance between the polarities is unavoidably going to be followed by the pendulum swinging back toward the other polarity.
What I mean to show is that individual sapience is not necessary to understand the impasse humanity has reached in late-modernity. To me the extreme imbalance between individualism and the societal explains without a shred of a doubt how we collectively, very unwisely, landed our species in that impasse. Following this model of reasoning individualism is going to melt from our consciousness as a result perhaps of the coming hardships and the rebalancing of the societal and the individual polarities could thus, possibly, unleash a new age of wisdom.
Posted by: laodan | July 17, 2013 at 11:20 AM
"To RE's points: Biology is not inherently at fault. The example you cite is just evolution working. "-GM
The point is not to assign blame to Biology, but to point out that the supposed improvements to the human condition brought about by scientific knowledge in reality cause more harm than good, and not merely because we lack wisdom to use the knowledge well.
For the most part the scientific revolution has been about harnessing energy to extract more resources from the earth and build cooler toys. Even the knowledge of gene manipulation already appears to have blowback in the area of GMO plants and animals wreaking havoc with the natural ecosystem, not to mention our food supply.
It's darn hard actually to find any scientific "advancement" that doesn't have blowback. An increasingly Wired society brings with it increased surveillance as every street corner has a camera on it. We've been digging this hole in earnest now since the development of the steam engine, and the state of the world sucks because of it, and it's not lack of wisdom, it is inherrent.
Also George, discussion has picked up on your Podcast on the Diner:
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/forum/index.php?topic=1510.msg27458;topicseen#msg27458
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | July 17, 2013 at 03:36 PM
One of the things that has most helped me make sense of the difference between science and engineering has been Marvin Harris' anthropological framework called "Cultural Materialism".
Harris sees all human cultures as operating on three levels. The infrastructure is the level at which culture and the physical environment meet. It's where all the "means of subsistence" work to provide the culture with its physical existence. It's the level of technology - of farming, mining, manufacturing etc. Above that is the structural level, where the organizing institutions of the culture operate - the legal and educational systems, economic institutions etc. At the highest level, the "superstructure" is the level where values and meaning live. It's the level at which we explain to ourselves the nature of the world and our place in it.
The other key element of CM is the concept of "Infrastructural Determinism". This principle embodies the observation that in all cultures, cultural change usually flows up from the infrastructure, usually due to changes in physical circumstances or the technology to deal with them. Changes do not flow down from the superstructure with anything like the same ease or impact. In other words, the operation of a culture responds more to changes in the outer environment or technology than to changes in value systems. In fact, most changes in value systems occur *in support of* changes that are already occurring down in the infrastructure.
In this view, engineering lives at the infrastructure, since it provides the technology for promoting our continued existence. On the other hand, science is a component of the superstructure. Science explains the universe to us, and creates a sense of meaning. Religion also live in the cultural superstructure of course.
Here's how I see the process working. I'll use 18th century British coal mining as an example.
British society needed a new thermal technology because the forests are being depleted, so enterprising people figure out that coal can be burned in place of wood. Coal mining starts. The easy seams are rapidly exhausted, and the mines are dug deeper. But there's water down there, flooding the shafts. It needs to be pumped out, and hand vacuum pumps lose their lifting ability below about 30 feet. Some mining engineers hear about the Newcomen steam engine, and it's brought into service as a pumping engine.
As the mines go deeper through the rest of the century, the early engine is found not to be efficient enough. So the call goes out from the engineers for improvements to steam engine technology. This call rises through the culture until it reaches the ears of Carnot and Clausius. They're not engineers, but scientists, and as they think about the issue, the new science of thermodynamics is born. The scientific finding are fed back to the ironmongers and mining engineers, and the problem is solved. In the process, a new science has been created, one that continues to explain the operation of the universe 150 years later.
The same process can be seen at work in the need for a hugely destructive weapon to win WWII. Science did not "create" the atom bomb, it merely made it possible. The long view of science is sometimes incompatible with the needs of the infrastucture, as both Oppenheimer and Wiener found out, much to their disadvantage.
As long as the role of science is kept clear, there is little problem. Science explains the world up in the cultural superstructure, then engineering turns those observations into useful technology down in the infrastructure. However, when the needs of the cultural infrastructure become overwhelmingly pressing, the direction of science is subjected to great pressure flowing up from below - pressure to align its work with the technological needs of the culture. Thus the pure explanatory objective of science is gradually subverted. Scientists are forced into bed with the engineers through social pressure and grant tailoring, and we have the unfortunate, muddy result we see today.
Posted by: Bodhi Chefurka | July 18, 2013 at 05:01 AM
Science provides a measured facsimile of reality, a mental playground for engineers, mating technological enzyme to substrate with predictive results. We use this knowledge to preserve and extend our lives beyond natural limits; those limits that if greatly surpassed will result in ecosystem collapse. We cater to every desire of our evolved pleasure loving brain that has become terribly obsolete in terms of promoting our survival. Humans no longer fit in the ecosystem and they’re beginning to feel the effects.
Posted by: James | July 18, 2013 at 07:19 AM
"One of the things that has most helped me make sense of the difference between science and engineering has been Marvin Harris' anthropological framework called "Cultural Materialism".-BC
I loved MH's "Our Kind", but I find the distinction between Science & Engineering to be rather specious.
"Pure Science is Good & Clean, it's those Nasty Dirty Engineers who muck it all up!" LOL. Einstein=Good thinking up Relativity, Oppenheimer, Tesla & Feinman=Bad for making Bombs out of it.
What good is it to know something if you don't make something with that knowledge? The knowledge of relativity gave us the ability to make Atom Bombs and Nuke Plants, neither of which turned out to be very good things.
Watson & Crick elucidated the structure of DNA, leading to creation of GMO foods and the Monsanto Monster, not a good thing.
Alan Turing comes up with principles of computing, we end up with the Big Gorilla of Microsoft and the Google/NSA database mining of your life, not a good thing.
It is too far back in history to peg whoever it was that discovered principles of making fire and agriculture, but in application of these ideas, it has not been a good thing for the planet overall.
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | July 18, 2013 at 09:22 AM
Sorry, RE - I didn't intend a value judgment from that - i was trying to point to the role of science as explanatory of the universe and out place ion it - in much the same way as art, philosophy or religion. We are tool-monkeys, we always do things with our knowledge. Art is pressed into service as propaganda in addition to its more benign expressive role; religion becomes a social control mechanism as well as a way of expressing reverence towards the larger universe; philosophy becomes the basis for legal systems... It's not even that though is noble and action is base. I think that some clarity can be had by unpacking the cultural roles of science and engineering a bit more clearly than we're used to doing.
Posted by: Bodhi Chefurka | July 18, 2013 at 10:03 AM
Typos, typos.
...and our place in it...
...that thought is noble..."
Posted by: Bodhi Chefurka | July 18, 2013 at 10:05 AM
Under the animistic worldview the concept of individuality is non-existent. Each individual conceives of him(her)self as being like one atom of the molecule tribe that contains on average some 150 atoms (Dunbar number). Deviance from the worldview was non-existent in the individuals' consciousness. Reality was being conceived of as "one" or "whole" ensemble in which all particles were interconnected. So in tribal societies the interrelations with the other individuals and with all under particles in nature were seen as sacred or life enhancing. Under animism humanity was seen as the result of the dance between its 2 polarities: individuals and societal.
Furthermore the animistic worldview and its corresponding tribal societal organization was roughly similar around the whole world.
Following the advent of agriculture kingdoms and empires imposed their religious or philosophic worldviews by means of force. Deviance was punished by death or exile but deviance helped new worldviews to emerge. Meanwhile the repression was fostering the discovery of the self.
East and West part ways starting with the foundations of their civilizational house:
- brutal elimination of all vestiges of animism in the West while in the East the new worldviews were build on top of the acquired animistic knowledge base and pragmatism thus ensues in the East while the West remains stuck for millenia with a narrative that is totally detached from reality.
- dualism versus polarities
Over time, with the addition of separate layers of cultural addons, worldviews differentiate within the civilizational houses. It is in such a context that modernity emerges in Western Europe.
The dualism at the core of Christianity explains why the popes wanted to conquer Jerusalem and crusades were thus called for by the end of the 11th century.
At the time Western Europe and the Middle-East were characterized by extreme divergences in sociological and economic realities. In one word Europe was extremely primitive and "provincial" while the Middle-East was flourishing as a result of its long distance trade with the East.
Plunder ensued and over the following centuries plunder morphed into long distance trade for luxury goods at the attention of the high clergy, the aristocracy and the mew rich merchants who were eager to take possession of Eastern luxury goods. But the Christian worldview opposed the use of the new instruments of long distance trade so the early new rich merchants grew conflicted and soon became encouraged to stand up for the new values that emerged out of the practice of long distance trade under the "reason of capital". They indeed soon became aware that capital has a life of itself and that to be successful at the game of trade their actions had to satisfy capital's "reason" or logic. This were the days of early modernity or of early rationalism.
The success of long distance traders manifested itself in the erection of mansions in the country and houses in the cities of Northern Europe. Soon everyone was falling for the dream of material possessions.
The rest of the story of modernity is a succession of widening phases when "the reason or rationality of capital" was gradually spreading to everyone and everything and as a consequence we end up with an extreme individualism that rejects the idea of the societal. In late-modernity humanity reaches a phase of uni-polarity and as a consequence, its vital energy, its wisdom has dried up.
The 19th century, in the West, has been the consecration of:
- the scientific method to discover functional truths about reality (functionally useful truths that could help generate surpluses)
- the investment of capital in generating such functional truths in order to propose offers on the market at the attention of a demand from society (existing demand or demand to be created from scratch)
Those general principles were not, and still are not, visible to the naked eye. What was visible, and is still visible today, are the changes in daily life provoked by the introduction of always newer offers on the market. What was not visible, and is still not clearly visible today for most, are the consequences such offers are inflicting upon the principle of life.
Science and art suffer the same kind of dilemma. On one side the feeling of a loss of purity, or a loss of sense. while, on the other side, the market train steams forward. In art the saying goes that "art is dead" and that what passes for art is no more than products for interior decoration on which greedy financiers eventually speculate. The biggest difference, perhaps, between art and science is that interior decoration products don't threaten humanity while science is always seen at the origin of all our troubles... There is a clear danger here that, the deeper our troubles get, science could possibly end up being vilified by disgruntled citizens while in reality the rationality of capital is the true culprit of those troubles. When "Reverse Engineer" writes "Today, I find science and what it has wrought on the Earth to be revolting" is this not a sign of a vilification in the making?
Posted by: laodan | July 18, 2013 at 11:23 AM
@Iaodan,
That was quite a lot to digest! BTW I had to retrieve this comment from the spam filter. Typepad staff suggest that the reason is was tagged was due to length! My suggestion is that if you make comments and they need to be lengthy, cut them up into shorter sections and post them serially, but leave a good 15 minutes in between. Apparently the filter also grabs posts that are done in sequence too soon together. [All, I'm not happy with the filter, but OTOH I have very little real spam that gets through.]
I hope you will understand that I will not be able to address much of your post. I think you raise some interesting ideas. After a quick read through I'm not sure I agree with some aspects, such as the claim that individual sapience is unnecessary, implying that societal sapience (whatever that might be) is the goal [if I interpreted correctly].
For now I will just point out that I have talked about coevolution on a number of occasions and I think this is your stated premise - that culture and biology coevolve. On other posts I have introduced the notion that biological evolution is not just a matter of competition, that the old interpretation of Darwinian selection is not sufficient to explain certain major leaps in the organization of living systems. So I'll leave it at that.
As time permits (which is a luxury these days) I will try to re-read and grapple with other ideas here. Thanks for commenting though. Always appreciated.
------------------------------------
@RE,
This mention of blowback is interesting. In my view evolution has always involved disruptions to the "norm" or natural order of things. There have always been "blowbacks" of one kind or another, including from life processes themselves, e.g. the advent of oxygen in the atmosphere thanks to cyanobacteria. In my view humanity is just another disrupting phenomenon in the Ecos. As ever before I expect our kinds of disruptions will lead to interesting new experiments in biological evolution (and social evolution as well!)
On your response to Bohdi, consider that calling something good or bad depends on how you perceive yourself affected. I stand by my claim that science has been misused in the service not of engineering per se, but political and ideological pressures. All of the results that you point to are harmful to us and our form of life. Hence we will consider them as bad.
But the comet that hit the Earth 65 mya wasn't good for the dinosaurs and a number of other genera. However, it proved to be a good thing if you think mammalian and avian evolution were good. We would possibly not be here if that massive extinction hadn't happened.
Evolution doesn't play good or bad, it just constantly tests organisms and species against the events that are a natural part of the universe. I do not consider humans to be an anomaly, an unnatural thing. When we create GMOs, for example, we are just following our natural tendencies and shuffling the gene pools around a bit. It might be harmful to us, but so what? Life will find a way to make use of it in the future. If we are not part of that saga, too bad, for us.
Consider too, if we follow your logic backward every innovation in evolution should have been stopped before it happened. At what point in evolutionary history would you say here and no further? If man should not have learned to master fire, would you have had further intelligence development stopped at Homo ergastor?
None of us likes what is happening, and like much less that we are the very causes of so much disruption. As you know I think that karmic feedback is going to play havoc with our species. But the fact that we are unhappy with the situation and ourselves doesn't obviate the reality of evolution. Disruptive change is inevitable. I guess I take solace in the notion that we are the first sentients to be able to recognize the process.
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@Bodhi (Paul),
RE: Harris. Blast from the past! I'd forgotten all about this but the ideas stuck in my brain (apparently). I read Harris in my undergrad days at U of Mo. when I was considering anthropology as a major. Thanks for the reminder, will have to see if I can dig up a copy. Also good example about coal, very apropos to the whole predicament.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | July 18, 2013 at 12:10 PM
"BTW I had to retrieve this comment from the spam filter. Typepad staff suggest that the reason is was tagged was due to length!"-GM
You should chat it up on the Diner. No comment length issues there, I set it to INFINITY since I have a serious case of diahreah of the keyboard. :)
Better yet, I am working together with the Database Cavalry From California to set up a New Collapse Network, you should join us. We can migrate your whole database no problem and get you set up with the Spiffiest Platform in the Collapse Blogosphere, and the best Hosting Server also!
Far as when I would have Stopped "Progress" if I was God, it would have been with the tech the Polynesians had circa 1500 prior to the arrival of Cook. Basically Stone Age with the ability to Navigate the Pacific.
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | July 18, 2013 at 12:49 PM
As a little lagniappe for the cybernetic cognoscenti, and to illustrate where I think the combination of science and engineering have brought us, here's an excerpt from a short article called The Dawn of Cybernetic Civilization:
Posted by: Paul Chefurka | July 18, 2013 at 04:53 PM
The link didn't resolve properly above, it seems:
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/CyberneticCivilization.html
Posted by: Paul Chefurka | July 18, 2013 at 04:55 PM
For All,
My sincere apologies but the spam filter seems to be kicking into high gear. It seems that comment length (for anyone who isn't an owner of the blog!) is an issue. So please try to keep comments relatively short and just post a sequence if you really need to say a lot.
RE I don't know why you keep getting sequestered. Supposedly once I mark a trapped comment for publishing it keeps that commentator's stuff out of the filter.
All I can ask is patience. I will routinely check the filter folder in the mornings and try to move anything legit through.
RE, thanks for the kind offer but I have a personal reason for keeping QE separate from mixing in other platforms (note I pay a fee to keep advertising out as an example). Typepad has worked reasonably well for all these years and I wouldn't really have time to handle the transfers anyway.
On a positive note, I just sent chapter 12 (systems analysis) off to my co-author for review and corrections, etc. On to 13 (modeling) and 14 (systems engineering) and then I'm done, at least with the main writing task.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | July 18, 2013 at 05:37 PM