This year marks the 50th anniversary of the conference by C.P. Snow on ‘The Two Cultures “, the one in which he complained about the hegemony of the “Literary Culture” upon the “Scientific-Empirical Culture”. Since then, there are still those who keep on dreaming with the day in which the scientists replace the politicians. Others, like John Brockman, do their day editing and publishing best-sellers of “Pop Science” and promoting from some foundation the advent of a supposed “Third Culture”, that of the “Humanist Scientists” who educate the public (by chance those that he manage).
Paraphrasing J.M. Keynes we might say that the scientists who believe themselves free of literary influences are usually slaves of some defunct philosopher. In this case Plato, who dreamed of expelling the poets from his ideal Republic. He too was aspiring to end with the diffusers of myths and replace them by cultivators of the rigorous thought (his, of course).
But, since Thomas Khun published “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962), we know that the scientists stick to erroneous ideas (paradigms) for many subjective reasons (pride, prestige, interest and even religious faith). Some “evangelists” of the popularization of science are pathetic, like these ethologists who studying the pigeons give an opinion on the social human organization. The biologists will be able to keep on scanning the cerebral activity and on registering the hormonal changes –surely with big profit for the Humanity. But they hardly will advance one centimeter further away from Shakespeare and Freud in the comprehension (and the control) of the Passions.
GLORIA MUNDI 
Mario Giardini
September 2, 2009
Bob
In the year 2009 I do really believe that it is impossible to be what here in the Old Europe we call a cultured man if one of these legs is missing or not adequate. I see too many Humanistic cultured people totally unaware of even elementary rudiments of science. It’s also true that too many people having a technical/scientific background does not have sufficient humanistic culture. Being this the situation, what is wrong in pursuing a merge between science and humanism? I really do not understand.
gato
September 15, 2009
What do you call a “sufficiently” humanistic education in culture. Sufficient enough to maintain the status quo. Not to think outside the box. Reduction of all to the same.
We cannot limit knowledge according to our comfort zones and cultures, or rather you can and natural selection will take its course and you will likely disappear in spite of your passions and convictions.
You cannot “merge” the rigorously tested and reasoned approach of science with a visceral, haphazard, communally defined understandings of the humanities. We must act on one theory of human behavior in our decision/policy making, and you could for instance choose between biology/psychology or Aristotle and his lot.
Nostalgia, sentiment and tradition should not determine our future.
Mario Giardini
September 15, 2009
“Nostalgia, sentiment and tradition should not determine our future”.
Fully agreed. However, my point is not “merge” science and humanism.
My point is that both should constitute our own assets during our life. Science is still young if compared with humanistic disciplines. And therefore science is not (yet) able to provide all the answers we need for all our basic questions. And, possibly, will not, even over the long period (centuries?)
So, if I have to make a decision on why or when to kill or not a person, I have to found my answer somewhere else outside the scientific domain.
Hamidreza
September 15, 2009
Mario – you are wrong. Science will NEVER arrive at humanitarian questions because they belong to a domain that is absolutely arbitrary – without rules or laws. They are not empirical and they are chosen as you would choose the rules in game theory. Science has NO INTEREST in such matters as they are UNFALSIFIABLE.
This has nothing to do with the youth of science.
Mario – you are expressing the position of the Second Culture, that the two cultures can co-exist side by side, and that the first culture has something important to contribute – and I disagree with that on philosophical grounds, and IMO it is wrong.
What you say about “humanistic disciplines” (eg why or when to kill) is a “Value Judgement”. It depends on your “Value System”.
A Value System is not based in science, which is firmly rooted in empiricism.
A Value System is ABSOLUTELY ARBITRARY. Unless you dishonestly invoke revelation, you have no leg to argue which Value System is superior. Value Systems are a subdiscipline of Game Theory and hence are rationalistic and non-empirical.
This is better known as Hume’s Fork. Science deals with empiricological matters.
Value Systems is what you choose to be, either through social consensus, through religion, through nationalism, through ideology, etc.
Imagine a soccer game. The science is the atheliticism of the players, the equipment, etc. The Value System are the rules of the game. They could be arbitrary. They could be unfair giving one team an advantage. There is no rule in the universe that says the rules of soccer must be “fair” or the game “interesting”. Humanities deals with such arbitrary values, and therefore because you can never arrive at facts or truth, it is of little, some argue NO value.
Science deliberately and wisely does not deal with values, as they are essentially arbitrary. As scientists says, values (or humanities) are “not even wrong”. They cannot be falsified.
So the Fork will always exist. Now science can make it easier to arrive at values, but that is another matter. The problem is when a bunch of unwashed First Culturalists believe they have a mandate on the rest of us and want to impose their values upon society simply because science rightfully wishes not to deal with values. They mistakenly believe they have their own domain that science is unable to address, so they want to set up their own rulership. This is the story of religion for example.
Little do they know that Science will not touch this stuff because its garbage.
So I dont have a problem when Bob indulges in his little values and plays Game Theory. What I object to is when the First culture politicizes it and falsely claims that it is at par with Science, and does not admit to its own bastardness. The folks in the 2nd Culture have fallen for this tactic and let the First Culture practice their hegemony, thinking that they are being of service to humanity. NOT!
The damage that First Culture has done to humanity is endless. It is a reactionary force that feeds off mass gullibility and invariably leads to the anti-enlightenment and political control.
People like Voltaire and Diderot are philosophers belonging to the 3rd Culture and not the First Culture. Yes they were terrific writers, but that does not make them a First culture person. If they were alive today, they would be at http://www.edge.org, and would not be putting a wad of dollars in the pocket of John brockman.
Regards
Bob Row
September 2, 2009
Mario:
No wrong. In fact, I’m in favor of mutual enrichment or -more accurately- of the recovery of the original ONE comprehensive culture (as my title implied). But it should be a two-way road.
What I’m against is to reductionism of the symbolic realm to the physics or biologic realms as was the Americanization trend in later years.
Human behavior (be it as a psychological subject or as a social community) can’t be understood as some kind of particular molecular arrange or disarrange (besides specific pathological cases).
Such a perspective is prone to dangerous “social engineering” essay. Until the ’60s (!) in Sweden a young woman could be subjected to brain ablation by a judge if her mother worried about her sexual behavior. It was an obvious religious (Lutheran) prejudice sanctioned by the “state of the art” scientists of the time.
So, I think, empirical scientists must return to the Philosophic seedbed of their origin in Classic times (s.XVI-XVIII) and to sound literature. At least as much as Social Theory must be aware of the Empirical Sciences advances. Sigmund Freud was trained in Biology prior to find its shortcomings to explain human suffering. It was his extensive readings in great literature (Shakespeare, Goethe) and Philosophy that gave him a clue to understand the elusive language of the Unconscious.
Even Jacques Derrida (who’s American disciples in the Literature and Social Sc. Dpts. went the wrong easy way) was well aware of the implications of Biology advances for future developments in Ethics and Civil Law.
I myself, try to think as a Materialist, rid of mysticisms of any kind; even of the mysticism of the Matter in the neo-Positivist fashion. I stick to the brilliant formula of the young Karl Marx in the First Thesis on Feuerbach:
“The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, as practice, not subjectively.”
So, if a Third Culture is to be heralded it should be the same One Great Culture of the time before ultra-specialized knowledge of today. The culture of the human social and symbolic comprehension of its own activity upon its material as well its social environment.
My best.
A.Tiwari
September 3, 2009
As an educator I couldn’t agree more: the importance of an education grounded in the ‘hard’, ‘social’ and ‘humanistic’disciplines cannot be overstated. In my field–urban planning-the capacity to theorize and analyze qualitatively and quantitatively is necessary for understanding the built environment and its relationship to the human condition (and vice-versa); what contributes to a ‘sense of place’ is just as important as the quantitative categories for describing that place.
However, too often I run into young persons who are not only incompetent with respect to the hard sciences, particularly mathematics, but proud of their ignorance. Young people grounded in the hard sciences/mathematics who don’t pursue the social/humanistic disciplines vigorously and enthusiastically seem to be fewer in number. Though my observations are anecdotal, this seems to be the general trend. I suspect the aversion to the hard sciences/math has something to do with the work, especially rote, repetitive work, required for even a basic level of competence. This trend, if left unchecked, does not bode well for the future of this country (US), as our ability to attract overseas talent will likely diminish as living standards and wages rise in other countries.
Mario Giardini
September 3, 2009
Bob
“What I’m against is to reductionism of the symbolic realm to the physics or biologic realms as was the Americanization trend in later years. Human behavior (be it as a psychological subject or as a social community) can’t be understood as some kind of particular molecular arrange or disarrange (besides specific pathological cases).”
I partially agree with, meaning that there are not conclusive evidence about this. However, I believe unavoidable the attempt, and the need, to better understand human behavior using the scientific method. And, to be honest, I am not (yet) ready to buy the idea that physics and biology can not fully explain it. But I admit I could be wrong.
“Such a perspective is prone to dangerous “social engineering” essay. Until the ’60s (!) in Sweden a young woman could be subjected to brain ablation by a judge if her mother worried about her sexual behavior. It was an obvious religious (Lutheran) prejudice sanctioned by the “state of the art” scientists of the time.”
Yes it is. However, “social engineering” has been extensively practiced in XX century basing it mostly on Political, Cultural and Philosophical reasons than scientific ones. Science was a mere subsidiary tool for Communism, Nazism and Fascism.
“So, if a Third Culture is to be heralded it should be the same One Great Culture of the time before ultra-specialized knowledge of today.”
Science became, in the last century, a too far more complicated issue that it was at s.XVI-XVIII. To avoid ultra-specialization is almost impossible. What can be done is just trying to temperate it with the virtue of doubt.
Un caro saluto dall’Italia.
A.Tiwari
September 5, 2009
Even if physics and biology could explain human behavior, the explanation would be different than the one proffered by, for example, a social constructionist approach, and not necessarily one that yields greater usable insights into both the ugliness and nobility that characterizes human history. Consciousness studies offer us a glimpse of how some explanations, though powerful, shed little light on the more emergent aspects of the human condition. For example, even if consciousness was a property of the universe such as gravity or a constant, or a function of microtubules (a la penrose, hameroff) this view tells us little of its implications especially with regard to (to borrow Hofstader’s ideas)the differences between big (impt) souls and the smaller, less-significant ones.
Mario Giardini
September 6, 2009
“Consciousness studies offer us a glimpse of how some explanations, though powerful, shed little light on the more emergent aspects of the human condition.” You are right, my friend. My point is that you are right… now. I am not sure that in say 500 years this sentence will still be right. I find very difficult to buy the idea that we have a “software” that is fully indipendent of our biological “hardware”. This separation between mind and body is typical of western philosophy, it does not exist in the oriental one.
Bob Row
September 6, 2009
I’d like to thank you both for your interest in deepening into my fast written post.
I think we are not discussing the preeminence of Hard Sciences over Humanism or vice versa.
Can we agree on the need of a public education oriented to “learn to think” before teenagers engage into a closed specialized field?
I never was good at Maths but I was early fascinated by the implications in the Second Law of Thermodynamics or other Physics models. In reverse, I remember some brilliant students in Sciences that never grasp the meaning in History or in Philosophy.
That’s due to an abstract presentation of the issues they were required to repeat so as to get their grad.
They need to see what is the “practical interest” for them in understanding this or that problem. Be it the “Heisenberg indetermination” or the “Linguistic structuralism” present in family ties and social myths as studied by Levi-Strauss. So they’ll be able to get a wide scope of the possible fields to choose to submerge into. And to keep open a healthy skepticism about the explanatory virtues of his chosen field over the others.
Mario Giardini
September 7, 2009
I fully agree. And Third or just One culture is a just semantic issue. I can add, seeing what is happening in Italy, that in our High School (the Liceo) nobody is taking care of making our students understanding what really means culture today. We still have a distinction between Liceo Classico (Humanistic matters) and Liceo Scientifico (Scientific ones). So at the of 14 (!) a student is required to make his first (and very offen definitive) choice, that, for obvious reasons, will be difficult to change later on. I find this absurd.
Mario Giardini
September 7, 2009
A word is missing in one sentence, making it not understandable: ” So at the of 14 (!) a student is required to make his first (and very offen definitive) choice”. Of course, the correct one is : “At the AGE of 14 (!) a student is required to make his first (and very often definitive) choice…”. Sorry.
A.Tiwari
September 7, 2009
Agreed! I also think the dichotomy between the soft and hard sciences is a bit misleading. An intellectual, at least one with any integrity, irrespective of his/her training, will/should delve into all relevant fields to develop a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective on the problem. Often the questions we pose are inadequate or incomplete as we have seen only conceptualized a particular phenomenon from a narrow vantage.
Also…too often students are unwilling to do the hard work that will allow them the freedom to move between fields, ideas, etc; one must reasonably comprehend the basics of any area before questioning its foundations. I have often heard students blame the instructor, or some pre-existing deficiency in writing, quantitative reasoning,etc. (“I am not just good at math, or ___), for their poor performance, and follow it up with a declamation of their innate intelligence (“I didn’t do well because I just didn’t try), as if innate ability, whatever that is, is sufficient for success. It is their lack of committment to learning, to hard work that I find troubling. However, I also realize that as instructors and teachers we must do a better job of inculcating a comprehensive perspective; we often take positions in the classroom in terms of binary oppositions (i.e. qualitative vs. quantitative)–unfortunately, this is more often a reflection of our own inadequacy in some other field or the ‘other side’
A.Tiwari
September 7, 2009
Also, with regard to the mind/brain dichotomy, I did not mean to imply that the software will exist independently of the hardware; rather, that certain properties only exist at a higher level and must be understood at that level. We may fully understand how the mind comes into being at the level of the brain/hardware, but that may not be useful, in some cases, for addressing higher level issues.
Also, I am not sure which ‘oriental’ philosophies you are refering to. Hindu thought, for example, is monistic (i.e. one consciousness/souls from which the smaller souls have separated and must return ultimately return through by negating their karma); buddhist thought is similar to hindu thought except it is silent on the question of divinity and is more explicitly concerned with the negation of suffering (it is decidedly more psychological). They probably did not delve into the ‘hard’ problems as there was no way empirically for the ancient scholars to address the mind-brain issues.
In any case, I think, especially given the tools we have today, we must develop a comprehensive understanding of the human condition, one the transcends reductionism or unverifiable metaphysical/post-modern claims.
Just Cosmetic
September 11, 2009
During the last thirty years lots of experiments have been carried to understand how are brain works and why we behave the way we do. Cognitive psicology has given a new and bright insight of what it means to be human so, in my opinion, science is a perfectly reasonable way of understanding what we are and why.
I absolutely agree with Mario Giardini.
Anand
September 13, 2009
“The biologists will be able to keep on scanning the cerebral activity and on registering the hormonal changes –surely with big profit for the Humanity. But they hardly will advance one centimeter further away from Shakespeare and Freud in the comprehension (and the control) of the Passions.”
Sure, sure….and a few hundred years ago, Isaac Newton’s contemporary humanities scholars would have said the same thing about his physics…that he could keep making his equations but he would never be able to explain all the glory of the world…..and some years later Darwin would have to face the same belittlement – so some members of a species emerge more successful in competition- that doesn’t explain anything, that doesn’t mean that every word in the Bible is literally true…
Today Newtonian mechanics and Darwinian evolutionary theory have slammed down their critics and delivered far more than they ever promised. My point is that the same thing applies to neuroscience, evolutionary psychology etc – the field is less than fifty years old. Give it some time, and I’m sure neuroscience will blow Shakespeare and Freud away in understanding what it means to be human.
Oh, PS – Sigmund Freud’s theories have been widely discredited by modern science. Even psychologists (borderline pseudo-scientists, if there ever were any) don’t follow his ideas. That’s the problem with the Humanities – it’s easy to come up with fancy and interesting theories about people and societies, but there’s no falsifiability or evidence.
Hamidreza
September 14, 2009
Excellently said. Marhaba!
Hamidreza
September 14, 2009
Have no choice but to agree with Mario Giardini, Anand and Just Cosmetics.
Give up the nonsense Bob. You are conflating the humanities with humanism. What has literature described that science and philosophy have not better described? What brought forth democracy – was it literature and drama and poetry? HARDLY!
First culture is on the path of extinction because it cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas. Cognitive Neuroscience will tell you who I am, and not a truckload of Shakespeare or Geothe. That trash bin was quite apt in the cartoon.
Bob, your rearguard action will not work. Keep an open mind and set dogma aside. Science is not an ideology, and if you really cared about society you would tackle tough subjects like empirical value systems. Literary obfuscationism is finished, almost dead – thanks god the almighty for eliminating this noise on discourse.
Hamidreza
September 15, 2009
And then there is Bob Row’s ad hominem. Unable to participate in the sophisticated debates you find on Brockman’s site (www.edge.org), he attacks Brockman by putting a wade of dollars in his pocket.
Get it folks? Brockman is attacking the First Culture not because of First Culture’s multiple failures, but because Brockman is getting paid and rich doing that.
Bob, you are not credible. Show your face at edge.org and try to argue your pitiful case. If you can’t (which you don’t have the competence to do, being illiterate about science and philosophy), then take off that pocketful of ad hominem dollars you attached to Brockman.
Bob Row
September 15, 2009
Hey! “the Popperian taliban squad” performs an assault on my blog, behead Shakespeare and Goethe, and then call ME dogmatic? ha, ha!
Take it easy. At least Mario was open to recognize the necessity of a cultural convergence at the educational level, so youngsters don’t find themselves confined in a closed field by a precocious choice (frequently influenced by the desire to please or to oppose parental pressure).
I said before I’m not against Science by no means. On the other hand, I’m sure no Ph Sc. would dare to call for silence the “noise” of Art or Humanities. In first place, because such kind of people are often aware of their social and psychological shortcomings. My wife (a Physics trained) has a “knack” to detect them.
It’s okay, their dedication to Science is a blessing for the Humanity. While the destructive consequences (of nuclear bombs, for instance) are Politicians responsibility (scientists showed a lot of
ingenuitynaivete in this regard; Shakespeare didn’t).As for the advance of Democracy, I’m sure Enlightenment Philosophers such as Diderot or Voltaire would be astonished at the opposition between Science and Literature (they called themselves “La Republique des Lettres”). Their enemies where the Kings and the Clergy.
Neuroscience is a young discipline with impressive advances in a short time. Its practitioners conducted empirical tests to probe there is, in effect, an unconscious mind -or, at least, an unconscious perception (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind). Mainly at a rudimentary level by now, but there is a lot of progress ahead to do.
Freud himself was a Darwinian biologist, confident in such a future demonstration of his theory. As Mario says: perhaps in another 500 years, maybe.
I, myself, have reserves in this regard, because I don’t think symbolic meaning (both in individual and social history) could be falsified as in Physic Sciences. There’s not such thing as a “true” or “false” option in meaning.
Meaning can be researched and systematized, notwithstanding (cf. “Born to rebel” at: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sulloway/ -for a statistic research on rebel psychology of second brothers).
As a History trained, I’d look for other motivations than those psychological ones searched by Sulloway. Any student knows that many crusaders and Spanish “conquistadores” were second brothers or bastards deprived by inheritance rules.
But, for Sulloway it was a way to counterbalance the racist influence of crude genetics theories of “The Bell Curve” at that time, without retort to the “discredited” Psychoanalysis in the “amiable” American cultural milieu. Just to probe that individual motivations are influenced by personal history as large as by inherited traits!
Well, I’m fortunate I don’t have such racist theories to fight, not such “scientific” prejudices against Psychoanalysis at home (Argentina). The only neo-Positivist epistemologist so stubborn as to equal Psychoanalysis with Astrology (Mario Bunge) has to go to Canada.
But don’t take me seriously. I’m from an underdeveloped country where the only massive killers are the military trained at the School of the Americas. The same who prosecuted both physicists and psychoanalysts they labeled equally “subversive” at once.
Bob Row
September 15, 2009
Hamidreza: I’m not attacking Brockman for finding a “guesheft” (yiddish for “business”) in promoting a Third Culture. In fact, I didn’t know of Edge until I had to illustrate an article on the “Two Cultures” for a newspaper. Caricatures are my own “guesheft” after all; and I’m sure Brockman will understand it. As well I’m sure Brockman doesn’t means to throw Shakespeare to the bin. It’s just a caricature resource.
But, seriously, I find some traits of American cultural environment frankly exotic. There are no battles against Biblical textual reading in Argentinian politics. Nor battles against “creacionists” in schools, where Evolution is the sole teaching. Even in religious schools is mandatory by law. Biblical teaching must be given separately. I’m able to understand the progressive role institutions like Edge has to bear in such a context.
But you’re correct in that I must be unfitted to take part in sophisticated arguments at Edge. At least, at my level of self-taught English. In fact I’m surprised by the extension of this discussion. I never imagined my mischievous caricature would provoke such a solemn reaction.
Hamidreza
September 15, 2009
Mario – you are expressing the position of the Second Culture, that the two cultures can co-exist side by side, and that the first culture has something important to contribute – and I disagree with that on philosophical grounds, and IMO it is wrong.
What you say about “humanistic disciplines” (eg why or when to kill) is a “Value Judgement”. It depends on your “Value System”.
A Value System is not based in science, which is firmly rooted in empiricism.
A Value System is ABSOLUTELY ARBITRARY. Unless you dishonestly invoke revelation, you have no leg to argue which Value System is superior. Value Systems are a subdiscipline of Game Theory and hence are rationalistic and non-empirical.
This is better known as Hume’s Fork. Science deals with empiricological matters.
Value Systems is what you choose to be, either through social consensus, through religion, through nationalism, through ideology, etc.
Imagine a soccer game. The science is the atheliticism of the players, the equipment, etc. The Value System are the rules of the game. They could be arbitrary. They could be unfair giving one team an advantage. There is no rule in the universe that says the rules of soccer must be “fair” or the game “interesting”. Humanities deals with such arbitrary values, and therefore because you can never arrive at facts or truth, it is of little, some argue NO value.
Science deliberately and wisely does not deal with values, as they are essentially arbitrary. As scientists says, values (or humanities) are “not even wrong”. They cannot be falsified.
So the Fork will always exist. Now science can make it easier to arrive at values, but that is another matter. The problem is when a bunch of unwashed First Culturalists believe they have a mandate on the rest of us and want to impose their values upon society simply because science rightfully wishes not to deal with values. They mistakenly believe they have their own domain that science is unable to address, so they want to set up their own rulership. This is the story of religion for example.
Little do they know that Science will not touch this stuff because its garbage.
So I dont have a problem when Bob indulges in his little values and plays Game Theory. What I object to is when the First culture politicizes it and falsely claims that it is at par with Science, and does not admit to its own bastardness. The folks in the 2nd Culture have fallen for this tactic and let the First Culture practice their hegemony, thinking that they are being of service to humanity. NOT!
The damage that First Culture has done to humanity is endless. It is a reactionary force that feeds off mass gullibility and invariably leads to the anti-enlightenment and political control.
People like Voltaire and Diderot are philosophers belonging to the 3rd Culture and not the First Culture. Yes they were terrific writers, but that does not make them a First culture person. If they were alive today, they would be at http://www.edge.org, and would not be putting a wad of dollars in the pocket of John brockman.
Regards
Mario Giardini
September 16, 2009
Mario – you are expressing the position of the Second Culture, that the two cultures can co-exist side by side, and that the first culture has something important to contribute – and I disagree with that on philosophical grounds, and IMO it is wrong.
Sorry, Hamidreza, I am NOT saying this. I am just pointing out that, today, some questions can be answered by science, some others not. Being this the case, and still needing, today, an answer for many of your questions, what is your proposal? On what will you base your decision?
What you say about “humanistic disciplines” (eg why or when to kill) is a “Value Judgement”. It depends on your “Value System”.
A Value System is not based in science, which is firmly rooted in empiricism.
Yes, of course.
A Value System is ABSOLUTELY ARBITRARY.
Mmmm. I could argument about this, still this is not belonging to our today’s discussion.
Unless you dishonestly invoke revelation, you have no leg to argue which Value System is superior. Value Systems are a subdiscipline of Game Theory and hence are rationalistic and non-empirical.
This is better known as Hume’s Fork. Science deals with empiricological matters.
Value Systems is what you choose to be, either through social consensus, through religion, through nationalism, through ideology, etc.
Yes, of course.
Imagine a soccer game. The science is the atheliticism of the players, the equipment, etc. The Value System are the rules of the game. They could be arbitrary. They could be unfair giving one team an advantage. There is no rule in the universe that says the rules of soccer must be “fair” or the game “interesting”. Humanities deals with such arbitrary values, and therefore because you can never arrive at facts or truth, it is of little, some argue NO value.
Science deliberately and wisely does not deal with values, as they are essentially arbitrary. As scientists says, values (or humanities) are “not even wrong”. They cannot be falsified.
Mmmm. Again, as above. It’s true that values cannot be falsified. Still, even if you don’t have a scientific scale to measure how much you are wrong or right, something – not scientific – is telling you that to kill people to robe them is quite different than to kill a person to avoid the murder of an innocent, isn’t it? If you don’t temperate all the above assertions, you just end with relativism.
So the Fork will always exist. Now science can make it easier to arrive at values, but that is another matter.
The problem is when a bunch of unwashed First Culturalists believe they have a mandate on the rest of us and want to impose their values upon society simply because science rightfully wishes not to deal with values. They mistakenly believe they have their own domain that science is unable to address, so they want to set up their own rulership. This is the story of religion for example.
Yes, you are right. Along the whole history this happened. However, again, I am not talking nor defending this way of living the humanistic domain.
Little do they know that Science will not touch this stuff because its garbage.
So I dont have a problem when Bob indulges in his little values and plays Game Theory. What I object to is when the First culture politicizes it and falsely claims that it is at par with Science, and does not admit to its own bastardness. The folks in the 2nd Culture have fallen for this tactic and let the First Culture practice their hegemony, thinking that they are being of service to humanity. NOT!
The damage that First Culture has done to humanity is endless.
Yes, perhaps it is. However, this is just one side of the coin.
It is a reactionary force that feeds off mass gullibility and invariably leads to the anti-enlightenment and political control.
People like Voltaire and Diderot are philosophers belonging to the 3rd Culture and not the First Culture. Yes they were terrific writers, but that does not make them a First culture person. If they were alive today, they would be at http://www.edge.org, and would not be putting a wad of dollars in the pocket of John brockman.
Possibly yes.
Hamidreza, I am an engineer. My profession is to build up mobile communications networks. So I have a scientific background, and, when exists, I fully agree that science is the only, rational base, to make decisions.
Problems arise when you do not have a scientific base to act, like when you need to do your ethics choices.
Let me put these examples. In Italy we have a small, pacific sect named “Javeh witnesses”. They refuse, among other things, to accept blood transfusions, even when this is the unique way to save their life.
Now, suppose an adult refuses the transfusion. What will you do, if you were the on duty doctor?
Or suppose that this adult, being the father of a 2 years child, refuses his authorization to make the transfusion to the child, putting him a risk to die? Again, what will you do?
This is not theoretical. A real case, involving a child, happened a few months ago.
You see, my friend. You may be fully aware of how much imperfect, questionable or even logically unacceptable is an “absolutely arbitrary value system”.
Life, however, willing or not, will always put you in front of these kind of decisions to be made. You can not escape. Conscious or not, to live your life, you must build up your non-scientific “value system”.
The final question is: on what will you base it?
Regards
Hamidreza
September 17, 2009
Mario – I its a pleasure to be discussing with you, and I am sure its due to you being trained in science and engineering. Most folks, especially those coming from arts and philology and theology, haven’t the faintest idea of the what we are talking about, as they do not have the necessary scientific understanding in this regard. I understand that the European intelligentsia is particularly deficient in this regard. You say:
something – not scientific – is telling you that to kill people to robe them is quite different than to kill a person to avoid the murder of an innocent, isn’t it?
Unfortunately not. I may believe in fairness, justice, and equality, and the golden rule, so I will not kill. But there is no measure that says these maxims are “chosen” and superior. Science cannot certainly say that. In fact in certain cultures (such as a primitive African bush culture), killing an innocent (of another tribe) is required for marriage rites and is celebrated.
Then there are ideologies like fascism, communism or Islamism that killing innocents in the name of the nation, proletariat or Mohammad is particularly celebrated and encouraged.
So yes, I wish not to be subject to that treatment, but if in power, why not subject others to this treatment? There is no meta or super-golden rule that says the golden rule is “superior” or “good”. Good and bad has no intrinsic meaning, as value systems are arbitrary. If you believe equality is a good principle, then why? You may provide some rational argument on how it makes society a better place, but then I will argue back that there is no need for society to become a better place.
Once arbitrary in essence – it remains arbitrary throughout. Of course we are talking logically and not pragmatically.
Now you rightly object that this is simply reactionary postmodernism and relativism. But this arbitrariness of values (I believe Nietzche called it nihilism) claims that good and bad is meaningless, as its just a game. Relativists on the other hand believe that there is a good and a bad, but that it cannot be universal, and what may appear bad to you (e.g. racism or sexism), is justified if the society is a victim of imperialism, and that you cannot judge others by enlightenment standards, and other such nonsense.
The key to the paradox is to realize that essentially values are arbitrary. This is necessary in order to cut off the thief’s hand (religionists, priests, artists, postmoderns, political ideologists, poets, and philologists). Once we rid ourselves from the First Culture, we are faced with ourselves in the mirror. We can’t pass the blame to the devil, to god, to the west, to politicians, to imperialists, or to bankers, etc. We will then not be manipulated by orators and demagogues. We will come to realize that we need to choose our values very carefully, through democratic discourse, and we will have to stick to the very basics (e.g. avoidance of pain, hunger, violence, and affirmation of fundamental rights, etc.). We will understand that the forces of anti-enlightenment and obfuscation (with the help of the First Culture) will try to pull the wool over our eyes and try to manipulate us in adopting their pet value system as being “firmly rooted in a higher order”.
Science is a method, i.e. a process. Science does not tell you a-priori what is right or wrong. Same with values – we cannot tell a-priori what is good or bad. Hence we have to concentrate on the process of arriving at a value system. This is where the First Culture has gone wrong and has turned into a reactionary force. Instead of helping with the process, the First Culture is fighting the process by planting seeds of distrust, cynicism, anti-enlightenment, relativism, cowardice and plays to the hand ideologues with agendas.
That is why it is essential for the Third Culture to demolish the First, and tell it where its rightful place is (simply in aesthetics).
“Life, however, willing or not, will always put you in front of these kind of decisions to be made. You can not escape. Conscious or not, to live your life, you must build up your non-scientific “value system”.
Excellent point. Obviously the state must intervene in the case of the 2 year old Jesuit kid. The right to life (due to the superiority of science to prayers), trumps the right to religion, and the right (if any) of controlling and brainwashing your children.
These are simple reducible questions, if we take a clear shot at them, and not get obfuscated and ideologued-out by the First Culture, and if we concentrate on the democratic process.
Once we realize there is no such thing as “ggod” or “bad”, then we will earnestly sit down together and put our brains to work for a better society.
N
September 16, 2009
Throughout this entire discussion, no one has brought up the most important question: why does Mr. Brockman have dark skin? (except for his hand, which apparently has transferred its blackness to Mr. Snow… I imagine the first culture will have an easier time figuring this conundrum out)
Mario Giardini
September 16, 2009
Bob, I posted a comment to Hamidreza,which is, I see, quite unreadable, being the characters the same. Is there any way to differentiate my comments from the Hamidreza’s sentences? I couldn’t find. Grazie e ciao.
Bob Row
September 16, 2009
Done.
Roy D. Schickedanz
September 17, 2009
We are reminded by the disease call man and such an aniversary of such personalities like C P Snow we are moved into the future through hope and its possibilities, never under estimating man’s needs and growth where science manages our materialistic views of reality from the Big Bang.
Roy D. Schickedanz
Glenwood, Illinois
Mario Giardini
September 18, 2009
“Once we realize there is no such thing as “good” or “bad”, then we will earnestly sit down together and put our brains to work for a better society.
Suppose we accept this starting point and clear our cultural boards from all old “goods” and “bads”. And start to work for a “better” society. This obviously implies to compare among them different choices. And to establish what is better. Now, you can not use science for that. So, in my opinion, you are back at my final question: on what will you base your choices? What does it mean a “democratic process”? Should we establish a parliament, vote our representatives and wait for their codes to be promulgated?
Really, Hamidreza, irrespective of what you can build up us processes, that should be considered just an objective method to execute specific tasks, I believe the main problem is still there: if not science, what?
Mario Giardini
September 18, 2009
Corection…
Really, Hamidreza, irrespective of what you can build up AS processes, that should be considered just an objective method to execute specific tasks, I believe the main problem is still there: if not science, what?
Imre von Soos
September 28, 2009
Greetings,
Culture, so the dictionary, means “trained and refined state of the understanding and manners and tastes, instilling of it by training; particular form or type of intellectual development or civilization”. The primary culture – that is, the level of intellectual evolution, the state of civilization, cultivation, refinement and sophistication – defines the way and the spectrum of awareness in which individuals, the constituents of social groups or of societies are looking at and are understanding themselves and their environment; the level on which they communicate with each other, and the way they are acting. It also refers to an individual’s level and scope of education, knowledge, understanding, manners and tastes, and is closely connected to his level of intelligence.
The actual intellectual spectrum of the species Homo sapiens spreading between IQ50 and IQ220, with IQ100 as the mean, no generalizations can be applied. According to scientific studies made between the populations of developed nations, well above 90% cannot think but in terms of effects, and only a fraction is able to reason logically and has the ability to conceptually connect thought processes.
What is binding social groups or societies together is the harmony of their traditions expressed in their literary, plastic and musical arts. These traditions are free of political or religious undertones.
Without the foundation of the primary culture, a man can be a rich businessman and maybe even a brilliant scientist, will remain, however, but an uncultured and short-sighted businessman, or blinkered scientist, with worldview limited by the boundaries of his specialty. Nietzsche called them inverted cripples, with one overdeveloped member hanging on an underdeveloped body.
Living in Europe, it happens only through some US websites that I can be informed about the fights between what they call there “creationism” and the neo-Darwinian distortion of the Darwinian evolutionary theory. As I perceive it, this latter is not happening in the interest of science but in that of the dissemination of a nihilistic and subversive worldview expressed by Richard Dawkins as: “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Are these the observational results of “science”, and are these the “deeper meanings of our lives” that “those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world of the third culture, who through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual”, are “rendering visible” by “redefining who and what we are”?
Just as much am I safe here from the “battle of the cultures”, especially about the “Scientific-Empirical Culture”, which, I suppose, would mean there the “gadget culture” or “pop science culture”. Possessing a computerised bottle-opener means no culture, especially when the thus liberated liquid is being then drunk straight out of that bottle.
Science does not limit itself to the empirical by far. On the fields of evolutionary biology, cosmology and nuclear physic, only a fraction is empirical, clearly observed fact; the rest are conjectures that make up very shaky theories. Here are some examples:
That random operational defects – mutations – happen at chromosomal copying, is an observational fact. That the most capable elements within a social group of animals prevail and dominate, is also an observational fact. But “The concept of evolution through random genetic variation and natural selection” (NAS), is only a theory built on conjectures based on these facts, especially as, according to the NAS, “natural selection tests the combinations of genes represented in the members of a species and allows to proliferate those that confer the greatest ability to survive and reproduce.” All this is stated without ever revealing the identity of that conjured up consciously acting subject who does the testing and the allowing; while also ignoring the observational fact that genomes are routinely scanned for damage and errors by repair-genes (and not by personified “natural selection” agents) and that these errors are repaired in order to keep them functioning properly and harmoniously.
As a matter of fact, wherever a causeless random event is suggested in a scientific theory, a mythical, extraneously acting agent is hiding in the background as a ‘predicate’ disguised for a ‘subject’, without which the ‘object’ couldn’t be acted on, and the theory couldn’t function.
That the electromagnetic energy is constituting the subatomic particles and consequently the physical substratum of the material universe, is an observational fact. That the pair-production of elementary particles is brought about and maintained – according to the actual theories – by “virtual pairs” – “the imaginary particle-anti-particle pairs that have not been materialized”; and that the “virtual pairs” are noetic elements, the kind of existences materialistic science ab ovo denies, leaves no scientist with sleepless nights.
That the light coming from far stars, quasars, galaxies arrive redshifted, is an observational fact. That the redshift is due to the Doppler effect, and not to the loss of energy due to interaction with the interstellar dust, is a conjecture, which is used to calculate their distances and movements. The thus conjectured expansion of the universe leads to the conjecture of its origin as a singularity, which it has big-banged out of. On the above conjecture calculated distances being too much for maintaining the intergalactic gravitational equilibrium, an invisible black matter had to be conjectured, which, however, did not succeed to gain any empirical proof already for two decades of hard trying. They are hoping now to find some sign of it through the Large Hadron Collider. But please read the news-letter I have just received on 25-09-2009: “Particle feud goes public. Rift in CERN collaboration leads to charge of poor and unethical science” http://physicsworld.com/cws/m/1493/234567/article/news/40475
Just by the way: there are to be found, under the above URL, two very interesting remarks: Dydak (the chef of the group) believes this new approach is seriously flawed. “I feel extremely badly about the way that things are going here,” he says. “Science is no longer of prime importance. The rules of high-quality scientific work are being replaced by the rules of democracy. That is appropriate in politics but not in science.”
And a comment: “No business is run democratically, and if it is, it is ran proportional to money invested (shareholders). Not all scientists give equal results, why did they choose democracy?”
A tantalising thought: why not chose meritocracy, the prevalence of the most capable: the natural system that has been working successfully for three and a half billion years on this planet, and has supported the evolution of its billionfold life-manifestations?
“Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. – wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson (that trashy scribbler of the dark American past of first culture) – Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Masses! the calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking millions at all. If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single men spoken on their honour and their conscience. In old Egypt it was established law that the vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much underestimated.”
This long contribution would be much longer by adding some thoughts about education, consciousness, spirit and the mind over matter aspect of reality, would A. Tiwari not have already written so excellently about these subjects, which I heartily underwrite. And so do I also agree with what Bob Row had to say. I will, however, add to it a quotation from John Taylor Gatto’s book: The Underground History of American Education, pointing to a situation where “science” is just as diligently cooperating in the public domain: “The secret of commerce, that kids drive purchases, meant that schools had to become psychological laboratories where training in consumerism was the central pursuit.” .. “The truth is that America’s unprecedented global power and spectacular material wealth are a direct product of a third-rate educational system, upon whose inefficiency in developing intellect and character they depend. If we educated better we could not sustain the corporate utopia we have made. Schools build national wealth by tearing down personal sovereignty, morality, and family life. It was a trade-off.”.
Just by the way again: I am an (unwashed – and bastard, if it so pleases) architect, civil engineer and all else related to these two professions, which have enabled me to design, independently of any consultation, anything from a little coffee lounge, through civil, industrial, off-shore and submarine structures, to multi-billion dollar hydroelectric schemes, while living and working in ten countries of three continents and designing for another two continents. I have also written until now eight scientific and philosophical books. My being has its primary foundation in my first culture of world literature, plastic arts and classical music: “trash” produced by people, who, according to some great luminaries like J. B. Watson, B. F. Skinner and Daniel Dennett, are getting to their verbal, formal and musical creations by “manipulating words, forms or notes, shifting them about until a new pattern is hit upon. Not until the new creation aroused admiration and commendation, both his own and others, would manipulation be complete – the equivalent of the rat’s finding food. … The painter plies his trade the same way, nor can the poet boast of any other method.”
Bob Row could not show his face at edge.org. He is unfitted. There are no debates involving external comments or contributors on Brockman’s site. Only the initiated preshrunk have that privilege. I have sent them, a year ago, a long comment on Dennett’s ideas about consciousness etc., receiving the answer that “we are not accepting unsolicited submissions”. And, of course, solicited are the ones who enter in the line.
Have your third culture reality, fellows, if you can survive on it on your own strength, without being protected against contrary rationalities; but do not misconstrue the issues into vague ones, in order to stay within the frame of the materialistic paradigm; and do not gather into self-promoting self-righteous groups – mutual admiration societies, expertly managed and made exclusive in the international media – and promote your credos under the aegis of science and under the auspices of university cathedras with amazing intellectual dishonesty and on nihilism focussed subversion.
“No individual organism shall reach an evolutionary state – even if he possesses and enjoys all the material benefits characteristic to that state – that others have conceived and elaborated, unless he has an intellectual talent that fits him to conceive and elaborate them, to resolve related difficulties and form solid judgements on these matters.” (Descartes paraphrased by me) – “For only the man – as Lama Govinda has put it – who has conquered, gained this world spiritually, whose consciousness has reached this stage of knowledge, is capable of using sensibly the forces derived from it without misusing their power. Only such a one is entitled to use them. This discrepancy between perfection and power of the means created from a higher dimension of knowledge and the level of consciousness of those using them, must in the end result in schizophrenic civilization in which man no longer controls these means because he no longer understands the power at his disposal. He then resembles the magician’s disciple who is no longer able to hold in check the powers which he has conjured up, because he is not related to their nature, he does not really know them.”