[FRIAM] science privilege — fork from acid epistemology

Sat Mar 14 14:18:04 EDT 2020

If what we have encountered here is the limits of discourse, why are we
talking?

Nick,

Because consummatory behavior is rewarding in its own right

---
Frank C. Wimberly
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 10:30 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> .... and if we have not gone beyond the bounds of discourse, HOW shall we
> talk?
>
> N
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thompnickson2 at gmail.com <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
> Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2020 10:27 AM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: RE: [FRIAM] science privilege — fork from acid epistemology
>
> Dave and Glen,
>
> It's great to see your two frames coming into adjustment.  At the risk of
> taking the discussion back to absurdity, let me try to express, in
> laughably simple terms, what I hear you guys agreeing to.
>
> I have been taught a way of thinking about science that is western.  Like
> all ways of thinking it both sights me and blinds me.  Nobody knows
> everything; everybody knows what they know.  Nobody should presume to judge
> what they don't know.  I don't know Eastern ways of thinking.  I have no
> basis on which to claim privilege for my western ways of thinking about
> science.
>
> Now, as a person who has always delighted in attending discussions among
> people who do not agree, and always fascinated by the possibility of
> convergence of opinion, what do I do when Dave (or Kim, or others)
> highlight the fact that there are whole ways of thinking that I just do not
> know anything about?
>
> One way would be to shrug.  AW heck, you go your way, I will go mine. I
> can't do that.   Shrugging is just not in my natire.  I need to try to
> integrate discordant ideas held by people I respect.  Now, it is possible
> that need is, in itself, Western.  And what an eastern philosophy would
> tell me is to put aside that need.   Often developmental psychologists
> among my acquaintances have asserted that my quest for agreement is a kind
> of invasion of their mental territory, that each person is entitled to his
> own individual and pristine experience.
>
> Let's say you come to me and tell me that you hold in your hand an
> instrument of great wisdom, a revolver.  And if I will only put it to my
> head, and pull the trigger, I will have knowledge and understanding beyond
> anything I can now imagine.  I would be reluctant to follow that advice.
> Is that western?
>
> Let's say, I say to you that "to speak of that of which we cannot speak"
> is non-sense.  To say, as an occasional member of the home congregation
> occasionally says, "What if there is a world out there which is totally
> beyond all forms of human understanding" is non-sense.  As Wittgenstein
> says, the beetle divides out.  Is an Eastern philosopher going to reply,
> "Ah Nick, such a paradox is not non-sense but the beginning of wisdom."
>
> Or perhaps, the eastern philosopher would say, No, No, Nick, you have it
> all wrong.  If you seek that sense of convergence, go for it directly.
> Don't argue with dave and Glen, hug them, drink with them, play Russian
> roulette.  What you seek cannot be found with words!
>
> If what we have encountered here is the limits of discourse, why are we
> talking?
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2020 8:28 AM
> To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] science privilege — fork from acid epistemology
>
>
> FWIW, I agree completely with your gist, if not with your pique. The lost
> opportunity is implicit in the ebb and flow of collective enterprises.
> Similar opportunity costs color the efforts of any large scale enterprise.
> I can't blame science or scientists for their lost opportunities because
> triage is necessary [†]. But there is plenty of kinship for you out there.
> I saw this the other day:
>
>   Your Mind is an Excellent Servant, but a Terrible Master - David Foster
> Wallace
>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsAd4HGJS4o
>
> I'm tempted to dive into particulars on your examples (Vedic, Buddhist,
> Hermetics). But my contributions would be laughable. I'll learn from any
> contributions I hope others make. I've spent far too little of my life in
> those domains.
>
> [†] Both for the individual trying to decide what to spend their life
> researching and the whole (as Wolpert points out <
> https://ti.arc.nasa.gov/m/pub-archive/1476h/1476%20(Wolpert).pdf>). Most
> of the prejudice I encounter doesn't seem mean-spirited, though. Even
> virulent scientismists seem to be victims of their own, personally felt,
> opportunity costs.
>
> On 3/14/20 3:21 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> > Glen, I really appreciate your response and insights.
> >
> > You are certainly correct that much, or most, of my pique is simply
> impatience. But, I am here now, with these questions, and with a limited
> window within which to be patient. Should my great grandchildren have my
> interests, Science might serve them well, but is is frustrating right now.
> >
> > Science is far more reflective that I generally give it credit for. Your
> examples, save one, illustrate that. The one that I object to is "assessing
> scientific literacy" which, based on limited exposure, seems to be more of
> "checking to see if you are bright enough to agree with us" than evaluating
> what it would mean to be scientifically literate.
> >
> > A closely related, I think, topic is the push by computer science to
> have "computational thinking" embedded in elementary and secondary
> education as "essential." Computational thinking is exactly the wrong kind
> of thinking as most of the critical things we need to think about are not
> algorithmic in nature. The scientific and computational part of the climate
> crisis is the easy part. figuring out the complex
> social-cultural-economic-politcal answers to the problem is the hard part
> and I doubt it is reducible to scientific thinking and absolutely positive
> it is not amenable to computational thinking.
> >
> > Maybe when Hari Seldon has his psychohistory all worked out it will be
> > different.  :)
> >
> > It may very well be possible to develop a science of philosophy, but it
> will require relinquishing what, again to me, appears to be a double
> standard. Scientists are willing to wax philosophical about quantum
> interpretations but would, 99 times out of a hundred, reject out of hand
> any discussion of the cosmological philosophy in the  Vaisesika Sutras —
> despite the fact that that Schrodinger says the idea for superposition came
> from the Upanishads.
> >
> > George Everest (the mountain is named after him) introduced Vedic
> teachings on math and logic to George Boole, Augustus de Morgan, and
> Charles Babbage; shaping the evolution of Vector Analysis, Boolean Logic,
> and a whole lot of math behind computer science.
> >
> > One could make a very strong argument that most of the Science that
> > emerged in England in the 1800-2000, including Newton, was derived
> > from Vedic and some Buddhist philosophies. But try to get a Ph.D. in
> > any science today with a dissertation proposal that incorporated
> > Akasa. [The Vedas posited five elements as the constituents of the
> > universe — Aristotle's four, earth, air, fire, water, plus Akasa,
> > which is consciousness.]
> >
> > Swami Vivekananda once explained Vedic philosophical ideas about the
> relationship between energy and matter to Nicholas Tesla. Tesla tried for
> years to find the equation that Einstein came up with much later. Try to
> get a research grant for something like that.
> >
> > A practical question: how would one go about developing a "science" of
> the philosophy of Hermetic Alchemy and its  2500 years of philosophical
> investigation. Information, perhaps deep insights, that was tossed out the
> window simply because some pseudo-alchemists tried to con people into
> thinking that lead could be turned into gold.
> >
> > Of course the proposal for developing such a science would have to be at
> least eligible for grants and gaining tenure, or it is not, in a practicial
> (take note Nick) sense.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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