[FRIAM] science privilege — fork from acid epistemology

[Prof David West]

And my pique is not the fault of others, it is from within myself — at least in large part.

I started thinking about all the ways that Vedic and Taoist and Hermetic thought has informed Western Science - almost totally without attribution — and thought, "hey, why not find a nice graduate program in the History and Philosophy of Science where I can explore this stuff and get some insights and guidance from others."  No surprise - outside of India (Vedic) and China (Taoist) and nowhere (Hermetic), there are no such programs. There are a lot of programs, but none of them seem to have courses or course content that exposes what I am looking for.

Instant pique.

But then, I looked at my own library.  I have exactly two sources: Needham's two volumes on Science and Civilization in China, and Basham's The Wonder That was India. I have read other material, but have not actually built up a collection of sources.

For drugs and consciousness I have a lot more, but still a sparse resource.

Never have I spent the time and effort to establish a network of folks to talk to. I am certain, as you said, they are there.

So, why exactly am disparaging of others, of Scientists. With regard Science as it has become institutionalized I have very little respect. Just like religion, I can accept the Theology (sometimes) but reject almost every aspect of the Church.

davew



On Sat, Mar 14, 2020, at 3:28 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> 
> 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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