Archive for February, 2010

…Scott Adams based “Dilbert” on my former life as a federal employee. Well at least today he did:

In his post Unsettled Science, Caleb Howe over at RedState writes:

People “know” we’re hurting the earth with pollution. They “know” greenhouse gases are heating up the earth. They “know” that will eventually cause catastrophic devastation. After all, there was a movie! The “know” the science is settled. They “know” all the scientists are in agreement. After all, there was Nobel prize!

There is a problem in the scientific community of which the scientific community is mostly unaware. Science has almost completely been divorced from philosophy. This may be because research has become fragmented into many specialized areas rather than the broad inquiry that characterized the early days of the “natural philosophers.” Whatever the reason, this split between science and philosophy has given the scientist or the student of science a false sense of confidence in what they “know.” The lack of a philosophical element in science has removed much of the motivation scientists might have to question their own preconceptions. Those on the periphery of science seldom question what science tells them. As a result, we have an area of inquiry that is artificially elevated above all others. Science is seen as absolute, unblemished, and wholly objective. Belief and knowledge are considered the same within the bounds of science.

This bleeds over into the community at large and laypeople without the expertise or experience in science accept science as absolute and pure knowledge. Most people could not recreate the experiments needed to prove that the earth orbits around the sun, but we nonetheless believe it. This is because we have faith in the source of that assertion.  It is not absolute personal knowledge though. It is a belief based on faith in a human source.

Mostly this is a benign situation as practical applications of science usually need to be proven and tested experimentally before they can directly affect our lives, but the highly speculative areas like the study of climate change, global warming, or whatever they’re calling it these days, present a different situation. With climate change, we stand on the brink of committing massive resources and risking economic disaster based on the belief that human activity is destroying the planet. The public is largely conditioned to accept what science tells them without question. Those who don’t get accused of being anti-intellectual (when quite the reverse is true). The recent “Climate-gate” scandal has led many to realize that science is–like any other human endeavor–tainted by bias, ambition, competition for grant money, etc. There are many scientific assertions that through repeated experiments can be accepted as objectively true, but this is not the case with every assertion made by scientific researchers. When the consequences of scientific claims will affect us all, we are all responsible for recognizing that which can be accepted as knowledge and that which can be accepted (or rejected) as belief.

I recommend The Science Before Science by Dr. Anthony Rizzi, an accomplished physicist who is also an accomplished philosopher. Heavy stuff that requires a lot of pondering, but truly enlightening.

The U.S. Navy is reportedly lifting it’s ban on women sailors serving aboard submarines. Might this give new life to an old Navy recruiting poster?

G.K. Chesterton, one of the greatest thinkers of the 19th and 20th century in my opinion, once wrote,

“‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”

I believe this can also be applied to political parties. There has been a lot of speculation and criticism aimed at Glenn Beck’s keynote address at CPAC on Saturday. Some say that Beck was calling for a third party and saying that the GOP is exactly equal to the Democrat party in its approach to governing.

I was there and I did not hear that in Beck’s speech. What I heard was Chesterton’s patriot refusing to say ‘my country [or party] right or wrong.’

There are absolutely some bright lights in the GOP for those who believe in Constitutional, limited government. Beck acknowledged this on his TV show today. He also noted that those

bright lights are often succeeding in spite of the actions of the Republican party establishment, as with the Florida U.S. Senate primary race between Marco Rubio and Charley Crist. The GOP establishment is backing the squishy moderate Crist who is down 18 points to conservative Rubio.

At times it still seems that the GOP is about as engaged with the American people as the U.S. Congress has been with regard to health care reform.

If you tell me that the Conservative Political Action Conference is no place for valid criticism of the GOP’s less than stellar record on limiting the size and scope of government, I’m hearing you say “My mother, drunk or sober.”