12.11.05
Posted in Evolution, The Eonic Effect at 10:28 pm by nemo
A short review of Armstrong’s new book on mythology:
A Short History of Myth (Myths) by Karen Armstrong
This book suffers from a kind of double identity, as an outline of world history, adapted to some publisher’s project to do with mythology. The question of myth is a complicated one, and Armstrong’s manner of challenging ‘logos’ with ‘mythos’ is to me an invitation to sophistry, as an indirect attack on modern rationality and secularism. The periodization of the book focuses on the data of the Axial Age, which the author threatens to turn into another myth. Armstrong’s treatment of this subject has made it into a proxy for the onset of the world reiligions, when in fact the Axial Age is something far more complex than that. The rise of Greek science, the emergence of the world’s first democracy and much, much else have a place in the consideration of the Axial period. Correctly understanding this period is not so simple and there is a danger that the author’s power to sell books and bestsellers will completely confuse this issue for large numbers of people, making the whole area suspect. The data of the Axial period is one of the most crucial aspects of world history, one that has suffered neglect. The sudden promotion of distorted version is less than helpful. This reviewer’s _World History and The Eonic Effect_ contains a complete analysis of the complexities of the Axial phenomenon for those who wish to sort out the confusion on this question.
There is now a kind of New Age postsecular exploitation of this idea under the rubric of a Second Axial Age, in a further distortion of the original data and its significance.
Myths indeed.
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12.07.05
Posted in The Eonic Effect, you've got mail at 4:12 am by nemo
Email from Teilhard, posted at Chaos/chaosmos/hegel/kant/teilhard/Scfp/consilience
In a message dated 12/6/2005 9:34:24 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, wispj@[ ].net [from Teilhard-yahoo] writes:
Yes, but what about the ‘why’? What do you see as the cause of the eonic effect? And what about punctuated equilibrium? Any relationship?
Questions, questions!
Questions, questions. Good question, one that, like ‘open sesame’, unlocks the dragon’s gate. If you pursue my eonic model you will discover the built in relationship to the Kantian noumenon/phenomenon problem. The question is very deep.
If we sense the noumenal aspect of something that probably means “It’s curtains”. NOBODY KNOWS AND YOU CAN’T FIND OUT. We reach the limits of our knowledge.
So we proceed carefully here, suspecting this is the case, careful not to invent a new myth, religious or Darwinian or whatever.
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12.06.05
Posted in Evolution at 12:44 pm by nemo
Kristof has an editorial in the Times (Times Select): The Arrogance of the Humanities.
How about the arrogance of the Scientists? Especially the Darwinians.
The technocratic elite is getting nervous and must want to blame their troubles on liberal arts majors, echoes of C.P.Snow. Now it is undoubtedly true that everyone should know more science. Every liberal arts major should consider the question, as should every scientist. As a classics major, I took a calculus course in college, out of the blue. One of the best decisions I ever made, so I appreciate Snow’s point.
In general everyone agrees we should know more all around. We can all agree, but actually getting the work done is the problem. There is no excuse for not being omniscient. So everybody should be omniscient, starting tomorrow. Meanwhile liberal arts curricula often fail to teach liberal arts, what to say of science.
The reference to Snow shows the problem existed back then, at the peak of American science dominance. So I doubt that liberal arts emphasis is, or ever was, the problem.
Those who wish humanities students to study more science might consider what happens to those who take the plunge, they are swiftly eliminated in the better courses beyond survey junk, usually by design. The top teachers only want to deal with a select few. They have more than enough qualified people, and dispose of the remnant in short order. I could be wrong, but that’s my non-comprehensive observation.
Still, science education should always deserve more promotion, and more.
But I think this complaint is misleading. The depth of ignorance Kristof produces statistics for is something deeper than the Two Cultures problem. If only 13 percent know what a molecule is, college course changes isn’t going to change that. Maybe just kiss your ass goodbye in that case.
How does the arrogance of the humanities fit in here? I doubt if many humanities students are arrogant about science ignorance at this point. It is simply the logistics of learning that gets in the way.
And the question is broader than that of knowledge. It sounds as if we are being stealthed in the Darwin debate, on the issue of evolution. They don’t care if liberal arts majors know much biology, just make them study enough to be indoctrinated in Darwin’s theory.
Darwin’s theory is bad science, so the Darwin debate should prove beneficial. If the only challengers are fundamentalists, then I would say that science education is in crisis, because it can only produce one-dimensional technical expertise pervaded by a science ideology.
Everyone should study more biology, stat, but the dominance of Darwinian ideology is one factor in making that difficult. The Wells book, Icons Of Evolution, which, I know, is flawed, and has been exposed and debunked a hundred times already, nonetheless goes into this question of science education in biology, attempting to point to the way the knowledge is being distorted.
Anyone who explores biological texts with a critical stance discovers just how deceptive this field can be. You are better off working alone, without the brainwashing syndrome that pervades the system here.
So much for science education.
So the first requirement would seem to be to stay away from biology texts, and research the question for yourself??!! Need I go on? Self-education is your best option, if truth is your concern. The Big Pharmaceutical, in a panic over Bangalore, will have to fend for themselves in the University system.
Those who wish to study biology can go to the public library in their spare time.
So why not just keep liberal arts majors away from this pack of lies syndrome!!! Keep some troops in reserve. Let biology specialists be sacrificed on the altar of reductionist idiocy.
Just there we see the classic reason for the division of knowledge, stretching back to the now defunct relation of the naturwissenschaften and geisteswissenschaften. The onset of positivism has demolished this natural relationship of subjects. The totality of knowledge is not a function of reductionist derivation but an interplay of independently developing subjects. The attempt to reduce all knowledge to science is itself a kind of scientific arrogance, and the prospect of turning literary study into sociobiological clichés is not grounds for jooly photo op handshakes between the two domains. Evolutionary psychology, the step child of sociobiology, thrives on this narrow science stupidity.
The problem here is that each individual must harmonize those two domains within himself, not become a refugee specialized in one of them.
The classic gesture in this direction springs from Kant. Kristof complains the Nazis were steeped in Kant and Goethe. I doubt it. The famous episode of Eichman’s abuse of Kant shows how little steeped he was in anything, smatterings as usual.
The question of reductionism provokes a social imbalance. No use blaming the humanities.
Scientists have made the claim that science is to recast all knowledge as their province and domain, but the sticking point comes, and came early: evolution. Science has not yet even produced a viable social philosophy in relation to evolution. It can’t even mediate the fact/value question. Something is awry, Fred.
Thus the division of human and natural sciences, to the extent is exists at all anymore, acts as a failsafe.
Thus, if there is one issue that points to the dangers of abolishing that partition it is precisely the Darwin debate, and the issue of evolution. Half-educated science experts have lost all sense of reality, cultural or otherwise, and have had the ability trained out of them to see the flaws in Darwin-style evolutionary thought. The solution is not religion or intelligent design.
If anything the liberal arts world has been too compliant on Darwinism, and has lost the ability to stand up to the spread of reductionist one-dimensional thinking that has made Darwin’s theory an obsessive dogma. To tackle the Darwin debate, therefore, the liberal arts world needs to start studying more science, then they can take on Darwin.
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