10.24.08
Mr. Myers, the real ‘loons’ are the sciencebloggers
Myers goes into one of his ‘loon’ rants on the question of Jeffrey Schwartz, Your brain is the next battleground
The charge of ‘loon’ seems to be this fellow’s only debating point. And this is the science we are supposed to accept as infallible truth, dispensed by sophmoric professionals raised on talk.origins and Dawkins, and closed in a fantasy world of ‘science’.
The tone of haughty contempt, and the idea that scientists are some sort of omniscient cadre who can dispense the swinish label of ‘loons’ to anyone who doesn’t fall in line behind the party line, finally gets tiresome. It won’t work on the brain/mind problem, that’s for sure.
In fact, while I am not sure that I agree with Schwartz’ take on the question of brain and mind, it is at least probable in my view that he is closer to seeing the real problems than most scientists in the mainstream of the ‘club’.
Whatever the case, the brain/mind dualism debate has gone on a long time, and it isn’t helpful to be charging anyone with being a loon on the issue.
It seems to me that scientists have been bemused by some kind of pixie dust, and can’t see their position.
Karl Popper is the head science methodologist of this club and yet he was a dualist. Is Popper a loon.
Being called a loon isn’t much of a much, but the reason to protest springs from the realization of the obvious: it hurts the younger generation studying science more than the targets of the ‘insult’. The first part is the training in Dawkins syle hauteur, as a substitute for reasoning, or dialectial self-evaluation, and the next is the subtle intimidation with these cues that succeeds in silencing dissent in the organizations of professionals. The question is starting to default to outsiders, because professional science is proving incapable of dealing with the broader issues.
The final sad endgame of these routines is going to be the rise, as with Discovery Institute, merely a foretaste, of systematic anti-science, and the exposure of what is not science, but a science bureaucracy/priesthood in a state of frozen mentation.
So to the loons at Scienceblogs, I’d say, wise up.