07.18.11
The legacy of challenging science, from Rousseau and Kant to the Romantics
Berlinski on Youtube:
http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcMs4rOCWjI
It takes a bit of courage to challenge science these days, but we have been doing of bit of that here. Let me note that we are the ones to do this, since the basis for discussion is that of science enthusiasts, with several sidelines in the science discourse and study, right up to trying to get a bibliography for string theory operational.
That said, the current environment of science worship gets bit tiresome, and it suppresses reflection and dissent, promotes crippled educations, ignorance of history, and coexists with some truly outrageous, if not sad, blind spots, like Darwinism.
The remarkable thing is that all of this is ‘deja vu all over again’, and we can see that the seventeenth century scientific revolution was already the object of commentary and meta-discourse in the enlightenment, beginning with Rousseau, Kant, the Romantics, and much else. It is not as if this problem wasn’t foreseen.
But what has happened is that an entire cadre of narrowly educated science freaks who puke at any other college course outside their developing specialization have graduated to the science domination circuit and the result is an new brand of ignorance, and arrogant ignoramus to go with it.
I think the negative effects are visible in someone like Sam Harris, who shows obviously vestigial signs of a broader perspective, one that got excised as he entered the PhD brainwashing circuit, especially given his celebrity, which is based on this narrow view of science. He has attempted to talk his way out of his obvious New Age preoccupations, without much success, his take on Buddhism showing all the signs of mental degeneration induced by scientism.