From: L-Soft list server at St. John's University (1.8c) To: Ian Pitchford Subject: File: "SCI-CULT LOG9803" Date: Saturday, September 26, 1998 11:26 PM ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 19:44:13 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@Scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: UK Virtual Society Special Lecture MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT VIRTUAL SOCIETY? SPECIAL LECTURE - 1 APRIL 1998 The first of a series of Virtual Society? special lectures will be held to coincide with the 10th anniversary year of CRICT (Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology) at Brunel University, UK. To mark the occasion, CRICT and the ESRC Virtual Society? Programme cordially invite you to: Bruno Latour (Ecole des Mines, Paris) "Thought Experiments in Social Science: from the social contract to virtual society" Wednesday 1 April 1998, 4.30-6.00pm followed by a reception. Howell Lecture Centre H001, Brunel University To book a place, please email Debbie.Chagouri@brunel.ac.uk indicating whether you will (a) attend the lecture and reception or (b) lecture only, and giving your electronic and postal addresses. Please reply as soon as possible and by 23 March 1998 at the latest. Directions to Brunel and a campus map can be found at http://www.brunel.ac.uk/campus/maps/accux.html Steve Woolgar, Director, ESRC Virtual Society? Programme Christine Hine, Acting Director, CRICT Apologies if you receive more than one copy of this message. Please forward to anyone who may be interested, and who may not have received a copy. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:25:01 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@Scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Genes, Gestation, and Life Experiences: Perspectives on the Soci MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT "Genes, Gestation, and Life Experiences: Perspectives on the Social Environment in the Age of DNA" Call for papers for a session proposed for the July 1999 ISHPPSB meetings. Everyone "knows" that genes and environment interact, but, in this Age of DNA, genetics is often seen as the way to expose the important or root causes of behavior and disease and as the necessary basis of effective therapeutic technologies. The dominance of genetics is also reflected within STS. Critical light has been shed on the history, semantic complexity, ethics and other dimensions of genetics, yet very little STS scholarship concerns the sciences of, for example, educational interventions or psychological development. In general, the "environment" is underexamined and construed in simple terms. Nevertheless, several scientific currents are bringing the environment, in different variants, back into the picture. In evolutionary biology, a great deal of attention is now given to the plasticity of phenotypes across a range of environments. Developmental biology, filling the gap between genes and the characters they shape, is experiencing a rennaissance. Although the field still focuses mainly on embryological or early development, the influence of the environment is now acknowledged even for those stages. Behavioral genetics, once firmly directed towards establishing the heritability of traits, now highlights the effects of "non-shared" environmental influences, i.e., those not experienced equally by members of the same family. Among such non-shared influences, Sulloway has argued that birth order may be a key factor in explaining conformity to or rebellion against authority in intellectual and other spheres of social life. In short, the stage is set for STS scholars to examine the complexities of the "environment." What meanings are given to the term, and how have these changed over time and in response to criticism? What is measured and what is explained? What methodologies are employed for collecting data and making inferences? What is the status of the different sciences and social sciences involved? How are these colored by past and present associations with political currents? With these questions in mind, this session aims to enrich scientific and popular discussion about the contribution of the environment to the development of behavioral and medical conditions over any individual's lifetime. If you are interested in contributing a paper to this session -- or know someone who might be -- please contact: Peter J. Taylor Lang Visiting Professor for Social Change Swarthmore College Swarthmore, PA 19081, USA phone: 610-690-6858 (o); 328-8663 (fax) email: ptaylor1@swarthmore.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 14:57:39 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Richard Sclove Subject: DEMOCRATIZING SCIENCE (in _Science_ magazine!): Action Alert! MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Loka Alert 5:2 (4 March 1998) Please Repost Widely Where Appropriate DEMOCRATIZING POST-COLD WAR SCIENCE POLICY: Action Opportunities! (Editorial from _Science_ Magazine by Richard Sclove) Friends and Colleagues: This is one in an occasional series of electronic postings on democratic politics of science and technology, issued by the nonprofit Loka Institute. Below is an editorial about democratizing U.S. science policy that I have just published in _Science_ magazine (27 Feb. issue). It is followed by some suggested easy steps you can take right now to promote post-Cold War science and technology policies that are more socially responsive and responsible. There's a political opportunity here; let's work together to use it! If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Loka Institute's E-mail list, please send a message to: . Please invite interested friends and colleagues to subscribe too. Thank you! --Dick Sclove Executive Director The Loka Institute, P.O. Box 355, Amherst, MA 01004-0355 USA E-mail: resclove@amherst.edu World Wide Web: http://www.amherst.edu/~loka ** PLEASE NOTE THE LOKA INSTITUTE'S NEW PHONE & FAX NUMBERS ** Tel. +(413) 559-5860; Fax +(413) 559-5811 ***************************************************************** CONTENTS (1) Introduction................................... (12 lines) (2) "Better Approaches to Science Policy" (Loka Editorial in _Science_ magazine)...... (1-1/2 pages) (3) What You Can Do................................ (1 page) (4) About the Loka Institute....................... (7 lines) ***************************************************************** BETTER APPROACHES TO SCIENCE POLICY by Richard E. Sclove (1) INTRODUCTION The venue for the editorial that follows unusual: _Science_ magazine is the leading professional science journal published in the United States, and it publishes only one editorial per issue. I take the fact that _Science_ made the unusual decision to publish an editorial calling for more social responsiveness in science policymaking as a hopeful sign. A post-Cold War thaw may finally be starting in U.S. science and technology institutions. On the other hand, the thaw after a long freeze can produce a sulfurous swamp, lifeless hardpan, or a blooming meadow. After the editorial I list a few steps you can take right now to help get those flowers blooming! ***************************************************************** [The editorial that follows is reprinted with permission from _Science_ magazine, Volume 279, Number 5355, Issue of 27 February 1998, p. 1283. Copyright 1998 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science. Readers may view, browse, and/or download this material for temporary copying purposes only, provided these uses are for noncommercial personal purposes. Except as provided by law, this material may not be further reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, adapted, performed, displayed, published, or sold in whole or in part, without prior written permission from AAAS.] (2) BETTER APPROACHES TO SCIENCE POLICY, by Richard E. Sclove Who should sit at the table when science policy is being decided? Across the higher echelons of U.S. government, the long-standing norm is to invite scientific leaders, but no one else who will be affected or who might have an illuminating alternative perspective. For example, to help frame a year-long effort to develop a post-Cold War U.S. science policy, the House Science Committee on 23 October convened an elite group: the presidents of the National Academies of Science and Engineering, representatives from the Council on Competitiveness, leaders of the Sandia and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, the president of MIT, and so on. Notably absent were any representatives from the many grassroots, worker, and public-interest organizations concerned with science policy. There were no social scholars of science, no proponents of alternative science policies (from within the science community or without), and only a solitary science policy critic. This event's restricted roster was hardly anomalous. For example, in 1992 and 1993--when Democrats controlled Congress-- the House Science Committee organized 30 hearings on a comprehensive National Competitiveness Act. Among 120 invited witnesses, there was not one from an environmental, defense conversion, or labor organization commenting on a major piece of legislation with ecological, employment, and other social implications. In the Executive Branch, the composition of high-level science advisory panels--such as the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and the National Science Board--is similarly constricted. The problem with exclusively elite, insider approaches to science policy-making is that they fly in the face of inescapable realities: (i) All citizens support science through their tax dollars and experience the profound consequences of science, both good and bad. (ii) In a democracy, those who experience the consequences of an activity and those who pay for it ordinarily expect a voice in decisions. (iii) Scientific leaders have no monopoly on expertise, nor do they have a privileged ethical standpoint, for evaluating the social consequences of science and of science policies. (iv) Nonscientists already do contribute to science and science policy (for example, women's organizations have redirected medical research agendas to reduce gender biases). (v) Elite-only approaches are antithetical to the open, vigorous, and creative public debate on which democracy, policy-making, and science all thrive. (vi) There is a danger that public support for science will erode if other perspectives are excluded. (vii) With the Cold War concluded, it is time for science policy to welcome new voices and fresh ideas for addressing the social needs of the 21st century. There are proven methods that use broadened representation to inform and improve decisions. The Swedish government's Council for Planning and Coordination of Research includes a majority of nonscientists and is noted for promoting innovative interdisciplinary research programs. Japan, Germany, and other European nations have pioneered processes fostering collaboration between industrial engineers, university scientists, workers, and end-users in developing new technologies. Dutch universities advance social responsiveness via a decentralized national network of "science shops" that address questions posed directly by community and worker groups, public-interest organizations, and local governments. For a decade, the Danish government has appointed panels of everyday citizens to cross-examine a range of experts and stakeholders, to deliberate, and then to announce nonbinding science policy recommendations at a national press conference. A 1989 Danish citizens' panel on the Human Genome Project seconded expert support for basic genetics research, but called for more research on the interplay between environmental factors and genetic inheritance and on the social consequences of science, while influencing the Parliament to prohibit the use of genetic screening information in employment and insurance decisions. This carefully structured, participatory process is already being emulated in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and has undergone an independent pilot-scale demonstration in the United States. Experiences such as these can light the way toward U.S. science policies that are more socially responsive and responsible, more widely supported, and more consonant with the tradition of openness that is the true lifeblood of science and a healthy democracy. ______________ Richard E. Sclove is executive director of the Loka Institute, Amherst, MA, USA, and author of _Democracy and Technology_ (Guilford Press). E-mail: . For more information about the ideas and projects discussed in this editorial, visit the Loka Institute Web page: . ***************************************************************** (3) WHAT YOU CAN DO From World War II through the end of the Cold War, U.S. science and technology institutions were powerfully shaped by national security imperatives. In the aftermath of the Cold War, science and technology bureaucracies (e.g., universities, federal agencies, national laboratories, and corporations) have generally tried to remobilize for a new "war"--a war for strategic position in the global economy. But there are other choices. We could take advantage of the end of the Cold War to rebuild a science and technology infrastructure guided by broader and more humane social imperatives--such as social justice, democracy, environmental sustainability, high quality jobs, healthy communities, and a sane pace of life. You can contribute to the post-Cold War thaw, and press for more humane and socially responsive U.S. science and technology policies, by communicating your views to the Clinton Administration and to the U.S. Congress. There's a strateigc opportunity here, but nothing good will happen if you and I don't make an effort. Please send a short note supporting Loka's editorial, and adding your own views or recommendations, to one or all of the following forums. And pass this Alert around, inviting others to do the same. (If you visit the Loka Institute's homepage at you will find all of the following suggestions, along with hot links to make the steps easier for you): A. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, has asked the House Science Committee to propose a post-Cold War U.S. science policy. Visit the Web page for this process at: http://www.house.gov/science/science_policy_study.htm and leave a comment there. Committee staff tell us that your comment will have more impact if it is polite, substantive, specific, and succinct (ideally no more than one page long; two pages maximum). Staff will ask you for follow-up information if they are interested. (If you are a U.S. citizen, you might increase your odds of being taken seriously if you send a copy of your message to your own Congressman. You can locate your Congressman via the Web at .) B. President Clinton has just announced proposed changes in his top science policy advisors and administrators. E-mail your comments on U.S. science policy to outgoing Presidential Science Advisor, Dr. John Gibbons ; to newly nominated Presidential Science Advisor, Dr. Neal Lane ; and to the newly nominated director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Dr. Rita Colwell . (We would be grateful if you would also e-mail a copy of your comments to us at the Loka Institute: .) If you are writing before March 13, you might mention your concern that Vice President Gore (and possibly President Clinton) is scheduled to participate in a March 13th "National Summit" on Innovation, organized at MIT by the Council on Competitivenss (COC); the attendees of this event--which is closed to the public, but open to the COC's corporate and university executives--will "vote" their preferences on U.S. R&D policy. (For info about the COC, go to on the Web.) C. If you want to discuss the democratization of U.S. science and technology policy with others, subscribe to FASTnet (the listserv of the Federation of Activists on Science & Technology Network), and post your comments there. To subscribe, send an E-mail message to with a blank subject line and the message: subscribe FASTnet ***************************************************************** (4) ABOUT THE LOKA INSTITUTE The Loka Institute is a tax-exempt nonprofit organization dedicated to making science and technology responsive to democratically decided social and environmental concerns. TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE LOKA INSTITUTE, to participate in our on-line discussion groups, to order publications, to apply as a volunteer of intern, or to help us financially, visit our Web page: . Or contact us via E-mail at . ### ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 05:35:26 EST Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: ARCHIVE1 Subject: Wtr: Belastungsmatrix:NO FUTURE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_889094126_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_889094126_boundary Content-ID: <0_889094126@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII --part0_889094126_boundary Content-ID: <0_889094126@inet_out.mail.aol.com.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from rly-za04.mail.aol.com (rly-za04.mail.aol.com [172.31.36.100]) by air-za01.mail.aol.com (v40.2) with SMTP; Thu, 05 Mar 1998 04:56:34 -0500 Received: from mail2.ipf.de (mail.ipf.de [195.211.211.22]) by rly-za04.mail.aol.com (8.8.5/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with ESMTP id EAA16307 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 04:56:33 -0500 (EST) Received: from PARITAET.ORG ([195.88.82.35]) by mail2.ipf.de (Netscape Mail Server v2.02) with ESMTP id AAA10615; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 10:56:30 +0100 Received: from PWV/SpoolDir by PARITAET.ORG (Mercury 1.40); 5 Mar 98 10:58:40 MEZ Received: from SpoolDir by PWV (Mercury 1.21); 5 Mar 98 10:58:25 MEZ From: ARCHIVE1 To: "graffiti" Subject: Belastungsmatrix:NO FUTURE Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 04:55:07 EST Errors-to: Reply-to: "graffiti" Sender: ECHO@paritaet.org X-listname: X-Mailer: AOL 3.0.i for Windows sub 74 (via Mercury MTS v1.21) Message-ID: <8E5436366C@PARITAET.ORG> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Im Folgenden eine Auflistung der (belastenden)Schwerpunkte und Besonderheiten,durch die ein =DCber-Leben in der Welt erschwert wird. Das Material wurde entnommen und konzentriert aus den 2(bisher ver=F6ffentlichten)Teilen des VOCABULARY OF GRAFFITI-RESEARCH(sowie Ausz=FCgen aus dem(in Bearbeitung)T= eil 3). STICHWORTE(English): inimical territory,poverty,lack,unsatisfied needs,housing,hopelessness,unwantedness,aggression,hate,abuse(verbal,phys= ical) ,no facilitation,bad schooling,bad education,nutritional lacks,parental instability,no chances,no transportation,ghetto-life,insecurity,no guidance,overchallenge/underfeed, psycho-social depivation,no opportunities,spatial needs,invisible prison,,insecurity,helplessness,continual minimal traumatisation,,revenge,identificational lacks,broken homes,rapid changes,acceleration,inhibited adaption,coping lacks,no dreams,premature adulthood,no playgrounds,,children=3Dnuisances,bad health,lack in care,rejection,,denials,incapacitation,no pets,anaclitic depression,traumatisation,packing,environment,violence,xenophobia,ambival= ences ,boredom,frustration,self-estrangement,siciopathies,a-socialisation,psych= o- toxidity,mobbing,hostility,disintegration,splitting processes(fragmentation),arbitraryness,restlessness,no leisure,agitetedness,haste,no rutuals,damages,censorship,desperation,viol= ent homes,losers,lack in orientation,refuge(lack)sesnsation seeking,danger- craving,troubles,unresponsiveness,lifetime-wasting management,wearout,anonymisation,breakdown,,bureaucracy,,complexity,confl= icts, deviance,discrimination,disintegration,drugs,discontent,disinformation,no empathy,envy,escalation,fears,no future,herding people,horror,incompetence,illegal legality etc./vice/versa,insecurity,intimidation,insults,irritation,losses,margina= lity, monotony,nightmares,overregulation,persecution,prejudices,racism,passivis= ation ,peacelessness,rat-race,repression,sabotage,segregation,social idiocy,unstructuredness,surpluslives,survival,uncannyness,monopolies,welf= are,z ombieasation,slander,blackmail,suppression A.Thiel Kassel --part0_889094126_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 19:03:42 +0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Basuki X-To: MR JON J BENNETT In-Reply-To: <199802221027.RAA04968@uicsgtw.cs.ui.ac.id> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Jon and all here, Help me to stop for subscribe to this list group. I want to move to seeking Hospital Social work. As researcher I want to start to digging material for new topic as hospital social work. Thank you for your help. Basuki. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:20:54 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: News from Nowhere MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Comments? ---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------------- STAR WISDOM Exploring Contact with the Cosmos A Native American/Western Science Conference and Dialogueon Extraordinary Experiences Co-Sponsored by the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER) and the Interface Foundation May 8-9, 1998 Interface Newton, Massachusetts (Boston) Featuring: John Mack, M.D., Harvard psychiatrist and author of Abduction Sequoyah Trueblood, Choctaw Native elder Edgar Mitchell, D.Sc., Apollo astronaut and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences Dhyani Ywahoo, Cherokee chief and Tibetan Buddhist leader Rudy Schild, Ph.D., Astrophysicist and cosmologist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Experiencers, individuals from Western culture who describe experiences with non-human intelligences This fascinating and unique conference brings together the scientific and clinical communities with Native Americans who describe contact with "star people" and Westerners who describe "alien abduction" experiences. For countless generations, Native Americans and other indigenous people around the world have described contact with other intelligences in the cosmos, often calling them "star people." The Lakota Sioux refer to the Pleiades star system as their original home. These peoples have accepted such relationships as a natural part of their worldview, a worldview that easily accommodates inter-dimensional experience as a part of everyday reality. In stark contrast, Western science, even at its most progressive, has taken a very cautious and skeptical stance toward the existence of other intelligent beings. Scientists have exhibited great reluctance to accept the notion that other intelligent beings-in this universe, in other dimensions, or in realms not yet understood-may be in relationship with humans. They have resisted the possibility that there are valid ways of knowing and understanding the universe distinct from the currently prevalent scientific paradigm. Recently, Native Americans have begun to share their knowledge and experiences of the "star people." Many credit their willingness to reveal these secrets, in part, to the work of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, whose pioneering and courageous look at so-called "alien abduction" experiences created dramatic ripples in the mainstream scientific community. And there are a few broad-minded scientists, especially those engaged in quantum physics, who are beginning to consider alternate explanations for extraordinary experiences and have been openly inquiring into such phenomena. Together, we will explore the nature and meaning of these experiences. Regardless of the ultimate explanation, it is vital to examine these unusual phenomena and consider their implications. Join us as we explore the known and the unknown, listen to stories of "star people" and "alien abduction" experiences, and ask profound questions. This conference is for those who are just curious, those who are intelligently informed, and those who are deeply involved. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:41:21 -0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Kevin Johansen Subject: Comments on News from Nowhere X-cc: "NJLEVITT@IDT.NET" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mr. Levitt, Aliens, huh? In ages past, shamans told stories around the campfire of the Demons and = Gods who danced in the shadows at the edge of the darkness. With = technology we have made our campfires much brighter, and have pushed the = edge of darkness much father away. Off of the planet entirely, it = seems. =20 Cheers, Kevin _______________________________________________________________ Kevin Johansen Voice 800-789-0145 CEO, 4WORK, Inc. - and 303-741-9701 http://www.4work.com Fax 303-741-9702 "No one has the right to sit around and feel sorry for=20 themselves. There's too much work to do." - Dorothy Day _______________________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: Norman Levitt [SMTP:njlevitt@IDT.NET] Sent: Friday, March 06, 1998 2:21 PM To: SCIENCE-AS-CULTURE@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU Subject: News from Nowhere Comments? ---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------------- STAR WISDOM Exploring Contact with the Cosmos A Native American/Western Science Conference and Dialogueon = Extraordinary Experiences Co-Sponsored by the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER) and the Interface Foundation May 8-9, 1998 Interface Newton, Massachusetts (Boston) Featuring: John Mack, M.D., Harvard psychiatrist and author of Abduction Sequoyah Trueblood, Choctaw Native elder Edgar Mitchell, D.Sc., Apollo astronaut and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences Dhyani Ywahoo, Cherokee chief and Tibetan Buddhist leader Rudy Schild, Ph.D., Astrophysicist and cosmologist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Experiencers, individuals from Western culture who describe experiences with non-human intelligences This fascinating and unique conference brings together the scientific = and clinical communities with Native Americans who describe contact with = "star people" and Westerners who describe "alien abduction" experiences. For countless generations, Native Americans and other indigenous people around the world have described contact with other intelligences in the cosmos, often calling them "star people." The Lakota Sioux refer to the Pleiades star system as their original home. These peoples have accepted such relationships as a natural part of their worldview, a worldview that easily accommodates inter-dimensional experience as a part of everyday reality. In stark contrast, Western science, even at its most progressive, has taken a very cautious and skeptical stance toward the existence of other intelligent beings. Scientists have exhibited great reluctance to accept the notion that other intelligent beings-in this universe, in other dimensions, or in realms not yet understood-may be in relationship with humans. They have resisted the possibility that there are valid ways of knowing and understanding the universe distinct from the currently prevalent scientific paradigm. Recently, Native Americans have begun to share their knowledge and experiences of the "star people." Many credit their willingness to = reveal these secrets, in part, to the work of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, whose pioneering and courageous look at so-called "alien abduction" = experiences created dramatic ripples in the mainstream scientific community. And = there are a few broad-minded scientists, especially those engaged in quantum physics, who are beginning to consider alternate explanations for extraordinary experiences and have been openly inquiring into such phenomena. Together, we will explore the nature and meaning of these experiences. Regardless of the ultimate explanation, it is vital to examine these unusual phenomena and consider their implications. Join us as we explore the known and the unknown, listen to stories of "star people" and "alien abduction" experiences, and ask profound questions. This conference is for those who are just curious, those who are = intelligently informed, and those who are deeply involved. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 23:44:05 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@Scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Mack MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I think the description of Mack as a pioneer is interesting - I could think of many more suitable terms also beginning with "p". The background info on Mack from Sagan's The Demon-Haunted Worlsd is quite enlightening: (p.143) John Mack is a Harvard University psychiatrist whom I've known for many years. 'Is there anything to this UFO business?' he asked me long ago. 'Not much', I replied. 'Except of course on the psychiatric side.' He looked into it, interviewd abductees, and was converted. He now accepts the accounts of abductees at face value. Why? 'I wasn't looking for this,' he says. 'There's nothing in my background that prepared me' for the alien abduction story. ' It's completely persuasive because of the emotional power of these experiences.' In his book _Abductions_, Mack explicitly proposes the very dangerous doctrine that 'the power or intensity with which something is felt' is a guide to whether it is true. ==== >From my point of view the most interesting aspect of the alien abduction stories is that they always fail to describe anything remotely alien at all. The creatures are always humanoid and behave in very human-like ways. Regards Ian ******************************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 ******************************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/index.html Mental Health Metasearch http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/metasearch.html InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html ******************************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 19:01:31 -0500 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Comments on News from Nowhere MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kevin Johansen wrote: > > Mr. Levitt, > > Aliens, huh? > > In ages past, shamans told stories around the campfire of the Demons and = > Gods who danced in the shadows at the edge of the darkness. With = > technology we have made our campfires much brighter, and have pushed the = > edge of darkness much father away. Off of the planet entirely, it = > seems. =20 [snip] How can a person who has a genuinely scientific (i.e., critical) spirit reject out of hand anyone's claim to have experienced something, especially when that claim comes with some at least not patently fabricated evidence of "strange things" (again, I recommend the film about Australian aboriginals and liberal Westerners: "The Last Wave")? Perhaps these persons' interpretation of their experience is "wrong" and their "strange encounters" can be reduced to trite "realities". But we cannot even begin to assess this in at least some cases until we try to understand these persons' life as they experience it (*if* they will let us do this act which is invasive no matter how nobly meant!). The image of *light*, like all metaphors has its limits. The brighter we make the light, the less we can see of the starry heavens. The louder people scream (or just pressure us with dead-lines), the less we can detect the subtle details which may be indicative of important things to come, or even just the hopes and fears of fragile human persons (a person's faint moan of pain amidst the clamour of an invading tank column...).... Far be it from me to say "there is no G-d", although, at this point, I rather doubt there is such. But if G-d speaks to me (or even smites me), I'll both consider the possibility that I am hallucinating, and *also* that something else might be going on. Sometimes it is darkness that reveals things -- even the light.... Reason consists in debunking bunk, not in debasing what is of value. \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net (914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 19:20:12 -0500 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Mack (extraterrestrial marketing strategy...) X-To: Ian.Pitchford@Scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > [snip] > >From my point of view the most interesting aspect of the alien > abduction stories is that they always fail to describe anything > remotely alien at all. The creatures are always humanoid and behave > in very human-like ways. [snip] There may be a rather obvious explanation for this, which should be self-evident in a free market economy and in a democracy. If you want to gain market share, or popular support for your agenda, if you want to acquire customers or supporters, the best way is to *appeal* to them: to make them *want* your product or to further your agenda. (This is, of course, more generally applicable, e.g., to the transmission of wisdom.) So if the aliens *want* to interact with us, what does one expect them to do? To make themselves as weirdly off-putting as possible? So the similarlity of aliens to us certainly can be a function of our psychological projection (etc.), but it *could* also be the result of psychological savvy on the part of the aliens. ("When in Rome do as the Romans do", etc.). If you are going to communicate with me, you will have to speak my language (or, to be "spacy" about it: you will have to conform yourself to my conditions of possible experience).... \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net (914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 17:36:40 -0700 Reply-To: kwj@4work.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Kevin Johansen Organization: 4Work Subject: Re: Comments on News from Nowhere X-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Mr. McCormick, The letters behind my name are 'CEO', not Ph.D. Because of this, I must use different evaluative mechanisms than an academic. And because of this, I often get a different answer to the question asked. I realize that it is a quantum universe, and thus a probablistic one, and thus that all things are possible, if not probable. I also realize that to create a foundation for progress, or even simple communication, we must have shared values. The values of the NA/WS Conference were discarded by the larger culture decades ago as unworkable, lacking in utility, detached from reality, and/or simply lacking in relevance. The world moved, and they did not move with them. Consequently, from my rationalist, bottom line perspective (Which I wear special for this post - an uncomfortable fit, at best.), the greater values of this conference will be anthropological and psychological, not scienctific or sociologic. This, of course, doesn't mean that we can't have fun talking about them. Cheers, Kevin Johansen CEO, 4WORK, Inc. http://www.4work.com Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: > Kevin Johansen wrote: > > > > Mr. Levitt, > > > > Aliens, huh? > > > > In ages past, shamans told stories around the campfire of the Demons and = > > Gods who danced in the shadows at the edge of the darkness. With = > > technology we have made our campfires much brighter, and have pushed the = > > edge of darkness much father away. Off of the planet entirely, it = > > seems. =20 > [snip] > > How can a person who has a genuinely scientific (i.e., critical) > spirit reject out of hand anyone's claim to have experienced something, > especially when that claim comes with some at least not patently > fabricated evidence of "strange things" (again, I recommend the film > about Australian aboriginals and liberal Westerners: "The Last Wave")? > > Perhaps these persons' interpretation of their experience is > "wrong" and their "strange encounters" can be reduced to trite > "realities". But we cannot even begin to assess this in at > least some cases until we try to understand these persons' life as > they experience it (*if* they will let us do this act which is > invasive no matter how nobly meant!). > > The image of *light*, like all metaphors has its limits. The brighter > we make the light, the less we can see of the starry heavens. > The louder people scream (or just pressure us with dead-lines), > the less we can detect the subtle details which may be indicative > of important things to come, or even just the hopes and fears > of fragile human persons (a person's faint moan of pain amidst the > clamour of an invading tank column...).... > > Far be it from me to say "there is no G-d", although, at this point, > I rather doubt there is such. But if G-d speaks to me (or even > smites me), I'll both consider the possibility that I am > hallucinating, and *also* that something else might be going on. > > Sometimes it is darkness that reveals things -- even the light.... > > Reason consists in debunking bunk, not in debasing what is of value. > > \brad mccormick > > -- > Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but > Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. > > Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net > (914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA > ------------------------------------------------------- > Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 17:43:36 -0700 Reply-To: kwj@4work.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Kevin Johansen Organization: 4Work Subject: [Fwd: Comments on News from Nowhere] X-To: BRADMCC@CLOUD9.NET MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Hi Mr. McCormick, > > The letters behind my name are 'CEO', not Ph.D. Because of this, I must use > different evaluative mechanisms than an academic. And because of this, I often > get a different answer to the question asked. I realize that it is a quantum > universe, and thus a probablistic one, and thus that all things are possible, if > not probable. I also realize that to create a foundation for progress, or even > simple communication, we must have shared values. > > The values of the NA/WS Conference were discarded by the larger culture decades > ago as unworkable, lacking in utility, detached from reality, and/or simply > lacking in relevance. The world moved, and they did not move with them. > Consequently, from my rationalist, bottom line perspective (Which I wear special > for this post - an uncomfortable fit, at best.), the greater values of this > conference will be anthropological and psychological, not scienctific or > sociologic. > > This, of course, doesn't mean that we can't have fun talking about them. > > Cheers, > Kevin Johansen > CEO, 4WORK, Inc. > http://www.4work.com > > Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: > > > Kevin Johansen wrote: > > > > > > Mr. Levitt, > > > > > > Aliens, huh? > > > > > > In ages past, shamans told stories around the campfire of the Demons and = > > > Gods who danced in the shadows at the edge of the darkness. With = > > > technology we have made our campfires much brighter, and have pushed the = > > > edge of darkness much father away. Off of the planet entirely, it = > > > seems. =20 > > [snip] > > > > How can a person who has a genuinely scientific (i.e., critical) > > spirit reject out of hand anyone's claim to have experienced something, > > especially when that claim comes with some at least not patently > > fabricated evidence of "strange things" (again, I recommend the film > > about Australian aboriginals and liberal Westerners: "The Last Wave")? > > > > Perhaps these persons' interpretation of their experience is > > "wrong" and their "strange encounters" can be reduced to trite > > "realities". But we cannot even begin to assess this in at > > least some cases until we try to understand these persons' life as > > they experience it (*if* they will let us do this act which is > > invasive no matter how nobly meant!). > > > > The image of *light*, like all metaphors has its limits. The brighter > > we make the light, the less we can see of the starry heavens. > > The louder people scream (or just pressure us with dead-lines), > > the less we can detect the subtle details which may be indicative > > of important things to come, or even just the hopes and fears > > of fragile human persons (a person's faint moan of pain amidst the > > clamour of an invading tank column...).... > > > > Far be it from me to say "there is no G-d", although, at this point, > > I rather doubt there is such. But if G-d speaks to me (or even > > smites me), I'll both consider the possibility that I am > > hallucinating, and *also* that something else might be going on. > > > > Sometimes it is darkness that reveals things -- even the light.... > > > > Reason consists in debunking bunk, not in debasing what is of value. > > > > \brad mccormick > > > > -- > > Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but > > Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. > > > > Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net > > (914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA > > ------------------------------------------------------- > > Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 18:18:02 +0000 Reply-To: Jose Morales Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Jose Morales Subject: Re: News from Nowhere MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-Ascii" Makes me want to throw up!! Norman Levitt wrote: >Comments? >---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------------- > >STAR WISDOM > >Exploring Contact with the Cosmos >A Native American/Western Science Conference and Dialogueon Extraordinary >Experiences > >Co-Sponsored by the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER) >and >the Interface Foundation > >May 8-9, 1998 >Interface >Newton, Massachusetts (Boston) > >Featuring: >John Mack, M.D., Harvard psychiatrist and author of Abduction >Sequoyah Trueblood, Choctaw Native elder >Edgar Mitchell, D.Sc., Apollo astronaut and founder of the Institute of >Noetic Sciences >Dhyani Ywahoo, Cherokee chief and Tibetan Buddhist leader >Rudy Schild, Ph.D., Astrophysicist and cosmologist at the >Harvard-Smithsonian >Center for Astrophysics >Experiencers, individuals from Western culture who describe experiences >with >non-human intelligences > > >This fascinating and unique conference brings together the scientific and >clinical communities with Native Americans who describe contact with "star >people" and Westerners who describe "alien abduction" experiences. > > For countless generations, Native Americans and other indigenous people >around the world have described contact with other intelligences in the >cosmos, often calling them "star people." The Lakota Sioux refer to the >Pleiades star system as their original home. These peoples have accepted >such >relationships as a natural part of their worldview, a worldview that >easily >accommodates inter-dimensional experience as a part of everyday reality. > > In stark contrast, Western science, even at its most progressive, has >taken >a very cautious and skeptical stance toward the existence of other >intelligent beings. Scientists have exhibited great reluctance to accept >the >notion that other intelligent beings-in this universe, in other >dimensions, >or in realms not yet understood-may be in relationship with humans. They >have >resisted the possibility that there are valid ways of knowing and >understanding the universe distinct from the currently prevalent >scientific >paradigm. > > Recently, Native Americans have begun to share their knowledge and >experiences of the "star people." Many credit their willingness to reveal >these secrets, in part, to the work of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, >whose >pioneering and courageous look at so-called "alien abduction" experiences >created dramatic ripples in the mainstream scientific community. And there >are a few broad-minded scientists, especially those engaged in quantum >physics, who are beginning to consider alternate explanations for >extraordinary experiences and have been openly inquiring into such >phenomena. > > Together, we will explore the nature and meaning of these experiences. >Regardless of the ultimate explanation, it is vital to examine these >unusual >phenomena and consider their implications. > >Join us as we explore the known and the unknown, listen to stories of >"star >people" and "alien abduction" experiences, and ask profound questions. >This >conference is for those who are just curious, those who are intelligently >informed, and those who are deeply involved. > >RFC822 header >----------------------------------- > >Received: from itssrv1.ucsf.edu (128.218.95.22) by rorl.ucsf.EDU with > ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 1.1.2); Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:37:03 -0700 >Received: from ITSSRV1 (itssrv1.ucsf.EDU [128.218.95.22]) > by itssrv1.ucsf.edu (8.8.5/CDR8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA36660; > Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:31:18 -0800 >Message-Id: <199803062131.NAA36660@itssrv1.ucsf.edu> >Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:20:54 -0500 >Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture > >Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture > >From: Norman Levitt >Subject: News from Nowhere >To: SCIENCE-AS-CULTURE@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 00:51:17 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: MR JON J BENNETT Subject: VIEW FROM NOWHERE Wasn't it Carl Jung who first predicted this phenomenon-of belief in ET's, as a psychological experience. And isn't this also related to Toynbee's notion of "futurism", that tends to appear in eras of social\cultural disintegration. Jon ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 22:40:51 -0800 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Michael Gregory, NEXA/H-NEXA" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii" Ian Pritchford says, > >From my point of view the most interesting aspect of the alien abduction stories is that they always fail to describe anything remotely alien at all. The creatures are always humanoid and behave in very human-like ways. Regards Ian << Yes, and that's the scary part. Michael Gregory H-NEXA ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 03:26:46 EST Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: ARCHIVE1 Subject: Alien Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit A commept to M.Geregory`s posting: The picture of ALIEN is a archetypal image of DEATH as the being being able to take you away.... When old ladies tell you their fears of being alone at some solitary place and somthing could happen to them you might wonder how come such old gals having phantasies of rape. They don`t. The rapist here would be death in a cloak of a normal person killing them.We often smile about their fears because we don`t (want to)listen to their fears that are very natural the elder yuo get the closer the"grey person"(also color depicting end of life...)might be waiting for you. The 3 alien films are the best psychological images to my knowledge and that this"monster"is coming out of chest/belly region(solar plexus)where we experience fearst most is brilliant. Especiall Alien 4,with science trying to tame"nature"not working is worth seeing. Alien also being a disguised question how will we come with our final questions:how to live a life BEFORE death.. so we may be able to pass on quietly Axel Thiel(coordination) int.work-group on graffiti-research http://www.graffiti.org/axel/index.html ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 05:14:50 -0500 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: aliens among us MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Michael Gregory, NEXA/H-NEXA wrote: > > Ian Pritchford says, > > > > > >From my point of view the most interesting aspect of the alien > > abduction stories is that they always fail to describe anything > > remotely alien at all. The creatures are always humanoid and behave > > in very human-like ways. > > Regards > > Ian << > > Yes, and that's the scary part. > > > > Michael Gregory > > H-NEXA As Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and he is us." Or Heidegger, glossing Sophocles' "Ode to Man" from _Antigone_: The strangest of all the strange things in the world is man, and the strangest thing of all about this strangest of all things is that man finds everything strange except for himself. \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net (914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 05:20:35 -0500 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: VIEW FROM NOWHERE (and from the transcendental ego) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit MR JON J BENNETT wrote: > > Wasn't it Carl Jung who first predicted this phenomenon-of belief in > ET's, as a psychological experience. And isn't this also related to > Toynbee's notion of "futurism", that tends to appear in eras of > social\cultural disintegration. > > Jon Well, Jung was rather "spacey", wasn't he? Or is mainly that his followers are? But, if the latter, then what in the former made the latter possible? On the subject of demythification, consider the following excerpt from an address by J. Robert Oppenheimer to a 1965 UNESCO gathering honoring Einstein on the 50th anniversary of the general theory of relativity: "I thought it might be useful, because I am sure that it is not too soon---and for our generation perhaps almost too late---to start to dispel the clouds of myth and see the great mountain peak that these clouds hide. As always, the myth has its charms; but the truth is far more beautiful." (SCIENCE, 16 May 1980, p. 698) (What does this have to do with Jung? *We* can go beyond "archetypes", to the Kantian/Husserlean notion of constitutive syntheses of the productive imagination) \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net (914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 05:30:51 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: lynda birke <100041.1747@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Alien MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I am normally a passive reader of this list....but I was infuriated by Axel Thiel's posting. It is is sexist and ageist. There are perfectly legitimate fears of rape on the part of ANY woman, no matter what her age. To smile indulgently at "old women" and their fears of rape, and to assume that it is merely "death" whom they fear is patronising rubbish. Lynda Birke ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 10:59:07 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@Scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Mack and the conjunction fallacy In-Reply-To: <350092BC.1158@cloud9.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: So the similarity of aliens to us certainly can be a function of our psychological projection (etc.), but it *could* also be the result of psychological savvy on the part of the aliens. ("When in Rome do as the Romans do", etc.). ======= REPLY: Try this one for comparison: "Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. - Please rank the following statements by their probability, using 1 for the most probable and 8 for the least probable (a) Linda is a teacher in elementary school (b) Linda works in a book store and takes Yoga classes (c) Linda is active in the feminist movement (d) Linda is a psychiatric social worker (e) Linda is a member of the League of Women voters. (f) Linda is a bank teller (g) Linda is an insurance sales person (h) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement In a group of naive subjects with no background in probability and statistics, 89% judged that statement (h) was more probable than statement (f). When the same question was presented to statistically sophisticated subjects - graduate students in the decision science program of the Stanford Business School - 85% made the same judgment! Results of this sort, in which subjects judge that a compound event or state of affairs is more probable than one of the components of a compound, have found repeatedly since Kahneman and Tversky's pioneering studies." (Samuels, Stich and Tremoulet, unpublished) Now try this one: (a) aliens visit the earth (b) humanoid aliens visit the earth (c) humanoid aliens visit the earth and abduct people (d) humanoid aliens visit the earth, abduct people, and have sex with them. Your basic argument is that a simple improbable statement becomes more credible by the addition of succesively more incredible ingredients. If list members are interested in scholarship emerging from Harvard, then I would advise them to ignore Mack and _Abductions_ and instead turn to the new work by former Harvard literature professor Thomas Richards _Star Trek: In Myth and Legend". This explains how Star Trek became the most syndicated TV show in history by using story lines based an ancient themes in mythology and scripture. It should appeal to anyone interested in hermeneutics. Best wishes Ian ******************************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 ******************************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/index.html Mental Health Metasearch http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/metasearch.html InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html ******************************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 06:46:37 EST Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: ARCHIVE1 Subject: alien Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit a partial reply to L.Birke`s posting: One part of alien-problems is it is a theme that riases deepseated emotions and agitations as well as ambivalences when translations of the"psychological images"is being done. The joke in that context would be: When finger pointing to the moon fool looking at finger. This cannot be helped and is a fundemantel happening you find often in such contexts of controversial character. Whenever some problem ist being discussed one will stand up and state- correctly-but I don`t have(have another)problem. Normally discussions don`t get very far(and deep)if working along these lines. To repeat: ALIEN is a pschological image of DEATH we all are afraid of and would prefer not coming next to us. In what disguise even:rape,accident,drugs etc. A.Thiel Germany ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 08:10:22 -0500 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: News from Nowhere (lost in space...) X-To: Jose Morales MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jose Morales wrote: > > Makes me want to throw up!! > Norman Levitt wrote: > >Comments? > >---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------------- > > > >STAR WISDOM > > > >Exploring Contact with the Cosmos > >A Native American/Western Science Conference and Dialogueon > Extraordinary > >Experiences [snip] *I'm* a bit *confused*. I had been developing the hypothesis (transcendental synthesis of immediate data into an object) that Prof. Levitt was a kind of "hard-headed" (in William James terminology...) scientist (esp.: mathematician), and I seem to recall Ian Pitchford having somewhat obstreperously mocked some postmodernist professor (Aronson?) at New York University. I can integrate Pitchford's posting announcements for "leftish/[whatever]" things as part of my constitution of him as a web site administrator (whose job would include posting things he didn't believe in), but I must wonder if there are two Norm Levitts, or if, perhaps, there is a bit of irony afoot here. Who believes / stands for what here? (It's a tad off the mark here, but I can't resist quoting #6, from "The Prisoner" TV series: "Which side are you on?" And: "Who are the prisoners and who are the warders?".... ("That would be telling") \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net (914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 09:02:42 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Re: News from Nowhere (lost in space...) In-Reply-To: <199803071315.IAA23691@u3.farm.idt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > >Comments? > > I had been developing the > hypothesis (transcendental synthesis > of immediate data into an object) > that Prof. Levitt was a kind of "hard-headed" (in William James > terminology...) scientist (esp.: mathematician), > and I seem to recall Ian Pitchford > having somewhat obstreperously mocked > some postmodernist professor (Aronson?) at New York > University. > > I can integrate Pitchford's posting announcements > for "leftish/[whatever]" things as part of my constitution of him > as a web site administrator (whose job would include > posting things he didn't believe in), but I must wonder > if there are two Norm Levitts, or if, perhaps, there is > a bit of irony afoot here. There is, so far as I am aware, but one Norm Levitt--and that's more than enough for suffering humanity to endure. My own position on Mack & Co.--if that wasn't already clear--is that the only interesting question raised is the adequacy of our taxonomy in distinguishing fools from knaves. For further insight into the UFO-Alien Abduction question, I refer readers to the episode of "South Park" that aired this past Wednesday. Norm Levitt ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 17:17:34 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Richard Hull, CRIC Research Fellow" Organization: Centre for Research in Innovation & Competition, Manchester Subject: New Web Site on Innovation and Competition MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Apologies for cross-posting. The Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition is a new long-term research centre funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. Within the broad remit of casting new light on the connections between innovation and competitive environments, we are conducting a wide variety of projects within the four themes of (1) New models of competition and their relationship to innovation and public policy; (2) Innovation in Services; (3) New forms of organisation and their relation to innovation and competition; and (4)The comparative context of innovation and competition. Details of the current projects, and of much other useful material, can be found at our new web-site at: http://les.man.ac.uk/cric/ The Web Site includes a list of publications, seminars/workshops/conferences, relevant journals, numerous links to other Centres and web resources, and an Innovation-Competition email distribution list Please remember to visit our on-line GuestBook! CRIC has a Working Paper and Discussion Paper series, and new items will soon be available in downloadable pdf-format. Current items in the Paper Series may be obtainable by post or email - please contact the Administrator, Sharon Hammond at: Sharon.Hammond@man.ac.uk For further details of the Web Site, for instance to suggest additions to the Links, please contact the Webmaster, Birgitte Andersen, at: Birgitte.Andersen@man.ac.uk Regards, Richard ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 08:14:05 EST Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: ARCHIVE1 Subject: ALIEN(follow-up) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit KEYWORD.alien SYNONYMA:stranger,foreigner,fears,projection,unconscious,horror,Zombie,angst,u ncanny,darkness,,facelessness,anonymity,boredom,devil,destruction,death,dragon ,archetypes, PSYCHOLOGICAL RELATIONS:inside/outside LEVELS:society,personal life,psychology TRANSLATIONAL PROBLEMS:mixing up psychologcal images with outside realities=transference/counter-transferece EXAMPLE: One everyday example of a psychological image visualized in many stories and(then translated into films)is the ZOMBIE. According Zombies are un-dead(biologically impossible)bus psychologically perfectly true=severely narcisstically deprived personalities that walk about like"psychological"black holes""you cannot"satisfy"and are full of hate and-if permitted-do to others(revenge-principle)what has been done,they belong to a cohort os PSYCHO-SOCIOLOGICALLY ABORTED persons(unwanted children). Their`s is a very specific(Rene Spitz was first to notice)quality;PSYCHO- TOXIC.If you ever worked with a severely damaged(narcistically)person you`ll know what I`m writing about. Such psycho-socially aborted persons feel"dead on the inside"and they need most extreme "kicks"to be able to feel"alife"and we know of adolescents that killed telling-when asked-they wanted to"feel something at all". Such IMAGES also being"disguised"pictures of death (in the very end...)as it sometimes is coming slowly.Like each parting being a preparation of our final parting when we die.... BNy the way:OUTSIDE walls being the projection screens societies use to have certain(unwanted)themes still being discussed.....a"mirroring"function being also related to archetypal figures of"trickster"(joker"in many countries. A.Thiel(coordination) int.work-group on graffiti-research http://www.graffiti.org/axel/index.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 15:36:52 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Rudi Borth Subject: Re: Response to Ted Winslow X-cc: Ted Winslow MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On 25 Feb 1998, Ted Winslow posted refutations of some of the theses I posted on 23 Feb. under this subject. (Am I to believe that everybody else agreed with the theses? At least, nobody else had anything to say about them...) It is now time to show why I find the refutations unconvincing. Ted Winslow writes: > Your answers contain the same contradiction I pointed to in the > claims of Weinberg and Wilson. Thanks for putting me in such distinguished company. It makes me feel good. > You assume the possibility of an activity, "science", which, as > you describe it, necessarily involves self-determination. How > else could the subjects of this activity, scientists, "falsify" > and "improve" their theories? This could be claimed for most activities. However, self-determination is _not_ implied by the fact that human (and other animals') survival kit includes very complex (and incompletely understood) brain functions for evaluating and reacting to the situations encountered, where 'situation' is meant to include, of course, experiences, memory, skills, opinions etc. in addition to the environment reflected by the most recent sensory input. > At the same time, you insist that science demonstrates that there > is no self-determination, that "the human experience of one's > mind and consciousness ... is part of the deterministic world," > that "free will is an illusion" (though you also claim that there > are "observers" who can escape this illusion and know the truth, > i.e. that there are observers self-determined to the degree > required to know that there is no self-determination). Except for our own pre-reflective intuition that we decide and act 'freely' all the time, there are no hints--and certainly no pieces of evidence provided by the methods of science--pointing to self-determination in the usual sense of 'being able to act otherwise than we actually do'. Nobody escapes that intuition (the illusion may be an important part of the survival kit); but from the observers' vantage point the causal network is often more easily seen than by someone involved in a particular situation and busy trying to survive or at least to improve his lot. [For 'his' read 'his/her'. Some languages have political limitations.] > Your statement at the beginning that "theories are the product of > necessity," by which I take it you mean to suggest that the > activity of science can be coherently explained without recourse > to any concept of self-determination, plays on ambiguity in the > meaning of the word "necessity". This point can be made only by ignoring the brief question which my brief statement was meant to answer. > Truth compels in a way different from the law of gravity. Both truth and laws of nature require evidence to be compelling. > To begin with, it only compels those who are to the requisite degree > self-determined, i.e. _rational_. "...self-determined, i.e. _rational_"?? If this equality is a serious claim, its truth would make Ted Winslow's statements self-refuting. In short, the contradiction construed and claimed by Ted Winslow does not exist--neither in the real world of which we and our thoughts are part, nor in the abstractions we derive from it in our thoughts. Greetings! Rudi Borth ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 17:01:58 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Latour on Ramses II (part 1) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Norm: I have a problem and I need your help. I don't know if I am going crazy or what. During this semester that I am spending in Paris, I decided to read work by some distinguished French thinkers, and one of my very first readings has been an article by Bruno Latour, in the French magazine "La Recherche" (No. 307, issue of March 1998). I was aware, of course, that you and Alan and Jean had said some things about Latour that weren't entirely favorable, but I didn't find what you said believable, because you made him sound so utterly ridiculous that I was sure that it couldn't be that bad, and I thought you must have been overstating your case. The problem I have now, having read the article, is that it is so much worse that I had ever imagined, that I cannot believe my own eyes. So I need you to help me answer some questions, such as, for example, whether Bruno Latour really exists and is the author of the things that are published under his name, or perhaps you and your friends are great humorists, and Latour is just a figment of your imagination, a joke that you and your friends are creating, a pen name you use to test the gullibity of academics, or just to have a good laugh? Let me tell you about the article, so that you will appreciate my problem. I am sure you will see when I am through with my story that it is hard to believe that someone who writes such things truly exists. In the article, the author seems to be discussing ---seriously--- the following profound and challenging scientific-philosophical question: how is it possible for Ramses II to have died of tuberculosis 3000 years ago, given that the Koch bacillus was only discovered in 1882? I am NOT joking! I have puzzled during most of my adult life over all kinds of philosophical and scientific questions about the universe and its mysteries, things like whether anything at all can be known with certainty, whether moral norms can be derived by reasoning without invoking religion, how the brain works, whether superluminal speeds are attainable, whether string theory is true, how life originated on Earth, and even more mundane questions such as why the Heaven's Gate guys killed themselves, why TV programs are so bad, and what exactly went on between Bill and Monica. Yet, in spite of the amazing breadth of these intellectual interests of mine, it would never have occurred to me to ask a question such as Latour's. Paraphrasing Orwell, one could say that "you have to belong to the French Intelligentsia to ask a question like that; the average person in the street, and the average scientist or philosopher in any country other than France, would never have thought there was anything worth discussing there." And I certainly wouldn't have thought so either, so please believe me: I haven't made this up, I couldn't have, I don't have enough imagination to think of a question like that. Latour is aware of the existence of what he calls a "sensible [bon sens] answer," namely, that "Ramses II died of tuberculosis 3000 years ago, but we only found out that it was so in 1976." But he discards this answer, by saying that elle n'a, comme on va le voir, que l'apparence du bon sens [Transl: "this answer only appears to be sensible, as we shall see."] I have read the whole article (which is completely self-contained and only about a page and a half long, so one can read it and reread it and make sure that one hasn't missed anything). But I am still puzzled by those words "comme on va le voir." Normally, one would expect that, having made a statement and then added "as we shall see", the author would later in the article take the trouble of giving at least one argument in support of that statement. But either I am crazy and don't know how to read this very sophisticated product of the Parisian Thought industry, or the argument isn't there. What Latour does, after presenting the "sensible" answer and announcing that he will make us see later that it isn't that sensible, is assert that there is another "radical" answer, which, he says, only APPEARS to be radical, and he adds, once again, "comme on va le voir." At this point, two rather strong statements have been made, namely, 1. that the "sensible" answer isn't really that sensible, and 2. that the truly "radical" alternative isn't really so radical after all. Moreover, in both cases we have been told that "on va le voir." So you can imagine how interested I became in reading forward, hoping that I would get to see how Latour was going to make us "voir" those two things. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 17:03:18 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Latour on Ramses II (part 2) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII First, of course, we need to know what Latour's "radical" answer is. He refers to the headline of a Paris-Match article ---"Nos savants au secours de Ramses II tomb'e malade 3000 ans apres sa mort," i.e. "Our scientists help Ramses I, who fell ill 3000 years after his death"--- and writes: "La reponse la plus radicale ... consiste a dire que Ramses II est bien tomb'e malade 3000 ans apres sa mort. Il a fallu attendre 1976 pour donner une cause a sa mort et 1882 pour que le bacille de Koch puisse servir a cette attribution." [Translation: "The most radical answer consists of saying that Ramses II indeed fell ill 3000 years after his death. It took until 1976 for a cause to be given to his death, and until 1882 for it to be possible to use the Koch bacillus for this attribution." I am sorry for the very bad English of my translation, but this is the best I can do. I don't know exactly how to translate "donner une cause" into English, other than by saying "give a cause." I realize that "to give a cause" is awful English, but I have talked to a couple of French friends and they tell me that they don't understand the meaning of "donner une cause," that it is not good or even understandable French, that what one would say in French is "trouver la cause", which translates easily into English as "find the cause," showing, incidentally, that a statement in any language, if it conveys a clear thought, can be translated into any other language, resulting in a statement that conveys the same thought with equal clarity, and it's only when statements are vague or ambiguous or nonsensical that translating them becomes difficult. Of course, if Latour had said "trouver la cause," then he would have contradicted the whole point of this article, which is precisely to say, or at least suggest, in a truly scoial-constructivist way, that the cause somehow didn't exist until 1976, that the cause wasn't FOUND in 1976 but was somehow CREATED, constructed, invented, made up, or something like that, in 1976.] So now Latour has two propositions to defend, namely, Nos. 1 and 2 above. Moreover, he has announced by means of two "comme on va le voir" ["as we shall see"] that he is indeed going to make a case for them. How does he do it? He states that, under the radical "hypothesis," researchers don't just "discover": "they produce, manufacture, construct" ["ils produisent, ils fabriquent, ils construisent"]. So "to state without any further analysis that the Pharaoh died of tuberculosis amounts to committing the historian's cardinal sin of anachronism." To illustrate the concept of "historical anachronism" Latour uses the statements that A. Ramses II was killed by machine-gun fire and B. Ramses II died of stress caused by a stock-market crash. In both cases, he says, we would have found the statement ridiculous. And he asks why this is so, and why the statement about tuberculosis is not in the same category. He then tells us what "the answer" is, but he doesn't tells us what is wrong with the "common sense answer" (namely, that in 3000 BCE there were no machine guns or stock markets, but there were Koch bacilli, even if the people at the time didn't know it). What Latour does tell us is this: a. that to determine that Ramses II died of tuberculosis it was necessary to wait until 1976, exhume his body, take it to Paris, take it to a hospital, and use X rays and microscopes, b. that without these 20th century techniques, we might have BELIEVED that when Ramses II coughed he spit Koch bacilli, but we wouldn't KNOW FOR SURE, c. that this is similar to what we all experience when we are ill: when we are far from the hospital, we are never sure of exactly what ails us; we know something itches or something hurts, but that's it; it's only when we get to the hospital and go through lots of tests that we get a diagnosis with some degree of certainty. At this point, I start to feel uneasy: Points a, b, c above are of course true. More than that, they are in fact trivially true platitudes, and it is somehwat annoying to be treated like a moron by an author who deems it necessary to point out such things. But, since I want to see how the author makes his case, I am still willing to go on reading. As far as I can tell, Points a,b,c have nothing whatsoever to do with the two theses that Latour said that "on va voir" ["we will see"]. To my knowledge, nobody has ever claimed that the Egyptians of 3000 BCE knew about the Koch bacillus, so a fortiori nobody would dispute that the Egyptians couldn't possibly have known at all ---let alone know with absolute certainty--- that Ramses II died because of the Koch bacillus. On the other hand, the Egyptians' ignorance of machine-guns and stock-market crashes is of a different nature: the Egyptians didn't know anything about machine-guns and stock markets because at that time there weren't any, whereas Koch bacilli ---like, for that matter, cells, protons, penguins, kangaroos, the planet Pluto, the rings of Saturn, and spiral galaxies--- were there but the Egyptians just didn't know it. This is, of course, a view that may be called by its detractors "naive realism" (or maybe naive something else, but certainly naive, perhaps too naive for sophisticated French minds). But that doesn't make it wrong. (For example: I happen to believe that Bruno Latour works at the Ecole des Mines; and my belief is based on the fact that the article in La Recherche says so. That's certainly naive, but I don't think Bruno Latour would object to it on the grounds that it is naive.) If Latour wants to argue that the "naive", "sensible" view is wrong, he'd better give some reasons. He has said he would ["comme on va le voir"], but will he? I am beginning to wonder. We are close to the end of the article, and no signs of an argument yet... Latour then moves into a more "scientific" mode, obviously making use of what he must think is his vast knowledge of Einstein's theory of relativity, so perceptively analyzed in the Sokal-Bricmont book. The answer, he tells us, is that Toute la difficulte de cette affaire revient a comprendre que le deplacement dans le temps obeit aux memes regles que le deplacement dans l'espace. [Transl: All the difficulty here reduces to understanding that displacement in time obeys the same rules as displacement in space.] Wow! Really? For example, one "rule" I know about displacement in space is that I can make choices and move in different directions. So that must mean that I can do the same in time!!!! Wonderful!!! All I have to do now is to ask Mr. Latour to explain to me how to do it!!! Maybe he doesn't really means that both "obey the same rules." Maybe he means that there are SOME rules that they both obey. Which rules? Only Latour knows, I guess! Let's see. Let's suppose that what Latour says about space and time displacements was an intelligible statement (which is already a big thing to suppose), and let's even suppose it was true. How would that establish the two theses that Latour said that "on va voir"? (And, by now, we are through about 4/5 of the article, so Mr. Latour had better hurry.) Latour explains: De meme que je ne peux pas deplacer une maladie dans l'espace sans etendre le reseau medical ou me rapprocher de lui, je ne peux pas deplacer une decouverte du present dans le passe sans un travail supplementaire d'extension de ce meme reseau. [Trans: "Just as I cannot move an illness in space without extending the medical network or approaching it, I cannot move a discovery from the present to the past without some supplementary work to extend that network." Again, please forgive my poor English, but I think that only with poor English is it possible to do justice to the deplorable quality of the French original.] Now I am really confused. First of all, I didn't know that illnesses moved in space, perhaps because I didn't know that illnesses were the kind of entities that are supposed to have a location in space. (My rudimentary readings of Anglo-Saxon philosophy ---so much despised by French philosophers--- teach me that illnesses ---like physical laws, colors, mathematical equations, poems--- are abstract concepts, maybe members of what Popper liked to call "The Third World", but certainly not things with a location in physical space. So tuberculosis is not located in a particular place in space, any more than the U.S. Constitution, the law of gravity, the number 6, French history, or social constructivism are.) ILL PEOPLE (who should not to be confused with the illnesses themselves, although perhaps Mr. Latour is not aware of this extremely subtle distinction), on the other hand, are indeed located (at least approximately) in a specific place in space, and can therefore move in space. But even there I am not following Mr. Latour: let us be kind to him and grant that when he talks about "deplacer une maladie" (to move a disease) what he really had in mind was "deplacer un malade" (to move a sick person). Is it really true that I cannot do this "sans etendre le reseau medical ou me rapprocher de lui" [without extending the medical network or getting close to it]? Really? Two weeks ago I had a cold and I traveled from Paris to London. Wasn't that an instance of "deplacer une maladie"? And, if so, how did that displacement "extend the medical network or get me closer to it"? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 17:05:32 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Latour on Ramses II (part 3) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Second, even if we granted that illnesses have a location in space, and cannot move in space "without extending ...", how would that have any implications about the displacement of discoveries in time? (Latour says that "the same rules apply ..." If he had said that "Just as I cannot move an illness in space without extending the medical network or approaching it, I cannot move an illness in time without extending the medical network or approaching it," then I would still not understand what on Earth he may be talking about, but at least I would see that he is "applying the same rule." But in his "application of the same rule," he takes an (untelligible) statement relating ILLNESSES to SPACE and says that, by "applying the same rule" one gets another (equally unintelligible) statement relating DISCOVERIES to TIME. (Norm: do you understand what one might possibly mean by "displacing a discovery from the present to the past"? And when he says that this cannot be done "without a supplementary work of extension of that same network," could it be that "the same network" means "the medical network", as one would naively think it does, considering that he says it's "the same" network"? That would give things like "we cannot displace the discovery of the top quark from the present to the past without extending the medical network." Am I getting it right or am I missing something? I have tried other examples of possible applications of Latour's theory of space and time, and sometimes it does seem to work. For example: "just as a cow wouldn't be glad to be shrunk to the volume of a bee, Proust wouldn't have liked it at all if someone had summarized `A la Recherche du temps perdu' in less than one minute." Gee! That sounds right! So maybe Latour is on to something after all? Maybe the famous French Cartesian logic still has things to teach us?) Next, having stated his "principle" that displacement in time obeys the same rules as displacement in space, Latour tells us that it is this principle that the Paris-Match journalist had understood so well: "3000 ans plus tard, `nos savants' rendent enfin Ramses II malade et mort d'une maladie decouverte en 1882, diagnostiqu'ee en 1976." [Transl: 3000 years later, `our scientists' finally make Ramses II get ill, and die of an illness discovered in 1882, diagnosed in 1976.] (Norm: I don't want to nitpick, but please tell me frankly whether you think it is possible that someone who is supposed to be a professional philosopher, specializing in issues related to science, could seriously assert that TUBERCULOSIS WAS DISCOVERED IN 1882. The KOCH BACILLUS may indeed have been discovered in 1882, but I was under the impression that tuberculosis ---maybe under other names such as consumption--- had been known since earlier times. Didn't Francois II, king of France some time in the late 1500's, die of tuberculosis? Didn't Chopin die of tuberculosis, certainly before 1882? Am I missing something? I know that, once again, I may be accused of trying to use an "Anglo-Saxon positivistic linguistic philosophy" kind of approach, and try to make distinctions ---such as the distinction between a disease and the cause of a disease or, more concretely, the distinction between tuberculosis and the Koch bacillus--- that are too fine and subtle for the mind of a French philosopher, trained as he is in reading Hegel, Lacan, Derrida, Virilio, and other truly profound thinkers who never wasted any of their valuable time worrying about stupid things such as trying to use language with precision. But is it possible that, within reason, some of these subtle distinctions that we sometimes try to draw in the Anglo-Saxon world may be of some use to clarify meanings and to avoid saying obviously idiotic things? And I know that is unfair to judge Mr. Latour's use of language according to the standards of a "professional philosopher." He is a "professional French philosopher", and the operative word here is "French". French philosophers, as Pascal Bruckner explained so well in his eloquent reply to Sokal-Bricmont in "Le Nouvel Observateur", are not interested in being right but in being brilliant, as opposed to those stupid, boring, Anglo-Saxon simpletons who think it matters whether what you say is right. Since the statement that tuberculosis was discovered in 1882 is certainly not right, do you think Latour may just have been trying to be "brilliant"? Personally, I don't see what is so "brilliant" about such a statement but, not being French, maybe I shouldn't be passing judgement on such matters, unless I am ready to be labeled a "censeur venu d'Amerique" by the followers of Latour, Kristeva and Baudrillard.) Next Latour ---without appearing to be troubled by the fact that he has less than 1/7 of the article to get to the end, and he hasn't yet come even close to making us "voir" the things that he had said "on va voir"--- goes on to say that time, really, is sort of two-dimensional. He even includes a diagram with two axes (the horizontal one being labeled "dimension lineaire du temps," while the vertical one is called the "dimension sedimentaire du temps"). As far as I can tell, the first one of these time coordinates of an event is what we would call "the time when the event happened," while the other coordinate is the time when we are talking about it. For example, the death-of-Ramses-II event of the year 1000 BCE, talked about at that time, is different from the death-of-Ramses-II event of the year 1000 BCE, talked about in 1998 CE, and for the latter ---but not for the former--- it is true that the Koch bacillus was involved. He then goes on to say that history advances not only along the horizontal axis but along the vertical one as well, and in both cases it is down and one cannot go back. This is it, this is all that the article says, and the author concludes by proclaiming how strange it is that it should take Paris-Match to teach us a philosophy lesson. Now, Norm, maybe I am truly stupid, but I cannot find a single place in the article where Latour gives any argument at all supporting the theses that I stated above with the numbers 1 and 2. He said "on va le voir", and we get to the end of the article and we haven't "seen" anything! I still don't know what is wrong with the "naive" view, and why it "only has the appearance of being sensible", "as we shall see"! And Mr. Latour certainly hasn't told us! But maybe I am asking the wrong question. Maybe Latour didn't feel that, if he states that something "only has the appearance of being sensible, AS WE SHALL SEE", he then has to make us "see", by giving at least some argument. Maybe he doesn't feel that, in order to make a case for a theory, it is not enough to STATE it. We simple-minded Anglo-Saxons have this belief that one has to give some EVIDENCE, if you pardon me for using another one of these concepts that French philosophers so profoundly dislike. But maybe a professor of French philosophy (which is not at all the same as a French professor of philosophy) doesn't care about evidence. Naturally, with my Anglo-Saxon philosophical background, I have a further problem: I don't see what could possibly count as evidence in favor ---or against--- Latour's "theory", because I cannot figure out what is the nontrivial scientific content of the theory. Suppose I were to say that statements about events in time really have THREE coordinates, namely, the two of Latour's theory, plus the number of letters of the statement itself. Or maybe four: the three we have already described, plus the first time the statement was uttered. SO WHAT? What difference would it make one way or the other? This last question of mine I think must have something to do with Latour's strange belief that he understands the theory of relativity, maybe even better than the physicists themselves. That must be why he thinks that the answer to the question about Ramses II lies in a "radical" new hypothesis about the nature of time, and about time being very much like space, exactly as in Einstein's theory. But Latour's theory of space and time fails to be like Einstein's in at least one fundamental point. Einstein didn't just say "let's declare time to be a fourth dimension and label events by four coordinates." Any illiterate ignorant idiot could have done that, and claimed to have made a profound discovery and to have finally solved the problem of the fourth dimension. What Einstein did was to come up with a theory that required the intertwining of space and time in a crucial way, by associating to pairs of events an invariant ---the Minkowski distance--- that only makes sense when you use a 4-dimensional space-time language. And the statement that this invariant is indeed an invariant leads to testable predictions that clearly differentiate between Einstein's theory and Galilean relativity. Latour's "theory," on the other hand, is, at best, a proposal that we take something we do every day ---when, for example, we say that it was found out in 1976 that Ramses II had died of tuberculosis 3000 years before--- and make a pompous and uselees change of terminology, by talking instead about two time coordinates in order to say exactly the same thing. One can do that, sure, why not? But why should one? I can understand why pseudophilosophers who make a career out of pretending that they know something about science, even though they don't understand a word, could see some use for this type of activity, in the sense that it may help their own advancement, even though it adds nothing to anybody's understanding of anything. If you take something eveybody knows (for example, say, that literary texts usually have more than one interpretation, or that a psychologist cannot talk to a patient without being somehow personally involved) and succeed in persuading people that this is so because of some profound scientific fact that you understand and others do not (for example, that it is thanks to Einstein's theory of relativity that we now finally understand that the interpretation of literary texts is relative and not absolute, or that psychologists cannot be totally detached because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), then you haven't said anything new or worth saying, you haven't added one iota of clarity to the situation, and you have in fact managed to confuse a clear issue by getting people to focus on a completely irrelevant dimension of the problem. (For another example, there is a paper that Jacques Derrida presented to a conference about the arms race. The paper begins by saying that the arms race is a dynamic phenomenon, that it takes place in time, so if we want to understand the arms race we have to start by reading everything that philosophers ---from Aristotle through Kant to Bergson--- have written about time.) So the community of serious scholars, the people who really want to understand and explain things, haven't gained anything. But you, our pseudophilosopher, have, because, when you get people to believe you, then they become dependent on you. They don't understand Einstein's theory, any more than you do, but they don't know this, so they are going to ask for your help and guidance. Et voila, you have become their guru, and that gives you power. Please tell me, Norm, could this be what is going on here, or am I missing something? Cordially, ---Hector, from Paris ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 17:07:24 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Petition on behalf of Scientists, Engineers, and Physicians in the People's Republic of China (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Member; The New York Academy of Sciences Committee on Human Rights is jointly co-sponsoring with the Committee on International Freedom of Scientists of the American Physical Society, Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Committee of Concerned Scientists a petition on behalf of scientists, engineers, and physicians in the People's Republic of China who are imprisoned or are thought to have been imprisoned (have disappeared) because they have engaged in the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression as provided for in Article 35 of China's Constitution. Please ACT NOW on-line < http://www.nyas.org/china98.html > because this form will not be available after Thursday, April 30, 1998. This is the date after which the number of signatures and forms collected will be tallied, and will be mailed to Government officials in the People's Republic of China. Please sign the web petition OR send e-mail with your name and affiliation to humanrights@nyas.org. Register your support in only ONE of these two ways. Thank you for your support. ____________________________________________________ Petition on behalf of Chinese Scientists: TO: Jiang Zemin, President, People's Republic of China Li Peng, Premier, People's Republic of China Song Jian, Chair, Science and Technology Commission Qiao Shih, Speaker, Congress of the People's Republic of China Professor Zhou Guang Zhao, President, Academia Sinica We are extremely concerned about fellow scientists and students of science who have been imprisoned or have disappeared for having exercised their rights to freedom of expression and association. Attached is a list of 9 individuals who are serving prison sentences and 9 who are known to have been detained, but whose current status is unknown to us. It is troubling to us that our colleagues and students of science have been imprisoned or have disappeared because they engaged in the peaceful expression of their beliefs. These actions clearly violate the rights of individuals as granted in Article 35 of your Constitution and as outlined within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We call upon your good offices to investigate the plight of these individuals and take actions to insure that they are released immediately and unconditionally on the grounds that they were imprisoned solely for engaging in the peaceful expression of their opinion. We believe that science is an endeavor that knows no national boundaries, which is why this matter is of great importance to us. It is critical that scientists and students of science in China be given the freedoms to which they are entitled--for their work affects our work, and more broadly, the global state of scientific knowledge and advancement. ________________________________ LIST OF 9 IMPRISONED SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS, AND PHYSICIANS IN CHINA NAME DISCIPLINE STATUS CHEN Lantao Marine Biology Sentenced in August 1989 to an eighteen-year prison term on charges of "counterrevolutionary propaganda and "disturbring the social order and traffic". His major "offense" was a speech he made on June 8, 1989 in which he demanded greater democracy and called upon the Communist Party to step down. He is imprisoned in Shandong Provincial Prison No. 3 in Weifang. His sentence was been reduced to sixteen years in December of 1994. GUO Haifeng Political Science Sentenced to 4 years imprisonment in 1989, freed, resentenced to 5 years in 1996. JAMPA Ngodrup Medicine Tibetian physician sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment December 1990. KANG Yuchun Medicine Researcher, Dept. of Psychiatry, Anding Hospital in Beijing; arrested in May 1992; sentenced to 17 years' imprisonment in December 1994. LI Lifu Medicine Graduate student at Nanjing China Medical College; detained in October 1990; tried and sentenced to eight years' in prison. PENG Wanquan Medicine Graduate student at China Medical College; detained in October 1989; tried and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. Prison term expired; release not confirmed. WANG Dan History Former Beijing University student leader, who is serving the second prison term for his pro-democracy activities. Currently serving an 11-year sentence meted out in 1996 in connection with his publishing articles in the foreign press and receiving donations from abroad for humanitarian aid to dissidents. WANG Xinlin Engineering Arrested in Jinggangshan City in June 1989; tried in November 1991 and sentenced to eight years in prison. Prison term expired; release not confirmed. ZHU Xiangzhong Physics Sentenced to seven and a half years' imprisonment in 1989; brutally beaten by a common criminal; denied proper medical care. Prison term expired; release not confirmed. LIST OF 9 MISSING PERSONS: SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS AND PHYSICIANS IN CHINA NAME DISCIPLINE STATUS CHEN Xuezhao Sociology Graduate student at Nankai University; arrested in August 1989. GUO Luxiang Geology Student at Beijing University of Science and Technology; arrested in June 1989. LI Shi Biology Graduate student; Nankai University (Tianjin); arrested in June 1989; detained without charge or trial. LI Yan Geology Graduate student at Beijing University; detained in June 1992. LU Yanghua Physics Graduate student at Lanzhou University; detained in April or May 1992; believed to have been secretly tried and sentenced. WANG Haidong Social Sciences Employed at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Ministry of Justice reported his trial and imprisonment in 1991 only to renege in October 1994, stating that "There is no record of this person having served or presently serving a sentence in prison". WANG Xuezhi Medicine Worked at Beijing College of Chinese Traditional Medicine; arrested in June 1989. ZHANG Shen(g)ming or Engineering ZHANG Xingming Engineer at a farm machinery plant in Guiyang City; arrested on June 24, 1989 and subsequently tried; outcome unknown; Ministry of Justice stated; "There is no record of this person having served or presently serving a sentence in prison". ZHENG Yaping Computer Science Graduate student at National Defense Science and Technology University; detained in 1989. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:15:13 +0100 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Piotr Szybek Organization: Lund University Subject: Re: Petition on behalf of Scientists, Engineers, and Physicians In-Reply-To: <9803102236.AA02831@nomina.lu.se> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT I am very grateful to dr. Levitt for having given me the opportunity of signing the petition etc. I also want to remind of another example of oppression, from (for people of my age) recent history. In the sixties, Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel prize in litterature. The Soviet authorities saw this as endorsing the picture of the bolshevik "revolution" and ensuing civil war, presented in "Doctor Zhivago", which they didnt like (it was, in fact, a matter of breaking their monopoly of presenting pictures of reality). A letter-writing campaign was started, and media were flooded with expressions like: "I haven't read the book by Boris Pasternak, but I want to condemn his denigration of the Great October Revolution etc." Now, I havent read the article by Bruno Latour in "La Recherche" and I WILL NOT endorse the campaign organized by dr. Levitt. Although he organizes it not in the name of a murderous regime, but in the name of that noble enterprize, science, still, there is something repulsive to me in the way he presents this matter. Nevertheless, thank you, dr. Levitt for directing my attention to this article. I am going to read it and try to form my own opinion. This is the approach I have been taught in my contact with both science and philosophy. Yours sincerely Piotr Szybek Department of Education, Lund University Box 199, 221 00 Lund, Sweden tel +46462224732, fax +46462224538 email Piotr.Szybek@pedagog.lu.se ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 04:49:17 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: MR JON J BENNETT Subject: Destroyer of Worlds Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII Brad, please tell me more about the Kantian\Husserlian constituitive synthesis of productiveeimagination. What Jung has to do with this discussion is that I read once that he predicted this UFO phenomemon in the early part of the century. Anyone else ever read this? And yes Jung was "spacey". Some of his writing was actually channelled through his own "spirit guide", named Philemon. In Christian terms we would call this a demon. I do think that the UFO phenomenon represents a real spiritual hunger in people, and can be taken as evidence of man's (and the world's) spiritual nature. For this reason I think we can't dismiss mythology so easily. For I think many "myths" contain some truth, and truth can be represented best in the symbolic language some call "myth". Think of a quantum wave function, which like Proteus takes no definite form until "captured", pinned down, by the act of observation. Also, I don't think we can "completely" get away from the archetypes, although I don't necessarily mean Jungian archetypes. But I'd like to discuss the archetypes and mythology in more detail later, and their relationship to truth. For now consider these excerpts from an article on genetics in Scientific American, and tell me if you don't see the new archetypes everywhere. It also seems a bit mysterious and mythic-as in "proteins specified by genes that in a conventional sense (i.e. your definition of truth) don't exist. "We must pay much more attention to the diversity of detail in ways that organisms play out the basic properties of DNA, RNA, and proteins," says Joshua Lederberg, pioneering molecular geneticis and Nobelist. " We are discovering intriguing twists to the traditional, more simplistic models of DNA's behaviour. Contrary to expectations, genes sometimes leap from one chromosome to another or expand and contract like accordiions. Chromosomes seem to carry chemical tags that identify whether they originaed in an organism's mother or its father-(showing the archs of uniqueness, diversity, differentiation). Proteins can sometimes be specified by genes that, in the conventional sense, do not exist. Workers have even found evidence that organisms may be able to respond to changes in the enviornment by altering their genes." Recent advances in cancer therapy also reveal the new archetypes at work. More on this next time. And since you qouted Oppenheimer, I will end with him. When Oppenheimer witnessed the first detonation of an atomic bomb, he quoted from Hindu mythology "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds" This most dramatic and defining moment in our history was preceded by an equally dramatic and fundamental change in our cosmology, and our cosmogony. For it is here that worlds are first created and destroyed. Jon MR JON J BENNETT wrote: > > Wasn't it Carl Jung who first predicted this phenomenon-of belief in > ET's, as a psychological experience. And isn't this also related to > Toynbee's notion of "futurism", that tends to appear in eras of > social\cultural disintegration. > > Jon Well, Jung was rather "spacey", wasn't he? Or is mainly that his followers are? But, if the latter, then what in the former made the latter possible? On the subject of demythification, consider the following excerpt from an address by J. Robert Oppenheimer to a 1965 UNESCO gathering honoring Einstein on the 50th anniversary of the general theory of relativity: "I thought it might be useful, because I am sure that it is not too soon---and for our generation perhaps almost too late---to start to dispel the clouds of myth and see the great mountain peak that these clouds hide. As always, the myth has its charms; but the truth is far more beautiful." (SCIENCE, 16 May 1980, p. 698) (What does this have to do with Jung? *We* can go beyond "archetypes", to the Kantian/Husserlean notion of constitutive syntheses of the productive imagination) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:03:05 EST Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: GilWhittem Subject: Re: Latour on Ramses II Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Is "Hector from Paris" real or a fictional entity? The e-mail return addresses do not indicate this was forwarded. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:04:16 -0500 Reply-To: Norman Levitt Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Re: Petition on behalf of Scientists, Engineers, and Physicians In-Reply-To: <199803110913.EAA13074@u1.farm.idt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Piotr Szybek wrote: > I am very grateful to dr. Levitt for having given me the opportunity > of signing the petition etc. > > I also want to remind of another example of oppression, from (for > people of my age) recent history. > > In the sixties, Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel prize in > litterature. The Soviet authorities saw this as endorsing the picture > of the bolshevik "revolution" and ensuing civil war, presented in > "Doctor Zhivago", which they didnt like (it was, in fact, a matter of > breaking their monopoly of presenting pictures of reality). A > letter-writing campaign was started, and media were flooded with > expressions like: > > "I haven't read the book by Boris Pasternak, but I want to condemn > his denigration of the Great October Revolution etc." > > Now, I havent read the article by Bruno Latour in "La Recherche" and > I WILL NOT endorse the campaign organized by dr. Levitt. I am deeply puzzled, in that I am not engaged in any "campaign" except that of encouraging discussion and critique of a certain range of ideas. Obviously, I have my own strong, sometimews scornful, views, but I have not called for any action against Latour (or anyone else) except to scrutinize what he has to say. As it happens, I have not read the Latour "La Recherche" piece either, because it is hard to get hold of that publication in the US. Hector Sussmann is a friend and colleague and sometime collaborator of mine, of 30 years standing, and I know him to be an almost obsessively meticulous and scrupulous man. So I tend to respect his judgment. Of course, that doesn't mean you have to do so. The obvious course, if you want either to criticize or defend Latour, is to read the piece. I will try to see if it can been downloaded from somewhere on the Web, and if so I shall be delighted to repost it. I do point out, however, that Sussmann quoted extensively from a rather short essay, so the likelihood that his comments constitute a complete misrepresentation is rather slim. Moreover, those of us who have read Latour extensively will not, I trust, find it implausible that his statements are just as extravagant, and his logic just as fugitive, as Sussmann suggests. > Although he organizes it not in the name of a murderous regime, but > in the name of that noble enterprize, science, still, there is > something repulsive to me in the way he presents this matter. Ah, but a certain symmetry inheres herein. Frankly, there is something repulsive to me in the way Latour presents his own ideas, if we may thus dignify his oracular pronouncements. Let me assure Dr. Szybek that Latour is in no immediate danger from me and people who think like me, even if we were to call for his dismissal--which, emphatically, we don't. Latour is quite secure in his various academic posts--he has thousandas of admirers in the academy who, having committed themselves thus far, are unlikely to recant any time soon. Indeed, my correspondents point out that Latour has a substantial influence over the French science-technology policy bureaucracy (a fact I frankly find alarming). He is also, moreover, a man of considerable private wealth which in this culture confers virtually total immunity to any criticism. I can't help observing, finally, that Dr. Szybek's remarks invite the interpretation that any strong critique of someone's ideas constitutes persecutioin in the fascist or Stalinist mode. Surely that is not what he meant to say? > > Nevertheless, thank you, dr. Levitt for directing my attention to > this article. I am going to read it and try to form my own opinion. > This is the approach I have been taught in my contact with both > science and philosophy. > > Yours sincerely > > > > Piotr Szybek > Department of Education, Lund University > Box 199, 221 00 Lund, Sweden > tel +46462224732, fax +46462224538 > email Piotr.Szybek@pedagog.lu.se > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:09:56 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Re: Destroyer of Worlds In-Reply-To: <199803110950.EAA04524@u1.farm.idt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, MR JON J BENNETT wrote: > Think of a quantum wave function, which like Proteus takes no definite > form until "captured", pinned down, by the act of observation. > Well, actually, no. The quantum wave function is definite enough--it's the physical interpretation that's puzzling. The standard one--upon which everyone agress for operational purposes. is that the square of the magnitude of the functiion is a probabililty distribution producting the outcome of many observations under identical conditions. It is the single observation that must be "pinned down", and is not "definite" until then. Thus, the celebrated "Measurement Problem" (or Schrodinger's Cat paradox. See S. Goldstein in the current "Physics Today" for an insightful debuniing of much of the nonsense that has been spun around this theme. Norm Levitt ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 16:46:12 +0000 Reply-To: "K.E. Kocher" Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "K.E. Kocher" Subject: Re: Latour on Ramses II (part 1, 2, 3) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm sorry. I'm not sure who to address this reply to--I suppose to the person who signed their name at the end of the 3 part message, "Hector." In any case, I would like to respond to a few points in his diatribe against Bruno Latour and his article (which I must say I haven't read--I don't read French.) Let me say from the outset that I am a simple master's student studying the history of medicine for just one year without, at this moment, designs on entering into the sordid world of academia. But, I have read Latour's most famous, controversial, and influential book, _Science in Action_, and it sounds like the basis for many of his ideas in this article would be more fully explained in this work. First of all, let me start out by saying that whoever wrote this three part mini-series on Latour's article on Ramses II (Hector someone?) seems to have an especial dislike for what he calls the "professional French philosopher" as opposed to the "clearer and more lucid" "Anglo-Saxon philosopher." This certainly might be getting in the way of understanding. By the way, although I do not read French, I am pretty sure that Latour (given that he is French) chose his words very carefully and that it was no accident that he would use phrases like "give a cause" or "create a cause" (rather than "find a cause") for the disease of tuberculosis. Anyway, let me now offer a few points that immediately struck me and perhaps will help to elucidate what Latour is (maybe?, since I haven't read the article) saying. The author (Hector) wrote: >Of course, if Latour had said "trouver la cause," then he would have >contradicted the whole point of this article, which is precisely to say, >or at least suggest, in a truly scoial-constructivist way, that the cause >somehow didn't exist until 1976, that the cause wasn't FOUND in 1976 but >was somehow CREATED, constructed, invented, made up, or something like >that, in 1976. You have it exactly correct here. Latour is no doubt arguing that the cause of Ramses II death from tuberculosis was created and constructed in 1976. Ramses II, who died in what, around 1000 BC?, could not have died of TB because it did not exist yet (the bacillus which re-defined the disease of TB, or better yet, constructed the new disease of TB as a germ disease with a specific etiology wouldn't be discovered by Koch until 1882). I know this is a potentially baffling statement, but perhaps this will help: What did people at the time of Ramses II's death believe he died of?--certainly not of a disease-causing bacteria. Ramses II died of whatever the Egyptians said he died of and not Koch's or our current day tuberculosis. That is what people at the time thought he died of, that is how they acted when he died, and that was how history was played out. Say you are able to go back in time and tell the ancient Egyptians that Ramses II died of a germ that he caught because someone coughed in his face or something like that. Would they believe you? They would think you were crazy. Say you even brought a microscope back in time with you to show them the bacillus as well as all of Koch's laboratory notes and the x-rays that were taken in 1976. They would still lock you up as insane. Perhaps this will help explain another of your questions/tirades: >(Norm: I don't want to nitpick, but please tell me frankly whether you >think it is possible that someone who is supposed to be a professional >philosopher, specializing in issues related to science, could >seriously assert that TUBERCULOSIS WAS DISCOVERED IN 1882. The KOCH >BACILLUS may indeed have been discovered in 1882, but I was under the >impression that tuberculosis ---maybe under other names such as >consumption--- had been known since earlier times. Didn't Francois II, >king of France some time in the late 1500's, die of tuberculosis? >Didn't Chopin die of tuberculosis, certainly before 1882? Am I >missing something? Just like with Ramses II, it would be unhistorical (remember, I am a historian) to say that these people died of TB before the bacillus was discovered. Consumption is certainly NOT the same disease as tuberculosis. It had a different set of symptoms. It was treated differently. It was transmitted differently. It had a different origin. If we say that these people--you name some king in France and Chopin--died of TB, then we are guilty of projecting our present concerns onto dead people (who cannot defend themselves) who believed, behaved, acted, and spoke of a disease they called and held was "consumption." It was not a disease that was caused by a tiny germ that could only be seen in a microscope. It was not defined by whether or not you had the presence of this bacillus in your sputum or an x-ray showing excessive mucous in your lungs. It was not conveyed from person to person in the water droplets coughed up by someone suffering from this disease. Our tuberculosis simply did not exist back then. Now, I may part ways with Latour at some point in this story because I am pretty sure that he believes that there is no independent reality out there, that e