Received: from mx02.globecomm.net (mx02.globecomm.net [206.253.129.31]) by email.mcmail.com (9.9.9/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA03834 for ; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:49:18 +0100 (BST) Received: from maelstrom.stjohns.edu (maelstrom.stjohns.edu [149.68.1.24]) by mx02.globecomm.net (8.8.8/8.8.0) with ESMTP id JAA01469 for ; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 09:49:07 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199808101349.JAA01469@mx02.globecomm.net> Received: from maelstrom.stjohns.edu by maelstrom.stjohns.edu (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <6.714C5038@maelstrom.stjohns.edu>; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 8:22:14 -1300 Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 08:22:13 -0400 From: "L-Soft list server at St. John's University (1.8c)" Subject: File: "SCI-CULT LOG9805" To: Ian Pitchford X-UIDL: e851dc429440b97e82555198b72fb9b1 X-PMFLAGS: 33554560 0 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 21:48:22 -0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Charles E. Moore" Subject: Re: True/false dichotomy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Prof Dykstra, 1. Since, presumably, you would doubt the "reality" of fluid dynamics, I surmise you refuse to board an airplane to travel to your conferences...? 2. You seem to place some intrinsic value on whether someone displays "arrogance" which goes beyond being bad because it tends to cause tunnel vision even beyond the "box" of time and place. I'm sorry, but it somehow reminds me of the unappetizing way Europeans tend to use the word "democratic", or apostate humanists use the word "elitist". -Charles Moore, PE ----------------------------- Dewey Dykstra, Jr. wrote: > > >Re: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason > >== > >Scientists pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors > >of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course > >their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. > >They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. > >======= > >REPLY: This true/false dichotomy is really overplayed by some in > >science studies camp. I'm comfortable with the idea of degrees of > >accuracy, and believe that it is legitimate to view scientific > >theories as successively more accurate models of reality. > >Notwithstanding the peculiar observations of the likes of Collins, > >Pinch, Fuller et al, scientific knowledge clearly is cumulative and > >progressive.To take some crude examples: Does anyone expect to wake > >up tomorrow to the revelation that the heart isn't a pump, that > >oxygen isn't an element, or that the Earth doesn't orbit the Sun? I'm > >always hesitant to comment on modern physics, but as I understand it > >quantum mechanics and relativity theory are not compatible, hence the > >search for a relativistic quantum field theory of gravitation. If we > >are restricted to the true/false description then I suppose you'd > >have to say that quantum mechanics and relativity theory are false, > >something that is obviously fairly ridiculous. It makes better sense > >to say that these theories represented signifcant advances in our > >modelling of reality in that they subsumed many disparate facts and > >observations, and that they impressively predicted many new ones to a > >high degree of accuracy (something that they continue to do, of > >course). Any new theory will be built on this foundation and will > >subsume all of the facts generated by these theories. But, I am sure > >the many physicists and mathematicians on this list can offer some > >more sophisticated insights here. > > > >Best wishes > > > >Ian > > Many were sure that the liminiferous aether existed. Many were just as > certain the phlogiston existed as we are sure of our knowledge now. There > were those that were certain that light was rays, later others who were > sure it was corpuscles. The point is that history abounds with examples > when whatever passed for the established science-as-knowledge included > certainties which we no longer hold, some which have been replaced several > times over. As Kuhn and others have pointed out, no one could tell what > the "new certainty" would be until it actually became the "new certainty". > Are we doomed to relive the arrogance of our predecessors; doomed to relive > history in a sense? > > There is at least one other way to view knowledge other than as "truth" > about what is. If we do not insist that the result of our efforts > generating explanatory schemes about the world as leading to or resulting > in the "truth" about what is, then we have a way of avoiding the potential > arrogance. > > Dewey > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105 > Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775 > Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330 > Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu > 1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders > Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper > > "Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and > are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external > world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld, > 1938. > "Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct > of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence." > --E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958. > "Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in > There Are No Electrons, 1991. > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 09:39:00 -0600 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Dewey Dykstra, Jr." Subject: Re: True/false dichotomy In-Reply-To: <199805010528.XAA21154@bsumail.idbsu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Prof Dykstra, >1. Since, presumably, you would doubt the "reality" of fluid dynamics, >I surmise you refuse to board an airplane to travel to your >conferences...? > >2. You seem to place some intrinsic value on whether someone displays >"arrogance" which goes beyond being bad because it tends to cause tunnel >vision even beyond the "box" of time and place. I'm sorry, but it >somehow reminds me of the unappetizing way Europeans tend to use the >word "democratic", or apostate humanists use the word "elitist". > >-Charles Moore, PE > I hope by now you have read my second installment on this topic. I believe that it answers your first question. Yes, I do place intrinsic value on a reasonable amount of humility and sensitivity as a habit of behavior on the part of the members of a profession; in part because a lack of it does generally seem to lead to a kind of tunnel vision. Wouldn't this concern anyone? Another important reason is because of the effect of this arrogance as we discharge two (not necessarily the only two) of the most important duties to society that we have as professionals. One is in how we contribute to the education of society in general. The other is in how we interact with society as we try to make possible the application or use of our "product" (knowledge, technology, etc.) by the society. If by education one means that the result is change in understanding of aspects of the the world by the student, then science education as-it-is is an almost complete failure. Our interactions with society, possibly chiefly through science education, have resulted in many people not being able to distinguish what we and what some call pseudo-science. It is all ready clear that additional doses of arrogance, insisting that science is the only true knowledge, does not work. Maybe working at it until people actually understand is a better tack, but this takes tact and a certain reserve and humility. Then, again, how we practice science education shows that in general we do not function in such a way as the bulk of the students achieve understanding even when we try. Maybe we have some major re-thinking to do. Hmmmm..... If we've got such a handle on the truth, then surely it can stand a critical eye. What do we really have to hide? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105 Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775 Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330 Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu 1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper "Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld, 1938. "Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence." --E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958. "Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in There Are No Electrons, 1991. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 17:22:24 +0100 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Gideon Lichfield Subject: Re: True/false dichotomy -- I & II X-To: sci-cult@SJUVM.stjohns.edu ** PRIVATE ** Dewey Dykstra wrote: >you might notice that there are two classes of entities mentioned here. >One type of example is reference to shared experience. .... >The other type of example is about entities presumed to exist and which >play a role in explaining our shared experiences with phenomena; >constructs. .... ..... >If we merely stopped insisting that our explanations tell us what "really >is," and instead thought our explanations as useful, plausible, satisfying >explanatory stories which fit our experience and which enable us to >accomplish goals and meet needs as we see them now, then the present >"debate" might not even occur to us. The "debate" you're referring to here is the one about realism: whether the entities that theories (usually of physics) describe exist. The position you argue for is instrumentalism: theories are useful tools for explaining the phenomena, not claims about what there is behind the phenomena. This recognises shared experiences (the first type of entity you mention), but not constructs (the second). Now, to bring in Ian Pitchford's comments: >Macilwain, C. (1998). Physicists seek definition of "science". Nature, >392 (30 April, 1998): 849. ... > Others are said to have been worried about public misunderstanding >of the statement's references to "falsifiability". and >Re: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason >== >Scientists pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors >of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course >their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. >They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. >======= >REPLY: This true/false dichotomy is really overplayed by some in >science studies camp. I'm comfortable with the idea of degrees of >accuracy, and believe that it is legitimate to view scientific >theories as successively more accurate models of reality... It seems to me that philosophy-of-science courses, though they teach realism vs. instrumentalism, and though they teach theory-choice and falsification, don't bring the two together in the way that this discussion indicates they ought to. When a theory is falsified in Popper's sense, it isn't usually rejected wholesale, as we all know. Though its ontological claims may get totally overturned, its explanatory scope is usually only restricted. (eg, Newtonian physics being shown to apply at low speeds and low spacetime curvature, rather than universally.) Yet themes like falsification, or the meta-induction from past falsity - a contortion of which is expressed in the above extract from Crichton on history of science - can seem to gloss over this distinction between the different senses in which a theory can be called "false", especially presented in the abstract way they are in philosophy courses. (It stems perhaps from the philosopher's logical point that if a theory contains a bunch of propositions and one of them is false then the theory as a whole is, logically, false.) Thus, those philosophy-of-science students who don't also study science (a practice that ought to be banned, IMHO) may end up failing to notice the distinction. And this confusion may also be conveyed more widely. No wonder, then, that people are worried about the public's misunderstanding the notion of falsifiability. It's a subtle notion that easily eludes you even if you're taking a degree in the subject. And here it's being proposed that it be explained *inside* a 200-word definition of the essence of science. I, for one, would like to know what benefit such a catechism is expected to bring, and how. Gideon Lichfield science/tech correspondent --------------------- The Economist --------------------- 25 St. James's Street, London SW1A 1HG tel: +44 171 830 7066 fax: +44 171 839 2968 gideonlichfield@economist.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 13:07:52 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Of special interest to "Social Text" fans MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII GRAVITY AND THE QUANTUM New Developments in Physics and its Philosophy A Joint Rutgers-Princeton Conference [INLINE] Thursday May 14, 1998 MORNING: * 10:00 Chris Isham, Imperial College (London), "The conceptual challenge of quantum gravity" * 11:30 Lee Smolin, Pennsylvania State University, "A proposal for the structure of quantum space-time" AFTERNOON: * 2:00 Carlo Rovelli, University of Pittsburgh, "What do we know about the quantum properties of time and space?" * 3:30 Edward Witten, Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton), Duality, space-time, and quantum mechanics Physics Lecture Hall, Busch Campus, Rutgers University For directions and map go to Rutgers Maps and Directions For more information, send e-mail to: Gordon Belot , Princeton University Tim Maudlin , Rutgers University Bas van Fraassen , Princeton University Last updated 27 April 1998 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 13:38:01 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Rooney,John Peter" Subject: Re: [Automatic Reply] Re: Announcement: Charles G. Gross book JOHN PETER ROONEY ASQ CERTIFIED RELIABILITY ENGINEER #2425 E-Mail: jprooney@foxboro.com >---------- >From: Stephen P. Rogers[SMTP:Steve.ROGERS@DG3.CEC.BE] >Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 1998 6:00AM >To: SCIENCE-AS-CULTURE@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU >Subject: [Automatic Reply] Re: Announcement: Charles G. Gross book > >Thanks for your message. >I'll reply to it on Thursday 30 April. > >Regards, > >Steve > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 14:32:47 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: GilWhittem Subject: Re: The tyranny of therapeutic culture (part 1) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hard cases make bad law. Does Prof. Levitt believe there is an affirmative obligation on the part of every citizen to report all evidence - even if hearsay and not eyewitness - to the police of any violations of law? What if the law itself were regarded as "wrong" - such as a law against the teaching of evolution? Or would this obligation be restricted only to certain crimes, or to certain types of evidence? The tragic - or enraging - facts of one case should not blind one to the underlying principle being advocated. Gil Whittemore, PhD, JD ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 18:57:24 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Re: The tyranny of therapeutic culture (part 1) In-Reply-To: <199805011833.OAA08723@mail-relay3.idt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 1 May 1998, GilWhittem wrote: > Hard cases make bad law. Does Prof. Levitt believe there is an affirmative > obligation on the part of every citizen to report all evidence - even if > hearsay and not eyewitness - to the police of any violations of law? What if > the law itself were regarded as "wrong" - such as a law against the teaching > of evolution? Or would this obligation be restricted only to certain crimes, > or to certain types of evidence? The tragic - or enraging - facts of one case > should not blind one to the underlying principle being advocated. > Gil Whittemore, PhD, JD > This is a straw-man argument and hardly worth responding to, but here goes anyway. Obviously, what Froistad confessed to was a moral enormity on any reasonable scale of decency. That this makes it utterly incomensurable with, say, unpaid parking tickets or chiseling on your income tax or smoking a joint is so utterly obvious that one would think it not worth mentioning in a conversation among presumptive adults. What is fascinating--and repellent--is that this little hermetic community was willing to throw decency to the dogs for the sake of a psychological sop--being able to comisserate endlessly with each other within the illusion of "virtual" privacy. It is a signal case of what Christopher Lasch called the "culture of narcissism," a myopia that makes one's own discomfiture with the viscisitudes of life so central to one's thinking that serious moral reflection is all but impossible. It also speaks to the hubris of "therapists" who manage to confuse their expertise (such as it may be) with sacerdotal status. In particular, Rotgers was in over his head, should have recognized the fact promptly, and simply called the cops. But that would have deprived him of oracular standing. There are lots of situations where I wouldn't dream of calling the cops-- and the hell with the law! But this is an antithetical case if ever there was one. N. Levitt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 19:40:04 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: C. Brand. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In regard to the Chris Brand case, here are the facts as best as I can make them out. If I am wrong in any material sense, I apologize and would appreciate being set right--with appropriate references. Brand is--or rather was--a psychologist at U. of Edinburgh, specializing in psychometrics. His woes began when he attempted to publish a book, based on his own research, on heritability of intelligence &c. The book was peer reviewed favorabley and a major American publisher took it on. However, among the propositions for which the book argued is the idea that "group differences" in intellectual capacity are real and genetically based--in other words, the thesis ntoriously popularized by Herrnstein and Murray in "The Bell Curve." When the publishers took note of this, the book was put in limbo; that is to say, they refused to bring it out, but used certain legal technicalities to obstruct it's being published elsewhere. Eventually, the fuss caught the attention of the Edinburgh academic community. Demonstrations ensued, with the result that Brand was summarily barred from lecturing. That set the stage for chapter 2 of the affair. To understand this, you must be familiar with the Nobel Prize laureate physiologist, Gadjanek, (pardon if I misspell the name; I don't have it in front of me) who got his award for proving that the neurological condition "Kuru" (endemic to New Guinea) is, in fact, caused by an unusual kind of infectious agent (then called a "lentivirus", now thought to be a "prion".) Gadjanek's work, by the way, led to such understanding as we now have of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy ("mad cow" disease), and, of course, laid the groundwork from the prion theory, which itself won a Nobel Prize. However, on a personal level, Gadjanek is an unconventional character--that is, he is homosexual, with a predilection for very young partners. On one of his visits to Micronesia, he acquired a young companion, and brought him back to the States as his "student." When the facts came to light, Gadjanek was tried as a sex offender for consorting with a boy under the age of consent. He was convicted and sentenced to prison for something over a year (a term which he completed just the other day.) Brand comes into the picture because he circulated an e-mail petition protesting the justice meted out to Gadjanek. Brand's arguments were twofold. First, he asserted that Gadjanek's prior and prospective service to humanity should be taken into account. Secondly, he claimed that the sort of relationship for which Gadjanek was punished does not, in most cases, do any severe damage to its purported victim. It is my understanding that Brand made these remarks without having any hidden agenda--in other words, he doesn't appear to share Gadjanek's proclivities. However, the University of Edinburgh instantly decreed that Brans's remarks were beyond the pale and that he had dirtied Edinburgh's "good name" by uttering them (from a university e-mail adress!!, horror of horrors). Brand was suspended from all university connections and proceedings were begun to dismiss him outright. In due course, he was fired, and the propriety of his firing was then confirmed by an appellate tribunal of some sort. Here, a disclaimer: I'm very skeptical of Brand's theses concerning group differences in intellectual capacity. I don't really agree with him on the issue of sex with minors either--I think Gadjanek got what he deserved, frankly. The point, however, is that, so far as I am aware, Brand was given the bum's rush for merely making cogent, reasoned arguments for ideas that various people find it unpleasant to contemplate, even for arguments sake. He was, or so it seems to me, the victim of intolerable censorship on a number of occasions. Finally, I only bring this up in connection with the Froistad murder because I doubt very much that Dr. Rotgers, the head of the Rutgers Center for Alcohol Studies, will suffer the least retribution or restriction as a result of his appalling conceit, his lack of good judgment and simple decency, and his arguable criminal liability. We'll see. Norm Levitt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 23:06:35 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Brand (2) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE [USEMAP] =20 Statement by Staff of Department of Psychology agreed unanimously 12/11/96 =20 At its Staff Meeting earlier today, the twenty academic staff present unanimously approved the following statement: =20 "Mr Chris Brand's views on sex, race and paedophilia, as reported in the press and on his web home page, in no way represent the views of the Psychology Department, whose members wish to disassociate themselves wholly from such views." =20 Staff were also strongly of the view that this statement should be made public at the earliest opportunity. Colleagues felt that their position should be made immediately known to the rest of the University, to students, the parents of students who have expressed concern, and to parents of children in the Departmental Nursery. =20 The Staff Meeting also decided that it would make no further public statement until disciplinary proceddings against Mr Brand are concluded. =20 Published by IPRS The University of Edinburgh Centre, 7 - 11 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9BE. Tel (University Switchboard) : +44 (0)131 650 1000 Last modified: Wednesday, 17-Dec-1997 12:17:34 GMT Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright =A9 The University of Edinburgh. Statistics for IPRS Server ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 23:05:48 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Brand (1) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Here, pace Brad McCormack, are some documents relating to the Brand affair at U. of Edinburgh, easily found on the Web. I leave it to readers to make their own characterizations, according to what they understand as "academic freedom" and, more generally, freedom of publication and communication. =20 My apologies to subscribers who may be uninterested or bored. NL -------------------------------------------------- =20 Disciplinary proceedings and Chris Brand =20 Issued by the University of Edinburgh's Information & PR Services to He= ads of Academic and Admin departments for information: 11.11.96 =20 Given the extensive media coverage devoted to this topic over the last two or three days, Heads of Department and members of staff more generally may wish to be aware of the following facts: * In the Daily Record published on Friday, 8 November, reference was made to an article of comment published by Chris Brand of the University's Psychology Department in an internet newsletter - which is believed to have been originated outwith the UoE. That article, criticising legal proceedings being taken against a 73-year-old Nobel Prizewinner, included a number of references to paedophilia, suggesting it was harmless when non-violent with a consenting partner over the age of 12, provided both partners were of above-average IQ and educational level. The press article also included the following statement attributed to Mr Brand, "The vast majority of young partners suffer no harm, especially where there is a cash payment involved", and included comments from a number of organisations. Mr Brand was also interviewed on radio that day. The publicity given to this matter led to many approaches to the University, for clarification of its position in relation to these statements and Mr Brand's position. Mr Brand was interviewed by the Dean of Social Sciences and did not deny these reports, providing a copy of the text he had published. * After an interim response to these queries, early on Friday evening, the University issued the following public statement: =20 1. As indicated earlier today, the University views with deep concern the views attributed to Chris Brand in the press and has been investigating the source and context of that report. 2. It was also stated that the University was, at the same time, taking professional advice about Mr Brand's position and will be taking, as a matter of urgency, whatever action is necessary in the light of that advice. 3. It is now possible to confirm that the office of the Secretary to the University has, this afternoon, served notice on Chris Brand that, under the University procedures governing these matters, he will be facing disciplinary charges. These are, in essence, that his "conduct has brought and is bringing the University into disrepute and that the work of the Department of Psychology may be seriously disrupted". These proceedings are being instituted, following a complaint from the Dean of Social Sciences, in the light of representations made to him by members of staff. He has also been informed that he has been suspended from his teaching and administrative duties within the Department of Psychology, with immediate effect, under procedures which empower the Principal to take this action where gross misconduct is alleged. 4. As previously stated, whatever allegations have been made to the contrary, the University of Edinburgh and its senior officers have, in recent months, gone out of their way to defend the concept of academic freedom, within the law, and to support the rights of academic staff to speak about and openly publish the results of their research, even where this might offend sections of the community. The University can, however, have no truck with the condoning of paedophile acts which transgress laws designed to protect the interests of minors". =20 Against this background, and the fact that he has also now published an article referring to paedophilia, using UoE computing facilities, on his home Web page, Mr Brand's entitlement to use UoE-based network facilities - as opposed to those mounted via non-UoE servers - has, pro tem, been curtailed, to protect the University's own position. =20 In view of subsequent reports, it may also be helpful to confirm that the University has not associated the institution of disciplinary proceedings in any way with 'a lucrative severance package' or the offer of sabbatical leave, though he had, some time earlier, received confirmation of his eligibility to apply for sabbatical leave. =20 The University has earlier issued three public statements in relation to Chris Brand, in the context of previous actions and statements attributed to him, and a letter from the Principal was published in The Scotsman on 4 November (all of which may be consulted, if wished, under Latest News (24.4.96, 31.5.96, 15.10.96 and 4.11.96). =20 Published by IPRS The University of Edinburgh Centre, 7 - 11 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9BE. Tel (University Switchboard) : +44 (0)131 650 1000 Last modified: Wednesday, 17-Dec-1997 12:17:35 GMT Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright =A9 The University of Edinburgh. Statistics for IPRS Server ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 23:07:19 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Brand (3) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE =20 Chris Brand dismissed following disciplinary tribunal =20 Mr Chris Brand has today been notified that, following the completion of the proceedings of the University's duly-constituted Disciplinary Tribunal and its unanimous conclusion that he has been guilty of gross misconduct in relation to the principal charge laid against him, the Principal of the University has authorised termination of his employment as a Lecturer at the University, to take immediate effect. =20 Mr Brand was suspended from his teaching and administrative duties in November of last year, following complaints about his conduct. An initial report by one of the University's Vice-Principals led to the decision to establish the three-person Tribunal, appointed by the University Court. =20 The Tribunal has had several meetings since then, at which Mr Brand and his adviser were present and presented statements, and to which a range of witnesses were called and questioned both by the officer representing the University and Mr Brand/his adviser, as well as by members of the Tribunal. The Tribunal recently submitted its final report to both the Principal of the University and to Mr Brand himself. =20 Mr Brand now has some 28 days in which to lodge an appeal against dismissal, if he wishes to do so. =20 The Principal of the University, Professor Sir Stewart Sutherland, has now made known his decision, in the following terms: =20 "Given the degree of publicity previously associated with this matter, I think it necessary to take the exceptional action of summarising, via this public statement, why the proceedings instituted by the University against Mr Brand have led to this decision." =20 "This outcome arises from an independently-reached judgement on the principal charge made against him: that aspects of Mr Brand's conduct - and particularly his public comments on paedophilia - have been 'of a disgraceful nature, incompatible with the duties of (his) office or employment'. =20 "I advisedly use the word 'conduct', because this is, in my view, in no sense a conclusion which inhibits the entirely proper exercise of academic freedom, under which academic staff must be able to undertake exacting research, carefully assess the evidence and publish and speak about their conclusions. 'However', in the words of the Tribunal report, ' it is incumbent upon any citizen to act responsibly in the manner of his public utterances. This is particularly true of the academic in exercising his academic freedom which does not give licence to express an opinion in any way one chooses: one must be acutely aware of the manner in which material is expressed and individual views should be set in a suitable framework with due care to the sensitivity of the issue and regard to the implications of controversial statements made.' =20 "Neither I nor my colleagues at this University have sought in any way to censor Mr Brand's researched conclusions on ethnic background and intelligence, for example - indeed, we went out of our way to defend his right to express them in a reasoned manner, however unpopular it was for the University to make that case - but it was made clear to him, well before he publicised views on paedophilia, that he also had responsibilities to act with care, whether in a departmental, teaching or wider situation; advice which he apparently chose to ignore. =20 "The Report continues, 'What makes Mr Brand's case extraordinary, and his statement on paedophilia different from the general case, is the way he has courted further controversy and showed a desire to pursue his own goals at the expense of others.... it appears his remarks were clearly chosen to inflame an already difficult situation, through a series of deliberate actions...' Quite apart from the issue of how this was perceived by the public at large and by students, 'The effect was to undermine completely any of the remaining trust and confidence which members of the Department of Psychology might have had in Mr Brand as a colleague' " =20 "The Report of the Disciplinary Tribunal is a long and thoroughly-argued document*. Three charges were brought against Mr Brand: the principal one referred to above; a second one alleging his conduct within his Department (of Psychology) had fallen short of due performance of his duties; and a third, alleging that references to the University/Department of Psychology in his Internet Newsletter involved publication of material damaging to the reputation of the University or its Departments. Charge 1 was unanimously found proven; Charge 2 was found proven by a majority judgement; as regards Charge 3, the majority judgement was that a disciplinary offence had clearly been committed, but that the evidence did not support the University's charge. The majority view of the Tribunal was that I should consider dismissal, but all took the view that were I, as Principal, not to proceed on these lines, it would not be appropriate for Mr Brand to return to the Department of Psychology." =20 "Having given careful consideration to the findings, recommendations and background arguments within the Report, I have come to the conclusion that termination of employment is the most appropriate decision. I see no case for continuing to employ such a member of staff at this University, effectively at the expense of others carrying out their duties and at a continuing cost to what is, ultimately, the public purse." =20 *It is the first case to be heard at the University under internal regulations designed to meet the requirements of the relevant 1988 Parliamentary legislation and subsequent Commissioner's Ordinance, specifically designed both to protect academic freedom and require properly rigorous procedures within any university disciplinary code. =20 Information relating to Mr Chris Brand =20 Published by IPRS The University of Edinburgh Centre, 7 - 11 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9BE. Tel (University Switchboard) : +44 (0)131 650 1000 Last modified: Wednesday, 17-Dec-1997 12:17:37 GMT Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright =A9 The University of Edinburgh. Statistics for IPRS Server ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 23:08:42 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Brand (4) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE =20 Decision Of University Disciplinary Proceedings Upheld _________________________________________________________________ =20 For immediate release (Tuesday 24 March 1998) =20 Queen's Counsel rejects appeal by Chris Brand against termination of his employment =20 The University announced today (Tuesday 24 March) the conclusions of the Hearing - conducted by Mr T Gordon Coutts, QC - of an Appeal, lodged by Mr Chris Brand, formerly a Lecturer in the Psychology Department, against the decision to dismiss him from the staff of the University, taken following the findings of a 3 person Tribunal that he had been guilty of gross misconduct. The summary conclusions of the written Decision by Mr Coutts are cast in the following terms: =20 The appeal fails. I reject all the revised amended grounds of appeal. I find that the appeal does not raise any question of academic freedom. Academic freedom is a principle which is defined and then imposed on the University by Statute although no doubt the University recognised it before it was statutory. I find it amply established that the Appellant (Mr Chris Brand) was dismissed by the Principal (Professor Sir Stewart Sutherland) who was the appropriate person after considering for himself the relevant facts found by the Tribunal i.e. the conduct of the Appellant as a Lecturer and member of the University and his disregard of any consideration for the University or its members in pursuit of his own ends. Those were publicity for his book and expression of the dismay he no doubt rightly felt when it had been effectively censored by the publishers. In pursuit of his objectives he set out to promote controversy. In that he succeeded but cannot now complain if the effect of his behaviour has been to render his continued employment by the University impossible. The Tribunal did not recommend that he be dismissed for views he held; the Principal of the University did not dismiss him for views he held, he was dismissed because it was established that his behaviour made it impossible for him to work within a University department. That behaviour was "good cause" and also in this case gross misconduct. On the facts dismissal cannot be said to have been improper or inappropriate =20 Both the Tribunal and Mr Coutts were appointed by the University Court under the University's Disciplinary Procedures. This latest decision confirms Mr Brand's dismissal, which took effect on 8 August 1997. It completes procedures under internal regulations designed to meet the requirements of the relevant 1988 Parliamentary legislation and subsequent Commissioner's Ordinance, specifically designed to both protect academic freedom and require properly rigorous procedures within any university disciplinary code (This was the first case to be brought at the University of Edinburgh under this code.) =20 The Appeal Hearing was conducted by Mr Coutts, as 'a person qualified in terms of both the Statutory Instrument and the University Disciplinary Policy, Procedures and Regulations 1993' (Appeal Decision), before Mr Brand and the Secretary to the University and their respective legal counsel, on 10 and 11 February 1998. The written Decision has now been delivered to the solicitors for both parties. =20 Commenting on the outcome of the Appeal, the Principal, Professor Sir Stewart Sutherland, said: =20 I am naturally content that this procedure is completed and that an independent legal expert has endorsed in the clearest possible terms, via his written Decision, both the findings of the Disciplinary Tribunal and the decision which I took, in the light of its findings of gross misconduct, to terminate Mr Brand's employment with the University. =20 This University - like any other institution of higher education - does not lightly embark upon such proceedings, but believes it must be in a position to take effective action when there is good cause and, where that action is sufficiently serious, to be able to dismiss the person concerned. =20 The duration of these proceedings has been lengthy. They have been so principally because the University took the view that the obligation lay upon it, having brought these charges, to see that the proceedings met fully the demanding framework of our Disciplinary Procedures, with Mr Brand given his full entitlement to put his case, given the seriousness of the charges. =20 I would repeat that it is for aspects of his conduct, not his opinions, that Mr Brand has been dismissed. Mr Brand has again, in recent months, been reported in the press as alleging this process was an attack on academic freedom (though this was not argued by his Counsel at the Appeal Hearing). It is not and never has been, such an attack, as independently confirmed by the Appeal Decision. =20 I repeat my earlier remarks =D4Neither I nor my colleagues at this University have sought in any way to censor Mr Brand's researched conclusions on ethnic background and intelligence, for example - indeed, we went out of our way to defend his right to express them in a reasoned manner, however unpopular it was for the University to make that case - but it was made clear to him, well before he publicised views on paedophilia, that he also had responsibilities to act with care, whether in a departmental, teaching or wider situation; advice which he apparently chose to ignore.' =20 As stated in the Report of the Disciplinary Tribunal, 'What makes Mr Brand's case extraordinary, and his statement on paedophilia different from the general case, is the way he has courted further controversy and showed a desire to pursue his own goals at the expense of others.... it appears his remarks were clearly chosen to inflame an already difficult situation, through a series of deliberate actions...' Quite apart from the issue of how this was perceived by the public at large and by students, =D4The effect was to undermine completely any of the remaining trust and confidence which members of the Department of Psychology might have had in Mr Brand as a colleague'." =20 The University's procedures are now completed with this confirmation of Mr Brand's dismissal. Should he, however, choose to pursue this matter further before the Courts or Industrial Tribunals, the University, against the background of the results of the Tribunal and of the Appeal Decision under its Disciplinary Proceedings, is prepared fully to justify its actions in that setting. =20 NOTES FOR EDITORS:=20 =20 1. Notice was served of the University's decision to implement Disciplinary Proceedings against Mr Brand on 8 November 1996 and he was suspended from his teaching and administrative duties from that date. A Vice-Principal was appointed to conduct a preliminary investigation and, following his findings, the University Court appointed a 3 person Tribunal in April 1997, to consider the charges made against him. Following the report of the Tribunal, Mr Brand's employment was terminated with effect from 8 August 1997. He then lodged an internal Appeal against dismissal, which was heard by Mr Coutts in February of this year, with the written Decision to reject the Appeal having now been delivered. =20 2. Mr T. Gordon Coutts, QC, was appointed by the University Court, under the University's Disciplinary Proceedings, to hear the Appeal =D4as a person, not employed by the University and not a member of (the University) Court who holds, or has held, judicial office or who is an advocate or solicitor of at least ten years standing. If practicable, this person should have experience of Industrial Tribunals (as Mr Coutts has).' =20 For further information, please contact: =20 Ray Footman, Director, or Anne McKelvie, Deputy Director, Information & PR Services, The University of Edinburgh Tel: 0131 650 2249/2248/2252 =20 Published by IPRS The University of Edinburgh Centre, 7 - 11 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9BE. Tel (University Switchboard) : +44 (0)131 650 1000 Last modified: Tuesday, 24-Mar-1998 16:24:34 GMT Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright =A9 The University of Edinburgh. Statistics for IPRS Server ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 23:11:25 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Brand (4) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII BRIEF CURRICULUM VITAE Name : Christopher Richard BRAND. Date of birth : 1 June 1943. Nationality: British. Education: Queen Elizabeth's Boys' Grammar School, Barnet, Hertfordshire; The Queen's College, Oxford. Degree: M.A. (Oxon.) (Psychology & Philosophy). Employment: Home Office, Prison Department (H.M.P. Grendon), 1965-68; Nuffield College, Oxford, 1968-70; U.S.Navy (Naval Personnel Research & Development Center, San Diego), 1982; Edinburgh University (Psychology Department), 1970-1997. RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS My academic work has been concerned with identifying and elucidating the main dimensions of human variation in personality and abilities (especially as reflected in objective measures). I have taken the view that the more interesting questions about personality differences and their biosocial and psychodynamic significance can only begin to be answered seriously once there is a consensus as to what are the main, objectively measurable 'dimensions of personality' (and as to what is still mysterious). Since 1984, I have maintained that there are six main dimensions - rather than the 'Big Five' that have enjoyed more popularity with psychometrician-psychologists; and that several dimensions have primarily Freudian interpretations. However, since the existence and importance of even a dimension of 'general intelligence' is often disputed in and around psychology and the social sciences, my work has especially concerned the g factor (the psychometric backbone of IQ), its possible basis in 'speed of apprehension', and its relation to personality and attitudes. Publication of my practical conclusions (chiefly that parents and schools should be able do more to tailor education to children's intelligence levels) and of my willingness to acknowledge deep-seated racial differences provoked a storm of controversy, the withdrawal of my, The g Factor, book by the US publisher, and eventually my sacking by Edinburgh University (on the pretext that I had counselled against the mounting paedohysteria in the USA and UK of 1996). Selected Publications etc. * 1982 'Intelligence and inspection time.' (C.R.BRAND & I.J.DEARY) In H.J.Eysenck, A Model for Intelligence. New York : Springer, pp.133-148. * 1984 'Personality dimensions: an overview of modern trait psychology.' In J.Nicholson & Halla Beloff, Psychology Survey 5. Leicester : British Psychological Society, pp.175-209. * 1989 'Has there been a 'massive' rise in IQ levels in the West? Evidence from Scottish children.' (C.R.BRAND, SUSAN FRESHWATER & W.B.DOCKRELL) Irish J. Psychology 10, 3, pp.388-394. * 1993 'Special Review' of H.J.Eysenck, Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. Behaviour Research and Therapy 31, 1, 129-131. * 1993 'Cognitive abilities: current theoretical issues.' In T.J.Bouchard & P.Propping, Twins as a Tool of Behaviour Genetics. Chichester : Wiley. * 1994 'Intelligence, personality and society: constructivist vs essentialist possibilities.' (C.R.BRAND, V.EGAN & I.J.DEARY.) In D.K.Detterman, Current Topics in Human Intelligence 4. New Jersey : Ablex. * 1994 'Open to experience - closed to intelligence: Why the 'Big Five' are really the 'Comprehensive Six'.' European Journal of Personality 8, 299-310. * 1994 'How many dimensions of personality? - The 'Big 5', the 'Gigantic 3' and the 'Comprehensive 6.' Psychologica Belgica 34, 257-273. * 1996 THE g FACTOR: GENERAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS. Chichester :Wiley. (Available in UK bookshops February 29 - April 17, 1996; now available by Inter-Library Loans.) * 1996 'The importance of intelligence in Western societies.' J. Biosocial Science 28, 387-404. * 1996 'Doing something about g.' Intelligence 22, 3, 311-326. * 1997 'Ten arguments for the existence of racial differences in intelligence, and why we should welcome race realism', Mankind Quarterly 37, 3, 317-326 * 1997 'Hans Eysenck's personality dimensions: their number and nature.' In H. Nyborg, The Scientific Study of Human Nature: Tribute to Hans J. Eysenck at Eighty. Oxford : Pergamon. * 1997 'Obituary for Hans Jurgen Eysenck.' Mankind Quarterly 38; Psychologemas [Spain]; and on the Internet at . * 1998 'Beware Feminazies!' ['Feminazisterna i farten'], Finanstidningen [Sweden] 13 February; and on the Internet at ('Kultur' section). * 1998 'Beware Educationists!' In press for Finanstidningen. I have broadcast for BBC IV UK, have written quite often for Nature and Times Higher Educational Supplement and am a Fellow of the Galton Institute [London]. There is considerable coverage of my case against Wiley and Edinburgh University in print: * 'IQ and PC', National Review [USA], ii '97 * 'Don't mention the P word', Independent, 18 viii '97 * 'Controversial academic gets the axe', Science 277, p. 5329, 22 viii '97 * 'Raymond B. Cattell and the Fourth Inquisition', Mankind Quarterly 38, Fall/Winter '97 [pp. 107-8] * 'Academic freedom versus the culture of comfort: NAS joins SAFS on the Brand case', Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship Newsletter [Canada], ii '98 * 'University urged to uphold appeal', Scotsman 5 ii '98 * Times Higher, 10 iv '98, p. 5, Olga Wojtas, Scottish Correspondent * 'The new enemies of evolutionary science', Liberty [USA], iii '98). * Student [Edinburgh University's student newspaper], 23 iv '98 The verdict on my Appeal against Edinburgh University from Mr T. Gordon Coutts QC was that British universities can fire their staff just whenever they want. There has apparently been no effective 'academic freedom' or 'security of tenure' for dons since the Education Act of 1988. Currently I am working (with US writer Kevin Lamb) on a biography of William McDougall FRS (1871-1938). Like myself, McDougall fell foul of environmentalism, egalitarianism and utopianism in psychology. I publish a weekly 'William McDougall NewsLetter' at my website . Prepared by Chris Brand. Last Modified: 21 April, 1998. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 23:13:27 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Brand (5) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE This from a National Association of Scholars spokesman on the Brand Affair. I have found no comments from presumably liberal organizations, the ACLU, or AAUP. ------------------------------------------- Comment on: =20 Dismissal of Chris Brand from Edinburgh University =20 by Bradford P. Wilson Executive Director and Acting President National Association of Scholars =20 On August 8, 1997, the Principal of Edinburgh University, Professor Sir Stewart Sutherland, issued a press release announcing the immediate dismissal of Edinburgh psychologist Chris Brand from the teaching faculty. Mr. Brand's dismissal followed upon the completion of a report by a specially constituted three-person "Disciplinary Tribunal." According to the press release, the tribunal determined that Mr. Brand was "guilty of gross misconduct," in that "aspects of Mr. Brand's conduct . . . have been of a disgraceful nature, incompatible with the duties of [his] office or employment." The "majority view" of the tribunal recommended that the Principal "consider dismissal." =20 The Disciplinary Tribunal conducted its investigation in private sessions, and its report has not been released to the public. This state of affairs hampers the ability of anyone not a witness to the investigation and to whom the report is unavailable to make a fully informed judgment as to the fairness of the investigatory process and its results. =20 Our concern with Edinburgh University's dismissal of Mr. Brand derives from our interest in promoting the intellectual integrity of the academy, and, in particular, the academic freedom of the community of scholars. We have had occasion to comment on Mr. Brand before. In April of 1996, the publishing house of John Wiley & Son suspended its publication of, and withdrew from circulation, Mr. Brand's book The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications. It did so because of its objection to (and, no doubt, embarrassment because of) statements made by Mr. Brand to the media in which he reacted to the publication of severe moral censure of his scientific work by a group of critics by describing himself as a "scientific racist," the epithet used by some of those critics. On May 20, 1996, the National Association of Scholars issued a joint press release with the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (in Canada). We said then that: =20 We view with deep concern the decision of the American publishing house, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., to suspend British publication of, and withdraw from circulation, Christopher Brand's The g Factor. We recognize the editorial freedom of publishing houses to decide what and what not to publish, but the withdrawal of a book following an agreement to publish--and after the processes of scholarly review, approval, and production have been completed--seriously impedes the free flow of ideas, chills the intellectual climate, and encourages efforts to suppress opinions of every stripe. While we understand and sympathize with Wiley's discomfort over some of the statements made to the British press by The g Factor's author, we believe that its actions constitute a dangerous precedent, and fall far short of the level of professional responsibility expected of a leading academic publisher. =20 The Principal of Edinburgh University, in a letter to The Scotsman newspaper on November 4, 1996, expressed an understanding much like our own. He criticized Wiley's action of withdrawing the book from circulation as "a matter for regret, since my hope has always been that the publishing industry exists in part to promote the free flow of ideas . . . even those which may cause offence to some readers." The Principal went on to say that it was wrong to "shout down a speaker because he or she might express views, . . . within the law, that you do not agree with. For my part, this indicates not true depth of view and integrity but an unwillingness to enter into debate and lack of confidence that your own arguments and conclusions will prevail." He concluded by saying, "The University is a place for ideas to be explored and debated-even the uncomfortable ones-and we shall continue to do all we can to protect that principle, whether that involves Mr. Brand . . . or whether it does not." =20 Given the Principal's public pledge to protect the freedom at his University to explore and debate uncomfortable ideas, we are surprised and troubled by his dismissal of Mr. Brand. In the absence of a public report by the Disciplinary Tribunal, we must rely on the August 8 press release announcing and justifying the Principal's decision. The Principal alludes to the existence of a context in which Mr. Brand's specific "conduct" occurred that is somehow relevant to judging its legitimacy. He quotes from the Report: "It appears his remarks were clearly chosen to inflame an already difficult situation, through a series of deliberate actions." Unfortunately, the Principal does not describe the nature of the situation, nor does he identify the "series of deliberate actions" the tribunal had in mind. =20 All we are left with is the proximate cause of the tribunal's investigation, what the Principal describes as Mr. Brand's "public comments on paedophilia." Those comments "particularly," the Principal stated, constituted "conduct" that justified Mr. Brand's dismissal. =20 This reference is to comments made by Mr. Brand in his internet newsletter in an article critical of the indictment and trial in the United States of a Nobel Laureate for alleged paedophilic activities. Among the arguments Mr. Brand brought to bear on the indictment was his statement that "Academic studies and my own experience [as a choirboy] suggest that non-violent paedophilia with a consenting partner over age 12 does no harm so long as the paedophiles and their partners are of above-average IQ and educational level." =20 After Mr. Brand's remarks on paedophilia were picked up by the media, Mr. Brand publicly stated that his remarks referred only to the question of psychological harm, not to questions of morality or jurisprudence. He insisted that he did not condone paedophilic behavior, and that he did not wish to see a change in the laws against such behavior. =20 As we take the Principal's press release as an accurate account of his reasons for dismissing Mr. Brand, we must conclude that the quoted statement of Mr. Brand above was the primary cause of his dismissal, as it constituted, for the Principal, "conduct" of a "disgraceful nature, incompatible with the duties of [his] office or employment." =20 As we said about Wiley & Sons, Inc., we can understand and sympathize with the discomfort of the Principal and other members of the Edinburgh University community at Mr. Brand's comments on a sensitive issue of social concern. Nonetheless, Mr. Brand's comments appear to us to be well within the civil freedom of academics to express opinions, however controversial, on matters of human behavior. That Mr. Brand's comments on psychological harm are also within his field of academic competence should place beyond doubt Mr. Brand's right to be free from administrative punishment for the utterances in question. =20 It is of course possible that a scholar's competence may be challenged on the basis of the quality of his arguments and conclusions. Nothing in the Principal's public statement, however, suggests that such a challenge had been made to Mr. Brand's competence, or that any judgment was being passed on Mr. Brand's competence. =20 The publicly available evidence, then, is that the Principal visited upon Mr. Brand the extreme administrative punishment of dismissal because of the opinions he expressed in his personal newsletter. Furthermore, the Principal's decision is rooted in his view that Mr. Brand, in stating his opinions, had "chosen to inflame an already difficult situation." Without more, we must assume that the "difficult situation" referred to by the Principal is the discomfort among parties at the University at Mr. Brand's prior statements that led Wiley & Sons to cease distribution of The g Factor. It is difficult not to conclude that the Principal's dismissal of Mr. Brand is an abandonment of the defense of Mr. Brand's freedom of opinion that the Principal had previously advanced in his public reaction to Wiley's decision. In making the University's situation less "difficult," Mr. Brand's academic career has been sacrificed. =20 Our view of Wiley's decision applies to the Principal's decision to terminate Mr. Brand's employment with Edinburgh University: it "seriously impedes the free flow of ideas, chills the intellectual climate, and encourages efforts to suppress opinions of every stripe." Edinburgh University's action "fall[s] far short of the level of professional responsibility expected" of a leading institution of higher learning. =20 back to top of document _________________________________________________________________ =20 home academic questions / affiliates / comment / conferences / home / index / information / membership / nas in the news and print / nassnl / newsletters / press releases / statements / nas update _________________________________________________________________ =20 =A9 1994-97 National Association of Scholars, Princeton, NJ/updated 11 December 1997 / Rita Zurcher ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 23:14:43 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Brand (6) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE [USEMAP] =20 Disciplinary proceedings and Chris Brand =20 Issued by the University of Edinburgh's Information & PR Services to He= ads of Academic and Admin departments for information: 11.11.96 =20 Given the extensive media coverage devoted to this topic over the last two or three days, Heads of Department and members of staff more generally may wish to be aware of the following facts: * In the Daily Record published on Friday, 8 November, reference was made to an article of comment published by Chris Brand of the University's Psychology Department in an internet newsletter - which is believed to have been originated outwith the UoE. That article, criticising legal proceedings being taken against a 73-year-old Nobel Prizewinner, included a number of references to paedophilia, suggesting it was harmless when non-violent with a consenting partner over the age of 12, provided both partners were of above-average IQ and educational level. The press article also included the following statement attributed to Mr Brand, "The vast majority of young partners suffer no harm, especially where there is a cash payment involved", and included comments from a number of organisations. Mr Brand was also interviewed on radio that day. The publicity given to this matter led to many approaches to the University, for clarification of its position in relation to these statements and Mr Brand's position. Mr Brand was interviewed by the Dean of Social Sciences and did not deny these reports, providing a copy of the text he had published. * After an interim response to these queries, early on Friday evening, the University issued the following public statement: =20 1. As indicated earlier today, the University views with deep concern the views attributed to Chris Brand in the press and has been investigating the source and context of that report. 2. It was also stated that the University was, at the same time, taking professional advice about Mr Brand's position and will be taking, as a matter of urgency, whatever action is necessary in the light of that advice. 3. It is now possible to confirm that the office of the Secretary to the University has, this afternoon, served notice on Chris Brand that, under the University procedures governing these matters, he will be facing disciplinary charges. These are, in essence, that his "conduct has brought and is bringing the University into disrepute and that the work of the Department of Psychology may be seriously disrupted". These proceedings are being instituted, following a complaint from the Dean of Social Sciences, in the light of representations made to him by members of staff. He has also been informed that he has been suspended from his teaching and administrative duties within the Department of Psychology, with immediate effect, under procedures which empower the Principal to take this action where gross misconduct is alleged. 4. As previously stated, whatever allegations have been made to the contrary, the University of Edinburgh and its senior officers have, in recent months, gone out of their way to defend the concept of academic freedom, within the law, and to support the rights of academic staff to speak about and openly publish the results of their research, even where this might offend sections of the community. The University can, however, have no truck with the condoning of paedophile acts which transgress laws designed to protect the interests of minors". =20 Against this background, and the fact that he has also now published an article referring to paedophilia, using UoE computing facilities, on his home Web page, Mr Brand's entitlement to use UoE-based network facilities - as opposed to those mounted via non-UoE servers - has, pro tem, been curtailed, to protect the University's own position. =20 In view of subsequent reports, it may also be helpful to confirm that the University has not associated the institution of disciplinary proceedings in any way with 'a lucrative severance package' or the offer of sabbatical leave, though he had, some time earlier, received confirmation of his eligibility to apply for sabbatical leave. =20 The University has earlier issued three public statements in relation to Chris Brand, in the context of previous actions and statements attributed to him, and a letter from the Principal was published in The Scotsman on 4 November (all of which may be consulted, if wished, under Latest News (24.4.96, 31.5.96, 15.10.96 and 4.11.96). =20 Published by IPRS The University of Edinburgh Centre, 7 - 11 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9BE. Tel (University Switchboard) : +44 (0)131 650 1000 Last modified: Wednesday, 17-Dec-1997 12:17:35 GMT Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright =A9 The University of Edinburgh. Statistics for IPRS Server ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 06:27:26 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: C. Brand, Tec. / Free Speech beyond shouting radius MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Norman Levitt wrote: > > In regard to the Chris Brand case, here are the facts as best as I can > make them out. If I am wrong in any material sense, I apologize and would > appreciate being set right--with appropriate references. [snip] > However, on a personal level, Gadjanek is an unconventional > character--that is, he is homosexual, with a predilection for very young > partners. On one of his visits to Micronesia, he acquired a young > companion, and brought him back to the States as his "student." When the > facts came to light, Gadjanek was tried as a sex offender for consorting > with a boy under the age of consent. He was convicted and sentenced to > prison for something over a year (a term which he completed just the other > day.) Would a person risk their social status (job, etc.) these days if they spoke approvingly of Robert Anderson's 1953 play "Tea and Sympathy"? > > Brand comes into the picture because he circulated an e-mail petition > protesting the justice meted out to Gadjanek. Brand's arguments were > twofold. First, he asserted that Gadjanek's prior and prospective service > to humanity should be taken into account. Secondly, he claimed that the > sort of relationship for which Gadjanek was punished does not, in most > cases, do any severe damage to its purported victim. It is my > understanding that Brand made these remarks without having any hidden > agenda--in other words, he doesn't appear to share Gadjanek's > proclivities. > > However, the University of Edinburgh instantly decreed that Brans's > remarks were beyond the pale and that he had dirtied Edinburgh's "good > name" by uttering them (from a university e-mail adress!!, horror of > horrors). Brand was suspended from all university connections and > proceedings were begun to dismiss him outright. In due course, he was > fired, and the propriety of his firing was then confirmed by an appellate > tribunal of some sort. [snip] I find this very interesting. (Obviously, I don't know if Prof. Levitt's synopsis fairly represents the particluar case, but I want to address certain hypothetical issues, which, in a way, I myself have encountered.) If a university's email cannot be used for free expression of ideas (at least to the general limits of free speech supported, e.g., by the United States' Supreme Court), then it seems to me that we have a problem. The problem can be addressed in part by persons conducting their correspondence via email from a personal account. But, especially for "mental workers", whose "work" and "personal views and the expression thereof" are complexly intertwined, such a "solution" may impact the person's *work* (if the person is thereby prevented from working on important aspects of their work except when they are physically not at work). If universities (and, a fortiori, private corporations) do not want ideologically non-conformant discourse going out under their electronic "letterhead" (we've all seen postings from employees that say "these opinions are mine and not my employer's" --> if this is not "good enough"), then is it acceptable (can it be made a norm [no pun intended, NL...]...) that persons could use their computers at work for this kind of correspondence, *provided* the mail came in from the person's own account (e.g., a POP3 mail client on TCP/IP port 110), and that it also went out via a non-university facility (e.g., SMTP server on TCP/IP port 25). Of course, even this idea would entail messages being *composed* on the organization's hardware, but the alternative: that the employee use a dial-up connection over the institution's phone lines has already been prohibited by some large computer companies (Sun is one, I think???). So do we accept that work, even for university faculty, is a place of directed activity and directed thinking, according to administrative policy specs? Or do we try to come up with some kind of reasonable modus vivendi, as if we were free and responsible individuals in a community of reciprocal support? (Note the "as if" -- I am not asking for true material democracy, but only for a reliable semblance of civility) In a world in which few persons can come anywhere close to being *independent* (Bill Gates and Donald Trump and any phisicist/other scientist who needs laboratory equipment they cannot buy from personal funds certainly are not!) -- for to approach independence seems to me to mean becoming a hermit incommunicado -- it seems to me that there needs to be a large measure of control over the exercise of power by institutions, from which it is the height of self-righteous hypocrisy to say: "If you don't like the way we do things here, go some place else." (Where? off the edge of the flat earth?) Perhaps today the story of The Tower of Babel could have a new twist: God does not intervene. The tower gets built. The Chief Administrators silence all discourse except that which can be deductively generated from their policy vectors. I'm looking for resources for my own situation (which I tend to deal with by "speaking" from my "home computer" -- but even that is not, per se, a solution, since one's employer could conceivably argue that one could not afford the "personal" computer except as a logical consequence of their paychecks...), and for ideas "in general". \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, 2 May 1998 08:43:10 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: E.O. Wilson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII May 2, 1998 The Forces That Explain Human Enterprise By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN W ASHINGTON -- This time around, no cold water was dumped on Edward Wilson's head. Margaret Mead did not have to stand up in his defense and denounce a professional audience for having the equivalent of a "book burning." And it is doubtful whether a dozen distinguished scholars like Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould will feel compelled to send a letter to The New York Review of Books, as they did 20 years ago, accusing Wilson of providing a "genetic justification" for racism and sexism. Political times have changed since Wilson's 1975 book, "Sociobiology," was published to these accompanying protests. The capacity audience at a symposium presented by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars here last Monday even gave Wilson (no relation) a warm welcome as he came to speak about his new book, "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge" (Knopf). Jay Tolson, the editor of the center's Wilson Quarterly (which published a mild-mannered debate on Wilson's ideas in its Winter issue), introduced the Harvard biologist, noting that "Wilson's scandalous notion has been accepted almost as a commonplace." Since "Sociobiology," the notion that many aspects of human society bear the marks of its evolutionary past has been amplified in a generation of books from Richard Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" to Robert Wright's "Moral Animal." Wilson has since won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his speculative book, "Human Nature," and his magisterial study "The Ants" (written with Burt Hoelldobler). And it seems to have become fairly widely accepted that we are indeed partly beholden to our animal heritage, that we are unusually intent on being fruitful and multiplying our genes, and that this might possibly affect everything from how we mate to how we worship. But the acceptance of the idea also seems to vary according to political convictions. The discussion at the Wilson Center was thoroughly decorous, with Wilson presenting his argument, the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty challenging Wilson's view of the centrality of evolutionary biology, and the biologist Paul Gross challenging Rorty's challenge. Politics has nevertheless affected the book's reception, with some criticisms remaining unusually harsh. In a scathing review of "Consilience" in The New Republic, for example, the literary critic Tzvetan Todorov challenged Wilson to demonstrate how sociobiology is different from social Darwinism, "the doctrine that was adopted by Hitler." Steve Jones, in The New York Review, jested about the book's purported allegiance to Newt Gingrich, who is thanked in the acknowledgments for being a prepublication reader of the manuscript. And Gross' defense of Wilson at the symposium also had a political dimension as he questioned the "ulterior motives" of some Wilson critics. Even the symposium's rather subtle debate between Rorty and Wilson suggested that vastly different political perspectives were involved. At the heart of the conflict is Wilson's innocent revival of the word "consilience," which refers to a "jumping together" of forms of knowledge, linking different disciplines and theories by finding common foundations. Wilson praises the drive toward unification of the sciences and humanities that began in the Enlightenment and mourns that it has gone astray. But while earlier attempts to discern consilience drew inspiration from religion or reason, mystical theories or physical laws, Wilson seeks the common foundations of human knowledge in the principles of evolutionary biology. He argues that they are central to the humanities and social sciences and therefore should be the vehicle linking them to the natural sciences. He asserts, in fact, that esthetic tastes and culture, forms of government and religious beliefs are all affected by genetic tendencies that have evolved over millions of years, tendencies that need to be better understood. They leave their imprint on every human act, with research showing, for example, that every known culture treats incest as a taboo, classifies colors in similar groupings, and has clearly defined notions of status and territory. Wilson suggests that such universals and other more complicated characteristics yet to be explored -- our "human nature" -- would, if properly understood, help reveal underlying forces shaping all human enterprise. This would also, he argues, help in very practical ways as well, showing which human enterprises may be doomed to fail and what dangers are latent in each social contract.. For instance, he suggests that evolutionary biology would have led us to expect the downfall of communism (which attempted to bypass the claims of human nature) and the rise of ethnic warfare (a tendency coded in our genes). But as some critics have pointed out, these examples remain curiously cursory. Some of the objections raised to Wilson's enterprise have pointed to the disparity between the largeness of his claims and the small scope of his examples. Skeptics have asked why knowledge of biological factors would affect our understanding of artistic achievement, and how the study of ethics would profit more from learning about genetic predispositions than by examining historical examples and using reasoned argument. Wilson acknowledges that right now, too little is known to make more detailed analyses. Even the narrower conclusions must be qualified. Human nature, Wilson points out, does not determine culture, it just determines tendencies. At the symposium, Gross pointed out that there is so much variation in culture that some Wilson critics might be right when they argue that the actual genetic contribution to culture may be smaller than expected. At the end of the symposium, Betty Friedan, who was in the audience, asked whether the development of feminism was consistent with Wilson's views of evolutionary biology. Both Wilson and Gross responded that indeed it was, that sexual differentiation does not restrict these forms of cultural change. But arguments have been mounted in the other direction as well. Such ambiguities and speculations, though, have not been the main cause for the political passions Wilson has inspired. In the book he anticipates that his effort will be welcomed like a "vampire in the sacristy" simply because of the attempt he is making: to discern a biologically based "human nature." Wilson's view of human nature is a view of human limitations. It suggests that there are boundaries on the possibility of creating different kinds of societies, that we are not completely free to remake ourselves and our world as we wish. Belief in such limits raises suspicions, particularly on the political left, where there is desire for deep-seated social change. Rorty points out in the Wilson Quarterly: "We have come to distrust the people who tell us that 'you cannot change human nature' -- a slogan that was employed against the education of women, interracial marriage and gay liberation." The symposium's interchange between Rorty and Wilson, in fact, showed how deeply political these disagreements are. Rorty said that rather than thinking about human nature ("which strikes me as having very little interest"), rather than seeking to reduce human activities to biological tendencies, he is more interested in the multiple ways in which humanity can be studied and described. He used the analogy of a computer. Wilson, he suggested, gives too much importance to the hardware, while what we really care about is the software: the cultural and social lives that surround us. Far from seeking a unified, consilient approach -- a single piece of software -- we revel in variety: "We have lots of programs for different purposes." And so it should be when we study the humanities and social sciences. Wilson's consilience, he suggested, is limited and limiting. This represents a vastly different view of human nature. Wilson, for example, does not really accept Rorty's computer analogy. For Wilson, software -- culture, behavior and social organizations -- is not added onto hardware, it grows out of it and is partly indistinguishable from it. We cannot separate our biology from our culture. These contrasting views are intimately linked to interpretations of how much political change is possible and how it should be attained. For Rorty, it seems, humanity can evolve through self-invention: Choose a different program and there is no reason that it cannot be used; the emphasis is on possibility. For Wilson, such experimentation is dangerous; the emphasis is on limitation; some software -- to extend the analogy -- might cause the system to crash or corrupt important files. The hardware, for instance, simply won't let us design a society built around either incestuous family relations or nonexistent family relations. These are almost archetypal political differences. Rorty would probably look at the disagreement as another example of how many ways there are of looking at the world and how strong the tendency is to mistakenly elevate one over others. For Wilson, the disagreement may have a darker meaning, providing evidence of how strong the human urge is to believe that we can remake ourselves without bounds, and how urgent the need is for consilience. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 08:45:04 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Park on Seitz MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII May 2, 1998 Scientists and Their Political Passions By ROBERT L. PARK W ASHINGTON -- I received a note a few weeks ago, urging me to sign a petition card opposing the global climate change accord. So, it seems, did just about every scientist in the United States. The note was signed by Frederick Seitz, a physicist who once served as president of the National Academy of Sciences. An accompanying article that looked like a reprint from the academy's journal explained what we can all do to make this a better world: burn more hydrocarbons. This was a new concept for me. Maybe I should crank up the thermostat and trade my fuel-efficient car for a sports-utility gas guzzler? I wanted to learn more, but there was no letterhead, and the only return address was a post office box in La Jolla, Calif. The National Academy of Sciences disavowed any connection with the petition. The article had not been published in the academy's journal -- or anywhere else. Moreover, a study conducted by the academy had reached the opposite conclusion. If scientists all have access to the same data, why, you might wonder, is there such passionate disagreement? What separates the two sides may not be so much an argument over the scientific facts, scientific laws or even the scientific method, but profoundly different political and religious views. Most climatologists agree that as a result of increased burning of fossil fuels, the temperature of the earth has gone up perhaps 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Climatologists warn that if the buildup continues, low-lying land masses, including many of the world's great cities, may be flooded in the next century by rising sea levels as the polar caps melt. Drastic changes in rainfall patterns could wreak havoc on food production. "Nonsense!" insists a highly vocal minority. The increase in carbon dioxide is actually "a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution," to quote an opinion article published a few months ago in The Wall Street Journal. These optimists say that carbon dioxide stimulates plant growth, making the world more lush and productive, and that our unrationed burning of hydrocarbons allows the world to support a larger population -- fulfilling the biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply." The great war over global warming, then, is more about values than it is about science. It sounds like a scientific debate, with numbers and equations tossed back and forth. The antagonists themselves may even believe they are engaged in such a debate. But the average scientist is exposed to religious and political views at his mother's knee, long before he is exposed to science. Such views have a way of occupying whatever gaps are present in scientific understanding. And there are gaps aplenty in the climate debate. There are holes in the data and uncertainties in the computer models, and small changes in the assumptions could result in very different projections. Both sides acknowledge these limitations. But to allow unlimited growth in greenhouse emissions is a reckless acceleration of a global experiment the industrialized world is already engaged in -- the consequences of which are potentially catastrophic. Until the numbers are in, however, it's easy to be misled. That brings us back to the petition. The source turned out to be the tiny Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, based in Cave Junction. I don't know how many petition cards were sent out, but I can guess who paid for the mailing. There is a well-financed campaign by the petroleum industry to recruit scientists who are skeptical about global warming to help convert journalists, politicians and the public to their views. Few of the scientists who received the petition are climate experts -- and there aren't any in Cave Junction either. But when uncertainty abounds, scientific judgment has a way of conforming to the religious and political views of the scientist. As for me, global warming or not, my mother taught me to keep the thermostat down. Robert L. Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, is author of the forthcoming "Voodoo Science." Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 12:14:11 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: GilWhittem Subject: Due process and regulating speech on the Internet Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On Fri, 1 May 1998, GilWhittem wrote: > Hard cases make bad law. Does Prof. Levitt believe there is an affirmative > obligation on the part of every citizen to report all evidence - even if > hearsay and not eyewitness - to the police of any violations of law? What if > the law itself were regarded as "wrong" - such as a law against the teaching > of evolution? Or would this obligation be restricted only to certain crimes, > or to certain types of evidence? The tragic - or enraging - facts of one case > should not blind one to the underlying principle being advocated. > Gil Whittemore, PhD, JD Prof Levitt replied, in part: >"This is a straw-man argument and hardly worth responding to, but here goes anyway. [snip] There are lots of situations where I wouldn't dream of calling the cops-- and the hell with the law! But this is an antithetical case if ever there was one." Gil Whittemore replies: I believe Prof. Levitt's final sentence illustrates precisely the point I was trying to make. Extreme cases make bad law. Recall this discussion arose because of a statement in this public forum that a named individual should summarily be deprived of his livelihood, and likely his career, because of his failure to report to the police a communication over the Internet, after said communicaiton had already been reported by others. Presumably this is not a recommendation made lightly or casually. Also distinguish between the crime confessed to, murder, and the offense for which this person should lose his job: failure to report an Internet communication already reported to the police. If, as Prof. Levitt says in his last sentence, there are cases in which one would not dismiss a faculty memeberr for such a failure to report (which was my point in presenting the "straw man" exampole of a law against teaching evolution), the following issues arise: 1. Can one develop a standard suitable to guide people's future actions which would specify what Internet communications must be reported? Prof. Levitt seems to regard as relevant in this case the general nature of said person's earlier Internet communications - but is this relevant to the point at issue? Is the claim that said person was contributing to a "culture of narcissism" at all relevant to deciding whther he should lose his job? If so - that is is the general content of one's communications over the Internet are relevant - then the problem of developing a standard is even more difficult. 2. Can one develop a process - "due procedure" - for enforcing such a standard? 3. How would such a standard and procedure interact with the application of freedom of speech as applied to the Internet? It is better to think through proposed laws and actions - whether those of a university, a learned profession's self-regulation or a government - before embarking on them instead of simply relying on a personal, ad hoc "to hell with the law" response to the issues presented above. Robert Bolt put it far better in Act One of "A Man for All Seasons": "[Earlier in the scene More had likened the laws of England to a great forest. Roper is now opposed to King Henry VIII and does not believe the king should have the protection of "law"] ROPER: So now you'd give the Devil the benefit of law! MORE: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ROPER: I'd cut down every law in England to do that! MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." Gilbert Whittemore ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 12:04:52 -0800 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Simon Subject: Re: The tyranny of therapeutic culture (part 1) In-Reply-To: <199805012257.PAA15682@smtp1.teleport.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Norman: You write, > What is fascinating--and repellent--is that this little hermetic > community was willing to throw decency to the dogs for the sake of a > psychological sop--being able to comisserate endlessly with each other > within the illusion of "virtual" privacy. It is a signal case of what > Christopher Lasch called the "culture of narcissism," a myopia that > makes one's own discomfiture with the viscisitudes of life so central > to one's thinking that serious moral reflection is all but impossible. I must admit that the scenario did make me reflect a bit on when I ought to call the cops -- and when not. At one time I was an attorney. In that position I heard a lot of confessions and was generally prevented by law from disclosing that information to authorities. No case ever arose of such moral enormity that I was willing to subject myself to the legal sanctions that would have followed from taking a higher moral road and reporting the crimes. After being an attorney for a while I did a stint as a criminal and drug addict. Although the honor among thieves is severely overrated, the social pressure not to disclose the crimes of one's cohorts is fairly strong in that social milieu. I did not. Finding crime and addiction a bit too stressful I found it necessary to join a twelve step group. It is a tough group where status is measured by penitentiary time rather than post-graduate degrees. Our particular group is the oldest one in my state and has a long standing policy of not cooperating with legal, medical or social service authorities. I never heard an unprosecuted murder confessed in the group, but I have heard lots of felonies. I have never know a member to report these crimes, but many members have cut down on committing them. Now I work in business. Crime in business is normal business. The crimes may have enormous impact, but the impact is spread so widely that normally no individual is all that severely hurt. Being that I value my job and might well -- considering my background -- have a difficult time finding another one, I don't blow the whistle here either. > There are lots of situations where I wouldn't dream of calling the > cops-- and the hell with the law! I guess I want to ask for a little more direction. When have you notified authorities about the illegal activities of your social and professional associates, and what personal losses have you suffered from doing so? It would be easier for me to understand the standard you propose if I could see how you have put it into action on the tough cases. Orrin "Simon" Onken oro@teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~oro Listowner, Netdynam -- Group Psychology in Internet Communication http://rdz.stjohns.edu/lists/netdynam ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 13:22:34 -0600 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Dewey Dykstra, Jr." Subject: Re: True/false dichotomy -- I & II In-Reply-To: <199805011700.LAA10740@bsumail.idbsu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gideon Lichfield writes: >Dewey Dykstra wrote: > >>you might notice that there are two classes of entities mentioned here. >>One type of example is reference to shared experience. >.... >>The other type of example is about entities presumed to exist and which >>play a role in explaining our shared experiences with phenomena; >>constructs. .... >..... >>If we merely stopped insisting that our explanations tell us what "really >>is," and instead thought our explanations as useful, plausible, satisfying >>explanatory stories which fit our experience and which enable us to >>accomplish goals and meet needs as we see them now, then the present >>"debate" might not even occur to us. > >The "debate" you're referring to here is the one about realism: whether the >entities that theories (usually of physics) describe exist. The position you > argue >for is instrumentalism: theories are useful tools for explaining the >phenomena, >not claims about what there is behind the phenomena. This recognises shared >experiences (the first type of entity you mention), but not constructs (the >second). Since I AM "recognizing" constructs and instrumentalism, which in your view, *does not*, then I must NOT be arguing for instrumentalism, but *something else* instead. (Maybe a more "complete" position, since it includes both entities and instrumentalism, according to your claim, does not.) I agree that "realism or not" is a way of characterizing what I see as the underlying issue, but I am wondering what labeling "my position" as instrumentalism actually accomplishes, especially considering the contradiction which exists between your characterization of and what I have actually argued in the quote above. >It seems to me that philosophy-of-science courses, though they teach realism >vs. instrumentalism, and though they teach theory-choice and >falsification, don't >bring the two together in the way that this discussion indicates they >ought to. I wonder how many of the participants of the "debate" overall have actually even taken a philosophy-of-science course. Hence, I'm wondering why what happens in such courses is of any actual import in the framing of the debate in our society on the whole. One can be pretty sure that all of the participants have had way more hours of instruction in science than philosophy-of-science in their schooling. Obviously this is true of the scientists in the debate. What about the non-scientists? In the US very few who would be participating in the debate can have "escaped" quite a number of hours of science instruction just getting through high school and it is hard to get the first four year degree (B.S. or B.S.) without one or two more science courses. (Is it very different in other countries from which the participants come? I kind of doubt it.) In addition, research in student conceptions of the phenomena over the last 20 years reveals that, on a world wide basis, science instruction has little effect on student conceptions of the phenomena. Unless those who teach philosophy-of-science know something the rest of us do not know about teaching, I doubt that such courses have much effect on the conceptions of science of those who take the courses. Hence, on both counts, I'm wondering why anything that happens in such courses would be expected to have had an effect on the debate concerning the "science wars." >When a theory is falsified in Popper's sense, it isn't usually rejected >wholesale, >as we all know. Though its ontological claims may get totally overturned, its >explanatory scope is usually only restricted. (eg, Newtonian physics being >shown to apply at low speeds and low spacetime curvature, rather than >universally.) But, it is the *ontological* aspects and the *distinction* between them and the explanatory scope of particular constructs which *are* the issue here. Such distinctions are quite obviously not the result of the many hours of instruction in science which essentially everyone in the debate have experienced, including the non-scientists and nearly the whole population of the countries from which the "debaters" in this discussion come, not to mention many other countries. Then again, there are those who have pointed out that even Popper's position on falsification may have flaws. While bringing up his position may make it possible to cast the discussion in terms of the distinction between ontological claims and explanatory scope, it is *this* distinction and not Popper or falsifiability which are at the "bottom" of the debates in my view. >Yet themes like falsification, or the meta-induction from past falsity - a >contortion >of which is expressed in the above extract from Crichton on history of >science - >can seem to gloss over this distinction between the different senses in >which a >theory can be called "false", especially presented in the abstract way >they are in >philosophy courses. (It stems perhaps from the philosopher's logical >point that if >a theory contains a bunch of propositions and one of them is false then the >theory as a whole is, logically, false.) I think you may be attributing notions to Crichton that are not justifiable based solely on the quotation. I certainly am not and no reasonable person I know would agree that the explanatory scope of particular constructs is changed when new constructs occur to us which accommodate experiences which the old ones cannot. I believe this is Crichton's position and it is certainly mine. I'm saying that I think Crichton is quite aware of this distinction between the ontological claims and the explanatory scope of constructs. In fact, it is hard to understand how Crichton could knowingly and logically make such a statement and without recognizing the distinction. It could only be "contorted" if you assume that Crichton does not think about what he writes and doesn't know any better. His formal education includes more mathematics and science than many in the debate. As a comentator on aspects of our society, in speeches I have heard, I have found him to be more penetrating and thoughtful than most practicing scientists I know. >Thus, those philosophy-of-science >students who don't also study science (a practice that ought to be banned, >IMHO) may end up failing to notice the distinction. It appears to me that the way the arguments have been constructed by those "defending" science, even people with advanced amounts of formal education in science (and then many years in the practice of science) don't make the distinction. Given the results of science instruction now, why should adopting such a requirement *really* be expected to have any effect? One conclusion is that what we expect of education is not in fact the outcome of education-as-it-is. Could education be different? I think so and there is evidence of it in isolated cases. >And this confusion may also be conveyed more widely. Obviously, it is, but is it conveyed or is it part of our culture, reproduced in each successive generation via education-as-it-is? You can probably guess what my answer to this question is. >No wonder, then, that people are worried about the public's misunderstanding >the notion of falsifiability. It's a subtle notion that easily eludes you even > if you're >taking a degree in the subject. And here it's being proposed that it be > explained >*inside* a 200-word definition of the essence of science. I, for one, >would like > to >know what benefit such a catechism is expected to bring, and how. Ahh... now on this we DO agree, but apparently via different routes. Gideon, thanks for the response and making the opportunity to respond. Dewey +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105 Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775 Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330 Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu 1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper "Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld, 1938. "Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence." --E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958. "Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in There Are No Electrons, 1991. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 02:15:29 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: ARCHIVE1 Subject: writers(graffiti)manifesto Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit int.work-group on graffiti-research: A"writers`manifesto"(extracted from 30 000 sources)has been published(52 key- sentences)in ALT.GRAFFITI A.Thiel(coordination) Kassel(Germany) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 10:46:21 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Scientific fightback MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT A response to John Ziman's review of *The Flight from Science and Reason* in the letters column of this weeks *Times HIgher Education Supplement* (May 1 1998) _______________________________ John Ziman misunderstands the purpose of *Flight from Science and Reason* (THES, April 24). Far from trying to create a new philosophy or history of science it is forging a resistance to what has become a naked assault on the Enlightenment and any kind of rational dialogue, made by those who are privileged enough to profit from its fruits. Such attacks are also directed at history. Assaults on science are coming from New Age mysticism, "feminist scientific (sic) theory", Afrocentrism, anti-Darwinism, techno-occultism, political correctness and pre-millenial anxieties masquerading as critiques of contemporary society. It is significant that this centenary year of Trofim Lysenko has been met by a deafening silence. *Flight* is an essential toolkit needed to overcome Hydra-headed madness. Without a fightback the consequences would be too dreadful to contemplate. Mazin Zeki ______________________________________ **************************************************************** 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/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 10:49:40 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Origin of the enemies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Letters, *Times Higher Education Supplement* May 1 1998. Those who are so inclined may want to contemplate the use of juridical metaphor in reference to Einstein's work, and pathological metaphor in relation to dissent from the aims of science studies. _____________________________ Origin of the enemies RAY MONK's review of Raymond Tallis's *Enemies of Hope* (THES, March 20) is mostly a carve up of me. Tallis says his book began as a review of my *Origins of the Sacred* which "got out of hand". Monk wants to praise Tallis but is deeply puzzled and annoyed that this versatile sharpshooter has wasted some 30,000 words on a ludicrous twerp like me while dealing cursorily with such heavyweight baddies as Marx, Freud, and Foucault. The answer to this puzzle might just be that Tallis really did think that I required 30,000 words, but that in the forensic excitement of zapping the enemy he only embraced my phantom, and hence what got shot was the straw man and not the sheriff. By way of chastising my wicked refusal to see that "science works and magic does not", Monk relays irrelevant and nauseating details of a tasteless story about a sick Nigerian girl being effectively tortured by her witch-doctoring tribe before being rescued by western medicine. Mr. Monk hereby reveals more than a touch of the yobbish tendency. Of course I never suggest that science does not work. My point is the opposite, that it works so well we must need to "worship" the "magicians" who can save lives with antibiotics and put men on the moon; and this poses problems for piety. On reflection, I may have slightly overdone the implications of the idealist shunt in quantum theory but it was in any case a small part of a sustained critique of the Cartesian mind. Not only does Monk not mention Descartes, but neither does he mention that the other figure I want rounded up for questioning in my science chapter is that kindly old mathematician Einstein. My criticisms of Einstein (extending back to Renaissance ballistics) are certainly contentious, intentionally provocative, arguably unkind, and possibly wrong; and yet they are passed over in silence while I am mocked for quibbling over quarks. Such evasion of my central arguments would suggest that someone in the precinct is "in denial"; or that Tallis and Monk are both afflicted by scientism. In place of my puerilities on myth, Monk proposes Wittgenstein as a proper opponent for Tallis; but Wittgenstein's definition sounds altogether compatible with my own, which is based on Salusts's precis of Aristotle: "These things never happened but are always". This has served the mythographic community for over 2,000 years now. *Origins* was written almost ten years ago in the hope of narrowing the gap between the Two Cultures, and proposes Darwin as culture hero. The dummies in New York who nominated it for a Pulitzer Prize have by now all been sent to Wyoming and re-employed as soda jerks; and I, though unrepentant, certainly would not undertake such a project today -- doors slamming everywhere, drawbridges coming up, enemies of hope indeed. Dudley Young Department of Literature University of Essex __________________________ **************************************************************** 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/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 07:25:04 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Scientific fightback X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > A response to John Ziman's review of *The Flight from Science and > Reason* in the letters column of this weeks *Times HIgher Education > Supplement* (May 1 1998) > _______________________________ > > John Ziman misunderstands the purpose of *Flight from Science and > Reason* (THES, April 24). Far from trying to create a new philosophy > or history of science it is forging a resistance to what has become a > naked assault on the Enlightenment and any kind of rational dialogue, > made by those who are privileged enough to profit from its fruits. > Such attacks are also directed at history. Assaults on science are > coming from New Age mysticism, "feminist scientific (sic) theory", > Afrocentrism, anti-Darwinism, techno-occultism, political correctness > and pre-millenial anxieties masquerading as critiques of > contemporary society. > It is significant that this centenary year of Trofim Lysenko has > been met by a deafening silence. [snip] *I* certainly did not know it was Lysenko's centenary, and I am also unclear as to its/his "implications". However, anent "the Enlightenment", in going through some files in my basement, yesterday I found an article which, I feel, very beautifully and succinctly sums up the case *for* it. The article includes key quotes from Joseph Needham's _Science and Civilization in China_. I heartily recommend it, and would much like to hear any responses to it, pro or contra: 'Copernicus and the Quest for Certitude: "East" and "West"', by Benjamin Nelson, New School for Social Research, New York Now for the downside: At the time aI photocopied the article, I was not sufficiently conscientious to note what journal I got it from, and the journal was not sufficiently "modern" to include copyright information in each article. I feel it's worth finding. Anybody have a quick way to do it? (I'd appreciate the information, myself). \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: Mon, 4 May 1998 12:40:11 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Science: historical, philosophical and cultural studies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Robert M. Young's Online Archive http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/staff/rmyoung/papers/ ___________________________________________ This extensive archive of works in the history, philosophy and sociology of science has now been integrated with a wide range of scholarly internet resources. A new guest book affords the facility to provide feedback to the author, and lengthier responses can be accommodated on the WWW site by writing to robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk. A full listing (in chronological order) of works available at this site appears below. 1960 Review of Criminological Texts =A0 1966 Scholarship and the History of the Behavioural Sciences The Divided Science: Essay Review of R. D. Laing, The Divided Self =A0 1967 The Development of Herbert Spencer's Concept of Evolution Animal Soul Review of Burrow, Evolution and Society 1968 The Functions of the Brain: Gall to Ferrier (1808-1886) Association of Ideas =A0 1969 Understanding It All: Essay Review of C. D. Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society The Naked Marx: Review of Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilisation =A0 1970 Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century =A0 1971 Evolutionary Biology and Ideology: Then and Now The Anthropology of Science Scientific Medicine and the Social Order Mystifications in the Scientific Foundations of Sociology Science versus Democracy =A0 1973 The Human Limits of Nature =A0 1974 Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capital 1977 Science is Social Relations Sabotage: A Spanner in the Works 1978 Getting Started on Lysenkoism =A0 1979 Why Are Figures so Significant? The Role and the Critique of Quantification ScienceIs a Labour Process How Societies Constitute their Knowledge: Prolegomena to a Labour Process Perspective Interpreting the Production of Science What if Human Nature Is Historical Reconstituting Technology: Chips, Genes, Spares Science as Culture =A0 1980 Where the Chips May Fall Between the First and Third Worlds The Relevance of Bernal's Questions Darwinian Evolution and Human History =A0 1981 The Naturalization of Value Systems in the Human Sciences Science on TV: a Critique Science, Technology, Medicine and the Socialist Movement =A0 1982 Darwinism is Social The Darwin Debate =A0 1984 No Easy Answers: Essay Review of Russell Jacoby, The Repression of Psychoanalysis Exhibiting Nuclear Power: The Science Museum Cover-up =A0 1985 Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in Victorian Culture Is Nature a Labour Process? =A0 1986 Darwin's Metaphor and the Philosophy of Science Life among the Mediations: Labour, Groups, Breasts Freud: Scientist and/or Humanist Biography: The Basic Discipline for Human Science The Dense Medium: Television as Technology =A0 1987 Racist Society, Racist Science Psychoanalysis and Racism: A Loud Silence The Scientist as Guru: Essay Review of Sir Peter Medawar's Autobiography Transitional Phenomena: Production and Consumption Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere Darwin and the Genre of Biography 1988 Darwin: Man and Metaphor Darwin, Marx, Freud and the Foundations of the Human Sciences Psychoanalysis, Values and Politics 1989 Persons, Organisms and...Primary Qualities The Role of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in the Human Sciences Psychoanalytic Teaching and Research: Knowing and Knowing About Review of Mrs Klein Review of Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time =A0 1990 The Analytic Space: Countertransference and Evocative Knowledge Scientism in the History of Management Theory Herbert Spencer and Inevitable Progress The Mind-Body Problem Science, Alienation and Oppression Marxism and the History of Science 1991 British Psychoanalysis and Politics Psychotic Anxieties Are Normal The Vicissitudes of Transference and Countertransference: The Work of Harold Searles Psychoanalytic Critique of Productivism =A0 1992 Benign and Virulent Projective Identification in Groups and Institutions Desmond and Moore's Darwin: A Critique Guilt and the Veneer of Civilization Psychotic Anxieties and the Fading Hopes of the Left Psychotic Anxieties in Groups and Institutions Racism: Projective Identification and Cultural Processes Science, Ideology and Donna Haraway The Ubiquity of Psychotic Anxieties Christians, Cannibals and Spite: Notes on Films Review of "Alien 3" Big Books Review of Jeffrey Masson, Final Analysis Review of "Toto the Hero" Review of Carl Rogers Reader =A0 1993 Deadly Unconscious Logics in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 The Profession of Psychotherapy in Britain Psychoanalysis and the Other: Psychopathology and Racism The Psychoanalysis of Sectarianism What Scientists Have to Learn Review of Of Mice and Men Review of The Evening Star Is "Perversion" Obsolete? =A0 1994 Across the Borderline Mental Space What I Learned at Summer Camp: Experiences in Television 1995 Conceptual Research Good and Evil, Character and Morality Human Nature Mental Space and Group Relations A Place for Critique in the Mass Media Psychoanalysis and/of the Internet Reductionism and Overdetermination in the Explanation of Human Nature We Don't Need Them to Make Culture - or to Share It 1996 Primitive Processes on the Internet The Search for Transcendent Values NETDYNAM: Some Parameters of Vitual Reality A Note on the Tar Baby and Projective Identification The Moral and the Molecular in the Future of Psychiatry Evolution, Biology and Psychology The Culture of British Psychoanalysis and Related Essays on Character and Morality and on The Psychodynamics of Psychoanalytic Organizations Whatever Happened to Human Nature? Disappointment, Stoicism and the Future of Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere Anthropology of Cyberspace: Review of Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen 1997 Representations of Primitive Processes in the Cinema The Concept of Psychopathology: a Critique Group Relations in a New Environment Princess Diana's "Constituency of the Rejected" and Psychotherapeutic Studies Group Relations: An Introduction Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: The Grand Leading the Bland =A0 1998 The Messiness, Ambivalence and Conflict of Everyday Life Some Reflections on the Psychodynamics of Wealth Malthus on Man - In Animals no Moral Restraint Sexuality and the Internet =A0 **************************************************************** 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/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 21:59:06 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Active social engagement sought MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT *Social Science: Beyond Constructivism and Realism* by Gerard Delanty Open University Press, 159pp stlg9.99 ISBN 0 335 19862 7 ________________________________________________________ Reviewed by Tim Blackman, School of Social Sciences and Law Oxford Brookes University Gerard Delanty argues in the introduction to this book that social science is in a deep crisis regarding its public role in society. This phase, however, could be one of transition in which social science's role as the "critical consciousness of modernity" is rediscovered. The book contributes to this task. It explores the present situation and seeks a theoretical path forward. In the process, it presents an account and critique of social theories that is well organised and thought provoking. Delanty organises his account around a dialogue between constructivism and realism. Constructivism is the belief that knowledge of the world is socially constructed and that, therefore, all knowledge is relative. Realism, on the other hand, posits a real external reality and has a commitment to causal explanation. He suggests that this division is a false one. and sets out to reconcile the two positions. Realists have to acknowledge that reality is understood and may be changed through social constructs and actions based upon them, while constructivists have to accept that subjective interpretations have reals consequences. The book argues that realism and constructivism emerged as alternatives to positivism because of the untenability of a philosophy based purely upon the possibility of value-free empirical observation. Unfortunately, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water because there appears to be no place for empirical testing of theory in Delanty's account. Instead, he works towards a synthesis based upon social scientists engaging in a "discursive mediation" between social science and society. This is arrived at via chapters on interpretative sociology, Marxism, Jurgen Habermas, Apel's communication-based emancipatory social theory, and postmodernism. The book is useful because Delanty has written a fluent and succinct overview of social theory, including informed commentary and critique. But is is also frustrating because some of the book is so concise, as in presenting the difficult ideas of theorists such as Habermas and Luhmann, that a reader unfamiliar with them has to take the author's criticisms at face value. The later sections of the book are less impressive that earlier commentaries on key ideas and thinkers, partly because one has the feeling that Delanty has not yet fully developed his position on these issues. More fundamentally, the book does not engage with complexity theory, which is surprising given the references to the Gulbenkian Commission report on the emerging commonalties between natural and social sciences. In the end, Delanty argues against postmodernism's underplaying of agency and for a social science that is engaged with the social world that shapes it. The book presents some very good potted accounts of the various theoretical in the social sciences and sets out issues that are not yet resolved. It should be added to the reading lists of theory and methodology courses in the social sciences. ________________________________________________ Times Higher Education Supplement, May 8 1998 ________________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html ___________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 22:02:11 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Freud study X-To: psycho-pathology@psycom.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Lynn, D.J., & Vaillant, G.E. (1998). Anonymity, neutrality, and confidentiality in the actual methods of Sigmund Freud: A review of 43 cases, 1907-1939. American Journal of Psychiatry, 155(2), 163-171. _______________________________________________________ OBJECTIVE: The aim of this historical study was to examine the methods actually used by Sigmund Freud in his practice of psychoanalysis in his mature years (1907-1939) and to assess the relationship between these methods and Freud's published recommendations concerning anonymity, neutrality, and confidentiality. METHOD: The authors used both published and unpublished sources, including reports or autobiographies by analysands, letters by analysands, interviews of analysands, letters by Freud, published works by Freud, and clinical records of subsequent treatment. RESULTS: Information concerning Freud's actual methods was found in 43 cases, including ten clinical psychoanalyses, 19 didactic analyses, and 14 with combined clinical and didactic purposes. These 43 cases probably encompassed a majority Freud's psychoanalytic hours during these years. Deviations from Freud's recommendations were found to the following extent: for anonymity, 43 cases (100%); for neutrality, 37 cases (86%); for confidentiality, 23 cases (53%). In addition, there were significant extra-analytic relations between Freud and 31 of these analysands (72%). CONCLUSIONS: These results show a substantial disparity between Freud's recommendations and his actual methods. Freud's prescribed method, as defined by his recommendations, was not tested or used in his practice. Freud's actual method was never explicitly described in his writings and cannot be replicated. ________________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html ___________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 May 1998 18:01:57 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Freud study (Study of...) X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Communications generally communicate something for some purpose. I wonder what is the purpose of this communication (see below)? Is it "Freud bashing"? Is it criticism of deviations from "standard psychoanalytic practice", whatever that is (besides being something for training analysts to torment analysts-in-training with)? If this last point, I'd urge reading (Prince) Masud Khan's _The Long Wait_ (Summit Books, 1989), which indicates what is possible when the analyst does not need to live in fear. Other? \brad mccormick (an excommunicated psychoanalytic intern) Ian Pitchford wrote: > > Lynn, D.J., & Vaillant, G.E. (1998). Anonymity, neutrality, and > confidentiality in the actual methods of Sigmund Freud: A review of 43 > cases, 1907-1939. American Journal of Psychiatry, 155(2), 163-171. > _______________________________________________________ > > OBJECTIVE: The aim of this historical study was to examine the > methods actually used by Sigmund Freud in his practice of > psychoanalysis in his mature years (1907-1939) and to assess the > relationship between these methods and Freud's published > recommendations concerning anonymity, neutrality, and > confidentiality. > > METHOD: The authors used both published and unpublished sources, > including reports or autobiographies by analysands, letters by > analysands, interviews of analysands, letters by Freud, published > works by Freud, and clinical records of subsequent treatment. > > RESULTS: Information concerning Freud's actual methods was found in > 43 cases, including ten clinical psychoanalyses, 19 didactic > analyses, and 14 with combined clinical and didactic purposes. These > 43 cases probably encompassed a majority Freud's psychoanalytic hours > during these years. Deviations from Freud's recommendations were > found to the following extent: for anonymity, 43 cases (100%); for > neutrality, 37 cases (86%); for confidentiality, 23 cases (53%). In > addition, there were significant extra-analytic relations between > Freud and 31 of these analysands (72%). > > CONCLUSIONS: These results show a substantial disparity between > Freud's recommendations and his actual methods. Freud's prescribed > method, as defined by his recommendations, was not tested or used in > his practice. Freud's actual method was never explicitly described in > his writings and cannot be replicated. > > ________________________________________________ > Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com > Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ > University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent > SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. > Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 > > Online Dictionary of Mental Health > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ > InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html > ___________________________________________________ -- 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, 9 May 1998 08:53:54 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Academy rallies teachers on evolution MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Holden, C. (1998). Academy rallies teachers on evolution. Science, 280, 194. _____________________________________________________ Whether it's a symptom of rotten science literacy or a triumph of conservative religious groups, evolution is ignored or downplayed in many classrooms these days. Yet, says a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), "teaching biology without evolution would be like teaching civics and never mentioning the United States Constitution." In a report* released on 9 April, a panel headed by Stanford biologist Donald Kennedy attempts to take the first step to putting evolution where it belongs - at the core of biology curricula across the country. The panel has put together a well-illustrated publication designed to help teachers understand, defend, and teach evolution, what it calls "one of the most magnificent chronicles known to science." This report does not take aim at creationism; that's the topic of a booklet NAS plans to release next summer. To start with, Kennedy's panel takes pains to correct a major misunderstanding that can hamper efforts to teach evolution. Calling it a theory does not mean it's just a hunch. In science, the report explains, a "theory" is an explanation for the set of known facts and observations - in the case of evolution about the "similarities among organisms" and the "extraordinary variety of life." They include observations that led Charles Darwin to first devise the theory of evolution more than 140 years ago, as well as modern findings such as similarities in the proteins and genes of different species pointing to a common ancestor. The report also offers instructions for conducting classroom exercises to teach principles of scientific inquiry in general and evolution in particular. One exercise, for example, challenges students to infer the behaviors of two animals based on a pattern of fossil footprints. Another teaches the role of predators in selective survival by having students hunt for "prey" (colored dots of paper) on a busy background. "In my dealings with K-12 teachers, I find that there's a great hunger for the kind of information in this publication," says a panel member Eugenie Scott, who runs the National Center for Science Education Inc in El Cerrito, California. Teachers must be able to communicate that science is based not just on observation and experimentation but also on inference, says Scott, who claims there is a widespread misapprehension among the general public that if something is not directly observable, it's not science. Indeed, she notes, a group called the American Scientific Affiliation has drafted a model law that would require teachers and textbook publishers to differentiate between "evidence" and "inference" in teaching evolution. Kennedy says he hopes the new report will help dispel suspicions about evolution that are based on this artificial distinction. "That's why I wanted to talk about the very direct evidence for evolutionary change in real time, " he says, such as modern-day changes observed in 13 finch species first studies by Darwin on the Galapagos islands. The academy panelists now hope teachers will heed their message. SAys Yale biologist Timothy Goldsmith: "To fail to recognise [evolution] as one of the most important triumphs of human understanding in the history of science is to ignore something just terribly important, exciting and inspiring." ______________________________________________________ * "Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science" NAS http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/evolution98 _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 08:53:55 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Narrative construction of reality MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT An advertisement on page 45 of the current New York Review of Books, simulating a tabloid front page, complete with a picture of a flying saucer: +--------------------------------------+ | N E W B O O K S | | R E A D A L L A B O U T I T ! | +--------------------------------------+ _____________________________________________________________ BELIEVED-IN IMAGININGS: THE NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY Edited by Joseph de Rivera and Theodore R. Sarbin Alien abduction, UFO sightings, satanic ritual abuse, repressed memor- ies of abuse, multiple personality -- a lot of people are convinced that they've experienced these things, but the experience may be only in their minds. How do people come to fervently believe in things that may have sprung purely from their own imaginations? In this fascinat- ing collection of essays, leading scholars in psychology, anthro- pology and sociology bring scientific analysis to bear on a conten- tious, and often sensationalized, issue. Available August 1998 ISBN 1-55798-521-9 ___________________________________________________ Available through bookstores or call 1-800-372-2721 AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 09:25:02 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Dunbar on Haraway MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dunbar, R. (1995). The Trouble with Science. London: Faber and Faber. __________________________________________________________ [p.145] In her book *Primate Visions*, the American historian of science Donna Haraway attempted to interpret the history of primatology (the study of primate behaviour and biology) in terms of recent political changes. In considering the recently published book *Primate Societies* (intended to be a state of the art compendium of our understanding of primate behavioural biology), Haraway found it to be: "an exemplar of a widespread groping in the 1980s western biopolitical and other cultural discourse for ways to narrate difference that are as deeply enmeshed in feminism, anti-colonialism, and searches for non-antagonistic and non-organicist forms of individual and collective life, as by the hyper-real worlds of late capitalism, neo-imperialism, and the technocratic actualization of masculinist nuclear fantasies." (Haraway, p.373) 'Gee,' observed primatologist Meredith Small in her review of Haraway's book, '...[and] we thought it was just a text book.' [Joseph] Schwartz points out that many people find abstract language of this kind appealing precisely because it has a distinctly poetic quality. It has an intrinsic beauty of its own. Dressing simple ideas up in obscure language makes them seem more profound than they really are. Moreover, like all good peotry, it can be read as saying almost anything you like: it can mean all things to all people. [p.158] ... the historian Donna Haraway shows, in her book *Primate Visions*, how the National Geographic Society wove a fabric of myths around the public persona of Jane Goodall and her work on the chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe Natinal Park. These myths were unquestinably very important in promoting public interest in studies of wild primates, and were pronbably single-handedly responsible for persuading governments and independent funding agencies to underwrite the costs of research in this area for several decades. They also probably played a seminal role in attracting many young people into this particular field of study, providing the launch-pad for a thousand PhDs. But those myths contributed hardly at all to the development of science in this area. Our present understanding of primate societies and their evolution owes little to studies of chimpanzees, and even less to the work of Jane Goodall herself, despite the genuinely important and very substantial contribution that she and many others have made to our store of knowledge about monkeys and apes. And it owes nothing at all to the feature stories that appeared in the pages of *National Geographic* magazine. REFERENCES Haraway, D. (1989). Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge. Schwartz, J. (1992). The Creative Moment: How Science Made Itself Alien to Modern Culture. Cape: London. Small, M. (1990). Review of D. Haraway, Primate Visions. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 82, 527-532. _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 07:57:18 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Dunbar on Haraway (The Mentality of Apes...) X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > Dunbar, R. (1995). The Trouble with Science. London: Faber and Faber. > __________________________________________________________ > [snip] > [Joseph] Schwartz points out that many people find abstract language > of this kind appealing precisely because it has a distinctly poetic > quality. It has an intrinsic beauty of its own. Dressing simple ideas > up in obscure language makes them seem more profound than they really > are. Moreover, like all good peotry, it can be read as saying almost > anything you like: it can mean all things to all people. [snip] The posting I'm responding to does seem to me to itself be "bricolage", but at least I seem to read in the above paragraph something I myself feel is happening sometimes today.... But, back to apes: I think Wolfgang Kohler's _The Mentality of Apes_ (1925, and subsequent copyright and publication dates...) still is rich in material for what we might call comparative hermeneutics, other-species phenomenology, etc. Page 314, for instance, describes how apes spontaneously develop *dance*, which may have something to say about the origin of [human] language (Susanne Langer picks up on this in _Philosophy in New Key_...). But something must be wrong with this picture -- I'm talking about books that are 56 and 73 years old. But then I've been reading recently that time is reversible, so maybe there isn't a problem after all.... \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, 9 May 1998 22:09:43 -0800 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: b c Subject: query for feedback X-To: sci-cult@SJUVM.stjohns.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Science-as-Culture List, i write to request your public and private feedback regarding a temporary website presenting my independent study project, a multimedia prototype entitled Mapping the Electrical Assemblage, which will be reviewed by school faculty and presented at graduation next month. the demo page http://www.sirius.com/~schizo/demo/start.htm overviews the basic ideas upon which the prototype is based, including an outline of the architecture of electricity thesis which seeks to provide a logical scaffolding for building rational and multidisciplinary analyzes of the technological built environment based upon electricity. this site breaks down into the following specific areas.. http://www.sirius.com/~schizo/demo/symbol/sutro2.htm attempts to establish an aesthetic continuum between the Eiffel Tower of 20th century Paris and Sutro Tower of the San Francisco Bay Area into the 21st century. http://www.sirius.com/~schizo/demo/object/2main.htm a chess set which juxtaposes the new electrical order with the traditional order of this game, metaphorically and literally detailing the everyday power structure. http://www.sirius.com/~schizo/demo/story/2main.htm a story which resembles a cosmology of electricity, created in response to feedback regarding the need for 'a story with a beginning and ending' to accompany the prototype of Mapping the Electrical Assemblage... http://www.sirius.com/~schizo/mea/mea_m.htm is the prototype project which seeks to rationalize the order of electricity and electrical technology in the world through applying an archaeological-architectural method which creates a scaffolding for future information with a system of navigation between 'contextual' hyperlinks. [currently the prototype only works with Netscape 3.01+] i am very interested in your multidisciplinary feedback, which will be included within my graduation presentation. thank you... brian carroll independent architectural explorer ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 22:57:55 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Val dusek Subject: Re: Brand Case Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit As an adendum to the pudendum of the Brand case (May 1 postings of Norm Levitt), the research of Gajdusek (not Gadjanek as Levitt guessed) [the Nobel Prize Winner whose paedophilia Brand got academically sanctioned for defending] concerning the disease Kuru is of interest with respect to the problems of the propensity to leap to genetic explantions of phenomena of the sort that Brand himself makes. Previous to Gajdusek it was thought that the brain disease kuru was hereditary. Descendents of the diseased person also got the disease, and the probability of them getting it varied with the closeness of relation. Gajdusek showed that in fact the disease was transferred by the custom of eating the brains of the deceased, and closest relatives got first divs. Val Dusek ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 22:57:54 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Val dusek Subject: Re: Dunbar on Haraway Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit R. Dunbar in the quotes Ian Pitchford posted notes that Haraway uses big words and long sentences. This is indeed a vice, but it does not in itself show that there is no case to be made for the influence of a number of political and economic views and models on primate research. Haraway herself discusses a score of these, not mentioned in the Dunbar selections. Dunbar also notes that the myths created by National Geographic helped finance primate research but had little influence on the content of the research. This may ;true in this case, but in sociobiology and related areas popularization has fed back into "serious" discussions. An example of the latter is David Barash's use of a Neweek magazine article on "The Oversexed Bedbug." Another example is the use of Thomas Bouchard's anecdotes in the popular press (about coincidences concerning twins) by scientists such as Steve Pinker and genetic engineers looking for support for the importance of heredity in human behavior, when those scientists are uncritical of the anecdotal status of the popular material, have never looked at Bouchard's actual published research, and are unaware of the rejection by peer reviewers, lack of publication and peculiar (white racialist Pioneer Foundation) funding of much of Bouchard's research.. Also, many serious, "scientific" theories about human evolution and primate behavior are closely connected to political views and social models. Harraway, in an early article "The High Cost of Information in Post-WWII Evolutionary Biology" discusses military models of animal social behavior, such as E. W. Wilson;s "factory-fortress" model of the ant colony. If one is prone to dismiss this claim became because it comes from Haraway, who is a postmodernist and other Bad Things, it might be noted that Michael Ruse, highly sympathetic to sociobiology and a recipient of favorable blurbs from Wilson, sees Wilson's views as molded by his military brat childhood. A further example of this sort of use of human relations as models of primate behavior, used in turn to justify claims about what is natural for humans is De Vore's account of the baboons emphasized their male-dominated miltiary troop organization, although he selected those species and environments (open country) in which extreme male dominance and military formation were advantageious, and neglected the forest baboons which had greater sexual equality. I once saw a TV interview in which de Vore was supposed to speak about his guru Louis Leakey. All de Vore talked about was Leakey's fantastic masculinity and overpowering male dominance--not about Leakey's discoveries or theories. This was somewhat suggestive about de Vore's own personal concerns. Another area, not mentioned by Haraway, is the Man the Hunter model of human evolution, which was propounded in part because it allowed all branches of the Family of Man (title an early 1960s photography exhibit emphasizing human unity) to advance in common through their interaction with the environment. The Man the Hunter scenario was attractive during the fifties and early sixties because it went against the notion that different branches of the human race might have advanced at different rates, with the racial implications thereof. Of course the Man the Hunter scenario later came in for feminist criticism. Haraway, of course, notes, as have many others, the shift of focus from male primate behavior to female primate behavior with women students of primates. These are but a few of the many cases where human political and social concerns have influenced primate studies, understandably given their importance for our views of human nature. Dunbar's criticisms are based on selective quoting, neglecting the dozens of cases Haraway documents well, and on a too sharp (at least for primate behavior studies with implications for humans) separation between serious science and populatization. Obviously criticisms of Haraway's later out-of-control pomo prose do not in themselves refute claims of influence of political and economic views on primate models which have been discuss by numerous people other than Haraway (for instance, Lila Liebowitz and Marianne Lowe on the Baboon evironoments). Val Dusek ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 22:39:02 -0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Michael Gregory, NEXA/H-NEXA" Subject: *Koro* syndrome: Not necessarily Re: Brand Case: *Kuru* In-Reply-To: <199805110258.WAA25984@beasley.concentric.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Val dusek is precisely correct, both in spelling Gajdusek* (pronounced Guydushek) and in fact about the vector of Kuru being brain canibalism, a practice known since Peking Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis), undertaken in New Guinea not for nutrition but for ceremonial purposes. Urp. Pardon me. Another disease, almost an allophone - Koro Syndrome - is (I fervently hope) psychological, and occurs on the Malay Peninsula. It is the belief, induced by shamanistic malevolence, that a man's penis can gradually retract into his body, and there become suddenly erect, stabbing him to death internally. * Gajdusek's brother Robin, novelist and a colleague at SFSU, tells the story of G's near-divorce by a wife, sick and tired of opening the refrigerator and finding it stacked high with brains in various states of preservation. Cordially, Michael Gregory Editor, H-NEXA (visiting Bob's wonderful list) At 10:57 PM 5/10/98 EDT, you wrote: >As an adendum to the pudendum of the Brand case (May 1 postings of Norm >Levitt), the research of Gajdusek (not Gadjanek as Levitt guessed) [the Nobel >Prize Winner whose paedophilia Brand got academically sanctioned for >defending] concerning the disease Kuru is of interest with respect to the >problems of the propensity to leap to genetic explantions of phenomena of the >sort that Brand himself makes. Previous to Gajdusek it was thought that the >brain disease kuru was hereditary. Descendents of the diseased person also >got the disease, and the probability of them getting it varied with the >closeness of relation. Gajdusek showed that in fact the disease was >transferred by the custom of eating the brains of the deceased, and closest >relatives got first divs. > >Val Dusek > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 00:15:12 -0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Michael Gregory, NEXA/H-NEXA" Subject: In defense of chimpanzees and Jane Goodall - Re: Val Dusek - Re: "Dunbar on Haraway" In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980509230941.007cb100@pop3.concentric.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 22:57:54 EDT, From: Val Dusek Subject: Re: Dunbar on Haraway Response to: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com At 11:09 PM 5/9/98 -0700, you wrote: >Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 09:25:02 +0000 >From: Ian Pitchford > >Dunbar, R. (1995). The Trouble with Science. London: Faber and Faber. > (Please see comment [*] below, following this excerpt] >[p.158] ... the historian Donna Haraway shows, in her book *Primate >Visions*, how the National Geographic Society wove a fabric of myths >around the public persona of Jane Goodall and her work on the >chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe Natinal Park. These myths were >unquestinably very important in promoting public interest in studies >of wild primates, and were pronbably single-handedly responsible for >persuading governments and independent funding agencies to >underwrite the costs of research in this area for several decades. >They also probably played a seminal role in attracting many young >people into this particular field of study, providing the launch-pad >for a thousand PhDs. But those myths contributed hardly at all to the >development of science in this area. Our present understanding of >primate societies and their evolution owes little to studies of >chimpanzees, [*] and even less to the work of Jane Goodall herself [....] _______________________________ [* Chimpanzees are our closest primate relatives (shown inter alia by studies of immunological distance), our genomes are in other ways remarkably similar, and our behaviors differ in far fewer ways than one would imagine, except that chimpanzees, on the whole, are more cheerful and less given to pretense. For striking examples of behavioral similarities, see Darwin's ~Expression of Emotion....~] Michael Gregory Editor, H-NEXA [p.158] ... the historian Donna Haraway shows, in her book *Primate >Visions*, how the National Geographic Society wove a fabric of myths >around the public persona of Jane Goodall and her work on the >chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe Natinal Park. These myths were >unquestionably very important in promoting public interest in studies >of wild primates, and were probably single-handedly responsible for >persuading governments and independent funding agencies to >underwrite the costs of research in this area for several decades. >They also probably played a seminal role in attracting many young >people into this particular field of study, providing the launch-pad >for a thousand PhDs. But those myths contributed hardly at all to the >development of science in this area. Our present understanding of >primate societies and their evolution owes little to studies of >chimpanzees, [*] and even less to the work of Jane Goodall herself, >despite the genuinely important and very substantial contribution >that she and many others have made to our store of knowledge about >monkeys and apes. And it owes nothing at all to the feature stories >that appeared in the pages of *National Geographic* magazine. >[p.145] In her book *Primate Visions*, the American historian of >science Donna Haraway attempted to interpret the history of >primatology (the study of primate behaviour and biology) in terms of >recent political changes. In considering the recently published book >*Primate Societies* (intended to be a state of the art compendium of >our understanding of primate behavioural biology), Haraway found it >to be: > >"an exemplar of a widespread groping in the 1980s western >biopolitical and other cultural discourse for ways to narrate >difference that are as deeply enmeshed in feminism, anti-colonialism, >and searches for non-antagonistic and non-organicist forms of >individual and collective life, as by the hyper-real worlds of late >capitalism, neo-imperialism, and the technocratic actualization of >masculinist nuclear fantasies." (Haraway, p.373) > >'Gee,' observed primatologist Meredith Small in her review of >Haraway's book, '...[and] we thought it was just a text book.' > >[Joseph] Schwartz points out that many people find abstract language >of this kind appealing precisely because it has a distinctly poetic >quality. It has an intrinsic beauty of its own. Dressing simple ideas >up in obscure language makes them seem more profound than they really >are. Moreover, like all good peotry, it can be read as saying almost >anything you like: it can mean all things to all people. > >despite the genuinely important and very substantial contribution >that she and many others have made to our store of knowledge about >monkeys and apes. And it owes nothing at all to the feature stories >that appeared in the pages of *National Geographic* magazine. > >REFERENCES > >Haraway, D. (1989). Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the >World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge. > >Schwartz, J. (1992). The Creative Moment: How Science Made Itself >Alien to Modern Culture. Cape: London. > >Small, M. (1990). Review of D. Haraway, Primate Visions. American >Journal of Physical Anthropology, 82, 527-532. > >_____________________________________________ > Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com > Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ > University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent > SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. > Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 >_____________________________________________ > Online Dictionary of Mental Health > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ > InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html >_____________________________________________ > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 10:35:19 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Dusek on Dunbar on Haraway In-Reply-To: <199805110256.WAA01007@mx05.globecomm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I agree with Val Dusek that having a penchant for big words and long sentences doesn't invalidate one's arguments. However, if Haraway has uncovered a score of examples where political and economic views influence primate research I wonder why none of these are mentioned in Dusek's response. The rest of the argument is basically Engels' observation that 'The whole Darwinist teaching of the struggle for existence is simply a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes's doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes [a war of all against all] and of the bourgeois economic doctrine of competition together with Malthus' theory of population. When this conjuror's trick has been performed. . . the same theories are transferred again from organic nature into history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved.' which Dusek couples with some anecdotes which may or may not show that some people sometimes try to use evolutionary hypotheses to support their political and/or moral beliefs, e.g. "... David Barash's use of a Newsweek magazine article on "The Oversexed Bedbug." "... Thomas Bouchard's anecdotes in the popular press (about coincidences concerning twins) [used] by scientists such as Steve Pinker and genetic engineers looking for support for the importance of heredity in human behavior." " Also, many serious, "scientific" theories about human evolution and primate behavior are closely connected to political views and social models." As far as I can see none of this demonstrates the constitutive role of ideology in scientific theorising. Just to reiterate points made over and over again in the literature: "is" doesn't equal "ought", the context of discovery is irrelevant to the context of justification, scientists derive some of their ideas from the current intellectual/ideological/socio-cultural milieu (how could it be otherwise), but this doesn't deprive them of agency - they are still individuals capable of unprejudiced observation and inference to the best explanation. I think we should also be careful to distinguish between hypotheses which are said to be derived from evolutionary theory and the theory itself. Any theory can be misconstrued, and evolutionary theory usually is. In discussions on the 'net I frequently encounter the following: (1) evolution is about the survival of the fittest, i.e. strongest. (2) evolution is a theory of chance (3) evolution is caused by mutations (4) evolution is about "nature red in tooth and claw" (5) evolution is a "theory" (6) evolution is for the good of the species (7) Steve Gould doesn't believe in evolution by natural selection (8) punctuated equilibrium contradicts Darwinian evolution (9) evolution is progressive (10) evolution is a tautology All of these are wrong, and the the idea that sociobiology is inherently conservative deserves a place amongst these. Even where prescriptions for human behaviour are drawn from evolutionary theory, support for conservative philosophies seem tenuous. As an example take some of the conclusions reached by E. O . Wilson (supposedly the most egregious malefactor) in *On Human Nature* "All that we can surmise of humankind's genetic history argues for a more liberal sexual morality, in which sexual practices are to be regarded first as bonding devices and only second as means for procreation." "There is, I wish to suggest, a strong possibility that homosexuality is normal in a biological sense, that it is a distinctive beneficent behavior that evolved as an important element of early human social organization. Homosexuals may be the genetic carriers of some of mankind's rare altruistic impulses." "...most scientists have long recognized that it is a futile exercise to try to define discrete human races. Such entities do not in fact exist." "... hope and pride and not despair are the ultimate legacy of genetic diversity, because we are a single species... mankind viewed over many generations shares a single human nature within which relatively minor hereditary influences recycle through ever changing patterns, between the sexes and across families and entire populations." "[theorists] forget that innateness refers to the measurable probability that a trait will develop in a specified set of environments, not to the certainty that the trait will develop in all environments." Wilson certainly errs in drawing prescriptions from evolutionary descriptions, but I wouldn't like to be a spin doctor tasked with drawing support for conservative ideology using concepts such as "the unity of humankind", "the meaningless of race", "the value of homosexuality", "the primacy of the environment" , and "the value of sex in human bonding". Set against this Dusek's observation that in a TV interview " All de Vore talked about was Leakey's fantastic masculinity and overpowering male dominance--not about Leakey's discoveries or theories" seems remarkably trivial. Evolution by natural selection is one of the keys to understanding human behaviour and cognitive architecture, but it doesn't provide a blueprint for a moral society. Best wishes Ian _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 14:11:44 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Val dusek Subject: Alabama legistature says pi=3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit For supporters of Sokal's hoax articles' claim that pi various with the curvature of space. Val Dusek > ***************************************************** > HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA engineers and mathematicians in this > high-tech city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state legistature > narrowly passed a law yesterday redefining pi, a mathematical constant > used in the aerospace industry. The bill to change the value of pi to > exactly three was introduced without fanfare by Leonard Lee Lawson > (R-Crossville), and rapidly gained support after a letter-writing > campaign by members of the Solomon Society, a traditional values group. > Governor Fob James says he will sign it into law on Wednesday. > > The law took the state's engineering community by surprise. "It would > have been nice if they had consulted with someone who actually uses pi," > said Marshall Bergman, a manager at the Ballistic Missile Defense > Organization. > According to Bergman, pi is a Greek letter that signifies the ratio of > the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is often used by engineers to >calculate missile trajectories. > > Prof. Homer Carlisle, a mathematician from Auburn University, said > that pi is a universal constant, and cannot arbitrarily be changed by > lawmakers. Carlisle explained that pi is an irrational number, which means that > it has an infinite number of digits after the decimal point and can never be > known exactly. Nevertheless, she said, pi is precisly defined by > mathematics to be "3.14159, plus as many more digits as you have time > to calculate". > > "I think that it is the mathematicians that are being irrational, and > it is time for them to admit it," said Lawson. "The Bible very > clearly says in I Kings 7:23 that the alter font of Solomon's Temple > was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in diameter, and that it was round in >compass." > Lawson called into question the usefulness of any number that cannot > be calculated exactly, and suggested that never knowing the exact answer > could harm students' self-esteem. "We need to return to some > absolutes in our society," he said, "the Bible does not say that the font was > thirty-something cubits. Plain reading says thirty cubits. Period." > > Science supports Lawson, explains Russell Humbleys, a propulsion > technician at the Marshall Spaceflight Center who testified in support > of the bill before the legislature in Mongtomery on Monday. "Pi is > merely an artifact of Euclidean geometry." Humbleys is working on a > theory which he says will prove that pi is determined by the geometry > of three-dimensional space, which is assumed by physicists to be "isotropic", or >the same in all directions. > > "There are other geometries, and pi is different in every one of > them," says Humbleys. Scientists have arbitrarily assumed that space is > Euclidean, he says. He points out that a circle drawn on a spherical > surface has a different value for the ratio of circumfence to > diameter. "Anyone with a compass, flexible ruler, and globe can see > for themselves," suggests Humbleys, "its not exactly rocket science." > > Roger Learned, a Solomon Society member who was in Montgomery to > support the bill, agrees. He said that pi is nothing more than an assumption by > the mathematicians and engineers who were there to argue against the > bill. "These nabobs waltzed into the capital with an arrogance that was > breathtaking," Learned said. "Their prefatorial deficit resulted in a > polemical stance at absolute contraposition to the legislature's puissance." > > Some education experts believe that the legislation will affect the way > math is taught to Alabama's children. One member of the state > school board, Judy Aull, is anxious to get the new value of pi into > the state's math textbooks, but thinks that the old value should be > retained as an alternative. She said, "As far as I am concerned, the value of pi > is only a theory, and we should be open to all interpretations." She > looks forward to students having the freedom to decide for themselves what value pi >should have. > > Robert S. Dietz, a professor at Arizona State University who has > followed the controversy, wrote that this is not the first time a state > legislature has attempted to redifine the value of pi. A legislator > in the state of Indiana unsuccessfully attempted to have that state set > the value of pi to three. According to Dietz, the lawmaker was > exasperated by the calculations of a mathematician who carried pi to four hundred > decimal places and still could not achieve a rational number. Many > experts are warning that this is just the beginning of a national > battle over pi between traditional values supporters and the technical elite. > Solomon Society member Lawson agrees. "We just want to return pi to > its traditional value," he said, "which, according to the Bible, is three." Val Dusek ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 12:34:23 +0100 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Piotr Szybek Organization: Lund University Subject: Re: Alabama legistature says pi=3 In-Reply-To: <9805111815.AA02009@nomina.lu.se> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT The letter sent by Val Dusek can be found in the site http://www.isr.umd.edu/~jasonp/pipage.html where also this can be read, about the letter's content: "NEW! Think calculating pi is hard? Never fear, the religious right has made it easy. I've since found out the story was a clever hoax (Guy Hunt was governor of Alabama until 1993) but I was taken hook line and sinker. You can never be too careful. " Well. I sense some affinity with the messages warning for e-mail transmitted virus. Piotr Szybek, PhD candidate, Dept. Education, Lund University, Sweden. > For supporters of Sokal's hoax articles' claim that pi various with the > curvature of space. Val Dusek > > > ***************************************************** > > HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA engineers and mathematicians in this > > high-tech city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state > legistature > > narrowly passed a law yesterday redefining pi, a mathematical constant > > used in the aerospace industry. The bill to change the value of pi to > > exactly three was introduced without fanfare by Leonard Lee Lawson > > (R-Crossville), and rapidly gained support after a letter-writing > > campaign by members of the Solomon Society, a traditional values group. > > Governor Fob James says he will sign it into law on Wednesday. > > > > The law took the state's engineering community by surprise. "It would > > have been nice if they had consulted with someone who actually uses pi," > > said Marshall Bergman, a manager at the Ballistic Missile Defense > > Organization. > > According to Bergman, pi is a Greek letter that signifies the ratio of > > the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is often used by > engineers to >calculate missile trajectories. > > > > Prof. Homer Carlisle, a mathematician from Auburn University, said > > that pi is a universal constant, and cannot arbitrarily be changed by > > lawmakers. Carlisle explained that pi is an irrational number, which means > that > > it has an infinite number of digits after the decimal point and can never be > > known exactly. Nevertheless, she said, pi is precisly defined by > > mathematics to be "3.14159, plus as many more digits as you have time > > to calculate". > > > > "I think that it is the mathematicians that are being irrational, and > > it is time for them to admit it," said Lawson. "The Bible very > > clearly says in I Kings 7:23 that the alter font of Solomon's Temple > > was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in diameter, and that it was round > in >compass." > > > Lawson called into question the usefulness of any number that cannot > > be calculated exactly, and suggested that never knowing the exact answer > > could harm students' self-esteem. "We need to return to some > > absolutes in our society," he said, "the Bible does not say that the font > was > > thirty-something cubits. Plain reading says thirty cubits. Period." > > > > Science supports Lawson, explains Russell Humbleys, a propulsion > > technician at the Marshall Spaceflight Center who testified in support > > of the bill before the legislature in Mongtomery on Monday. "Pi is > > merely an artifact of Euclidean geometry." Humbleys is working on a > > theory which he says will prove that pi is determined by the geometry > > of three-dimensional space, which is assumed by physicists to be > "isotropic", or >the same in all directions. > > > > "There are other geometries, and pi is different in every one of > > them," says Humbleys. Scientists have arbitrarily assumed that space is > > Euclidean, he says. He points out that a circle drawn on a spherical > > surface has a different value for the ratio of circumfence to > > diameter. "Anyone with a compass, flexible ruler, and globe can see > > for themselves," suggests Humbleys, "its not exactly rocket science." > > > > Roger Learned, a Solomon Society member who was in Montgomery to > > support the bill, agrees. He said that pi is nothing more than an > assumption by > > the mathematicians and engineers who were there to argue against the > > bill. "These nabobs waltzed into the capital with an arrogance that was > > breathtaking," Learned said. "Their prefatorial deficit resulted in a > > polemical stance at absolute contraposition to the legislature's puissance." > > > > Some education experts believe that the legislation will affect the way > > math is taught to Alabama's children. One member of the state > > school board, Judy Aull, is anxious to get the new value of pi into > > the state's math textbooks, but thinks that the old value should be > > retained as an alternative. She said, "As far as I am concerned, the value > of pi > > is only a theory, and we should be open to all interpretations." She > > looks forward to students having the freedom to decide for themselves what > value pi >should have. > > > > Robert S. Dietz, a professor at Arizona State University who has > > followed the controversy, wrote that this is not the first time a state > > legislature has attempted to redifine the value of pi. A legislator > > in the state of Indiana unsuccessfully attempted to have that state set > > the value of pi to three. According to Dietz, the lawmaker was > > exasperated by the calculations of a mathematician who carried pi to four > hundred > > decimal places and still could not achieve a rational number. Many > > experts are warning that this is just the beginning of a national > > battle over pi between traditional values supporters and the technical > elite. > > Solomon Society member Lawson agrees. "We just want to return pi to > > its traditional value," he said, "which, according to the Bible, is three." > > Val Dusek > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 14:35:37 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Val dusek Subject: Re: Dusek on Dunbar on Haraway Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-05-12 00:38:53 EDT, you write: > I agree with Val Dusek that having a penchant for big words and long > sentences doesn't invalidate one's arguments. However, if Haraway > has uncovered a score of examples where political and economic views > influence primate research I wonder why none of these are mentioned > in Dusek's response. The main reason was that I was too lazy to recapitulate Haraway's lengthy book in my post. >The rest of the argument is basically Engels' observation that > > 'The whole Darwinist teaching of the struggle for existence is simply > a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes's doctrine of > bellum omnium contra omnes [a war of all against all] and of the > bourgeois economic doctrine of competition together with Malthus' > theory of population. When this conjuror's trick has been performed. . > . the same theories are transferred again from organic nature into > history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of > human society has been proved.' True, it is. But note that Haraway's book does not simply claim that all primate research is a projection of capitalism. She has feminism, Western attitudes towards the non-civilized "Other," ethnic cultural differences (i.e. Japanese primate research) and other factors besides capitalism impinging on primate research. Personally as a dogmatic Marxist i prefer her first section "Monkeys and Monopoly Capitalism" to her later, more pluralistic and post- modern developments. > which Dusek couples with some anecdotes which may or may not show > that some people sometimes try to use evolutionary hypotheses to > support their political and/or moral beliefs, e.g. > > "... David Barash's use of a Newsweek magazine article on "The > Oversexed Bedbug." > "... Thomas Bouchard's anecdotes in the popular press (about > coincidences concerning twins) [used] by scientists such as Steve > Pinker and genetic engineers looking for support for the importance > of heredity in human behavior." > " Also, many serious, "scientific" theories about human evolution and > primate behavior are closely connected to political views and social > models." > As far as I can see none of this demonstrates the constitutive role > of ideology in scientific theorising. Just to reiterate points made > over and over again in the literature: "is" doesn't equal "ought", > the context of discovery is irrelevant to the context of > justification, scientists derive some of their ideas from the > current intellectual/ideological/socio-cultural milieu (how could it > be otherwise), but this doesn't deprive them of agency - they are > still individuals capable of unprejudiced observation and inference > to the best explanation. (I note you left out the military models in ants and baboons and the rise and fall of "Man the Hunter" story I noted, as these examples might be stronger than the Barash and Bouchard examples in constitutivity of research). With respect to contexts of discovery and justification, this dichotomy has been undermined in various ways in the last four (Yes, four. Why it seems like only yesterday were all positivists) decades. One way this is undermined not sufficiently noted is that research programmes involve the deployment of hypotheses and elaboration thereof. Models and metaphors often play a role in the choice of auxiliary hypotheses (those consistent with the model of the main part of the theory), so that considerations relevant to the context of discovery play a role in what might be called the context of deployment. If there is no instant rationality (to borrow a Lakatos phrase) and research programmes or traditions are the units of appraisal of science rather than single theories in specific detail, then context of discovery considerations form a part of those research programmes or traditions. As to the is-ought split, I'm glad that libertarian philosopher Richard Nozick tipped of E. O. Wilson that you can't just deduce ethics from descriptive biology. Nevertheless more subtle relationships can hold. Wilson in "On Human Nature" (favorably quoted by Ian) claims that although it is possible to enforce male-female equality in law, science, and politics, the costs of this may be too great. Wilson in "Human Nature" Writes that "Even with identical education for men and women and equal access to all professions men are likely to maintain disproportionate representation in business, law, and science." (p. 133) Clearly Wilson is drawing policy conclusions. Even if "is does not imply ought" another possible area of is-ought interaction is in Kant's 'ought implies can.' If one tranposes this, it would yields "can't implies not ought." (I recall a long article on this by Tranoy in Ratio years ago, though I realize this is all controversial.) If this is so, then proving that various social arrangements are biologically impossible would have implications for what we can be obligated to do. For instance Wilson in "Human Nature" claims that biology shows us that the totally free market society of Herbert Spencer as well as planned socialism are impossible. I visiting my university a few years ago, Wilson stuck to his more benign biodiversity and endandered species concerns in his large public lecture, but in his lecture to the biology departments he made a number of "jokes" about how socialism was appropriate for ants, wasps and bees, but not for humans. "Marx and Lenin had a good theory, but for the wrong phylum." This is certainly a fairly large policy claim, although Wilson carefully expressed it though "jokes" so he wouldn't have to take responsibility for his claims. To show that political views influence sociobiological views, one does not have to prove such views ultra-reactionary. Neo-liberal views can also impinge on sociobiology. As to Ian's caveats about the various misinterpretations of and misattributions to evolutionary theory, I generally agree. Val Dusek ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 09:33:08 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Val dusek Subject: Re: Wilson on Socialism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit This article contains in print Wilson's "joke," which betrays an amazingly deterministic view of socialism as pre-programmed, not as a result of human planning or choice. It's "inevitability" quote is also revealing. Actually Wilson sounds a lot more deterministic in this article than his conciliatory consilience selections in the Atlantic Monthly sound. Interestingly the version of the same material delivered in Science magazine to biologists is much more openly reductionistic than his soft sell version for humanists in the Atlantic Monthly--an interesting case study in the rhetoric of science. -Val Dusek >From Ants to Ethics: A Biologist Dreams of Unity of Knowledge NICHOLAS WADE CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Laid out on a desk in Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology is a neat array of white-sided boxes, each with pinned specimens of ants belonging to the genus Pheidole. Dr. Edward O. Wilson is writing a monograph on the genus, which is the world's largest. There are 326 new species, many of which he discovered himself, and each is in need of a precise description and a scientific name. The work is pure taxonomy, "scientific knitting," he calls it. The ants, little black specks mounted on white triangles of cardboard, seem perfectly indistinguishable. But under the microscope each species looks as different as a bear does from a tiger, Wilson assures a visitor. The "knitting" is no doubt mental relaxation from the soaring works of synthesis that are Wilson's other passion. Or maybe both are the products, on different scales, of a mind that loves to classify and discover patterns in the world's unruly substance. In an alternative fate, Wilson might have been an obscure expert on the ants of Alabama, his home state. But at each stage of his career he has looked outward, trying to see how the scholarly patch he had cultivated might fit into some larger scheme of things. And because so few scholars dare to explore beyond the boundaries of their own narrow fields, Wilson has produced an original work of synthesis time after time. His first foray outside the ant microcosm was "The Insect Societies," published in 1971, which surveyed the evolution of sociality among wasps, ants, bees, and termites. It seemed only logical to extend the synthesis to vertebrates, humans included, though no one else had attempted so obvious a task. "Sociobiology" appeared in 1975, immediately falling under political attack from left-wing colleagues who objected to the idea that certain human behaviors might have genetic determinants. "He was taken to task in an unfair way," says Thomas Eisner, a Cornell University biologist and longtime friend, "but his ideas are not arrived at lightly." The ideas of sociobiology were many years in the making, Eisner says. Wilson was blindsided and bruised by the attack but undeterred. He expanded his ideas about the mind's genetic history in "On Human Nature," which appeared in 1978. Then he turned to other matters, like writing a comprehensive survey of ants with his colleague Bert Hoelldobler and becoming a champion for the world's disappearing rain forests. Twenty years later, Wilson has returned to the theme of genes and human nature. His new work of synthesis is called, a little forbiddingly, "Consilience," a word coined by the 19th century philosopher of science William Whewell to mean the melding of inferences drawn from separate subjects. Wilson has resurrected it as the slogan for a program of unrivaled ambition: to unify all the major branches of knowledge -- sociology, economics, the arts, and religion -- under the banner of science and in particular of the biology that has shaped the human mind. The kind of unification he proposes is the outright intellectual annexation that occurs when one field of knowledge becomes explainable in terms of a more fundamental discipline, as when thermodynamics (heat processes) was explained in terms of statistical mechanics (equations describing the movement of molecules). These putsches, which always constitute major advances yet are usually not much welcomed by scholars in the discipline being taken over, are termed "reductions" by philosophers of science. How can economics, not to mention religion and esthetics, be reduced to molecular biology? Wilson believes this will come about as biologists work out the behavioral rules that evolution has built into the brain. These rules, the sum of which is human nature, define the framework in which economic, religious and esthetic decisions are made and so should, he says, be made fundamental to those branches of study. Wilson is well aware that people do not always warm to the idea of having their higher cognitive functions explained in terms of genetic programming. But he can see the revolution coming, the vanguard being led by the new approach to the brain called evolutionary psychology (another name for sociobiology, in his view). Karl Marx, Wilson once joked when talking about ants, was correct: he just applied histheory to the wrong species. Ant societies, of course, are very different from the biped variety, but one common feature is the inherited nature of social behavior. Like any other feature of an organism, behavior can be shaped by evolution. Ants have evolved quite elaborate behaviors, but most are rigidly determined. Human behaviors have also evolved for the purpose of survival. But unlike the programmed instincts of ants, these behaviors, Wilson believes, are governed by what he calls epigenetic rules, genetically based neural wiring that merely predisposes the brain to favor certain types of action. In the case of the universal taboo against incest, for instance, Wilson suggests there is an epigenetic rule that makes people instinctively averse to marrying those whom they knew intimately in childhood. There are doubtless many other "instinctual algorithms" that guide humans, like other animals, through their life cycle, he says. Altruism, patriotism, status-seeking, territorial expansion, and contract formation are among the many behaviors that Wilson believes are guided by epigenetic rules. "The search for human nature," he writes, "can be viewed as the archeology of the epigenetic rules." If the essence of human nature is sketched out by the genes, it follows that the major branches of knowledge -- sociology, economics, ethics, and theology -- are shaped by the mind's genetic framework and rest on a foundation of epigenetic rules. The unified tree of knowledge, as envisaged in "Consilience," has physics at its root, leading to a trunk of chemistry, molecular biology, and genetics, and everything else as its branches. Wilson criticizes anthropologists and social scientists for having boxed themselves into ideological positions that deny any role for biologically based human nature. He faults economists for "closing off their theory from serious biology and psychology." Hence, economics is "still mostly irrelevant" and the esteem that economists enjoy "arises not so much from their record of success as from the fact that business and government have nowhere else to turn." Ethicists, too, he says, have slipped into the fallacy of ignoring biological origins, in their case the origins of the moral instincts that govern human behavior. Religion, in Wilson's view, also has epigenetic roots; it evolved from the human equivalent of animals' submissive behavior, and because belief in the supernatural conferred a survival value. Wilson realizes that he would not now win many votes for this proposition. "The human mind evolved to believe in the gods," he writes. "It did not evolve to believe in biology." Darwinism is still an affront to many established ways of thought, and "Consilience," published by Knopf, is not a conciliatory book. It contains enough to disconcert almost everyone. The vigor and aggressiveness of its judgments contrast with the elegance of the writing and the mild and courteous nature of its author. Wilson, who is 68, grew up imbued with a respect for social order and civility, but in the course of overcoming personal handicaps and a difficult childhood he acquired an independent mind. "Ed, don't stay on trails when you collect insects," an adviser told him at the outset of his career: "You should walk in a straight line through the forest. Try to go over any barrier you meet. It's hard, but that's the best way to collect." A straight line to faraway peaks has been Wilson's path ever since. "I set goals which are usually rather distant and hard to get to, like pointing toward higher mountains," he says. "And I organize my life around that goal." Much of his life has been devoted to self-imposed endurance tests. At the private school he attended, the Gulf Coast Military Academy, he was drilled in the virtues of hard work and punishingly high standards. In street fights as a boy, he would never quit, obedient to the academy's ethos, and still bears the scars of his opponents' fists. He learned to turn handicaps to advantage. In his autobiography, "Naturalist," he describes how the loss of vision in his right eye, stuck by a fish spine, and the loss of hearing for high notes made it hard for him to spot birds. He took up study of insects, which he could still see clearly. The loss of sight also caused him to be turned down by the Army, a bitter rejection given the respect for military institutions in Southern life. As a boy, he was highly religious, reading the Bible twice from cover to cover and being born again as a Southern Baptist. "At my core, I am a social conservative, a loyalist," he writes. "I cherish traditional institutions, the more venerable and ritual- laden the better." A workaholic nature gave Wilson the impetus to push his quest for scientific truth from one frontier to another. And from some source, perhaps his strong roots in the South and in the cadences of the sermon or the scripture, he acquired a talent that set him apart from most other scientists -- an outstanding gift for language. Two of his books, "On Human Nature" and "The Ants," a specialist monograph written with Hoelldobler, have won Pulitzer Prizes. Drawn to Harvard for its magnificent ant collection, Wilson found his outlook and his respect for civility at odds with the "often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate." The Harvard biology department was a battlefield during the 1960s and 1970s between the new breed of molecular biologists and traditionalists who studied whole animals. The molecular biologists, in Wilson's view, included some of the least socialized of the breed. Of course it is the molecular biologists' annexationist credo, that nothing in biology makes sense until explained in terms of molecular biology, that Wilson is seeking to apply to the rest of knowledge. Social scientists and anthropologists are likely to resist the takeover proposed in "Consilience" as strongly as Wilson and his colleagues asserted their own discipline's integrity against the molecular biologists. Wilson has few expectations of instant victory. Noting that defenders of an orthodoxy rarely accept a new idea on its merits, he quotes a remark by the economist Paul Samuelson that knowledge advances "funeral by funeral." "I don't want to sound Marxist and say it is inevitable," Wilson says, but he believes that the unification of knowledge will be achieved by a younger generation of scientists who see the opportunities. "By assistant professors, I'm not talking about full professors at Harvard," he says, laughing at the thought of any ray of enlightenment from such a source. If human nature is shaped by genetic history, then the same techniques now being developed to cure genetic diseases will later be used to change the genes that legislate the contours of the human mind. That capability will raise the question of human purpose in a practical sense: do we wish to change it or leave it as shaped by evolution? Wilson terms this impending quandary the phase of "volitional evolution." The prospect, he writes in "Consilience," will present "the most profound intellectual and ethical choices humanity has ever faced. ... Our childhood having ended, we will hear the true voice of Mephistopheles." His answer is that human nature should be left as it is: "Neutralize the elements of human nature in favor of pure rationality, and the result would be badly constructed, protein-based computers." The apparent imperfections in human nature, like adolescent violence, may spring from the same epigenetic rule that guides explorers and mountain-climbers, he suggests. Any attempt to change the apparent imperfections in human nature "would lead to the domestication of the human species -- we would turn ourselves into lapdogs," he says. Does he have a new work of synthesis in mind? Wilson parries the question. He is working full time on his knitting, the monograph about the Pheidole genus of ants. "There is a very special pleasure in looking in a microscope and saying I am the first person to see a species that may be millions of years old," he says. "And there you see, somehow I am going to get out of this the answer to the question of why are some species so inordinately successful." Another synthesis seems to be brewing already. Tuesday, May 12, 1998 Copyright New York Times ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 09:36:11 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Val dusek Subject: Re: Alabama legistature says pi=3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Please excuse my posting of the Alabama legistature says pi=3 satire without checking that it was not authentic. The case mentioned of the propopsed Illinois legislation of this socially constructed numerical value is authentic, however. -Val Dusek ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 17:05:24 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Re: Dusek on Dunbar on Haraway In-Reply-To: <199805121846.OAA01088@mx01.globecomm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Val Dusek wrote: Haraway's book does not simply claim that all primate research is a projection of capitalism. She has feminism, Western attitudes towards the non-civilized "Other," ethnic cultural differences (i.e. Japanese primate research) and other factors besides capitalism impinging on primate research. Personally as a dogmatic Marxist I prefer her first section "Monkeys and Monopoly Capitalism" to her later, more pluralistic and post-modern developments. ______________ REPLY: Thanks for this clarification. I have no problems with work revealing a multitude of social influences on scientific research. I only worry when the words "socially constructed" and "constitutive" appear in the explanation. That ideologies are constitutive in scientific theorising is the core of the vast bulk of work in STS. For example, despite being in the University library, I couldn't help laughing out loud on reading this in the current issue of *Social Studies of Science*: "I contend that the picture of 'nature' embedded in GAs [genetic algorithms] is resonant with the values of secularized Judeo-Christian white middle-class US-American and European heterosexual culture. I also maintain that GA formulations are accented by the languages inherited from sociobiology. I argue that examining GAs can help us track how dominant meanings of 'nature' are being stabilized and refigured in an age in which exchanges of metaphor between biology and computer science are increasingly common." It's difficult to imagine any work in social studies of science reaching any other conclusion. Indeed, I suspect that the 'conclusion' was written before the 'research' was undertaken. We need a great deal more reflexivity and examination of assumptions here. The tendency to see every possible iniquity as emanating from a particular group, whether communists, jews, moslems or scientists, strikes me as the epitome of unreason and a good foundation for every form of oppression. Slightly facetiously, I couldn't help wondering if those working in STS have pondered the constitutive role of the requirements of capitalistic, male-dominated Judeo-Christian Western meritocratic academia as much as the hyper-real worlds of feminism, anti-colonialism and queer studies in the content of their discourse. ________________________________________ Dusek continues As to the is-ought split, I'm glad that libertarian philosopher Richard Nozick tipped of E. O. Wilson that you can't just deduce ethics from descriptive biology. Nevertheless more subtle relationships can hold. Wilson in "On Human Nature" (favorably quoted by Ian) claims that although it is possible to enforce male-female equality in law, science, and politics, the costs of this may be too great. Wilson in "Human Nature" Writes that "Even with identical education for men and women and equal access to all professions men are likely to maintain disproportionate representation in business, law, and science." (p. 133) Clearly Wilson is drawing policy conclusions. _________ REPLY: My quotations from Wilson were supposed to show only that it's possible to give a variety of ideological interpretations to his writings as a counter example to the claim that all evolutionary theorising is constituted by and supportive of traditional capitialist values. I don't think science has anything at all to say about how we should live. In my view Noam Chomsky has the correct perspective on this: Page 164 " Surely people differ in their biologically determined qualities. The world would be too horrible to contemplate if they did not. But the discovery of a correlation between some of these qualities is of no scientific interest and of no social significance, except to racists, sexists, and the like. Those who argue that there is a correlation between race and IQ and those who deny this claim are contributing to racism and other disorders, because what they are saying is based on the assumption that the answer to the question makes a difference; it does not, except to racists, sexists and the like." Best wishes Ian References Chomsky, N. (1988). Language and Problems of Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Helmreich, S. (1998). Recombination, rationality, reductionism and romantic reactions: culture, computers, and the genetic algorithm. Social Studies of Science, 28, 39-71. _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 08:49:40 +0100 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Piotr Szybek Organization: Lund University Subject: Re: Alabama legistature says pi=3 In-Reply-To: <9805131340.AA07836@nomina.lu.se> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT > Please excuse my posting of the Alabama legistature says pi=3 satire without > checking that it was not authentic. I have to confess, that I was *made* observant of the fact, by a person to whom I forwarded that mail: Its fascinating how these things tend to *impose* credibility. That's why I thought of the parallel to the virus warning (which themselves are "social viruses" of sort, impeding communication and blurring concentration). Also, there is the fact that somebody invents it: this indicates the existence of a potentiality. >The case mentioned of the propopsed > Illinois legislation of this socially constructed numerical value is > authentic, however. -Val Dusek In that case it's worth to know the exact source. Can somebody help? Piotr Szybek Department of Education, Lund University Box 199, 221 00 Lund, Sweden tel +46462224732, fax +46462224538 email Piotr.Szybek@pedagog.lu.se ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 06:16:46 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Alabama legistature says pi=3 (Etc.) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Piotr Szybek wrote: > > > Please excuse my posting of the Alabama legistature says pi=3 satire without > > checking that it was not authentic. > I have to confess, that I was *made* observant of the fact, by a > person to whom I forwarded that mail: Its fascinating how these > things tend to *impose* credibility. That's why I thought of the > parallel to the virus warning (which themselves are "social viruses" > of sort, impeding communication and blurring concentration). > Also, there is the fact that somebody invents it: this indicates the > existence of a potentiality. [snip] "Language is a virus from outer space." (William S Burroughs) Every infant is infected from birth with the ecological constellation of semiotic viruses which constitute his or her *ethnicity of origin*. A (World / National / local / ...) Institute of Semiotic Health could begin to counteract the unwitting damage this does to each person (see, e.g., Frederick Le Boyer's _Birth Without Violence_, Alice Miller's various books, such as _Thou Shalt Not Be Aware_, _For Your Own Good_, etc.) by innoculating every child (and its parents, teachers, future employers, etc.) with the semiotic *counter* virus of: CRITICAL THINKING: "Question authority!" "Anything 'obvious' is probably eiher wrong or serves some hidden ulterior purpose: go find out what it is!" Etc. My favorite is from a most unlikely place (St. Paul), cultured through the medium of American Unitarianism: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." All persons need to come to see as universally necessary to question the legitimacy of *every* thing (no, not all at once, but iteratively and recursively), provisionally keeping the things that stand up to scrutiny and either eliminating, or, where there is no available cure for them, at least *exposing* the rest and putting up "Comtaminated" signs to warn others. The things that do get a [always provisinal] clean bill of health should be nurtured and cultivated, like museum conservators protect the fragile artworks in their collections: where the very act of preservation is always a further test of validity. Pi = 3 may or may not be a joke. Millions of girls are subjected to genital mutilation in Africa and elsewhere because their parents have been infected with the semiotic virus which says that this is necessary to make "good women" of them. Only quantitatively less devastating are the semiotic viruses of ritual male circumcision and all the forms of sexual repression (e.g., chastity) practiced closer to home, by our own hegemonous Religion-viruses. Then there is: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", "Not invented here", "Gott mit Uns!" competition in all its forms (e.g., competitive sports, the stock market, etc.). The viruses of ethnocentrism, "patriotism", (not to mention...) racism, etc. The world is full of semiotic viruses, few of which are either benign (prehaps thinking the world is either flat or round without having studied physics is one of these?), or genuinely salubrious (the spirit of critical inquiry). And, as Heinz Kohut observed, ubiquity or even universality of occurrence does not prove normality, much less health (he cited the example of dental carries, which were close to universal before fluoridation of water supplies -- but his point retains its force even if someone wishes to quibble with his example). The first few paragraphs of Section V of Freud's _Civilization and its Discontents_ is in my opinion a beautiful statement of "The Sorrow and The Pity" of what is possible but almost universally unrealized: "So far, we can quite well imagine a cultural community consisting of double individuals [libidinally bonded couples] like this, who, libidinally satisfied in themselves, are connected with one another through the bonds of common work and common interests. But this desirable thing does not and never did exist... [because] civilization is not content with the ties we have so far allowed it. It aims to bond its members together in a libidinal way as well AND EMPLOYS EVERY MEANS TO THAT END...." (emphasis added) I would say of all such semiotic formations (which generally give themselves more laudatory titles like: Fatherland, Alma Mater, etc.), what George Steiner said of the traitorous person Anthony Blunt: "Damn them!" (Not in the sense of condemnation alone, but in the more existentially relevant sense of consignment an ontological realm with no causal connection to our Lifeworld.) \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, 15 May 1998 10:37:54 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Val dusek Subject: pi=3 (ad infinitum) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-05-15 00:42:55 EDT, you write: > In that case it's worth to know the exact source. Can somebody help? > > > Piotr Szybek I don't know the original source of the April Fools pi=3 post, as I evidently received it months or years of forwarding after its origination. However Scientific American June 1998, in an article by Steve Mirsky on Vermont naming lake Champlain as one of the Great Lakes of the US, p. 28, has reference to the Indiana (not Illinois, as I erroneously said) State legislature's voting a simplified value of pi in 1897 under the influence of a crackpot who offered rights for use in Indiana textbooks and claimed that Indiana would get royalties from other states. A mathematician name C. A. Waldo was lobbying for the Indiana Academy of Science and alledgedly helped get the bill thrown out. There was an article in The Sciences magazine several years ago about the Indiana case which mentioned the name of the crank and the value he proposed for pi (which Scientific American does not). I had earlier heard that Tennessee attempted to legislate pi=3, but evidently this story was a confusion or conflation of the Indiana case with the bad image Tennessee got after the 1925 Tennessee Scopes monkey trial about evolution in 1925. Val Dusek ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 10:59:52 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Alok Kumar Subject: Re: pi=3 (ad infinitum) In-Reply-To: <199805151438.KAA11775@oswego-gw.oswego.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The discussion on pi= 3 is not a single incidence where State legislatures in Indiana and Tennessee tried to legislate wrong laws related to science. Elsewhere they even succeeded, as happened in the case of X-rays. As happens with many science news of direct interest to the public, rumors spread about the use and misuse of X-rays after its discovery in 1895. In the popular press, lurid stories of voyeurs who used X-rays to see through women's clothing were common. As a result poorly informed legislators in New Jersey (or Pennsylvania) passed a law to forbid the use of X-rays in opera houses and theaters. I wonder if anyone from this list could provide primary references to these two incidences. Alok Kumar Department of Physics State University of New York Oswego, NY 13126. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 20:42:17 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Rape and Evolution MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT This very dodgy hypothesis from the latest issue of *Evolution and Human Behavior* should provide grist for the science studies mill. ______________________________ Chavanne, T.J., & Gallup, G.G. (1998). Variation in risk taking behavior among female college students as a function of the menstrual cycle. Evolution and Human Behavior, 19, 27-32. ABSTRACT: There is some evidence that women are less likely to be raped during the mid-portion of the menstrual cycle. In order to determine if women might be behaving in ways to decrease their chances of sexual assault when they are most likely to conceive, female college students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their activities during the past 24 hours and indicate the first day of their last menstruation. A statistically significant decrease in risk taking behavior during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle was obtained for respondents who were not taking birth control pills. EXCERPT: If, as several theorists have suggested (Lalumiere et al 1996; Shields and Shields 1983; Thornhill and Thornhill 1983), the motivation of rapists is partly or entirely sexual and male sexual response has evolved to promote male fitness, then it would seem difficult to account for the evidence that women are actually less likely to be raped at about the time they are ovulating as opposed to other points of the menstrual cycle. Rogel (1976) examined the distribution of rapes during different phases of the menstrual cycle among 785 victims of sexual assault. She discovered proportionately fewer women were raped during the mid-portion of the menstrual cycle (days 10-22), and this effect appeared most pronounced for victims who were in their late teens and early twenties. Based on a sample of 123 rape victims Morgan (1981) also noted that women who were in the ovulatory phase at the time of the encounter were underrepresented among victims of sexual assault. We hypothesise that the reduced incidence of rape during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle may be a consequence of the fact that women unwittingly engage in less risk taking behavior around the time that conception would be most likely. Because of the high costs of becoming pregnant as a result of rape, perhaps during the course of human evolution females were selected to behave in ways that reduced their risk of sexual assault during the ovulatory phase. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 22:24:19 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Evolutionary workers' party MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Evolutionary workers' party *Times Higher Education Supplement* May 15 1998 ____________________________________________ It is time the left embraced Darwin, forgot Utopia and accepted there are some things about human nature that cannot be changed. Peter Singer urges a new manifesto on the left. Features a Darwinian left should embrace today: A Darwinian left would not: * deny the existence of a human nature, nor insist that human nature is inherently good, nor that it is infinitely malleable. * expect to end all conflict and strife between human beings, whether by political revolution, social change or better education. * assume that all inequalities are due to discrimination, prejudice, oppression or social conditioning. Some will be, but this cannot be assumed in every case. For example, the fact there are fewer women chief exectives of major corporations than men could be due to the men being more willing to subordinate their personal lives and other interests to their career goals, and biological differences between men and women may be a factor in that greater readiness to sacrifice everyting for the sake of getting to the top. A Darwinian left would: * accept that there is such a thing as a human nature and seek to find out more about it, so that it can be grounded on the best available evidence of what human beings are like. * expect that, under many different social and economic systems, many people will act competitively to enhance their own status, gain a position of power, and/or advance their interests and those of their kin. * expect that, irrespective of the social and economic system in which they live, most people will respond positively to enter into invitations to enter into mutually beneficial forms of cooperation, as long as they can see that the invitations are genuine. * promote structures that foster cooperation rather then competition and attempt to channel competition into socially desirable ends. * recognise that the way in which we exploit non-human animals is a legacy of a pre-Darwinain past that exaggerated the gulf between humans and other animals, and therefore work towards a higher moral status for non-human animals, and a less anthropocentric view of our dominance over nature. * stand by the traditional values of the left by being on the side of the weak, poor and oppressed, but think very carefully about what social and economic changes will really work to benefit them. * in some ways this is a sharply deflated vision of the left, its utopian ideas replaced by a coolly realistic view of what can be achieved. That is the best we can do today. ____________________________________________________ Peter Singer is professor in the Centre for Human Bioethics, Monash University, Melbourbe. This article is based on the second annual Darwin public lecture, delivered this week at the London School of Economics. A full versionof the lecture can be seen at http://www.thesis.co.uk _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 23:33:31 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Darwinian Shrinks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Darwinian Shrinks Review of *Evolution in Mind* by Henry Plotkin, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1997. by Simon Baron-Cohen __________________________________________________ Given that the mind is the product of the brain, it struck Henry Plotkin as decidedly odd that the academic discipline of psychology had rightly seen itself as one of the biological sciences and yet had divorced itself from evolutionary theory. In his new book, he set out to understand the historical factors that led to this regrettable separation. This state of affairs was particularly odd because psychology has at times striven virtually to be a branch of physiology, with its emphasis on experimentation, proximate causes and reductionism to the neural level; yet unlike physiology, it lost sight of the ecological functions of its subject matter (behaviour). Of course, there are some well-known exceptions to this, such as John Bowlby's ethological theory of attachment, but Plotkin's excellent book traces the regrettable history of psychology as a non-Darwinian science and attempts to reinstate it as a Darwinian one. Plotkin blames several factors for the drift away from an evolutionary framework. First, there is British empiricism (eg, in the 18th century and earlier, John Locke and David Hume claimed that there is no innate knowledge, only associations between sensations). Second, the German psychophysics tradition (eg, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the work of Gustav Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt and Hermann Helmholtz, with its emphasis on measurement, almost for its own sake). Plotkin highlights how William James, working in Harvard in the early part of this century, brought psychology back into contact with Darwinian ideas, through functionalism and notions of adaptation, but that such ideas were lost sight of as US psychology drifted into behaviourism. Two other subsequent attempts to bring Darwinian thinking back into psychology also fell on troubled times. Francis Galton's nativist approach soon came to be associated with the eugenics movement, which was understandably morally repugnant, and instinct theory came to be almost laughable as no one could agree on what was an instinct or how many instincts there were. Indeed, psychology had to await the arrival of ethology (and a Nobel prize to its founding fathers, Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch and Nikolaas Tinbergen), as well as Noam Chomsky's devastating critique of Skineerian behaviourism, before Darwinian ideas could have a chance to re-enter the field. Meantime, Plotkin notes that psychology missed certain opportunities, and in fact the revolution occurred in a neighbouring discipline instead: sociobiology. Admittedly, sociobiology also fell into disrepute for a short time when all behaviour was being reduced to Darwinian factors, but as Plotkin shows, by the close of the 20th century, a more balanced form of Darwinian thinking is developing in psychology. Plotkin's book is in part a historical account, and very readable for that. It then surveys contemporary "evolutionary psychology"; focussing on language as a particularly developed example and other domains such as folk psychology (our everyday understanding of social causation). These chapters review many empirical studies and theoretical arguments, and Plotkin's elegant style shines through. I enjoyed the book, not only because it takes a bird's-eye view of the discipline of psychology as it spans several centuries, but also because it helps the reader to situate the current interest in evolutionary psychology. The book require a fair bit of background knowledge to move at Plotkin's pace; it is more for a final-year undergraduate or above, rather than an introductory text. _________________________________________________________ Simon Baron-Cohen is lecturer in experimental psychology and psychiatry, University of Cambridge. _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 14:54:13 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Molecular anthropology and sociobiology MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Wilson, E.O. (1978). On Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Reprinted Penguin Books, Harmondsworth:1995). [Page 39] Hypergamy is the female practice of marrying men of equal or greater wealth and status. In human beings and most kinds of social animals, it is the females who move upward through their choice of mates. Why this sexual bias? The vital clue has been provided by Robert L. Trivers and Daniel E. Willard in the course of more general work in sociobiology. They noted that in vertebrate animals generally, and especially birds and mammals, large, healthy males mate at a relatively high frequency while many smaller, weaker males do not mate at all. Yet nearly all females mate successfully. It is further true that females in the best physical condition produce the healthiest infants, and these offspring usually grow up to be the largest, most vigorous adults. Trivers and Willard then observed that according to the theory of natural selection females should be expected to give birth to a higher proportion of males when they are healthiest, because these offspring will be largest in size, mate most successfully, and produce the maximum number of offspring. As the condition of females deteriorates, they should shift progressively to the production of daughters, since female offspring will now represent the safer investment. According to natural-selection theory, genes that induce this reproductive strategy will spread through the population at the expense of genes that promote alternative strategies. It works. In deer and human beings, two of the species investigated with reference to this particular question, environmental conditions adverse for pregnant females are associated with a disproportionate increase in the birth of daughters. Data from mink, pigs, sheep, and seal also appear to be consistent with the Trivers-Willard prediction. The most likely direct mechanism is the selectively greater mortality of male fetuses under adversity, a phenomenon that has been documented in numerous species of animals. ______________________________________________________________ Gibbons, A. (1998). Indian Women's Movement. Science, 280, 380-381. The marriage choices of most people in India - who today number almost 1 billion, or one-sixth of the world's population - were controlled for more than 3000 years by the strict rules of the Hindu caste system. Now, by studying men of different castes, a group of researchers in Utah, India and Arizona has found that those rules have left a clear mark on the genes of modern hindus. The researchers traced maternal and paternal ancestry in the same men by analyzing markers on the Y chromosome - which is inherited only through the paternal line - and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited maternally. The results indicated that women sometimes married up and ascended the social ladder into higher castes. But men tended to stay in the castes into which they were born, says Lynn Jorde, a human geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake CIty, and co-author of the report presented to the meeting [of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists]. Although researchers have tried for years to use blood groups and genes to track differences among Hindu castes, this study is one of the first to show the impact of social rules on the genome. "It is one of the clearest applications of molecular genetics to an anthropological question about mate choice and population substructuring," says Rebecca Cann, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. The work offers genetic proof that "humans choose mates according to certain rules.... [which are often] different for men and women." In their study, Jorde, University of Utah pediatric geneticist Michael Bamshad, and research specialist Scott Watkins worked with anthropologists Bhaskara Rao and J. M. Naidu of Andhra University in Vishakhapatnam, India. The team collected blood samples from 300 unrelated men from 12 populations spanning the Hindu caste hierarchy and set up a molecular genetics lab at Andhra University. The researchers compared the DNA sequences of men of different castes, measuring how many differences there were in the same 400-base-pair segment of mtDNA and in seven markers or segments, of their Y chromosomes. The mtDNA showed a slight blurring of caste lines. Men in closely ranked castes had similarities in their maternally inherited mtDNA, but there were few similarities between the mtDNA of men in the highest castes, such as Brahmins, and those in the lowest castes. "The genetic distances between upper and lower castes are much greater than [those] between upper and middle castes," says Jorde. This gradient means, says Jorde, that these men's maternal ancestors had moved between adjacent ranks, mixing the genes between closely related castes. And historical records and strict social rules make it clear that women must have moved up, rather than down. "You get this ladder effect, where women tend to move to a caste of the next higher rank but [don't make] dramatic leaps from the lower castes to the very highest," say jorde. The distribution of markers on the Y chromosome showed a very different pattern. Men in the highest castes didn't share any more genetic markers with men in middle castes than they did with men in lower castes, suggesting little crossing of caste lines. In other words, "the men are stuck", says Jorde. The study confirms a pattern in cultures found worldwide - that women can move up in social rank, because higher ranking males will marry lower ranking females, but that low-ranking males have the least choice in mates, notes molecular anthropologist Mark Stoneking of Pennsylvania State University, University Park. The study also gives the geneticists confidence that they can detect historical and social effects in the genome. The effects of caste were still evident even though the system was outlawed in the 1960s. And the study shows an Asian origin for people in most castes, but the DNA of people in the upper castes has some similarities to that of Caucasians, which fits historical records that say the caste system was imposed by Caucasians sweeping in from the northwest. "It should make us optimistic about the power of genetic studies to reveal history," says Jorde _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 14:14:31 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: History of Evolutionary Biology Web Site Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Lefalophodon: A History of Evolutionary Biology Web Site http://homebrew.si.edu/lefa/ This is an informal and incomplete guide to the history of evolutionary biology from about 1800 to about 1950. It is maintained by John Alroy. Its main emphases are on the late 19th century and on paleontology. However, I hope to see the coverage become more comprehensive in the near future. If you have any comments or suggestions or wish tocontribute to the site, I strongly encourage you to do so; please write me. The only limits on contributions are that they must follow the site's format and carry your byline. __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837. Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/ 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 22:07:25 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: 'Darwinism and the Division of Labour' Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Recent writings on science and ideology, the science wars, postmodernism and, above, the limits - if any - to the explanatory power of Darwinism all lead me to feel that I have been here before, in particular, in the debates at the beginning of the radical science movement in the New Left in the wake of the events of 1968 and the intellectual ferment which followed on. In tht period I wrote a number of essays, some for very public audiences, e.g., the BBC Third Programme. I have just put one of them on the web: 'Darwinism and the Division of Labour', http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/staff/rmyoung/papers/pap109.html which is closely allied to some others, e.g., 'Evolutionary Biology and Ideology: Then and Now', 'The Anthropology of Science', 'The Naturalization of Value Systems in the Human Sciences', 'Darwinism is Social. All bear on the use of biological explanations and analogies in thenhuman and the management sciences. Comments welcome. __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837. Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/ 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 03:27:45 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: ARCHIVE1 Subject: female writers(graffiti) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit int.work-group on graffiti-research: list of writers`names(female)has been published today in ALT.GRAFFITI ...among ca. 8000 int.names only ca.50 women could be identified...... Axel Thiel(coordination) http://www.graffiti.org/axel/index.html ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 09:35:06 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: What is society? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT In 'Darwinism and the Division of Labour' Bob Young writes: "The tremendous vogue of Darwinism provided both a rationalization for competitive struggle and a warrant for using scientific concepts to justify particular forms of social and economic relationship. Only the fittest survive, and those who do survive must therefore be fit. This slogan was placed on the banners of imperialists as well as on those of the most ruthless industrialists. "The indirect path to human happiness by concentrating on science, technology and the hierarchical division of labour, while holding out the promise of generous fruits if only people will allow their bodies - and latterly their minds - to be treated as things, has been trod long enough. Biological theory has played and continues to play an important role in justifying this.... accepting and deferring to the theories I have been discussing makes authoritarianism seem natural. The machines and the theories are therefore themselves forms of power." _________________________________________________________ I think there is a strange tale to be told here. The tale of the anthropomorphism of 'society' in historiography inspired by Marxist ideology. It seems that we have mistakenly believed that there are agents in the world, intelligent, rational agents capable of objective observation - we call these agents 'people'. But in fact there is only one true agent in the world, the agent in which all causal efficacy is vested. This true agent is society. Thankfully, there are a group of seers who have been liberated from the dictates of society and who are capable of identifying 'social constructions'. The true analysis of the history of science thus rightly entails the investigation of how 'society' projects its dominant ideology through the theories produced by unwitting pseudoagents called 'scientists'. A very strange tale, but one that is still credible to some, and it certainly provides a convoluted justification for the discussion of the term "survival of the fittest" above. There is no analysis at all of what this non-Darwinian term might mean within the context of evolutionary theory, simply because the justification for treating the term as inherently meaningless as anything other than a social construction is already in place. Natural selection describes how, in a world of finite resources, miniscule differences capable of promoting the differential survival of offspring will, across vast swathes of evolutionary time, result in adaptations and speciation. How on earth can this theory justify any particular social environment or practice? Presumably, we have to believe that what was uppermost in the minds of nineteenth century industrialists was the desire to promote the adaptation and speciation that might occur among the populace if stable working practices and social conditions could be maintained over hundreds of millenia? If we move from the nineteenth century to the present day, and to the modern evolutionary concept of neighbour-modulated fitness, can we assume that the preoccupation of contemporary capitalists is with the pooled value for the success of all copies of a given gene in the population at any particular moment? Best wishes Ian _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 10:47:02 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: Fodor on Pinker & Plotkin Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jerry Fodor's "The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism" (a review of How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker and Evolution in Mind by Henry Plotkin) was published in the London Review of Books, vol. 20, number 2. It's still on line at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20n02/fodo2002.html __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837. Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/ 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 19:56:46 +1000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: melanie lazarow Subject: The "left" defends itself -Sociobiology and stereotype X-cc: m.madison@hps.unimelb.edu.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ian Pritchard writes: >It is time the left embraced Darwin, forgot Utopia and accepted there >are some things about human nature that cannot be changed. There is the old adage about philosophers interpreting the world, and the point being to change it. (Marx in my own words).What Peter Singer calls "utopian" is the absolute necessity for the abolition of classes. This left program can only be carried out by the mass of the organized working class, becoming conscious of its power and organizing to get rid of all of the old forms of the state which maintain power in the hands of the small ruling class. This, in practice , is what Singer is so sarcastic about. But, if he had stood, as I did, on a mass picket with the Australian wharfies and their supporters, defending the right of unionised labour, he could have gained a minute bit of understanding of the changes that people undergo in struggle. If he had seen 2000 building workers encircle the police and join the striking Maritime Union, he would have feared, or been enthused about, the potential of this class. The entreaty to come to terms with the limits of human nature, focuses on what cannot be changed (aspects of human nature). This implies that how we are now, (a deeply class divided world society, where only a few own and control the wealth, switching investments across borders while others starve or get thrown out of work in the booms and slumps of capitalism) is projectable back in time and forward in time. We would have to have a very detailed discussion about what aspects of human nature can and cannot be changed. A central concept of dialectical materialism, the cornerstone of Marxism, is that change is central to life and that nothing is immutable. Here is a quote from Engel's "Anti-During" "Therefore, knowledge is here essentially relative, inasmuch as it is limited to the investigation of interconnections and consequences of certain social and state forms which exist only in a particular epoch and among particular peoples and are by their very nature transitory. Anyone therefore who here sets out to hunt down final and ultimate truths, genuine, absolutely immutable truths, will bring home but little, apart from platitudes and commonplaces of the sorriest kind -- for example, that, generally speaking, men cannot live except by labour; that up to the present they for the most part have been divided into rulers and ruled; that Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, and so on." Certainly in some senses the only truth is that things will change. >Peter Singer urges a new manifesto on the left. > >Features a Darwinian left should embrace today: > >A Darwinian left would not: > >* deny the existence of a human nature, nor insist that human nature >is inherently good, nor that it is infinitely malleable. This stereotyped left, which has "denied the existence of human nature" is a construct, used to destroy its opponents. The "left" (Lewontin, Rose, Gould) have very complex analysis of human nature, non of which is fixed. I have not seen any analysis on the left that says "human nature is inherently good". Rather human behavior is analyzed in its complex relationship with the means of subsistence. The same person can act in many ways under different circumstances. The moral prescript "good" or "bad" human nature is an anathema to the left. An understanding of how people behave in various ways through the pressures put on them by competitive demands, ie one job 50 applicants causes certain kinds of behavior that is encouraged by the ruling classes ie racism. sexism etc. If the left is not organised racism and sexism can be enshrined into fascism, tolerated by big business if necessary, to maintain a decent profit rate. >* expect to end all conflict and strife between human beings, whether >by political revolution, social change or better education. Sorry Peter, the organised left will continue to defend our right to change a system of ongoing war, terror and starvation, which can be scientifically understood as coming from the constant booms and slumps, of capital, which in its attempt to maintain maximum profits forgoes the environment or human beings lives turning them into "human resources' to be spat out or employed at its leisure. >* assume that all inequalities are due to discrimination, prejudice, >oppression or social conditioning. Some will be, but this cannot be >assumed in every case. For example, the fact there are fewer women >chief exectives of major corporations than men could be due to the >men being more willing to subordinate their personal lives and other >interests to their career goals, and biological differences between >men and women may be a factor in that greater readiness to sacrifice >everyting for the sake of getting to the top. Once again, the biological determinism of sexual inequality. How boring to have to deal with this again and again. It is not my aim to give a social history of this type of statement, but in part it is necessary. Karl Vogt, in the middle of the nineteenth century claimed that the female skull approached in many respects that of an infant. It might be a biological fact that women give birth. this period of dependance on other's certainly allows for oppression. But which part of biology are you stating makes women incapable of being numerically equal to men as CEO's. Now I'm no friend of feminists whose only interest is reform of the system to allow them more access to the boardrooms. but in a struggle between them and you, I'm on their side. However my concern is the use your biologically deterministic theory will be used that there are features of women that make them more comfortable in the home, looking after children etc. etc. Quite honestly your shallow biological analysis is a veiled cover for legal and other forms of continuing sexism and oppression. >A Darwinian left would: > >* accept that there is such a thing as a human nature and seek to >find out more about it, so that it can be grounded on the best >available evidence of what human beings are like. How are we going accept that there is no such thing as human nature, then find out more about it. The fact is that Peter believes very strongly in a human nature but the exact limits of his analysis are unformed and unconscious. >* expect that, under many different social and economic systems, many >people will act competitively to enhance their own status, gain a >position of power, and/or advance their interests and those of their >kin. Lukacs put it quite succinctly: "For a Marxist as historical dialectician both nature and all the forms in which it is mastered in theory and practice are social categories; and to believe that one can detect anything supra-historical or supra-historical in this context is to disqualify oneself as a Marxist". In other words what Peter Singer is asking is that Marxist cease to be Marxists and become sociobiologists. Sorry, there are still some of us who do wan't to analyze the social world scientifically. >* expect that, irrespective of the social and economic system in >which they live, most people will respond positively to enter into >invitations to enter into mutually beneficial forms of cooperation, >as long as they can see that the invitations are genuine. >* promote structures that foster cooperation rather then competition >and attempt to channel competition into socially desirable ends. >* recognise that the way in which we exploit non-human animals is a >legacy of a pre-Darwinain past that exaggerated the gulf between >humans and other animals, and therefore work towards a higher moral >status for non-human animals, and a less anthropocentric view of our >dominance over nature. Humans dominate nature. The invention of the wheel was a domination of nature as was the steam engine, the computer and e-mail. These tools can be used in a variety of ways for the benefit or the deterrence of the majority. The single complex and dialectical relationship between man and animals is that we have a unique consciousness, but we are biologically inextricably connected to animals. Non human -animals not having the same kind d of devolved consciousness have no morality, to think that animals are in any way moral is anti-huminist twaddle. >* stand by the traditional values of the left by being on the side of >the weak, poor and oppressed, but think very carefully about what >social and economic changes will really work to benefit them. Yes I agree >* in some ways this is a sharply deflated vision of the left, its >utopian ideas replaced by a coolly realistic view of what can be >achieved. That is the best we can do today. The great uprisings of May '68 said "demand the impossible" Within your limited pragmatic view the real possibilities of humanity are lost. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxumburg, Gramski and Lukacs all have laid very important theoretical underpinnings for contemporary understanding. A return to the genetic and biological determinism of the turn of this century is a step backwards, though biology and genetics, can be useful tools in a dialectical understanding. >____________________________________________________ > > Anything 'obvious' is probably eiher wrong or serves some hidden ulterior purpose: go find out what it is! Melanie Lazarow Information Literacy Librarian University of Melbourne Parkville Victoria 3052 Australia ****************************************** Phone 61 3 9344 5373 Fax 61 3 9348 1142 Email: m.lazarow@lib.unimelb.edu.au ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 13:36:11 +0100 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: Re: Rape and Evolution MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian wrote: >This very dodgy hypothesis from the latest issue of *Evolution and >Human Behavior* should provide grist for the science studies mill. Surely one doesn't need to have any interest in science studies, let alone be part of the 'science studies mill', to be able to condemn the 'dodgy hypothesis'. Back in the old days, the idea that scientists should behave responsibly and ethically had nothing to do with 'science studies' - it was just plain common sense. Why on earth can't we recover some of that common sense? Regards, Richard -- ____________________________________________________________________ Richard Hull CRIC (ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation & Competition) Tom Lupton Suite, University Precinct Centre University of Manchester Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9QH Tel: +44 (0)161 275 7364 Fax: 7361 email: Richard.Hull@umist.ac.uk http://les.man.ac.uk/cric/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 13:12:13 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: Peter Singer on the Darwinian Left: full text Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A Darwinian Left: Evolutionary workers' party *Times Higher Education Supplement* May 15 1998 ____________________________________________ It is time the left embraced Darwin, forgot Utopia and accepted there are some things about human nature that cannot be changed. Peter Singer, Professor in the Cerntre for Human Bioethics. Monash University, Melbourne, urges a new manifesto on the left. The full text of the Second Darwin Public Lecture, given at LSE, is at http://www.thesis.co.uk Anyone wanting the full text but who has difficulties downloading it can write to me, since I have succeeded and would be willing to send it as an email or attachment. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 15:57:46 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Quotations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Gaither, C.C., & Cavazos-Gaither, A.E. (1997). *Physically Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations on Physics and Astronomy*. London: Institute of Physics Publishing. ___________________________________________________________ "no believes an hypothesis except its originator but everybody believes an experiment except the experimenter". W. I. B. Beveridge "TELESCOPE, a device enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless detail". Ambrose Bierce "Cosmologists are often in error, but never in doubt". Yakov Zel'dovich "the effor to understand the universe is one of the few things that lift human life a little above the level of farce, and give it some of the grace of tragedy". Steven Weinberg "physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world but because we know so little: it is only mathematical properties that we can uncover". Bertrand Russell Selected by David Hughes, reader in astronomy, Sheffield University _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 15:57:46 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Real poets, eco-poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Turney, J. (1998). Real poets, eco-poets. Review of *Green Space, Green Time: The Way of Science.* By Connie Barlow. London: Copernicus. The Times Higher Education Supplement, May 1 1998, 30. ____________________________________________________________ Our old myths are no longer much use, but living without myths seems impossible - so its up to us to create new ones. A plausible claim perhaps, as one watches myths being spun all around. But Connie Barlow goes a step further. Science, she argues, far from negating myths, is the best grounding for new ones fit for the times. Specifically, Darwinian theory and geophysiology offer inspiration for new stories about nature, stories that impart meaning to our lives by placing them in a larger scheme. Geophysiology, under the banner of Gaia theory first unfurled by Jim Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, has always had a semi-mythical aspect that repels as many scientists as it attracts. Darwinian theory, although it seems to induce a near-religious fever in some of its modern adherents, is less obviously a source of such stories. But they are there, in the form of what writers such as Edward O. Wilson have self-consciously fashioned as the epic of evolution. Barlow, whose two previous books were collections of writing about life and evolution, applauds all of this as an appealing way of developing a new ecoreligious movement. She sees it as complementary to more traditional modes of consciousness raising - tapping ancient wisdom, seeking personal transcendence or making mystical contact with nature. To these three she seeks to add another, what she calls the way of science. To point the way, she reviews the work of writers who have written about their science in ways accessible to lay readers, as in Wilson's *Biodiversity*, or who have tried to interpret aspects of science in ways that relate to broader concerns. In their hands, the history of the universe becomes a scientifically based story, from the big bang (or the great radiance, as one of Barlow's favoured authors dubs it) through the formation of stars and planets, the origins and evolution of life and the development of conscious minds. As bearers of such minds, we find ourselves in a position to appreciate all this and to fathom they way the planet seems to constitute a self-regulating system, in which the totality of life helps maintain its own environment. For Barlow, this offers a creation story as capable of expressing key values as any that has been told before, in this case values centred around the richness of life's diversity. This, in turn, can be used to evoke responses as varied as new religious rituals and practical work to preserve or reconstruct local bio-regions. But above all, it is a damn good story. One could regard all this simply as an impressive exercise in marshalling rhetorical resources in favour of a particular brand of conservationist politics. It is certainly open to relativising responses of various kinds. And although Barlow is in effect proposing a new hermeneutics for a new age, she explicitly repudiates postmodernist attitudes to science: it is necessary for her story to be true in a scientific way as well as a spiritual sense. Finally, though, her message about science and values invites a more personal response. I approached the book convinced the signs were bad - something about the title and the acknowledgement to "the trees whose once-living fibres now support this sharing of ideas". But I found it carefully argued, charmingly written and well aware of the objections to attempts to harness science to values. Not all the people one meets in these pages are as impressive as Wilson or Lovelock. One or two if the "scientist-poets" strike me as people no one outside California would mistake for a poet. However, the overall message Barlow distils from her many conversations seems a fine one for popular science writing to convey. If one sticks resolutely to the principle she affirms towards the end of the discussion, that the scientific story can always change and the current version of the myth would then have to change too, there is nothing here to disturb a realist epistemology. And as a secular rationalist who has always felt allergic to other belief systems, I warm to the effort to make more sense of the unfolding of science than Steven Weinberg's dictum in *The First Three Minutes* that the more we understand of the universe, the more meaningless it becomes. After all, everyone needs some kind of story to tell their children. But that, I think, is Barlow's point. ________________________________________________________ Jon Turney teaches science communication at University College London. _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 16:02:43 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: Launch of Research Seminars on Social Responsibility Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Advances in Social Responsibility in the Information Age On 20 May 1998 the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility launches an important research seminar series which will influence the nature of UK research into the social and ethical issues related to information and communication technology. The two year programme is funded by Economic and Social Research Council with additional sponsorship from Royal Mail. The aim is to bring together researchers and research users from industry, commerce and government to discuss key issues and help formulate an effective research agenda. Further information about the series can be found on a dedicated page on CCSR's web site at http://www.ccsr.cms.dmu.ac.uk/conferences/ESRC This will be regularly updated with output from the series and should prove to be a userful source for those working in this area. Use CCSR's newsgroup ccsr.misc to participate in an ongoing discussion about the issues raised by this seminar series. Access the newsgroup at http://www.ccsr.cms.dmu.ac.uk/discussion/ Simon Rogerson Director of CCSR __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837. Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/ 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 16:43:06 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: _Science as Culture_ vol. 7 No. 1 has appeared: contents Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" _Science as Culture_ Vol. 7 Part 1 has now appeared. The editors hope that members of this forum will be the first to appreciate the attractions of subscribing to the journal, which has a unique point of view in a world where most commentators on science, technology, medicine and other forms of expertise suffer from a remarkable timidity. They also invite submissions on any aspect of the cultural dimensions of science and of the history and philosophy of science and other forms of expertise. CONTENTS NATURAL SELECTION: A Heavy Hand in Biological and Social Thought by Peter Taylor BIOCOLONIALISM AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE by Laurie Anne Whitt BIOMEDICAL CONTROL AND DIABETES CARE by Matthew R. Davis WHEN HARRY MET SANDRA: An Alternative Engagement after the Science Wars by Mark Elam and Oskar Juhlin REVIEWS The Gendered Politics of Disembodied Space _Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace_, edited by Lynn Cherny and Elizabeth R Weise reviewed by Tiziana Terranova Provincial History of Science _Colonial Technology: Science and the Transfer of Innovation to Australia_, by Jan Todd reviewed by David Mercer Scientific Learnings _Minds for the Making: The Role of Science in American Education, 1750-1990_ , by Scott L. Montgomery reviewed by Daniel Dunlap During 1988 _Science as Culture_ will publish two special issues: _Strategising Counter-Expertise, guest editors Kim Fortun and Todd Cherkasky (7/2) _Natural Contradictions_, guest editors Yrjo Haila and Peter Taylor (7/4) _Science as Culture_ is published quarterly for Process Press Ltd. by Carfax Publications Ltd. For information about subscriptions and a list of back issues, go to: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/process.html#science Subscription information is also at http://www.carfax.co.uk/sac-ad.htm A web site associated with the journal and forum holds articles from back issues of the journal, as well as other materials which forum members may wish to discuss: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/rmy/sac.html The web site now includes Barbara Heyl's classic article, 'The Harvard "Pareto Circle"', which discusses the ideological origins of the concepts of social system and social equilibrium, involving the influence of L. J. Henderson on the social science writings of Talcott Parsons, Charles Homans and Crane Brinton, in which Henderson drew on the ultra-conservative theories of Vilfedo Pareto to combat radical and Marxist ideas in American social science. This essay is of considerable interest for the understandng of systems thinking in the human sciences and in the functionalist tradition. Editor Robert M. Young robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk Managing Editor Les Levidow l.levidow@open.ac.uk __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837. Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/ 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 21:17:54 -0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Michael Gregory, NEXA/H-NEXA" Subject: Re: Quotations X-cc: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com In-Reply-To: <199805191502.LAA03645@franklin.concentric.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ian P.: You might want to add these luminous sayings, given here in gist, with amusing/weird details (you'll appreciate): Hypothico non fingo. (I do not make hypotheses.) Isaac Newton* *Laughed only once in his life - at a student's stupid mistake. Took up science to further his study of witchcraft. (McGuire, ~Newton and the Pipes of Pan.~) Reality cannot be approximated mathematically, and what is mathematical is not real. Albert Einstein* *Didn't speak until age five; as student, poor at math(s). Delighted diner guests with his trick of removing his vest without removing his jacket. Did not wear socks. Often at Princeton called provost to be reminded of his address. Could not be at the bedside of his wife, dying of cancer, because of his research on Unified Field. Michael Gregory NEXA/H-NEXA You are not alone, Ian! We are among you, scientists all, princes of wisdom and reality! Quite, quite daft, and such fun! At 03:57 PM 5/19/98 +0000, you wrote: >Gaither, C.C., & Cavazos-Gaither, A.E. (1997). *Physically Speaking: >A Dictionary of Quotations on Physics and Astronomy*. London: >Institute of Physics Publishing. >___________________________________________________________ > >"no believes an hypothesis except its originator but everybody >believes an experiment except the experimenter". >W. I. B. Beveridge > >"TELESCOPE, a device enabling distant objects to plague us with a >multitude of needless detail". >Ambrose Bierce > >"Cosmologists are often in error, but never in doubt". >Yakov Zel'dovich > >"the effor to understand the universe is one of the few things that >lift human life a little above the level of farce, and give it some >of the grace of tragedy". >Steven Weinberg > >"physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the >physical world but because we know so little: it is only mathematical >properties that we can uncover". >Bertrand Russell > >Selected by David Hughes, reader in astronomy, Sheffield University > > > >_____________________________________________ > Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com > Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ > University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent > SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. > Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 >_____________________________________________ > Online Dictionary of Mental Health > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ > InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html >_____________________________________________ > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 14:53:45 -0700 Reply-To: wderzko@pathcom.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Walter Derzko Subject: Creativity Consortium-Panel on Computer-aided Innovation X-To: List ODCNET X-cc: List Decision Explorer , List Service , List ODNLIST Tor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Creativity Consortium-Panel on Computer-aided Innovation The Monthly meeting of the Creativity Consortium Wednesday May 27, 1998--6:15 PM to 9:30 PM The Ontario Club, 30 Wellington St West, 5th Floor Commerce Court South Toronto, Ontario [Can't attend ? copies of the proceedings will be available in June--embargoed till June 28th. call or email for details] Topic: Panel on Computer-aided innovation-software that helps you see patterns, manage knowledge, think and invent Building a knowledge repository-does it aid in collaboration, insight generation and speed up the concept to cash life cycle ?Jim Falconer a researcher from Nortel (Northern Telecom-Canada's premier research establishment) reports on his experiences in building a repository of knowledge artifacts and an interactive research and collaboration tool for a small consulting department within a large communications solutions company. Jim talks about the particular challenges faced by a geographically-dispersed knowledge-based enterprise like Nortel in constructing and maintaining a corpus of knowledge and innovation that is self-sustaining, dynamic and value-rich. The solution relies heavily upon the ubiquity, extent and hypertext-based underpinnings of the World Wide Web. In addition, all aspects of the inquisitive/ acquisitive behavior, interaction and knowledge management had to be modeled into the solution for it to be both useful and engaging. Can software programs help inventors, designers and engineers in creating concepts for new inventions? IQ-Plus, a Canadian software company is one of the several firms who have released new software based on the creativity technique called TRIZ, a process originally invented by G.S Altshuller in the 1960's. After it was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, the TRIZ process is now used by such well-known firms as: Kodak, Ford, Nortel, AMP, IBM, 3M, Eli Lilly, Kimberly-Clark, Rand, Motorola, Rockwell, Saab, Xerox and others. IQ-Plus software is unique in that it integrates several methods including VA, QFD, TRIZ, TOC and the Coller method and others. Victor Minin, an engineer, scientist and entrepreneur discusses his 12 years of experiences in product innovation and solving engineering problems. Come out and hear our experts or order the proceedings. Does it deserve all the hype? What are some of the results? See a demo in action. Panel Moderator: Walter Derzko, Director Brain Space and founder Creativity Consortium. Panelists: Jim Falconer, Nortel and Victor Minin, IQ Plus Corporation Meeting Cost: $40 guests, $30 members, $20 full time students Cash, cheque or AMEX Proceedings: $42.50 (includes postage) if ordered in Canada $37.50 US for all international orders Cheque (made out to the Creativity Consortium)or Amex For reservations or to order proceedings call (416) 588-1122 Walter Derzko Director Brain Space (formerly the Idea Lab at the Design Exchange) Founder Creativity Consortium 116 Galley Ave Toronto, Ontario Canada, M6R 1H1 (416) 588-1122 wderzko@pathcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 21:35:50 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Downsizing Darwin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable The Boston Globe | Opinion Downsizing Darwin By Paul R. Gross, 05/17/98 The oddest trend among culturati is the rise of anti-evolutionism, which they call ''anti-Darwinism.'' However, this is not just the old creationist maundering about a young Earth and Noah's ark. Among conservative intelligentsia, there is joy. Darwinism, they declare, is dead; science itself has resurrected God. For example, Robert H. Bork explains the lack of evidence for evolution in his latest book: ''A compelling argument for why such evidence is missing is provided by the microbiologist Michael Behe. He has shown that Darwinism cannot explain life as we know it.'' Unfortunately, Behe - a biochemist, not a microbiologist - has shown nothing of the kind. Creationists and evangelical Christians love his book, but it contains no new evidence for the venerable Argument from Design. Behe's version of it was demolished by serious students of evolution. The ''missing'' evidence is missing only from Behe's book. In addition the conservative journal Commentary has been printing flamboyant critiques of science by a mathematician, David Berlinski. He exhumes long-discredited creationist arguments and adds a few bones of his own. Across the country, college and university faculties seem to be ignoring anti-Darwinist crusades bankrolled from outside the institution. And the National Association of Biology Teachers, symbol of resistance to creationism, has recently had second thoughts: from its time-honored definition of evolution, two key adjectives - ''unsupervised'' and ''impersonal'' - were deleted. Do they now think that the evolution of life on Earth is ''supervised,'' or ''personal?'' No. Teachers qualified in science admit that there is no new reason to believe that. But they glance at the wall and see a hand, writing. By removing the offensive words they hope still to teach the facts, including the salient one: that to the best of our knowledge, the diversity of life on this planet is the result of organic evolution. They're kidding themselves. The teachers are rationalists and compromisers. But the trend is not toward recognizing the compatibility of religion with science: it is for the defeat of science wherever it conflicts with religion. In 1850, Adam Sedgwick, Darwin's geology teacher, thundered that if evolution is true, then religion is a lie, law is folly, morality is moonshine. Therefore evolution must be false. His thunder survives and rumbles again. Why? Are there really deep flaws in biology and a conspiracy to hide them, as the new anti-evolutionsts claim? Have genetics, biochemistry, embryology, and paleontology failed to support the synthesis of Darwin's natural selection with what we know about heredity? Are there really no intermediates in the fossil record? No. The modern evolutionary synthesis is as sound as the heliocentric solar system. The soundness of Copernicus is tested daily in millions of ''experiments.'' So is the soundness of misnamed ''Darwinism,'' which is really 100 years of biology and geology. To be sure, scientific knowledge is impermanent; change is the rule. But the main channels of science have been open for 300 years and one of them became evolutionary biology. A returning Darwin would find much of it incomprehensible, so far has it advanced and changed. Don't take my word for it: study any good textbook. So far, every creationist claim against evolution has collapsed, to the unnecessary embarrassment of religion. So the bluster is not really about fine points of biology or even the truth of special creation. It is about politics. The real worry remains Sedgwick's: that religion will be seen as lies, law as folly, morality as moonshine; that the social order will come apart because of science-fed doubt that God is watching, that the evil in our hearts must take over. The worry could in principle be legitimate; but world history gives it no support. And that isn't the whole story. Much of the anti-Darwin furor is resentment of science in general, a malady as much of the academic left as of conservatives. It is the ''biophobia'' of some humanists and social scientists. It decrees that biology has little or nothing to say about human behavior. Writing in The Nation on ''The New Creationism,'' Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh argue that: ''... the combined vigor of antibiologism and simplified postmodernism has tended to obliterate the possibility that human beings have anything in common, and to silence efforts to explore this domain.'' Those -isms are trends of the cultural left. A strange, informal collaboration of right and left is in progress, undercutting evolutionary and other science in education and in general. It does not bode well for our announced national goals in science achievement by American kids. Paul R. Gross, former director and president of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and a former professor at MIT, is a visiting scholar at Harvard University. This story ran on page E07 of the Boston Globe on 05/17/98. =A9 Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 19:40:26 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Unauthorized Freud MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Crews, F. C. (1998). Unauthorized Freud : doubters confront a legend. New York: Viking. ISBN: 0670872210 $24.95 AUGUST 1998 ________________________________________________________ Over the past thirty years, a revolution has occurred in the study of Sigmund Freud and his brainchild, psychoanalysis. The Freud of legend - the lonely scientific pioneer who steeled himself to place importance on his patients' unbidden sexual revelations, cured their neuroses, and discovered the universal Oedipus complex lurking within their memories - has been exposed as a fiction, a joint concoction of Freud himself and his official biographer, Ernest Jones. In *Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend*, Frederick Crews has collected essays and exerpts from a wide range of scholars, biographers, and critics that brilliantly make the revisionist case against Freud. According to Crews, the most trenchant (and most frequently attacked) of Freud's critics, the emerging truth is that Freud was a dogmatist who browbeat his patients and consistently failed to mark the crucial difference between his patients' fantasies and his own. And while the heroic Freud has thus been shrinking to human size, philosophers and psychologists have been finding that psychoanalytic clinical evidence offers no credible support to the top-heavy, tottering Freudian system of mental laws and powers. It is still widely assumed, however, that only disturbed "freud bashers" would want to question Freud's achievement. That assumption cannot survive acquaintance with *Unauthorized Freud*. Here we see, in the work of authors such as Frank J. Sulloway, Peter Swales, Stanley Fish, and Ernest Gellner, the mistakes and deceptions leading to the "discovery" of psychoanalysis proper; the logical considerations that undermine Freudian assumptions about the meaning of dreams, symptoms, and slips; the missteps that doomed Freud's case histories both as therapeutic interventions and as illustrations of his theory; and finally, the personal costs incurred by disciples and patients who were sacrificed to the master's monomaniacal ambition. According to Crews, the conclusion is inescapable: the founder of psychoanalysis is the most overrated figure in the history of medicine and science. _____________________________________________________ The *Burying Freud* Web Site: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/burying_freud.html Debate on Freud's Seduction Theory http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/aesterson.html _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 22:35:04 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Unauthorized Freud MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > Crews, F. C. (1998). Unauthorized Freud : doubters confront a legend. > New York: Viking. ISBN: 0670872210 $24.95 AUGUST 1998 > ________________________________________________________ > > Over the past thirty years, a revolution has occurred in the study of > Sigmund Freud and his brainchild, psychoanalysis. The Freud of > legend - the lonely scientific pioneer who steeled himself to place > importance on his patients' unbidden sexual revelations, cured their > neuroses, and discovered the universal Oedipus complex lurking within > their memories - has been exposed as a fiction, a joint concoction of > Freud himself and his official biographer, Ernest Jones. [snip] > According to Crews, the conclusion is inescapable: the founder of > psychoanalysis is the most overrated figure in the history of > medicine and science. > _____________________________________________________ > The *Burying Freud* Web Site: > http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/burying_freud.html > Debate on Freud's Seduction Theory > http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/aesterson.html > [snip] This seems to me an "interesting" posting. The first part looks like a book review. It even has an "According to" phrase in it. Then there follow references to what sound like they are anti-Freud web sites, but which are not "bracketed" by being part of the "review". So I hyopthesize the "review" may merely be a *cover* for Freud-bashing propagandizing. I'm not a "Freud Moonie" (I encountered some of them, or at least their refurbished "Object Relations" avatars, in the psychoanalytic training institute I attended...). But I have read some of Freud, and found some valuable (hermentutically oriented) stuff as well as some other stuff which looks like naive psycho-physics, etc. "Freud" is not so easy to dismiss, in my opinion, since, even *if* he was largely wrong, it seems unlikely that a lot of stuff that is a lot more right could have happened without him (Ferenczi, Winnicott (via Melanie Klein)...). For one particular where I think Freud got things very right, I feel the first few paragraphs of Section V of "Civilization and its Discontents" is one of the great statements of the vision of a fully human society and what stands in the way of its actuallization. \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: Mon, 25 May 1998 18:24:26 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Science Studies Bibliography In-Reply-To: <24MAY98.23629609.0069.MUSIC@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Ted Hermary of McGill University in Canada has very kindly provided me with this brief introductory science studies bibliography. Comments, additions and amendments are welcome. Ian ________________________________________________________________ GOOD OVERVIEWS OF "TRENDS" IN THEORY AND RESEARCH, AT DIFFERENT TIMES: Gooding, David, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer, ed. 1989. The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knorr-Cetina, Karin D., and Michael Mulkay, ed. 1983. Science Observed: Perspectives in the Social Study of Science. Oxford: Permagon Press. Lynch, Michael, and Steve Woolgar, ed. 1988. Representation in Scientific Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mulkay, Michael. 1979. Science and the Sociology of Knowledge. London: George Allen & Unwin. [Presumes a bit of sociology.] Pickering, Andrew, ed. 1992. Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. INTEREST THEORY -- THE CONSTRUCTED POINT OF ORIGIN FOR "MODERN" SCIENCE STUDIES Bloor, David. 1976. Knowledge and Social Imagery. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Barnes, Barry. 1982. T.S. Kuhn and Social Science. New York: Columbia University Press. WHAT IS A PARADIGM (OR A THOUGHT-STYLE, FOR THAT MATTER)? Fleck, Ludwick. 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Yikes! a sociological scientist! Also the guy Kuhn ripped off.:-)] Edge, David O., and Michael J. Mulkay. 1976. Astronomy Transformed: The Emergence of Radio Astronomy in Britain. New York: Wiley. [Closest thing to an in-depth empirical study of Kuhnian ideas.] Stewart, John. 1990. Drifting Continents and Colliding Paradigms: Perspectives on the Geoscience Revolution. Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press. ETHNOGRAPHIC WORKS Collins, Harry M. 1992. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Garfinkel, Harold, Michael Lynch, and Eric Livingston. 1981. The Work of a Discovering Science Construed with Materials from the Optically Discovered Pulsar. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 11 (2): 131-158 (Comment: 159-161). [Not for the faint of heart. Interesting reply.] Gilbert, G. Nigel, and Michael Mulkay. 1984. Opening Pandora's Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists' Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [More interviews and discourse analysis than observation, but still good.] Knorr, Karin D. 1981. The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Oxford: Permagon Press. Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press. GOOD HISTORICAL WORKS: Daston, Lorraine. 1992. Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective. Social Studies of Science 22: 597-618. Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. 1985. Leviathan and The Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Star, Susan Leigh. 1989. Regions of the Mind: Brain Research and the Quest for Scientific Certainty. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Brannigan, Augustine. 1981. The Social Basis of Scientific Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TEXTUAL ANALYSISS Bazerman, Charles. 1988. Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and the Activity of the Experimental Article in Science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Bensman, Joseph. 1988. The Aesthetics and Politics of Footnoting. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 1 (3): 443-470. Myers, Greg. 1990. Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. [THE BEST IMO, and VERY easy reading] FEMINIST WORKS: Haraway, Donna J. 1989. Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge. [Semi- advanced postmodernese] Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press. [Stil the best feminist analysis of science I know of.] AS MUCH ABOUT TECHNOLOGY AS SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE: Bijker, Wiebe E., Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, ed. 1987. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. [Introductory Chapter by Bijker on development of bicycle the best, Hughes a close second.] Collins, Harry M. 1990. Artifical Experts: Social Knowledge and Intelligent Machines. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Suchman, Lucy A. 1987. Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MISCELANEOUS Bloor, David. 1993. Cognitive Models of Science (Review). Social Studies of Science 23: 743-757. [A review, I know, but some good thoughts on the limits psychological/ cog science approaches to knowl] Gieryn, Thomas F. 1983. Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists. American Sociological Review 48 (6): 781-795. Gieyrn, Thomas F. 1995. Boundaries of Science. In Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by S. Jasonoff, G. E. Markle, J. C. Petersen and T. Pinch. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications. [How sociologists look at the demarcation question.] Pinch, T.J., and H.M. Collins. 1984. Private Science and Public Knowledge: The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal and Its Use of the Literature. Social Studies of Science 14. [Another view of this, with a juicy, controversial example.] SCIENCE AND (OR IN) THE PUBLIC Porter, Theodore M. 1995. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jasanoff, Sheila. 1987. Contested Boundaries in Policy-Relevant Science. Social Studies of Science 17: 195-230. Jasanoff, Sheila. 1995. Science at the Bar. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 12:31:03 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 29c:1 Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 1st issue -- March 1998 Table of Contents Alice D. Dreger, Michigan State University, USA The limits of individuality: ritual and sacrifice in the lives and medical treatment of conjoined twins Toine Pieters, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands Managing differences in biomedical research: the case of standardising interferons Soraya de Chadarevian, Hamburg Institue for Social Research, Germany Of worms and programmes: Caenorhabditis elegans and the study of development Paul Thagard, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Ulcers and bacteria, part I: discovery and acceptance Alan Marshall, University of Wollongong, Australia A postmodern natural history of the world: eviscerating the GUTs from ecology and environmentalism Niels Roll-Hansen, University of Oslo, Norway Studying natural science without nature? Reflections on the realism of the so-called laboratory studies Lyuba Gurjeva, University of Cambridge, UK Scientific motherhood (essay-review of Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle, Cambridge 1996) Bradley E. Wilson, Slippery Rock University, USA Completing the synthesis (essay-review of Harmon R. Holcomb III, Sociobiology, Sex, and Science, New York 1993) Sahotra Sarkhar, McGill University, Canada Symbiosis in evolution (essay-review of Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis, Oxford 1994) Editorial Panel Editor: Nicholas Jardine, University of Cambridge, U.K. Associate Editor: Marina Frasca-Spada, University of Cambridge, U.K. Advisory Editors Soraya de Chadarevian, University of Cambridge, U.K. Nicholas Hopwood, Wellcome Institute, London, U.K. Harmke Kamminga, University of Cambridge, U.K. Consultant Editors Andrew A. Brennan, University of Western Australia John P. Forrester, University of Cambridge, U.K. Ilana Lšwy, INSERM, H™pital Necker-Enfants Malade, Paris, France Onora O'Neill, University of Cambridge, U.K. Hans-Jšrg Rheinberger, Max-Planck-Institut fŸr Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, Germany Kenneth F. Schaffner, George Washington University, U.S.A. _Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences_: CALL FOR PAPERS _Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences_ is a new journal whose first issue will be published at the beginning of 1998. The journal will be devoted to historical, sociological, philosophical and ethical aspects of the life and environmental sciences, of the sciences of mind and behaviour, and of the medical and biomedical sciences and technologies. The editorial policy will be in line with the policy of the parent journal, _Studies in History and Philosophy of Science_: contributions will be drawn from a wide range of countries and cultural traditions; we shall encourage both specialist articles, and articles combining historical, philosophical, and sociological approaches; and we shall favour works of interest to scientists and medics as well as to specialists in the history, philosophy and sociology of the sciences. The table of contents of _Studies in History and Philosophy of Science_ is available at the Elsevier Science Ltd website at the following address: . The editors are seeking original English language articles in the field of the new journal. For these the word limit is c. 10,000. They would also welcome proposals for 3-4000 word essay-reviews. Prospective authors should submit copies of papers in duplicate, typed and double-spaced (including quotations and footnotes) on quarto or A4 paper. They should retain a copy for the purpose of checking proofs. Illustrations are encouraged; authors should be prepared, if their paper is accepted, to supply good quality copies of any illustration and any necessary permissions for reproduction of copyright material. All articles and volunteered essay-reviews will be blind refereed. Contributions and proposals should be sent to Dr Marina Frasca-Spada, Associate Editor, _Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences_, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, U.K., email . __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837. Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/ 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 08:16:23 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Darwin@LSE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT The Darwin@LSE programme is designed to explore what Darwin's magnificent idea can tell us about human nature - understanding our brains, minds, consciousness, bodies, behaviour and aspects of culture as adaptations evolved by natural selection. The programme was established in April 1995 by LSE's Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, and has already become a world-renowned focus of Darwinian ideas. Our public events - The Darwin Seminars, The Annual LSE Darwin Public Lecture, The Biology and Society Forum, the About Biology series - attract members of the public, the media and eminent scholars from around the world and from all disciplines: human and social sciences; philosophy; the arts; the law; the spectrum of biological sciences; medicine and psychiatry. Our mailing list is international, with 1000 names. And the programme has sparked collaborative and interdisciplinary research among academics who would not otherwise have had a meeting place. Darwin@LSE has also established its own group of long-term and visiting Darwin fellows at the Centre, who meet weekly with colleagues from LSE and other London colleges to discuss work in progress. We provide a first port of call for the media; and now - in collaboration with Weidenfeld and Nicolson - are launching Darwinism Today, a series of essay-length books by leading authorities on evolutionary themes. We also collaborate with other academic departments, publishers and think-tanks. A Darwin Discussion SPEAKERS: Alan Sokal New York University Bruno Latour Centre de Sociologie de l Innovation, Ecole des Mines, Paris DATE: Thursday 2nd July TIME: 6.00-8.00pm VENUE: Old Theatre For the latest information on forthcoming Darwin@LSE events phone: 0171 955 6236 or see the website: http://www.lse.ac.uk/depts/cpnss/darwin/ _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 08:19:35 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Darwinism Today MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Thursday 8 October1998 http://www.lse.ac.uk/depts/cpnss/darwin/events.htm You are invited to the launch of: DARWINISM TODAY A series of provocative essay-length books by today's leading evolutionary thinkers, brought to you by Darwin@LSE, and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The first four titles will be: JOHN MAYNARD SMITH FRS Biology, Sussex Evolution and the embryo: The genetics revolution KINGSLEY R. BROWNE Law School, Wayne State Women at work: An evolutionary view COLIN TUDGE Author of The Engineer in the Garden and The Day before Yesterday Neanderthals, bandits and farmers: How agriculture really began MARTIN DALY AND MARGO WILSON Psychology, McMaster The truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian view of parental love Talks... discussions... readings... interviews... and a chance to meet t the authors will be followed by a party _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 08:28:58 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: The Evolutionist MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT The Evolutionist http://www.lse.ac.uk/depts/cpnss/evolutionist/ ________________________________________ Although the slow fuse of change has been alight since Darwin's time, evolutionary thinking has really exploded only over the last few decades. Evolutionary ideas are forcing disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, sociology and philosophy to question many of their most cherished assumptions about human nature. the evolutionist aims to cover the best of evolutionary theory and explore what it says about humans and their everyday lives. Origins - on the political interest in modern Darwinism Evo - a gene's-eye view of the news Postcard - a view from Debra Lieberman, Student Representative of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society Column Tudge - Colin Tudge explores the limits of evolutionary theory Interview - the evolutionist talks to the Doctor of Love, David Buss Featuring - Derek Freeman on the myth of Margaret Mead Soap Box - Steven Mithen argues that psychologists need to get their hands dirty Links - information motorways heading straight for Sites of Special Scientific Interest Fossil Record - articles from previous issues of the magazine _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 11:49:33 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: List of Writings at web sites controlled by Robert M. Young Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Here is a full list of the writings available at the web sites under my control: HUMAN RELATIONS, AUTHORITY AND JUSTICE http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/hraj/archive.html Tim Kendall, 'Trieste: The Current Situation' Bulgarian Psychiatric Association, 'Toward the Liberation of Mental Health: A Reform of Bulgarian Psychiatry' W. Gordon Lawrence: 'The Presence of Totalitarian States of Mind in Institutions' Robert M. Young: 'Mental Space and Group Relations' David Armstrong, W. Gordon Lawrence and Robert M. Young, _Group Relations: An Introduction_ Writings of Professor Toma Tomov: 'Psychoanalysis in a Post Totalitarian Society' List of Publications in English 'Social Violence and the Social Institutions' 'The Politics of Mental Health in Bulgaria: Is There a Civic Role for Psychiatry?' 'Ethnic Conflict and Mental Health: An Agenda for the Future' 'Impact of Political Change in Eastern Europe on the Advancement of Behavioural Sciences and Psychiatry' 'Institute for Human Relations' Writings of Professor Robert M. Young 'Racist Society, Racist Science' 'Group Relations in a New Environment' Robert M. Young and Toma Tomov: 'Institute for Human Relations Papers from the 1992 Psychoanalytic Week, New Bulgarian University, 4-15 April, 1992: Robert M. Young: 'Guilt and the Veneer of Civilization' Robert M. Young: 'Psychotic Anxieties in Groups and Organizations Writings of Professor W. Gordon Lawrence: 'Won from the Void and Formless Infinite: Experiences of Social Dreaming' 'Signals of Transcendence in Large Groups as Systems' _To Surprise the Soul: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Groups, Institutions and Society in the Bion-Tavistock Tradition_ 'Centring of the Sphinx for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations' W. Gordon Lawrence, Alastair Bain, and Laurence Gould , 'The Fifth Basic Assumption'W. Gordon Lawrence Writings of David Armstrong: 'Making Absences Present: The Contribution of W. R. Bion to Understanding Unconscious Social Phenomena' 'The Recovery of Meaning' 'Names, Thoughts and Lies: The Relevance of Bion's Later Writing for Understanding Experiences in Groups' 'The Institution in the Mind' Reading Lists : W. R. Bion Groups and Institutions Racism and Virulent Nationalism FREE ASSOCIATIONS/PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/rmy/indfa.html Barry Richards, 'The Princess, The Premier and the People Authority in the New Britain' Robert M. Young 'The Messiness, Ambivalence and Conflict of Everyday Life' Robert M. Young, 'Disappointment, Stoicism and the Future of Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere' Jo Nash, Review of Rozsika Parker, _Torn in Two: The Experience of Maternal Ambivalence_. London: Virago, 1995. Pp. 299. Deborah Marks, Review of Lennard J. Davis, _Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and the Body_ London: Verso, 1995. Paul Hoggett, Review of Anton Obholzer & Vega Zagier Roberts, eds., _The Unconscious at Work: Individual and Organisational Stress in the Human Services_, London: Routledge, 1994. Pp. xx+224. W. Gordon Lawrence, 'The Presence of Totalitarian States of Mind in Institutions' Michael Rustin and Andrew Cooper, 'Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere: The Project in Changing Times' Kenneth Eisold, 'Psychoanalysis Today: Implications for Organizational Applications' Norman Holland, 'Internet Regression' Robert M. Young, 'Psychoanalysis and/of the Internet' Ros Minsky, 'Fragrant Theory: The Sweet Scent of Signifiers' Laurence J. Gould, 'Correspondence Between Bion's Basic Assumption Theory and Klein's Developmental Positions: an Outline' David Ingleby 'Ideology and the Human Sciences: Some Comments on the Role of Reification in Psychology and Psychiatry' PROCESS PRESS http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html#science Em Farrell, _Lost for Words: The Psychoanalysis of Anorexia and Bulimia_. Process Press, 1995 (full text) Robert M. Young, _Mental Space_. Process Press, 1994 (full text) Robert M. Young, _Whatever Happened to Human Nature?_ (in press) (full text) David Armstrong, Gordon Lawrence & Robert M. Young, _Group Relations: An Introduction_ (in press) (full text) W. Gordon Lawrence, _To Surprise the Soul: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Groups, Institutions and Society in the Bion-Tavistock Tradition_ (in press) (full text) SCIENCE AS CULTURE http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/rmy/indsac.html Barbara Heyl, 'The Harvard "Pareto Circle"' Robert M. Young, 'A Place for Critique in the Mass Media' Simon Schaffer, 'Babbage's Intelligence' Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, 'The Californian Ideology' Thomas H. Thompson,'Metaphilosophy' WRITINGS OF ROBERT M. YOUNG http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/papers/index.html Review of Criminological Texts 'Scholarship and the History of the Behavioural Sciences' 'The Divided Science': Essay Review of R. D. Laing, _The Divided Self_ 'The Development of Herbert Spencer's Concept of Evolution' 'Animal Soul' Review of John Burrow, _Evolution and Society_ 'The Functions of the Brain: Gall to Ferrier (1808-1886)' 'Association of Ideas' 'Understanding It All': Essay Review of C. D. Darlington, _The Evolution of Man and Society_ 'The Naked Marx': Review of Herbert Marcuse, _Eros and Civilization_ _Mind, Brain and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century_ 'Evolutionary Biology and Ideology: Then and Now' 'The Anthropology of Science' 'Scientific Medicine and the Social Order' 'Mystifications in the Scientific Foundations of Sociology' 'Science versus Democracy' 'Darwinism and the Division of Labour' 'The Human Limits of Nature' 'Braverman's _Labour and Monopoly Capital_ 'Science is Social Relations' 'Getting Started on Lysenkoism' 'Why Are Figures so Significant? The Role and the Critique of Quantification' 'Science Is a Labour Process' 'How Societies Constitute their Knowledge: Prolegomena to a Labour Process Perspective' 'Interpreting the Production of Science' 'What if Human Nature Is Historical?' 'Reconstituting Technology: Chips, Genes, Spares' 'Science as Culture' 'Where the Chips May Fall Between the First and Third Worlds' 'The Relevance of Bernal's Questions' 'Darwinian Evolution and Human History' 'The Naturalization of Value Systems in the Human Sciences' 'Science on TV: a Critique' 'Science, Technology, Medicine and the Socialist Movement' 'Darwinism is Social' 'The Darwin Debate' 'No Easy Answers': Essay Review of Russell Jacoby, _The Repression of Psychoanalysis_ 'Exhibiting Nuclear Power: The Science Museum Cover-up' _Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in Victorian Culture_ 'Is Nature a Labour Process?' 'Darwin's Metaphor and the Philosophy of Science' 'Life among the Mediations: Labour, Groups, Breasts' 'Freud: Scientist and/or Humanist ' 'Biography: The Basic Discipline for Human Science' 'The Dense Medium: Television as Technology' 'Racist Society, Racist Science' 'Psychoanalysis and Racism: A Loud Silence' 'The Scientist as Guru': Essay Review of Sir Peter Medawar's Autobiography 'Transitional Phenomena: Production and Consumption' 'Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere' 'Darwin and the Genre of Biography' 'Darwin: Man and Metaphor' 'Darwin, Marx, Freud and the Foundations of the Human Sciences' 'Psychoanalysis, Values and Politics' 'Persons, Organisms and...Primary Qualities' 'The Role of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in the Human Sciences' 'Psychoanalytic Teaching and Research: Knowing and Knowing About' Review of 'Mrs Klein' Review of Peter Gay, _Freud: A Life for Our Time_ 'The Analytic Space: Countertransference and Evocative Knowledge' 'Scientism in the History of Management Theory' 'Herbert Spencer and Inevitable Progress' 'The Mind-Body Problem' 'Science, Alienation and Oppression' 'Marxism and the History of Science' 'British Psychoanalysis and Politics' 'Psychotic Anxieties Are Normal' 'The Vicissitudes of Transference and Countertransference: The Work of Harold Searles' 'Psychoanalytic Critique of Productivism' 'Benign and Virulent Projective Identification in Groups and Institutions' 'Desmond and Moore's _Darwin_: A Critique' 'Guilt and the Veneer of Civilization' 'Psychotic Anxieties and the Fading Hopes of the Left ' 'Psychotic Anxieties in Groups and Institutions' 'Racism: Projective Identification and Cultural Processes' 'Science, Ideology and Donna Haraway' 'The Ubiquity of Psychotic Anxieties' 'Christians, Cannibals and Spite: Notes on Films' Review of "Alien 3" 'Big Books' Review of Jeffrey Masson, _Final Analysis_ Review of "Toto the Hero" Review of Carl Rogers, _Reader_ 'Deadly Unconscious Logics in Joseph Heller's _Catch-22_' 'The Profession of Psychotherapy in Britain' 'Psychoanalysis and the Other: Psychopathology and Racism' 'The Psychoanalysis of Sectarianism' 'What Scientists Have to Learn' Review of 'Of Mice and Men' Review of Larry McMurtry, _The Evening Star_ 'Is "Perversion" Obsolete?' 'Across the Borderline' _Mental Space_ 'What I Learned at Summer Camp: Experiences in Television' 'Conceptual Research' 'Good and Evil, Character and Morality' 'Human Nature' 'Mental Space and Group Relations' 'A Place for Critique in the Mass Media' 'Psychoanalysis and/of the Internet' 'Reductionism and Overdetermination in the Explanation of Human 'Primitive Processes on the Internet' 'The Search for Transcendent Values' 'NETDYNAM: Some Parameters of Vitual Reality' 'A Note on the Tar Baby and Projective Identification' 'The Moral and the Molecular in the Future of Psychiatry' 'Evolution, Biology and Psychology' _The Culture of British Psychoanalysis and Related Essays on Character and Morality and on The Psychodynamics of Psychoanalytic Organizations_ _Whatever Happened to Human Nature?_ 'Disappointment, Stoicism and the Future of Psychoanalysis and the Public Sphere' 'Anthropology of Cyberspace-: Review of Sherry Turkle, _Life on the Screen: Identity iin the Age of the Internet_ 'Representations of Primitive Processes in the Cinema' 'The Concept of Psychopathology: a Critique' 'Group Relations in a New Environment' 'Princess Diana's "Constituency of the Rejected" and Psychotherapeutic Studies' _Group Relations: An Introduction_ 'The Messiness, Ambivalence and Conflict of Everyday Life' 'Some Reflections on the Psychodynamics of Wealth' '"Malthus on Man - In Animals no Moral Restraint"' 'Sexuality and the Internet' __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837. Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/ 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 13:57:48 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Axel Thiel Subject: history of writing/graffiti Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit int.work-group on graffiti-research: subject:a short history of writing/graffiti entrances:ca.50 where:alt.graffiti,today Axel Thiel(coordination) ARCHIVE1@aol.com Germany ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 09:50:51 EDT Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Valdusek@AOL.COM Subject: Gould on Darwin and Conservatives Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit >From today's NYT: May 29, 1998 Let's Leave Darwin Out of It [3] [IMAGE] By STEPHEN JAY GOULD A s a paleontologist by trade and (dare I say it?) a card-carrying liberal in politics, I have been amused, but also a bit chagrined, by the current fad in conservative intellectual circles for invoking the primary icon of my professional world -- Charles Darwin -- as either a scourge or an ally in support of cherished doctrines. Since Darwin cannot logically fulfill both roles at the same time, and since the fact of evolution in general (and the theory of natural selection in particular) cannot legitimately buttress any particular moral or social philosophy in any case, I'm confident that this greatest of all biologists will remain silent no matter how loudly conservatives may summon him. The scourging of Darwin -- the idea that if we drive him away, then we can awaken -- has animated a religious faction that views an old-style Christian revival as central to a stable and well-ordered polity. In "Slouching Towards Gomorrah," for example, Robert Bork writes, "The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes," who "believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance. Freud, Marx and Darwin, according to the conventional account, routed the believers. Freud and Marx are no longer taken as irrefutable by intellectuals, and now it appears to be Darwin's turn to undergo a devaluation." Then, exhibiting as much knowledge of paleontology as I possess of constitutional law -- that is, effectively zero -- Mr. Bork cites as supposed evidence for Darwin's forthcoming fall the old, absurd canard that "the fossil record is proving a major embarrassment to evolutionary theory." If Mr. Bork will give me a glimpse of that famous pillar of salt on the outskirts of Gomorrah, I shall be happy, in return, to show him the abundant evidence we possess of intermediary fossils in major evolutionary transitions -- mammals from reptiles, whales from terrestrial forebears, humans from apelike ancestors. Meanwhile, the celebration of Darwin -- the claim that if we embrace him, he will validate the foundations of our views -- motivates the efforts of more secular believers determined to enshrine conservative political dogmas as the dictates of nature. In National Review, for example, John O. McGinnis argued last year that "the new biological learning holds the potential for providing stronger support for conservatism than any other new body of knowledge has done." "We may fairly conclude," wrote Mr. McGinnis, "that a Darwinian politics is a largely conservative politics." Mr. McGinnis then lists the biological bases -- self-interest, sexual differences and "natural inequality" as examples of right-wing ideology resting on the foundations of evolutionary theory. Moreover, according to Mr. McGinnis, Darwinism seems tailor-made not only to support conservative politics in general, but also to validate the particular brand favored by Mr. McGinnis himself. For example, he uses specious evolutionary arguments to excoriate "pure libertarianism." Thus he invokes Darwin to assert that the state has legitimate authority to compel people to save for their declining years or to rein in their sexual proclivities. "The younger self is so weakly connected to the imagination of the older self (primarily because most individuals did not live to old age in hunter-gatherer societies) that most people cannot be expected to save sufficiently for old age," Mr. McGinnis writes. "Therefore there may be justification for state intervention to force individuals to save for their own retirement." Also, "Society may need to create institutions to channel and restrain sexual activity." Misuse of Darwin has not been confined to the political right. Liberals have also played both contradictory ends of the same game -- either denying Darwin when they found the implications of his theory displeasing, or invoking him to interpet their political principles as sanctioned by nature. Some liberals bash Darwin because they misconceive his theory as a statement about overt battle and killing in a perpetual "struggle for existence." In fact, Darwin continually emphasized that this "struggle" for existence was metaphorical and best pursued by cooperation in some circumstances and by competition in others. Using the opposite strategy of embracing Darwin, many early-20th-century liberals lauded reproduction among the gifted, while discouraging procreation among the supposedly unfit. The Darwin bashers and boosters can both be refuted with simple and venerable arguments. T o the bashers, I can assert only that Darwinian evolution continues to grow in vibrancy and cogency as the centerpiece of the biological sciences -- and, even more important, that no scientific truth can pose any threat to religion rightly conceived as a search for moral order and spiritual meaning. To those who would rest their religious case on facts of nature, let them note the wise words of Bishop Thomas Burnet, the 17th-century scientist: "'Tis a dangerous thing to engage the authority of Scripture in disputes about the Natural World . . . lest Time, which brings all things to light, should discover that to be evidently false which we had made Scripture to assert." So the Roman Catholic Church learned in the 17th century after accusing Galileo of heresy -- and so should modern fundamentalists note and understand today when they deny the central conclusion of biology. Those who recruit Darwin to support a particular moral or political line should remember that, at best, evolutionary biology may give us some insight into the anthropology of morals -- why some (or most) peoples practice certain values, perhaps for their Darwinian advantage. But science can never decide the morality of morals. Suppose we discovered that aggression, xenophobia, selective infanticide and the subjugation of women offered Darwinian advantages to our hunter-gatherer ancestors a million years ago on the African savannahs. Such a conclusion could not validate the moral worth of these or any other behaviors, either then or now. Perhaps I should be flattered that my own field of evolutionary biology has usurped the position held by cosmology in former centuries, and by Freudianism earlier in our own times, as the science deemed most immediately relevant to deep questions about the meaning of our lives. But we must respect the limits of science if we wish to profit from its genuine insights. G. K. Chesterton's famous epigram -- "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame" -- applies equally well to science. Darwin himself understood this principle in suspecting that the human brain, evolved for other reasons over so many million years, might be ill equipped for solving the deepest and most abstract questions about life's ultimate meaning. As he wrote to the American botanist Asa Gray in 1860: "I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton." Those who would misuse Darwin to advance their own agendas should remember the biblical injunction that provided the title to a great play about the attempted suppression of evolutionary theory in classrooms: "He that seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him. . . . He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 18:42:32 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Gould on Darwin and Conservatives MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Valdusek@AOL.COM wrote: > > >From today's NYT: > > May 29, 1998 > > Let's Leave Darwin Out of It > > [3] [IMAGE] > > By STEPHEN JAY GOULD > [snip] > Those who recruit Darwin to support a particular moral or political > line should remember that, at best, evolutionary biology may give us > some insight into the anthropology of morals -- why some (or most) > peoples practice certain values, perhaps for their Darwinian > advantage. But science can never decide the morality of morals. > Suppose we discovered that aggression, xenophobia, selective > infanticide and the subjugation of women offered Darwinian > advantages to our hunter-gatherer ancestors a million years ago on > the African savannahs. Such a conclusion could not validate the > moral worth of these or any other behaviors, either then or now. > [snip] > G. K. Chesterton's > famous epigram -- "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture > is the frame" -- applies equally well to science. > [snip] > Those who would misuse Darwin to advance their own agendas should > remember the biblical injunction that provided the title to a great > play about the attempted suppression of evolutionary theory in > classrooms: "He that seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him. . . . > He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind." I couldn't have said it better myself. But what effect will it have? Who will pursue the disciplined study of such issues as "the morality of morals", which requires *reflection* (hermeneutics, sociology of knowledge, phenomenology and transcendental pragmatics, etc.)? And Darwin is not the end of scientism, for there remain those who would derive *ought* from brain physiology, irrespective of brain evolution. When will the watchword of our age become Gadamer's dictum that "We are a conversation" -- that the ultimate reality is not in rocks and cells, but in our study of whatever we experience (which, currently, has led us to believe in -- talk about -- evolution,etc.)? \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, 30 May 1998 00:03:04 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Darwin's distracting description MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT This response to Singer's article 'Evolutionary Workers Party' in this week's THES is notable for the author's comprehensive misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Some of the basic errors here date back to the 1860s, while others are borrowed from Karl Popper's notoriously inadequate analysis of the status of natural selection; still others seem to be the result of the "postmodern tide of epistemological mayhem". It doesn't bode well for the discussion of these important matters that the author considered his comments germane, or that the THES thought it sensible to publish them. Ian _________________________________________________________ Bond, R. (1998). Darwin's distracting description. The Times Higher Education Supplement. May 29: 15. IN HIS timely article on the growing influence of Darwinism ("Evolutionary workers' party", THES, May 15), Peter Singer rightly suggests that we should avoid the temptation of the naturalistic fallacy by "deducing an 'ought' from an 'is'". However, he concludes by imploring us to "understand the tendencies inherent in human beings, and modify [our] abstract ideals to suit them". This "ought" is reinforced by an accompanying box, which tells the reader, in no uncertain terms, what "features a Darwinian left should embrace today". This decisive shift from biological description to political prescription, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in a range of public arenas (not least the pages of The THES), should not go unquestioned. Darwinism, unlike Marxism, is not a manifesto. Darwin provided an insightful description of biological evolution, one that has gained a remarkable level of acceptance. Human beings and all our biological attributes, including behaviour, are embraced by this description, but there is nothing that tell us how we "ought" to behave or how we should arrange our societies. At its heart Darwinism is the simple and rather overrated observation that at any moment in time, given a particular set of environmental conditions, some variations on a particular organic theme will flourish, biologically speaking, more than others (natural selection). Certain characteristics and types thus become favoured over others as long as these particular conditions prevail (survival of the fittest) but lead to only significant biological change over a very long time. Change is therefore driven by conditions, including social ones, but only incredibly slowly. Unless it is being suggested that we should control social and environmental conditions deliberately to favour certain human variations (eventually) this is not actually a terribly useful basis for considering our more immediate social and political concerns. Darwin's simple idea may be sufficient to describe where we came from, but it says little of interest about where we are going, or why we should go anywhere in particular. Indeed, Darwinism is about as helpful to deciding social policy as an appreciation of Newton's law of gravity. That we have certain common traditions of social order and behaviour is not, if we avoid the fallacy, much help in deciding how we should order ourselves and behave. We are not slaves to our evolutionary inheritance any more than a bird is slave to gravity: at a very basic level it is influential over what we can do (and genetic engineering has the potential to push the boundaries further), but it should not be used to determine social, moral and political values. Darwin's idea is, as Sir Karl Popper famously pointed out, "feeble" as a scientific theory, being neither predictive nor testable (and therefore not refutable). As is well known, in the "survival of the fittest", it is not strictly possible to define the fittest of anything other than "those who survive". That Darwinism is becoming influential across a range of disciplines from psychology to economics to computing to medicine is indicative not of strength but weakness. Because it is irrefutable and non-predictive, it is an inherently flexible idea that can be used to describe (but not explain) a range of sometimes contradictory observations. It is no coincidence that Darwin was a hero to Karl Marx, influential in the development of social Darwinism and fascism, used by anarchists to support ideas of natural order and mutual aid, an inspiration to Thatcherite ideas about free markets and opposition to the welfare state and similarly helpfully to the thinking of Tony Blair's intellectual doyens. Perhaps in the late 20th century Darwin is seen as a welcome vestige of the 19th-century's idealism and sense of certainty, the last gasp of modernity in the face of what science sees as the terribly postmodern tide of epistemological mayhem. The temptation to succumb to the beguiling sufficiency of a reductive biological narrative as an "ought" is understandable. But as Zygmunt Bauman notes in the same THES edition, "Can the biologist understand a tree? No, he can merely describe it". Biological description is neither a full understanding nor a prescription for action. We should note let our particular origin story distract us from confronting the problems of our freedom. In his uncritical celebration of Darwin's simple and rather and unhelpful idea we are in danger not only of impoverishing academic enquiry but of missing out on a serious engagement with the most important issues of our time. Richard Bond Research adviser University of the West of England __________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 00:15:36 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: NS and Hermeneutics In-Reply-To: <199805292242.SAA23263@mx03.globecomm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Brad McCormick wrote: When will the watchword of our age become Gadamer's dictum that "We are a conversation" -- that the ultimate reality is not in rocks and cells, but in our study of whatever we experience (which, currently, has led us to believe in -- talk about -- evolution,etc.)? _______________________ REPLY: This would be acceptable if we had no reason to suspect the existence of human universals, but in fact there are many such, and evolutionary theory provides an indispensable framework for their analysis. Hermeneutics may well be a sensible tool for the study of other, local human phenomena. Best wishes Ian _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 20:21:12 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Gwen Pearson Subject: philosophers of science X-cc: PCST-L@cornell.edu In-Reply-To: <01IX7SXVXUIQ00NMC1@ALPHA.ALBION.EDU> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i am looking for some info, but i'm not sure where to look. can some of you help me out with a source? I am trying to find out how much, if any, time some of the big names in philosophy of science (Lakatos, Feyerabend, Kuhn) actually spent "in the lab", doing/practicing science. there is a pretty common opinion among scientists that the philosophers of sci. are ignorant of the actual processes of science; i'm trying to find some info to support/deny this. thanks! ~~~~~~~~~ G. A. Pearson, Department of Biology~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~Albion College, Albion, MI 49224~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ gpearson@alpha.albion.edu~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~517.629.0290~~~~Fax: 517.629.0509~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.albion.edu/fac/biol/pearson ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 10:43:19 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: david topper Subject: Re: philosophers of science In-Reply-To: <199805300017.TAA21825@io.uwinnipeg.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm almost positive that Kuhn had a PhD in physics, and later got intereted in the history of science. Feyerabend had training in science too. David Topper At 08:21 PM 5/29/98 -0400, you wrote: >i am looking for some info, but i'm not sure where to look. can some of >you help me out with a source? >I am trying to find out how much, if any, time some of the big names in >philosophy of science (Lakatos, Feyerabend, Kuhn) actually spent "in the >lab", doing/practicing science. > >there is a pretty common opinion among scientists that the philosophers of >sci. are ignorant of the actual processes of science; i'm trying to find >some info to support/deny this. >thanks! > >~~~~~~~~~ G. A. Pearson, Department of Biology~~~~~~~~~~~ >~~~~~~~~~Albion College, Albion, MI 49224~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >~~~~~~~~~ gpearson@alpha.albion.edu~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >~~~~~517.629.0290~~~~Fax: 517.629.0509~~~~~~~~~~~~ > http://www.albion.edu/fac/biol/pearson > > Department of History University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3M 3J7 Canada topper@UWinnipeg.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 13:39:03 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: philosophers of science X-cc: gpearson@alpha.albion.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit david topper wrote: > > I'm almost positive that Kuhn had a PhD in physics, and later got intereted > in the history of science. Feyerabend had training in science too. I believe Norwood Hanson (_Patterns of Discovery_, etc.) was a trained physicist (Cambridge?). Hanson is less famous than Kuhn, but he had some of the same ideas about the same time (the late 1950s), and, in any case, I took a course on philosophy of science (which I completely forget, except that he seemed a pretty decent person) from him at Yale, ca. 1967. \brad mccormick > > David Topper > > At 08:21 PM 5/29/98 -0400, you wrote: > >i am looking for some info, but i'm not sure where to look. can some of > >you help me out with a source? > >I am trying to find out how much, if any, time some of the big names in > >philosophy of science (Lakatos, Feyerabend, Kuhn) actually spent "in the > >lab", doing/practicing science. > > > >there is a pretty common opinion among scientists that the philosophers of > >sci. are ignorant of the actual processes of science; i'm trying to find > >some info to support/deny this. > >thanks! > > > >~~~~~~~~~ G. A. Pearson, Department of Biology~~~~~~~~~~~ > >~~~~~~~~~Albion College, Albion, MI 49224~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >~~~~~~~~~ gpearson@alpha.albion.edu~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >~~~~~517.629.0290~~~~Fax: 517.629.0509~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > http://www.albion.edu/fac/biol/pearson > > > > > Department of History > University of Winnipeg > Winnipeg, Manitoba > R3M 3J7 Canada > topper@UWinnipeg.ca -- 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, 30 May 1998 18:36:38 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Re: philosophers of science In-Reply-To: <199805300016.UAA19091@mx01.globecomm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Gwen Pearson wrote: i am looking for some info, but i'm not sure where to look. can some of you help me out with a source? I am trying to find out how much, if any, time some of the big names in philosophy of science (Lakatos, Feyerabend, Kuhn) actually spent "in the lab", doing/practicing science. _________________ REPLY: There's a fascinating review of Kuhn's work in Buchwald, J. Z. and G. E. Smith (1997). "Thomas S. Kuhn, 1922-1996." Philosophy of Science 64: 361-376. Kuhn was educated at Harvard University, where he received an S.B. (summa cum laude) in Physics in 1943 and a PhD in the subject in 1949. _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 14:30:09 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: NS and Hermeneutics X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > Brad McCormick wrote: > > When will the watchword of our age become Gadamer's dictum that "We > are a conversation" -- that the ultimate reality is not in rocks and > cells, but in our study of whatever we experience (which, > currently, has led us to believe in -- talk about -- evolution,etc.)? > _______________________ > REPLY: This would be acceptable if we had no reason to suspect the > existence of human universals, but in fact there are many such, and > evolutionary theory provides an indispensable framework for their > analysis. Hermeneutics may well be a sensible tool for the study of > other, local human phenomena. > [snip] There is no "we" apart from conversation, and you have, by your response, conversed with me (and others), which I would take to be evidence in support of my hypothesis (albeit evidence which has as its "content" the assertion that my hypothesis is more or less wrong). Where will you seek for "human universals", except in "the conversation we are" (science text books, the community of researchers working on projects, the thoughts "in your own head" about "humen universals", etc.)? I am asking that we take the reflective ("transcendental") turn, and reflect on what we are doing, whatever it is, and see that the things asserted are only one side of the experience [what Husserl would call the "noema"] in which they are asserted [Husserl's noetic act]. And it is not *a priori* absurd to imagine that one day we will find out that evolution was as wrong as we now think Creationism was [it *could* all be a big "Mission Impossible" hoax]. But, even then, "we" will "think" something or other is true, i.e., there will be "the conversation we are", which is a proper object of hermeneutical study. Human phenomena are "local"? The universe as such and as a whole is *part* of [the content conversed about in] our conversation. As Kant pointed out, space and time [which include all of "evolution", among other thing] are "in us", as the forms of our experience. Can we proceed further in a constructive way with this conversation? \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, 30 May 1998 13:33:30 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: david topper Subject: Re: philosophers of science X-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net In-Reply-To: <199805301820.NAA27522@io.uwinnipeg.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:39 PM 5/30/98 -0400, Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: >david topper wrote: >> >> I'm almost positive that Kuhn had a PhD in physics, and later got intereted >> in the history of science. Feyerabend had training in science too. > >I believe Norwood Hanson (_Patterns of Discovery_, etc.) was a trained >physicist (Cambridge?). > >Hanson is less famous than Kuhn, but he had some of the >same ideas about the same time (the late 1950s), and, in any case, I >took a course on philosophy of science (which I completely >forget, except that he seemed a pretty decent person) >from him at Yale, ca. 1967. > >\brad mccormick > >> >> David Topper >> >> At 08:21 PM 5/29/98 -0400, you wrote: >> >i am looking for some info, but i'm not sure where to look. can some of >> >you help me out with a source? >> >I am trying to find out how much, if any, time some of the big names in >> >philosophy of science (Lakatos, Feyerabend, Kuhn) actually spent "in the >> >lab", doing/practicing science. >> > >> >there is a pretty common opinion among scientists that the philosophers of >> >sci. are ignorant of the actual processes of science; i'm trying to find >> >some info to support/deny this. >> >thanks! >> > >> >~~~~~~~~~ G. A. Pearson, Department of Biology~~~~~~~~~~~ >> >~~~~~~~~~Albion College, Albion, MI 49224~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> >~~~~~~~~~ gpearson@alpha.albion.edu~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> >~~~~~517.629.0290~~~~Fax: 517.629.0509~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> > http://www.albion.edu/fac/biol/pearson >> > >> > >> Department of History >> University of Winnipeg >> Winnipeg, Manitoba >> R3M 3J7 Canada >> topper@UWinnipeg.ca > >-- > 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, 30 May 1998 20:23:46 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Re: NS and Hermeneutics In-Reply-To: <199805301830.OAA20110@mx03.globecomm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Brad McCormick wrote: Can we proceed further in a constructive way with this conversation? _________ REPLY: If you're taking Gadamer's view that discourse constitutes the limit of intelligibility for everything about ourselves and the world then I don't see how the conversation could proceed in a constructive way, even in principle. I'm also very dubious about Gadamer's other recommendations such as the recognition of authority as a condition of knowledge, and the rejection of "prejudice against prejudice" since our prejudices "constitute our being". Apparently Habermas, another thinker whose name often appears in your postings, regards Gadamer's work as "a universal endorsement of supine conservatism" and I'm tempted to agree. Best wishes Ian _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 16:24:32 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: NS and Hermeneutics X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > Brad McCormick wrote: > > Can we proceed further in a constructive way with this > conversation? > _________ > REPLY: If you're taking Gadamer's view that discourse constitutes the > limit of intelligibility for everything about ourselves and the world > then I don't see how the conversation could proceed in a constructive > way, even in principle. Yes, I find that reflection confirms Gadamer's thesis here, for I cannot seem to imagine a form of inquiry or critique which would not take place in conversation (even if only that "conversation with oneself" which we have internalized from our childrearing). Heraclitus's Logos seems to me similar, and I find Heraclitus "on target", too (quoting from memory): "So vast is the extent of Logos that no matter how far you venture, you will not reach its limits." > I'm also very dubious about Gadamer's other > recommendations such as the recognition of authority as a condition > of knowledge, and the rejection of "prejudice against prejudice" > since our prejudices "constitute our being". Apparently Habermas, > another thinker whose name often appears in your postings, regards > Gadamer's work as "a universal endorsement of supine conservatism" > and I'm tempted to agree. Yes, I "like" Habermas, too. But I think that, if you have represented Habermas's position on Gadamer's "conservatism" fairly (and perhaps you have, since I seem to recall a couple places where Habermas comes down strongly against Gadamer as you indicate...), I disagree with Habermas's "take" on Gadamer. I have read Gadamer with this specific issue in mind, and *I* find that his "conservatism" is definitely not "supine". Gadamer is dead, so he can't defend himself, but I think he would approve of my arguing that his "conservatism" is more a form of "conservatorism" (ref.: museum conservators), which (1) *bases* itself on a heritage, (2) knows that, apart from that heritage, it has nothing to do *anything* with, but which (3) *critically* appropriates that heritage. (Here I find myself quoting, of all people, Heidegger: "For the piety of thinking is questioning", and, perhaps stranger yet, St. Paul, via William Ellery Channing: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.") A "supine conservatism" (Republicans on the grass alas?) would, I propose, be anti-hermeneutic, for the last thing it would want would be for its absolute-pre-given-unquestionable-and-hopefully- not-even-thought-of-as-questionable-etc. TRUTH to be --> *interpreted*! > > Best wishes > > Ian [snip] Yes, best wishes (but that is conversation...) \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: Sun, 31 May 1998 13:44:52 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Tonality and babies -- Globe & Mail MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT TONALITY FAVOURED, STUDY SAYS Babies Prefer Harmonies BY STEPHEN STRAUSS Science Reporter Globe & Mail 9/17/96 Canadian and U S. psychologists have come to the aid of those who believe that the human ear, not to mention the human soul, is biologically attuned to appreciate harmonious music. Furthermore, their two new studies lend credence to those who argue that the 20th century's atonal music has failed to grab a wide audience not just because it is new, but because the brain perceives it as unnatural. The Canadian research, conducted by Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Windsor and Sandra Trehub of the University of Toronto and published in this month's issue of Psychological Science, studied 90 infants, some as young as six months old- The question was how do children respond to the pure tone changes. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras first described these natural harmonies as being fundamentally pleasing more than 2,500 years ago. An octave. the notes of the scale, and certain harmonics such as the so-called "golden 5th," where the "so" and "do" notes are sounded together, are examples of these consonant sounds. The consonant tones, sounds generally associated with the words "in tune" and prevalent in Western music ranging as far afield as Beethoven and Motown, were able to readily attract the attention of the infants being held on the parents' laps. At the same time, the children hardly responded to the more dissonant combinations - for example, C and F sharp played together. These out-of-tune sounding notes are often used by atonal composers such as Schoenberg and Berg, not to mention rap groups such as Public Enemy. The same response to consonants has been noted by the two Canadians in studies of adults and young people. In a companion study published on Sept. 5 in the British journal Nature, Harvard University psychologists Jerome Kagan and Marcel Zentner studied the response of 32 infants, some as young as four months old. The Harvard researchers found that the children seemed calmer and more content when harmonious sounds were played. The out-of-tune sounds produced not just looks of disgust, but the infants would look away, cry, fret and not even look at the speaker, Prof. Kagan told the Reuters News Agency. The meaning of the findings remains controversial. The Canadians believe that the simplest explanation for their work is that the musical scales that are found in societies around the world are not cultural artifacts but natural apparitions- The infants' responses are "entirely consistent with dominance of musical scales with simple frequency ratios throughout history and across cultures," they write. The golden note combinations and octaves are everywhere. "I haven't found a musical system which doesn't have a perfect fifth," Prof. Trehub said in an interview. Even something as notoriously dissonant as a bagpipe has perfect fifth tones droning underneath its sounds. In some music systems, notably that of Javanese music, the perfect fifth is a little less perfect than other places, but Prof. Schellenberg believes that it is close enough for the ear to perceive it as harmonious. The evolutionary benefit of hearing and liking harmonious notes is unclear. Prof. Schellenberg points out they are tones that underlie human speech and thus paying special attention to them may act as a kind of primer to infants understanding speech. Prof. Trehub points out that how a song is sung can dramatically influence what it sounds like. "I have heard a lot of mothers singing lullabies around the world, and let me assure you, you wouldn't want to learn about pitch levels by the way a mother sings to her child." she said. Perhaps the most contentious issue is what the new findings say about the relationship of atonal to tonal music. Schoenberg contended that when people became familiar with it, his atonal music would eventually become as popular as tonal music. The Canadians say their findings does not mean one musical form is biologically better than another. Consonance does start out with some distinct advantages. "I would say that [atonal music] is not inherently pleasing and that you would really have to work to get to appreciate it," Prof. Trehub said. However, that is just what people who like atonal music do, she added _____________________________________________ Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 _____________________________________________ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html _____________________________________________ -- End --