What, Why & How do we Know ?

Way behind on both reading and writing, but have read two great books I need to review / gut. Firstly, below, “Pythagoras’ Trousers” by Margaret Wertheim, subtitled “God, Physics and the Gender Wars“. The Pythagoras connection follows on from my read of Philip Goff, but I’m still not sure where I picked up the reference. My initial response in a short burst of tweets:

[The rest of this post is that “gutted” content for ongoing research. As a review it doesn’t do justice – but highly – Highly – recommended.]

Reading a fascinating – eye-opening and engrossing – book. “Pythagoras Trousers” by @margaretwerth
(Will have to review properly, but embarrassed to say I’ve lost track of where I picked-up the reference to it. Thanks, whoever …)

�” What, Why and How do we Know? (@psybertron) February 17, 2020

2/ Obvious – ie explicit – gender politics motivation (GoF feminism, not the recent “TERF” monstrosity) – there can’t be many 21st C reads that join-up Boscovich with the orthodox science mainstream. It’s a gold-mine.

�” What, Why and How do we Know? (@psybertron) February 17, 2020

Many thanks @psybertron. I think my book Pythagoras’ Trousers is even more relevant than when I wrote it 25 years ago.

�” Margaret Wertheim (@margaretwerth) February 20, 2020

Having completed the read, knocked out by it. 2 books in one, both excellent. The gender bias in the business of science has hopefully moved on more in the 25 years, it will remain important to historical understanding. 1/2

�” What, Why and How do we Know? (@psybertron) February 23, 2020

2/2 And of course the patriarchal parallels with the Abrahamic religions and the positive link between science and religion remains ignored, BUT the blind spot of orthodox science re its god-like foundations becomes a bigger obstacle to progress every day.

�” What, Why and How do we Know? (@psybertron) February 25, 2020

The (hopefully) historical gender politics of science remains a fascinating read in its own right, but as I say in that last tweet:

The blind spot of orthodox science
re its god-like foundations
becomes a bigger obstacle to progress every day.

Very much the same premise as Philip Goff:

Galileo and Newton were successful with their physics precisely because they worked within a narrow range of purely physical properties … they did not hanker after mathematical formulations of sin and grace … quaint absurdities of a confused past.

The invention of feminism:

In opposition to Aristotle, Averroes held that men and women were essentially equal … As the deeply Aristotelian high middle-ages gave way to the first stirrings of renaissance humanism … academic misogyny was the target of a feminist attack by Christine of Pisan (1364 – 1430) … in her “Book of the City of Ladies”. “If it were the custom to put the little maidens to school … to learn the sciences as they do the man children … they should learn as perfectly.”