Year: 2014

Learning by Heart

I’m reading Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia, picked-up along with his much acclaimed new translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. More on the latter later.

The title resonated with a recent quote from Eagleton in Culture and the Death of God:

Like most avant-gardists,
[… when it comes to Christian culture …]
Nietzsche is a devout amnesiac.

Tend to forget, brought up on James’s quick fire TV and Magazine pieces, that he’s a seriously polyglot, well-read poet and cultural historian, pulling in references he’s clearly read in the original French, German, Russian and Italian, not to mention Spanish / Portuguese and classical Greek and Latin. You can hear his voice in the rhythmic prose delivery, but the content is both wide and deep.

I’m only up to the C’s but already loving it. It’s a series of essays, loosely-based on named individuals, triggered by contemporary marginal notes from his 20th century readings, then arranged (arbitrarily) in alphabetical order. Many recurring themes; popular culture naturally, the Jews, world-wars I & II, American cultural dominance from his antipodean perspective – but the common thread is the poetry, with Dante leading the field. The expression of culture in well crafted phrasing of the day, often borrowed, evolved by judicious selection (or typesetter’s error) and re-purposed from another day.

So many people and references new to me, but so far all excellent, absolutely wonderful. Exemplary piece on Gianfranco Contini analysing poetic criticism on “rules” of rhyme and rhythm, and the concept of “learning  by heart”. The latter we may pejoratively translate as almost robotic or mechanical – uh oh – don’t forget the heart. It’s a kind of imperfect recall compression skill that comes from real learning and near-perfect appreciation. Fascinating.

Another from Contini: You heard the idea of no such thing as problems, only opportunities ? Well try this

The departure point for inspiration is the obstacle.
[Varianti – essays 1938-68]

A cheaper, less inspiring idea for a book it’s hard to imagine, which means James’ imaginative content stands by itself. An immense and unexpected pleasure, and being in essay form, an easy piecemeal read, no rush.

The Return of God

Piece in The Spectator to read later. Tweeted by Andrew Neil.

Dreadful piece it turns out, too exclusively Christian, but the main point is true enough.

The new atheists may not like it,
but they’ve had their say.
It’s time for a serious discussion.

It’s a plug for a book that’s clearly been a long time in the writing, the Terry Eagleton reference is from 2009, as opposed to his 2014 book. (Which, ironically, I criticised for being written a decade too late. Better late than never I guess.)

And more #geocentrism @IRaiseUFacts @LKrauss1

In addition to the 2006 references below, there are more later even better observations.

For example, “Does the motion of the solar system affect the microwave sky?”

Rick Ryals adds on Facebook:

There have been a number of scientific papers written that derive the same results…
… yet look at them now, they act like they never saw any of it before…

Also, “Is the low-l microwave background cosmic?”

And, “Large-angle anomalies in the CMB”

And, “Why is the solar system cosmically aligned?“

#geocentrism @IRaiseUFacts @LKrauss1

Larry Krauss has been tweeting about clips of him being inserted into a “documentary” about geocentrism, and as a result has posted a robust rebuttal on the Future Tense blog at The Slate.

Obviously (as an atheist), I’m interested in this because I’ve quoted Krauss before remarking on a surprising apparent geocentrism in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) correlating with earth’s orbit around the sun. (Hat tip to Island / Rick Ryals linked multiple times in the link above.) On a cosmic scale that’s a kind of geocentrism – an anthropocentrism – we, our earth, our solar system, our milky way, our local group …. “we” seem to occupy a “special” place in our “observed” universe. One to which you can react (at least) two ways. Both start with – that’s mad, there’s something wrong here. The question is what might be wrong; either the very idea of geocentrism is wrong (mad, ridiculous, worthy only of scorn), or maybe the underlying (standard) cosmology against which we’re judging the CMB correlation is itself flawed. The first is political prejudice, the second is science. Unless of course the correlation has already been explained away by valid follow-up analysis of the “apparent” observations. A question I’ve asked Larry a few times in the blogo-twitter-sphere, to no avail.

Of course if you’re a faith-based literal-nut-case theist (the third option), as per the makers of the film I’ve not actually seen, then you cite a respected, famous, authoritative scientist on the side of your geo-anthropo-centrist-creationist agenda. And you get the obvious reactionary knee-jerk response – shooting creationist fish in a barrel. Oh what sport. Whatever turns you on Larry.

Don’t be a jerk just because creationist nut-cases are jerks – why play their game – instead, why not try some science Larry. Answer the question (ATFQ).

Why might CMB observations correlate with the place of “our” planet in the cosmos ?

[Hint – there are plenty of serious scientists out there with suspected candidates for the flaw in our accepted “standard” model.]

Sparrow Numbers

Baffled by this. Same issue on two counts.

(1) That the common House / Tree Sparrow is logged as the most commonly seen UK garden bird.

(2) The Dunnock (aka Hedge Sparrow) doesn’t even make the top 10.

Are people just reporting “sparrow-like” birds and are the RSPB not differentiating what is reported. Dunnock and House Sparrow are not just different species they’re quite different types of bird. In my experience of several gardens in different locations, Dunnocks are much more common these days than Sparrows.

[Also incidentally – no Coal Tit ? At least as common as the Blue and Great Tits surely? And Goldfinch increasingly common yes, but no Greenfinch?]

Sokal vs Maxwell

This evening Nick Maxwell presented “How Universities Can Help Create a Wiser World” launching his latest book of the same name. Alan Sokal and and Philip Ball provided responses.

Some 50/55 in the theatre as the UCL Grand Challenge on Human Wellbeing is introduced.

Nick describing his main theme that science has enabled the technologies that have contributed, even created, many of the global problems we face, but blaming science is the wrong response. Obviously science and technology are to be credited with immense positive progress. The problem is a damagingly irrational conception of “enquiry” that dissociates the pursuit of knowledge from how we apply technologies to achieving what is of value in the world.

The idea that Human Well-being is seen as a grand challenge by an academic institution like UCL is an indication that some part of the necessary revolution is already under way. But the rationality of Wisdom Enquiry is not yet recognised as part of this. The problem is that Knowledge Enquiry excludes value-based aspects of problem definition and problem solving – objectivisation and even hyper-specialisation often, without any interaction with the values and aims of the bigger picture. And that’s true even though the concern with the bigger picture may be exercising the minds of the same participants in their wider social world, evenings and weekends.

If you’ve read Nick’s earlier works, the continuing arguments are well recognised and rehearsed. (From Knowledge to Wisdom and Is Science Neurotic for example.) His 7-level model of Aim-Oriented Empiricism / Rationality. In fact as Nick concludes, it’s the same message he’s been pushing for over 40 years.

Feeding AOR into “Social Life” –  the task is social methodology or social philosophy, not social science. Methodology notice, philosophy of action, about doing not theorising

Dr Philip Ball responds, mainly to the book itself. Science is much less methodical that it appears, than it might formally admit (Maxwell’s scientific neurosis?). Trend to have to define and justify (funding) aims in terms of economic benefit. (But must aims be economic – bean-countable?) Dr Ball sees the solutions as essentially economic, even if they may require alternate market models and incentives. The recently recurring reminder that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher before and above his position as an economist. (Very Benthamite – reducing all issues to cost-benefit, even justifying art projects on relevance and benefit.) Democracy is not a necessary part of scientific progress. Agree focus must shift from knowing, but to doing.

Alan Sokal responding;  Science does make metaphysical assumptions, even though it would deny it. Scientists take weekends off, but we all know when non-unified scientific hypotheses are crazy. Nick’s work on the hierarchical AOE/R are important contributions to the philosophy of science, but the lack of “Wisdom Inquiry” in academic institutions is not really the fundamental problem preventing progress, rather than say economic incentives. Nick’s wisdom inquiry claims are probably more targeted at the social sciences than the natural sciences. (Quite the opposite in fact.)

My take is this.

Alan Sokal is well known for his fighting on the side of strict rationality against social constructivism, and yes we can all shoot PoMo Social Constructivists like fish in a barrel. Nick Maxwell’s “Aim Oriented Empiricism” basis for wisdom is however at that interface of rational knowledge with the social.

Yes, the rationality of the processes of gaining and applying knowledge may be strictly objective, logical, scientific. But, the rationality of aims is more than that. It’s also about what we value and how we agree what we should value. That is philosophical, even subjective and clearly social. They’re “problematic” – the task as Nick says is social methodology or social philosophy, not social science – requiring more than rational knowledge to manage and solve. Wisdom.

So, does Alan Sokal believe there can be more to applied wisdom than strictly logical, objective, scientific rationality and knowledge? Apparently not.

Ultimately disappointing, the discussion drew out into very general criticisms of “too hard”, and wider questions of national, resource and conflict governance – the arithmetic of democracy not excluded (*1) – well beyond academe. In fact both respondents really failed to pick up on the social values aspect of Nick’s “Aim Orientation”, slipping too easily to see aims as quantifiable economic goals (*2).

—–

Notes:

(*1) Sure, the one man one vote emancipation, epitomises the importance of the value of any human, but we’re talking here about methodology and doing, We can’t all take equal roles in every action, let alone deciding every action by popular poll.

(*2) Sure, technology is universally recognised as the main driver of global economic activity, and science as the main enabler of technology (Kondratiev, Schumpeter, Kuhn, you name them). But as well as enabling, what we do needs enacting, requiring populations of people with hearts and minds, hopes and fears, that ultimately determine what is achieved; Hiroshima or Hinkley.