Yet There Is Method In It

I’ve got 50% of people with me, and 50% of people will never be with me. Tracey Emin

I have been distracted from updating this site.. which is rapidly approaching its 2ND BIRTHDAY! Many news items suggest comment but were left unremarked. Many views were aired in public and private but simple “passed by”. Even some threads of thought of mine are incomplete.

I need to regain my copy of notes from underground, also. My audio book reading in librivox is progressing and passed half-way.

Just to get very pop culture, I only recently noticed the lyrics to Muzzle by The Smashing Pumpkins. After the first half of the song is plagued with existential doubt, the ending is filled with what might be called existential certainty “[...]the emergence of certainty, even a dreadful certainty, after long tension and torture by uncertainty.” I dig it.

and in my mind as i was floating
far above the clouds
some children laughed i’d fall for certain
for thinking that i’d last forever
but i knew exactly where i was
and i knew the meaning of it all
and i knew the distance to the sun
and i knew the echo that is love
and i knew the secrets in your spires
and i knew the emptiness of youth
and i knew the solitude of heart
and i knew the murmurs of the soul
and the world is drawn into your hands
and the world is etched upon your heart
and the world so hard to understand
is the world your can’t live without
and i knew the silence of the world [x5]

AC1

I just finished Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground and I’ve started Kafka’s Metamorphosis, so this made me laugh:

Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport

… he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it.

My house-mates are back from holiday, which brings the following Nietzsche quote to mind:

To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both — a philosopher.

Nearly finished the book “Tipping Point”…

AC1

To preface by comments on Kierkegaard, I thought I would reproduce his and Nietzsche’s favourite* quotes from the Bible. The verses they use share a common theme, so well done if anyone recognises which philosopher used a particular quotation. At least one verse is used by both.

And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, Mark 12:38, Luke 20:46

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. Matthew 19:21 (also Luke 12:33)

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Matthew 18:9

And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.
And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.
And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:
For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. Mark 12:38-44, Luke 20:45-47

But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Matthew 5:34-35, James 5:12

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; 1 Corinthians 1:27

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26

I will save any reaction until after I have finished reading my current book.

* my knowledge of Kierkegaard is still very narrow so their might be even more relevant quotes. Plase add any additional verses as comments.

Anti Citizen One

Been busy and strangely not in the mood provide much commentary on recent events. Worrying I have been thinking “All is alike, nothing is worth while, the world is without meaning, knowledge strangleth.” (Nietzsche’s spoof of Schopenhauer) – but then again I suspect there are happy isles…

Reading Kierkergaard – thinkings are looking interesting already. Half way through “Attack upon Christendom”.

AC1

Been busy! I finished reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals. I am thinking about doing an audio recording of The Gay Science which will take a long time. Need to read more. To do: go to library.

AC1

I saw Steve Jones (the geneticist) talking about the future of the human species. It was a very slick presentation. It seemed to be an expanded discussion of an article he published in the telegraph. He claimed that human evolution has come to a halt. The reasons for this are perhaps not interesting in this blog’s context. I was immediately skeptical of his conclusion but he did add two important conditions: he was only referring to the western world and the halt in evolution was temporary.

Any claims of constancy or certain knowledge in the apparent world should be examined closely since they can only come from two lines of reasoning:
1) A priori – there is no reason why constancy (or even inconstancy) should be expected, so no certain claim can be made.
2) A posteriori – basing a theory on past observations can never provide certainty since the next observation might disprove a theory.

The purists would try to apply this reasoning to my argument. An uncertainty might be the possibility of other sources of knowledge apart from a priori and a posteriori. What we can say is any claim about the apparent world without an element of doubt is, at best, misleading*. Since the apparent world is different at different times, we can speculate that change is possible. It seems the universe has changed greatly through out its existence, and it is therefore conceivable that constancy is illusionary. We could say some things are constant and some things are transitory. There is also a possibility that an seeming constant in the world is in fact going through a slow transition – too slow for us to perceive. As Heraclitus said, “All things are flowing.” Also Nietzsche, “Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie.” (A luck “guess” by Heraclitus – that everything is made of one primordial element (fire) is not so far from the modern concept of mass/energy equivalence.)

A few blogs have attempted to rebut Steve Jones on practical grounds which might be interesting for some.

Anti Citizen One

* probably

I was reading the Gene Expression blog and it claims that generation of scientific knowledge is generated through the scientific community acting as the overall arbiter and gatekeeper. Without this collaboration, science would not function. Individual scientists are not fully rational and presumably the rationality of the scientific process arises through ‘”wisdom of the crowds” at its apotheosis’.

Because at the end of the day science does not rely on the rationality of a scientist. It relies on the cumulative and self-correcting rationality of the scientific community.

[...]science is such a superior method of extracting information about the world around us[...]

[...]the power of science arises from the intersection of the communal wisdom of tens of thousands of individuals over decades with the nature of the subject at hand. Gene Expression blog

The author implies that no individual scientist is capable of really doing science in isolation.

Granted, there are individual geniuses of great brilliance such as the great Isaac Newton, but the outcomes of his dabbling in alchemy and scriptural hermeneutics should go to illustrate that cognition applied to a fool’s errand only results in glorious foolery.

I picture this as an infinite amount of research monkeys almost randomly striking keys on type writers and the gate keeper of science, the community, allows anything that happens to be scientific. As Newton said, possibly with sarcasm, “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”.

Peer review and the scientific community is not what distinguishes science from other areas of knowledge. After all history community decides what is good history knowledge, theology community decides what is good theological knowledge and the law community decides what is good law knowledge. Since they have similar process for publication and dissemination of knowledge, why are they not also “a superior method of extracting information about the world”?

What distinguishes science from other fields of knowledge is empiricism. Production of scientific knowledge occurs when we use our personal experience about the world to form predictive theories and we attempt to verify them. When Galileo looked through a telescope and saw dots circling Jupiter and him realizing they were moons was a scientific achievement. Since there was no community, it is clearly false to say the community is necessary to progress science.

Referring to the scientific community as this monolithic truth machine is not helpful considering that good science is decided by a very small subsection of the community who have the relevant background knowledge to review cutting edge research. In some fields, everyone knows the other researchers by name. I will admit that science has progressed more quickly because collaboration and teamwork is more efficient than solo working. But teamwork it is not necessary for science to occur.

Anti Citizen One