Ross 2
A little more. Because it’s hard to resist. Because there are just so many – um – interesting remarks.
To set the scene. Ross once attended what he calls a New Age trade convention, and gives us his thoughts on the subject.
The more official and centered voice of condemnation against the New Age community can be found in what are often charaterized as the witch-hunting activities of CSICOP…CSICOP is an international ‘inquisition’ of mostly academic ghostbusters, set up…to police the boundary between science and pseudoscience contested by a host of New Age alternatives to institutional scientific orthodoxies.
Same again. Official, ‘centered’ (huh?), witch-hunting (!!), inquisition, police, boundary, institutional, orthodoxies. All that in 1.5 sentences. Talk about over-egging the pudding (or over-egging the omelette, as the Alternative Idiom Community likes to call it). And then on the other hand (cue friendly music): community, contested, alternatives. That’s another way Ross is like Harding, despite the superficial differences in style: he’s what you might call insistent. He doesn’t have much to say, so he resorts to saying it over and over again. He says community, alternative, marginal, contested as often as he possibly can, and orthodoxy, official, authority, dominant, even oftener. Maybe one day we’ll get the point and change over from authoritative science to the New Age kind. Yupuhuh, gonna do that, fer sher.
But such exposés of paranormal activities, whether in dry polemics or showbiz, are always conducted through appeals to the kind of experimental certification that rationalist science has established as the single standard of truth and reason in our dealings with the natural world. In this respect, they might be seen as affirmations of faith in the world-view of a particular culture…
Well that’s wrong, for a start; ‘rationalist’ science has not established ‘experimental certification’ as the single standard of truth and reason; that’s just bollocks. And that tired crap about affirmations of faith – well, it’s tired crap, that’s what. Sure, they might be seen as that, because anything might be seen as anything. But that don’t make it true.
On the issue of the “authoritarianism” and “conventionalism” of science and scientists, on which Ross insists (to his disgust), I was reminded of a short passage from Stove, which I quote:
“The levity of Popper and his followers concerning science bears a marked analogy, therefore, to a species of political levity which is excessively familiar: what Kipling called “making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep”. For who are the pet aversion of Popperites, as policemen are of parlor-pinks? Why, ordinary flesh-and-blood scientists, of course! Any contact with living scientists always leaves a Popperite far more Feyerabendian than it found him. It can be relied on to bring him out in fury of what we may call `criticismism’. Scientists, he finds to his horror, are dogmatic, uncritical, authoritarian, etc., etc. So they are, of course. They are also people of the very same kind, by and large, as those who have erected what Popper himself once called, in a moment of self-forgetfulness, “the soaring edifice of science” [19].
It is the frivolous elevation of the `critical attitude’ into a categorical imperative of intellectual life, which has been at once the most influential and the most mischievous aspect of Popper’s philosophy of science. That it is frivolous, should be evident from the tautology that it is only valuable criticism which is of value; not criticism as such. The demand that scientists in general should be critics and innovators, rather than mere followers, is even, in its extreme forms, self-contradictory; like the implicit demand of those educationalists who want every child to be exceptionally creative. (Before they complain of the rarity of any great critical faculty in scientists, Popperites should read Hume on what he called those “thoughtless people” who complain of the rarity of great beauty in women [20]). Even in its non-extreme forms, however, the apotheosis of the critical attitude has had, as its principal effect, simply this: to fortify millions of ignorant graduates and undergraduates in the belief, to which they are already only too firmly wedded by other causes, that the adversary posture is all, and that intellectual life consists in “directionless quibble” [21].
Ross’s work looks like a job for the Passive Voice Alarm . . . and sure enough, off it bleeps. The advantage that using ‘what are often charactised as’ brings to Ross is that he can take up a position of plausible deniability. He’s not calling them witch-hunters, you understand, just putting that sign next to them, and then blaming unnamed others for placing it there.
Pure genius. Lenin, for all his faults, hit it on the head when he noted that the most important questions are those that ask ‘who does what to whom?’
That was exactly what came to my mind. “Often characterized as witch-hunters” – Ross didn’t say it, but the word is said. Sneaky. Anyway, it’s pretty hard to debunk anything without the other side making comparisons to the Holy Office with the rack and glowing pins and all, and comparing itself to Galilei.
Great quotations, MD.
I know, isn’t that great? Same thing with ‘inquisition’ – the quotation marks are a great touch. He’s just quoting himself, but we’re not supposed to realize that. And it’s similar to the ‘might be seen’ thing. Well, sure, they might be – that’s safe enough. And it’s all like that. Worthless made-up crap, basically, passed off as Deep Thought. Only it’s worse than worthless, it’s harmful.
And this is the guy who sneers at Alan Sokal for being so dim he has to do physics (which is so easy, you know), because he’s not clever enough to do Theory. Oy veh.
Having published in Social Text, Sokal has done “theory”, in his spare time.
In any case, the postmodern essay generator can do “theory.”
Have to say, I wish I was an ‘academic ghostbuster’. Clearly, being dominant and technocratic is the cool choice to make – after all, when have you seen Social Text action figures?
Hang on, there’s a thought….
OK, so Ross writes appalling garbage.. so does Stove. What is wrong with Popper’s philosophy of science? Isn’t falsifiability important? And what is wrong with Feyerabend’s philosophy of science? Isn’t it important to develop a wide range of new and radical theories? As far as I know Feyerabend never suggested that new and radical theories should not be tested according to (Popperian) scientific principles.
Here’s an even better thought: B&W action figures. One of Jerry S running a race, and one of me – um – lounging about, sniggering.
What’s wrong with Popper’s philosophy of science? Stove wrote a book on that question (it can be read online in its entirety), and he can speak for himself.
What’s wrong with Feyerabend’s philosophy of science? As Stove observes (the obvious):
“The levity of Feyerabend is too `gross, open, and palpable’, to require that instances be given here to prove it. In Against Method it is in fact so omnipresent that he has managed to entangle himself in a certain `paradox of levity’ which is, as far as I know, entirely original. Feyerabend enjoins the reader of that book [15], indeed he pleads with him [16], not to take anything he reads there too seriously. But this injunction and this plea are among the things he reads there. How seriously, then, ought the reader to take them?”
Of course, Harding, Harraway, Ross, etc., take Feyerabend et al. seriously, despite the fact that Feyerabend explicitly implores his readers not to take his claims seriously.
As for “new” or “radical” theories, I’m not aware that anyone has ever suggested that some prohibition exists on such things, other than the simple control of experiment. Young people in all disciplines are always moving the ball forward, or trying to, but it takes more than a radical, new theory to do so; the theory must make predictions that conform to subsequent observation, and it must be an advance on existing theory (simpler, more elegant, more coherent, more comprehensive, fewer anomalies, etc). If this were easy to do, science wouldn’t be work, it would be recreation.
Yeah, and frankly, that’s part of the problem with a lot of FN – that it’s just ‘new and radical’ for the sake of being new and radical. Same kind of thing as what I said yesterday about the need to say something, and if it’s Out There, it gets attention. A theory can be new and radical and still be total bullshit, or old and non-radical (?) and still be true. Novelty is one thing and truth is another.
Less talk. Let’s get to work on those figures.
You’ll need a vehicle – the Butterfly on Wheels, natch. It would be some kind of mobile reason-crime lab. On the other side you’d have the Dialectic Biologiser, the Creationist, the feared Freudian villain Aynalgennitle (ooh! your dirty mind) and many more, all housed in the Fortress of Implausibility, complete with Ivory Towers that they pretend never to frequent.
“Hey look Scooby, under the mask, the Spectre of Unfalsifiable Meaninglessness is none other than the harmless old Professor of Stalinist Literature, T. Willard Tanquee.”
“Bah! And I’d have got away with it if hadn’t been for you pesky kids!”
You’ve figured out my secret desire. I long for a butterfly chariot that I could go wheeling around in…