Explaining and Understanding
I posted a comment on Dennett’s reply to Ruse and Bunting this morning – and since the idea I was commenting on is (I think) a fairly pervasive one, and related to this whole question of ‘shut up about your atheism, they might hear you,’ I thought I might as well post it here too. The first para, in italics, is someone else commenting.
on the subject of Dawkins getting up ones nose, it would be all well and good if he was just another academic. He does however hold a position called ‘The Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University’ (according to wikipedia) which means he has the task of communicating his subject to us, the unwashed masses. If people feel he’s getting up your nose, then he’s not doing this right is he.
But having the task of communicating his subject to us is not quite the same thing as not getting up anyone’s nose. It may be that communicating a particular subject is of the very essence of getting up people’s noses – or at least some people’s noses. That’s just how it is, surely. It’s not possible or reasonable to assume that increased understanding of anything will automatically or necessarily pleasing to absolutely everyone. Increased understanding of anything may lead to feelings of displeasure and consequent hostility. In short, understanding is one thing, and liking is another. So it’s just not necessarily true that Dawkins isn’t doing his job right if he irritates some people (we know he doesn’t irritate all people, since he has a good many admirers).
And I think that his arguing that science and religion are in fact not as compatible as ‘let’s all get along’ people like to claim they are, is part of explaining science. The reasons he gives for thinking they are not compatible (in the first part of ‘The Root of All Evil?’ for instance) make part of an explanation of what science is. The fact that science is always in principle revisable and that religion is not is an important difference between them, and understanding that is, surely, part of understanding science.
That’s what I said at Comment is Free. It has since occurred to me that the whole thought is also part of the understanding of science. The understanding that there is a difference between understanding and being pleased is part of the understanding of science, and perhaps the reason science is not compatible with religion. Science by definition doesn’t adjust its findings to make them more pleasing – to make them less likely to get up anyone’s nose; if it does that, it’s not science. Arguably that’s one of the first things one has to get a firm grip on in order to have an Understanding of Science: that it is not and cannot be a popularity contest. Other systems of thought can be, but science can’t.
Mind you – to be fair – the commenter probably meant merely that irritating people can make it difficult to communicate with them, which is a reasonable point. But it also relates to the whole question of tactics, and I think it’s fair to point out that Dawkins is not being perverse in thinking that explaining how science and religion are incompatible is part of increasing public understanding of science.
The Chair is for the Public Understanding of Science, not Religion. You do good PR for science and you are guaranteed to get up a lot of people’s noses. I presume the complainers would prefer Dawkins to do a wishy-washy job of it, as if the Chair were for the Avoidance of Public Controversy. I’ll bet Simonyi is tickled pink with his investment and the headlines it has brought. Public Understanding of Science cannot sidestep religion and remain honest. It’s one thing to argue with Dawkins because one disagrees with him, either completely or on certain points; it’s quite another to do what Ruse does, which is to say “Dawkins is right, but he ought to keep quiet about it because it’s bad politics to rile the people who don’t get it.” We know what that kind of attitude is a recipe for…
I still say Dawkins RULES.
BTW, I finished reading “Breaking the Spell” a few days ago and I am in awe of the amount of respect Dennett does accord religion. There are sentences in there that, taken out of context, might be guessed to have been written as part of a very favourable appraisal of religion. My point being: he’s so balanced and reasonable that he makes the people attacking him look like jerks. There are a few points where he does insist that we’re all adults and needn’t seriously pretend that every minor deity worshiped on every island in the Pacific actually exists, but the whole book is less an assault on religion than a painstakingly precise argument that religion ought to be investigated. That’s what it all boils down to. That some people find that idea offensive says a lot about them. Hey, but who ever said discussing things with people who decline to discuss those things would be easy? I just don’t think we can avoid insisting upon it as long as any of them have power in their hands.
It’s not that religion isn’t “revisable,” it’s that when it is revised, the revising has nothing to do with discovering something new (as science does), but is usually a political move to attack or defend someone’s beliefs. Because it’s all in the realm of belief, of what people think is so or make up stories about what is so, not what really is so. “Theology is intellectual tennis played without a net,” etc.
Hmm…I would still say it’s also that religion is unrevisable. That’s why people fret about whether something or other is ‘compatible with the Koran’ and similar. Then again, perhaps what you said is what I meant – that it’s not revisable when new evidence is discovered.
I’m just making the cynical point that, since religion is fictional to begin with, there’s no problem with rewriting it at any point (like a film script — the Torah was the original script for Cecil B. DeMille). But of course a lot of people insist on its *not* being changed. Who would want to touch a syllable of Casablanca?
“Who would want to touch a syllable of Casablanca?”
I would! I’d lose ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’ Corny. Bathetic. Ungood.
OK, how about Citizen Kane? Change “Rosebud” to “Rose Petal”?
OK, how about Citizen Kane? Change “Rosebud” to “Rose Petal”?
Or Strangelove. I don’t think I’d change a word of Strangelove.