Here’s something to take our minds off the election for a few minutes – or maybe just my mind: an article by Ellen Granfield posted at Everyday Feminism that recycles some so 1990s ideas about science. Some bad so 1990s ideas about science.

It’s posted at Everyday Feminism, so Twitter trolls are screeching that this kills feminism dead. (Yo, Everyday Feminism isn’t even feminist, let alone representative of all feminism. Feminism has an anti-science irrationalist wing, but that’s far from all of feminism.) But it was reposted from The Establishment. The Establishment is that site where Aaron Kappel wrote that appalling piece bashing feminism because one woman asked him clumsy questions about his “identity as non-binary.” Publishing the piece discredits The Establishment and Everyday Feminism, but it doesn’t leave a mark on feminism in general.

So let’s see Ellen Granfield’s so last century thoughts on science:

Modern, mainstream science finds itself deeply embedded in a supposedly objective, quantifiable worldview – one that is at best faulty, and at worst, is a form of scientism which denies new findings.

There was the idea of continental drift, you see, which was ridiculed and then later accepted, which is

a stark reminder that the course of human history is not governed by objective truth of any kind, especially in the history of science; the truth is always shifting.

Emphasis hers.

Right. People are wrong about one thing for a short period of time, and it turns out they’re wrong – and that demonstrates that ALL IS RANDOM AND SHIFTING.

I kid. No it doesn’t.

Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince discuss this phenomenon vis a vis paranormal discoveries in their book The Forbidden Universe, which contends that “the view of the universe emerging from the latest scientific discoveries, particularly of quantum physics and cosmology, can be seen to vindicate the ancient Hermetic belief in an evolving, living, conscious universe.”

Seriously, it’s not 1993 any more.

One of the most obvious examples of scientism today is the theory of evolution, which is still upheld as the dominant explanation of how life generates itself. The problem is that biologists still can’t answer the most basic of questions involved, including the origin of life itself, sexual reproduction, or how species originate.

Oops.

The political fight over curriculum between religious Fundamentalists and neo-Darwinists has pushed any meaningful discussion of this topic off the table, as mainstream science remains stubbornly fearful of giving up ground if they admit that there are serious controversies raging around the theory of evolution as the catch-all explanation for our current existence.

It leaves no room for the possibility of Intelligent Design Theory, which posits “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause.” IDT is often made synonymous with creationism – neo-Darwinists argue that it’s just Creationism in disguise – but there are many scientists and philosophers alike that believe IDT is just as compelling a theory as evolution for “the way things are.”

This doesn’t discredit all of feminism, because it’s not all of feminism what wrote it or published it, but it sure as hell does discredit Everyday Feminism and The Establishment – if they had any credit to dis, which in my book they didn’t. In short, boo on them for publishing that garbage.

There’s a lot more, and it’s even worse. There’s some ranting about science’s rude insistence that the heart is a pump and only the brain has intelligence, and the importance of intelligence in the cosmos as a whole, and similar profundities. (Nothing about brain cells in the gut, though. Is she gutphobic?) Very distracting stuff.

H/t Helen Dale