…and this is a 
I used to love to watch barnacles. Well, I still do, but there's a distinct shortage of tidepools here in Minnesota, which makes it a very difficult hobby. Barnacles are arthropods hunkered down in stony shells attached to a substrate, and what they do is unfurl feathery legs like ostrich plumes (called cirri) and wave them about in the water to catch small particles of food. They're very pretty, but also very skittish: a shadow passing over, a splash, the klunk of a rock sending vibrations through the substrate, and they instantly withdraw their limbs and slam the plate-like doors to their home shut. There isn't much variation in their response; they can't get up and run away, they can't leap out use kung-fu on an interloper, all they can do is hide behind their armored shells, and that's what they do as a reaction to any stimulus.
Barnacles are completely lacking in curiosity. It makes sense; they have very tiny brains, and all they want is to be left alone to strain the water for nutrients. For a barnacle, curiosity would be a dangerous vice. Any intrusion on their routine is a risk, and they don't need to analyze…just slam the doors shut.
While there may be few tidepools in Minnesota, I can find some in the pages of the NY Times. Stanley Fish is apparently some species of barnacle. James Leach of the National Endowment for the Humanities gave a lecture titled "Is There an Inalienable Right to Curiosity?", which has stirred Fish to protest. I think. In a wonderfully consistent pattern that I'm sure would meet the approval of barnacles everywhere, he doesn't actually express an opinion directly himself. Instead, he merely reports what others have said. We must deduce his opinion from the fact that he only quotes critics of curiosity. Curiosity is the original sin, you know: we can blame all of our suffering on a god who righteously slapped down a couple of people for daring to be curious.
When God told Adam he could eat of all the fruits of the Garden of Eden, but not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he placed what has been called a "provoking object" in Adam's eyes. The provocation was to go beyond the boundaries God had established and thereby set himself up a rival deity, a being with no limits on what he can conceive, a being whose intellect could, in time, comprehend anything and everything. Such a being would imagine himself, God-like, standing to the side of the universe and, armed only with the power of his mind, mastering its intricacies. Those who engage in this fantasy, says Thomas Aquinas, think "they are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world; so great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue."
Another churchman, Lorenzo Scupoli, put it this way in 1589: "They make an idol of their own understanding" ("Knowledge puffeth up," I Corinthians 8:1). Pascal said it succinctly: "Curiosity is only vanity." Jonathan Robinson, writing in this century, makes the same point: "What we are talking about is the desire to satisfy our curiosity on any and every conceivable subject that takes our fancy" ("Spiritual Combat Revisited").
Isn't that fascinating? If barnacles could imagine and could write, that's precisely what they'd say, too. There is a hallowed tradition in certain scholarly circles of simply quoting famous dead white guys who agree with you in order to lend your words some authority that reason cannot bestow on them, and Stanley Barnacle has this same attitude. When someone quotes stodgy old promoters of the status quo who insist that human knowledge must have limits, we must go no further than we have up to this century, though, I have to note that they've all been irrefutably proven wrong by the time the next century rolls around. I am unpersuaded. Actually, I'm anti-persuaded. There's something about citing a 5th century bishop telling everyone to stop exploring the world that has the effect of convincing this 21st century secularist to go turn over a few more rocks.
Give this indictment of men in love with their own capacities a positive twist and it becomes a description of the scientific project, which includes among its many achievements space travel, a split atom, cloning and the information revolution. It is a project that celebrates the expansion of knowledge's boundaries as an undoubted good, and it is a project that Chairman Leach salutes when he proudly lists the joint efforts by the University of Virginia and the N.E.H. to digitalize just about everything. "The computer revolution," he announces, "holds out the prospect that the digital library could be become an international citadel for the pursuit of curiosity."
That's exactly what Paul Griffiths, professor of divinity at Duke University, is afraid of. Where Leach welcomes the enlargement of curiosity's empire, Griffiths, who is writing a book on the vice of curiosity, sees it as a sign of moral and spiritual danger: "Late modern societies that are fundamentally shaped by the overwhelming presence of electronic media and the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life" ("Reason and the Reasons of Faith"). The prescriptions come in the form of familiar injunctions: follow the inquiry as far as it goes, leave no stone unturned, there is always more to know, the more information the better. "In a world where curiosity rules," Griffiths declares, "unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive device . . . amounts to nothing less than a . . . radical critique of superficiality and constant distraction."
Oh, no! Digitizing books? Heresy! We should be reading marks chiseled in stone or clay, as the gods intended!
I would have been shocked that an academic would condemn curiosity as a "vice", as "destructive and offensive", as "superficiality and constant distraction", since exercising our curiosity, and fostering curiosity in our students, is supposed to be one of our jobs. However, the barnacle gave us advance warning: it's not just an academic, it's a professor of divinity. Oh, well then, point taken. I can understand why a professor of nothing would resent the possibility of other human beings poking into his little niche and discovering what a hollow lie it all is.
I, with my omnipresent laptop and smartphone, my kindle and my flash drives full of pdfs, my blog and my facebook and my twitter accounts, am a walking, talking, info-flooding obscenity to these guys. I like it. Now why, though, should they find the data-driven life so disgusting? You can guess why.
Griffiths builds on the religious tradition in which curiosity is condemned because it distracts men from the study and worship of God, shackling them, says Augustine, "to an inferior love." But curiosity can also distract men from secular obligations by so occupying their minds that there is no room left for other considerations. These men (and women) fail to register the pain of animals subjected to experiments in the name of knowledge, pay no heed to the social consequences of their investigations, and take no heed of the warnings issued in Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus," Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (not to mention the myth of Pandora and the Incredible Hulk).
God likes his people uninformed, ignorant, and close-minded. With good reason: if his followers aren't that way, they might discover what a sham the priests have erected. I reject such self-serving excuses.
The social consciousness argument has a little more weight, but is still unconvincing. Scientists have changed the world, and that always causes stresses on society, the kinds of stresses that writers like the ones he cites have explored. That does not imply that scientists are somehow outside of the culture they are changing; we do pay attention, we have to. The point is, though, that we change social realities because we are bringing about greater understanding of material realities, and if our beliefs about how the universe works are confronted with the reality of how the universe works, we think it is the beliefs that ought to change, because the universe is not going to bend to our convenience. We are responsive to nature, not the contrived dogma of theologians.
As for his dig against animal experimentation…he's clueless and has never been in a research lab. We care very much about the comfort of our animals.
They are obsessive and obsessed and exhibit, says John Henry Newman, something akin to a mental disorder. "In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman: once fairly started on a subject, they have no power of self-control" ("The Idea of a University"). They have no power of self-control because they have no allegiance -- to a deity, to human flourishing, to community -- that might serve as a check on their insatiable curiosity. (Curiosity is inherently insatiable; its satisfactions are only momentary; there is always another horizon.)
In short, curiosity -- sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom -- is their God. The question, posed by thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine to Newman to Griffiths, is whether this is the God -- the God, ultimately, of self -- we want to worship. Given the evidence, including Chairman Leach's address, the answer would seem to be yes.
Wow. Curiosity as a mental disorder: are these people not primates? It's a behavior that practically defines us naked monkeys! There is no greater joy and no more satisfying experience than exploring new avenues and discovering new ideas. It's what makes us civilized humans and not cows or jellyfish or barnacles. It's how Stanley Fish ends up clucking over our insatiable desire to learn more and do more…on the internet, with his computer, from his position as an academic at a university. It's a bit hypocritical, don't you think? He should at least be living in a cave, draped in animal skins, and scrawling his treatises in charcoal on flat pieces of rock.
Or better yet, his ideal life of the mind would be better spent sessile, locked in a limestone shell, with his only interaction with the world being the gentle scraping of his environment for little slimy gleanings of food. He could worship god as he did so, as well.
The rest of us…well, we'll try to reach a little higher and a little deeper, and enjoy our curiosity.
Comments
Posted by: Lauren Ipsum | September 17, 2009 2:52 PM
That's it, I am so referring to him as Stanley Barnacle from now on.
Posted by: OneHandClapping | September 17, 2009 2:52 PM
You have "priests" and the past tense of "erect" in the same sentence without it referring to a sexual innuendo. I am in awe, sir.
On another note, I hope that this guy helped the lads down in the printing room set all those letters in the paper press. The hypocrisy is strong in this one...and all those fundagelical asshats like him.
Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak | September 17, 2009 2:53 PM
How else would you get folks to believe in a misogynic, vain, jealous, greedy, genocidal, and childish God?
Using your brain, which God gives to you apparently, is evil people. Don't think. Rather lets sacrifice a sheep to our Beloved Lord(TM).
Posted by: jeremy | September 17, 2009 2:55 PM
"...the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life..."
Such a shy bloke, if he wants to condemn pornography he should have the guts to come out and say it.
Posted by: hje | September 17, 2009 2:57 PM
Wow! Stanley has really jumped the shark this time.
This is an anti-intellectual screed worthy of Glenn Beck & Co., or even Pol Pot--it just uses fancier words.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 17, 2009 2:57 PM
FZ
Posted by: Rob | September 17, 2009 2:57 PM
Face it PZ, you're an infidel and going straight to hell.
Posted by: SC, OM | September 17, 2009 2:57 PM
Morris Zapp strikes again.
"Knowledge puffeth up"
I like that. "Puffeth" is wonderful.
***
"Curiosity's Empire" would make a good chapter title.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | September 17, 2009 3:01 PM
The great thing is that he's so incurious that he'll never trouble to find out the value of being curious, hence confirming his predilection for being an unthinking derivative slug.
To put Fish in another way, skepticism and doubt are wrong, unless, of course, you're skeptical and doubtful of anyone who explores and discovers.
I wonder how long it will take for the IDiots to ape him and once again fault skepticism, instead of claiming that credulous belief in an invisible designer is true skepticismTM.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: William | September 17, 2009 3:01 PM
You have offended the curious barnacles good sir!
Posted by: Ken | September 17, 2009 3:03 PM
"The scientific project, which includes among its many achievements space travel, a split atom, cloning and the information revolution."
"These men (and women) fail to register the pain of animals subjected to experiments in the name of knowledge."
Is he referring to Schrödinger's cat?
Posted by: Russell | September 17, 2009 3:04 PM
PZ, you should come down to the gulf shore. I'll give you a scraper, and you can have as many of those damned barnacles as you want. If some smart biologist could figure out an inexpensive, non-toxic anti-foul coating that would keep them from growing all over everything submerged, he would become rich. Filthy rich.
Posted by: Pacal | September 17, 2009 3:06 PM
Stanley Fish is, if not an actual "Post-Modernist", is very much in sympathy with their goals and attitudes. He wrote a piece over a decade ago called, I'm not exactly sure if I have the title correctly, "Skoal's Unfunny Hoax", in which he denounced Skoal for getting a Post-Modernist journal, Social Text, to publish a piece of nonsense, which if they had bothered to have another physicist look at it would have revealed it to be sheer bullshit.
Given Stanley Fish's Modernist leanings I would be carreful about whether Stanley Fish means any of it or is just taking a rhetorical position to rattle a few cages.
Despite the above I like some of what Stanley Fish as written about various matters, but here I fear his Deconstructionist / Post-Modern sympathies may have taken him once again over a cliff.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | September 17, 2009 3:08 PM
That was deconstructionism to the hilt, and much of "post modern" philosophy as well. Quote Heidegger or some such person, a bit of Hegel, some Nietzsche, and you have a book that will be taught as if it involved some sort of thought. Derrida was one of the worst scholastics.
Fish comes straight out that debased philosophical tradition.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: H.H. | September 17, 2009 3:08 PM
The NY Times published this? What, did the World Net Daily pass it over as beneath them?
Posted by: the pro from dover | September 17, 2009 3:09 PM
Look at it this way: If Stanley was a cat, he'd live forever.
Posted by: b00ger
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September 17, 2009 3:10 PM
I once had a professor who made us write papers like that. We could only quote other folk's published articles and never interject our own opinions or hypotheses. Most of the articles we had to read and cite from where written by himself. I had to write about 10 papers for that class with those restrictions. That was the only class in undergrad I ever got a D in. Some people just shouldn't teach.
Posted by: Ray Ingles | September 17, 2009 3:10 PM
the warnings issued in Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus," Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (not to mention the myth of Pandora and the Incredible Hulk).
So, the best - the only - examples he can come up with are fictional ones? Why the hell should we take anything he says seriously?
Posted by: payaso del mar | September 17, 2009 3:12 PM
so did he make anyone else think of Ignatius T. Reilly, from A Confederacy of Dunces, with all his rants agin the evils of the modern world?
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | September 17, 2009 3:12 PM
This is also a favourite technique of Joey the Rat, aka Pope Indulgence. It is a way to preserve deniability.Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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September 17, 2009 3:15 PM
Isn't religion supposed to answer the 'big questions'--those questions we all only have because we're curious?
And if it weren't for the curious, then who would Fish be quoting?
How anyone can listen to an apologist and not feel offended as a human being by the very existence of mendacious piece of garbage such as Fish is beyond me.
One of those 'big questions', I guess.
What an asshole.
Posted by: Randy | September 17, 2009 3:15 PM
I think it was in this very blog that I saw the picture of the church reader-board that said "Reason is the Enemy of Faith". Now they can add curiosity! Maybe just boil it down to "Brains are the Enemy of Faith". There seems to an inverse relationship... small of one often means big of the other.
Great blog as usual! I really enjoyed this one.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | September 17, 2009 3:15 PM
I really wish Prof. Zapp had accepted that chairmanship offer at Rummidge. At least then he could be polluting the pages of some Tory rag instead of the NYT.
Posted by: Tulse | September 17, 2009 3:17 PM
Exactly -- we should, and not that hoi polloi on the Interwebs! I mean, who knows what the great unwashed rabble might do with all that knowledge! I'm guessing that Stanley himself has no trouble getting library access (or rather, his assistants getting access).
It is a hoot that he would both rail against digitizing books and cite numerous obscure works.
Posted by: Susan | September 17, 2009 3:17 PM
Oh, snap. Great deconstruction, PZ! Stanley Barnacle, it is.
Posted by: Azulene | September 17, 2009 3:19 PM
"...the myth of Pandora and the Incredible Hulk."
I seem to have missed the part of the myth where opening the box made Dr. Bruce Banner angry. What a great cross-over that would be!
Posted by: dave gamble | September 17, 2009 3:21 PM
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. -- Albert Einstein
Posted by: hje | September 17, 2009 3:21 PM
As an academic, I find this kind of nonsense far more irritating that any stupidity uttered by Ham, Hovind, or Comfort.
Behold! Stanley Fish, herald of the new Dark Ages! We all know what a paradise it was to live in the incurious western Europe of the Middle Ages (as compared to the curious contemporaries in China, India, the Americas, or the Middle East). Why understand when you can attribute disease and pestilence to witches, miasmas, and a vengeful god?
The "incurious" George W. Bush must be practically the "Kwisatz Haderach" in his eyes.
Posted by: overburden | September 17, 2009 3:21 PM
"Many might find the importance I give the concept of curiosity itself a curious thought. But curiosity is imaginative thinking. And imagination fortified by knowledge is a powerful force. It is exactly what oppressive states fear. That is why oppressors are invariably censors. They attempt to close the ears of their people and cloak them with orthodoxy of one kind or another." James Leach
This obviously didn't sit wull with Stanley Fishy.
Posted by: Ms. Crazy Pants | September 17, 2009 3:21 PM
I thought barnacles were the things that stuck to your boat that you need to whack off with a stick? (It was probably actually something else, but oh well.)
I guess if Stanley Fish comes near my place, I'm ready with lots of sticks. :-)
Posted by: Wesley Voorhies | September 17, 2009 3:23 PM
So being against curiosity, seems similar as already knowing everything you need to know. That is vanity.
"When you are closed off to curiosity; with every breath you take, the world advances without you." Me: Just now.
Quoting yourself is vanity, curiosity is not.
Posted by: SQB (fuck death)
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September 17, 2009 3:25 PM
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Posted by: Booger | September 17, 2009 3:26 PM
Wait. I thought it was Mike Barnicle who wrote the dumb things. He's got a brother?
Posted by: overburden | September 17, 2009 3:29 PM
Barnacles attach and grow to anything below the waterline - they have nasty serrated shells - and if you have ever surfed you know how miserable they can make the experience... have I just described Fish?
Posted by: 6EQUJ5 | September 17, 2009 3:30 PM
Imagine God catching a muskrat. He made the muskrat hungry. He made the crayfish a tasty morsel. He made the muskrat trap, staked it in place, camouflaged it, and baited it.
Who would expect the muskrat to do anything but follow the nature it was given?
God has all the moral authority of a steel trap.
BTW, if Fish isn't curious, why is he studying God? Isn't wanting to learn sinful?
Posted by: Tim H | September 17, 2009 3:31 PM
Stan the barnacle needs to read his bibble a bit better. Not only could Man imagine himself god-like after he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, but god was afraid that if Man also ate from the Tree of Eternal Life Man would actually BE god-like. The whole kicking Adam and Eve out of the garden was simply a case of god getting rid of potential competition.
Posted by: Tim Converse | September 17, 2009 3:32 PM
So, wait...uh, I'm trying to imagine being a human being with out curiosity..... WAIT, that's being curious isn't it? AAAAGH, a question!!! No, don't answer that it might make me think.....be uncurious, be uncurious, am I being uncurious yet? Don't think about....stuff.....
*insert sound of head exploding*
Posted by: Jim Harrison | September 17, 2009 3:33 PM
Stanley Fish has made a career out of provoking people. Obviously he's pretty good at it. You all have certainly risen to the bait.
If I may be forgiven a lapse of internet etiquette and raise an actual question: is it obviously true that curiosity is always a virtue? P.Z.'s opening bit suggests that curiosity is not a virtue for barnacles. We aren't barnacles, but we aren't invulnerable gods either and surely there are times in which our situation is--how shall I put it-a bit barnaclesque. How do you reject the notion that there are some things we shouldn't mess with?
Whether knowing more is good for you or not surely depends on the game you are playing. To believe that the master game we're involved in will reward effective curiosity is rather a leap, isn't it? Of course one could point to specific ways in which curiosity has paid off in human history, but then it has also had identifiable costs. I don't know where an empirical evaluation of the utility of curiosity would land you, probably at a rather hedged conclusion. I do doubt it would justify the kind of piety about curiosity demonstrated in the comments to this thread, a piety which is pretty much just the attitude of Fish's theologians but with the signs reversed.
People who care about the sciences are possessed with what used to be called libido sciendi, an itching desire to know. We aren't going to give up this obsession, at least not without a fight, but that doesn't make our beloved vice a virtue.
Posted by: JefFlyingV, Ain't No Business | September 17, 2009 3:33 PM
How is it possible for any moron to earn a postgraduate degree without curiosity? Why isn't Fish living in a cave without any of the coveniences afforded by curiosity?
Fish does not walk the talk.
Posted by: wright | September 17, 2009 3:35 PM
It reminds me of a similar essay by C. S. Lewis (no fan of progress himself), in which he chides scientists for trying to EXPLAIN everything and makes some vague suggestions for what he considers a more pious approach to investigating nature. Can't find the exact reference, sorry.
The hypocrisy in Fish's piece is amazing, even for a god-shouter.
Posted by: Alexander | September 17, 2009 3:37 PM
it takes my breath away. and such morons are using cars, electricity, the internets, television, xray and medicine... god damn the hypocrites!
Posted by: hje | September 17, 2009 3:38 PM
Re; "How do you reject the notion that there are some things we shouldn't mess with?"
OK, I'm game--LIST these things for us. Just so we know.
Posted by: natural cynic | September 17, 2009 3:40 PM
The Gnostics had it right: Original
SinVirtue.Posted by: JefFlyingV, Flash Chordin' | September 17, 2009 3:41 PM
The anti curiosity people are supposedly intelligent, therefore I have to believe some sort of parasite has invaded their bodies and is controlling their minds to talk nonsense with a straight face.
The discover link may bear out my theory:
http://discovermagazine.com/photos/04-zombie-animals-and-the-parasites-that-control-them/?searchterm=parasites
Posted by: Tommy | September 17, 2009 3:43 PM
Curiosity killed the cat.
Satisfaction brought him back.
Posted by: Tim Converse | September 17, 2009 3:44 PM
Jim@38
It seems to me that curiosity is pretty much hardwired into the system. Right from the very beginning we, as a species, would have had to have been curious about everything around us just to survive. Admittedly some "expirements" probably didn't fair well, like the first person to taste an olive, but curiosity made us what we are by making us interact with our environment. There was simply no other way, unless you would like to suggest that god should have just loaded up our brains with everything right from the start. If that's the case than I got an incomplete download, but I suspect that's true of everyone.
Exactly what kind of situations are you suggesting we, as a species, would have been better off not knowing more about? What could there be, measured against the entire history of humanity from naked ape till now, that would have been so bad that we shouldn't know it?
Posted by: kermit, stepping on yer lawn | September 17, 2009 3:45 PM
Ray Ingles "So, the best - the only - examples he can come up with are fictional ones? Why the hell should we take anything he says seriously?"
Now Ray, weren't you just warned about asking questions?
[...]
Damn.
Looking back, that may be when I started questioning the church - when I realized that they didn't want me to wonder. They may as well have asked me not to breathe, or later, not to look at girls.
I knew (instinctively?) that scientists were more trustworthy than preachers, because scientists asked questions and shared knowledge and spoke with enthusiasm about what they had discovered. Every science book I saw sounded like a kid saying "Cool! Guys, come over and look at *this!"
All the religious tracts and sermons sounded like grumpy old people saying "Hush, stop laughing, and sit up straight! Stop fidgeting. And get off my lawn!"
Posted by: DTK Greg | September 17, 2009 3:45 PM
I can quote dead, white guys too.
Thomas Paine, a deist, spoke against the idea of revealed religions and said something to the effect of, "The only true religion is the study of nature."
Guess he's going to hell too.
Posted by: gillt
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September 17, 2009 3:48 PM
As a research scientist, reading this with my precious zebrafish swimming merrily in a rack behind me, I felt rage, rage only tempered by your spot-on mockery of this anti-science, whiny buffoon. And to think I once considered him an important Milton scholar.
Posted by: Brady | September 17, 2009 3:49 PM
Over 500 years after Gutenberg and we're still having this argument? *sigh*
Posted by: Rickety Cricket | September 17, 2009 3:51 PM
Read that in this gem:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20Prayer-t.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
The first page is great.
Posted by: Akiko | September 17, 2009 3:53 PM
These are the same idiots who quote the "Founding Fathers" when making up things about our country. I am currently reading a good book by Berneard J. Nebel, PhD called "Nebels' Elemntary Education". In the first chapter he outlines "Baloney Busters" that he believes we should teach our children. Naturally, these ideas are not taught in public and most private schools as they promote skepticism and logic. He suggests teaching all students ideas such as "Forceful declarations do not substantiate facts or truth", "The Universe is governed by natural laws and principles","Beware of attacks on the speaker, not on the Argument" which he calls not just baloney but rancid baloney. Then there is my favorite, "Every Effect Has A Rational Cause" where he states, "the belief in rational causes is more responsible for the advancement of understanding than any other single idea.... On the other hand, beliefs in supernatural causes have not yielded any such increase in understanding. Therefore, beliefs in the supernatual have not been proven wrong so much as they have been shown to be without merit." Obviously the followers of the creationist gooberheads have never even considered any of these ideas. Might start up thinking too much I guess.
Posted by: natural cynic | September 17, 2009 3:53 PM
You have stated a corollary to Clarke's First Law:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Posted by: Umkomasia | September 17, 2009 3:53 PM
He reminds me more of those internal parasitic barnacles that castrate blue crabs. Yes, there are such barnacles.
Posted by: DazedNConfuzed | September 17, 2009 3:54 PM
@#26
Or, a great porn title...
"Bruce Banner, and the curse of Pandora's Box."
Posted by: Tim H | September 17, 2009 3:57 PM
Next blockbuster animated feature-- Kung-Fu Barnacle.
Posted by: Coleslaw | September 17, 2009 3:58 PM
I certainly hope so.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 17, 2009 3:58 PM
wild skunks
candiru
anything written by Abdul Alhazred
Posted by: scrabcake | September 17, 2009 3:58 PM
booger,
It's interesting that you should say that about your professor. I kind of sympathize with him. I do a lot of really geeky specific egyptological research, and have noticed that the burden of proof for new theories is quite low. It might pass muster as evidence for capitol trials in Texas, but not for any sort of science publications. I've come to the conclusion that if you do not have
a) a *very* thorough handle on your sources or
b) any evidence that's not circumstantial or that doesn't require a certain amount of jiggerypokery to work as evidence in the way you want it to,
then it's better for everyone if you keep your hypotheses for yourself lest others start to take them on faith without fact checking you. >:o
More on topic, barnacles have giant penises that are many times their body size--You know, so they can reach their penis over and make sweet barnacle love to the barnacle a couple of centimeters away on the rock.
I somehow doubt that Mr. Fish has this trait in common with barnacles.
Posted by: --E | September 17, 2009 4:02 PM
Ah, if only we really could lock these dopes in little limestone shells, and keep them there simply by waving our hands in the water a little. What an easy solution to the problem of morons promulgating moronity!
Maybe someone should point out to him that lack of curiosity tends to lead to things like war, famine, pestilence, and death. Or is he hoping to avoid those parts of the medieval experience?
Posted by: Iason Ouabache | September 17, 2009 4:03 PM
Whenever I see the phrase "vice of curiosity" my brain just shuts down. I know what each of these words mean but I cannot comprehend what they mean in that particular order. How in the hell can anyone in this century claim that curiosity is a bad thing???
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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September 17, 2009 4:06 PM
Luddism is alive and well and being published in the New York Times.
It struck me as odd that a philosopher and scientist would write this, so I hunted down the quote. As I suspected, Fish is doing a bit of quote mining. Here's what Pascal actually wrote:
Posted by: DR Benway | September 17, 2009 4:06 PM
What a boring old preacher's trick: 1) take something people like 2) accuse them of liking it so much it's like a god to them.
Reminds me of the schoolyard: Oh you like Batman, do you? Guess that means you wanna marry him. HAHA!
Wankers.
Posted by: jj | September 17, 2009 4:07 PM
I say careful likening him to a barnacle, it may be taken as a compliment, as if I am not mistaken, they have the largest penis to body size ratio
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 17, 2009 4:09 PM
Did you know that the barnacle has the biggest dick (relative to body size) of any animal? 'strue!
Did you know that that was the topic of Randy Olson's first audio-visual project?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZQE0Z2aZHE
Posted by: Thanny
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September 17, 2009 4:09 PM
If the religious are the ship-encrusting barnacles that hide inside their miniature mineral calderas, then religion itself must be Sacculina, forgoing brain altogether, extending its tendrils into the meat of society, draining its curiosity through (intellectual) castration.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 17, 2009 4:09 PM
@ Jim Harrison, #38,
The problem with your proposition is that we must know something about a subject before we can determine if it is a line of inquiry we should not follow. We can't merely say, "Ah! Genetics is a deadly knowledge. We should not go there." We have to know why it is deadly; and by that time, it is too late. (SEE the history of the atomic bomb for an excellent example. By the time we realized what was bad about our atomic model, knowledge of the possibilities of the bomb were also known.)
This is a Catch-22 that can only be answered one of two ways: either by disengaging curiosity entirely (the anti-intellectual approach -- in which case, I have dibs on Carlsbad Caverns for my cave; go find your own), or by unfettered research in which we learn not only the dangers, but how to control the dangers.
Sure, it might end up with the destruction of everything we know. But so might the anti-intellectual route. There are no guarantees. Life is hard. Wear a cup. (Apologies to Dennis Miller, from when he was funny.)
If there is a third way, I do not see it. Human nature pretty much states that if knowledge progresses to the point where it might be a weapon, someone somewhere will attempt to weaponize it.
Your suggestion of the restraint of curiosity, while admirable, is perhaps unworkable.
In any case, I'd like to point out the possible good things to come from science: computers, fusion, interstellar travel, instant communication, temperature-regulated houses, Spam (the meat product, not trash email), increased crop yields (RIP Norman Borlaug), same-day international travel, life-saving medicine, and wicked-cool pictures of deep space.
If you wish to curtail curiosity, please feel free to give up the benefits of these various curiosity-derived processes, objects, or ideas. Make room for someone who actually appreciates them.
Just stay out of Carlsbad Caverns. That'll be my new home when our new anti-intellectual caveman overlords arrive.
Posted by: Ray C. | September 17, 2009 4:11 PM
@#54: damn, you beat me to it. They're called Sacculina BTW.
Posted by: Alyson Miers | September 17, 2009 4:12 PM
My kitty was curious, and the most injury it ever did him was to land him on a cold tile floor that shocked his little feets.
Then again, I assume we've all heard the phrase "herding cats." It's been said that managing scientists is like herding cats. Perhaps that's what Stanley Barnacle is so afraid of; he's picturing what it would be like to be in charge of a society full of curious people who love to explore and poke their noses in new things. He is assuming, therefore, that he should be one of the folks in charge.
Or maybe he needs to know the joy of playing with a furry critter who reeeeeeally wants to escape from his box. There's another joy my kitty understood and that Stanley Barnacle doesn't seem to have ever tried: adventure.
Posted by: Walton | September 17, 2009 4:14 PM
Ah, another academic literary theorist wasting words on pointless waffle. Just like Terry Eagleton.
What I do not understand is why the taxpayer subsidises the study of literary criticism at universities, paying for the "work" done by the likes of Eagleton and Fish. Don't get me wrong - public funding for academic research is important and useful, but it should prioritise those subjects which have a demonstrable practical value, like science, engineering and medicine. Just think of all the money that Eagleton, Fish, and their colleagues have collected in salaries and research grants over their careers; and imagine what useful discoveries could have been made if all that money had been spent on, say, cancer research.
I made this point on another thread, and Bill Dauphin made an excellent point about the value to society of training scholars and of teaching better thinking skills, regardless of the field in which they're trained. And that's a good argument for continuing to fund teaching in all fields (at least at the undergraduate level), via student loans and grants. But it's not an argument for providing research funding to all fields equally. I would rather see taxpayers' money spent on finding cures for cancers, say, or developing new technologies, than on paying someone like Terry Eagleton or Stanley Fish to blither on about a Marxist post-structuralist modernist interpretation of the work of Jane Austen. IMO, research funding should be much more concentrated on the physical and natural sciences, at the expense of artistic subjects.
Posted by: SC, OM | September 17, 2009 4:15 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/22/dining/where-the-best-hold-on-for-dear-life.html
Posted by: RobNYNY1957 | September 17, 2009 4:16 PM
Fish wrote a column a while ago on how science is just another religion. First and last time I read him.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 17, 2009 4:21 PM
Okay, seriously, STFU Walton.
Posted by: Gruesome Rob | September 17, 2009 4:21 PM
Skunk smell doesn't bother me. It smells like pennies to me.
I'd like to introduce a few to mister barnacle.Don't forget your elder sign, you'll be fine.
Posted by: Betz | September 17, 2009 4:21 PM
Darwin's famous quote seems doubly appropriate here:
"I hate a Barnacle, as no man ever did before."
Posted by: Thorne | September 17, 2009 4:22 PM
Hmm. Now you've made me curious....
Posted by: Alyson Miers | September 17, 2009 4:22 PM
Walton. Must you really ride that hobby-horse in here? The thread is only in its early 70s now, and you've arrived to hijack it already?
Posted by: Peter G | September 17, 2009 4:22 PM
Sounds positively Orwellian doesn't it. War is Peace. Curiosity is superficiality. Of such arrant nonsense are academic careers in the liberal arts made.
Posted by: Lily | September 17, 2009 4:22 PM
I was just about to mention that barnacles have large penises, but I see #64 and #65 already beat me to it. oh well.
Posted by: jj | September 17, 2009 4:23 PM
HA! #59 beat me to it, but I barely beat Sven @#65 to that fact about barnacles...
Posted by: The Pint | September 17, 2009 4:27 PM
*gives a long-suffering sigh* Stanley Frakking Fish again.
You think this is bad? Try making it through an essay of his about the methodology of teaching literacy or the proper method to craft an essay or about literature as symbolism. It's less painful to dig one's eye out with a rusty spork. Seriously - I'd rather slog through another Marxist interpretation of Wuthering Heights or the entire works of Foucault again than read more Fish, and that's saying something. It's bad enough that I've had to wade through many of Fish's psuedo-intellectual wankings - pardon me, literary critical analyses - throughout my graduate studies, but having yet another essay of his in which he's flogging his post-modernist sensibilities pop up on a science blog that I rather enjoy? Now I'm going to be peeved all afternoon. I understand that part of his schtick is to write provocatively, but for once can't the man just come out and state his opinion baldly and openly rather than waffling about as a what-if Devil's Advocate tease?
And really, curiosity as a vice? Well why the hell did God give man a brain and intellect to begin with? Of course unbridled curiosity can have negative consequences - which is why we have stories like Pandora's Box (at least the gods in that story were upfront about the fact that they were giving the box to Pandora precisely because they knew she was going to open it and screw mankind) but it's like any other human attribute - it's manageable through moderation and careful consideration, you know, like using your brain to weigh potential benefits against potential harm before making a decision. The idea that we're supposed to bow down and worship a being that endows us with such abilities even though using them will only get us condemned to ever-lasting perdition is beyond sadistic.
Posted by: hje | September 17, 2009 4:27 PM
Re: "In any case, I'd like to point out the possible good things to come from science: computers, fusion, interstellar travel,"
Whoa! I missed that last one. Zefram Cochrane hasn't even be born yet! ; )
Technically, the Pioneers and Voyagers would count.
Posted by: natural cynic | September 17, 2009 4:27 PM
@47:
Ah, 'tis more subtle than that You are supposed to ask questions, but only the prescribed ones with the prescribed answers. Hence, catechism.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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September 17, 2009 4:30 PM
Walton, where do you draw the line? Does economics have a demonstrable practical value? How about sociology? Criminology? Anthropology? Archaeology? History? For that matter, what practical value does astronomy have? Or pure mathematics?
I think we can all admit that teaching or studying law is a complete waste of time. As Billy Shakespeare said "First, let's kill all the lawyers." I know Billy wrote this because I was taught it in an English literature class.
Posted by: John Sherman | September 17, 2009 4:31 PM
I have always loved the old monster movies from the 1930s to the 1950s, especially the old Universal one. I did not, however, agree with them philosophically. When I was 10 or 11, I was watching once such movie. At some point, one of the characters said, "There are some things Man was not meant to know." I remember getting very irritated and shouting out, "Yeah? Name one!" My Dad was also watching the movie and told me he was very proud of what I said.
I simply CANNOT imagine anyone seeing curiosity as a fault.
Posted by: Lyr
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September 17, 2009 4:31 PM
I think this is the first time I've ever heard curiosity described as a vice, and not something inherently part of human nature. This is very strange to me -- I can't imagine not wanting to find out more about the things that interest me!
Posted by: Ron Sullivan | September 17, 2009 4:32 PM
Griffiths of Duke: in the OP:"Late modern societies that are fundamentally shaped by the overwhelming presence of electronic media and the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life" ("Reason and the Reasons of Faith").
That's some of the sloppiest writing I've ever had the dubious privilege of reading. All that electronic media and pictures and sounds... That's not a matter of curiosity; that's just secondhand noise, taking someone's word for it, spectating at someone else's performance.
Choosing from it, chasing down a line of reasoning or an aesthetic source or a related topic, is the start of satisfying curiosity. Looking at the real unmediated world, turning over those rocks, that's more of satisfying curiosity. Finding out what other people know about it makes it better all the time, helps you see it better—IF you know how to accept others' word only conditionally, of course. Y'know, like science.
Oh, and understanding that all those appliances have Off buttons, that's a good idea too. Apparently Griffiths hasn't followed his curiosity quite that far.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 17, 2009 4:32 PM
@ hje #82,
Please note, I said possible. I also included fusion (meaning as a controlled energy source, not strictly solar). People are used to the modern wonders we use every day; I figured I'd spice it up a bit.
Hell, if Fish can use The Incredible Hulk as a bad thing, I figured I'd through in some fictional stuff too. Of course, I think he's totally wrong; the existence of a real Incredible Hulk would be awesome!
Posted by: JBlilie | September 17, 2009 4:33 PM
The thing they are really doing is saying that being curious makes you sub-human. As PZ pointed out, they got the completely wrong end of the stick. Which demonstrates what happens to you if you spend your time reading theological tomes. You become stupid and/or insensate.
I can't imagine trying to quell the curiosity of my 5-year-old! It's one fo the most wonderful things about him and helps me see the world freshly again. How else can one learn, for Hank's sake? Oh yeah, they don't want people to learn, they just want conformity.
They are being quite hypocritical if they use modern medicine or airplanes!
Right on.
If for no other reason, if the animals are distressed, it can very well invalidate the research!
I work in biotech and our animal study people have the very opposite of a cavalier attitude towards their charges. They ensure that the animals feel less pain and less distress than you or I do when we have a medical procedure. Admittedly, some animals are killed (painlessly) in the process of understanding how mammalian bodies interact with medical procedures. The flip side of it is: Would you prefer that these data were gathered by experimenting on your own child (or spouse/parent/sibling)? Or not gathered at all (stop progress in medicine)?
BTW: Everyone check your driving permits and verify that you are organ donors!
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 17, 2009 4:34 PM
@ me, #88,
That's "throw," not "through." Grr. What was I thinking? It's the cold meds, I tell you. The cold meds.
Posted by: charlied | September 17, 2009 4:34 PM
I believe it was Dorothy Parker who said something like "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." It seems that Stanley T. Barnacle wants to do is rope off a whole area of inquiry so that we don't realize that we're peering into an empty void.
Posted by: John Sherman | September 17, 2009 4:35 PM
Ironically, I have always been very curious about religion. Not as a possible personal belief system, of course, but certainly as a force of history and society.
Posted by: SC, OM | September 17, 2009 4:35 PM
I see what you did there.
Posted by: Richard Smith | September 17, 2009 4:36 PM
re: barnacle endowment
I'm sure that, like all his other barnacle buddies, Stanley's penis is at least four centimeters long.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 17, 2009 4:38 PM
It just so happens that Stanley Fish is a professor of law.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 17, 2009 4:39 PM
I know you all don't know me yet, but could you please do me a personal favor and stop talking about Stanley Fish's penis?
I think I just ran across one of the things we shouldn't be too curious about, and I'm feelin' queasy.
Posted by: becca | September 17, 2009 4:41 PM
in other words, he doesn't like Google.
Posted by: Walton | September 17, 2009 4:44 PM
'Tis Himself,
Yes. In fact, as you may recall, I recently defended the usefulness of economics on another thread.
Well, maybe I'm a hypocrite (or not bright enough to study a science subject; you decide). But that doesn't make me wrong. :-)
Posted by: SteveN | September 17, 2009 4:47 PM
Brilliant! Fish is such a strange person... I won't use the term "thinker," due to the content of his writings. Why does the NYT keep him on the payroll? They've dropped Ben Stein, but they keep Fish?
Posted by: What | September 17, 2009 4:47 PM
Yes, religion is nonsense and a waste of human resources. Yes, this questioning of curiosity is probably the obvious ploy to get people to accept religious fairy tales - as though that is the only other option. But the value of curiosity is something worth studying and unlimited curiosity should not be accepted as defacto "good".
Posted by: Deiloh | September 17, 2009 4:47 PM
I'm NO poet, I'm hoping someone more clever is inspired to show me up:
a barnacle shuns examination
it stays callow and safe
wave in friendly recip'ocation
the doors smack in place
seeking deep observation?
behold the shallow and base
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 17, 2009 4:50 PM
Walton's thesis here is one of hostility toward certain curiosities.
Posted by: Archaeopteryx
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September 17, 2009 4:53 PM
"Professor of nothing." Heh. Made my day.
Posted by: Louis | September 17, 2009 4:58 PM
Oh look a postmodernist/quasipostmodernist arguing that curiosity is a bad thing. Yay! Don't look at the man behind the curtain, there is no man there. [/sarcasm]
I have to say of all the annoying little habits that we humans have this decrying of curiosity is the one that gets my goat the most. No question is unaskable, no curiosity is wrong. I'm probably even more extremely curious than even the extremes Fish decries. Pare everything down. Take it all apart. Reduce it. Analyse it. Put it all back together. Find out what the tick is and what makes that tick tick!
It might make some people uncomfortable, some people don't like questions or being questioned but the only way to tell a nefarious fraud from the genuine article is to question. No stone left unturned please.
This curiosity and questioning doesn't have merely intellectual consequences and satisfactions. Relating this to other thread topics, curiosity, the desire and ability to question, coupled to reason is partly why we have (increasingly) better rights for formerly oppressed people....well to be more accurate: "people who were formerly oppressed more than they are now but are still pretty damned oppressed". Curiosity and reason aren't merely intellectual fun and frolics, they are the tools of liberty.
Anyone who tells you different is either trying to sell you a bridge somewhere or oppress you in some way. Anyone.
Louis
Posted by: nobuddy | September 17, 2009 4:58 PM
BfffaaaahahahahAHAHAHAH!
Who are 'people who live in the real world'? I'll take "Fact or Fantasy" for $200, Alex.
PS: Marvel comics predicted 9-11 (at least the part about bad guys flying jumbo jets into skyscrapers (and aside to that aside, technically, by NYC code the skyscrapers are supposed to withstand airplane impacts, and some buildings there have--the architect who designed the WTC is the engineering equivalent of a quack and is partially responsible for those lives losts, IMO, although I just found out that the momentum on 9-11 was roughly twice what he alleged the building could take)). I wonder if Stanley Fish would recommend Marvel Comics Editor in Chief Joe Quesada for Director of Homeland Security?
Posted by: The Pint | September 17, 2009 4:59 PM
@ Walton #70 - GAH!! Terry Eagleton. If I had a gun with one bullet and the choice to shoot either Fish or Eagleton, I'd shoot myself and get it over with. They're both intellectual wankers, as far as I'm concerned.
However, as a lit student/writer, I feel I must at least attempt to stick up for the need for funding the works of literary theorists, not to mention the creative works of writers, artists, musicians and the like. I agree that funding those like Fish and Eagleton who "blither on about a Marxist post-structuralist modernist interpretation of the work of Jane Austen" isn't the best way that money can be spent (at this point, I think that the work of Austen and the Bronte sisters have been analysed past death), but there is something to be said for examining the myriad ways literary works not only reflect the period in which they were written, but how they can reflect or be related to in the period in which they are being read. While the benefits of literary/artistic theory & criticism, and artistic works, may not be immediately apparent as, for example, cancer research, they do (ideally) contribute to a society's ability to examine itself more fully. While I've about had it up to my neck with reading the many, many differing literary interpretations of, say, Wuthering Heights, the fact that the work has inspired that much variation in criticism to begin with perhaps says something about how deeply the work affects those who've read it.
I will admit that the pretentiousness that often accompanies the work of literary theory and artistic endeavors doesn't help endear either to the community at large (and granted there is A LOT of subsidized crap art, like Fish, out there), but great art, like breakthrough scientific discoveries, depends a great deal on cash and as an artist I hate the idea that art can be viewed as "less useful" or "disposable" because it's benefits are not as easy to quantify as data gleaned from a science experiment.
What I guess I'm trying to say is that subjects like literary theory and other artistic endeavors are no less important to the overall health, if you will, of a society. They serve to stimulate our minds, our sense of aesthetics, our ability to look beyond ourselves and our immediate experiences, etc. Things like medical and scientific research are of course vitally important, but what's a healthy, nourished body without an equally healthy and stimulated mind? I'm not saying that art is MORE deserving of funding, and yes, the salary pulled down by wankers like Fish is astonishing, but I'd at least hope that the need to fund artistic endeavors isn't being completely discounted in your view.
Posted by: T. Bruce McNeely | September 17, 2009 5:02 PM
Stanley Fish can't get over the humiliation of the Sokal Hoax, which essentially discredited his field of study. Poor baby. So he has to lash out.
It's been 13 years now, Barney. Get some therapy and GTF over it!
Old joke, modified:
Grad student: Is a post-modernist a scholar?
Professor: Is a barnacle a ship?
Posted by: The Pint | September 17, 2009 5:05 PM
BTW, PZ, the next time I run into my lit theory/criticism prof, I'm giving her a copy of your post. She wasn't a big Fish fan either and she'll find your reasoning of why Fish is a barnacle to be hilarious.
Posted by: nobuddy | September 17, 2009 5:05 PM
I see your Invisible Hulk and raise you the Fantastic Four! Top that, o hater of curiosity and saver of cats!
Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 5:08 PM
Scientists have changed the world, and that always causes stresses on society, the kinds of stresses that writers like the ones he cites have explored.
One should also point out that most of the writers he cites were not speaking out against scientific inquiry; their messages were a bit more profound (at least the ones that had messages -- I doubt that The Incredible Hulk was ever trying to do more that tell an interesting story). I would like to say that Stanley Fish simply didn't understand his Intro to Lit class, but it seems more serious: the books' messages are usually pretty clear if you actually read them.
Posted by: Louis | September 17, 2009 5:10 PM
Well I'm going to agree with Walton and go even further.
In fact I have a "Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Students and Faculty of Humanities Departments in The World from Being a Burden to The Taxpayers or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public All". Here is the proposal, the proposal that is mine, it is my proposal, and without further ado I present the proposal which I have devised {ahem}:
Humanities departments of all stripes should be shut down, their funding given to scientists like me and the people working in those departments should be killed and barbecued to make cheap, healthy food for scientists. After all what use is a
babyhumanities graduate?*Thank you
Louis
(With apologies to Jonathon Swift and Anne Elk)
*Well, they do serve a mighty fine burger....What? I'm not even allowed one single McJob joke? Oh that's CRUEL!**
**Before the usual lack of humour candidates fall over themselves, if it isn't obvious I'm not even remotely serious, I pity you.***
***The McJob joke is not an instance of "ha ha only serious". Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Look! Look! Look what your whining has reduced me to! Disclaimers! For shame, for shame!
Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 5:10 PM
P.S. Is anyone else having trouble getting this weird, unreadable format for the comments on certain threads?
Posted by: Azkyroth | September 17, 2009 5:11 PM
Walton: while the tangible products of the humanities are less obvious and the associated establishments produce a large amount of garbage, they fundamentally represent humanity's attempts to understand and make intelligible the experience of being human and living. This is valuable to the development of culture and to a more thorough understanding of the subjective functioning of the human mind.
While you're mistaken here, you're getting better; this was worth engaging with.
Posted by: Sastra | September 17, 2009 5:12 PM
What #100 wrote:
I think there's a distinction between knowledge, and behavior. When you use the phrase "unlimited curiosity" you're smuggling in the same slight confusion which Fish trades on -- a confusion between the knowledge itself, and what we choose to do with the knowledge (or what we do in order to get it.) If a curiosity has 'no limits,' this implies that there's no reasonable restraint -- and that we're not just talking about finding something out anymore. Instead, the implication is that we lack concern for the consequences of our actions, and how they effect other people, or the world. We're causing harm. But just knowing something -- or wondering something -- still leaves our moral choices completely open. More open, in fact.
I think Fish wants us to have fewer choices. Not for himself, I'm sure -- he would always choose for good. But for other people.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 17, 2009 5:13 PM
There's an Invisible Hulk? That's way more awesome than an Incredible Hulk. Although an Invisible Hulk would also be Incredible.
I wonder what a marxist deconstruction of Fantastic Four would reveal? I must consult the Fish!
Posted by: DavidD | September 17, 2009 5:13 PM
PZ. You do a great disservice to barnacles in comparing them to Stanley Fish and his ilk. They are fascinating organisms, worthy of much of our own curiosity. In fact, Darwin spent 8 years studying barnacles and published what continues to be one of the most authoritative (three-volume) references on barnacle systematics.
In terms of curiosity, the difficulty for most barnacles is their habit of cementing to a solid substrate to live out their adult lives. Certainly, a lot of Christians cement themselves to immovable doctrine and this may explain their envy and fear of real curiosity.
But barnacles have two distinct lifestyles! When young (they are released from the adult as a swimming nauplius larvae) they swim about in search of food. As they swim and grow they shed their restrictive outer skeleton as many as 7 times before being ready to settle on a rock. Talk about curious! every ready-to-settle barnacle larva (they're called cyprid larvae at this stage) has to find an appropriate place to set up a permanent adult home. It has to be suitably distant from predators (those pesky sea stars, among others) and appropriately near other barnacles of the same species (the purpose of that record-setting penis, of course, being to "reach out and touch someone" with a suitable charge of barnacle sperm).
Barnacle youngsters are destined by evolutionary-selected genetics to stifle their own curiosity and attach themselves to immovable objects.
Barnacles don't put their offspring through curiosity-numbing schools, churches, sunday schools, etc. Curiosity-bashing Christian apologists, at some point in their lives, had some choices.
Posted by: Louis | September 17, 2009 5:14 PM
Chiroptera:
Yeah I'm getting it on the Aussie Laws thread. Reloading/closing + reopening browser/clearing cookies etc hasn't worked for me. No reason to suspect it would, I just try these things!
Louis
Posted by: natural cynic | September 17, 2009 5:14 PM
@60
In earlier times, these morons often did it to themselves: holy hermits, Essene communities, remote monasteries, LDS migration to Utah, etc. Unfortunately, there aren't enough empty places left.
And, anyway, some people like Brian seem to disrupt their isolation.
Posted by: R. Schauer | September 17, 2009 5:16 PM
God is like the Wizard of OZ and we are akin to Dorothy or actually Toto who exposes the Wizard.
Additionally, I can't believe these people have degrees in something...even divinity. WTF is a degree in divinity anyway? What, read one 2000 year old book and you know it all? W.T.Fuck!
So where does this leave us if we are to follow Mr. Fish or Griffiths? Trying to put the genie (curiosity) back in the bottle? Should we get rid of the MRIs, CAT scans, scanning electron microscopes, stethoscopes, blood transfusions, chemotherapy, Internet, PCs, etc, etc...where do we cut it off? Should we all become Luddites or Amish? Fish and Griffiths, what a couple of fucktards!
**rant**
Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 5:17 PM
Louis, #117:
I suspect that Scienceblogs introduced another change, and once someone gets around to checking their work they'll see it and fix it.
I hope.
Posted by: A. Noyd
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September 17, 2009 5:18 PM
Chiroptera (#112)
Yup. On "The curse of Eve" and "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution" the comments bleed into the right side advertising column and then stretch all the way across the page. The comments for "Time to activate Team Canada!" are just plain missing.
Posted by: Carl Buell | September 17, 2009 5:19 PM
As one who would have died from an infection in 1953 at the age of 6 without penicillin, I sure am glad Alexander Fleming had a bit of curiosity when he found that contaminated culture of staphylococci.
Posted by: llewelly | September 17, 2009 5:30 PM
Don't you know that gives the GOVERNMENT permission to CHOP UP YOUR BODY and build ZOMBIES out of your parts?Posted by: What | September 17, 2009 5:33 PM
Sastra #114
Knowledge is only obtained through behavior and those behaviors have consequences. Curiosity motivates behavior. I think it is well worth our while to consider the question raised about curiosity - independent of the religious nonsense of course.Posted by: Lynna | September 17, 2009 5:34 PM
Deadly Virtues
Humility, for example: "Only God can make a man" so we should just sit down and STFU and stop storing frozen embryos for women undergoing cancer treatment. And the ultimate example of humility for fundie Christian Women: set your needs aside and put your God, your church, your husband, and your children first -- until one day you reach to set yourself aside and find your hands are empty.
Saving Vices
Sloth, (lollyagagging) for example: To make the best use of time, squander it. Squander it within reason of course; neurology tells us that insights often come when the mind is focused on a problem for a length of time, and then released, let go to wander.
Posted by: Gregg | September 17, 2009 5:35 PM
Look at his credentials: the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University.
I cannot imagine how someone who appears to be a teacher would have such harsh words on the very characteristic that provides students.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | September 17, 2009 5:35 PM
The criticism of curiosity may be wrong, but it sure isn't postmodern. By the way, most of the strictures on curiosities one encounters in old books are not blanket condemnations of wanting to know. They are more in the line of old idea of nothing in excess, which is central to Aristotle's ethical philosophy, the system adopted by most Christian sects. But Aristotle also wrote, "Man by nature desires to know." (Book alpha, Metaphysics)
In fact, everybody wants to limit curiosity, including, certainly, many of the posters on this site who emit high pitched shrieks like a bunch of scandalized maiden ladies when they encounter a point of view different from their own. (Actually I'm thinking of how the transformed Donald Sutherland sounded in the first remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers when he encountered somebody who hadn't been turned into one of the pod people. Like him, you guys positively squeak when your rather puritanical sensibilities are offended.)
If you think about, a lot of what one learns in a classroom is what counts as legitimate and what counts as illegitimate curiosity. That's not a criticism. Without such prohibitions on what kind of questions are legitimate, I don't see how you maintain a discipline. Kids have to learn, for example, that the many questions that begin with "why" do not belong in a biology class. And of course most of us have problems with that form of curiosity we call pedantry.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 5:36 PM
If some smart biologist could figure out an inexpensive, non-toxic anti-foul coating that would keep them from growing all over everything submerged, he would become rich. Filthy rich.
I recall long ago a buddy of mine showing me an example of a low level electrified hull.
alternate metals in the hull generating a very low-level electrical field.
I think the only thing that grew on it over a 6 month period was a tiny bit of algae.
I haven't a clue why that never took off.
Posted by: AnneH | September 17, 2009 5:36 PM
There has been some research demonstrating that learning new things can delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070123182024.htm
To put it simply, satisfying curious urges is good for the brain.
Posted by: MikeM | September 17, 2009 5:39 PM
I gotta say, this certainly explains a lot of Christians I've met.
Posted by: Alexander | September 17, 2009 5:43 PM
@111, indeed, you are right. we should endorse this "kind" of ingenious minds that was targeted so cruelly by Alan Sokal.
Just for you: it is not against human sciences, it is against plain stupidity. It is really not so difficult to tell them apart.
Posted by: What | September 17, 2009 5:47 PM
Jim #127
Well said.
Transformed Donald Sutherland with Tourette's Syndrome.
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | September 17, 2009 5:49 PM
Barnacle Stan, the sessile man,
Afraid to even look;
A timid fool, his tidal pool
An ancient holy book.
Between its pages, stuck for ages,
Keeping safe from Hell,
For fear of fire, he'll ne'er inquire,
But stay inside his shell.
Barnacle Stan, he hatched a plan;
The gist of it was this:
He'd stay inside, forever hide,
Cos ignorance is bliss;
He'd sometimes write, with great delight
About his lovely view--
And tell us we should be so free...
I'm not convinced. Are you?
Posted by: Christ Davis | September 17, 2009 5:51 PM
Louis @111: Here is the proposal, the proposal that is mine, it is my proposal, and without further ado I present the proposal which I have devised {ahem}:
You should also acknowledge Mojo Jojo, who you seem to have taken elocution tips from.
Posted by: photon | September 17, 2009 5:52 PM
Isn't that just one of the many names of god?
Blasphemer! Invisible Hulk SMASH!
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 17, 2009 5:57 PM
Galactus is imperialism, and the Silver Surfer represents those scientists and intellectuals who hope to save themselves by selling out to the war machine, while the Fantastic Four are scientists in service of all humanity. When the Silver Surfer joins the side of the people, Galactus is repelled but not defeated; Stan Lee is reminding us of the necessity of permanent revolution.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 5:57 PM
It just so happens that Stanley Fish is a professor of law.
interestingly, so is Phillip Johnson...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson
reminds me of a bad joke...
A man is walking along the beach one day, and finds a bottle with a genie in it!
The genie offers him 3 wishes, but with a twist:
Every wish he requests will also be granted double to all lawyers, everywhere.
"Hmm, the man thinks. I'll have to consider this carefully."
"For my first wish, I want a red Ferarri with all the trimmings!"
*bing*
"done." Says the genie.
*bing, bing*
"now all lawyers have 2 of that same car too."
"Ok, I can live with that."
"Next, I want a beautiful woman to ride in the car with me!"
*bing*... *bing, bing*
"Ok, now for the last wish... I want to donate one of my lungs to science."
...
Posted by: Sastra | September 17, 2009 5:58 PM
What #124 wrote:
Well, I suppose it only makes sense to be curious about the question raised about curiosity -- if we draw a line on whether it's proper to ask this question, then we're refuting ourselves. But I think questions about the limits of curiosity are always going to reduce to questions about the limits of our behaviors. The more informed we are, the better choices we can make.
Can you think of something it is immoral to know about per se -- which involves no harmful behavior?
Posted by: The Pint | September 17, 2009 6:00 PM
@ Louis #111
I beg your pardon, but those of us studying the humanities would make AWFUL food, not even remotely healthy. Have you seen a humanities prof or student lately? The quality of meat is questionable at best. We're either a bit stringy from subsisting on a heavy diet of cheap instant ramen soup, coffee and cigarettes (can't debate Marxist theory without smoking you know!) or soft from not getting much exercise (the mind is racing but the body, not so much).
If you science types want to grind up a department to save money and provide a hefty BBQ, may I suggest the athletics division? They're probably nice and tender from all that stretching and after workout massages.
Posted by: Louis | September 17, 2009 6:01 PM
@ Icthyic # 128:
You wonder why the electric hull never took off? Slightly electrified hull = sex magnet for electric eels and other charge loving fish. 'Tis obvious. It was humped to death by horny sparking fish.
See, if you just bring these problems to me, I'll sort them out for you.
@ Christ Davis # 134:
I had to google Mojo Jojo. Anne Elk is the Monty Python character that does that particular "this is my theory, the theory that is mine..." type thing. It predates Mojo Jojo, so I think I got the original reference in correctly ;-)
Louis
Posted by: amphiox | September 17, 2009 6:02 PM
A few thoughts:
Without curiosity we wouldn't be back in the caves. We'd never have dared to go into them. We'd have stayed in the trees and probably been wiped out by the ancestors of the chimpanzees.
There is no practical danger in knowledge of any kind. It's just patterns of electrical activity in your brain. It'll do nothing more than amuse you until you actually apply to something.
The practical application of knowledge never harms the specific individual (or group) who applies said knowledge. Whenever harm does accrue it is always due to insufficient knowledge (e.g. knowledge of a process but ignorance of its consequences, or failure to recognize a confounding factor). Thus harm is the fault of not enough curiosity - one decides that I know enough to act on what I know now, I don't need to learn any more, I don't need to wait.
(Often it is necessary to act with incomplete knowledge and take your chances, of course. But this has nothing to do with curiosity per se, and everything to do with the fact sometimes, reality sucks)
Where curiosity can be detrimental is in the process of acquiring knowledge, because the activities necessary to obtain knowledge can frequently carry certain risks. Just ask Robert Scott. Basically you have C=curiosity, R=recklessness, and if CR>D where D is a certain danger threshold that varies depending on the specifics of the situation, then this becomes a bad thing. However, one can have a very high C and remain safe by keeping R low.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 6:03 PM
(Actually I'm thinking of how the transformed Donald Sutherland sounded in the first remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers when he encountered somebody who hadn't been turned into one of the pod people. Like him, you guys positively squeak when your rather puritanical sensibilities are offended.)
holy fuck!
puritanical sensibilities???
boy have you fucked up reading this place.
*points finger and screams*
Posted by: ckitching | September 17, 2009 6:03 PM
Without curiosity, we would not have computers.
Without curiosity, we would not have electronics.
Without curiosity, we would not have telecommunication.
Without curiosity, we would not have electricity.
Without curiosity, we would not have mechanized transportation.
Without curiosity, we would not have machines.
Without curiosity, we would not have modern agriculture.
Without curiosity, we would not have ancient agriculture.
Without curiosity, we would not have books.
Without curiosity, we would not have tools.
Without curiosity, we would not have adaptability.
Without curiosity, we would not have medical science. And judging by Mr Fish's apparent age in the photo, he'd almost certainly have died to something easily treatable today, as would most of the rest of us.
Therefore, without curiosity, nearly all of us would be dead (including me).
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not ready to go back to a hunter/gatherer society. I think that Mr Fish should put his money where his mouth is, and forgo all the benefits that curiosity has produced, and live the simple 5th century life he seems to be promoting. The rest of us can continue to live in and benefit from the fruits of the 21st century curiosity.
Posted by: Lynna | September 17, 2009 6:04 PM
So many things wrong with that, one hardly knows where to begin.
1) Distracting men from the study and worship of God... Okay, if God made everything, then studying anything is studying God. Or, if God does not exist (especially not the in the versions offered up by religious leaders), then the more people distracted from this pointless exercise, the better. Or, moderation in everything, including the time spent worshipping your God -- basically, even God does not want your family to starve, nor your children to go uneducated while you put callouses on your knees or your forehead.
2) "an inferior love" -- whoo, boy, that's a big assumption there. No wonder Augustine had trouble with the female sex. Augustine copped to an "insatiable desire" and at the same time thought he had to give up marriage and sex in order to be the best christian he could be. So, no, not a could source of advice on love of any kind.
3) "No room left for other considerations" .... um, way to underestimate the human mind. Most of us have plenty of room left for other considerations, no matter how much crap we are forced to contemplate on a daily basis. One could be thoroughly involved in secular activities, curiously seeking to know the ways of the giant squid, and still have plenty of brain power leftover for other pursuits.
4) "These men (and women) fail to register the pain of animals subjected to experiments in the name of knowledge." I laughed out loud when I read that. No transition, no bridge over the logic gap -- where was the editor! And the nastiness of assuming that animal torture derives from the absence of God in the lab! Whoa, read the bible, buddy. And then there's the unsupported and unsupportable claim that persons intelligent enough to be in a research lab are not intelligent enough to provide good care for the animals. Or maybe we should just let God and his minions torture animals for no reason at all, that would be better than using animals to increase our knowledge. Right.
Posted by: Azkyroth | September 17, 2009 6:05 PM
Jim, you were asked a question. Perhaps you should answer it and quit wasting our time with the waffly wankery?
Posted by: Louis | September 17, 2009 6:05 PM
@ The Pint # 139:
You make a good point, in part at least. However, well seasoned, smoked meat cured with alcohol is very flavoursome. Whilst it might not be as firm and juicy as the meat from an athletics dept, it would possibly have that soft, spongy quality that foie gras develops.
So thanks for adding the idea about the athletes making better steaks, but I think the "kill and eat the humanities bods" still stands, I just need to change the recipe....
Mmmmmmm pate de historian....{drools}
Louis
Posted by: FierceGeekChick | September 17, 2009 6:06 PM
I don't remember the Hulk being part of the Pandora myth. Or was Pandora a Marvel character that I'm forgetting about?
Posted by: Falyne, FCD | September 17, 2009 6:06 PM
AWESOME.
Posted by: What | September 17, 2009 6:09 PM
Sastra
I don't understand your question. The first part (before the -) is almost understandable except that it appears to address nothing that I wrote. I did not address immorality although I can see how you may have thought otherwise. You may have misunderstood what I meant by "good". Perhaps you can clarify your question a bit and I will get back to you much later today.
Posted by: davep | September 17, 2009 6:27 PM
Weird. It looks like PZ Myers misunderstood what Fish was trying to get across.
Fish is describing what the "other side" says. That doesn't establish that he approves of what they say.
Anyway, at the end, he, albeit hesitantly, agrees that curiosity is a good thing.
"In short, curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom — is their God. The question, posed by thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine to Newman to Griffiths, is whether this is the God — the God, ultimately, of self — we want to worship. Given the evidence, including Chairman Leach’s address, the answer would seem to be yes."
Posted by: D | September 17, 2009 6:28 PM
Chimpanzees... fire hose... bananas at the top of a ladder... I can't quite make the connection, but neither can I get the image out of my head!
Dr. Myers, you have such a way with words! This was a rollicking good read, and thank you for diminishing the shadow cast by Barnacle Man's ponderous hypocrisy.
Yeah, umm... I'm gonna go and say that this is true evil here. Maybe not the only kind, but definitely evil. Brave, heroic, intelligent, and above all curious humans defied the church and its clergy of barnacles, risking life and limb in a way we cannot truly appreciate today, just to make it possible for us to live better lives by standing on their shoulders. And this noisy buffoon, this disgusting oaf, this slobbering imbecile, this sorry excuse for a homo sapiens would throw it all away? He would rather we grub for insects in the desert?
If he wishes to do so, he's welcome to it. There's plenty of desert about! But I'll thank him not to defile what precious civilization we've managed to raise so far with his filthy, ignorant, unworthy hands. He is an ingrate, and the purposes to which he has put our lovely, lovely technology (the spread of this intellectual anti-food) are the worst kind of abuses I can imagine - with the possible exception of actually bringing back the primitive drudgery for which he so piously pines away.
Shorter Barnacle Man: "Don't think, don't innovate, don't investigate, don't try to make the world a better place - just take your God-smack and procreate unthinkingly until you die." Is it really too much to ask that this guy practice what he preach and live in the wilderness away from us civilized folk? (No, bad D! Freedom means the freedom to be a nasty little hypocrite, too... so fine. Ignore him and get on with your life, D!) Still makes me angry, though.
Posted by: Sastra | September 17, 2009 6:37 PM
What #149 wrote:
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I think Fish's concern about the dangers of 'unlimited curiosity' really breaks down into two different concerns: one having to do with our knowing too much, and one having to do with our causing harm -- motivated, perhaps, by curiosity, but the curiosity itself is not the problem. When he gives examples, he blurs that distinction.
I suppose I was asking you the same question Azkyroth is asking Jim: What are the things we should not know?
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | September 17, 2009 6:37 PM
That is, actually, a classic Shakespeare quotemine.
Source
OK, I've nitpicked, I'm content, please proceed.
Usually I get annoyed by Pushkin quotemines.
Posted by: natural cynic | September 17, 2009 6:38 PM
"There are some things Man was not meant to know."
[cribbing a few from the internetz]
The exact position and speed of an electron.
What goes on inside a black hole.
What's in all the other boxes at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark
What cats do when we are not home.
Why bacon tastes soooo gooood.
“What would it look like if I crossed a hairless dog with a gremlin?
Who would win a fight, Superman or Jesus?
How hard parenting is [until you're already stuck]
How is it possible to know that "There are some things Man was not meant to know."
Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 17, 2009 6:42 PM
I don't think the Muslims bought that lame defense after he quoted a Byzantine emperor:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"
He was just quoting!
To show how wrong he was some Muslims reacted violently and also issued a fatwā to kill the Pope.
Posted by: erh | September 17, 2009 6:42 PM
Mostly off topic, but there's a pretty large population of barnacles in Fargo. Yeah it's not MN, but if you are really wanting to see them, close enough. NDSU's Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering maintains large numbers for testing antifouling and fouling-release hull paints.
And when it comes time to reproduce, believe me, barnacles are plenty curious.
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | September 17, 2009 6:44 PM
Don't move
Don't talk out of time
Don't think
Don't worry
Everything's just fine
Just fine
Don't grab
Don't clutch
Don't hope for too much
Don't breathe
Don't achieve
Or grieve without leave
Don't check
Just balance on the fence
Don't answer
Don't ask
Don't try and make sense
Numb
Posted by: Itspiningforthefjords
|
September 17, 2009 6:45 PM
I join my voice to the chorus that finds your simile utterly revolting, and DEMAND an apology to barnacles everywhere. They have earned FAR better than this.
Why not compare him to Justice Scalia? There's a living creature - alleged - that shows no sign of curiosity whatsoever, is as supremely arrogant, uses absurd quotes to bolster fossilized nonsense, and also shyly extends feathery appenages with which to gather nutrients.
Posted by: Jambe | September 17, 2009 6:47 PM
PZ, this man is hardly worth the words you devoted to him. He thinks curiosity is a vice; clearly the man is mad.
Posted by: Qwerty | September 17, 2009 6:53 PM
He forgot to mention OZ as one of his fictional works. Oh, but Dorothy et al are curious about what exactly is behind that curtain. Why it's a human! And he can help her get back to Kansas plus et al all they need. (Though, why she wants to get back to that bland black and white existence is another thing to be curious about.)
So, it's human to be curious and to be a puffed up know-it-all like the Wizard and/or Stanley the Barnacle.
Posted by: H.H. | September 17, 2009 6:56 PM
davep wrote:
Actually, I think it is you who is reading that wrong. First, the fact that Fish is saying that sating curiosity is a replacement for worshiping god is absurd, but it indicates where his sympathies lie. He's equating the pursuit of knowledge with hubris--the sin that got Adam expelled from Paradise.He's clearly saying that curiosity is a bad thing. He ends by asking if this is the sort of "dark path" society wishes to walk down, and then ruefully concludes that "yes, it is." But don't mistake that for approval, though. It's like a preacher saying "society's god is materialism. Is that the god we want to worship? Any trip to the mall should provide evidence that the answer would seem to be yes." He means that "yes" to sound like an ominous warning.
Posted by: semiprometheus
|
September 17, 2009 7:09 PM
As a side note, Fish's fictional examples leave something to be desired:
Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein": The true "sin" was Frankenstein rejecting and abandoning his creature.
H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau": Despite what your English teacher told you, this is really a parable about God creating bestial but thinking beings, and oppressing them with a simplistic Law that denies their bestial nature.
Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde": The "serum" is merely a MacGuffin to explore a concept, that man has cruel and bestial urges restrained by reason and social pressure.
Pandora: Like the rest of the Prometheus myth, the real point of this story is that the gods are jerks.
Incredible Hulk: In canon, Bruce Banner's had his accident while trying to save a hapless youth who wandered into the test area. Also, the Hulk's real problem is anger management, not to mention an army of idiots who don't realize hurting him makes him stronger.
(I haven't read "Dr. Faustus", so I've no idea if Marlowe's text supports an interpretation aside from the superficial.)
Posted by: The Pint | September 17, 2009 7:14 PM
@ Louis #139
Damn. You've got a point there, and foie is tasty tasty. I could have played to type and been yet another Asian with an engineering degree but nooooo.... I had to be the black sheep in the family and major in the humanities, only to end up on the summer BBQ menu for the science department.
Would it be too little too late to plead solidarity between fellow intellectuals of both the science and humanities persuasions against the common (and as you've admitted, tender steak) enemy of jocks who quite probably pick on science and art geeks indiscriminately? Besides, anyone who majors in gym really deserves to get eaten anyway.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | September 17, 2009 7:16 PM
One common thread that I have found in the writings of scientists and science writers concerns the nature of science and how people relate to it.
With respect to those who learn and practice it and once in a great while become a household word the observation is that a very large number of working scientists are young. In their twenties and thirties, roughly. They are highly social and a major part of their socializing relates to science; their own or a colleague's or in general. To varying degrees they display evidence of great mental engagement with the world and mental agility, dedication to understanding, discipline in study, experiment and conclusion, willingness to accept criticism and corrective suggestions not to mention a deep curiosity about most everything.
The fruit of this labor, for many a work of deep passion, practiced by uncountable young scientists since the Industrial Revolution is in evidence everywhere. Virtually everything we do everyday is aided and enhanced by the technology that just falls right out of the science. A great lesson might be taught if a sudden time warp took us all back to some previous era totally lacking of the basics of modern life. For the average American I'd guess colonial Jamestown would be far enough back.
The only difference between now and then (well, ignoring the slow crawl of civilization) is the result of scientists who were often young, quick and good natured, counting many friends and mentors, and gifted with the ability to look deep into some facet of nature and tease out another morsel of knowledge. Only rarely will one of them do something of profound moment but the sum total of the works done together compose the data base upon which we design, build and live in the world of the present. And this because some kid got interested in some silly damn thing like . . . fill in the blank.
Curiosity? Hell yeah!! It's motivational, inspirational, challenging and always potentially profitable. And the profit eventually gets spread widely.
Who wouldn't want a world full of lots and lots of curious people like this?
Posted by: Blake Stacey | September 17, 2009 7:19 PM
WTF? I've read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. What warning was I supposed to get out of it? "When the body you have stitched together from corpses is ready to re-animate, don't take a nap in the next room." OK, and what else?
I've never understood the idea which runs through all these invocations of Frankenstein and its ilk, the claim that the solution to dangerous knowledge is blissful ignorance. Shouldn't we at least consider the possibility that the antidote to dangerous knowledge is not ignorance, but wisdom? This alternative has plenty of representation in fiction, too — some of the classics of the science-fiction genre have taken up this theme.
Posted by: Knight of L-sama | September 17, 2009 7:24 PM
Strange Gods @136
Does this reading account for the fact that Galactus (at least in 616) is one of the primal forces of the Marvel Universe and like Infinity/Eternity and Death/Oblivion necessary to the continued existence of reality.
As for the main article all I can say is... Ugh. Such close-minded, blinkered thinking cowardly and hypocritical given advanatages of modern technology and scientific thought that we make use of daily.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 7:24 PM
What warning was I supposed to get out of it?
It's like what your mom used to tell you when you woke up in the morning:
"Clean up this mess, or else!"
I always took the theme to be taking responsibility for cleaning up the messes we make, rather than turning our back on them and forcing the villagers to burn down our house with torches.
Posted by: AJ Milne | September 17, 2009 7:26 PM
Ohhhh...
Man, that is a good point, actually...
And y'know, the couch in the den next to basement lab prolly really isn't such a great place for a snooze, anyway...
(/Heads upstairs.)
Posted by: Blake Stacey | September 17, 2009 7:28 PM
semiprometheus:
Borges once wrote that Marlowe was "clearly in sympathy" with Faustus (see, I cited a Dead White Guy, so my statement is automagically true!). Depending on the reader or the performance, I suspect there's plenty of room for a contra-Fishian interpretation. Marlowe wouldn't be the only author to have written a story of damnation which seems irresistibly to turn towards "the devil's party". . . .
Posted by: Blake Stacey | September 17, 2009 7:38 PM
Y'know, I'm starting to like the idea of playing the Stanley Fish game. For any chosen work of fiction, choose the moral we ignore at our peril:
Posted by: Jamie | September 17, 2009 7:41 PM
The thing is that curiosity leads us to the truth, otherwise we'd just accept everything we're told.
If someone is killed, we shouldn't investigate, that's being curious! Seeking knowledge is bad, we'll just assume God-did-it. (It works both ways!)
Posted by: IaMoL | September 17, 2009 7:44 PM
That as the modern Prometheus, your creation would simply kill you versus having your liver spontaneously regenerate to feed the birdies daily.I sometimes confuse this pushing a dead horse up a hill where it will see it's shadow.
Posted by: debunk | September 17, 2009 7:44 PM
If adam and eve had no knowledge of good and evil you can't blame them for not obeying this god. Blaming this on curiosity is ludicrous.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | September 17, 2009 7:48 PM
Alternatively:
Posted by: Kevin | September 17, 2009 7:52 PM
A post modernist is someone who fancied himself an intellectual until some smart girl laughed at the size of his intellect. So he bought a strap on.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 7:54 PM
> but since you are such a lying sack of shit I have decided to send it - to the police and fbi as well!
yes, please do, Dennis.
Along with a photograph of yourself and your full name and address, so they can properly reward you for doing your duty as a good Canadian citizen.
Posted by: Randomfactor | September 17, 2009 7:58 PM
Isn't the argument somewhat negated by not having been painfully copied onto parchment by tonsured monks, but instead translated into those eeeevil pixels?
Posted by: Azkyroth | September 17, 2009 8:00 PM
Concerns about corrosion would be my guess.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 8:03 PM
Concerns about corrosion would be my guess.
...and mineralization, too, now that I think about it.
still, it would have seemed easier to deal with than scraping barnacles (having done that myself).
Posted by: Eric R | September 17, 2009 8:04 PM
Why is he hating on Pandora? It satisfies my musical curiosities. But I guess that's a bad thing.
Posted by: Louis | September 17, 2009 8:04 PM
@ The Pint # 163 (or whatever it will be when Markuze's vomit has been cleaned up):
I have a different proposed target: Engineers and Mathematicians.
Never liked 'em.
Louis
Posted by: AJ Milne | September 17, 2009 8:12 PM
Morals I've learned from fiction:
Lord of the Rings--If the ring you were planning on wearing this eve turns out to be a deadly, seductive, conniving font of pure evil which at every turn attempts to devour your will and make you a wraithlike thrall of its dread lord, seriously, just go with the necklace, babe.
(And y'know, it's more your colour anyway...)
Wayne's World--Judge not shock rockers, for what do ye really know of their lives?... And contrary to what you might have expected, Alice Cooper is quite the historian.
Tootsie--some people really just don't have the figure for a dress.
Godfather III--never go into business with the church or the mob... Also, don't watch Godfather III.
Airplane--the white phone is for courtesy calls only.
Poltergeist--Actually, going with a well-maintained--if smaller--rental property--as opposed to that nice, big fixer-upper--sometimes isn't such a bad option.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 8:16 PM
the white phone is for courtesy calls only.
...and if someone asks if you've ever watched gladiator movies, just say no.
Posted by: Michael | September 17, 2009 8:25 PM
Griffiths' book is here: http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-Appetite-Theological-Paul-Griffiths/dp/0813216869
From the publisher's description:
"Christian thinkers have traditionally distinguished between good and bad forms of the appetite for knowledge, calling the good "studiousness" and the bad "curiosity." The former is aimed at joyful contemplation of what can be known as gift given; the latter seeks ownership and control of what can be known as property for the taking. Paul J. Griffiths's Intellectual Appetite offers an extended study of the difference between the two, with special attention to the question of ownership: What is it like to think of yourself as the owner of what you know, and how might it be different to think of what you know as a gift given you?"
Posted by: Louis | September 17, 2009 8:30 PM
Icthyic:
Still going with the humped by electric fish hypothesis. It fits well with the bacon wrapped biblical masturbation aid for lesbians theme of the place.
Honestly. You people have no sense of the aesthetic. Tchoh.
Louis
Posted by: Jim Harrison | September 17, 2009 8:33 PM
Atomic weapons, PCBs, heroin, mind control technologies, tetraethyl lead, the internal combustion engine, lie detectors, tasteless tomatoes, etc.
I didn't think it was my responsibility to answer a question so screamingly obvious. (and, no, I'm not presuming that all the items I mentioned were better off not invented, just I don't know that they were a net benefit, which is a very different thing to say.)
"Sciences marches on. Why shouldn't it march back?" -Arthur Rimbaud. And before you have a coronary, ask yourself why even entertaining such a notion is a deadly heresy hereabouts and, on the evidence, that anybody who entertains any such thought, no matter how hypothetically, will be denounced by the local Donald Sutherland sound alikes as either a cartoon Postmodernist or a cartoon fundamentalist.
Doesn't it get a might close there in your phone booth?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
September 17, 2009 8:37 PM
Louis #186
What are you talking about? I listened to Richard Harris sing "MacArthur Park" just last month and didn't vomit once.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | September 17, 2009 8:53 PM
Discovering the various and often subtle harms done by pollutants is itself an act of science, i.e., an expression of curiosity. The way out is going forward, not back.
Posted by: El Guerrero del Interfaz
|
September 17, 2009 8:55 PM
This guy sure sounds weird to me.
I mean, all this talk about contemplation and ownership of knowledge. Is he alien or something? Because for me the joys of knowledge are 2 and none of his: discovery and sharing.
Or am I the alien?
Posted by: Lindsay | September 17, 2009 8:57 PM
But WAIT! I would certainly label barnacles as curious creatures... they spend up to 40% of their time exploring their surroundings with their penis (which, btw, they hold the record for highest penis length to body length ratio of any animal).
I'd pick a different sessile invertebrate to name-call!
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 17, 2009 9:00 PM
I'm afraid not. I didn't read that far into the Wikipedia article. :)
If I were Derrida I could still bullshit my way out of this corner.
Posted by: Louis | September 17, 2009 9:01 PM
Jim,
I think you were asked about knowledge, not products of applied knowledge, but whatever, that's not my problem. It's yours and whomsoever you were discussing it with.
Just out of curiosity though, how do you know those things are not necessarily a net benefit?
More importantly, how would one know before these applications were invented that the knowledge that lead to their invention was potentially dangerous?
Louis
P.S. Your/Rimbaud's question isn't heresy as far as I'm concerned. All I ask is how will we now when we have reached a point in scientific (really technological judging by your chosen examples) advancement where whatever is over the next hill is worse than what we already have?
Posted by: MadScientist | September 17, 2009 9:03 PM
Fish a Barnacle? I need to revise my phylogenetic tree.
Anyway, Fish isn't anywhere near as interesting as a barnacle; I doubt he's even half as intelligent as a barnacle.
Posted by: Susannah | September 17, 2009 9:07 PM
So I guess you're going to join us this Sunday in Rock Flipping Day.Posted by: raven | September 17, 2009 9:13 PM
Doesn't it get a might close there in your phone booth?Well Jim, maybe because people who attack science are invariably crazy morons. To take just one current example, you are using a powerful computer that would have cost millions 3 decades ago hooked up to the internet, to ask a serious question, "Is science a benefit to mankind?"
Well, really, no one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to participate in 21st century Hi Tech society. You could always do an Amish thing and hang out with no electricity and lots of horses. A few non-Amish in the wilds of Oregon, Idaho, or Alaska do exactly that.
If that is too sciency for you, you can always head on back to the stone age or subsistence agriculture. It is a free country. Feel free to walk your talk.
Posted by: Anri | September 17, 2009 9:28 PM
Hey there, Jim H!
Tell you what, make it easier for all of us. Please list the three areas of scientific research that will show us the least net benefit over the next 100 years.
Compare and contrast with those that show the same over the next 1000 years.
Please defend your selections and show you work.
Thanks in advance.
Posted by: amphiox | September 17, 2009 9:30 PM
Jim #186:
That is a very unconvincing list. In every single one of your examples, the harm caused by the application results from the use of that application with incomplete knowledge - the negative consequences were unforeseen or insufficienty anticipated. The harm is each of those cases is therefore caused by a lack of sufficient curiosity. And the harm in all those cases was discovered because we continued to be curious and continued to investigate the effects of those applications.
Posted by: JefFlyingV, Travelin' Shoes | September 17, 2009 9:32 PM
Raven, there are also Amish communities in Indiana, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Posted by: Azkyroth | September 17, 2009 9:35 PM
Having a hole eaten in the hull in the mid-Atlantic wouldn't be.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 17, 2009 9:39 PM
C'mon now, it's simply not fair to mock Stanley Fish for lauding the great tradition of aggressive ignorance in historic Christianism.
After all, the real Stanley Fish is, even as we point at laugh at the words below his name, gagged and bound in the back of Alan Sokal's closet, wishing he'd bought that identity theft insurance policy.
Posted by: Azkyroth | September 17, 2009 9:39 PM
Pretentious pseudointellectual masturbation is tiresome. So is concern trolling.
Grow up.
Posted by: A. Noyd
|
September 17, 2009 9:46 PM
Jim Harrison (#186)
The only heresy around here is in expecting everyone to take unsupported arguments seriously. But I suppose blithering about how your every utterance sends us reeling towards the fainting couches might distract one or two of us from the fact that you can't address the gaping flaws being revealed in your position.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | September 17, 2009 9:47 PM
Jim, if you toss out the A-bombs and lousy tomatoes what you are left with are tools, useful things that reside in the toolbox of human inquiry. I suppose you have some sort of toolbox at home containing a hammer, couple of screwdrivers, some open end wrenches and some pliers that'll pinch your fingers if you hold them wrong. If you attempt a job and fail, do you blame your tools?
*the A-bombs occupy a class of one and the poor produce is . . . I just don't know. But I'd recognize them at the market and not buy them*
Posted by: Don | September 17, 2009 9:50 PM
It's funny; Fish is trying to criticize curiosity, but the language he uses sounds almost like praise to me. A few simple changes would do it.
a being with no limits on what he can conceive, a being whose intellect could, in time, comprehend anything and everything. Such a being would imagine himself, God-like, standing to the side of the universe and, armed only with the power of his mind, mastering its intricacies..."they are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world; so great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue."
Makes me want to go out and do some science.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 17, 2009 10:12 PM
... Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus," Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," H.G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (not to mention the myth of Pandora and the Incredible Hulk).
Funny he doesn't mention the story of Thomas Aquinas's mentor Albertus Magnus of Koln, who worked for 30 years to construct a Brazen Head which answered questions on all subjects (until destroyed by little Tommy having another one of his episodes).
Posted by: Keanus
|
September 17, 2009 10:27 PM
I'm late to comment—it's been a busy day—but neither Fish, Griffiths, nor Newman have even an elemental understanding of science. They are the personification of the "other culture" of C. P. Snow's Two Cultures. How ones such as they can consider themselves educated is beyond me. They only make fools of themselves with such pronouncements. (Aquinas and Augustine I can understand; they died long before science manifested itself in any formal sense. But the others have lived long after the Copernicus, Brahe, Hooke and all the rest, and after the Enlightenment. They have no excuse for such a pinched view of human kind's culture.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 10:29 PM
tasteless tomatoes, etc.
bah. tasteless tomatoes have fuck all to do with technology.
you want tasty tomatoes? get ones grown WITH technology like hydroponics in a giant air conditioned greenhouse.
thems good eatin.
bottom line:
Jim's a moron.
Posted by: Ichthyic | September 17, 2009 10:31 PM
just I don't know that they were a net benefit
Jim sez, after telling us how "screaming obvious" it was..
*rolleyes*
Posted by: aratina cage
|
September 17, 2009 10:43 PM
*finishes reading #174 by Blake Stacey*
*swoon*Posted by: Danno Davis | September 17, 2009 10:44 PM
PZ, this was one of the best things I've read in a long time:
"There is a hallowed tradition in certain scholarly circles of simply quoting famous dead white guys who agree with you in order to lend your words some authority that reason cannot bestow on them..."
You completely made my night.
Now, forgive me for wanting to have my cake and eat it too, butum... PZ, as difficult as it is to admit, I can honestly say that I agree with damn near every opinion that you voice. My only question is, would publishing all of your ideas about science, the cosmos, accommodationism, etc. preclude you from carrying on with this blog? Is it the only thing stopping you?
Okay, my sycophantic outburst is complete.
Posted by: Planetfan | September 17, 2009 10:44 PM
I have to say. Thank you, PZ, thank you very much for writing pieces like this. They are doses of sanity to the religiously caged, vindications for the incurably curious--those who couldn't fit in with our endlessly hymn singing, cliché touting, thought deferring, church-going fellows.
Posted by: Roameo | September 17, 2009 11:31 PM
I'm not convinced, for what he prints
seems a little odd.
how can it be, curiosity
my one and only god
should be cast aside, for one who'll hide
and dictate from above
that faith is blind, that soul trumps mind
and ignorance is love
Posted by: Jim Harrison | September 17, 2009 11:56 PM
I'm glad that this thread evinces absolutely no evidence that folks in these parts overreact to even the mildest criticism.
The defenses of curiosity one encounters hereabouts are examples of what is called apolegetics when theologicans do it. You aren't doing cost/benefit analyses of unrestricted scientific inquiry and then deciding that's a good idea. You are balls out in favor of unrestricted scientific inquiry and then figuring out how to justify all the expense and risk after the fact by dragging in possible practical benefits. One likes the idea of space exploration so one ends up talking about Teflon and Tang as if they had anything to do with it. The funny thing is, I'm as addicted to a desire to know as anybody around here, so addicted in fact, that I've been driven to recognize that my desire to know is not based on some utilitarian calculation.
Posted by: Roameo | September 18, 2009 12:33 AM
We've never seen unrestricted scientific inquiry, and I dont think that anyone here is under the illusion that we will. Factors such as politics, religion and economics will always impose external limits on what scientists are able to achieve, something we all find annoying, and there are internal limitations such as ethics, which dont attempt to limit knowledge, just how we go about obtaining it.
the fact that we know how to make atomic weapons is dangerous yes. but the same knowledge enables us to produce nuclear energy, create radio isotopes for medicine, and further our knowledge of physics which has given us countless benefits. You cant know the effects of your enquiry until you carry it out. thats the whole point. And seeing as we aren't the book burning types you can't separate the dangerous knowledge from the beneficial. So you either continue to learn and discover or you go back into your cave.
so, you want a utilitarian cost benefit analysis?
costs so far:
a legacy of environmental degradation that continues to worsen.
future benefits:
the ability to actually do something about this
benefits so far:
im going to go ahead and include pretty much everything that's nice in your life that you wouldnt have if you had been raised in a cave.
future costs:
the ability to fuck things up on a grander scale.
However, personally I don't need a utilitarian justification for seeing curiosity as a virtue. For me it is one of the fundamental goods in life. from curiosity stems awareness, knowledge and agency. all things that often conflict with happiness (one of the usual humanist standards of good) yet i would argue have inherent value.
That and it is a critical part of my identity. It separates me from most animals and people I dislike...
Posted by: Bryson Brown | September 18, 2009 12:55 AM
Nice to see Dr. Fish taking his lumps here-- his column is an ongoing disgrace to any self-respecting academic. There's no academic right Fish won't decry, and no attack on academics Fish won't support in his inimitable, mealy-mouthed and small-minded way. I don't know whether it's self-contempt or the contempt of (too many) Deans for their underlings that drives him, but as a commentator on higher education and matters intellectual in general, he's a lot worse than a waste of space.
Posted by: The Pint | September 18, 2009 1:06 AM
Jebus, a girl goes away for a couple of hours and look what I miss on this thread.
@ Louis #181 - I'm tempted to accept your proposed substitution as I never liked my math teachers, but it occurred to me that we've both missed an obvious target: the Theology/Divinity department. What do you say?
@ Blake Stacey - I like this Stanley Fish game you're playing. Care to apply that to a movie like, oh, PCU?
@ Jim #186 & #213 - your point being, what? That unbridled curiosity is a bad thing? No kidding, Sherlock - most good scientists know better than to attempt an experiment for no other reason than just because they can. I'm not a science geek, but even I know better than to mix an acid and a base to see the resulting "boom" even though I could have if I'd wanted to ignore the good advice of my high school chem lab teacher. Scientific inquiry, as I understand it, is naturally restricted by the need to weigh the benefits against the risk of said inquiry before proceeding past theorizing to actual experimentation. Not to mention, it's kind of hard to get financial and institution support for a direction of inquiry that's obviously dubious and probably useless or unquestionably harmful. Just look at what researchers have to go through to fund stem cell research. All the examples you give have had negative consequences, yes, but none of them were evil discoveries IN AND OF THEMSELVES - what was evil or harmful were the ways in which they were used. As a wise man once said, a tool or weapon is only as good or as evil, or as weak or as strong, as the hand that wields it. Scientific discoveries and technological innovations aren't inherently harmful, they're just tools - it's our responsibility as human beings to use those tools correctly. That's not apologetics, that's just common sense.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | September 18, 2009 1:06 AM
Well, Jim, I don't think I overreacted to your comments. I just suggested that one does not blame a rock for the damaged caused by he who threw it. Or a faulty weld for bringing down a bridge. One usually takes a close look at how rocks and welds are able to accomplish certain things. With a rock I can pound in a tent peg or crush a child's skull. With a welding rig I can make something strong, merely appear strong or purposefully weaken it. But neither tool does anything on its own.
You wrote
Yup. That's about right. That's how science (and innumerable other endeavors) are done. It's the human condition from which the human race has prospered to the point that not only are we benefiting more and more by the wise application of knowledge we are suffering more and more from the unwise application of the same facts.
It's not what people know, it's what they do with their knowledge. I have yet to be convinced that constraints on human inquiry and exploration are useful or protective; it us usually someone with an agenda uses knowledge to fleece the gullible and line their own pockets that gives knowledge (or technology) a bad name.
I'll give it up for Dr. Seuss again:
"Look at me,
Look at me,
Look at me now.
It's fun to have fun,
But you have to know how.
I admit that it is a sticky wicket and we'll be thrashing this out for a very long time.
Live long and prosper, man.
Posted by: tmaxPA | September 18, 2009 1:11 AM
I know it said "Late modern societies that are fundamentally shaped by the overwhelming presence of electronic media and the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life."
But all I kept hearing was "The Internets scare me!"
Posted by: AJ Milne | September 18, 2009 1:12 AM
I've always felt there's a spectacular--and in all probability wilfully obtuse--naivete about the suggestion that somehow because learning certain things is dangerous--insofar as it can lead to learning how to do things that you or others may regret--we should simply avoid learning those things.
It seems almost self-evidently absurd to me, writing it that way. But is that not, in fact, the lament, at the base of such pleas as we read here?
As to why it's absurd, do I even need to explain?
Rhetorical question. But fuck, I'll explain anyway.
It's absurd, first, because the world doesn't generally give you the kind of convenient warning labels that would even make it possible, unless you were actually simply to stop trying to learn anything whatsoever (and probably not even then, since you probably can't even do that, but more on that later). Because there's no sticker on the nucleus of the atom that says 'erm... you really don't want to know'. There's no way of knowing ahead of time that once you work out certain intricacies therein, you've got yourself one hell of a great recipe for seriously menacing bombs. And as a somewhat less extreme, but still disturbing example, we got the first nerve gases out of research into insecticides.
Research is funny that way. Ask one question, sometimes you don't even get the answer you asked, and sometimes, whether or not you get that one, you get six entirely different and unanticipated answers...
(And some of those answers, well, they are going to be of interest to your nation's military even if you got the bulk of your funding from Greenpeace. Reality has a nasty sense of humour, that way.)
Now, sure, you *can*, if you're determined enough, theoretically at least choose as your own ethical decision not deliberately to refine certain technologies, of course, once their potential does start to occur to you. And I admire people who try to do that, who manage to do that, sure. Because sure, maybe nothing exactly says, necessarily, just because the equations are making it so very obvious what is the potential of doing so, that you *have* to go to the trouble of smashing two subcritical masses of refined uranium together and see what happens...
But then, note, at that point, it's not really so much about 'see what happens' anymore anyway. At that point, we pretty much know what happens. And it's less about curiosity than making that bomb. So it's not really on anyway to muddy this by saying: well, okay, just don't do *that*. Or rather, sure, please *do* say that--that's a cause I could almost get on board with. But it's missing the point, in this particular discussion, I'm afraid. And talking to the wrong people about the wrong problem. And note also that, in practical political terms, if you could solve the realities behind that conundrum--which is, even if you *don't* refine that technology, it's only so much help if someone else *will*--I suspect you probably wouldn't be so much concerned with the issue that's the subject of this thread anyway. It absolutely would make the first problem a lot less critical, sure.
But anyway, getting back to that first problem: The point is: curiosity made the bomb possible. It has a way of doing that, yes. You can absolutely blame it for that, fair cop...
But seriously, first of all, what the fuck do you really expect to do about it anyway, given this nasty little 'can't see around certain corners' problem? You could conquer the world with your holy armies, demand no one anywhere study anything without some precious holy muckamuck saying 'okay, go', and you'd *still* get burned, if maybe a whole lot slower... and never mind, again, the political reality that if you take that attitude, your nation's not likely to last real long to maintain that standard anyway...
To the point, learning, again, is like that. What's around the next corner, how it could be applied, it just isn't always obvious. Even with such draconian measures, you'd *still* learn stuff that made life a bit more interesting, to use a rather drastic euphemism, anyway, and you'd *still* have to deal with it. You can't just metaphorically stick your fingers in your ears here. So much so that you might as well just throw out that metaphor entirely. Because it doesn't even really apply.
And this points to the essential wrong-headedness of the question. The practical reality is: you're human. You have a lot of choices about a lot of things, but you *are* going to learn how this world works, whether it's the hard way or the (relatively) easy way, same as you're going to breathe, same as you're going to eat, whether you like it or not. This isn't some high-minded idealism talking, nor is this a rueful observation--this is just the practical reality. It's what your brain does, for better and for worse, all the fucking time, anyway, whether you really enjoy this process or not. And once, for that matter, you look around that omnipresent dualism we all tend to harbour, you'll also get: if it's what your brain does, it's what *you* do, actually. It *is* you, for all practical purposes. You might as well be water, wishing it weren't wet. My view of it is you might want to get a bit more used to it, really, but seriously, you can take that advice or leave it, it makes no difference. You can whine to me about it if you like--this, too, makes no difference. And the chimp-like thing who picked up the first rock either to bash in a predator's or a rival's skull or to beat rythmically on palm trees, maybe, I guess, you'd might fairly have a few words for him on the subject, but he's not 'round to answer for where that led anymore, thing is.
The wrongheadedness of the question, to my mind, in more human, conventional terms is just: it makes a bizarre leap from the reality that there are things about the world we find make life awfully dangerous and complicated sometimes to the conclusion that, well, then, we should just try not to learn those things. As though somehow not knowing will protect us from them. And as though we even really have the *choice*, in the long run, not to find out eventually...
That doesn't work. It seems to me it should be obvious enough why it doesn't, and I can outline any number of reasons, if that helps. The simplest formulation, I guess, really is: the truth will out. Again: whether you want it to or not.
So honestly, look, just get used to it, get with it. Hell, even get good at it. Because the facts are, whether you like them or not: there are things you do not yet know, but you're going to need to learn them. Possibly, no one knows them yet, and you *still* are going to need to learn them. Because even if *you* think you'd rather not know, there will be opportunities and threats that will arise from others knowing them, and those others *will* learn them, sooner or later. And this reality, sooner or later, will force itself upon you. Hiding from it just isn't much of a strategy, in the long run.
I can't insist you enjoy parts of that ride, the way some of us do. But then, I don't need to, either. Your personal appreciation or lack thereof for this fundamentally human process--and whether or not I personally find it bizarrely alien--just isn't especially relevant, here.
Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 1:41 AM
Sastra
For the moment I must respond to your question with a question. What are the things we should know? Neither question can claim superiority.Do you truly think we should know all (whatever that might possibly mean)? Do you think that it would even be desirable for each of us to possess our present collective knowledge?
Posted by: Christophe Thill | September 18, 2009 1:44 AM
The "evil conequences of science", that Mr Fish insanely denounces, are actually the evil consequences of the results of the use of the work of scientists by a capitalist economy, which engine is the quest, not of truth and knowledge, but of money and short-term profit (whatever the consequences). Whatever evils science is accused of (pollution, deadly weapons, stress in our life...) are not the scientists' fault. The blame is laid on the wrong guys here.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | September 18, 2009 1:47 AM
Consider the state of the present population of humans if none of our ancestors had bothered to pick up two rocks and smack them together.
There wouldn't be a scientist or doctor or auto mechanic or nuclear physicist among us worth their salt. Of course, terminology such as comparing a person's worth to some measure of a common chemical substance wouldn't exist. Nor this.
The simple fact that anyone can trace a gradual increase in the overall welfare of humanity throughout our history and make direct correlations to scientific advances (the love child of curiosity and dexterity) gives the lie to notions that knowledge is dangerous. People are dangerous! Particularly those who don't like humanity and its accomplishments.
We are what we are because curiosity finds answers and integrates them into custom. Some don't but many of us take pride in such a distinction. We alternately pity and lambaste those who are embarrassed by such a legacy and use their timidity to try to stop progress and self realization on scales ranging from personal to universal.
I suspect that eventually one side of this argument will have faded into a curiosity, and it won't be the side with the facts and the guts to stand by them. I further suspect that when that time comes anyone who invokes some innate human culpability for all evils will be patted on the head, given a lollipop and shown the way to the sandbox.
Posted by: D | September 18, 2009 1:49 AM
@ Forbidden Snowflake (#157): Wow. Yeah. I'm not as much a fan of U2's newer stuff, but they've got a way with words.
@ semiprometheus (#162): I find it tremendously ironic that Barnacle Man cites Marlowe's version of the Goethe play. You see, my last name is Faust, so I take this sort of thing kinda seriously (but I also realize that this is viciously arbitrary on my part). I own three copies of the Goethe play, and my favorite translation (Kaufmann's parallel) opens with:
I have, alas, studied philosophy
Jurisprudence and medicine, too
And worst of all, theology
With keen endeavor, through and through
And here I am, for all my lore
The wretched fool I was before.
I don't want to go on at too much length, but Goethe's play is complex and lends itself to layers and layers of interpretation. By stark contrast, it will suffice to say that Marlowe's play came to be presented as a comedic farce. It was a laughably unworthy abuse of the source material - much as our Barnacle Man poetically abuses the luxuries of his station to denounce the principles responsible for bringing him those luxuries.
Posted by: A. Noyd
|
September 18, 2009 2:06 AM
Jim Harrison (#213)
And talking out your ass is called talking out your ass no matter who does it.
We're not the ones equivocating between the acquisition of knowledge, the application of knowledge, and knowledge itself. Several people now have called you out on this, in fact, and your inability to understand what's wrong with leaping between the three as though they are the same thing undermines your ability to make convincing arguments. Having failed to make the point you want about things best left unknown, you instead make a straw man of us saying we won't let ethics stand in our way of gaining knowledge. But this is a completely different argument and fails as readily as your previous ones. As others have already pointed out, curiosity does not lead us to justify any particular means of acquiring knowledge. That's how easily this latest argument perishes.
Why don't you go back and answer the question of how we are to practically limit our curiosity to prevent ourselves from knowing things we'd be safer not knowing. Or properly answer what items of knowledge we are better off without. If you can't, then just admit it rather than trying to take the argument elsewhere again.
Anyways, if you're worried about how people acquire knowledge and what they do with it, wouldn't it be far, far more practical to get rid of irrational belief systems (such as religion or totalitarianism) so there would be fewer people who ignore reality-based consequences and humanitarian concerns in pursuit of knowledge or its application? (Disclaimer: No, I'm not saying this would be a 100% guarantee against absuse of knowledge, so don't even try to go there.)
Posted by: calilasseia | September 18, 2009 2:09 AM
Hopefully, the other readers of PZ's blog won't mind if I repost this in more or less its entirety. This is a response I posted to the same item covered above by PZ, over at the Richard Dawkins Forums. Perhaps lacking some of PZ's finer touches, but I hope that at least it matches him for passion. :)
*******************************
... that theological rant by Griffiths consists of nothing more than a petulant scowl at the successes of the reality-based world view. His words amount to nothing more than the following shrieking diatribe: "How dare you use your brains and think for yourselves! How dare you pay more attention to reality than to the mythology whose strictures I have decided you should conform to! How dare you learn that reality does not genuflect before that mythology!"
This shrieking diatribe is nothing more than an open admission of intellectual penis envy on the part of theologians, an intellectual penis envy arising from the fact that paying attention to reality instead of mythology is manifestly and spectacularly successful. Paying attention to reality has led to the eradication of smallpox; the control of dozens of diseases that once killed untold thousands; the routine presence of humans in outer space; direct exploration of the outer Solar System, the discovery of exotic phenomena that the authors of bad mythology were incapable of even fantasising about, such as neutron stars and black holes; the elucidation of the detailed operation of the inheritance mechanisms that gave rise to us all, the evidence for which testifies eloquently to the basic truth that all life on this planet is ultimately related by inheritance; the discovery of testable chemical mechanisms for the very origin of life on this planet itself; and the probing into the very heart of matter itself, which has bestowed upon us not only profound insights into the workings of the world on the smallest scales, but which has ramifications for the history of the cosmos itself. In the space of three hundred years, we have gone from being at the mercy of famine, disease and superstition, to possessing real substantive knowledge about the organisation of the entities and interactions that build our universe, and applying that knowledge to alleviate misery and suffering, to improve the lives of millions, to wage war on famine and pestilence, and as our species has embarked upon that journey, awe-inspiring and wonderful vistas of knowledge have become ours to gaze upon, teaching us much about ourselves as well as the world in which we live.
Yet Griffiths scorns these achievements, he spits upon them in a fit of pique, he snarls and scowls at the wonders of real, substantive knowledge, and all because they owe nothing to a collection of bad myths that he has decided count for more than reality itself. He has learned nothing from the yawning chasm separating the dark era when his mythology held sway over millions in Europe, during which the brutish lot of all too many consisted of starvation and plague, and the subsequent flowering of learning when our species began to take notice of the lessons that the real world was teaching us, which led to the end of the Hobbesian existence for the inhabitants of entire continents, and its replacement by lives free from the threat of being brought prematurely to an end. He openly despises the fact that our lot has improved immeasurably precisely because some of our species chose to abandon worthless mythology, and listen instead to the gently didactic whispers that the world had been sending our way, so much so that even the humblest of the citizens of a modern developed nation, now enjoy a standard of living that would be beyond the dreams of the richest emperors of ancient times. He vomits his bile all over the treasures of the Enlightenment, including the development of proper, decent human rights, rights that were noticeably absent in the Europe of the Inquisition, when the enforcers of conformity to doctrine wielded bestial instruments specifically for the purpose of striking terror into those who failed to toe the line of dogma. That he yearns for a return to that dark age is manifest in his foetid pontifications, for his stance plainly and demonstrably consists of that favourite line of doctrinal enforcers everywhere, "conform or else". That is his underlying attitude, an attitude borne of overweening hubris that in turn is the natural corollary of uncritical acceptance of unsupported assertion - the aetiology of the doctrine centred world view is all too easy to understand once laid bare. Storm Jameson knew as much when she penned her preface to The Diary of Anne Frank, warning of the dangers of doctrine, and though her words were aimed at subjecting the ideological battlefields of the 20th century to critical scrutiny, her words are, if anything, even more relevant with respect to the anachronistic revival of supernaturalist doctrines, wraiths from the past that we thought we had committed to the grave, but which now stride the world as so many doctrinal zombies.
Griffiths would, given the power to do so, cut off the entire human species forever from the bright sunshine of learning and knowledge, and condemn it to the eternal darkness of the concentration camp of doctrinal conformity. What a thoroughly nasty, crude, and boring vision he has for us all. We owe it to future generations to see that this tiresome little theological bureaucrat is sent packing with his tail between his legs, and is told in no uncertain terms that his suppuratingly gangrenous eructations are a direct and heinous assault upon all that makes us human. We are a species that reaches for the stars, and those of us who rejoice in that endeavour, rejoice in the wonders that unfold before us as we strive diligently to realise that dream, should with equal diligence and assiduous labour, bulldoze aside this purveyor of ideological pornography and his inimical, anti-human works. Because, at bottom, his worksare anti-human: they are an explicit denial of our essential nature, a nature that is seen in every child given the opportunity to explore and to learn; his ravings against the pursuit of knowledge scream "how dare you be human!".
Well, I have this to say to the "divinity professor": I dare to be human, I dare to learn, I dare to be curious, I dare to acquire knowledge, and I regard your filthy little screed as an abomination, an ideological cancer to be excised surgically before it can destroy the body politic. Take your death-cult mythology, your diseased attack upon the very human nature we all possess, your utterly psychotic desire to see a return to enforced conformity, and shove them where the sun doesn't shine.
Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 2:16 AM
A. Noyd
I don't interpret Jim's posts as assertions that they are the same things.Posted by: Ichthyic | September 18, 2009 2:22 AM
For the moment I must respond to your question with a question. What are the things we should know?
I don't interpret Jim's posts as assertions that they are the same things.
Ok, that's it. You've posted nothing but drivel for days now.
you're fucking useless. Stop trolling already.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | September 18, 2009 2:24 AM
Calilasseia,
Way.
I'll sleep a bit better for that comment. Knowing someone is out there making it and making it eloquently. Within minutes I'll be dreaming daringly.
Thanks.
Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 2:27 AM
Decency breach. Communications selectively terminated.Posted by: Ichthyic | September 18, 2009 2:30 AM
Decency breach. Communications selectively terminated.
oh, but I wish that were true.
get in the feckin' sack.
Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 2:46 AM
Aj Milne
Go very slowly. Perhaps much much more slowly.As we probe the universe in a quest for knowledge that probing requires increasing energy expenditure and with it goes increasing risk. Sometimes the risks are not fully appreciated and sometimes they are appreciated in an approximate sense. I cannot imagine that clear thinking people would not be asking themselves whether knowing is worth the risk. As a scientist possessed by curiosity as much as anyone I wonder if we have already passed that point - and too often.
Posted by: hje | September 18, 2009 2:47 AM
Re; "Atomic weapons, PCBs, heroin, mind control technologies, tetraethyl lead, the internal combustion engine, lie detectors, tasteless tomatoes, etc."
You forgot to add Nazi "experimentation" and Cheney-style waterboarding to your greatest hits list of the "evils" of science. And why not add plowshares while you're at it--they can always be made into swords, no?
I guess it's all been downhill from the time of our paleolithic ancestors. Damn you cavemen and your insatiable curiosity about the world around you!
This list is so silly it's a waste of time to address, but let's just take the first of your examples. Atomic weapons. Now everybody HATES atomic weapons, and it can be argued that they should never have been developed--but exactly when in the last hundred years or so, should we have imposed a moratorium on progress in chemistry and physics? Want to know how the sun shines? Sorry, that's forbidden knowledge because someone can use that knowledge to conceive of a H-bomb. Want to treat cancer with radiation? No such luck, we never knew it existed so we had to stick with chemotherapy (which should also have been banned because organic chemistry can be used to make chemical weapons like sarin). Develop nuclear fusion as a relatively clean and unlimited source of energy--no way, no how. Et cetera.
Re: "You are balls out in favor of unrestricted scientific inquiry and then figuring out how to justify all the expense and risk after the fact by dragging in possible practical benefits."
Well if you put it that way, no--I put my balls away when working in the lab. Mainly in the interest of personal safety rather than philosophical concerns.
So once again, what restrictions do you have in mind with respect to scientific query? Can we do research in quantum computing, try to detect gravitational waves, search for intelligent life in the universe, probe the origin of life, etc.? Or is it best we don't even try to understand, because who knows, we just might be opening Pandora's box.
Re; "The funny thing is, I'm as addicted to a desire to know as anybody around here, so addicted in fact, that I've been driven to recognize that my desire to know is not based on some utilitarian calculation."
Is this your roundabout way of telling us that if we meet Buddha on the road, to kill him?
Posted by: Sam C | September 18, 2009 2:59 AM
I once wondered if the fable of the apple on the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden was being misinterpreted (I mean interpreted differently from its original intention).
One possible, more mature reading, is that if one lives in ignorance, life can be pleasant but is ultimately empty. If, however, one chooses to educate and inform oneself, then life becomes much more complex, but it is the mess of real life, not the delight of a delusion.
Or, more feministically, Adam (the man) was happy to live in a dream world, but Eve (the woman) chose messy reality over his dream!
Posted by: Brian X | September 18, 2009 3:01 AM
Jim Harrison:
You are an ass. Concern-trolling, claiming to represent "open-mindedness", and attacking the very foundations of science on a science blog shows you to be both unwise and a shit-stirrer of no great distinction.
Walton:
You are an ass. Focusing only on what is perceived is immediately practical leads inevitably to the well running dry on ideas. We don't know where research will lead us, whether it's in literary or scientific terms.
Science and curiosity work in ways that no other ways of looking at the universe ever have, and far more problems in this world have been caused by the desire to suppress curiosity than have ever been caused by curiosity itself, and I've often said that "curiosity killed the cat" is one of the most obscene and hateful things you can teach a child.
You two go live in your little anchorite boxes. Get the fuck out of our way.
Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 3:12 AM
Sam C #233
Most species are relatively ignorant compared to humans and they are all without exception part of "the mess of real life". I am aware of only a small set of species capable of delusion.Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 3:15 AM
Consider the validity of the following two propositions.
(1) All curiosity is good.
(2) All curiosity is not good.
Excuse me while I pass on the extremism. I'm funny that way.
Posted by: Brian X | September 18, 2009 3:20 AM
What:
I believe your two propositions are moot. Curiosity is necessary; whether it's good or bad is immaterial.
Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 3:28 AM
Brain X
Nobody here is arguing about whether curiosity is an integral part of being human - assuming that is what you mean by necessary. That is generally accepted in this discussion. It does appear that we are still arguing about the two propositions I gave. So they stand.
Perhaps you would like to admit other propositions not already agreed upon or in current dispute. What are they?
Posted by: Brian X | September 18, 2009 3:33 AM
I am not saying curiosity is a part of human nature; that's a given, and in fact putting it your way makes it sound like a bit of a spandrel. What I'm saying is that it's a necessary part of day-to-day life -- you might call it scientific inquiry, or due diligence, or something like that, but they're all the same. People who are discouraged from being curious are being intentionally crippled, as unfettered access to information is critically important to making an informed decision on any subject.
If I had to put it in moral judgement, I'd say it's good, but I don't think that's a useful thing to do. Again, good vs. bad is moot; it's like asking whether breathing or eating is good or bad. There is no point in answering the question.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | September 18, 2009 3:44 AM
This has probably gone on long enough already, but I have to note how odd it is that so many people manage to leap from my comments to the notion that I'm dead set against scientific progress or curiosity when it seems to me what I've done is raise some questions. What I'm campaigning against is the metaphysical certainties that people deploy around here in support, presumably nonironic support, of empiricism. That and the claustrophobic narrowing of options to Us and Them. I sure hope there's some other option available beside Village Atheist and Stanley Fish.
Jokes aside, there really are serious questions about the responsibilities of scientists. Certainly many of the men who worked on the Manhattan Project did not find it particularly easy to make a distinction between knowledge and its eventual, probable, or perhaps inevitable use. Of course we haven't blown up the world, yet... Meanwhile, the psychologists hired by the Feds to supervise the torture of detainees have some explaining to do, even if it would certainly be interesting to know if there are surefire ways of negating human freedom through expertly applied pain--I note that the psychologists, at least in this case, showed a lot fewer scruples than the physicists.
Speaking of psychology, issues of what constitutes legitimate curiosity routinely come up in relationship to studying the sexual habits of human beings and that's true even though a better understanding of how we behave would be extremely helpful in dealing with real problems like AIDS and contraception--as it is, despite all the talk about the subject, it's easier to get reliable info on the mating habits of flamingos or frogs than of Irishmen and the Japanese because human research really does raise tough ethical and political issues. In this as in many other real-world areas, the question isn't whether curiosity is a good thing or a bad thing but how do you weigh curiosity against other interests such as privacy or human dignity.
There is also a general axiological question about curiosity: what is the relative value of knowing things about things compared to other ends of human action? Specifically, how do you justify making curiosity sacred, especially if you don't believe in gods? There are theological ways of raising these issues, but religious people don't have a monopoly on them. For example, my approach to thinking about this stuff has a lot more to do with the ideas of Frederich Nietzsche than anything you'll find in St. Thomas. Why isn't Truth just another one of the dead Gods of modernity?
Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 3:47 AM
I am not necessarily asking a question about morality as I already pointed out to Sastra. You can define good and bad any way you like. But once defined - example: survival is good - one should be aware that curiosity as with everything has a cost associated with it and sometimes that cost can be bad outcome - no survival. The propositions stand.
Goodnight all.
Posted by: j a higginbotham | September 18, 2009 3:53 AM
was that griffiths or reinhard hutter?
http://books.google.com/books?id=H_6dQDJJsUUC&pg=PA178&lpg=PA178&dq=Late+modern+societies+that+are+fundamentally+shaped+by+the+overwhelming+presence+of+electronic+media+and+the+obscene+inundation+of+every+aspect+of+human+life+by+pictures+and+sounds+have+turned+the+vice+of+curiosity+into+a+prescribed+way+of+life&source=bl&ots=Kvvy7YH7T8&sig=4EG5Nc6iIpkv6bpgmBRaoP3YOSE&hl=en&ei=GTuzSsr7HYbuswPH88zRDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=Late%20modern%20societies%20that%20are%20fundamentally%20shaped%20by%20the%20overwhelming%20presence%20of%20electronic%20media%20and%20the%20obscene%20inundation%20of%20every%20aspect%20of%20human%20life%20by%20pictures%20and%20sounds%20have%20turned%20the%20vice%20of%20curiosity%20into%20a%20prescribed%20way%20of%20life&f=false
Posted by: Roameo | September 18, 2009 4:32 AM
Theyre premises, not propositions, validity doesn't apply.
But, as I said earlier, I dont have any problem saying all curiosity is good. Doesnt mean that said curiosity should always be acted upon though.
Posted by: Louis | September 18, 2009 4:32 AM
Hi Jim,
Back in post #192 I asked you a couple of very polite questions involving no apologetics nor condemnations of your anticuriosity comments.
They hit to the heart of the problem with your claim, do you think you can actually answer them instead of whining about nasty curious people.
Cheers
Louis
Posted by: sasqwatch | September 18, 2009 4:34 AM
Two words: divinity fudge.
Posted by: Louis | September 18, 2009 4:44 AM
@ The Pint #216:
You are a genius! We can get rid of folks who are genuinely useless, who have many of the proclivities of humanities people that make the meat so soft for pate, plus they have that wonderful gamy flavour of holy bullshit!
I take my hat off to you, Madam.
Louis
P.S. The Pint btw? Of what dare I ask?
Posted by: Roameo | September 18, 2009 4:57 AM
Happiness is also good. In fact, a lot of people, including certain breeds of consequentialists, consider it to be inherently good. Now, my happiness can lead to bad things, such as other people being jealous, or me becoming complacent and not seeking to improve the lives of others. Or, my happiness can come at the cost of someone else's. Maybe I'm a sadist. None of this makes my happiness, or indeed happiness itself any less good. None of this makes me being less happy a good thing in itself. It just means that my actions must still be rationally governed by their impact on others.
Just because the actions taken with the intention of satisfying our curiosity can be fatal, doesn't make curiosity any less of a good thing. It just means we should have had a lookout, been wearing a harness, or have turned the power off at the switch.
Posted by: SaintStephen | September 18, 2009 5:56 AM
As Richard Dawkins might say:
What a pithy piece of writing!
I thought it was much better than pithy, PZ -- I thought it was GREAT writing. I'd be very interested in knowing how long it took you to write this gem of an essay.
C'mon, Professor Myers... you've been looking for a chance to embarrass someone. I'm volunteering to be knocked into the squid tank (or one of those lovely a Minnesota tide pools) with your answer. How long does the brilliant PZ Myers take to lay something like this down?
Posted by: KevinC | September 18, 2009 6:16 AM
Curiosity killed the cat? What cat? How did it die? I wanna know!
*Wikipedia*
Ah. Well, the problem there seems to be insufficient curiosity, rather than excess. The cat in question wasn't curious enough to ask, "How am I going to get back down?" before climbing up the fireplace flue.
Barnacle Man (who else is hearing a rewrite of TMBJ's "Particle Man"?)** seems to be pining for some "ideal" Platonist society where only an elite coterie of Philosopher Kings are allowed to know anything. I wonder how eager Mr. Barnacle would be to advocate such a society if he were informed that he would be one of the serfs/slaves, rather than one of the Philosopher Kings.
**I only read to comment #186, so don't clobber me too hard if someone's done this at #250.
Posted by: KevinC | September 18, 2009 6:45 AM
Ahahahaha. I pull the number 250 out of my posterior in my previous post, and it happens to be #250. lol@self
Posted by: Walton | September 18, 2009 6:55 AM
Just to clarify my statements, since my original post was perhaps too ambiguous and wide-ranging.
I do not believe that the humanities, as a whole, are less useful than the physical and natural sciences. Far from it. History, economics and other social-science fields tell us vital things about human society and the way it works, allowing us to learn from the mistakes of the past and make fewer mistakes in future; and so I absolutely think that historical and social science research should be funded by government. Likewise, my own field - law - does have a practical purpose in the real world; as much as people tend to dislike lawyers, we've seen what societies without a rational and consistent system of law look like, and they're not pretty. Governance according to the rule of law is one of the great innovations which allows modern civilisation to exist.
Rather, what I'm complaining about is the funding granted to purely artistic fields, and, in particular, to critical theory and research into creative works. I do not really see how studying and interpreting the "meaning" of a literary work of fiction, or analysing pieces of music or art, generates any new knowledge which is useful in the real world. For instance, I studied music at A-Level (high school senior level, for Americans); I learnt how to write essays about Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and how it fits into the gradual departure from conventional tonality in the music of the Romantic period, and other things of this nature. All very well; but I don't see how this knowledge will ever help me to do anything that will enhance other people's quality of life. It doesn't tell us anything about the real world which we can use to improve our material prosperity and physical well-being. It's simply an abstract intellectual exercise. Not that there's anything wrong with abstract intellectual exercises; but I'm just saying that, in a world of finite resources, maybe we should prioritise those fields of study which allow us to discover materially useful things about the real world.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | September 18, 2009 6:58 AM
Oh, yeah, Fish, the first part of Feagletosh, right?
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 7:08 AM
Shorter Walton: less abstract art, more Soviet realism.
Posted by: Walton | September 18, 2009 7:17 AM
Not so. Unlike Stalin, I believe artists ought to be free to take their artistic endeavours in whatever direction they choose. If they want to throw a blob of paint at a wall and call it "art", it's fine with me; if some rich idiot wants to pay twenty million dollars for it at auction, that's equally fine with me. I just don't believe that the taxpayer should be forced to subsidise any part of this process. Art is purely a matter of aesthetic taste, and no one should be forced to subsidise their neighbours' aesthetic tastes. If people want art, they can pay for it themselves.
(I wrote a blog post in a similar vein some time ago, deploring the fact that, in Britain, the taxpayer currently subsidises art galleries, orchestras, the Royal Opera House, and a whole range of cultural activities enjoyed by the elite. I queried whether Joe Taxpayer, who might well prefer to spend his money on, say, football tickets or a trip to the pub, should be forced to subsidise the entertainment pursuits of art-lovers and opera-goers.)
Btw, there is a reply waiting for you on the Texans thread. (Though something strange seems to have happened to the formatting on that thread, making the whole thing nearly unreadable. I don't know if it's a problem with my browser (I use Internet Explorer) or with Scienceblogs.)
Posted by: Richard Eis | September 18, 2009 7:37 AM
-Jokes aside, there really are serious questions about the responsibilities of scientists.-
Regardless. You cannot go back. Only forward. The message of Pandora's box.
Also the point of the original article was to say "Doing science is a waste of time when you could be doing important things like subjugating yourself before my god."
Posted by: Anri | September 18, 2009 8:01 AM
Walton sez (in part):
By encouraging them to go listen to it...?
And, possibly, exciting thier interest enough to listen to lots more beautiful music to attempt to determine if you know what you are talking about.
Unless, of course, you think this isn't improving thier quality of life?
On another topic, I can't help but notice that Jim H and What haven't bothered to respond to my post at #196 to make this topic more concrete...
That kind of info is invaluable in this sort of discussion.
Posted by: Amen | September 18, 2009 8:16 AM
Adam and Eve curious? Doubtful. What did they do when they found out they were naked? Did they say "Wow, I wonder what these things are for?" No, they felt shame and covered themselves up. Barnacles.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 8:27 AM
Stereotypical, proud ignorance.
How are the architects who design our buildings going to learn any style and form if they don't teach art in school? Or should we all live and work in gray boxes?
Posted by: Alcari | September 18, 2009 8:30 AM
"hey can't leap out use kung-fu on an interloper..."
That's what they want you to think!
Posted by: Roameo | September 18, 2009 8:30 AM
Some lawyer said:
Yes because we all know what a fine art critic Joe sixpack is. While we're at it, how about we start soliciting political advice from Joe the plumber?
This is kinda getting OT but whatever. If you want the cultural environment where you live to wither up and die feel free to lobby for the removal of public funding of the arts. I am more than happy to have my tax dollars go to art galleries, even when they exhibit artist i happen to dislike. Just as I am happy to have them fund community centres I will never use. If someone is willing to survive on a subsistence income to make beautiful things just so the public can enjoy them, I feel we should encourage that and at least give them a space in which they can show their work. The thing is, when you have a thriving arts community, you tend to create more and better art. And I'm not just talking about paintings here, music and books are a product of the same organic process.
If you think the market alone can sustain a thriving arts culture, youre sadly mistaken. Its not so much the artists that need money, theyre usually working two part time jobs and scraping by, its the community based infrastructure making their work available that needs help. Most private galleries i know of charge upwards of 60% commission and have 1 year waiting lists for new exhibitions. Commercial radio will only play music that is sanctioned by their advertisers and marketed by the labels they have deals with. And as for those idiot millionaires you're talking about? I know one of those, spends hundreds of thousands on the work of a few select artists who are essentially hacks who happen to paint to his exact style.
It is very hard to get a break as an emerging artist. The thing is, once you make whatever faustian deal you have to to get mainstream exposure, Joe Sixpack is more than willing to buy your work, without a seconds thought as to how you came to develop your talent.
And the cities that support community radio, community galleries, and the like? theyre the ones that produce the artists who's work occasionally breaks the monotony of grey concrete and advertising around us.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 8:38 AM
You should go insult the working classes to their faces. I have friends who work on restaurant grills and assembly lines, who spend their money on inexpensive (subsidized) tickets to theater and sculpture exhibitions.
Your insinuation that they don't appreciate art will be met with a beer bottle to your head and a steel-toed boot to your ass.
Posted by: Walton | September 18, 2009 8:48 AM
Roameo
Ah, flattery. Technically I'm a law student, so not (yet) entitled to call myself a lawyer. :-)
Great. Feel free to donate as much of your money as you like to art galleries. But please stop confiscating other people's money, through taxes, to pay for your aesthetic preferences.
What is "better art", exactly? Is there an objective, measurable, quantifiable way of distinguishing "better" from "worse" art?
In the end, the value of art is inherently subjective and aesthetic. That doesn't mean it has no value; but it means that one person's great art is another's worthless dross. What constitutes "good art", that is worth spending money on, is entirely a matter of personal taste. It's not like, say, healthcare or welfare or medical research, where the benefits are objective and measurable. And so I suggest that each individual should be free to spend their own money on whatever forms of art and cultural expression they personally enjoy, rather than having the state decide for them what their money should be spent on.
Posted by: Walton | September 18, 2009 8:54 AM
strange gods,
Why do you insist on reading class prejudice into my comments? You know me well enough by now to understand what I was trying to say, so please stop deliberately missing the point.
I was making the point that there are millions of taxpayers in Britain - of all different income levels and social backgrounds - who are not particularly interested in art galleries, opera, Radio 3, or any of the other subsidised forms of cultural expression. Plenty of them are far more interested in, for instance, football matches (which are not subsidised). So, considering that the value of entertainment and cultural expression is entirely subjective and a matter of personal taste, why should they be forced to subsidise other people's aesthetic interests?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 8:54 AM
Walton,
I note you still say you are a student.
This is not acceptable. Why should the tax payer continue to subsidise your education when you seek to deny the opportunities you have to others.
Unless and until you can confirm you pay the full costs of your education you will be a hypocritical scumbag.
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 8:56 AM
Nobuddy @105:
You get an "F" on your engineering final exam.
They did withstand the impacts, both of them, as you would know if you had watched video of the event. What they failed to withstand was an hour or more of extremely intense fire.
No building made of steel could withstand what they were subjected to. (And no building could economically be designed to withstand it -- or any number of other extremely unlikely conditions.)
Steel becomes weaker at high temperatures (as all substances do.) Steel also burns quite merrily in the presence of oxygen at very high temperatures, which tends to degrade the design strength of your structure. So, unless you are proposing that steel be outlawed as a civil engineering material, you're just talking nonsense. And, regarding that proposal, I'll just say: Golden Gate Bridge.
The Vampire State Building withstood an impact from a B-25D:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0311.shtml
A B-25 has a fuel capacity of approximately 700 gallons. A Boeing 767-200 has a fuel capacity 23,980 gallons or ~35 times as much fuel (potentially). (A Boeing 747-400 can hold 57,285 gallons; an Airbus A380 can hold 81,890 gallons) If a 767 (or 747 or A380) had hit the Empire State Building, the story may well have been different.
It is quite possible to design a building to withstand any conditions one might dream up. One could armor-plate the exterior of the building and eliminate all windows. Only one problem: No one would ever pay for such a building.
Having worked all three parts of the aviation industry (manufacturer/designer, operator, and regulator: all three "legs of the stool of safety") I can tell you that every engineered thing you use (and almost everything you use is engineered) is a compromise between function, safety, and economics. And people wouldn't have it any other way: Literally. You can kill yourself any day you like using a bathtub and any electrical appliance in your home. Does that stop us from making and using bathtubs and electrical appliances?
All the best, JB
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space
|
September 18, 2009 8:59 AM
Walton, there is a difference between being educated and merely trained. To be educated is to cultivate your curiosity. Enjoy a symphony? Maybe you should learn a little about music theory. Enjoy the Blues? Maybe you'd be interested in its roots in Africa and how it was modified by exposure to traditional English folksongs. And frankly the best reason to read the Bible is so that you will understand the allegory in so much of Western literature.
And in the sciences, can you really understand quantum mechanics without understanding how its formalism was adumbrated in the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics, or stat mech if you don't comprehend how the rise of statistical reasoning paved the way for statistical mechanics and the atomistic description of matter?
If we are to preserve culture, we must value it. If we are to learn to value it, we must cultivate our curiosity about it.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 9:00 AM
Maybe because you are class prejudiced ?
We all know you want to deny decent education and decent healthcare to the less well off in society. I would say that constitutes prejudice.
Please though confirm you will drop out of University today. I would not like to think that you will continue to demand the taxpayer fund your education any longer. If you can find some taxpayer dumb enough to volunteer to pay for you to study then fine, but otherwise practice what you preach. It is not even as though what you are studying will benefit society much. The world is not in need of more lawyers.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
|
September 18, 2009 9:02 AM
@ strange gods before me, #136:
Can I worship you? Just a little? I think you are made of tasty awesome.
Posted by: Roameo | September 18, 2009 9:09 AM
My asthetic preferences have nothing to do with it (if they did we'd be arguing for the decriminalisation of street art). I'm also fine with the fact that my taxes are funding football stadiums. I hate football. But I understand that it enriches the lives of a lot of people, and that money helps keep athletes and stadium construction workers employed.
Thats the thing. We each have our own standards of taste, and having a rich and varied arts culture means that we're all more likely to be satisfied. I mean its not like youre arguing that we should be using a work's monetary value as the standard of taste.
Oh whoops you are. Well then sunshine, go out and look at the billboards and enjoy the view. Because thats the art thats being paid for. It fufills a certain need, and that need has very little to do with aesthetics.
If you think that the art market is perfect, unmanipulated by dealers, and an envionment where the most talented artists get exposed to the buyers who's tastes they embody, I'll bottle you myself.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 9:13 AM
I insist.
Posted by: Walton | September 18, 2009 9:19 AM
Matt Penfold,
As I have said on several occasions, I do not object to government funding of higher education. I just think it should be more effectively prioritised. I do not seek to deny anyone opportunities.
Posted by: Technik | September 18, 2009 9:20 AM
I'm curious about the timeline, "from Aquinas to Augustine".
Let's see...
Thomas of Aquin or Aquino; born ca. 1225; died 7 March 1274 and, um, Augustine of Hippo November 13, 354 – August 28, 430.
Or is there another, later Augustine my lack of curiosity has failed to turn up?
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 9:23 AM
Louis @181:
Don't fly on any airplanes, drive a car, cross a bridge, or go into any buildings. For that matter, don't use any manufactured or built object. Assuming you desire consistency.
Reminds of a true story:
In the middle of a mechanical engineering exam, one student asks the professor, "can we assume zero friction in the bearings?" A: "No, all the zero-friction bearings are kept in the physics department."
Posted by: John Norris | September 18, 2009 9:23 AM
I wonder what the librarians at Duke University think of Prof Griffiths lack of curiosity and how that effects their working with him?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 9:26 AM
Well matey, I doubt the public thinks law is a priority, so you are still out of luck. If you do not want to fund English courses at Uni, why should you expect to have your law course funded ?
Silly me, you think you are special and deserving. It is only other people who should suffer the damage your libertarian fuckwittery would inflict on society. You know, you really a bad advert for your political philosophy. Why should we pay attention to it when even you refuse to follow it ?
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 9:26 AM
I assure you, if I am misunderstanding you, it is not deliberate. I sincerely believe that your comment was classist. I don't see any other interpretation of the insinuation that "Joe Taxpayer" wants only beer and football, but no inexpensive art museums to enjoy with his family. You might as well close up the natural history museums too.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 9:28 AM
That is one of the reasons I love having him around.
Posted by: hje | September 18, 2009 9:31 AM
"Why isn't Truth just another one of the dead Gods of modernity?"
What is truth?
Posted by: Walton | September 18, 2009 9:34 AM
OK then, I apologise for creating that impression. In my mind, "Joe Taxpayer" - or at least the Joe to whom I was referring - doesn't necessarily have to be poor or working-class. But perhaps I chose my words poorly.
I was merely making the point that people have different cultural tastes. I'm not interested in football; nor am I interested in going to an art gallery. Why should I subsidise the second but not the first? In fact, why should I subsidise either?
Yes, as you point out, plenty of ordinary people are interested in going to art exhibitions. That's fair enough. Let them do so, and let them pay for it themselves. But why should Fred the Art Lover be able to tax his neighbour, Bill the Football Lover, to pay for Fred and his family to go to the local art gallery?
No, but I do think they should be operated by the private and voluntary sectors where possible, and funded by entrance fees and donations. I love museums; I loved going to London as a little kid and looking round the British Museum, Science Museum and Natural History Museum (all of which are provided courtesy of the taxpayer). But it would be fine with me if an entrance charge were levied to support these institutions. They'll still get plenty of custom.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 9:34 AM
Don't go giving him ideas.
Posted by: kalibhakta | September 18, 2009 9:38 AM
How appropriate that, five minutes after reading P.Z.'s post and Zapp's column, I should come across these words in a biography I'm reading:
"I wonder Charles is not damped in his ardour....He says that Patagonia where they are going first...is the most detestable climate in the world....The natives will infallibly eat you if they can get an opportunity...It is very enterprising to go in spite of such discouraging accounts."
Now, lemme see, which attitude is more admirable, more fitting an outlook on life: that of the yahoos quoted by Zapp, or that of the young Darwin?
And from a purely logical POV, wouldn't curiosity tend to lead one beyond the "self," contra Cardinal Newman, et al.??? That's been my experience.
P.S. Walton sounds like a legislator in my state who once asked a university administrator, "Anybody ever READ all 'em books yall got in 'at lieberry?"
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 9:39 AM
Explain then why when they did charge for entry the numbers visiting declined ?
However again we must note that you seek to deny access to museums to poor. Museums will tend to come second best given a choice between a visit to one and having food, light and heat.
Still going to insist you are not prejudiced against the poor ?
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 9:41 AM
Azkyroth @199:
Azkyroth is correct I would venture. Corrosion and fatigue are generally the greatest enemies of metal structures. Especially corrosion in marine applications. Setting up electrical potential between different bits of metal in a corrosive environment ensures rapid corrosion damage. Engineers expend a great deal of effort to avoid setting up electrical potentials in metal structures. Not doing so results in: Failure.
Although it's not so much the hole in the middle fo the Atlantic, it's more the 20X work hours needed on each periodic maintenance check that kills the idea. I would guess that scraping barnacles is cheaper that replacing hull plates.
-- Yer local engineering curmudgeon (My job is to resist wind, water, snow, ice, entropy, and Mr. Murphy -- it ain't easy. Engineers say: Make something fool-proof and someone goes and invents a better fool.)
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 9:44 AM
They might, and the might not. But in any case, that means poorer families will have less opportunity to attend. Like I said, classist.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 9:44 AM
I am pretty sure Walton would be opposed to allowing the public free access to libraries as well. Why should he pay for books that he does not want to read ? Nah, people should buy their books, or pay to join a library. And if they are too poor, well tough shit.
Posted by: Roameo | September 18, 2009 9:45 AM
And you dont think that society gains any benefit from people educating themselves at museums? You dont think that perhaps poorer people wouldnt be able to afford the entrance fee to get their entire family in? You dont think that these people would be the one's that society has the greatest interest in educating? You dont think that the private sector will manipulate content and that the volunteer groups are stretched already? you total libertarian fuckwit.
the same applies to giving people a cultural education. I've already made the point about supporting the arts community which you have totally failed to understand. If people dont see art, dont see what is possible, and begin to identify with the culture of their local community, we lose the next generation of artists.
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 9:50 AM
Jim Wrote:
And you propose what? knowing ahead of time all the results and ramifications of all inquiries? Well, if you can do that, please inform us all and we can save a TON of money on all this useless research we're doing!
*head-desk*, repeat, repeat, repeat
Posted by: iMature | September 18, 2009 9:50 AM
"We should be reading marks chiseled in stone or clay, as the gods intended!"
NO! We should have Someone Read Them TO US in Latin, or some other language that only the few have studied.
Posted by: Tom | September 18, 2009 9:51 AM
I'm highly amused that, in seeking to point out the failings of science, they inadvertently let slip that they recognise the existence, in their list of what they see as good and noble things scientists allegedly aren't allied to, of not just one, but two moral causes that are entirely distinct from gods - "They have no power of self-control because they have no allegiance -- to a deity, to human flourishing, to community".
The implications of this listing of "human flourishing" and "community" alongside "deity," not as a part of it but as apparently separate and equally respectable ideas, is really a quite spectacular own-goal for people who invariably argue that all morality stems directly from their god and could not exist otherwise.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 9:53 AM
Roameo,
Well in Walton's world only those with parents rich enough to pay for them to go to art school would be able to afford to go. No doubt he thinks those who's parents can afford to pay will be more deserving anyway. After all if the parents are rich enough to afford it they must have made lots of money. Presumably he thinks their offspring will take better advantage of their time art school. Better that than allow some poor oik who's parents are dirt poor to go. Probably spend their time taking drugs, and besides they should have taken more care choosing the parents. If you choose poor parents you get what you deserve in Walton's world.
Posted by: davep | September 18, 2009 9:55 AM
Still weird. Fish isn't against curiosity.
He is also very carefully indicating that those "anti-curiosity" things are being said by other people. They are silly, absurd examples and Fish intends that they be seen as such.
In the last paragraph, we says that the evidence repudiates all the people he quoted.
[quote]In short, curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom — is their God. The question, posed by thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine to Newman to Griffiths, is whether this is the God — the God, ultimately, of self — we want to worship. Given the evidence, including Chairman Leach’s address, the answer would seem to be yes.[/quote]
If he's a bit hesitant about it, maybe that's because curiosity isn't a simple, unalloyed benefit.
It certainly is a somewhat-oddly constructed piece.
Posted by: Louis | September 18, 2009 10:01 AM
@ JBlilie #273:
Please find a dictionary and look up the word "humour". Then look up the word "satire".
In a post (or rather series of posts) that proposes taking funding from specific areas of enquiry and then killing and eating people engaged in those areas of enquiry I figured it was utterly impossible for anyone to take any aspect of it seriously. Jonathon Swift made the same (but VASTLY more eloquent) assumption centuries before with A Modest Proposal. Way to miss the point.
Unless of course you're trying to be funny...
Louis
Posted by: PZ Myers
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September 18, 2009 10:04 AM
If you read the third paragraph of my post, you'll notice that I already commented on that. He's being ambiguous, by design or incompetence. However, notice that he only cites arguments against curiosity, and offers not one speck of nuance to suggest that maybe curiosity is a good thing.
The last paragraph does not imply any support for curiosity on the part of Fish. He suggests that curiosity is the god of self...and given his past record, I don't think he looks on that god at all favorably.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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September 18, 2009 10:07 AM
Chicago has some nice museums. But there are parents who could afford $20 for themselves and their two kids, but not $20 apiece for each of them ($80 total), as they just can't afford it. You have no idea of real costs of things. That is why public subsidies are needed for things like museums that benefit all. Private enterprise does not work at all for these things.Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 18, 2009 10:07 AM
If it's possible for us to know everything, we should.
If I could know everything that is fact (as opposed to experience) that is currently known, I would want to. That's part of what the internet is about, and part of what computers will help us accomplish: universal knowledge, with universal access.
Why should we know everything? Simple.
Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is dangerous. Imagine we didn't know about nuclear reactions. Imagine a stockpile of uranium accidentally going critical. It is knowledge that helps us avoid those sorts of accidents (thought accidental criticality has happened in the past).
Not knowing what causes disease helped turn the black death into a pandemic. By killing cats (those evil tools of satan) instead of rats (part of the vector of the plague), the disease was actually helped along by human ignorance.
This kind of knowledge is not a priori. There is no way to know without experience what we need to know to avoid making bad situations worse, let alone which knowledge we'll need to make any situation better.
Should we practice restraint in the pursuit of knowledge? Absolutely. We must be careful how we gain knowledge. We must be careful not only about the methods, but about the rate. Knowledge must be integrated into society, which may sometimes take decades. (Look how long it's taken us to begin to live with the nuclear weapons.) We're still waiting to see the full effects of computers and instant communication on society.
That is part of the self-regulating system that is knowledge acquisition. New knowledge must integrate into society. Even after 150 years, there are people who resist the knowledge of Darwin's proposition. That, to me, illustrates the greatness of his discover more than anything else: the number of generations that have resisted it in an effort to maintain their old metaphysics is astounding. It's an odd and sad metric.
Anyway, to sum up this ramble: yes. We should know everything. Once we have explored the fundamentals of reality, and explored the nuances of the biological computer that is our brain, and the often-irrational software that is our mind, and the bewildering interdependencies of our biosphere, and so on -- after all that, perhaps we'll have enough knowledge to choose our own destiny. That might mean destroying us and the planet in the process. If so, no matter. The risk is worth it, to be independent, to be adults.
If we can know everything, we should.
Posted by: Rey Fox | September 18, 2009 10:08 AM
"However, notice that he only cites arguments against curiosity, and offers not one speck of nuance to suggest that maybe curiosity is a good thing."
I guess it takes a certain amount of knowledge of the writer in question. If YOU were to have written a post citing all of those historical quotes, I would consider it a ringing endorsement of curiosity.
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 10:11 AM
I have to wonder what Walton consider's to be part of a civilised society. For me, and I suspect most people here, things like healthcare that does not depend on ability to pay, or access to decent education, again not based on ability to pay are part. As are museums and libraries that allow the public free access.
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 10:13 AM
Louis @ 292:
"Way to miss the point."
Guilty. Apologies.
Posted by: Rey Fox | September 18, 2009 10:14 AM
"I'm highly amused that, in seeking to point out the failings of science, they inadvertently let slip that they recognise the existence, in their list of what they see as good and noble things scientists allegedly aren't allied to, of not just one, but two moral causes that are entirely distinct from gods - "They have no power of self-control because they have no allegiance -- to a deity, to human flourishing, to community"."
Could be that he was trying to be coy with the god-talk in order to rope in any unsuspecting curiosity-addicts whom that might otherwise turn off. But of course, that was one of the biggest insults of the piece, to suggest that those given over to scientific curiosity have no allegiance to the human community. Apparently we're all mad scientists to Fish.
Perhaps we need more Fish in our schools. Suggesting that wanting to learn is forbidden by stodgy and pompous elders might be just the thing to get teenagers learning.
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 10:17 AM
Nigel @295
"Imagine a stockpile of uranium accidentally going critical."
This is not an idle fantasy. It almost happened during the Manhattan Project because of excessive secrecy and "need to know" mentality (think: 9/11/2001). The people storing and handling certain radioactive materials had no idea placing them tightly together might be a problem. Ooops! (I'm reading some Feynman right now.)
Posted by: The Pint | September 18, 2009 10:18 AM
@ Louis #246
Why thank you. *takes a little bow*
To answer your question, currently The Pint favors a good crimson ale - either a MN-brewed Surly Furious (damned if I can find it down here in Chicago though) or the Flemish Duchesse de Bourgogne, although a Goose Island Pere Jacques does in a pinch. But as winter's a-comin' I'll probably mix it up with a heavier stout as well (can't make a decent stew without some & it'll enhance that special flavor of Divinity Dept. meat).
@ Roameo #286 - couldn't have said it better myself, thank you.
Posted by: The Pint | September 18, 2009 10:36 AM
@ Nerd of Redhead, OM #294
Yup, Chicago's museums are top-notch, but as you've pointed out, rather pricey. Even with the middle of the week during summer free admission day, how many families are actually able to take advantage of that?
Probably the best example of a subsidized facility in the city is the Lincoln Park Zoo & the adjacent Children's Zoo Farm - they're free to the public and rely exclusively on public funds and private donations/foundations to keep running and I can't imagine how they manage as a facility like those must be beyond expensive to maintain (specialized animal care, structural engineers, general staff, etc). As far as zoos go, they are rather good - the habitats are well-maintained and well-designed (the zoo had some major renovations done in recent years), with lots of interactive opportunities (petting specimens in the Reptile house or at the Farm Barn) and the fact that something like this can be found in the city is enormously beneficial: it's a major anchor to the neighborhood, brings in tourists and is an option for families who might not be able to afford the price of admission to a place like the Brookfield Zoo in the 'burbs.
I barely make use of the zoo, even though I live less than a mile away, but I sure as hell don't begrudge my tax dollars going toward supporting the facility.
Posted by: amk | September 18, 2009 10:39 AM
Walton reminds me of this clip from Yes Minister.
I'm not. There is a huge amount of money in football (of whatever code - except maybe Gaelic) in the developed world. They don't need subsidies, and can bloody well pay for what they need themselves.The competitiveness between the teams and there supporters for the top players pushes their wages far beyond their relative worth as entertainers. They get paid far more than they deserve.
What I may consider supporting is a government run redistribution of sporting wealth. It would have to happen at a high level though to stop the players leaving.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 10:44 AM
Charity does not work. In shrinking economies, people give fewer and smaller donations to charity.
Relying on charity to support art and natural history museums and libraries would mean throwing these in the trash as soon as there's an economic downturn. But that's the worst time to throw out our repositories of creative inspiration.
Government does not experience that kind of death spiral that charities do in a bad economy. Government can keep up a more consistent level of support precisely when charities cannot, precisely when support is needed. This is just one reason why charity can never replace public funding.
But remind me again why we have to talk about Walton's politics just because Stanley Fish is an assjack?
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space
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September 18, 2009 10:44 AM
What @220. What we don't know can hurt us--badly. There is no glory in ignorance. It is a much greater threat to our survival than curiosity.
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 10:45 AM
Also sounds like Como Zoo in St. Paul, MN. Wonderful place. We always donate when we visit. Just seems like the right thing to do. Como is a gem; and it's free! Their butterfly exhibit this year was amazing.
Posted by: Louis | September 18, 2009 10:54 AM
@ Jblilie #298:
No worries, I do it all the time. I was actually worried that you were making a joke I'd missed!
Beers all round methinks!
Speaking of which...
@ The Pint #301:
Nice choices. Whilst I appreciate the finer drinks in life, I have developed a tendency towards decadence of late. Pint of Creme de menthe it is then! Or a Dog's Nose.*
Louis
* Seven ounces of gin to thirteen of beer. Unless you are Lord Jeremy Pimpole, in which case it's the other way round. Best drunk in a pint glass....waits for the "but you can't fit 20 ounces in a pint glass"....precisely!**
** Well you can fit 20 Imperial ounces in a pint glass, but you're Foreign, I thought I'd accommodate you!
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 10:56 AM
"Beers all round methinks!" Full agreement! It's only a couple of hours away here!
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 18, 2009 11:04 AM
It seems there is some disagreement on the intertubes about the perfect Dog's Nose:
----------
Dog's Nose
INGREDIENTS:
12 ounces Guinness (room temperature)
2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 ounces gin
Freshly grated nutmeg, for garnish
INSTRUCTIONS:
Pour the Guinness into a large sturdy glass and heat it on high in a microwave for about 1 minute. Add the brown sugar and gin and stir lightly. Add the garnish.
OR:
Ingredients
Dog's Nose
* 1/2 ounces London dry gin
* 1 pint ale
Glass Type: pint glass
Instructions
Drop a shot glass of London dry gin into a pint of porter, pale ale, or bitter ale.
Posted by: Samantha | September 18, 2009 11:09 AM
Walton:
Firstly, on subsidizing museums and not football.
I wish I lived where you did. The local professional football (soccer here) team just got a nice new stadium built, funded in part by the government and put on government land for a highly subsidized purchase price. The (American) football/baseball stadium and the hockey/basketball arena had nice direct road routes put in when they were rebuilt about 10 years ago and were also partially subsidized by the government. You can get a ticket to any of those games (with the exception of the hockey team) for less than $10 on any of the cheap days. The museums in the very same city barely get any government support and tickets range anywhere from $15 to $25 (for adults). Parking is abominable, there are no direct roads built specially for their visitors and even the subway requires you to walk almost four blocks through one of the less safe areas of downtown. The museum subsists off of donations from rich patrons and struggles to stay above bankruptcy. The stadiums and sports teams make the millionaire owners more money while bringing in half the custom for any business OUTSIDE the stadiums than the museums do. All this is ignoring the fact that "Joe Taxpayer" can watch sports for FREE on basic cable and get the first level of paid cable or satellite for about $30-$40... the cost for two adults to go to any of the museums ONCE.
But sure, art and culture aren't worth anything if the average taxpayer doesn't care about them. Never mind the fact that one of our "museums" is actually a "science centre" that is a common trip for many students in the area (a two hour drive radius) and teaches everything from astronomy to body kinetics through interactive exhibits. Another of the big museums has art and artifacts from a vast array of cultures and histories, Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Chinese, Japanese and African alike. I volunteered to chaperone my cousin's class when they made the trip there and there isn't much better than to hear kids going "Cool!" over ancient history that they find boring when just told about it in class. We got a huge discount for the class, paying about 2/3 of what full price would have been and even then it was tight on the school's budget to send the kids there.
But fine, so maybe SOME museums (history or science based ones) should stay open and be funded, but who needs art or literary criticism, right? After all, it's just talking nonsense about other people's writing (or painting). You can see it that way, absolutely, but I think that needs a lot of consideration. I am currently a student doing what we call "Lit and Crit" but is officially "English Literature and Rhetoric". In my first day of class, one of my profs said (paraphrased) "Rhetoric is the words or images that someone will use to try and convince you of something. Criticism is looking at those words and asking questions about them. It is taking an advertisement and breaking it down until you figure out what they're trying to sell you... other than the product, of course." This is why criticism is a necessary subject. Literary and art critics are the ones who read Beowulf and can tell you not only what is going on in the poem but what was going on in the author's world. We spent an entire class (12 or 13 weeks at 3 hours a week) reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales not for what the poem said but what the way the poem was written said. As much of our knowledge about the societies of history comes from literary criticism as it does from the literature and historical reports themselves. Sure, we don't need a dozen accounts of the Marxist themes in Jane Austen, but we do need to study literature as more than just "hey look, doesn't this sound cool" or "isn't this a cool story". You can read Don Juan and just read a story about a young man who finds that he is very attractive or you can criticize Don Juan and learn about Byron and England in the Romantic period.
As an example, one of my courses last year was "Post-Colonial Literature". I wrote an essay on Lovelace's "Dragon Can't Dance" focusing on how the author tied the character's parts in the Dance to their personalities and responsibilities in the community. I had to do a lot of research about the Dragon Dance and Carnival in general. I passed the essay along to a friend of mine whose boyfriend is from Trinidad. At first she read it and just thought it was interesting, but when she got talking to her boyfriend, she found out that some of the ideas behind it were true, mostly that anyone who got the honour of playing Dragon tended to also be the "protector" and law-maker of the community. Sure, none of that was of earth-shattering importance but it did encourage her to learn more about her boyfriend's culture and it ended up bringing them closer. That is the main purpose and strength of criticism; to encourage questioning and investigating other cultures and time-periods and to encourage questioning what we think we're reading to see if there is more behind it than just a pretty poem or enjoyable story. Of course, there are people who get into criticism because it's easy for them to say anything they want and at least get someone to hear them out on it. However, most of those people are looked down on by the majority of the people who actually do love criticism. Often the worst "critics" are ones who don't actually have a degree in rhetoric or criticism (or even any language) and/or are only supported by the general public and not by the majority of Rhetoric or Criticism graduates of any level. Of course, there are some, but those do exist in any subject.
So... yeah, you can throw out museums and criticism and you and maybe some other people wouldn't mind, but there would be damage to society. As much as science and math and even social sciences have more obvious effects, criticism, art and museums encourage questioning and creativity in students of all subject preferences.
Posted by: The Pint | September 18, 2009 11:12 AM
@ Louis #307 & JBlilie #308 - beer it is then! I'll raise my glass to you both at lunch (only 2 hours away, then, whoo-hoo!).
Oh, and just to clear one little thing up, Louis - I'm a Foreigner b/c I'm in the States and you're not, right? Because I'm a Chicagoan born & bred, babe. The 'rents came over from the Philippines - I just don't necessarily fit into the "type" (except ok, I do play the piano, and I'm good at math even though I chose the humanities, and I'm short, but I don't play any country club sports, damn it. Except for polo. I'll stop now).
JBlilie - looks like the Como zoo is on my list of places to visit when I'm next up in Minneapolis.
Posted by: Louis | September 18, 2009 11:12 AM
@ nigelTheBold # 309:
I prefer the Pimpole version from Tom Sharpe's Grantchester Grind. It has that nice ring of dipsomania about it...
;-)
Louis
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 18, 2009 11:15 AM
@ Louis:
I think the only way out of this is empirical evidence. I will have to make all three versions and determine for myself which is superior.
Hmmm. I wonder which I should start with first?
(And I do love Tom Sharpe. I'll have to give the Grind a read.)
Posted by: Walton | September 18, 2009 11:22 AM
Samantha,
I see your point, and maybe I was unfairly disparaging towards literary criticism as an endeavour. On further consideration, I'll accept that it probably does have some useful social effect.
Re sports stadiums, I think it is absolutely wrong for professional sport to be subsidised from the public purse. One of the things that most pisses me off about my own country (the UK) is that we're currently spending billions of taxpayers' money preparing for the 2012 Olympics. We could be spending that money on so many more useful things. Some people persist in the delusion that the Olympics will "regenerate London", but it won't. Past experience shows that it's not likely to achieve much at all, except pouring a ton of money down the drain and leaving us with a lot of useless stadia. Not to mention the people whose homes and businesses are subject to "compulsory purchase" to build all the new sports facilities. It's revolting.
Posted by: Louis | September 18, 2009 11:24 AM
@ The Pint # 311:
Oh FSM yes! I'm a Brit, the Dog's Nose and measurements I was talking about comes from a quintessentially British novel. I was being "funny"* about nationalist idiosyncracies, not the fact that you are or aren't foreign!
Obviously it should go without saying that, like eating theologians is a good idea, anyone not British is practically sub-human and to be deeply pitied. Obviously. No. Really.
Ok perhaps not.
Anyway, polo? For real? Excellent choice of sports! Played it once or twice as a younger person, but stuck with rugby. Less wear and tear on horses...
Louis
*Clearly failed. My bad.
Posted by: The Pint | September 18, 2009 11:25 AM
@ Samantha #310 - Bingo! I wrote a paper last year for my lit theory/criticism class applying Foucault (and his application of Benthem's Panopticon in particular) to the graphic novel Kingdom Come to examine themes of alienation, control & rebellion and far more satisfying than the grade was my prof's comment that she'd never been interested in reading comic books before but would be giving the novel a chance after reading my analysis. BTW - nice to see another lit student on this blog.
@ Strange Gods Before Me #304 - because there are only so many ways we can say "Stanley Fish is an assjack?" I've read enough of the man's work to know to avoid it unless my grade depends on it. The discussions about the validity of lit theory/subsidizing the arts has been a bit off-topic, but as someone who's artistic endeavors could depend quite a bit on things like public literary grants and such, I'd like to hope that at least by engaging Walton on this one, perhaps there's a chance to adjust his opinion even a little? I could be overly-optimistic here - I haven't been around long enough to know whether or not it's a lost cause.
Posted by: Stephen Wells | September 18, 2009 11:26 AM
A story I met in a journal a few years ago seems apposite:
'Robert Wilson, who proposed the first
large Brookhaven accelerator, was asked at a senate hearing “What would the accelerator do to the
defense of the country?” He replied” it will do nothing to the defense of the country but it would make the
country worth defending”.'
Posted by: Walton | September 18, 2009 11:35 AM
To be fair, I do think, on reflection, that public libraries and some museums serve a useful social role. For people who can't afford to buy books and don't have home access to the Internet, libraries provide a vital educational service, which could not easily be replicated by the private or voluntary sectors. Similarly, as Samantha points out, some public museums can be of massive educational benefit. So I'm not being doctrinaire about this; I'm not categorically against the taxpayer funding of libraries, museums, zoos etc. Nor am I totally opposed to the funding of literary criticism in universities (Samantha and The Pint, among others, have convinced me that it does have a certain amount of practical value).
But I also think that art, music, sports, and other forms of entertainment, being essentially subjective in value, should generally not be taxpayer-subsidised. I maintain that it isn't right, fundamentally, to expect a person to subsidise his neighbour's aesthetic preferences.
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 11:36 AM
It's possible. It's a lot of work, though. Usually you have to hound him from thread to thread, keeping track of his contradictions and rubbing his nose in them. It's not worth it unless you enjoy seeing him squirm; then the effort is its own reward.
Posted by: The Pint | September 18, 2009 11:37 AM
@ Louis #315 - Oh, no worries, no offense was taken. I was amused and just curious as to where you hailed from. Which British novel would that be then? I'm always up for a new read! And yes, polo - nothing like playing a sport originally developed as a war game on horseback. Have always wanted to try rugby though - it's surprisingly popular out here in the city. But thanks a lot - I was thinking I might spend this weekend sober but it looks like I'll be pulling out my bar tools & experimenting with the various Dog's Nose mixtures mentioned instead.
@ Walton #314 - (replying to Samantha)"I see your point, and maybe I was unfairly disparaging towards literary criticism as an endeavour. On further consideration, I'll accept that it probably does have some useful social effect."
Huzzah!
Posted by: Louis | September 18, 2009 11:37 AM
@ nigelTheBold # 313:
{Sniff} That's beautiful man. I'll join you in precisely one and half hou.....
....bugger!
I've just remembered I am a new-ish father and therefore have nappies to change if I want to stay married.
This family lark really eats into an excellent drinking career.
I have a solution! I'll get the baby drunk as well. That's responsible parenting, right?
Louis
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 11:40 AM
Walton, natural history museums are entirely of subjective value. You either like them or you don't; that's either the sort of thing you want to learn about or it isn't. Our funding of them is only so that people who want to learn about that stuff have an opportunity to do so.
Posted by: Samantha | September 18, 2009 11:43 AM
Walton:
Fair enough, and thanks for at least thinking about what I said. A lot of people do view English (and by association Literary Crit) with suspicion at best and derision at worst because it is one of the subjects that a lot of people take just because they think it will be easy. Trust me, those of us who love English, Rhetoric and Criticism because we see how it can truly speak to the human condition and the beliefs, circumstances and feelings of the author and culture have more disgust for those "I took English because it was easy" than those outside of our program do. Doing Criticism properly is NOT easy, because you have to put aside a lot of yourself in order to try to read through to the author. That is where the formalist "read only the words on the page" idea came from, which is a fantastic beginning for Criticism but unfortunately what most of the critics of Criticism know as "what Criticism is". It's not.
I totally agree that sports shouldn't be subsidized and if art, history and culture were more valued by our society, I would say that neither should museums. However, I don't think that a trip to the museum for a family of four should cost more than a basic internet and cable bill, as sports CAN be seen with either of those two things where museum exhibits cannot. As it stands, the last time I went to the museum, it was almost $100 for three adults, one 14 year old and one (free) 2 year old. Basic cable and internet can be as low as $60. Two adults and two children (between 4 and 14, more if they were 15-18) would have been $75 after taxes. A baseball game on a cheap day for the same family could have been as low as $36. Basketball game (again, on a cheap day) as low as $50. To me, that is ridiculous. With that being the way things are, however, I do think that museums should be subsidized so that tickets can be $9 a person, rather than $15 and up. If people start to wake up and realize that museums ARE important and start to donate the $200 they would pay on the super-awesome seats at a baseball game or the $1000 they pay for a courtside seat at a basketball game, then museums won't need subsidization anymore. However, last year's donor lists (people who donate $500 or more) from the two biggest museums we have is about the length of the list for $1000 and up seats for about 4 basketball games... which should really say something about why museums get (and in my opinion should get) subsidies when sports games don't.
Posted by: The Pint | September 18, 2009 11:44 AM
@ Walton #318 - Thank you for the acknowledgment. Going to have to continue to disagree with you about subsidizing art (although I'm at least gratified that you hold art & sports in the same vein), but I'm glad to see that you found the discussion to be enough to change your mind regarding the value of lit theory & criticism.
Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings
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September 18, 2009 11:47 AM
I find the mention of "sports" among art and music a bit jarring.
Both art and music are permanent snapshots of culture. They are not merely a reflection; they freeze a bit of culture in time. We know much of ancient Greece not just through the writings, but also through the arts. Singing one round of "Erie Canal" gives me more insight into the 19th century (and the first few years of the 20th) makes dry discussion of the canal much more real.
Sports, however, is nothing more than a frequent contest between individuals. Though the rules of the game capture something of the culture, the games themselves do not.
Our books will give future archeologists an idea of how we think; our art will give them an idea of how we feel.
Is that not worth preserving?
Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 11:57 AM
It's true that at the professional level, sports can be sustained by the market, and sports subsidies amount to little more than giveaways to rich owners. (This is a problem that localism can never solve, by the way. Only a federal ban on local sports subsidies could eliminate the bidding between cities.)
But there are many children who benefit enormously from playing sports, whose parents could not afford the programs without subsidies.
Posted by: amk | September 18, 2009 12:06 PM
Walton,
Sport isn't about aesthetics. Sure, there's an element of marvel at the participants' skill, and sport can tell human stories, but mostly it's about Beating The Other Lot. It's not art, it's tribalism.
I'm going to be annoying and say that the Discovery and History Channels do as good a job of replacing museum visits as ESPN does of replacing attendance of sports events (except for "hands on" exhibits, but in my experience these are both rare and a bit crap). Being there makes a real difference either way.Samantha,
Posted by: Samantha | September 18, 2009 12:10 PM
strange gods:
I am 100% for subsidizing sports programs, just not professional sports. The city I grew up in (different from the one with the stadiums and museums) had minimal subsidies for sports programs but a bunch of parents got together, negotiated with the city for field time and set up their own (free) leagues for soccer, baseball and basketball for kids under 12. My dad was a soccer coach and I was a soccer ref and baseball coach for the summer after I finished high school (had to be 18). The kids wore coloured t-shirts rather than team ones, all chipped in $5 for a few bats and a couple balls per team (couple of balls and nets for soccer) and got a lot of good social experience and some exercise. The leagues shut down just before summer 2008 due to legal concerns but I'd say that the kids had way more fun on those teams than I ever did on the city-run ones.
Posted by: Samantha | September 18, 2009 12:25 PM
amk:
Sadly, I don't think we get either Discovery OR History channels in our basic cable... will have to go check that. Either way, I've seen both a TV program on King Tut and the King Tut exhibit when it came to the history museums and there was a vast difference. Watching baseball on TV and being at a live game? The main difference was the crick in my neck and the fact that my boyfriend ranted about not getting a foul ball for a few days. This may just be me, but I prefer watching sports on TV.
Just checked and we do not get either Discovery or History on basic Cable but we get a channel for the local baseball team, two NFL channels, four "SportsNet" channels, and "The Christian Channel". Going up a level gets you another half-dozen sports channels (TSN, TSN2, the Score, Basketball TV, The Golf Channel, local NBA team channel) plus Discovery and History and National Geographic.
Even if we did get Discovery and History with basic cable, the fact that museum admission is twice the price of baseball tickets and half again the price of basketball tickets is pathetic, especially considering that's the cheaper of the two museums.
Posted by: kalibhakta | September 18, 2009 12:36 PM
@#309:
Will I need a fume hood to make this?
Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 18, 2009 12:39 PM
What happened in the UK was that the last Tory administration decided that people should pay to go to museums like the Science museum, or Natural History museum. The move was ideologically based, as the Government still gave money to the museums for acquisitions, outreach and education projects and research.
So the museums had to introduce admission charges, that put people off going. Attendances dropped, especially amongst the less affluent in society. The actually amounts raised from admissions charges were pretty small compared to total budgets, so the Government was saving very little money.
One of the good things Labour did on gaining power was to provide additional funding and scrap admission charges. As a result attendances have risen.
Posted by: Vole | September 18, 2009 12:48 PM
Does this man need to get in touch with his inner Fish?
Posted by: A. Noyd
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September 18, 2009 1:27 PM
Jim Harrison (#240)
Stuff those straw men, go go go! I mean, you're not making any grounds against real atheists, so you might as well fabricate an opponent you can topple with ease, one that won't keep pestering you to back up your arguments.
Who's doing that?
~*~*~*~*~
Louis (#244)
I'd like the answer to those questions as well.
Posted by: robinsrule | September 18, 2009 1:29 PM
Alyson Miers:
Stan has plenty of company:
priests
politicians
the advertising industry
Sam C:
The bottom line is the deity got mad at Adam & Eve for whatever the fuck they did, therefore you gotta get saved, brother!
JBlilie:
Except in the case of cathodic protection against corrosion. It appears to be limited to stationary structures, unfortunately.
Posted by: Azkyroth | September 18, 2009 1:38 PM
...so?
Posted by: Steve_C | September 18, 2009 1:44 PM
So Dennis/Dave.
Do you work at Videotron?
Posted by: What | September 18, 2009 2:55 PM
The following line appears to be a good summary of the perspective of those of you arguing with Jim and I:
Wow! just wow!Posted by: Knockgoats | September 18, 2009 3:09 PM
OK What,
"Just because the actions taken with the intention of
satisfying our curiosityhelping others can be fatal, doesn't makecuriosityaltruism any less of a good thing."As you say: "Wow. Just wow!".
Posted by: A. Noyd
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September 18, 2009 3:22 PM
Hey, What, here are a few more you can goggle at:
Just because we can catch diseases by having sex, that doesn't make sex any less of a good thing.
Just because actions taken with the intention of ensuring national security can be unethical doesn't make ensuring national security any less of a good thing.
Just because breaking up can make us unhappy, that doesn't make relationships any less of a good thing.
Pretty outrageous, huh?
Posted by: Lynna | September 18, 2009 3:22 PM
To join in on the discussion related to economics, sort of... William Carragan, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Hudson Valley Community College, sent a letter to The New Yorker and they published it as "Putting It In Perspective":
Posted by: robinsrule | September 18, 2009 3:43 PM
Just because there is a very real probability of fatal catastrophic failure doesn't mean no one wants to be an astronaut.
Posted by: ctgopks
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September 18, 2009 3:45 PM
Oh man, there's so much in your post! Just a comment: If I do not believe in gods, there is no possibility of my thinking I am god; curiosity is irrelevant. It is not prideful for me to accept my humanity as it is.
Furthermore, Aquinas is full of of shit. I read him in Latin back in the day and worked through his unfulfilled efforts to work the square peg of Aristotle into the round hole of his religion-addled heart (mind). The only thing he ever proved was that his world-view was infantile (or barnacle-like). You can build an encyclopedia of pedantry on baseless nonsense and false premises, but it will amount to artifice only, when maybe it could have been art, with just a little curiosity. (Cf. Plantinga.)
It never ceases to amaze me, the tendency to appeal to authority. Maybe I'm being too harsh on Aquinas; maybe he would have been more curious if he lived today and was exposed to the discoveries we have seen in the last two centuries. Or maybe he would be just like modern authoritarian theologians, prideful to the core, with their closely held mysteeerious truth.
What ev!
(High on cold medicine)
Posted by: JBlilie | September 18, 2009 4:19 PM
"I don't think we get either Discovery OR History channels in our basic cable"
Never had cable, never will (I know, never is a long time.)
So many books, so little time. I haven't watched TV since 1987 ... (which is probably before some commenters were born ... yikes.)
Posted by: Kagehi | September 18, 2009 4:22 PM
I am reminded of a bit in one of the Uplift War books, by David Brin, in which all the aliens figured humans had to be bloody mad, since when something exploded, they all ran "towards it" to see what was going on. I wonder.. would they have been more accepting if, when something blew up, humans all ran to the nearest church? lol Maybe the wackos have been inbreeding so much that they really are developing into a separate species. :p
Posted by: ctgopks
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September 18, 2009 4:25 PM
@#38.
To answer your question, which other people have answered indirectly, curiosity is in our nature, by all appearances. To judge it good or bad because of penicillin or that science project with worms in the microwave on another post, is to argue from consequence. To argue there is something in our nature that is "bad" is ridiculous. Sounds like original sin to me.
Posted by: tim Rowledge | September 18, 2009 7:39 PM
I find I almost agree with Walton and yet simultaneously completely disagree with him. I really don't feel very happy that public money gets spent on a lot of fairly ridiculous supposed art and literary criticism etc. It seems a bit of a waste. I know it happens; I did a master's degree at the RCA, the premier post-grad art school on this particular planet and heard stories from some of the people that got funding. Of course, what is crap and what is groundbreaking new art etc is very subjective and if you don't risk funding crap you won't get the good stuff either.Oddly enough that's pretty similar to things in the world of science funding too. Some research produces valuable knowledge in both scientific and economic terms and some produces nothing better than a tedious repetition of the already known - or occasionally corrupt results. Same issue - if you don't risk funding crap you don't get the good stuff and you don't have any good way of knowing in advance which is going to be which.
In the 'near practical' research ('m thinking of projects where a fair bit is known and the thrust is now to see if it can be made interesting or profitable, the sort of thing ARPA used to do reasonably well) it is possible to improve the odds if you have good program managers. I've not heard much about similar successes in more speculative fields; maybe it simply isn't possible.
Posted by: Ron Schoenberg | September 18, 2009 8:03 PM
Curiosity can sometimes be a problem
http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=953bc29b3b92e0f478bd50f6ef322cab
I hope somebody hasn't already posted this.
Posted by: Roameo | September 19, 2009 12:38 AM
What:
How nice, you noticed. Now how about you get over your horror and address the fucking point.
I think you would have a very hard time arguing that curiosity itself, as a concept, as a drive, as a desire, is a bad thing. In the cases where it is associated with a negative outcome, the issue at fault is usually negligence or recklessness. I see very little correlation, and as a result causation is going to be a lot harder to prove.
However, if you insist on judging curiosity by its consequences, how about you stick to the ones where curiosity is a primary motive. Such as, i dunno... the majority of learning done by anyone, anywhere.
Posted by: Roameo | September 19, 2009 1:10 AM
Actually, what.
Just read your comments on the mabusa thread. I really shouldnt be feeding the concern trolls. Go fuck yourself.
Posted by: khms | September 19, 2009 4:41 AM
I should probably preface this by saying that "virtue" is not usually a word I use; it's too much associated with religion to really fit my ideas about the world.
#38 Jim Harrison
If I can pose that it's not always wise to do anything virtuous you can think of, then I'll answer this with a "yes". (I think that one's called "moderation".)
Easily. I reject it. There. Done.
I'd instead say that there are situations where it might be wiser not to poke at certain things; but it's definitely a very situational thing.
Isn't that only when you want plausible deniability? In which case you've certainly left virtue behind a long time ago.
Now, there are certainly things for most of us which we do not want to know - such as what a worm exploded in a microwave tastes like, maybe, or (at least for some of us) what exactly certain people do in bed (often called TMI (too much information)).
But we usually know quite well what those are and don't need any additional moraline inducements to restrict our curiosity in those areas.
Actually, no, I think that is a rather obvious conclusion from evolution.
Just remember that at least lots of mammals and birds (possibly even more species, but I'm not a subject expert) are all curious. If that didn't work out, evolution would have dropped that like a hot potato a long time before the first primate, let alone any humans.
(And incidentally, without curiosity, there would never have been any religion.)
Of course, there's nothing that doesn't have identifiable costs ...
Posted by: khms | September 19, 2009 5:48 AM
#106 The Pint
I'm sorry to have to tell you that you didn't manage to convince me.
I see what you're doing there, and I don't like it. I think there's a significant difference between artistic endeavours and theory about those endeavours.
I have no doubt in general about the worth of artistic endeavours (though certainly in many specifics), but over the years I've acquired rather significant doubt about the theory.
And that's another thing. I might be more sympathetic to art funding if I ever happen across funded art that actually seems valuable in some way to me; but so far, all art that meets that criterion for me has been unfunded - apart from being funded by way of selling it to someone, that is.
For example, I know of authors of wonderful books who write very, very slowly because they have to hold down a day job to make ends meet. Somehow, those never seem to get funding. On the other hand, I see publicly-funded sculptures that make me scratch my head and ask what on earth the point is supposed to be here. (Typically, there's either no answer, a lot of blather that doesn't seem to have any point either, or some point where the connection between point and art is completely indiscernible.)
Possibly that just points to a dramatic failure of art theory to do it's job, but I'm doubtful.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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September 19, 2009 6:51 AM
Walton's backpedaling on the utility of museums, football, and literary criticism doesn't actually have anything to do with his real complaint:
He's doing his usual looneytarian whining "da gummint is taking money out of my pocket and spending it on other people, WAAHH!"
Posted by: Trip the Space Parasite | September 19, 2009 6:03 PM
JBlilie @ #287:
See, that's the weakness of science! If you switch to A Different Way of Knowing™, then you'll have both the answer* and a complete list of the benefits to humanity** as soon as you formulate the question! Isn't that so much better?
*"The universe revolves around you."
**Bugger-all.