'The mythology of how markets work, of how money can do things on its own, is as remote from solid physical reality as these other things. And of course whatever the mythology of the time is, those inside it don't recognise it as such; they think they're just noticing facts.'
This mythology to facts manouevre became the excuse for the absurd 'strong programme' in sociology, an attempt to turn science into just another social discourse. Midgley is not going that far, indeed she is not saying anything about science qua science. She is simply saying that prevailing mythologies can produce phantasms that are taken for facts - factasms? - by believers. The mythology thus takes on the authority of science, often, as Midgley well knows, with the collusion of scientists.
A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Of course there was a good deal of fairly dodgy stuff on the fringe of science which was Marxist, but I don't think it was any dodgier than the monetarist things that have been going on since then.
ReplyDeleteLol.
Our propensity to substitute descriptions for nature will always trip us up. It's how people can become convinced that a bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex.
ReplyDeletesurprisingly brief this one, I felt like cool hand luke did at the end of the bitumen. yes. what else can you say?
ReplyDeleteWeber said that the difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences is that, in the latter, both the scientist and the object of study attach meaning to events. Action is social "when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior."
ReplyDeleteThus the surgeon and the knife-wielding assailant are different, despite the objective similarity of their actions.
Interestingly, Midgley belongs to a whole bevy of pugnacious and piercingly-intelligent female thinkers (Anscombe, Warnock, Murdoch, and, perhaps less well-known, the nuclear historian Lorna Arnold), all of whom reached university age in the war years. Midgley herself speculates that the number of men going off to war created greater academic opportunities for women at the time.
ReplyDeleteHi David,
ReplyDeleteI cannot find the source, but you reminded me that there was a psycho-social inventory, a USA-based values inventory I think, which showed that adolescents from affluent areas who became doctors, shared similar values with those who would be drug dealers in poor neighborhoods. I wish I could think of the similarities too, the importance of money and luxury cars and such. A value placed on healing was not as high as might be expected for doctors. Thus sociological studies can make what we perceive as different to be similar.
~~~~~
On science, myth and Midgely. It is interesting to note as we look at evolution as a creation myth, that scientists make up a very small percentage of the population. And yet, out of this group comes this construct that so many others easily buy into. It follows that this is a powerful and appealing construct, at least and apparently for our time.
It seems that, even though it is difficult to realize the myths we live in as myths, to separate the facts from the factasms as it were, we can look at the constructs of prevailing economic models as well as all creation models, especially including or adding the evolution model, to get an idea of the mythological environment that we are sharing. In other words, we an take the perspective of what we find in such a mirror.
Furthermore, both of these groups, the scientists and economists, are part of groups whose business it is to throw out mythological belief systems. Yet being human, they cannot (without repression, to use a Freudian idea) and I suspect because of a powerful tendency toward spontaneous social orders, whatever the prevailing orders may be. Thus, the myths that we all share play out in these systems that they create very unconsciously.
Yours,
Rus
This is a murky area, Bryan. I've been arguing with an atheist that the synoptic gospels are jsut as much documents form history as Tacitus, Josephus et al. They were written. They are documents. They just don't happen to suit his outlook.
ReplyDeleteFact is fact, science is science.
And yet, out of this group comes this construct that so many others easily buy into. It follows that this is a powerful and appealing construct, at least and apparently for our time.
ReplyDeleteNo weight given to rational clarity? How delightfully postmodern.
Hi kynefski,
ReplyDeleteThe issue with evolutionary theory--and I take it, based on a past comment of yours, that's where you would apply "rational clarity" as opposed to, say, either "irrational murkiness", "rational murkiness" or "irrational clarity" (which is the evolutionist's slippery slope)--is that it is simply and only a theory, a construct, thus a myth of our time (esp. if to believed as "gospel"), and may have nothing indeed to do with how everything actually got "here". But, the idea that evolutionary theory would be pushed as if it is the end-all of theories, speaks of what is ingrained in people nowadays. Why would we do this to ourselves? Why is there an argumentative insistence that we all step the same way, that there must be a ministry of silly walks to ensure that we all abide by this.We are each to think down this specific path, under the guise of "rational clarity", say, and not vary from what the evolutionists want us all, and themselves apparently, to believe. We must question motives.
Yours,
Rus
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRus,
ReplyDeleteYou know I'll always cede the last word but, you asked a particular question, and it would seem rude to ignore it.
First, since we're on Bryan Appleyard's turf, allow me to re-affirm my admiration for his 2000 New Scientist essay, You asked for it. I wholeheartedly agree with everything he says about misapplication of evolutionary theory to areas of human experience where it is useless. So please let's be clear that I speak only of the process by which life evolves on Earth.
Why is there an argumentative insistence that we all step the same way...
I contest the assertion that there is such an insistence, and I challenge you to identify a coherent theory for the process (important term, there) of biological evolution that has not received a fair hearing from the scientific community.
Yours,
Ken Pidcock
Hi Ken,
ReplyDeleteI cannot get to the entire article, not being a subscriber. But as I would expect, it sounds like it must be well put.
You want me to identify a coherent theory for the process of biological evolution that has not received a fair hearing from the scientific community.
Okay, so, you believe that if I were to do this, it would go far to convince who of what?, or progress what train of thought?, or put to bed which argument?
Imagine an ultimate truth guru who has been living through the ages. She knows what all these answers are, but each time a new theory comes about, a new cosmic model, the team or the genius who comes up with it, brings it before her to ask: Is this it? She simply answers "yes" or "no". I submit, that she has not yet said "yes", because each attempt has been too flawed. This is true of evolutionary theory.
The scientific community deals, for the most part in the physical world. Thus, any hearing of any theory by the scientific community would, in order to be fair to that community, need to be based in the physical world. Otherwise, it would be outside the scientific community's area of expertise and study. Thus, this community is disqualified from taking the place of our truth guru. But add to this that she has already said "no" in the first place to evolutionary theory as we know it.
That said, what we have in evolutionary theory is a model that can be useful to humankind. We have not completely tapped into all that such a thought process can yield to us in benefits or value.
If we look at the history of ideas, we can see that each model that has been prevalent, such as the clock theory as it relates here, but Euclidean and Newtonian models, has been powerful enough--as far as they go. And they are each still useful, just as I brought in the idea of Freud's repression above.
The next Einstein, however, will be the person who changes this up, who shows that the cosmic model cannot be the way current philosophies assume. This next Einstein may not get a "yes" from the truth guru, but he or she will show why the present-age "no" was given.
To frame this another way, what the scientific community is doing, is, at each step, assuming that evolutionary theory as we know it, is true--and then where it is not true, making adjustments. For instance, have we evolved from aquatic apes or what? Another way to make progress, would be to assume at each point that evolutionary theory is false. We just aren't Einsteinically there yet. But we are at a point to see that what is constructed is a myth of sorts, one that will not last as such forever.
Yours,
Rus
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Rus, how does the truth or otherwise of aquatic ape theory effect the validity of evolutionary theory? Surely the specifics of species descent can be debatable ad nauseam within the overarching structure of the general theory?
ReplyDeleteHi Michael,
ReplyDeleteThat's all there is to the theory, specifics. We take those specifics and project the theory onto them. That we have only conjecture where, not only we came from in the grand scheme of an evolutionary theory, but where any other species sprang from is significant. And we have been discussing in this blog how economists have no idea where the economy is heading. Evolutionists are even more clueless than economists.
Yours,
Rus
What on earth is Ed Hardy on about? Does his hoody and shoes theory fit in to a general idea of evolution - especially from aquatic apes? I doubt it ... oh I doubt it...
ReplyDelete