The alien hypothesis?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

There really are a lot of contradictions and equivocations in your 
rebuttal, and the social constructedness of "Science" as you are trying 
to define it becomes more and more apparent each time you leap to its 
defence with straw man attacks on what you perceive as challenges to 
its social and historical preeminence. Some points:
1. I can't comment on Pinker, but it's clear from *your* 
mischaracterisations that you have no idea what post-structuralism is 
on about.
2. Whether or not Zaman is as "smart" as Pinker I don't know, but your 
privileging of the one scientist/theorist over the other is baseless as 
far as I can see.
3. The mechanistic model upon which classical physics is founded is as 
metaphysical, and as untestable, as the immanent sentience model which 
Zaman has put forward. Call it "idle speculation" if you like, but that 
label applies equally to both models. As also does the provisionality 
escape clause.
4. You argue that no-one will take the proposition of immanent 
sentience seriously, but then assert that it's a very old idea. Which 
way do you want it? Certainly the idea of a Living Earth (in GR and M&D 
in particular) and deconstructions of the animate/inanimate hierarchy 
(in V. and GR) are prominent in Pynchon's work. And I'd argue that 
they're taken seriously.
5. While personally I might be tempted to agree with your rejection of 
the idea of sentient rocks, isn't part of the ideal of "the scientific 
method" at its best the willingness to recognise and step outside of 
one's subjective space (individual consciousness, prejudices, 
predilections, peccadilloes etc) in order to consider and investigate 
the possibilities which other perspectives and approaches might offer?

I think that you need to resort to your mischaracterisations of 
Critical Theory and theorists of Science with whom you disagree (what 
of the challenges to scientific orthodoxy coming from feminist 
scientists such as Sandra Harding, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Evelyn Fox 
Keller and Emily Martin?) in order to defend those boundaries--and by 
now it's pretty clear that they are in fact arbitrary boundaries ("you 
have to be able to look at things very differently but not SO 
differently" etc) which are considered to be conducive to traditional 
practices--which "Science"-- or the type of "Science" you approve 
of--constructs and polices. All that's really being questioned is what 
those boundaries are, who imposes them and why, for what purposes, and 
who and what is excluded or marginalised in the process. You now 
acknowledge that that's the way "Science" actually does operates in 
practical terms, what's so wrong with saying, "Well then, let's have a 
closer look at that". Btw, Feynman's choice of the strait-jacket 
metaphor was an unfortunate one, dontcha think?

best

On 23/10/2005, at 9:50 AM, John Doe wrote:

> If a guy as smart as Pinker can't make snese of
> Barthe's supposed "ideas" on language, that tells me
> that there's gotta be a whole lot of obscurantism
> going on in his notions...and as far a Zaman is
> concerned; look, to make a hypothesis scientifically
> meaningfull, it is implied, if not explicitly stated,
> that at some point you have to TEST that
> hypothesis...otherwise, what ya got is not an
> hypothesis so much as idle speculation...so hey, I'm
> relaxed about it - if Zaman want's to propose that the
> sun is a sentient entity, he's free to do so all he
> wants; sounds like oodles of fun!...but...if he's not
> willing to set conditions of testability on that
> surmise, or 'hypothesis', then he's not gonna be
> regarded by serious scientists... and..I would venture
> to bet, though 'course I can't PROVE this readily, I
> don't think anyone ELSE is gonna be much taken by his
> proposition, which is by the way a very old one at
> that...sure, any college sophmore understands that
> "our" definition of "life" may not embrace enough
> possibilities to include what MAY be out there, or
> even here...but, as with anything else, for practicle
> purposes, there IS such thing as being too
> open-minded...if we make allowances for rocks then we
> may as well scrap our working definition...and that's
> the whole point; every scientist knows that it's a
> working, provisional definition...but ya gotta start
> with SOME parameters...to define something ya gotta
> have some idea not only of what it is but what it's
> not...otherwise then you have REAL "semantic
> constructs" not worth a  damn...paradigm shifts STILL
> happen within accepted frameworks; Relativity had
> aspects that were very counterintuitive..at
> first...then, when elucidated it was shown that it
> essentially augmented, not supplanted Newtonian
> physics...things followed from things..it wasn't THAT
> weird...not as weird as saying "the universe is made
> of cheesey poofs"...and leaving it at that...so I
> simply don't see the value of such an unrestricted
> postulation....Richard Feynman once said that one way
> of thinking of the method of coming up with ideas in
> science was as "imagination in a strait jacket"...you
> have to have be able to look at things very
> differently, but not SO differently that you toss out
> all things we thus far feel we know...as provisional
> as they are...
>
> --- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
>
>> Take it easy, John Doe. Pop a Prozak or something.
>> It's quite OK if you
>> can't or don't want to try to come to grips with the
>> scientific and
>> methodological ideas in Zaman's article.
>>
>> Imagine it, to put it into the simplest possible
>> terms, as a thought
>> experiment which proposes the scientific hypothesis
>> that rocks and
>> other "non-living" objects are actually sentient in
>> some way (cf. those
>> "oodles of scientists saying exactly that: that
>> intelligent life as WE
>> know it may be too narrow a definition" which you
>> referred to
>> previously.) Newton's math still applies. Now, go
>> ahead and try to
>> disprove that hypothesis experimentally. I think
>> you'll find that the
>> immanent sentience version is no more or less
>> falsifiable than the
>> Newtonian mechanist version. At least, I think
>> that's part of what
>> Zaman is contending in the article. In rejecting the
>> hypothesis, all
>> you've really got to go on is human "common sense"
>> as the determinant
>> of what's "scientifically" tenable and what isn't.
>>
>> There are any number of resonances with Pynchon's
>> work, which is just
>> one of the reasons why the ideas might be worth
>> bothering with here.
>> And stamping your feet and sticking your fingers in
>> your ears and
>> shouting "la la la la" doesn't actually make them go
>> away.
>>
>> Btw, your narrow straw man definition of "language"
>> as signifying only
>> verbal utterances has nothing to do with the ideas
>> of Derrida and
>> Barthes, or with applied linguistics for that
>> matter, and is pretty
>> much on a par with your bowdlerisations of
>> Baudrillard.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>
>>>> See also, e.g.,
>>>>
>>>>
>>
> http://theoryandscience.icaap.org/content/vol002.001/05zaman.html
>>>>
>>>>
>>
> http://theoryandscience.icaap.org/content/vol003.002/zaman.html
>>>>
>>>> Cf. "[...] there's a feeling about that
>> cause-and-effect may have
>>>> been taken as far as it will go. That for science
>> to carry on at all,
>>>> it must look for a less narrow, a less . . .
>> sterile set of
>>>> assumptions. The next great breakthrough may come
>> when we have the
>>>> courage to junk cause-and-effect entirely, and
>> strike off at some
>>>> other angle." (GR 89)
>>>>