Trobriand Islanders

[John Doe]

No..he got it right..and so did J. Bronowski, who
published a series of lectures also dealing with this
sort of humbleness, accountability and necessary
honesty...no honesty is necessary in the humanities;
your rationalizations, biases, vanity and ego can go
unchecked...I can't believe you can't see this in
operation around you with your academic
buddies...historically, it has been humanities profs.
NOT the Cold Hearted Unfeeling Scientists who have
been ardent supportersd of Nazism and other fascist
ideologies...and , again, when you talk about bombs
and planes, trains and automobiles, you are not
talking about "science" anymore...Feynman worked on
the Bomb, yes, but excluding that unprecedented
association of the government with scientists -
ostensibly fighting the Good Fight against Nazism by
the way - scientists like Feynman, and he's a great
example, DON'T like to work for the mass production of
weaponry...in fact he used to say, 'I have a policy
practically of never going near Washington'; he also
nearly turned down the Nobel Prize; until his wife and
friends talked him out of it....here was a guy who
simply wanted to know what made things tick...he was
not into watching his ideas transformed into
rockets....I still don't know why humanities people,
so proud of their imaginations, cannot put themselves
in the position of awe and wonder that many scientists
are in - and that's perhaps why they can't figure out
what science is about; they can't relate to the
impulse to discover...if you yourself have never felt
such passion for understanding WHY apples always fall
downwards and not some other direction, or how this
automatic transmission accomplishes what it does, then
I can see why it's all so unvisceral and abstract to
you...but y'know, I'd figure you can at least through
the exercise of your copious imagination, be able to
put yourself in those shoes of wonder for at least a
few seconds....but I guess some people have a deficit
that way....so they whip up complicated Theories about
how science is just arbitrary rhetoric..blah blah
blah...funny how indignant they get over MERE
"rhetoric"...and by the way, Feynman was "old-school";
the scientists today ARE much more aware and
responsible about for what and for where there work is
or is not gonna be used...but nonone can anticipate
everything J.; many a humanities prof.'s writings have
been warped to serve the purposes of Dangerous
Groups....NIetzsche to name just one.....so don't
pretend like texts are any more immune to corruption
than E=mcsquared...and try to keep in mind that folks
with a childlike "wanting to know" are not the same
folks who write up government contracts to make
missles...you really need to sit down and talk to a
real thoretical scientist...you will be
surprised...besides, if you knewe about the history of
the life of the mind so to speak at Los Alamos, you'd
know that many scientists had misgivings at the time,
and especialy afterwards...again, I have heard many
scientists change their mind baout something - it's
part of the job - but rarely have I heard of
politicians or preachers or humanities profs. say "
Man, guess I was really dead wrong with that
idea....back to the drawing board" no - their egos
demand that they never admit error in judgement...if
it comes down to Trust, give me a scientist with
contingent beliefs anyday over some inflexible,
imperious schlep who believes his Word is Truth
unqualified.....

--- jporter <jp3214 at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 28, 2005, at 1:29 AM, Cometman wrote:
> 
> > What have you got against the Trobriand Islanders?
>  Is NATO going to
> > invade them next?  Is Kissinger en route to them
> to win another Nobel?
> >
> 
> I have always felt that Feynman  got it reversed in
> his poignant
> description of The Cargo Cult of South Pacific
> Islanders in his
> Caltech commencement address given in 1974:
> 
> http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html
> 
> 	Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you
> 	what they're missing. But it would be just
> 	about as difficult to explain to the South Sea
> 	islanders how they have to arrange things so
> 	that they get some wealth in their system. It is
> 	not something simple like telling them how to
> 	improve the shapes of the earphones. But there
> 	is one feature I notice that is generally missing
> 	in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all
> 	hope you have learned in studying science in
> 	school -- we never say explicitly what this is, but
> 	just hope that you catch on by all the examples of
> 	scientific investigation.
> 
> 	It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now
> and
> 	speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific
> integrity,
> 	a principle of scientific thought that corresponds
> to
> 	a kind of utter honesty --a kind of leaning over
> 	backwards.
> 
> 	For example, if you're doing an experiment, you
> 	should report everything that you think might make
> 	it invalid -- not only what you think is right
> about it:
> 	other causes that could possibly explain your
> results;
> 	and things you thought of that you've eliminated by
> 	some other experiment, and how they worked -- to
> 	make sure the other fellow can tell they have been
> 	eliminated.
> 
> Apparently, "scientific integrity" as preached by
> Mr. Feynman
> does not include the creation, testing and dropping
> of atomic
> bombs on innocents, nor accepting responsibility for
> it, more
> than some lip service about poor marksmanship.
> 
> Might be time for "a postdialectic paradigm that
> includes culture
> as a whole," including the effects of "scientific
> integrity", not just
> as some barely remembered elective course on the way
> to a
> shiny new degree in science, but front and center,
> in every science
> classroom on a daily basis.
> 
> To the Military Industrial Complex- those funding
> the actual research
> and development of scientific enterprise- the rest
> of us are all
> Trobriand Islanders. The price of not forging a
> bridge across that
> yawning divide is no small part of the meaning of
> GR.
> 
> jody
> 
> 



	
		
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