TRP and Science 2 (was: Science Plays God)

[Monte Davis]

KFL >Ain't modern science - and I'm talking here about hard, or, as Paul
Mackin puts it, "real science" - a self-referential functional system
completely unreachable for something as old-fashioned as values of the
"real, important human" kind?

 

Two angles of vision on this: one is via the is-ought problem
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem>  or  fact-value
distinction <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-value_distinction> . That
came up in philosophy and ethics independent of (in fact, long before
before) discussions of science and values. There simply is no agreement on
how to derive prescriptive, "human values" statements of the form "this is
what we ought to do (or not do) in the world"  from normative statements of
the form  "this is the way the world is," or even "this is the way we humans
are." The values have to come from authority, tradition/imitation (culture),
intuition, revelation. They are not to be found in facts, or in the
principles we come up with to organize and distill our understanding of
facts. 

 

NB that this applies to *all* knowledge - but in my experience, scientists
live more comfortably with that, and are readier to acknowledge it, than
others. That may appear bloodless and "value-free;" it isn't. They're every
bit as likely to care, think and feel strongly about "what we ought to do
(or not do) in the world;" but to the extent they're honest scientists,
they're actually less likely to claim that "the facts" dictate this or that
ethical (i.e. value-loaded) choice than others are.        

 

Second angle: Many aspects of scientific method and protocol "exclude human
values" as prophylaxis against letting the researcher's preferences
(conscious or unconscious) distort the choice of what data to collect and
how to interpret it. As you know well, much of statistics serves that
purpose: we don't trust our "feelings" about what's an adequate sample size,
or how far from the null hypothesis the results need to be to establish
significance at what confidence level, because there's a long, sorry history
of bad science done without statistical care. We're all too prone to see
what we want to see and stop looking as soon as it's "confirmed" to our
satisfaction. And a scientist taking precautions against that, like (say) a
journalist following her own profession's protocols to cover a story as
completely and objectively as possible, is likely - again - to look
cold-bloodedly methodical and "value-free" to a more passionate or
pre-committed observer. Again, I disagree: I think the scientists are just
as likely as anyone else to cherish and to and act on "human values" .
they're just more concerned than others to doubt, test, and be clear about
what they know (and don't know) before deciding what to do.  

 

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Kai Frederik Lorentzen
Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2013 6:19 AM
To: Monte Davis; pynchon -l
Subject: Re: TRP and Science 2 (was: Science Plays God)

 


On 13.06.2013 00:38, Monte Davis wrote:

Is it possible that at the same time he is suspicious and minatory and
worried about science and technology (and he is, like so many other
writers),  he is also (like very few others in literary fiction) really
interested in it? Attracted to it? Even fascinated by it? Concerned to show
us some real, important human values that come to us through, even because
of, math and science and technology?


How math, science and technology can bring us "real, important human
values", I do not see. I'm not saying this polemically, and there are
certainly good things - antibiotics have been mentioned - about scientific
modernity. Or, as Jesse says when Walter shows him how to cook up the shit
right: "WOW ... Science!"  But "values"? How? We do not have to come to a
consent on this. But I really would like to hear - and please note that I'm
not Alice - from you a detail or two on the criticism on science one can
doubtlessly find in Pynchon. The thing is that he's not simply "worried
about science and technology ... like so many other writers"; to Pynchon the
pitfalls of science-based control are a key issue. I don't find this in,
say, Philip Roth or Cormac McCarthy. It's plausible to say that Pynchon's
attitude towards modern science's war against ambivalence became more
relaxed in the second phase of his work, but in the first three novels the
theme is central, imo. Pointsman makes his points, Schoenmaker finds his
clients. And Dr. Hilarious can continue his concentration camp experiments
under civil conditions in context of MK Ultra. These motives - all based in
the real history of the 20th century - do unfold a fundamental criticism
regarding modern science and its lack of values. I'm not discussing here -
though we might come to this - whether the loss of human values is a
necessary product of social differentiation, as Luhmann ("Modernity has more
advantages and more disadvantages than any other society before") puts it,
or whether this could be avoided by different forms of political
organization. Just that much: "Keep cool and care!" won't do. That Pynchon
is "attracted" to modern science is certainly right; even after the
successful publication of V he wanted to complete his scientific education
with a math grade from Berkeley. But, as already said, how to get from
Pynchon's fascination by science to any kind of 'scientific value
generation' to be found in the texts themselves, is not clear to me. What I
find instead, especially in Gravity's Rainbow, is the tendency to connect
the progress of science to deadly war technology. Not only in the case of
rockets or nuclear weapons, yet regarding modern science as such. "There has
been this strange connection between the German mind and the rapid flashing
of successive stills to counterfeit movement for at least two centuries ---
since Leibniz, in the process of inventing calculus, used the same approach
to break up the trajectories of cannonballs through the air" (GR, p. 407).
It's not really "the German mind", it's science ---


  

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