TRP and Science 2 (was: Science Plays God)

[malignd at aol.com]

What do you mean by "dictate" in this sentence?


Who in the world thinks that facts can dictate anything? 





-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Mon, Jun 17, 2013 12:35 am
Subject: Re: TRP and Science 2 (was: Science Plays God)



On Jun 16, 2013, at 10:42 PM, Monte Davis wrote:

> 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 or  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.
Often the values people exhibit  proceed from the efficacy of other organizing 
forces: profit motives, violence, deceit, organized racism, nationalism, etc.  

> They(values) are not to be found in facts, or in the principles we come up 
with to organize and distill our understanding of facts.
 Values are never to be found in the principles we use to organize and distill  
our understanding of facts?   Really? What are some of the principles we use 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.
Quite a few scientists are also comfortable with working as hired killers or for 
those other unmentioned sources of values like  the practical survival skills of 
"profit motives, violence...."
> 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.

Who in the world thinks that facts can dictate anything? 

 Virtually all climate scientists agree that greenhouse gases are causing global 
warming and that  atmospheric carbon is causing ocean acidification. The rate of 
temperature rise has been revised upward several times.  But scientists are not 
allowed to be neutral observers and reporters of data in this situation because 
they are fully integrated into the fossil fuel based civilization,  because 
their children will live with the consequences of the choices made, and because 
there is no choice if we want to live on a hospitable planet other than reducing 
carbon emissions or playing    a risky game with an entire planet of 'maybe 
this'll work.'  

I'm glad that science is giving us a wake up call. But the implications of that 
wake up call do, if heeded, call for a revision of how and why science is done 
and perhaps even what science means.  Because if science really does remain 
unreachable by human values it will  continue to be readily used as a tool of 
inhuman values.  
>        
>  
> 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, evenbecause 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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