Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.

[Joseph Tracy]

 But scientists and technologists are not merely adjuncts to bad political pressures, they sometimes lead the way into ethically abusive terrain, atom & then hydrogen bombs, nuclear power plants sited on unstable terrain( Fukushima) with approval of scientists, medical scientists came up with the things like the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments, US military experiments exposing people to radioactive materials, MK Ultra's experiments using drugs, sensory deprivation and torture on unwitting Canadians. The Nazi "medical" experiments were often as "scientific" as current experiments on rats.  The  pragmatic, for some more than others, philosophy  of "Scientific advancement " demands that materials be mined and provided cheaply no matter the human and eco costs. Science and the products generated by science demand access to the materials and cannot ask for a free pass.
 
Sometimes scientists provide the disease and then the cure as in DDT, HFCs ,phthalates, and Thalidimide. With global warming there may be no cure

 You want to say these things are entirely political, but politicians do not make dioxins or PCBs, do not figure out how to mine with mercury, are not the inventors of fossil fuel technologies or new plastics and other products  and techniques that poison the waters and soils.. The presumption that all the questions and difficulties we face are neatly divisible in such a way as to absolve  scientists and the  scientific method is not an idea to which I will be genuflecting.  The science we inherit  has relied heavily on  analysis through dissection, dissolution, explosion and the reduction of all things to the observable component parts. This has been a mindset with some very dark consequences because life, and the only reality humans can actually experience is interactive, conscious, interdependent and more than the sum of parts or rules. There is no rule by which things desire to live, and no methodology of science has ever produced a living reproductive organism. Once again as in the original article there is a large gap between what  science claims  to know and what can be demonstrated by experiment.  Scientific practice is not  able to be isolated as some pure and benign pursuit. It has been heavily fueled throughout history by war and greed and has itself fueled war, injustice and avarice.  Some of this comes out with heart-rending intensity in Mason and Dixon, Gravity's Rainbow, and Against the Day.. Equally so in The Metaphysical Club, Frankenstein, A Brave New World.  


On May 30, 2013, at 10:44 PM, David Morris wrote:

> Good point.
> But your beef is entirely political.  It has nothing to do with science or philosophy, except beyond their application in politics.
> In the US 3rd parties are almost lays losers.  You seem to be advocating a allegiance of scientist as a political voice.  And Amen!
> But that goal isn't about science or philosophy.  It's about pragmatics.
> 
> David Morris
> 
> On Thursday, May 30, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> No.  I respect and love and admire the creative and inventive possibilities released by scientific inquiry. But science and scientists do also get used for, and sometimes actively participate in some real bad shit. What I was meaning to say and I can see how easily I could be misunderstood was that we have many global problems that seem to require the immediate attention and investment of modern science: global warming, toxic materials in food air and water, rampant hunger and disease, deforestation, etc. but instead of applying the  powers of science to those issues we are spending money on hadron colliders and giant space  telescopes looking for the beginning of the universe.   The thing is there is really no need to rush these extremely expensive  and/or theoretical projects and every reason to rush to find better solutions for some of the major issues of immediate planetary concern.
> 
> 
> 
> On May 30, 2013, at 5:46 PM, MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> 
> > So Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton, et al are to be held responsible for AIDS, ebola virus, Lyme disease, etc.  I admit, I hadn't considered that.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> > To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Wed, May 29, 2013 11:45 pm
> > Subject: Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.
> >
> > I think part of the point though is that there is growing evidence that science
> > is up against the limits of empiricism and has moved it's brightest physicists
> > toward spewing out untestable multidimensional string theory and spending
> > billions to collide beams in  search of Higgs's God particle. Is this not some
> > kind of pseudo scientific holy grail that is as much philosophy as physics? Will
> > a unified interpretation follow? How real is the thing they may or may not have
> > found and what exactly is the question being answered? Cuz it's getting mighty
> > hot around here, lots of people with malaria, aids, Lymes, Ebola Lots of
> > children starving, species disappearing,  fibers in the web of life breaking,
> > lot's of carbon and methane in the wind, toxic shit floating  down the
> > river,arsenic in the rice, radioactive towns, a great deal of it thanks to the
> > scientific revolution.
> > On May 29, 2013, at 6:31 PM,
> > MalignD at aol.com
> >  wrote:
> >
> > > Must disagree.  Shallow, strawman arguments that seem ignorant of the fact
> > that disagreement, challenge, sometimes piecemeal answers are part of science
> > and a large part of what makes it powerful.
> > >
> > > The questions he mentions are tough, and certainly there are no easy answers.
> > But to suggest we're going to philosophize our way to them is ... well:  good
> > luck.
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Keith Davis <
> > kbob42 at gmail.com
> > >
> > > To: Joseph Tracy <
> > brook7 at sover.net
> > >
> > > Cc: P-list List <
> > pynchon-l at waste.org
> > >
> > > Sent: Wed, May 29, 2013 3:24 pm
> > > Subject: Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.
> > >
> > > Amen
> > >
> > >
> > > On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Joseph Tracy <
> > brook7 at sover.net
> > > wrote:
> > > This is an excellent, brief but substantial rebuttal to the tidy mathematical
> > models of Hawking and his presumptions about the meaning and explanatory power
> > of those models. Hawking sees himself as part of the clear-headed data-based
> > scientific revolution, when he is largely a conservative voice defending a
> > particular POV that has been around with variations since the Enlightenment. I
> > often feel that science has been politicized into the same name-calling and two
> > party divisions which dominate political thought. It's a matter of survival,
> > allies in a tough market place rather than truly independent thinking .  All of
> > this is discussed in Pynchon's essay( Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?) referring to
> > CP Snow's lecture- "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" .
> > >
> > > Mostly it looks a lot like talking monkeys heaving shit at each other when
> > they/we reach the limits of their/our ability to  explain, know or understand.
> > To me part of the mindset I have imperfectly come to ( I still throw shit from
> > time to time), is a willingness to live with many unanswered questions. I feel
> > less hardened in this space, and I feel Pynchon and many artists occupy this
> > space and ask us to try it out.  It allows for the deepest kind of curiosity
> > without promising answers. I think it allows for taking philosophic , spiritual,
> > or moral positions without being self -righteously blind to the inconsistencies
> > or problems in our model.
> > >
> > >
> > > On May 27,