More Postmodernist and Science Studies Politicizing and High Moralizing: In
Refutation of V. Dusek
Epigraph I: "These are perilous times. I can’t abandon it [science] to
people who threaten everything [truly worthy] I’ve spent a lifetime
defending." (Jean luc Picard – Star Trek: Insurrection)
Epigraph II: "All superstition is much the same whether it be that of
astrology, dreams, omens, retributive judgment or the like…[in that] the
deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect or pass
over their failure, though it be much more common." (Francis Bacon, Novum
Organum)
Epigraph III: There are those who have proclaimed to have tamed the
‘monster’ Science "…by declaring that somehow it is all a fake, science
isn’t ‘real’ knowledge, it’s just a ‘narrative.’ It’s not abstractly
preferable to other systems of belief – myth for instance – merely attached
to a culture that is, for the moment, more powerful than others. To make
this strange doctrine even marginally plausible would seem to require an
intellectual engine at least comparably powerful to that deployed by the
sciences. How could one hope to reveal the errors of a flawed
knowledge-system without having some keener instrument at hand to dissect
it?
Quite obviously, no such things has been invented. What serves in its
place, however, is a stubbornly entrenched species of *knowingness,* an
attitude that gives itself permission to avoid the pain and difficulty of
actually understanding science by declaring in advance that knowledge is
futile or illusory."
(Norman Levitt, More Higher Superstitions: Knowledge, knowingness, and
Reality, Skeptic Vol.4, No.4. 1996, page 78)
Epigraph IV: "Among the articles of faith required of [postmodernist and
science studies] postulants was [and is] the dogma that only though this
creed could one enlist in the struggle against the social and political
evils of the world; only by getting [it] right with Foucault, Derrida,
Lyotard, and Kristeva could one truly oppose racism, sexism, homophobia,
imperialism, ethnocentrism, and all the [alleged] attendant evils wrought by
the capitalist West." (Norman Levitt, More Higher Superstitions, page 79)
Epigraph V: "Since my politics are those of my granddad – which is to say
Debsian socialist – I was disconsolate that at the end of this horrid
century the grand tradition of the *engage* intellectual had deliquesced
into this [postmodernist; science studies racket] slobber. To the extent
that I could unthink the prevailing rhetoric to see how its practitioners
thought they might accomplish something in terms of real-world politics, the
master-plan seemed to be this: If enough professors committed themselves to
using bizarre, woolly, and pretentious language in books, papers, and
lectures, then the contours of the world would shift, expelling all evils
and inaugurating The Reign of the Just." (Norman Levitt, More Higher
Superstitions, page 79)
Epigraph VI: "No less than in the circle of alien-abduction believers,
knowingness rules the day for science critics, with the curious corollary
that knowledge – that infinite more precious substance – is tossed on the
trash heap. ‘You can’t dupe us! Cry the social constructionists, thereby
duping themselves beyond hope of redemption." (Norman Levitt, More Higher
Superstitions, page 80)
Epigraph VII: "The simple truth is that I became a critic of the radical
science-studies movement because it seemed so intellectually shallow and
indefensible, and because its leading figures, a number of whom I had taken
care to hear out, seemed to embody all the misplaced self-regard and
self-certainty that makes postmodernism so unappealing." (Norman Levitt,
More Higher Superstitions, page 80)
Epigraph VIII: "What I really object to is the way a claim of left
sympathies is used as a perpetual Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card, something that
allows one to dismiss any criticism, however cogent, as the spiteful work of
diabolical reactionaries." (Normal Levitt, More Higher Superstitions, page
80)
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I deal with Val Dusek’s politicized and specious claims in ad seriatim
fashion.
(1) >>Although there's lots of incompetent nonsense and foolishness written
about quantum mechanics, denouncing these lightweights such as Chopra does
not change the fact that people like von Neumann (hardly a mystic or
tender-minded, after all he grooved on voyeuring at H-bombs and loved
military men) claimed that consciousness is responsible for the collapse.
<<
Response/Critique: Indeed there is a lot of nonsense written about QM, but
your buddies in postmodernism and The Science Studies Racket, with their
odious cognitive relativism and antirealism, are doing nothing at all to
help disabuse the body politic of its ubiquitous delusions with regard to
romantic and too-fantastic-to-be-believed interpretations of QM. In fact,
I’d say they are going out of their way in pandering to demotic superstition
and obscurantism especially with regard to QM (et al.).
Regarding von Neumann’s claim that "consciousness collapses the wave
function" I say: So he CLAIMED this. So what? Better and less fantastic
interpretations of QM have come now along. Is von Neumann the last word on
QM? I hardly think so.
You also say, in retro-hipster style, that von Neumann "grooved" on military
men. Besides being an un-evidenced assertion, what has this got to do with
science? The answer is: *Nothing whatsoever* – but it has everything to do
with the postmodernist and science studies politicization of science, which,
it seems, is the real substance of your argument and *not,* as it should be,
the adequacy of scientific methodology, scientific epistemology, and the
truth-status and utility of the natural sciences plus powerful and
well-tested scientific paradigms.
BTW, I myself don’t "grove" on military men, nor am I a power aficionado
(seemingly like yourself), siding with Science Studies Racketeers, with
their untenable thesis that everything is reducible to the social, the
cultural, and power & status, colonialism, Western hegemonic dominance of
marginalized people, ad nauseam.
(2) >>The multiple universe theory is a science fiction nerd's fantasy. I
think it is just reified modal logic, taking possibilities for actualities
in a naive way. See the movie "Slackers" about street people in Austin
Texas trying to market Madonna's pap smear and mumbling about the JFK
Assassination. (There put for finishing my U Texas dissertation one minute
before the deadline for expulsion go I). They believe in the multiple
universe theory and put it to new age uses. Does this discredit the
multiple universe theory?<<
Response/Critique: Multiple universes MAY NOT AT ALL be a "nerd’s" fantasy,
at least if we are to take Quantum Cosmology and Inflationary Cosmology
seriously. But IF multiple universes exist, they would exist, not as the
result of the activity human consciousness and human observation in QM
experiments as Everett envisaged – i.e., in the course of a QM measurement
of, say, color, of a hard electron, the number of physical universes there
are literally increases from one to two, and that in each one of those
worlds that color measurement actually has an outcome and the observer has a
determinate belief about that outcome, and that those [denizens in those]
worlds are subsequently absolutely unaware of one another, ad infinitum.
Rather than the MAGICAL view that consciousness affects reality in the
course of a QM experiment a’ la Everett, Inflationary Cosmology offers a far
more parsimonious and cogent interpretation here. Lawrence Sklar relates a
very plausible scenario based on Inflationary and Quantum Cosmology that
posits NO privileged role for a conscious observer and which does indeed
allow for the existence of multiple universes:
"We have remarked that the initial singularity’s [of the cosmos] uniformity
is puzzling given the causal unconnectability of regions of the spacetime
for all past times in the usual cosmologies, and that its seemingly near
perfect flatness at early times also constitutes a puzzle. An attempt to
solve both of these puzzles simultaneously is found in the so-called
‘inflationary’ cosmologies. Here, features of quantum field theory are
invoked to give a characterization of a universe that, starting from a
singularity, has a period of slow expansion (even stasis) in which a vast
store of latent energy is accumulated through a field-theoretic ‘phase
transition’ that holds off until the energy of transition is released in a
fast and enormous ‘jolt’ to the universe. This occurs in a manner analogous
to the fast crystallization that occurs when a supercooled fluid finally has
its transition to a sold that has ‘held off’ become[s] triggered, say, by
the introduction of a seed crystal. When the phase transition is finally
completed, the space of the universe can expand at an exponential rate.
Such a period of rapid expansion will allow for early periods of the
universe in which causal contact cold have occurred throughout the spatially
separated regions of the spacetime and would also account for the near
flatness of the currently observed universe without assuming the almost
perfect flatness of the universe near the singularity of the standard
cosmologies. *Variants of the inflationary scheme would take our universe
to be on ONE ‘bubble’ in a vast sea of inflationary bubbles, each of which
constituted its own observationally closed universe.*" (Physics and Chance,
by Lawrence Sklar, Cambridge 1995 CE, page 315)
NOTE: Val Dusek has NOT done his physics homework and research.
Contd.
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