Baby Bathwater
We’re repeatedly cautioned that the Trump Fascists are anti-science, and told to “follow the science”. Science is demonstrable, verifiable, replicable. It’s rational against irrational.
While I cannot argue that the Rightists aren’t irrational, the failures of rational science haunt me. We STILL have Freudian psychologists. Many scientists consider themselves devout Christians.
While Lamarck and Mendel added to scientific understanding, they unintentionally gave fuel to the communist/capitalist conflict now represented by arguments of fossil fuel vs. abiotic oil, the controversies weak, and ill-informed.
Anthropology started out abysmally; more recently, Theories of Literary Criticism failed to hold to rationality. Theology, philosophy and economics have been even weaker. Yet is was claimed over a century ago that 90% of what can be known, WAS.
What really burns me is ‘M Theory’ aka ‘string theory’ and egregiously blind insistence on using not just bad but WRONG math, math as simple-minded as proclamations about the ‘Holy Trinity’.
The other day I read that Gödel’s Proof doesn’t apply to physics because physics uses geometry, not math. WHAT?? Jesus was God’s only begotten son.
While I find it easy to accept that matter and energy have a commensurate relationship, when I read that space and time are the same thing, I despair. Snow and meteors have more in common. But my main pet hobby-horse is the ‘concept’ of the speed of light squared. This is taken as GOSPEL, despite that you patently CANNOT square a rate, any more than you can square a circle. No wonder so many are willing to throw baby out with bathwater.
While I cannot argue that the Rightists aren’t irrational, the failures of rational science haunt me. We STILL have Freudian psychologists. Many scientists consider themselves devout Christians.
While Lamarck and Mendel added to scientific understanding, they unintentionally gave fuel to the communist/capitalist conflict now represented by arguments of fossil fuel vs. abiotic oil, the controversies weak, and ill-informed.
Anthropology started out abysmally; more recently, Theories of Literary Criticism failed to hold to rationality. Theology, philosophy and economics have been even weaker. Yet is was claimed over a century ago that 90% of what can be known, WAS.
What really burns me is ‘M Theory’ aka ‘string theory’ and egregiously blind insistence on using not just bad but WRONG math, math as simple-minded as proclamations about the ‘Holy Trinity’.
The other day I read that Gödel’s Proof doesn’t apply to physics because physics uses geometry, not math. WHAT?? Jesus was God’s only begotten son.
While I find it easy to accept that matter and energy have a commensurate relationship, when I read that space and time are the same thing, I despair. Snow and meteors have more in common. But my main pet hobby-horse is the ‘concept’ of the speed of light squared. This is taken as GOSPEL, despite that you patently CANNOT square a rate, any more than you can square a circle. No wonder so many are willing to throw baby out with bathwater.
posted by Mythorelics | 2:48 AM
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