Mere Science

“The aim of life is to pass on one’s genes”, says Mr Worstall, adding that “we are told by the scientists” that it is so. [1] Well, randy scientists might tell him such things, but science — as knowledge only of the empirical-mechanical aspects of the world — does not. Aims, goals, purposes, etc, of any kind are outside its scope. To say that life itself has an aim of any kind is to impute to it a teleological nature, upon which science by itself is utterly silent. It ought to be obvious that the claim, to wit, that the aim of life is to pass on one’s genes, is not a scientific hypothesis, since it is not in any way verifiable or falsifiable. It is a metaphysical view in that it draws from the data of the physical world a conclusion which is not itself verifiable or falsifiable by the data thereof. [2] As a metaphysical view, it is open to rational disputation, wherein one may take into consideration whether it helps us, or is necessary for us, to make sense of the world, whether it accords with our experience, whether it is rationally coherent with our other claims, whether it leads to the denial of inconvenient facts, and so forth.
.....In speaking merely scientifically of so-called natural causes and laws, we are speaking only of the routines of sense-experience, as Karl Pearson phrased it, and not of some necessity or enforcement. All scientific laws and described regularities, taken merely scientifically without metaphysical insight, describe simply how things have behaved according to past sense-experience. Science, in the ideal-empirical state of having been stripped bare of all metaphysical insights, cannot claim any knowledge outside of the empirical-mechanical aspects of the world: “chaos is all that science can logically assert of the supersensuous”. [3] But if we are to think of order, causation, rationality, intentionality, teleology, and so forth, whereby we make sense of the world, then we must accept that our understanding of the world is something above a mere regular sequence of sense-impressions.
.....It is the spirit of positivism, however, which has the ideal-empirical state as its end for human thought as a whole. If a man ever achieved that state, he would become at that moment a brute. Perhaps then, having renounced his rational nature, his sole aim in life would be to pass on his genes, perhaps even as does the lowest life-form; and, having achieved his aim, he would spend his later years aimlessly writing popular-science books.

[1] Tim Worstall, “This is Absurd”, Tim Worstall (weblog), 19th September 2009.

[2] Even Richard Dawkins seems to be aware that his gene-centric view is not a scientific hypothesis: “I doubt that there is any experiment that could be done to prove my claim.” The Extended Phenotype: Gene as the Unit of Selection (London: W.H.Freeman & Co Ltd, 1982), p.1.

[3] Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1900), p.108.

Restricted Entry

“A young man is not a fit person to attend lectures on political science, because he is not versed in the practical business of life from which politics draws its premises and subject-matter. Besides, he tends to follow his feelings, with the result that he will make no headway and derive no benefit from his course, since the object of it is not knowledge but action. It makes no difference whether he is young in age or youthful in character; the defect is due not to lack of years but to living, and pursuing one’s various aims, under sway of the feelings; for to people like this knowledge becomes as unprofitable as it is for the incontinent.” [1]

We should greatly enlarge the entrances to all the departments of political science in the land, not so as to admit more students, but so as to fit those words in large letters on the lintels.

[1] Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, I.iii:1095a, tr, J.A.K. Thomson (London: Penguin Books, 2004), p.6; capitalisation added to first letter.

At School

“If one looks upon nature as a tutor, and us poor humans as listeners, then one is inclined to give room to a quite strange idea of mankind. All of us sit in a school-lesson, have the principles necessary to understand and comprehend it, yet we are always listening more to the chatter of our classmates than to the lecture of the tutor. Or indeed when a classmate next to us notes something down, we crib from him, steal what perhaps he himself has dimly heard, and we add to it our own misspellings and mistaken views.”

[“Wenn man die Natur als Lehrerin, und die armen Menschen als Zuhörer betrachtet, so ist man geneigt, einer ganz sonderbaren Idee vom menschlichen Geschlechte Raum zu geben. Wir sitzen allsamt in einem Collegio, haben die Prinzipien, die nötig sind, es zu verstehen und zu fassen, horchen aber immer mehr auf die Plaudereien unserer Mitschüler, als auf den Vortrag der Lehrerin. Oder wenn ja einer neben uns etwas nachschreibt, so spicken wir von ihm, stehlen, was er selbst vielleicht undeutlich hörte, und vermehren es mit unsern eigenen orthographischen und Meinungsfehlern.”]

G.C. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher (Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1984), I/90,2, wahrscheinlich aus Sudelbuch K (1793), p.465; original emphasis.

A Review

“This website is made up of old, grumpy, impotent men who pretend to be profound thinkers. How sad they are with their limited views of life and how threatened they are with their deletions of other points of view. What is needed here are women’s perspectives, which tend to reflect more open and global perspectives. We doubt, however, that the ‘all-knowing’ men on this lowly blog would ever include intelligent responses to their shallow responses. Our criticisms of Curmudgeonry’s old men’s views have therefore been published in other international websites.”

Anonymous, in the combox to “Just a Beginning”, on this lowly blog.

O Deo Whiggismum Odeo

“The best prediction that could have been made 20 years ago is that things can only get better. That’s also the best prediction that can be made now about the future and has been the best prediction that anyone can make about two decades in the future ever since we invented this liberal capitalism shtick back in 1750.”

Tim Worstall, “The best prediction of the past 20 years”, Tim Worstall (weblog), 3rd September 2009.

A Guiding Clue

“We must grasp the essential contrast between the whole modern world-view and that of previous thought, and use that clearly conceived contrast as a guiding clue to pick out for criticism and evaluation, in the light of their historical development, every one of our significant modern presuppositions.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1925), p.16.

Without Embarrassment

“The left always feel faintly embarrassed at attempting to promote their own political agenda”, says Steven Barnett, [1] professor of communications at Westminster University, without the faintest trace of embarrassment. Odd, I say, for I had thought that much of the success of leftism through the centuries down to the present day had been owed to the diabolical shamelessness of its promotion. I must have been reading the history and seeing the sights of another planet. Perhaps I ought to go back to university in order to learn how to communicate with this one, perhaps even without embarrassment.

[1] Quoted by Mehdi Hasan, “Bias and the Beeb”, The New Statesman, 27th August 2009.

A Sham and Puerile Kind of Heroism

“Science being, it is said, a pure service of truth for truth’s sake, is not called upon to consider whether the selfish wishes of men’s souls are satisfied or not. Thus here, too, men pass from timidity to presumptuous boldness. Having once tasted the delight of impartial and wholly unfettered investigation, they rush into a sham and puerile kind of heroism that glories in having renounced that which no one has ever any right to renounce; and reposing boundless confidence in assumptions which are by no means incontestable, estimate the truth of their new philosophic views in direct proportion to the degree of offensive hostility which these exhibit towards everything—except science—that is held sacred by the living soul of man.”

Hermann Lotze, Microcosmus, Vol.I, tr. E. Hamilton and E.E. Constance Jones (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1885), p.viii.

Fewtril no.271

In the course of decline, a nation can pass through a time of pessimism into a time of optimism whence the gloominess of the earlier time looks silly, thereby confirming the fears of the pessimists: that after them would arise a mass of pigs satisfied.

Lucky Albion

“In Britain [between the world wars], many concluded that the wrong people . . . were giving birth at a rate that threatened to engulf society in a wave of mediocrity.” [1]

Phew! Thank goodness that didn’t happen!

[1] Matthew Price, “The end was nigh”, review of The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars, by Richard Overy, The National, 20th August 2009.

A Little Reminder

“I certainly cannot explain how we got here, but I’d rather wait a thousand years to see if science can push back a few more layers of our ignorance before positing what seems to me a somewhat metaphorical explanation for our place in the universe.” [1]

My dear lady, I do not know how to break it to you, but there is a fairly good chance that you will be dead in a thousand years from now.

[1] Heather MacDonald, “The Evolution of God”, Secular Right (weblog), 9th August 2009.

The Carefree Minds of Ants

“Ants behave in an extremely collective fashion. Each has no say in what happens, and it’s no problem for them, why should it be a problem for us?” [1]

It would not be a problem for “us” if we had the minds of ants. Forsooth we would have no problems at all. There are many other entities which have no problems: pebbles, leaves, stars, and so on. A utopian world free of problems is just a short step away.

[1] “Shlick”, commenting on Madeleine Bunting, “In control? Think again. Our ideas of brain and human nature are myths”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 23rd August 2009. (I do sometimes gape in wonder at what seems to be the profound stupidity of the commenters at Comment is Free, but then I remember that they are all geniuses, greater than which the world has never known.)

Fewtril no.270

The bellwether-intelligentsia are always one step ahead of the herd in the run of ideas, but are usually outpaced and trampled down in the realisation of their consequences.

Novelty

“Novelty pleases all because it is uncommon, taste is refreshed, and a brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence.”

Balthasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, tr. J. Jacobs (London: MacMillan and Co., 1892), §.cclxix, p.162.

On Failing to Observe the Rules of Decadence

For the last hundred years or so, but particularly for the last forty, many of the bourgeoisie have spent much of their time in the weird attempt to shock or unsettle one another by unseemliness against old rules. Naturally, after so long, one cannot expect that the class as a whole would be anything but inured to the basest improprieties. Even so, most are still easy to shock. One cannot do so by producing ever more revolting or decadent works, or by striking against tradition, good manners or civility; for their instincts are for decline and destruction which they misapprehend by some perversion of the moral sense as progress and liberty. It is only that which strikes against those instincts which shocks them. Everything else is a thrill wherein to indulge. It is the highest things which fill them with loathing. They are pious observers of new rules.

“A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.” [1]

All one need do is say quite innocently something truly right-wing or reactionary. All one need do is say something sane, something which almost every man and woman in every age but our own would have held as sensible and good, something which promotes order, authority, hierarchy, stricture, or familial, racial or cultural preservation — anything, in short, which does not tolerate, or celebrate as a moral imperative, the destruction of these things. [2] Soon enough, one will find that one is no longer welcome at dinner-parties. Still, every struggle, no matter how bitter, has its sweet consolations.

[1] Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell, 10th June 1784, Life of Johnson, ed., R.W. Chapman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.1289.
[2] Actually this seems to be the case only amongst most of the white bourgeoisie. Even the plight of the red squirrel may exercise their considerations, whilst the dwindling of their own people, and the destruction of their own ancestral homelands, concerns them not at all.

Dowsers and Terrorists

If I were to claim that one man’s dowser is another man’s water-seeker, then I should do so in the expectation that many would call me a man of rare stupidity who has trouble distinguishing between means and ends, who fails to discriminate between mutually exclusive and inclusive terms, and who suggests, concerning the existence of dowsers and water-seekers, that there is no fact of the matter, but rather only opinion. Yet, analogously, if I were to claim that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter, I should do so in the fair expectation that many would take my claim as just one of those things that everyone knows.
.....Unless some very special and mutually-exclusive meanings are arbitrarily assigned to the words in question, it ought to be obvious that a man can be a freedom-fighter and not a terrorist, a terrorist and not a freedom-fighter, or that he can be both, just as it is obvious that a man can be a water-seeker and not a dowser, a dowser and not a water-seeker, or that he can be both. [1] One set of terms (“terrorist” and “dowser”) refers to someone by the aspect of a specified means, whilst the other set of terms (“freedom-fighter” and “water-seeker”) refers to someone primarily or solely by the aspect of a specified end. The two sets are not mutually exclusive. Nor is it simply a matter of opinion whether a man is a terrorist or not. If a man employs violent terror against both combatants and non-combatants alike as a tactic for the sake of his political ends, then he is a terrorist, whether or not he does so to liberate or enslave, and so on. Furthermore, that an apologist will refer to a terrorist and freedom-fighter simply as a freedom-fighter is of no import to the fact of the matter.

.....So far as I know, no-one has ever claimed that one man’s dowser is another man’s water-seeker, whereas the claim that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter has, as I say, been repeated time and again as though it were commonsense. Also, the terms of the first claim have never been the subjects of political-ideological discussion in the public arena, or, if they have, they have been only rarely, whereas the terms of the latter have frequently been such. Every good propagandist knows that even the stupidest falsehoods can be inculcated by affirmative repetition; and every good blight-spotter knows that any word or phrase which becomes the frequent subject of political-ideological discussion in the public arena is soon degraded by whimsical or politically-inspired abuse, sometimes even beyond worthwhile use, at least thereafter in the public arena itself.

.....All of which brings us to an article in a national newspaper, wherein the author takes a rather more original approach than simply assuming the aforementioned canard. He says:

“The choice of terms here is not between freedom fighter and terrorist but between murderer and terrorist — the former simply killing nihilistically because they are killing in a cause we do not believe in, and the latter using violence as part of an achievable and just political project with which we agree.” [2]

One can never quite tell beforehand what foul tortures the nation’s language will undergo at the whim or political exigency of its paid abusers.

[1] An archaeological geophysicist once told me that dowsing was sometimes used in site-surveys as a rough but effective substitute for some of the more technically-advanced and expensive conductivity-meters, but that their use was never admitted in publication.

[2] Brian Brivati, “Yes, Terrorism can be Justified”, Comment is Free (The Guardian's weblog), 18th August 2009. (A commenter — “LordSummerisle”— provides us with the usual canard: “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”)