My departure with the rationalists
Jan. 3rd, 2008 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterA couple of people (mostly my father and a ghost) have been recommending reading Wendell Berry's writings for quite a long time, and of course as soon as I've gotten around to it I can appreciate why. If you were to inquire, I'd profess an interest in rationalism as a useful system for getting a grasp on existence, and yet at the same time many of the most prominent rationalist scientific thinkers often make simple logical fallacies, such as stating that science is a means to discover truth and through science we'll eventually know everything we need to know (see Consilience, by EO wilson, though I'm thinking particularly of a brief quip by Dennett in an endnote in Breaking the Spell if I need to point more fingers).
This gets interesting and disheartening when one thinks probabilistically about the formation of the universe and evolutionary processes and the eventuality of death (whether our own or of others, human and non-human alike). Dwelling on this condition is what I term The Existentialist Crisis and makes me feel quite small and futile (to myself I have proclaimed, "I am dust in the face of the Universe").
But I think the rationalists are most comfortable dealing with the Known and struggle mightily with the Unknown and Unknowable because as they see it there's no way to have a rational conversation about such things. From what I can tell, Berry seems to argue that the rationalists have gotten themselves in a tizzy because they're forgetting about matters of scale and are leaping away from the human scale--what we can know now, in this lifetime here. And what we know here and now is governed as much by scientific principles as it is the principles of the individual (any scientist worth his or her salt will note that science, or at least the hypothetico-deductive principle, is grounded in finding generalizable patterns from individual variations, so if one is most interested in the level of the individual, the utility of science is quite different).
I can't pretend to have any sort of actual answer to things, as I've stated this is a departure from rationalism (if you consult my user profile, you'll note that I've never claimed to be rational anyway). But I will say that reading Berry's writings feels considerably more like progress than reading the hashed and re-hashed ideas of a lot of scientific writers (one should still read those writers, just not at their word, and not at the neglect of reading stories and poetry). The crux came for me when I had to try to resolve Native stories of coming to be where they are with Westernized accounts drawn from archaeological records. The accounts disagree and I had a hard time resolving the dissonance until I tried to see the utility in truth and learned that oral stories and prophecies will change in accordance with what's happening at the time (one might need to re-read parts of the Bible in light of this idea, for it is written that some disagreeable things are in agreement with prophecy and others are not effectively dealt with).
So I'll keep reading. But I'll also pause to spend time outside, watching a particular crow or ant or tree or cactus, for though my professed purpose is science, my purpose beyond that is to be human.
This gets interesting and disheartening when one thinks probabilistically about the formation of the universe and evolutionary processes and the eventuality of death (whether our own or of others, human and non-human alike). Dwelling on this condition is what I term The Existentialist Crisis and makes me feel quite small and futile (to myself I have proclaimed, "I am dust in the face of the Universe").
But I think the rationalists are most comfortable dealing with the Known and struggle mightily with the Unknown and Unknowable because as they see it there's no way to have a rational conversation about such things. From what I can tell, Berry seems to argue that the rationalists have gotten themselves in a tizzy because they're forgetting about matters of scale and are leaping away from the human scale--what we can know now, in this lifetime here. And what we know here and now is governed as much by scientific principles as it is the principles of the individual (any scientist worth his or her salt will note that science, or at least the hypothetico-deductive principle, is grounded in finding generalizable patterns from individual variations, so if one is most interested in the level of the individual, the utility of science is quite different).
I can't pretend to have any sort of actual answer to things, as I've stated this is a departure from rationalism (if you consult my user profile, you'll note that I've never claimed to be rational anyway). But I will say that reading Berry's writings feels considerably more like progress than reading the hashed and re-hashed ideas of a lot of scientific writers (one should still read those writers, just not at their word, and not at the neglect of reading stories and poetry). The crux came for me when I had to try to resolve Native stories of coming to be where they are with Westernized accounts drawn from archaeological records. The accounts disagree and I had a hard time resolving the dissonance until I tried to see the utility in truth and learned that oral stories and prophecies will change in accordance with what's happening at the time (one might need to re-read parts of the Bible in light of this idea, for it is written that some disagreeable things are in agreement with prophecy and others are not effectively dealt with).
So I'll keep reading. But I'll also pause to spend time outside, watching a particular crow or ant or tree or cactus, for though my professed purpose is science, my purpose beyond that is to be human.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 05:38 pm (UTC)rationalist scientific thinkers often make simple logical fallacies, such as stating that science is a means to discover truth and through science we'll eventually know everything we need to know
This seems to be a common fallacy. If science isn't a means to discover truth, then what do you think it is, personally and/or professionally?
the hypothetico-deductive principle, is grounded in finding generalizable patterns from individual variations, so if one is most interested in the level of the individual, the utility of science is quite different).
This set me off in all manner of tangents. If the truth of science (hypothetico-deductive science if not others - are there others?) lies in defining common threads, can it speak definitively to individual variation?
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Date: 2008-01-03 05:42 pm (UTC)