On Science
I've been making my way through Jason Godesky's Thirty Theses on Anthropik. I'm in the middle of Thesis 8, human societies are defined by their food. Jason's very smart, and clearly has a handle on the anthropological literature. I studied archaeology and some ethnography as well, but whereas he used Daniel Quinn as a jumping off point, I used John Zerzan, and 'Future Primitive,' specifically.
One thing that made me think- he mentions in Thesis 6 the idea, popular among vegetarians, that to kill an animal for food is morally problematic in ways that killing a plant for food is not, and refutes this in part by suggesting that "there is even some intriguing indications of the possibility that plants may even feel in some strange way." I'm not sure what evidence he's alluding to, but it did remind me of Cleve Backster and his experiments with what he calls Primary Perception. From the link:
Sometimes it happens that a person can name the exact moment when his or her life changed irrevocably. For Cleve Backster, it was early morning on February 2, 1966, at thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds of chart time for a polygraph he was administering. One of the world's experts on polygraphs, and the creator of the Backster Zone Comparison Test, the standard used by lie detection examiners worldwide, Backster had threatened the subject's well-being in hopes of triggering a response. The subject had responded electrochemically to this threat. The subject was a plant.
In a nutshell, this suggests some sort of primary (rather than extra-sensory) perception on the part of plants, and Backster's gone on to experiment extensively in this arena, uncovering many examples of this. Plants too, not unlike animals, seem to be alive and perceptive in meaningful ways.
(This also is partly why I no longer agree with veganism, as a dogma, despite my overwhelmingly vegan practices. After all, if the whole universe is alive and sentient, then the issue can't be eating only non-sentient life, since that doesn't exist. The issue must therefore be somewhere else, such as how that individual lives before it's consumed, or how its consumption fits into a broader whole.)
So Jason alludes to something like this, but later on affirms the anti-scientific nature of Backster's studies via this link. He's right, of course, in some ways. Science demands repeatability, and these phenomena, by Backster's own admission, tend not to be consistently repeatable. But that's not a fault of the phenomenon, but only one of science.
Ran Prieur writes about science's refusal to acknowledge that which cannot be reproduced on demand. I think that's a hell of a lot of wisdom that we're refusing when we discount that.
A friend of mine talks about the inherent biases of science, such as the above-mentioned bias toward reproducibility, the bias toward simple rather than intricate explanations, and the bias toward that which can be quantified at the expense of everything else. (There are probably more) That in particular is troubling to me, because so much of what is meaningful to me is not qualitative rather than quantitative. And even if it can be quantified, why bother, unless your aim is distance and control of the object of study, and I think that's one of Derrick Jensen's big beefs with science.
I'm very interested in exploring beyond science's limits. I recognize there's a world of wisdom in science, and have tempered my earlier dismissal of it. There are good scientists who are motivated by curiosity and wonder of the world, and not interested in distancing us and themselves from it, and trying to control and manipulate it. But science, strictly defined, is not the only way to know the world, and all too often heads away from the engagement I value. And so for me, onward from science to a million different ways of knowing.
One thing that made me think- he mentions in Thesis 6 the idea, popular among vegetarians, that to kill an animal for food is morally problematic in ways that killing a plant for food is not, and refutes this in part by suggesting that "there is even some intriguing indications of the possibility that plants may even feel in some strange way." I'm not sure what evidence he's alluding to, but it did remind me of Cleve Backster and his experiments with what he calls Primary Perception. From the link:
Sometimes it happens that a person can name the exact moment when his or her life changed irrevocably. For Cleve Backster, it was early morning on February 2, 1966, at thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds of chart time for a polygraph he was administering. One of the world's experts on polygraphs, and the creator of the Backster Zone Comparison Test, the standard used by lie detection examiners worldwide, Backster had threatened the subject's well-being in hopes of triggering a response. The subject had responded electrochemically to this threat. The subject was a plant.
In a nutshell, this suggests some sort of primary (rather than extra-sensory) perception on the part of plants, and Backster's gone on to experiment extensively in this arena, uncovering many examples of this. Plants too, not unlike animals, seem to be alive and perceptive in meaningful ways.
(This also is partly why I no longer agree with veganism, as a dogma, despite my overwhelmingly vegan practices. After all, if the whole universe is alive and sentient, then the issue can't be eating only non-sentient life, since that doesn't exist. The issue must therefore be somewhere else, such as how that individual lives before it's consumed, or how its consumption fits into a broader whole.)
So Jason alludes to something like this, but later on affirms the anti-scientific nature of Backster's studies via this link. He's right, of course, in some ways. Science demands repeatability, and these phenomena, by Backster's own admission, tend not to be consistently repeatable. But that's not a fault of the phenomenon, but only one of science.
Ran Prieur writes about science's refusal to acknowledge that which cannot be reproduced on demand. I think that's a hell of a lot of wisdom that we're refusing when we discount that.
A friend of mine talks about the inherent biases of science, such as the above-mentioned bias toward reproducibility, the bias toward simple rather than intricate explanations, and the bias toward that which can be quantified at the expense of everything else. (There are probably more) That in particular is troubling to me, because so much of what is meaningful to me is not qualitative rather than quantitative. And even if it can be quantified, why bother, unless your aim is distance and control of the object of study, and I think that's one of Derrick Jensen's big beefs with science.
I'm very interested in exploring beyond science's limits. I recognize there's a world of wisdom in science, and have tempered my earlier dismissal of it. There are good scientists who are motivated by curiosity and wonder of the world, and not interested in distancing us and themselves from it, and trying to control and manipulate it. But science, strictly defined, is not the only way to know the world, and all too often heads away from the engagement I value. And so for me, onward from science to a million different ways of knowing.
posted by Archangel at 12:05 PM
2 Comments:
We just had a couple rousing threads over at IshCon discussing science in-depth. One of the threads had a bit of a flamewar between Urban Scout and Jason, but the discussion for the most part was pretty high quality.
If you're interested (it's a lot of reading, which I get sick of myself and skim until I get to particular people's posts, a strategy I highly recommend):
Mythology for the Unseen Sciences -- This is one of the best threads we've had on IshCon in a long time.
Mythology and the Assumptions of Science -- A far less cogent thread, interspersed with flamewar and meanderingness, but still some good stuff if you want to wade through it.
IshCon's a pretty interesting place, as far as the internet world goes, and one I highly recommend visiting. The quality of discussion varies widely, but many of these are people who are seriously exploring all of these ideas.
- Devin
Right on.
For some reason, I haven't made my way over there. Maybe because I came to Quinn relatively late, and see him as somehow less satisfying than some of the other folks I've encountered. Thanks for the links, though, and I imagine I'll swing by them at some point.
Cool!
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