From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Aug 31 2002 - 01:01:28 MDT
At 11:36 PM 8/30/02 -0700, Lee wrote:
>The reason that Calvin's or Damien's quote should be criticized
>is that there *really is a real world out there*, just as the
>quote admitted. Okay, so when we talk, we *talk* about what is
>out there.
No, we talk about our collective construction or mapping of what we take
(via evolved templates, limited experience and superstition) to be salient
extracts from the buzzing blooming confusion. All that cultural constructs
require in order to remain in place is bare adequacy, enough not to kill
you before you get your replacement offspring outsprungen. Another quote:
===========
…even when the world comes at us in heavily pre-processed human language,
we don't always find it easy to comprehend. It's much worse when we try to
understand some completely new aspect of the world, one not yet modelled by
our customary fallible set of linguistic gadgets. Arguably this is why
science took so long to emerge, why it has done so only once in history
(despite some honorable near-misses), and is easily gazumped by inane but
comforting superstitions.
Even ordinary speech can be evasive, which is why we are baffled by this
perfectly grammatical sentence: `Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo
buffalo Buffalo buffalo'.
A bison from Buffalo is a Buffalo buffalo, which might `buffalo' or
browbeat its kin. So `(Those) Buffalo buffalo (which other) Buffalo buffalo
buffalo (will in turn) buffalo (still other) Buffalo buffalo'. This
diabolical sentence is cited in Steven Pinker's charming, brilliant and
altogether gratifying book on the reach and limitations of our language
`organ', the DNA-specified mental `instinct' that powers our speech and
writing. The buffalos' implications for the status of science as a special
way of knowing are not self-evident, but they're worth teasing out.
Consider two bullets. One is simply dropped at a gun's muzzle, the other
fired horizontally, at the same instant, with terrific velocity. Which hits
the ground first? Most of us have major trouble with this. Despite a
lifetime of lifting and throwing and dancing, all our intuitions about
motion start mumbling `buffalo buffalo' and conclude that the dropped
bullet hits the deck first, probably way earlier.
Not so. Gravity pulls equally on both bullets. The lateral motion imparted
by exploding gunpowder has zero effect on the rate at which the fired
bullet falls to earth. But we usually need disciplined training in vector
maths to understand this elementary truth about how our world works.
Science is not common sense. It is distinctly *uncommon* sense, and our
brains resist its enlightenment.
Recently, sociologists have asserted that `western' science is just one
form of many `ethno-sciences', each with its own rich claim to be taken
seriously as a form of valid knowledge. Alan Cromer is a fundamental
particle theorist with a special interest in science education, and he
won't have a bar of it. Most knowledge systems, he claims, project the
culture-bound shape of human minds upon the outside world. In a special
sense defined by the psychologist Piaget, they are `egocentric'.
By contrast, the techniques of inquiry invented by the Greeks and
rediscovered 300 years ago in Europe - techniques which have remade our
world utterly - deny that outer reality can be known through intuition. And
while the daily practice of science is clearly swayed by rhetorical skills,
special interests and power politics, it works so well because at base it
strives for objectivity. In Piaget's terms, its practice requires `formal
operational' mental skills, never attained by more than half America's (and
presumably Australia's) adults. Hence, most of us `can't analyze a
situation with several variables or understand a simple syllogism'.
Cromer's argument is frighteningly persuasive, and his surprising
curriculum suggestions (he'd get rid of the last two years of school) are
worth close study. Meanwhile, we can try to learn why the human brain has
so much trouble thinking scientifically. A good place to start is with
Pinker's rigorous but delicious survey of Chomskyan grammar - the theory
that we all possess a `language instinct' of great strength but annoying
limitations. I would not have thought it possible to be entertaining about
X-bar phrase structure theory, but Pinker is a hoot. Of course, it helps if
you already possess formal operations in your mental tool-kit. [etc]
==================
>I'd love it if a postmodern academic went to get
>his car fixed, and the mechanic shoved a lot of the crap
>right back in his face, saying that the behavior of the
>carburetor can be interpreted in several ways, all of
>which necessarily reflect the values of the mechanic
C'mon, Lee, this is way too easy, a gibe derived from one level of analysis
applied at another where it's simply inappropriate. I remember gruff
`realists' from my working class suburb jeering and hooting at my stupidly
delusional idea that the wall they were pounding my head against was
`really' made up mostly of space between far flung atoms. They proved this
was preposterous by showing that my head did not pass through the wall, at
least not for quite a long time.
Damien Broderick
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