The bass-ackwardness of ID proponents

That's hilarious. Good to have a laugh with Fitzmas right around the corner, waiting wistfully for the watchful eyes of Washington to fall on the wasted carcass of the W machine.

You just have to love those Post Modernest equal time kinda guys don't you . They have an even looser grasp on reality than Behe if that is at all possible. They bring a new meaning to ...well meaning.
These links help demystify PoMo and its relevance to science.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/ehrenreich.html

right click on the link below and download the pdf

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/pseudoscience_rev.pdf

Other radical minority notions that never became popular until their teaching was required in the public schools:

plate tectonics

(of course) evolution

high temperature superconductors

Bob Davis wrote: "... waiting wistfully for the watchful eyes of Washington to fall on the wasted carcass of the W machine."

Is it just a coincidence that the religious right wing which has so wanted to stack the courts is now being hit on all fronts by lawyers?

We've got Rove and Libby possibly indicted soon. We've got the ID trial, Frist and Delay getting hit by corruption charges -- all at once.

Damn! Our evil atheist conspiracy is good!

Norman
Go back to, I think it's Jack Chic cartoon ? link you put in and tell me if that is what you wanted.

Fuller doesn't sound as though he knows much about how science works. Does he really think the funding agencies are suddenly going to start looking more favourably at proposals to do intelligent-design research (assuming there ever are any, of course) just because a bunch of high-school kids have been taught about it?

I wonder how he thinks any of the current theories got to be the mainstream, if not by toppling older theories, and I wonder how he thinks they ever did that without help from a bunch of 17-year-olds.

If he doesn't see that this is just a case of trying to promote a particular worldview to children as young as possible, he hasn't scratched below the surface of the ID movement.

Steve Fuller is yet another example of the "Science Studies" folks, who purport to study how science is actually done while knowing not the first thing about science. Moreover, they even take pride in their scientific ignorance (e.g., Fuller's colleague Andrew Ross famously thanking the science teachers he never had). Fuller and his ilk tend to be exceedingly hostile towards real science, and especially toward scientists. They think scientists are merely playing "privileged" power games and that their work could in no way have any grounding in a real, external world.

But I'm confused. These postmodern "scholars" like Fuller tend to be very radical in their politics. So for the life of me I cannot fathom how they can make common cause with religious fundamentalists, as Fuller is now clearly doing. Unless it's simply "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Surely in a theocracy, these postmodernists would be the first to be executed! Don't they realize that?

"Introducing "intelligent design" to high school students could help the idea gain wider acceptance among mainstream scientists, a sociology professor testified Monday in a landmark federal trial over whether the concept can be mentioned in public school biology classes."

That's not teaching...that's indoctrination!. I think a group in Germany used the same tactic in the 1930's.

If the "theory" (not!) had any actual merit, it would gain acceptance the correct way and not by the use of indoctrination.

...After a morning of writing I met Political Science professor Patricia Boling who hosted a noon colloquium for the department faculty and grad students. I told them I was a postmodernist and deconstructionist just like them, but aiming at a slightly different target.

I hereby apologise to the US nation. My schadenfreude has been known to emerge, knowing that such cranks as Michael Behe et alis "could only happen in America". Then I took a look at Steve Fuller from Warwick Uni. A complete nutter from my own backyard.

Mea culpa!

I should have read his CV before posting. Born in New York... but still he adopted UK citizenship (and we let him!)

I should have read his CV before posting. Born in New York... but still he adopted UK citizenship (and we let him!)

Blame the French. Pomo and deconstructionism originate and blossom with them. Their nonsense has spread to some Anglo scholars, unfortunately. Richard Dawkins -- and he is one of yours -- tore them a new one in a positive (and highly entertaining) review of a book co-authored by NYU physicist Alan Sokal.

Sokal, in turn, was moved to look at pomo idiocy after reading PT contributor Paul Gross's (co-authored) 1994 book about their anti-science inanity.

so long as you clarify that the French have no monopoly on anti-science inaninity, or even deconstructionism for that matter.

Should we blame modern gun missusage on the Chinese, since they invented gunpowder?

You do have a tendency to use France as a negative exemplar for many of your points, Mona.

did you support the "freedom fries" movement, by any chance?

Not that I'm french or anything, but it does seem a bit over the top to overgeneralize on this point, wouldn't you agree?

once again, Mike Argento nails it.

You do have a tendency to use France as a negative exemplar for many of your points, Mona.

Huh? I have referenced the French Revolution and Robespierre, along with Stalin and Hitler in one thread, but only after having first been asked by you to elaborate on European secularism in contrast to the less secular U.S. Otherwise, I don't believe I have ever discussed France here (or much elsewhere). Moreover, I was waxing somewhat glib...I guess I should have employed something like the symbol for wink.

Actually, I'm a bit of a francophile. French is my only other language. But it just is true that the major hitters of pomo and deconstructionism originate avec les francais.

Richard Ray writes: But I'm confused. These postmodern "scholars" like Fuller tend to be very radical in their politics. So for the life of me I cannot fathom how they can make common cause with religious fundamentalists, as Fuller is now clearly doing. Unless it's simply "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Surely in a theocracy, these postmodernists would be the first to be executed! Don't they realize that?

Reasonable people -- left, right and center -- have been ringing the alarm bell about these folks for some time now. If you go to leftist Alan Sokal's web site here:

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/

and scroll almost to the bottom you will find an entry with embedded links that reads:

Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India, by Meera Nanda (Rutgers University Press, January 2004). Available from amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Highly recommended: "In this courageous and important book, Meera Nanda shows in dispiriting detail how postmodernist-oriented Indian intellectuals have unwittingly helped pave the way for the rise to power of right-wing Hindu nationalists. A must read for anyone who still doubts that abstract philosophical debates can have real-world consequences." See also the debate on this book in Social Epistemology, January-March 2005, including Nanda's response to her critics.

Nanda is a secular feminist, and if you read her response to critics in the Social Epistemology journal, it is almost heartbreaking. Hindu creationism, the caste system, and decidedly unenlightened attitudes toward women are being buttressed by Indian, pomo intellectuals.

Nor is this the first time IDists/creationists here in the U.S. have made common cause with these people who are on (part of) the left.

Richard Ray wrote: Surely in a theocracy, these postmodernists would be the first to be executed! Don't they realize that?

I don't care how many nice things you say about them, I still don't like fundies!

ah, pardon my misunderstanding then. I live in the "red" part of california (East of LA) and i think i've seen too many "francophobics", including lots of folks who actually thought the whole "freedom fries" thing was a good idea.

my apologies for overgeneralizing myself.

For Mona

Les États Unis sont passés du stage primitif à celui de la décadence sans cette période intermédiaire que l'on nomme, ailleurs, civilisation.

Georges Clémenceau

Anyway, Fuller said intelligent design "needed to be mainstreamed," which I guess is a polite way of saying that in its current embryological state, it rides the short bus of science.

Alan, yes, well, we de classe Americans have saved their civilized @sses a few times now. I know many dislike the francophobia that has occurred since the dispute between the Bush Admin and the French over the Iraq war. But the French also are extremely chauvinistic and can be quite anti-U.S., and were well before Bush.

I recall traveling from Orly airport by cab some 15 years ago, and using my reasonably fluent (but not perfect) French to inquire of the cab driver about a billboard we passed for the book Dianetics. Having to think a bit to internally translate, I explained this was a strange religious belief system launched by an American sci-fi writer, and its adherents included celebreties like Priscilla Presley, daughter of Elvis. The driver sniffed and assured me Scientology would find no toe hold in his nation, where folks are purportedly too sensible, and that only Americans could be such fools.

I could have set forth where I think they have been a good deal less than sensible, but was too polite to do so.

(sorry I posted this in another thread but I think it fits better here..)
"Deans unifying theory of Intelligent Design and Evolution - and why it deserves some Affirmative Action"
If a group of Hindus come along and propose another hypothesis - namely that the irreducable complexity found by Behe is because of reincarnation, and that 'conservation of information' supports this - will they be allowed in the 'big tent'? Of course we are not talking 'intelligent design' here in the sense that the process does not call on a supernatural creator - only unknown processes we don't understand - perhaps in another dimension. Of course there could be mix-ups in this other dimension which could lead to some interesting recombinations and more material for evolution.
They could even claim to have a grand unifying theory explaining both evolution and 'intelligent design' and has the benefit of parsimony and the support of scriptures as least as old as the bible.
Shouldn't this be taught as part of the controversy - can I be leader of the movement and get lots of money? (I'm not a Hindu so can't be accused of religious motivation). All I need is some affimative action for this idea in public schools and I'll have a new generation of supporters to help me develop the science.
I could even do joint work with Behe to figure out which elements have been designed from scratch as opposed to merely recycled.

I should have read his CV before posting. Born in New York... but still he adopted UK citizenship (and we let him!)
Read his CV again he's resident in the UK but still a US citizen. I wondered how he was so prolific until I grsped that he wrote pomobabble. In fact there is a nice random word generator that can do a fairly convincing job of this:
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/988132080
-seems to demonstate the absence of an Intelligent Designer in that field. My bet is that the first computer to pass the Turing Test will be talking to a postmodernist.

The plantiffs should hire Lynn Margulis as a rebuttal witness to this silly notion that unorthodox theories can never never gain acceptance among evolutionary theorists. Her theory that organelles like mitochondria might have originally separate organisms and were incorporated into eukarya as symbiotes was not well accepted, at first. But science is driven by evidence, and her theory is now well accepted.

Adrian

But the French also are extremely chauvinistic

Fuller is the kind of guy that gives people like me a bad name. (An unabashed leftist who might be regarded as a "science studier.) Fortunately Sokal, Gross, Levitt and others have made Fuller and co. settle down just a little. As for what he is doing in the ID debate, I don't know. Maybe he's a trojan horse, the way the rhetorician of science JA Campbell seems to be. (I met him a few years back and heard his talk about "Why was Darwin Believed?" and didn't realize he was an ID supporter until recently.)

I wonder if the Fuller testimony is not as damaging as it sounds, and possibly useful to the defense. The issue on trial as I understand it is whether or not ID is repackaged creationism, which is religious and therefore prohibited from being taught in school.

So, Fuller comes along and says "This has nothing to do with religion. This is a much needed affirmative action program for crackpot science. As an expert on the need to give crackpots a fair shake, I heartedly endorse this program." This gives the schoolboard an out:

"We're not promoting religion, we're, uh, what he said, uh, affirmative action for crackpots, yeah that's the ticket."

It'd be be hard to sell it to voters as a good idea but the court is not voting on whether it's a good idea, just determining if they've violated laws.

Is there any law against a schoolboard picking any crackpot science they like--as long as it does not promote a religion--and demanding that it be presented as a possible alternative to mainstream science?

But I'm confused. These postmodern "scholars" like Fuller tend to be very radical in their politics. So for the life of me I cannot fathom how they can make common cause with religious fundamentalists, as Fuller is now clearly doing. Unless it's simply "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Surely in a theocracy, these postmodernists would be the first to be executed! Don't they realize that?

Alan, yes, well, we de classe Americans have saved their civilized @sses a few times now. I know many dislike the francophobia that has occurred since the dispute between the Bush Admin and the French over the Iraq war. But the French also are extremely chauvinistic and can be quite anti-U.S., and were well before Bush.

"Alan, yes, well, we de classe Americans have saved their civilized @sses a few times now."

As long as we're talking about historical debts, it must be noted that democracy as we know it was conceived by philosophes, and probably wouldn't exist as it is today without them. Also, without French military assistance, neither would our country. There is a reason every major eastern city has a Lafayette Blvd. To many it seems, who crow about how "we" (actually mostly our parents and grandparents) saved the French, the irony is not troubling.

Well,well,well fascinating ...as the seers said "look and ye shall find"

The Seduction of Unreason:
The Intellectual Romance with Fascism, from Nietzsche to Postmodernism
Author: Richard Wolin
Publisher: Princeton University Press

1/2 page review
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lnl/s1490204.htm

My take:
The Ugly Past of Postmodernism

French postmodernism's birth began with the Academic Rights Nazi aligned Vichy anti humanist collaborators. The critique of the enlightenment and reason lives quite happily with the new identity politics current in Anglo Saxon USA UK Australia.

Identity politics is something Germany had between 1933-1945.

Minor notes.The author points out the French psyche(Vichy denial) at the time of English translation was not fully understood by the translators. Jung vs Freud and the love affair of feminism with PoMo.

To hear a 25 minute talk with the author on Australian ABC:Radio National
download the mp3 (25MB) for Tuesday 25 October 2005
Skip to minute 34 ,
The talk is a little slow and not too deep but very revealing.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lnl/

To many it seems, who crow about how "we" (actually mostly our parents and grandparents) saved the French, the irony is not troubling.

Lenny, you're a veritable polymath.

Lenny, you're a veritable polymath.

I'm lethal in a Zero fighter ;>

I'm lethal in a Zero fighter ;>

tight turns over strength and speed, eh?

The other key to shooting down a Zero is to bounce them from above (the Zero couldn't dive very well) and hit it in one pass as you go by. You do NOT want to get into a turning dogfight with a Zero --- it'll beat you every time. Instead, you want to close rapidly, hit-and-run, then dive away and climb for another pass.

now to the next obvious remark...

does your choice in fighter plane reflect your debating style as well?

does your choice in fighter plane reflect your debating style as well?

Sir_Toejam
... a mere Zero why not a full blown Deity ?
Speed, power (oooohhh the power) and fanatical devotees.
Able to change shapes or in fact whole universes.

Krisha... comes to mind famously quoted by Robert Oppenwhatsit
at ground zero.

Shiva* by the way is reserved for Lenny so you can't have him.
*(the swallower of the poisonous cloud released by the battle of the gods and the anti gods etc etc)

Shiva* by the way is reserved for Lenny so you can't have him.

He who dances on dwarfs !!!!!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

The dwarf by the way symbolizes the demon "Non-knowing"
There are a great insights into the meanings of the Hindu Deities
as well as hundreds of others in

"The Hero with a Thousand Faces" By Campbell
First published in 1975 and still in print.

Campbell had a unique ability to unravel the meaning of Myth and parallel analogies in modern man, making comparisons across all the worlds great religious stories. Including insights from ancient folklore through to modern story tellers, Poets, Freud, Jung and contemporary psychology. Wagner to Huxley, Abraham to Zuni Indians.
I read it first over 25 years ago and can always find something new and relevant.

Campbell was no lightweight he wrote

"A Skeleton Key to Finagans Wake"

Which I found more interesting than the Wake itself.

If Behe and the rabble that surrounds him picked that book up before they started their fools errand we wouldn't have to be doing this.

To many it seems, who crow about how “we” (actually mostly our parents and grandparents) saved the French, the irony is not troubling.

Another point that should be made is that the USA did not enter the war to save the French, or the British for that matter. You were quite happy to stand on the sidelines and sell us weapons until you got attacked by the Japanese.

Another point that should be made is that the USA did not enter the war to save the French, or the British for that matter. You were quite happy to stand on the sidelines and sell us weapons until you got attacked by the Japanese.

Hitler then declared war on you -

if he hadn't it would have been quite possible for the US to have had its own war with the Japanese alone (as was the wish of several republicans at the time). We - the Allies - won the war together.

Don't forget it was almost exclusively (especialy in the opening phase) a defensive action for us brits. Thus it was (mostly) a case of UK fighters against Axis fighters and bombers.

I do believe UK civilian casualties far outnumber aircrew losses.

The hurricane was indeed responsible for more "kills" than the spitfire. Due mainly to the fct that the RAF possesed far more of them, but also the hurricanes being far quicker and easier to repair helped. Generally when the situation allowed, controlers tried to target hurricane squadrons onto bomber formation and spitfires to handle the fighter escort.

US interventionists were starting to get the upper hand before the pearl harbour atack. Due mainly to the work of a bunch of (courageous) US journalists covering the Battle of Britain.

Actually, there's very good reason to believe that it was only the Russian/German conflict that ensured that Germany would lose. The Russians sacrificed the most by far, and cost the Germans the great majority of their casualties. Most of the ground fighting the Germans did was against the Russians. If Hitler had actually honored his nonaggression pact with Stalin, and had Russia stayed out of the war, Nazi Germany might have been unbeatable, at least on the continent.

..but it's a bit of light relief from UnIntelligible design, Specious Infomation, Irrefutable Complexity and all that rubbish (quote miners welcome here).

Vvvrrooomm! Vvrrooommm! buddabuddabuddabuddaBOW!! bam bam bam bam BAM KER-BLAMM! Yeeeearroww! BadabadaBAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BA-LAM!! Pow Pow Pow Pow Ka-Pow! Bburrooomm! Nnnoww! KER-Pow! Pow pow pow pow pow! KA-BLOOEY!! Pokka pokka pok pok pok! RRRiiippp! Tzing, zing, zing, zip, zip, zip! WHAM! BLAM! SLAM!
"Ah, they got me! T-t-tell Molly I love her..."*

Not only is it "a bit of light relief," it has infinitely more information content than ID.

(*No real soldiers were injured during the making of this sound track.)