21st-century Christian Philosopher

A reflection on Science, utility, and repetition:

“What is useful is true,” say engineers. I don’t begrudge them this. Yet, I find it only true in that it is useful for engineers to stick to applying known principles to their problems. Wandering in the clouds of what-might-be, really doesn’t help them build bridges.

But, we have two words: “useful” and “true”. We can blur the lines. Words are pliant things. Still, I find it useful to separate the two.

Newton’s mechanics were useful. Back when Newton proposed his mechanics a rubber-sheet universe was less useful. But, it would be odd to say our relativistic universe is true today, but was not true in the days of Newton. That’s just not how Science works to many of us.

What is useful changes; but what is true, isn’t supposed to. I had an engineer-type friend who would throw out the engineer’s slogan whenever we approached a nearby subject. Perhaps it would solve all problems, if we were engineers engaged on a project. Comparing and contrasting useful and true is not useful when trying to find the best weight distribution for a bridge.

I hope on day to fully justify the use of etymology in my discussions. It follows along the line of finding the original need for the word. For what purpose did people mint the word? We haven’t quite been successful in uncovering where the word cam from. But it has a proximate meaning to meaning related to usual.

This lines up with where I had it before I began the search. I reasoned that something that is of great value is not typically called “useful”. We find calling a cyclotron “useful” a bit of an understatement. But also I found a resonance with the word handy, which also carries the hint of “ready”.

Frequently pegged as a luddite, by the urbane atheist, I get people who challenge my notions about Science. To some, the value of Science has been the explanation it provides. I don’t agree.

I argue that the main value of Science is technology. I’m aware that we have a whole body of Science called “pure Science”. But we just would not engage in “pure Science” were there no technology. Gadgets and chemicals fund research. The public would hardly pay people to provide the service of looking at things endlessly.

Plus, technology and not story best maps to predictability. I expect my computer to come on and it does. I expect it to publish my words to the world, and it does. I expect to be able to program it and sometimes I can make it do some snazzy things.

Therefore the prediction has an intimate relation with my interaction with the fruits of technology. However, the consistent event of falling down had many explanations.

In a utilitarian way, I can operate with the abstraction of machine as an expression of expectation. The successful machine does what designer expected when he designed it (because the materials tend to lend a pattern of expectation) and what I expected when I bought it. The results matter, the interlacing together of details is only important in that it does what I want.

However, explanation invites us to try to weave invisible threads among the pattern of repetition. The hicks weren’t wrong in that the frost regularly appeared on the window pane. They weren’t wrong if they were to invent scrapers to remove the frost. It was in explaining it by “Jack Frost” that they embarrass us moderns. And it was entirely that explanation that had no bearing of the treatment of frost on windows.

Once, men of good reason thought that all bodies fell toward the center of the universe as a reason why things fell to the ground. It made a certain sense: the ground was where heavy materials tended to cluster, and they were impacted into the surface. And since many of them knew that the earth was a sphere (they did indeed), they were invoking a 3-dimensional center.

However, that the earth was the center of the cosmos was immaterial to technology that solved the problem of keeping things from falling and lifting up heavy things to keep them temporarily from “center-seeking”.

Thus as I said before there is less value in Evolution or the Big Bang, primarily used to provide closure to the world, than there is with the Toaster. The lack of technology throws us back to a dark age, not the lack of a story to tie our origin into naturalistic philosophy.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) web site has this to say on academic freedom:

Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good ….[and that] depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.[1]

Look at that, universities are searching for truth. Which means they don’t have it all—at least that what it seems that searching for something tends to mean. We tend not to search for our keys unless we don’t know where they are.

Yet on the other hand, they find the statement “the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge.” (← the period appears in the actual AAUP quote.), taken from the Academic Bills of Rights (ABOR)”antithetical to the basic scholarly enterprise of the university, which is to establish and transmit knowledge”.[2][italics mine]

Well, “transmit” can play the role of “exposition “, but “search” and “establish” tend to fight with each other. Unless it is the case that you can only freely search in areas where the truth is not establish-ed. But that would put parameters on search that make it not entirely free. And where does exposition lie in relation to this? Can you exposit what is counter to what is establish-ed? Can you search for what is counter to the establish-ed? And if that is the case, in what way is it establish-ed?

So is it then settled or unsettled? Well, we have to believe that they are earnest in repudiating this antithesis. So it seems reasonable that some things are settled and certain and other things are searchable.

But they continue:

Although academic freedom rests on the principle that knowledge is mutable and open to revision, an Academic Bill of Rights that reduces all knowledge to uncertain and unsettled opinion, and which proclaims that all opinions are equally valid, negates an essential function of university education.[3]

I have to agree—except I don’t get that from this:

1. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints. Academic disciplines should welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions. (Academic Bill of Rights [4])

Now, does that last sentence “reduce all knowledge” to unsettled questions? I doubt it. It says that academics ought to welcome many viewpoints about those questions that are unsettled, such as in this case “humanities and social sciences”. The AAUP’s added period cuts off “in these areas”, yet the characterization of it by the AAUP criticizes the quote they pulled as if it “reduces all knowledge to uncertain and unsettled opinion”.

Myself, I don’t know about this statement in the Bill. I’d be happier without the “all” . I’d also prefer”…should reflect that human knowledge in these fields tends to be uncertain and unsettled or at least widely disputed….” But then again, I prefer the phrase “tends to” in many instances. I tend to avoid absolutes.

Here is where some people would leave the argument: AAUP made an error, not only in quoting, but interpretation. A number of advocates would count the AAUP’s argument disqualified. I differ.

But I do want to make another comment on their treatment of ABOR. When posed with a question of diversity, the AAUP argues:

The proposed Academic Bill of Rights directs universities to enact guidelines implementing the principle of neutrality, in particular by requiring that colleges and universities appoint faculty “with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives.” The danger of such guidelines is that they invite diversity to be measured by political standards that diverge from the academic criteria of the scholarly profession. Measured in this way, diversity can easily become contradictory to academic ends. So, for example, no department of political theory ought to be obligated to establish “a plurality of methodologies and perspectives” by appointing a professor of Nazi political philosophy, if that philosophy is not deemed a reasonable scholarly option within the discipline of political theory. No department of chemistry ought to be obligated to pursue “a plurality of methodologies and perspectives” by appointing a professor who teaches the phlogiston theory of heat, if that theory is not deemed a reasonable perspective within the discipline of chemistry.

Okay, the last point first. It’s a good one–just not that good. Surely, we don’t want a professor teaching a theory that was debunked in the 17^th century. But you don’t want a professor teaching that “cats can answer that question better” in a disputed matter either. He may add something that other professors wouldn’t have, but it is hardly a “diversity” to be pursued.

Other than the history of phlogiston, the subject is not chemistry. Knowing the history of, arguments for, and refutations of this theory maybe a useful thing to teach, but it is just not part of the chemistry to advance phlogiston.

Second, a “professor of Nazi political philosophy” is a position and not a diverse view, and that has little to do with the subject matter of political science. One can easily see the difference between hiring a professor who has a different take on chemistry (relatively supportable) and establishing a department of alchemy for diversity’s sake. I don’t think the Bill requires that any new departments or curricula be created for the sake of diversity. Just that diversity be tolerated. (One almost senses an hint that certain departments are created for “voicing” an opinion.)

But lastly, regardless of how good the point is, it wasn’t handed down to me. I didn’t read the passage and discover that I did not want a professor teaching phlogiston. I have never thought about it before. But I knew what it was, and I knew when they discredited the theory. But, I can guess that before this, I would not have asked that they teach it other than as a case study.

Reasoning to a somewhat lay public, they chose an understandable example. But here’s the idea behind this. This idea is communicable to a lay public. Thus if this were a really good argument—which it is not—that would be enough to establish in a lay arena, that diversity for diversity’s sake has side effects.

Of course, again, this is something I could have figured out. I think I’ve also figured out that it is pretty much a slippery slope argument, too. The line is too hard to draw—or if we let in one group’s idea of diversity, soon the hoard who clamor for the return of phlogiston will be pounding down the door. [5]

The upshot is that they will explain to us poor pitiful layman why they cannot open their door any wider, but if that fails they will revert to the specialist’s privilege. If they have to accept one opinion which does not fit their model of “academic” then they don’t know on what basis they can exclude anything. As if we then suddenly do not know the difference between z-shielding and phlogiston or Locke and Hitler.

I feel that the AAUP is getting lost in its own worldview. Ultimately a class on Nazi political philosophy (were there actually such a thing) would be a good thing. Learning about the Weimar republic, the social forces in Germany from Wagner to Naziism, reading Mein Kampf or the Socialist periodicals Hitler read while in Austria—all good sources of facts to be learned about the period. To have a professor harangue about how much better it would have been if the Third Reich had succeeded, is worse. To single out Jews or Slavs in the class, atrocious.

The facts are the facts. If you teach them, people generally can see that they are facts. But if you are teaching interpretation of events—in what way can you object to someone calling this “uncertain”. “Many of the top scholars believe…” is a bit better than “I’ve just started research into the idea that….” on the spectrum of interpretation. But somebody who thinks this area is “settled” just doesn’t know that much about interpretation, in my opinion.

Finally, the argument is a straw man, based on yet another misrepresentation of the text. The only time that “neutrality” is mentioned is here: “neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers” (ABOR) So much for directing “universities to enact guidelines implementing the principle of neutrality” to the degree that we’d soon be seeing phlogiston professors.

Here’s where their chosen text appears:

1. All faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise and, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives.

So what it says is first, hire for competence and knowledge, but have a view toward fostering plurality. The plurality is second to competence, not first. It is a silly and poor reading of this item that invites the AAUP then to go on to say “Yeah, but we don’t want incompetence, simply because we have to make political appointments–when no such political appointments are required.

What am I to make of it if academics misread text so badly?

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1. Now, often, I find that the slippery slope can prove valid in the realm of personal or cultural opinion. To rule that slippery slope is always a fallacy falls beyond my power of belief. If we picture opinions as a vast unlit field, and understand that there is always a scatter pattern to opinions. We will find that as we shine a flashlight down into the field of opinion as we light one area, the opinions close to this one fall into the radius of light. If we consider everything in the dark to be socially unacceptable opinions, when we move the flashlight, we tend to see unlit points come into the light and previously lit opinions fall into darkness. Slippery slope, in human affairs, is nothing more than recognizing that if a little sugar is good, there is likely to be somebody arguing for more sugar than is good.

We can see how this might operate in common law. We have judges at various levels of competency and various levels of ability to withstand a worldview that resembles their own. While one case may set a valid precedent, you may well have lawyers who want to expand a precedent. Now, perhaps a given beyond-the-pale application of precedent will be shot down by most competent judges who resist imposing their worldview. But occasionally the appeal will meet either an incompetent judge or one who is swayed by his worldview.

Thus we may see both good and bad widening of a precedent. And that precedent may in turn be extended beyond the bounds where it is a good point.