I think that Tyson is being a bit too cute about his alleged "accommodation". He doesn't come right out and slam religion but that is the end of what I've seen of it online. It is certainly how it is being taken all over the internet, certainly at Alternet. Considering that scientists have been a lot more important in inhibiting innovation and progress in science, they certainly have had a bigger hand in producing intentional fraud and ideology masquerading as science, you would think a series dealing with impediments to science would pay more attention to that than to the quite often entirely mythical impediment that religion has been to science. I suspect that any series produced by professional atheists such as Seth Macfarlane and Ann Druyan (she and Sagan met through the production of his "Cosmos" as I recall) is unlikely to avoid distorting that history. I don't think that Tyson, who has been working in that area of sci-showbiz for quite a number of years now, is unaware of what was likely to result. I think he's just trying to have it both ways, participating in the neo-atheist fad while hedging his bets in case it goes out of style. I think that Larry Krauss was doing the same thing, though he has certainly put all his money on the fad lasting.
I haven't trusted a TV science show since Nova went bad about a decade or so ago. And Tyson was part of that as well. I remember when I first became aware of Sagan, on Nova programs where he talked about his area of scientific competence, I thought he was fascinating. Then he went on to become The Greatest Genius In The World, gassing on about stuff he didn't know anything about, producing intellectual atrocities such as The Amniotic Universe and The Dragons of Eden and before long I couldn't stand the guy. His Cosmos, whenever it touched on the history of science, was mostly a rehashing of old-line Brit anti-Catholic, anti-religious bromides and slogans. When you look at what people such as Copernicus, Galileo, etc. actually said, what their lives actually were and their relationship with the Catholic church was, the show-biz presentation is as much of a falsification of reality as the worst of creationism. I know that's not supposed to matter because it is mere history and that a sci-guy like Sagan or Tyson pushes false information is, meh. But we happen to be people and our history is as much vital information necessary to understanding our lives and our position in the universe as theoretical physics is. Considering how much of theoretical physics turns out to be wrong and, based on speculations on fragmentary information it's bound to turn out lots of wrong guesses, history, based on a far more certain, far richer and far less ambiguous range of evidence, can tell us a lot more about us than science can. I think it's probably a more serious matter with more consequences to lie about history than it is about many of the issues that we are supposed to be continually in a swivet about.
I have gone over this before but the most serious suppression of science in the past century was the suppression of genetics in the Soviet Union by atheists and the most serious crimes committed in the name of science were those that grew out of eugenics, invented by viciously anti-religious people, Galton, Haeckel, etc. Not to mention the use of science to produce weapons of mass destruction, just about every one of those people I know of were atheists as well. It would seem to me that looking to see if an ideology that so often includes a denial of and refutation of morality mixes salubriously with the potent efficacity of science might be a bit more important than rehashing the old line Brit Catholic bashing accounts of those two life long Catholics, Copernicus and Galileo. That's especially true since Catholics haven't been in the business of offing people for heresy for quite a long time now, whereas the history of atheist regimes murdering scientists has happened within living memory. I suspect it goes on today in places like North Korea and China to little notice by western popular media.
I'm not paying attention to "Cosmos" because I'm simply not interested. I enjoyed Sagan's version, but that was a long time ago, and after that came "A Demon Haunted World" and "Dragons of Eden" (as you mentioned) and I soon learned I knew far more than Sagan did, so I left him behind.
ReplyDeleteThe more I read of Tyson's views, the less enthralled I am. The whole debacle with the debate-that-wasn't is enough to sour me on him, but that's not the whole of it. Alternet seemingly weekly looks for the latest "assault" on "fundamentalists", and broadcasts their outrage from one obscure website or another (were it not for Alternet's outrage, I wouldn't know Ham or Klinghoffer existed or had opinions as baseless as those of Jerry Coyne, and I doubt I'd be the poorer for it).
Somebody on Salon this morning, in response to a comment mentioning Saudi Arabia (in the context of the latest Alternet/Cosmos posting, now on Salon, of course), spoke of the "fundamentalists" who control America. Which is laughable, when you consider the reality of Saudi Arabia, where atheists and Christians alike can be executed for their beliefs or lack of them, with America, where we have Alternet.
I'm working, slowly, on a post about Faust as the Renaissance Man who knew all humans could know, and how now you need only be a "scientist" (preferably a cosmologist or physicist; no anthropologists need apply!) to attain that exalted status. I'll finish it sooner or later.
Not that I've got anything against liberty, equality, or fraternity, but it was the French Revolution that got Lavoirsier's head.
ReplyDeleteStill and all I like popular science, and I'm sorry it generates such heat. The mere facts of science can be pretty exciting, but I find it's even more fun to read the scientists themselves (usually in English translations). Galileo can be very engaging. Newton's Principia I find very hard to follow, but some of the peculiar personality of that hard, hard man shines through. Einstein's "popular" book on relativity illustrates why he has always been a crowd-pleaser (though sub-titling it "An explanation anyone can understand" gives most of us way too much credit). Feynmann, whose "Six Easy Pieces" and "Six Not-so-easy Pieces" I've been through, can be a little too jokey, a little too self-conscious about his unconventionality. But he also has the earnestness of a good teacher, and by and large doesn't evangelize for his atheism.
I've alluded before, either here or at Adventus, to my having completed, with much effort, two years back, Heisenberg's "Der Teil und das Ganze." I think its Engish title is "Physics and Beyond," and I'd recommend it, not only for its informal, conversational coverage of the emergence of quantum mechanics, but because it well illustrates the familiarity of that generation of European scientists with philosophy, literature and music. Heisenberg also very gingerly touches on the ethical responsibility of scientists, and offers a plausible, if perhaps well-polished, apologia for his staying in Germany, and working on basic fission research under the Nazis. What is more moving is his account of the horror and unbelief of he and his colleagues (by this time prisoners of war),when they learn of the success of the accellerated American research project, and the deployment of that dizzying quantity of new science and engineering against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don't think that any of them dreamed that their work could be weaponized so quickly.