Monday, July 6, 2020

Recommended With Some Reservations

Last week someone recommended the Youtube channel of the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder to me and I spent some of the long drissely weekend watching a number of her subtly amusing, slightly but risk-free edgy and somewhat cool videos talking about modern physics, giving some very good popular level explanations of some of the problems with it that I've discussed on a layman's level.   I will say this for Hossenfelder, too, her music videos are the best of those I've seen from scientists and their associated sci-guy rockers.   

In general I like her though in the few I've watched where she talks about religion and, to some extent, science well outside of her field of expertise, she exhibits a milder form of the parochial ignorance of a complex subject which is inevitable from someone who has to spend so much of their time on their own complex subject.   That would be fine if she didn't, also, exhibit the vice of scientists who go make popular treatment of science, etc. speaking authoritatively instead of with the caution that vague familiarity should bring.  That's especially true when the topic is religion.   She's far, far from the worst offender but she does have the same trait in a milder form. 

One of the things that occurs to me from her talking about physics is that she practices the same kind of double-step that scientists do.  Proclaiming the modest ideals of what the physical scientists claim as the strict limits of what they do - not claiming to find "the truth" not going past where strictly controlled observation can inform their analyses and conclusions, not making undue claims for what they have found, always being open to refutation etc. while also claiming the opposite powers for science.   I will note that the scientific methods she proclaims are the main and overriding virtue of science are not methods that any scientist could bring to their lives outside of science,  relying only on evidence, not installing their ideological preferences, their interested claims of what is true, etc.  To claim that anyone could strictly apply the actual, agreed to, prescribed methods of science strictly to their everyday life and experience is a whopping big lie.  While I think she is unusually good at avoiding that for a scientist of her stature and her obvious ideological bias, that dishonesty is present in some of her presentations on the usual topics. 

For us mere laymen, I think she would disclaim the vulgar statement of scientism, that science is the only way to knowledge, that what science can't tell us cannot be true, though I think she more than implies that idea in her videos.   As any number of people have pointed out, that dictum of scientism is internally and fatally self-contradicting because science cannot support that contention.  Nor can it support any number of other such contentions.  Another is contained in her repetition of the contention that belief in God is not warranted because God is "not necessary" for the findings of physics.   There are any number of problems with that claim, not least of which is that science, including physics, is a human construct which formally excludes consideration of the question of God just as it excludes consideration of questions of morality.  When you start out that way, by excluding things, it is no great surprise when your chosen method cannot support the contention that those things are real or true - even as you formally proclaim that reality or truth are not the things you are trying to establish*.   She does both in the course of her videos, makes those true statements about the formal intentions of science but she, then, also tries to use them to debunk the existence of God. 

I would recommend her videos for their unusually clear - though complex - descriptions of some of he things modern physics currently holds as reliable knowledge and her critique of some of those which are most obviously not reliably believed - though they include some of the most popular of highly promoted science of the post-war period.  Her critique of the crisis in physics is extremely good as it would be for someone who is honest and as familiar with the field as she obviously is. 

On topics outside of her professional competence, she is generally better than most but you should take what she says with the kind of skepticism that the world would be better off if her colleagues applied that to the claims within their fields.  

Her music videos are some of the better imitation Brechtian stuff I've seen.  Though I hope she expands past that rather tired set of rather empty theatrical conventions.  Brecht was a practitioner of the cynical, the sensational and the circus like.  That doesn't get you far though it might get you an audience.  I think she'd benefit from reading Hans Kung, Existiert Gott? would be a good place for her to start.  I'd recommend she take advantage of her situation and follow up on his extensive citations and bibliography.  It would be a good place for anyone to start.  It's not an easy book but it is, as Elizabeth A. Johnson noted, the best handling of atheist arguments around.   

*  I'm not going to bother answering the snark, go look at her videos.  I'm finding that I'm feeling very reluctant to continue to argue with blog-rat, youtube-rat level trolls.  You won't listen to her so I don't think answering your snark is going to make any difference.  I'm not interested in things I know won't make a difference, anymore. 

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