A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics, law of entropy. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?'.
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, 'Can you read?' — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had
Americans, especially conservatives, indulge in these fantasies of frankness that are not ever going to happen. “You know what we should tell those nutcases? We should tell them that they have one week to start…” Sure, I agree. I would love to give that approach a try for a year. Put up or shut up. Fish or cut bait. Yo, Egypt! These are your two choices! Even if we went back to the old way after, it would be an unspoken threat. The Roman Empire would have a dictator for a year in time of war. Having one year of Donald Trump as president might be just what the doctor ordered...
It is the centre of that European arrogance that pretends to be tolerant, worldly-wise, calm, and combining the best of all worlds, while actually being a mess and in danger of bankruptcy were it not for the money that the rest of the EU sends in, plus the tourist trade from the US...
Women's Tribal Christmas. It is not original to note that while it is women who do most of the complaining about how much food there is just lying around, begging to be eaten at the numerous Christmas festivities, it is also women who organize 90% of it and bring 90% of the food. Ditto the small cute objects exchanged, followed by complaints about how cluttery the house is and how out of control it feels. If women ran the world, we would spend a great deal of our time exchanging small presents and feeding each other snacks...
Inapproprite Use Of Polls. Is OJ guilty? Will this be a snowy winter? Is Chicago west of Detroit? Some things are just not poll questions.
I bring up these obvious errors because most of the poll questions in the major media are not much better, but we don't tend to notice that. "Do children study more or less than they did thirty years ago?" "Is there more crime than there was ten years ago, or less?"
The God who is never in the middle. When we picture Adam in the garden, we have just come from the story of this mysterious huge thing that created worlds and lights and oceans, and we miss what Eve saw. Adam & Eve don't seem to have much awareness that Whoever it is they are talking to is in charge of much more that just Eden, some animals, and them. He is a very intimate god and quite local. If He is more powerful than they are, He doesn't seem to be so intimidating that they don't dare disobey. A traveling snake-oil salesman is enough to get them to disregard the one they call Lord. This seems to be a Lord of the Manor, or Lord of the Waterfall, not the creator of the universe...
Admitting that I have no superpowers. (I still don't)
One of my favorite urban legends, up in smoke. The idea that Ring Around The Rosie is actually about the plague – “all fall down” meaning falling over dead? It’s completely untrue...
Evolutionary Psychology: Disclaimer. I do think that we overrate our own rationality, and are subject to primitive schema which we don’t acknowledge. I give things a tribal description because it provides a way of looking at ourselves and each other that is often illuminating. But behavior is multideterminate, and we are not trapped in a narrow range of behaviors. We have predilections, predispositions, and tendencies, but we are often able to override one desire and replace it with another...
1 comment:
CP Snow's comments...they ought to leave a mark.
It boggles my mind that people can graduate high school without being at least introduced to Newton's Laws. Yet they do.
(It also boggles my mind that people can apparently call themselves educated, and not be familiar with either Shakespeare or Newton, as one of the commentors noted...)
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