Re: A Consortium of Scientists


"Peter F" <notdisclosed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:da3sj2$107l$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "g" <gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:da243o$e0d$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <snip>
>
>
> I don't think there is a realistic hope in hell (but if so, only a helluva
> small one)
> that we will ever see a wholesale authoritative exposure of, and remedial
> impact on,
> all these (different kinds of) obfuscations.

Peter,

There IS hope. Also, there IS some precedent. The scientific ideal IS
alive
and well, though it persist only the in the minds and hearts of but a few
good and capable thinkers... whose ranks, however loosely knit, have
lived and live on even now... and whose acquaintance we might bring
ourselves in line to make if we are brutally self-honest and work hard at
disciplining our thinking to gather reliable data, think rigorously hard
about it, and never assume we know it all, nor have arrived at the ultimate
diagnosis of all cases of ignorance.

Isaac Newton, himself, proposed a consortium although I have to say in all
humility that it is rather an obvious need long before I learned he had
given
it serious thought and endorsement.

You and I are keenly aware of the "economics" and "politics" of research
fundings and sanctions, but we know also that "widows and orphans" never
are out of mind of some of science's most open-minded and open-ended.
(No doubt you are familiar with the application of this expression to many
things, including rare diseases which get opted out of funding because the
spending of millions of dollars on finding a "pill" for one of them has a
snow ball's chance of returning any recompense (profit) to the discoverer
or marketer. You may even know that in the process of developing at least
one high end word processing program (Word Perfect) the term was applied
to a date that would be cut into by word wrap at the end of a sentence, or a
portion of a sentence beginning at the bottom of a page of print (which
would
be moved to the next page, where it would be together with the rest of the
sentence and the rest of the paragraph.

Indeed, the need for an objective consortium on evolutionary biology, or
Earth
sciences generally, NOT paid to produce a "property" for sale, and NOT paid
or sanctioned on condition of being politically correct... IS a causus
bono...
nevertheless. And, since our solar system's dynocentral star has enough
helium
remaining to go on as it is for a while, there is time for man to evolve
into a
species with a generalized capacity to hold more than one concept in mind at
a time -- whereas such specimins are a rarity up to now. So, let us not
abandon
all hope, who enter into the contemplation of solutions, even for widows and
orphans such as the notion of an objective Earth Science "issues defining"
consortium.

To that end, let me remind that weltenschaung (like the Newtonian view of
the
universe) is not of the nature of a still shot.

Just to mention one example of how things not only can change, but how ideas
can feed a SPIRALING forward progress in which the main evolutionary actors
are empirical learning and technological application, such that the learning
informs technological advances which, reciprocally, enable greater acuity of
observation (learning). It is NOT a cycle, but a helix (or, pehaps a
conical
helix, if we introduce the notion that hypertrophy is "progress," which is
a subjective assessment... but nonetheless valid where it is recognized as
such.

Anyhow, look at the fact that the notion of "moral intelligence" can be
traced
back more than 2,400 years, to Socrates. Does it surprise you that the
notion
has held different sway, in and out, over the centuries. Just looking at
the past
century, I am reminded of a piece of my life and thoughts when I became
hyper
focused (as I am prone to do) upon a band of issues known as "human
behavior"
and with a narrow aspect of that, known as "behavior modification."

It was in that parenthetical thought mode that I read a book by Hervey
Cleckley
named The Mask of Sanity. Cleckley's focus was not upon human behavior
generally, but more particularly the behavior/thinking of what is crudely
classified as "psychopathic thought and behavior."

Nevertheless, in reading Cleckley I came across an observation of his that
virtually EXPLODED into my conceptualization of human behavior generally,
and has pervaded it (though not exclusively thank heaven) ever since.

It was this observation Cleckley made that fragged my prior thinking. He
wrote (and I am sorry but must paraphrase... thought I put it in quotes to
give
him the credit):

A group of inmates of a criminal correction facility, in a
psychiatrist-moderated
group therapy setting, is as capable of discussing moral concepts of right
and
wrong as are the members of an adult Christian Sunday School Class. The
DIFFERENCE (caps mine) between the one and the other is not one of
distinguishing between the intelligence or the information to be considered
by
the one or the other; it is in HOW THEY FEEL about the subject matter.

We can appreciate what a veritable atom bomb this is.

(As a person who despises to see someone take a SINGLE, ISOLATED
concept into mind and fail to understand that -- regardless of its relative
impact on anything, or everything -- UNDERSTANDING its place in the real
world requires grasping the whole DYNAMIC in which it is an actor...
not in a "Eureka ! Now I know everything there is to know about human
behavior..." kind of corruption of wisdom. But it IS a major player.)

Most everybody knows about Pavlov's legacy, so I will mention it only to
mix with other intelligence to extend to saying, "A dog can be made to
starve
to death, by teaching him to fear the very food he needs to sustain life."
Or to posit the idea a different way, the best of ideas involved in grasping
a full dynamic, can be over-applied, and hence serve to distort and corrupt
one's understanding, more than improve it, if that idea is allowed to be the
ONLY stimulus given sway in the matter by the psyche. Enough said.

So, anyhow, at the time I was reading The Mask of Sanity the SUREST WAY
to get laughed all the way to the door, and out it, was to pose as anything
but
a JOKE the possibility of any significance to the notion of "moral
intelligence."

The joke in my mind is that the very same forums that would have laughed you
out of their midst then, are all buzzing about "emotional intelligence" now.

Get it? Emotional intelligence. Emotion... feeling... how they FEEL about
it.

How fun it is to swim and dive and splash and laugh with ideas, and see them
in both their finest glory and in their dirtiest and most ragged underwear.

Ideas, like humans, are not sacred icons, nor mysteries to be approached on
eggshells. They are best when swum in, surfed over, relished as an entire
dynamic no human is capable of conceiving of all at once, much less
integrating
fully. But WE CAN TRY. And weltenschaung DOES FLUCTUATE and
propagate forward in helical or spiral symphonication...

So long as we can keep the intellectual child alive in our minds and hearts,
there
is hope.


g








>
> However, from where a sit and think, it all can be revealingly viewed and
> powerfully "umbrella understood"
> (in a necessarily Tolerance Principled manner - and perhaps also
> necessarily in a *partly toilet-humorously concEPTualizing* manner)
> to be a result of the AEVASIVE facet of our phylogeny and functure.
>
> [BTW: Both our phylogeny and our functures stem from
> the fickle 'substratum' that fundamental physicists are attempting to
> theoretically describe and practically pinpoint.
>
> I liked to add this because I am a fascinated follower of what happens
> in (and what fruits that fall from) the frontiers of fundamental physical
> (amongst other fields) of Science;
> And because I am smugly pleased that my Encompassing Philosophical
> Terminology (of concEPTual lenses/tools)
> apply (or, more specifically, the didactic dichotomization of the
> "Evolutionary Pressure Totality"
> into adversity and opportunity type pressures applies) - i.e., only
> philosophically, don't forget ;-) - to the origin
> of, and the evolution 'within', our Universe. %-}]
>
> P
>
> P.S. Apropos my use of "functure":
> In mathematical physics - which, b.t.w., relies on a far more abstractly
> convoluted conceptual system than
> EPT is - the concept of "functors", figures widely (or is commonly fielded
> *without* any frowning from most players).
>
>
>


.

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