Now this was much better. Part two of the Genius of Charles Darwin didn’t have much to do with Darwin, but it did try to tackle some interesting issues. Dawkins looked as uncomfortable as ever, but some of the experts he interviewed made for good TV. I especially I enjoyed seeing his Pinkerness himself who prefaced his remarks on the evolution of the brain by saying “I happen to have one right here,” before picking up an authentic brain-in-a-vat.
The show tackled two questions. The first was the evolution of mankind. This was handled well and I shared Dawkins’ thrill at seeing some of the most precious and important fossils of early hominids. There were a couple of finely judged moments of political incorrectness such as Richard Leakey hinting that chimps and humans might be able to interbreed (they can’t) and Dawkins’s priceless question to a Kenyan bishop “I’m an ape. Are you an ape?”
I don’t think that it is controversial that man is descended from an extinct prehistoric creature from which chimpanzees are also descended. When the Bible refers to man being created in God’s image, it means as a rational, free and moral being. Since God has no body, it is trivially obvious that He doesn’t look like us (unless He wants to). The Kenyan bishop disagreed with Dawkins, not because he thinks we are created in God’s physical image but because he does not think we have evolved. He’s wrong on that and I was with Dawkins in the first half of the show.
The second half was even more interesting than the first because it dealt with the biggest moral problem for atheists. If our minds are simply the product of a struggle for survival, how can we say why we should be good? Surely, evolution only allows us to say that certain behaviour is more successful. Dawkins claimed he has wrestled with this problem throughout his life and it sounds like he still is. He explained that evolution can explain sacrifices for our own families and also reciprocal altruism where we return favours. But he admits that this doesn’t go far enough. He thinks we might have evolved simply to be nice to everyone we meet in the first instance because in the African savannah everyone we met was part of the same tribe.
I doubt this is right, but let’s suppose for a moment that it is. In that case, we can explain why we behave as we do. But it does not explain why we should be good. If niceness is just a useful trait that evolution has selected, like sharp teeth or a prehensile tail, it cannot be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Dawkins has no argument to use against evil. He abhors eugenics, like many of us, but can’t say why it is wrong, especially if it were (unfortunately) to be effective. If rape is an efficient reproductive strategy, as some controversial work as shown it might be, why should Dawkins have a problem with it? So he doesn’t solve the problem that he has wrestled with. In the end he admits, as he has previously in writing, that our goodness may be our selfish genes misfiring. Goodness is a mistake. Perhaps, Dawkins might even be tempted to call it a delusion.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Looking for bloggers
First, a quick announcement. My Cambridge University email (jh430@cam.ac.uk) no longer works. Now that I have graduated, the account has been closed down. In the past, I have been quite lackadaisical about which address I’ve used to send out emails so please check if you have jh430@cam.ac.uk as your email for me. If so, please change it to bede@bede.org.uk.
A related point on email: to help avoid falling into my spam trap, please ensure that all emails sent to me have an informative subject line. Try to avoid “Hello”, “Greetings” or “Hi”.
Second, a request and/or suggestion. I have been remiss in updating my blog over the last few months due to the pressure of work. When I do update it, the page stats are pretty good and they don’t even include most of the people who read on Google reader and similar. At the same time, I’ve noticed that some of the best blogs on the net are team blogs. The solution might be to pool resources with a few other bloggers or writers with similar views and interests. That way, we have a better chance of regular updates and of a richer fayre than the thin gruel of my own opinions.
So, I’m looking for people who might want to hook up with me to create a team blog. Three or four contributors would be ideal. I’d rebrand the blog so it is clear that it is a team effort and each blogger would be able to post whatever they liked under their own name (I think it is important that people do post under their real name). Contributors would need to be orthodox Christians, politically centre or centre right, willing to post once or twice a week, and with an interest in history, science, religion, politics and the other sorts of things I post on. You don’t have to agree with me on issues like behavioural genetics or global warming, but you should accept the basic truth of evolution. Having an existing blog would be an advantage so I can see the sort of thing you like to write about. Of course, you can keep your old blog going as well if you join the new team blog.
If you’d like to have over a thousand readers of your work a week, drop me a line at bede@bede.org.uk.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
A related point on email: to help avoid falling into my spam trap, please ensure that all emails sent to me have an informative subject line. Try to avoid “Hello”, “Greetings” or “Hi”.
Second, a request and/or suggestion. I have been remiss in updating my blog over the last few months due to the pressure of work. When I do update it, the page stats are pretty good and they don’t even include most of the people who read on Google reader and similar. At the same time, I’ve noticed that some of the best blogs on the net are team blogs. The solution might be to pool resources with a few other bloggers or writers with similar views and interests. That way, we have a better chance of regular updates and of a richer fayre than the thin gruel of my own opinions.
So, I’m looking for people who might want to hook up with me to create a team blog. Three or four contributors would be ideal. I’d rebrand the blog so it is clear that it is a team effort and each blogger would be able to post whatever they liked under their own name (I think it is important that people do post under their real name). Contributors would need to be orthodox Christians, politically centre or centre right, willing to post once or twice a week, and with an interest in history, science, religion, politics and the other sorts of things I post on. You don’t have to agree with me on issues like behavioural genetics or global warming, but you should accept the basic truth of evolution. Having an existing blog would be an advantage so I can see the sort of thing you like to write about. Of course, you can keep your old blog going as well if you join the new team blog.
If you’d like to have over a thousand readers of your work a week, drop me a line at bede@bede.org.uk.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Genius of Charles Darwin
Rather late, I’ve watched the first episode of Richard Dawkins’s The Genius of Charles Darwin. I’ve seen all his shows and thought this was the weakest of the three he has done for Channel 4 over the last couple of years (the other two were the Root of All Evil? and the Enemies of Reason). Dawkins’s is not really a television natural and he usually looks quite uncomfortable on screen. If I recall, he actually doesn’t enjoy TV work and has avoided doing it until recently. Another problem was that the script had been dumbed down to a level that only an ill-informed five year old would have learnt anything new. Certainly, if you’ve read any of Dawkins’s books, there was nothing in the show that you would not already know. This is almost certainly not the fault of Dawkins who is famous for communicating difficult ideas and helping his readers understand things that they might have thought beyond them.
The biographical bit of the show telling us about Darwin’s life was based on a very old fashioned reading of the history. There is no mention of Lamarkism or other theories of evolution doing the rounds when Darwin was researching. You would have imagined from the show that, until the Origin of Species was published, everyone was a young earth creationist. Charles Lyell is briefly mentioned, but not the fact he was a Christian despite demonstrating the enormous age of the Earth. As is well known, Darwin lost own his faith after the death of his daughter Annie, rather than because of his theory of evolution. We see a brief flash of Annie’s sketchbook but no mention was made of her importance to Darwin’s life. Perhaps this will come in the later episodes.
Still, the show had its moments. Dawkins comes face to face with a class of media-savvy teenagers. They know perfectly well what his hobbyhorse is and decide to pose as a bunch of unreconstructed fundamentalists. Dawkins appears to be blissfully unaware that they are winding him up. He should have remembered the old adage never to work with animals or children. Finally, it was a pity that even Richard Dawkins, the brightest star in the British scientific firmament, couldn’t get Channel 4 to part with a half decent budget for his programme.
My thoughts on episode 2 will follow when I’ve had a chance to watch it.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
The biographical bit of the show telling us about Darwin’s life was based on a very old fashioned reading of the history. There is no mention of Lamarkism or other theories of evolution doing the rounds when Darwin was researching. You would have imagined from the show that, until the Origin of Species was published, everyone was a young earth creationist. Charles Lyell is briefly mentioned, but not the fact he was a Christian despite demonstrating the enormous age of the Earth. As is well known, Darwin lost own his faith after the death of his daughter Annie, rather than because of his theory of evolution. We see a brief flash of Annie’s sketchbook but no mention was made of her importance to Darwin’s life. Perhaps this will come in the later episodes.
Still, the show had its moments. Dawkins comes face to face with a class of media-savvy teenagers. They know perfectly well what his hobbyhorse is and decide to pose as a bunch of unreconstructed fundamentalists. Dawkins appears to be blissfully unaware that they are winding him up. He should have remembered the old adage never to work with animals or children. Finally, it was a pity that even Richard Dawkins, the brightest star in the British scientific firmament, couldn’t get Channel 4 to part with a half decent budget for his programme.
My thoughts on episode 2 will follow when I’ve had a chance to watch it.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
George Saliba's Islamic Science
Sorry for the recent lack of posts. Things have been a bit busy. Actually, they still are and posts will remain infrequent for the moment.
The main object of this post is to report on George Saliba’s Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. I’ve got no time for Edward Said and I expect Saliba’s politics would disgust me, but he knows a great deal about Islamic Science. Let me make absolutely clear that this book is no fun to read. It is terse, badly edited and Saliba’s writing style is that of a professor who has no interest in attracting lay readers. It is the content of the book which makes it important and worth struggling through.
Saliba has two targets in view and he hits both of them. Firstly, he rejects the classical narrative that the conquered Syriac-speaking Christians population taught the Arabs Greek philosophy. He insists, I think quite rightly, that the assimilation of Greek learning into Arabic culture was an internal process within the Caliphate. It was not a case of ignorant Arabs learning philosophy from the Syrian Christians who had already mastered it. Rather, people living under the Islamic Caliphate decided for themselves that they wanted to acquire the philosophy of the classical Greeks and so went off to find it. There was no pre-existing advanced culture for them to take over – they created it from scratch. I don’t agree with all the details of Saliba’s case. He assumes on too little evidence that there was no indigenous scientific tradition in Byzantium at all. I think there was but it just wasn’t from this source that the Arabs acquired their own knowledge.
Why does this matter? In part, because it means the Arabs picked up ancient Greek philosophy in much the same way that Western Christians discovered Arabic thought in the twelfth century. In both cases, no one came to teach the new learning. Both the medieval Arabic and Catholic worlds were autodidacts. Contrast this with the recovery of Greek language scholarship in Renaissance Italy. That was very much driven by teachers fleeing from the wreck of Byzantium and educating the ignorant (but interested) Italians.
Saliba’s second attack is on the widely held belief that Arabic science declined after the thirteenth century, either due to religious pressure or the Mongol invasions. Saliba makes two points. The first is that Arabic science continued to advance until at least the sixteenth century. He convincingly shows how Copernicus used several unacknowledged cutting-edge astronomical techniques from Arab sources. These techniques for calculating planetary movements were not developed in Western Europe, but in Persia after the Mongol invasion. His second point is that talk of a decline is misleading. What needs explaining is how western science began and maintained its stratospheric progress from the fourteenth century onwards. Noting that Arabic science couldn’t keep up is not something that needs an explanation. The historical conundrum is western advance, not eastern stagnation.
I also tried Michael Morgan’s Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists. It’s awful and I couldn’t get through even one chapter. Avoid.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
The main object of this post is to report on George Saliba’s Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. I’ve got no time for Edward Said and I expect Saliba’s politics would disgust me, but he knows a great deal about Islamic Science. Let me make absolutely clear that this book is no fun to read. It is terse, badly edited and Saliba’s writing style is that of a professor who has no interest in attracting lay readers. It is the content of the book which makes it important and worth struggling through.
Saliba has two targets in view and he hits both of them. Firstly, he rejects the classical narrative that the conquered Syriac-speaking Christians population taught the Arabs Greek philosophy. He insists, I think quite rightly, that the assimilation of Greek learning into Arabic culture was an internal process within the Caliphate. It was not a case of ignorant Arabs learning philosophy from the Syrian Christians who had already mastered it. Rather, people living under the Islamic Caliphate decided for themselves that they wanted to acquire the philosophy of the classical Greeks and so went off to find it. There was no pre-existing advanced culture for them to take over – they created it from scratch. I don’t agree with all the details of Saliba’s case. He assumes on too little evidence that there was no indigenous scientific tradition in Byzantium at all. I think there was but it just wasn’t from this source that the Arabs acquired their own knowledge.
Why does this matter? In part, because it means the Arabs picked up ancient Greek philosophy in much the same way that Western Christians discovered Arabic thought in the twelfth century. In both cases, no one came to teach the new learning. Both the medieval Arabic and Catholic worlds were autodidacts. Contrast this with the recovery of Greek language scholarship in Renaissance Italy. That was very much driven by teachers fleeing from the wreck of Byzantium and educating the ignorant (but interested) Italians.
Saliba’s second attack is on the widely held belief that Arabic science declined after the thirteenth century, either due to religious pressure or the Mongol invasions. Saliba makes two points. The first is that Arabic science continued to advance until at least the sixteenth century. He convincingly shows how Copernicus used several unacknowledged cutting-edge astronomical techniques from Arab sources. These techniques for calculating planetary movements were not developed in Western Europe, but in Persia after the Mongol invasion. His second point is that talk of a decline is misleading. What needs explaining is how western science began and maintained its stratospheric progress from the fourteenth century onwards. Noting that Arabic science couldn’t keep up is not something that needs an explanation. The historical conundrum is western advance, not eastern stagnation.
I also tried Michael Morgan’s Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists. It’s awful and I couldn’t get through even one chapter. Avoid.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Shattering the Christ Myth
J.P. Holding of Tektonics apologetic ministry has edited (and substantially written) a new book providing a detailed rebuttal of the Christ Myth in its various guises. I have written an introduction to the book which compares the Christ Myth to the theory that Shakespeare didn't write the works of Shakespeare. I also offer a brief resume of the historiography of the Christ Myth going back to its nineteenth century origins.
This book should now, I believe, be the standard reference for anyone wanting to find a response to the various internet and published mythologists. You can get it from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. However, best of all would be if you order a copy from your local store and demand to know why they aren't stocking it.
No reviews yet, but do please let me know if you see any.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
This book should now, I believe, be the standard reference for anyone wanting to find a response to the various internet and published mythologists. You can get it from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. However, best of all would be if you order a copy from your local store and demand to know why they aren't stocking it.
No reviews yet, but do please let me know if you see any.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Implant Update
I owe you all an update on how I’ve been getting on with the cochlear implant. It has been turned on for almost three weeks now and the prognosis so far is very good. I went to Guy’s Hospital in London for the switch-on not really knowing what to expect. After some diagnostics to make sure it was working properly, Terry, the audiologist in charge of my case, ran through the different frequencies that the implant can deliver. They were all functioning and I could hear up to 8000Hz which is more than I managed in my early teens and a huge improvement on the 300Hz or so that I’ve been functioning with recently.
The implant initially made everyone sound like R2 D2. All I seemed to get were bells, whistles and beeps. Despite this, I could understand my wife quite well, but that might be more down to empathy than hearing. Over the following few days I still needed my hearing aid in the other ear to get by but it also distracted me from the sounds coming from the implant. So, as I had a week off work, I ditched the hearing aid (big relief – it was uncomfortable and I hated it) and just used the implant from then on. Gradually, the R2 D2 sounds began to resolve into voices, especially while following the subtitles on television. I also found I could hear my three year old a bit better.
When I got back to work on Monday, it was clear that I had already exceeded how well I had managed with the hearing aids. Colleagues whom I had previously had enormous trouble understanding even when I was lip-reading had become much clearer. On Tuesday, I went back to Guy’s Hospital for the implant to be retuned (which is necessary as I get used to it). Terry also ran some comprehension tests. I scored 92% in the hearing while lip-reading test (up from 86% with the hearing aids) and 55% when not lip reading (twice what I had managed before).
Already, things are a lot better and I can expect continuing improvement over the next few months. Aside from feeling very tired from having to interpret all the extra aural information, the implant has been a huge blessing already.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
The implant initially made everyone sound like R2 D2. All I seemed to get were bells, whistles and beeps. Despite this, I could understand my wife quite well, but that might be more down to empathy than hearing. Over the following few days I still needed my hearing aid in the other ear to get by but it also distracted me from the sounds coming from the implant. So, as I had a week off work, I ditched the hearing aid (big relief – it was uncomfortable and I hated it) and just used the implant from then on. Gradually, the R2 D2 sounds began to resolve into voices, especially while following the subtitles on television. I also found I could hear my three year old a bit better.
When I got back to work on Monday, it was clear that I had already exceeded how well I had managed with the hearing aids. Colleagues whom I had previously had enormous trouble understanding even when I was lip-reading had become much clearer. On Tuesday, I went back to Guy’s Hospital for the implant to be retuned (which is necessary as I get used to it). Terry also ran some comprehension tests. I scored 92% in the hearing while lip-reading test (up from 86% with the hearing aids) and 55% when not lip reading (twice what I had managed before).
Already, things are a lot better and I can expect continuing improvement over the next few months. Aside from feeling very tired from having to interpret all the extra aural information, the implant has been a huge blessing already.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Overtaking the Greeks in Science
In a comment on my recent post about Greek science, I was asked why it took fifteen hundred years for the Christian West to catch up with the ancient Greeks. It's a good question.
Firstly, a quibble. We had definitively overtaken the Greeks in natural philosophy by about 1350. That's a thousand years, not fifteen hundred, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and could reasonably have become dominant enough in philosophy to make a difference.
I have to answer the substantive question of why it took so long in two parts. The reasons why Western Europe took a thousand years to catch up are explained in the first chaper of my book God's Philosophers which you can read online. It was essentially because the Roman Empire was overrun by waves barbarian invaders and all knowledge of the ancient Greek language was lost. It took a long time to rebuild.
More puzzling is what went wrong in the Eastern Byzantine Empire where Roman rule went on until 1453 and the final fall of Constantinople. The history of Byzantine science is not a well-developed subject and I for one simply don't know enough to answer this question for the moment. What we do know is that John Philoponus, a Byzantine Christian from Alexandria, was the most important natural philosopher of late antiquity. But after him, there is very little more science. I certainly hope to investigate this question more closely and when I have some better answers I'll report back.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Firstly, a quibble. We had definitively overtaken the Greeks in natural philosophy by about 1350. That's a thousand years, not fifteen hundred, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and could reasonably have become dominant enough in philosophy to make a difference.
I have to answer the substantive question of why it took so long in two parts. The reasons why Western Europe took a thousand years to catch up are explained in the first chaper of my book God's Philosophers which you can read online. It was essentially because the Roman Empire was overrun by waves barbarian invaders and all knowledge of the ancient Greek language was lost. It took a long time to rebuild.
More puzzling is what went wrong in the Eastern Byzantine Empire where Roman rule went on until 1453 and the final fall of Constantinople. The history of Byzantine science is not a well-developed subject and I for one simply don't know enough to answer this question for the moment. What we do know is that John Philoponus, a Byzantine Christian from Alexandria, was the most important natural philosopher of late antiquity. But after him, there is very little more science. I certainly hope to investigate this question more closely and when I have some better answers I'll report back.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Parents versus peer groups
Daniel Finkelstein has been on the Judith Rich Harris again. His latest article quite rightly takes politicians to task for assuming that parenting skills have the slightest effect on the way children turn out. As I've argued many times, they don't.
However, Finkelstein seems to believe that environment must have some effect. He casts around and comes across Rich Harris's thesis. She claims that it is our peer group that forms us. This is almost certainly rubbish too. Peers have no more effect than parents.
The key to the confusion of both Finkelstein and Rich Harris is that they fail to distinguish between innate characteristics and learnt behavior. Some examples of characteristics are intelligence, extroversion, shyness, propensity to addiction, laziness, mathematical ability and optimism. You get the idea and can probably add many more. Behaviour includes language, reading and writing (although how good you are is largely a characteristic) and mathematical knowledge.
Now it is true that you can learn from both parents and peers. It may also be true that you are more likely to learn from your peers than your parents. But Rich Harris is wrong to extend the ability of peers beyond imparting behavior to also shaping our innate characteristics. They can't. Environment (aside from diet) as almost no effect on them at all.
By assuming we can change people by changing their peer group, I fear Finkelstein will send us off on a wild goose chase as pointless as the nurture assumption.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
However, Finkelstein seems to believe that environment must have some effect. He casts around and comes across Rich Harris's thesis. She claims that it is our peer group that forms us. This is almost certainly rubbish too. Peers have no more effect than parents.
The key to the confusion of both Finkelstein and Rich Harris is that they fail to distinguish between innate characteristics and learnt behavior. Some examples of characteristics are intelligence, extroversion, shyness, propensity to addiction, laziness, mathematical ability and optimism. You get the idea and can probably add many more. Behaviour includes language, reading and writing (although how good you are is largely a characteristic) and mathematical knowledge.
Now it is true that you can learn from both parents and peers. It may also be true that you are more likely to learn from your peers than your parents. But Rich Harris is wrong to extend the ability of peers beyond imparting behavior to also shaping our innate characteristics. They can't. Environment (aside from diet) as almost no effect on them at all.
By assuming we can change people by changing their peer group, I fear Finkelstein will send us off on a wild goose chase as pointless as the nurture assumption.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Could the Greeks Really Do Science?
Asking whether the ancient Greeks were any good at science might seem a silly question. After all, the conventional wisdom is that the Greeks invented science. But look a little more closely, and the Greek achievement is not quite as spectacular as it appears. Ask someone to name a scientific theory developed and proved by the Greeks and you may not get much of an answer.
Actually, there were a few genuine Greek scientific discoveries. Most important is Archimedes law of displacement and the work on statics that goes under his name. For instance, he knew how to calculate the mechanical advantage gained from a lever. Aristarchus of Samos famously suggested that earth goes around the sun, but the idea did not catch on. Eratosthenes’s measurement of the circumference of the earth is often brought up as a scientific achievement although he neither proposed a theory nor tested a hypothesis. I suppose you should say that proving the earth is a sphere is truly a scientific discovery, especially as early Greek natural philosophers doubted it.
Now the bad news. Greek medicine, both in general and in almost every specific was conceptually wrong and useless in practice. Greek astronomy and cosmology got almost nothing theoretically correct at all beyond the earth being a sphere and the light from the moon being a reflection from the sun. The basic principles of Greek kinematics and mechanics were erroneous and as a result everything derived from them was also false. Greek chemistry was devoid of any truth whatsoever and although many different atomic theories were suggested they never raised themselves to the status of a hypothesis. The ‘scientific method’ did not exist and the Greek alternative of ‘demonstration’ was incapable of generating natural knowledge.
None of this was the fault of the Greeks. The problem lay in the reasons they had for doing science. Almost none of the Greeks, certainly not Aristotle, did science for its own sake. They had no conception that discovering the way the world worked could be a good in itself. Rather, all science was at the service of philosophy and all theories about nature were intended to provide ballast for ethics. While medicine was practical, it was based on a holistic concept of man rather than the workings of the physical body.
So, no. The Greeks were not too hot when it came to science. And their mistakes took an extremely long time to shake off. Where they did excel was in the field of mathematics. There was a good reason for this. Greek thinkers considered the pure realm of numbers to be far superior to the tawdry material world. Thus, they devoted all their attention to it. It took Christianity and its belief in divinely-fashioned nature to re-orientate scientific attention towards reality.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Actually, there were a few genuine Greek scientific discoveries. Most important is Archimedes law of displacement and the work on statics that goes under his name. For instance, he knew how to calculate the mechanical advantage gained from a lever. Aristarchus of Samos famously suggested that earth goes around the sun, but the idea did not catch on. Eratosthenes’s measurement of the circumference of the earth is often brought up as a scientific achievement although he neither proposed a theory nor tested a hypothesis. I suppose you should say that proving the earth is a sphere is truly a scientific discovery, especially as early Greek natural philosophers doubted it.
Now the bad news. Greek medicine, both in general and in almost every specific was conceptually wrong and useless in practice. Greek astronomy and cosmology got almost nothing theoretically correct at all beyond the earth being a sphere and the light from the moon being a reflection from the sun. The basic principles of Greek kinematics and mechanics were erroneous and as a result everything derived from them was also false. Greek chemistry was devoid of any truth whatsoever and although many different atomic theories were suggested they never raised themselves to the status of a hypothesis. The ‘scientific method’ did not exist and the Greek alternative of ‘demonstration’ was incapable of generating natural knowledge.
None of this was the fault of the Greeks. The problem lay in the reasons they had for doing science. Almost none of the Greeks, certainly not Aristotle, did science for its own sake. They had no conception that discovering the way the world worked could be a good in itself. Rather, all science was at the service of philosophy and all theories about nature were intended to provide ballast for ethics. While medicine was practical, it was based on a holistic concept of man rather than the workings of the physical body.
So, no. The Greeks were not too hot when it came to science. And their mistakes took an extremely long time to shake off. Where they did excel was in the field of mathematics. There was a good reason for this. Greek thinkers considered the pure realm of numbers to be far superior to the tawdry material world. Thus, they devoted all their attention to it. It took Christianity and its belief in divinely-fashioned nature to re-orientate scientific attention towards reality.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The Easterlin Paradox RIP
Back in 1974, the economist Richard Easterlin did some work on happiness. He gathered research from different countries asking people how contented they were and then compared the results to each country’s GDP per head. He found, somewhat to his surprise, that money can’t buy you happiness. Beyond a certain level, increased wealth made no difference to how content people were.
This became known as Easterlin paradox and has become one of the standard weapons with which to critique capitalism. Our absolute wealth did not seem to make us happy and being poorer than the neighbours made us miserable. A new Mercedes gave no joy if the Joneses next door had a Maserati. This idea has been developed further by left-wing thinkers to explain, for reasons beyond natural justice, why economic inequality is a bad idea. Reducing the gap between the rich and poor would actually cheer the country up. Oliver James, a pop-psychologist, took the idea to extremes in his book Affluenza, but being a psychologist of the old school didn’t bother supply any evidence.
Now it turns out that Easterlin paradox is an illusion based on poor data. A much larger survey have revealed a reasonably clear correlation between GDP per head and general happiness. It appears that money does make us feel better.
I have to admit that, despite being a conservative, I was disappointed to hear this. I liked the Easterlin paradox. It was the sort of counter-intuitive conclusion that I find intellectually satisfying. Secondly, it seemed good that money was not all it was cracked up to be. Still, there is hope. Although the Easterlin paradox may be no more, no one is saying that money is all you need for happiness. Family, friendship and intellectual enjoyment are as important as ever. And, if we are honest, the idea that economic growth is not a good thing is dangerous because it amounts to keeping people poor. Hopefully not even Oliver James will be daft enough to suggest that now.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
This became known as Easterlin paradox and has become one of the standard weapons with which to critique capitalism. Our absolute wealth did not seem to make us happy and being poorer than the neighbours made us miserable. A new Mercedes gave no joy if the Joneses next door had a Maserati. This idea has been developed further by left-wing thinkers to explain, for reasons beyond natural justice, why economic inequality is a bad idea. Reducing the gap between the rich and poor would actually cheer the country up. Oliver James, a pop-psychologist, took the idea to extremes in his book Affluenza, but being a psychologist of the old school didn’t bother supply any evidence.
Now it turns out that Easterlin paradox is an illusion based on poor data. A much larger survey have revealed a reasonably clear correlation between GDP per head and general happiness. It appears that money does make us feel better.
I have to admit that, despite being a conservative, I was disappointed to hear this. I liked the Easterlin paradox. It was the sort of counter-intuitive conclusion that I find intellectually satisfying. Secondly, it seemed good that money was not all it was cracked up to be. Still, there is hope. Although the Easterlin paradox may be no more, no one is saying that money is all you need for happiness. Family, friendship and intellectual enjoyment are as important as ever. And, if we are honest, the idea that economic growth is not a good thing is dangerous because it amounts to keeping people poor. Hopefully not even Oliver James will be daft enough to suggest that now.
Discuss this post at Science, History and Religion - James Hannam's Forum
Click here to read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science absolutely free.
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