Infantilise seems to be a mot de jour. In this yesterday’s Times, Libby Purves used this very word in an excellent article about whether unmarried couples living together should have legal rights. Due to the Times pay wall, you can’t read it online, but I left my copy on the 8:50 to Charing Cross yesterday and it is probably still there if anyone wants to grab it.
The article followed an intervention by the president of the family division of the British courts, Sir Nicholas Wall, saying that when co-habitees break up, a judge should rule on how property is split between them. Now, my opinion of Sir Nicholas was already in the nuclear bunker below the basement due to his support for continued secrecy in the family courts and several dreadful decisions in adoption cases. I was pleased to note that former Justice Minister Jack Straw shared my opinion and tried, unsuccessfully, to block Sir Nicholas’s appointment to the presidency of the family division.
Sir Nicholas now wants the law to decide what happens when unmarried couples split up. Family lawyers think this is a splendid idea but, of course, they will pick up fats fees as a result. This seems to me to be a classic case of the state sticking its nose in where it has no business. If unmarried couples want to come to a legal arrangement, that should be up to them. Presently, such an arrangement is available. It is called ‘marriage’ and is even available to gay couples (albeit under a different name). Where children are involved, it is quite right that the law steps in to protect their interests when their parents split up. But in the case where a couple move in together, as many do, and then split up a couple of years later without having any children, the arrangement should be private. Another layer of legal bureaucracy is the last thing we need.
The difficulty raised by supporters of Sir Nicholas’s plan is the case of vulnerable women who are allegedly being thrown out onto the street when their lovers tire of them. They also note that people often don’t think through what they are doing. They might move in together, expecting that the arrangement will be for life and thus make no provision for if it doesn’t work out. The law, in other words, must protect people from themselves.
But even if this really is happening, should a law be brought in that applies to all couples when they break up? Surely, as Libby Purves noted in her Times article, people must learn to take responsibility for themselves. A law such as that proposed by Sir Nicholas would further “infantilise” us, in Libby Purves’ words. Whatever the good intentions behind the suggestion, it would have insidious the consequence of making us less responsible for our own actions.
Also, I fear that claiming women are not capable of taking that responsibility is chauvinistic. I am all in favour of ensuring people are aware that what happens when they split up is up to them. It might even be a good idea to make clear that the fabled concept of “common law marriage” does not actually exist. If you want to stay in your partner’s home when they die, you should get that in writing and into their will. And if you want a share of the house you are both living in, that should be documented too. The law should not, in my opinion, step in when people fail to take these elementary precautions.
And just for the record, this is nothing to do with safeguarding the sanctity of marriage. This straw man is regularly erected by proponents of Sir Nicholas’s idea, but is the least of my problems with it. It is a bad idea in its own right and another fine example of how the road to a nanny state is paved with good intentions.
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Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Monday, February 07, 2011
A Millenia-old Scientific Prediction
Let me ask two distinct questions: first, Did the universe begin to exist? and second, Does the universe have a cause? Since there are two conditions we are dealing with we can put the possible combinations of these conditions into four possible positions one could hold:
1. The universe began and it has a cause.
2. The universe didn't begin and it has a cause.
3. The universe began and it doesn't have a cause.
4. The universe didn't begin and it doesn't have a cause.
In theistic religions, 1 has been the most common option. But it should be noted that there were still some who held 2, that the universe, despite not having a beginning, still has a cause (such as Aristotle, Averroes, and the Latin Averroists). There is a good reason for this: simply showing the universe had no beginning is not sufficient to show that it has no cause; many forms of the cosmological argument argue from the premise of an infinitely-old universe.
Historically, the response of atheists was to accept 4, that the universe has neither a beginning nor a cause. Prior to the advent of Big Bang cosmology, position 3 was empty; at least I've never heard of anyone who accepted it, and the calls in the academic literature to find anyone who fits into it have gone unanswered. And yet it seems to be the position that atheists are driven to today. Of course, the fact that it has not been accepted historically does not mean that it is not a viable position to hold, but it surely gives us food for thought.
Ultimately, the claims that the universe began or that it did not amount to scientific predictions. The claim that it did have a beginning has been empirically verified by contemporary cosmology, and the claim that it did not has been empirically disconfirmed. And historically, the first category consists solely of theists, while the second category consists mostly of nontheists with a few theists. However, while theists argued for the universe's beginning, they did not think refuting this would refute theism -- in other words, while their prediction that the universe began could be falsified, their theism could not be (at least not by this factor). Atheists, however, gave no such indication: if you refuted the universe's eternality, then you would refute atheism, since it was accepted by all parties that if the universe began, it must have a cause. So the atheists' prediction was falsifiable, and by the same lights, so was atheism.
The problem, again, is that the atheists' prediction has been falsified. Thus, it would seem that atheism has been falsified. Yet atheists often claim to base their views on science and accuse theists of ignoring science. Surely this is backwards. Theists and atheists alike made a scientific prediction, the theists have had their prediction substantiated and the atheists have had their prediction refuted. In order to salvage their position, atheists have had to embrace a position that never occurred to anyone because it rejects the principle of causality. They have had to redefine their position so that it is no longer disproven by science. Again, this does not amount to a refutation of atheism, but if the tables were turned, do you think theists would be given the benefit of doubt?
(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)
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1. The universe began and it has a cause.
2. The universe didn't begin and it has a cause.
3. The universe began and it doesn't have a cause.
4. The universe didn't begin and it doesn't have a cause.
In theistic religions, 1 has been the most common option. But it should be noted that there were still some who held 2, that the universe, despite not having a beginning, still has a cause (such as Aristotle, Averroes, and the Latin Averroists). There is a good reason for this: simply showing the universe had no beginning is not sufficient to show that it has no cause; many forms of the cosmological argument argue from the premise of an infinitely-old universe.
Historically, the response of atheists was to accept 4, that the universe has neither a beginning nor a cause. Prior to the advent of Big Bang cosmology, position 3 was empty; at least I've never heard of anyone who accepted it, and the calls in the academic literature to find anyone who fits into it have gone unanswered. And yet it seems to be the position that atheists are driven to today. Of course, the fact that it has not been accepted historically does not mean that it is not a viable position to hold, but it surely gives us food for thought.
Ultimately, the claims that the universe began or that it did not amount to scientific predictions. The claim that it did have a beginning has been empirically verified by contemporary cosmology, and the claim that it did not has been empirically disconfirmed. And historically, the first category consists solely of theists, while the second category consists mostly of nontheists with a few theists. However, while theists argued for the universe's beginning, they did not think refuting this would refute theism -- in other words, while their prediction that the universe began could be falsified, their theism could not be (at least not by this factor). Atheists, however, gave no such indication: if you refuted the universe's eternality, then you would refute atheism, since it was accepted by all parties that if the universe began, it must have a cause. So the atheists' prediction was falsifiable, and by the same lights, so was atheism.
The problem, again, is that the atheists' prediction has been falsified. Thus, it would seem that atheism has been falsified. Yet atheists often claim to base their views on science and accuse theists of ignoring science. Surely this is backwards. Theists and atheists alike made a scientific prediction, the theists have had their prediction substantiated and the atheists have had their prediction refuted. In order to salvage their position, atheists have had to embrace a position that never occurred to anyone because it rejects the principle of causality. They have had to redefine their position so that it is no longer disproven by science. Again, this does not amount to a refutation of atheism, but if the tables were turned, do you think theists would be given the benefit of doubt?
(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)
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Sunday, February 06, 2011
Infantilising citizens
Reflecting on the way forward in Egypt, Robert Fisk writes in the Independent today:
Fisk is right, of course. Which is not usually something you can say about him. When governments become all pervasive, citizens no longer have to take any sort of responsibility. In a dictatorship, everything is the leader's responsibility and he paints himself as the father of the country. People become like children. They can whinge, and frequently do, but if they misbehave they get smacked or worse.
Sadly, though, almost all governments have this effect on people, even though, in a democracy, it is to a much lesser degree. The more government there is, the more people cease to take responsibility. When something goes wrong, we complain about our rulers but seem strangely unwilling to do things for ourselves. The present Conservative-led government is having trouble selling its idea for free-schools, localism and less bureaucracy for this very reason. It turns out that there are always plenty of people who have done very nicely attached to the teat of the state.
Of course, it is widely accepted that governments infantilise their citizens, which is from where we get the phrase "the nanny state". But many of the left think this is a good thing. Alain de Botton, the pop-philosopher, defends a paternalistic state on the BBC's website. It all sounds terribly reasonable but what he is really saying is that we all need a bit of dictatorship to defend us from ourselves. I doubt Hosni Mubarak would disagree.
UPDATE: My post above implies that Alain de Botton is arguing for dictatorship. Of course he isn't, and I'm sure he would not. The linked article is well worth a read and a rather more considered response than the one I gave it.
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The problem was that under the autocrats – Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak and whomever Washington blesses next – the Egyptian people skipped two generations of maturity. For the first essential task of a dictator is to "infantilise" his people, to transform them into political six-year-olds, obedient to a patriarchal headmaster. They will be given fake newspapers, fake elections, fake ministers and lots of false promises.
Fisk is right, of course. Which is not usually something you can say about him. When governments become all pervasive, citizens no longer have to take any sort of responsibility. In a dictatorship, everything is the leader's responsibility and he paints himself as the father of the country. People become like children. They can whinge, and frequently do, but if they misbehave they get smacked or worse.
Sadly, though, almost all governments have this effect on people, even though, in a democracy, it is to a much lesser degree. The more government there is, the more people cease to take responsibility. When something goes wrong, we complain about our rulers but seem strangely unwilling to do things for ourselves. The present Conservative-led government is having trouble selling its idea for free-schools, localism and less bureaucracy for this very reason. It turns out that there are always plenty of people who have done very nicely attached to the teat of the state.
Of course, it is widely accepted that governments infantilise their citizens, which is from where we get the phrase "the nanny state". But many of the left think this is a good thing. Alain de Botton, the pop-philosopher, defends a paternalistic state on the BBC's website. It all sounds terribly reasonable but what he is really saying is that we all need a bit of dictatorship to defend us from ourselves. I doubt Hosni Mubarak would disagree.
UPDATE: My post above implies that Alain de Botton is arguing for dictatorship. Of course he isn't, and I'm sure he would not. The linked article is well worth a read and a rather more considered response than the one I gave it.
Discuss this post at the Quodlibeta Forum
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Censorship in the Guardian
Antisemitism is never funny, but the reaction of the left-leaning Guardian newspaper to racism by the left is quite amusing.
Yesterday, various student groups and unions protested against the government's increase in university tuition fees. These protests were less marred by violence than on previous occasions, but at one point the crowd insulted the president of the National Union of Students, Aaron Porter. Porter is a moderate who has publicly criticised some of the violent and extreme protests, well aware that they damage the cause.
As the Guardian reports he was abused when he was due to make a speech and had to be escorted away by the police. The Telegraph reports that the crowds jeered him as a "Tory Jew", a common enough insult from the far-left and one repudiated by some of the other protesters. The Guardian quotes the crowd as calling Porter "a Tory too".
I doubt that the Guardian is deliberately lying. But, it seems to typify the inability of many on the left to accept that the "student" protesters contain some extremely insalubrious elements.
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Yesterday, various student groups and unions protested against the government's increase in university tuition fees. These protests were less marred by violence than on previous occasions, but at one point the crowd insulted the president of the National Union of Students, Aaron Porter. Porter is a moderate who has publicly criticised some of the violent and extreme protests, well aware that they damage the cause.
As the Guardian reports he was abused when he was due to make a speech and had to be escorted away by the police. The Telegraph reports that the crowds jeered him as a "Tory Jew", a common enough insult from the far-left and one repudiated by some of the other protesters. The Guardian quotes the crowd as calling Porter "a Tory too".
I doubt that the Guardian is deliberately lying. But, it seems to typify the inability of many on the left to accept that the "student" protesters contain some extremely insalubrious elements.
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Saturday, January 29, 2011
The Educational Culture Wars
There is a brutal culture war in British education.
On the left are the educational establishment wedded to outdated dogmas about child-centred teaching and government control. They are led by the National Union of Teachers (appropriately abbreviated to NUT) and Fiona Millar, partner of Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alistair Campbell. Unfortunately, these forces of reaction also include the Catholic Church. They all want to keep English schools exactly as they are, except for spending billions on shiny new buildings and paying teachers more, no matter how good or bad they are at their job. In effect, they want to keep poor children ignorant and underachieving.
On the right are teachers like Katharine Birbalsingh, scandalously sacked from her job for speaking out against the establishment and Toby Young, who is trying to set up a free school offering a rigorous education to all local children in Acton. He’s better known as the real person whose memoir was adapted for the film How to Lose Friends and Alienate People starring Simon Pegg.
Just how urgent the problem is for children from underprivileged backgrounds is illustrated by stark statistics. According to government figures, just 45 of children entitled to free school meals in 2002/3 (the standard measure of children from poor backgrounds and about 80,000 in total) got places at Oxford and Cambridge when they progressed in 2006/7. Other figures from the Sutton Trust found that only 130 such children got Oxbridge places over the three years to 2007. To put that in perspective, some top private schools manage to get 80 or so children into Oxbridge every year. Even allowing for genetic factors, this suggests that state education fails the most gifted of the needy.
But there is hope. Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, one of London’s poorest boroughs, got ten pupils offers to Cambridge last year. Mossbourne is an independent school run within the state system with the freedom to hire good teachers (and fire bad ones); impose a strict disciplinary ethos and challenge pupils with a demanding syllabus. No wonder the left hate it. They like to pretend that it has achieved its success through covert selection of the brightest local pupils, a charge for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Mossbourne Academy shows why defeating the NUT, Fiona Millar and the other educational reactionaries is a vital battle for increasing social mobility in the UK. It also shows what is possible once bureaucratic shackles are cut, discipline asserted and children are allowed to reach their potential.
Some on the political right believe that the problems started with the abolition of grammar schools. Under this system, which has been phased out since the 1960s but is still in force in certain parts of the country, children take an exam at age 11. If they pass, they go to an academic grammar school. If they fail (or didn’t pass with a high enough mark, using the current argot), they went to a ‘vocational’ secondary modern or comprehensive school. The system worked well for gifted poor children for whom grammar schools were a ticket to the middle classes. However, they failed late developers and children on the middle rungs on attainment. But ultimately, they were abolished because the existing middle classes got apoplectic if their children failed the eleven plus exam. Nonetheless, the combination of comprehensive schools and so-called liberal education policies has been a disaster for gifted children of parents who cannot afford to pay private school fees. Let us hope that Michael Gove, the Conservative education minister, with his strategy of freeing schools from bureaucrats and facing down the educational establishment, can repair some of the damage.
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On the left are the educational establishment wedded to outdated dogmas about child-centred teaching and government control. They are led by the National Union of Teachers (appropriately abbreviated to NUT) and Fiona Millar, partner of Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alistair Campbell. Unfortunately, these forces of reaction also include the Catholic Church. They all want to keep English schools exactly as they are, except for spending billions on shiny new buildings and paying teachers more, no matter how good or bad they are at their job. In effect, they want to keep poor children ignorant and underachieving.
On the right are teachers like Katharine Birbalsingh, scandalously sacked from her job for speaking out against the establishment and Toby Young, who is trying to set up a free school offering a rigorous education to all local children in Acton. He’s better known as the real person whose memoir was adapted for the film How to Lose Friends and Alienate People starring Simon Pegg.
Just how urgent the problem is for children from underprivileged backgrounds is illustrated by stark statistics. According to government figures, just 45 of children entitled to free school meals in 2002/3 (the standard measure of children from poor backgrounds and about 80,000 in total) got places at Oxford and Cambridge when they progressed in 2006/7. Other figures from the Sutton Trust found that only 130 such children got Oxbridge places over the three years to 2007. To put that in perspective, some top private schools manage to get 80 or so children into Oxbridge every year. Even allowing for genetic factors, this suggests that state education fails the most gifted of the needy.
But there is hope. Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, one of London’s poorest boroughs, got ten pupils offers to Cambridge last year. Mossbourne is an independent school run within the state system with the freedom to hire good teachers (and fire bad ones); impose a strict disciplinary ethos and challenge pupils with a demanding syllabus. No wonder the left hate it. They like to pretend that it has achieved its success through covert selection of the brightest local pupils, a charge for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Mossbourne Academy shows why defeating the NUT, Fiona Millar and the other educational reactionaries is a vital battle for increasing social mobility in the UK. It also shows what is possible once bureaucratic shackles are cut, discipline asserted and children are allowed to reach their potential.
Some on the political right believe that the problems started with the abolition of grammar schools. Under this system, which has been phased out since the 1960s but is still in force in certain parts of the country, children take an exam at age 11. If they pass, they go to an academic grammar school. If they fail (or didn’t pass with a high enough mark, using the current argot), they went to a ‘vocational’ secondary modern or comprehensive school. The system worked well for gifted poor children for whom grammar schools were a ticket to the middle classes. However, they failed late developers and children on the middle rungs on attainment. But ultimately, they were abolished because the existing middle classes got apoplectic if their children failed the eleven plus exam. Nonetheless, the combination of comprehensive schools and so-called liberal education policies has been a disaster for gifted children of parents who cannot afford to pay private school fees. Let us hope that Michael Gove, the Conservative education minister, with his strategy of freeing schools from bureaucrats and facing down the educational establishment, can repair some of the damage.
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Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Latest on Galileo
Last year saw two new biographies about Galileo by the heavy-hitting professors David Wooton and John Heilbron. I briefly mentioned them in an article I did for Standpoint magazine and the Times Literary Supplement has a more in-depth review (although the reviewer seems ignorant of early modern cosmology with his comments about how Galileo downgraded rather than upgraded the position of the earth).
Heilbron’s book, Galileo, is the more academic and traditional. He tends to underplay Galileo’s scientific achievements while noting that he had many other skills. The style is also rather stilted (Heilbron doesn’t seem to write easy books). He also indulges in post-modern nostrums such as imagined conversations between Galileo and his alter ego. I fear specialists will have to read this but others may find it heavy-going.
I found Wootton’s Galileo: Watcher of the Skies, both more enjoyable and more interesting. Wootton’s last book Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since Hippocrates, is a masterpiece and although his Galileo never quite reaches those heights, there is plenty of food for thought. Wootton is also an excellent writer who makes reading his revisionism a pleasure.
Most controversially, Wootton thinks Galileo was not a Christian, despite his protestations of loyalty to the Catholic Church. The evidence for this is rather thin and depends partly on a conspiracy theory. Wootton says that those of Galileo’s papers that incriminated him as a heretic were destroyed by his biographers keen to protect his name.
More interestingly, Wootton sides with Arthur Koestler in proclaiming Galileo the author of his own downfall (despite giving Koestler and indeed Feyerabend a kicking earlier in the book). As Wootton notes in his concluding chapter:
His characterisation of the liberal Catholic school of Galileo studies (of which I am surely a member) is also illuminating. He says that we think Galileo was a better theologian than the Inquisition (because he correctly showed in his Letter to Grand Duchess Christina that scientific questions do not have to impinge on the faith). But we also think that the inquisition was made up of better scientists than Galileo (because they could see that Galileo had no proof that the earth moved when he thought that he did). While this is put rather bluntly, I must plead guilty as charged. And not even Wootton’s entertaining book has convinced me otherwise.
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Heilbron’s book, Galileo, is the more academic and traditional. He tends to underplay Galileo’s scientific achievements while noting that he had many other skills. The style is also rather stilted (Heilbron doesn’t seem to write easy books). He also indulges in post-modern nostrums such as imagined conversations between Galileo and his alter ego. I fear specialists will have to read this but others may find it heavy-going.
I found Wootton’s Galileo: Watcher of the Skies, both more enjoyable and more interesting. Wootton’s last book Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since Hippocrates, is a masterpiece and although his Galileo never quite reaches those heights, there is plenty of food for thought. Wootton is also an excellent writer who makes reading his revisionism a pleasure.
Most controversially, Wootton thinks Galileo was not a Christian, despite his protestations of loyalty to the Catholic Church. The evidence for this is rather thin and depends partly on a conspiracy theory. Wootton says that those of Galileo’s papers that incriminated him as a heretic were destroyed by his biographers keen to protect his name.
More interestingly, Wootton sides with Arthur Koestler in proclaiming Galileo the author of his own downfall (despite giving Koestler and indeed Feyerabend a kicking earlier in the book). As Wootton notes in his concluding chapter:
Galileo overstated overstated his own achievements in the Dialogue and thus provoked the Church into condemning him. This view, which presents Galileo as an overreacher, seems to me essentially correct… The clash, when it came, was not between an impersonal institution, the universal Church, on one hand and a dedicated scientist on the other. Rather it was a falling out between friends, a just punishment, a betrayal. Galileo was indeed a heretic, but worse (for heresy was much more common than historians have realised), he was disloyal and ungrateful. In the world of Counter Reformation Italy, heresy often went unpunished; disloyalty and ingratitude, on the other hand, were never tolerated.
His characterisation of the liberal Catholic school of Galileo studies (of which I am surely a member) is also illuminating. He says that we think Galileo was a better theologian than the Inquisition (because he correctly showed in his Letter to Grand Duchess Christina that scientific questions do not have to impinge on the faith). But we also think that the inquisition was made up of better scientists than Galileo (because they could see that Galileo had no proof that the earth moved when he thought that he did). While this is put rather bluntly, I must plead guilty as charged. And not even Wootton’s entertaining book has convinced me otherwise.
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Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The 'Sid Meier's Civilization' school of History
Those with long memories will recall Richard Carrier's post back in January 2010 with the provocative title 'Flynn's Pile of Boners'. Unfortunately a lot of it seemed to rest on the assumption that if an invention originates in a particular culture then they get to claim sole ownership of it on the scoreboard of history (I don't know where this idea came from - perhaps the computer game 'Sid Meier's Civilization'). So, following this logic, the appearance of mechanical clocks powered by water in the ancient world thereby negates Medieval advances in clock making - 3 points to Rome, zero points to the dumb Medievals who end up with the Dan Quayle award.
To see how silly this idea is, one only has to look at the example of gunpowder. Now gunpowder is indisputably a Chinese invention and was used to develop a range of military technologies that eventually spread to the Arab and Medieval European world. However the gunpowder revolution - the event which revolutionised warfare and transformed the world - took place in Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth century. Before then hand cannons were of largely psychological use and as a general rule gunpowder weapons were not very effective. Descriptions of battles indicate they were more of an annoyance than a deadly menace.
The real revolution where gunpowder became a war transforming weapon took place in France in the fifteenth century. The key advance was a new technique of manufacturing gunpowder, a process known as Corning first attested in 1429. This turned the powder into granular form and greatly strengthened it's power and performance. It could be more accurately measured and stored without the powder separating. When a flame touched the powder it would explode about 30% more efficiently as the fire moved from grain to grain. Furthermore the new style of powder could propel a bullet or a cannon ball with much greater force and guns became the lethal weapon they have been ever since.
Because of increased recoil, the old way of holding a handgun with two hands in front of the chest was no longer practical. The Europeans solved this problem by developing the Arqubus (crooked stock) where the stock was bent down at an angle and could be nestled in the shoulder of the firer. This absorbed the shock and meant the soldier could sight down the barrel. This configuration was so effective it has not really changed in 500 years. The second innovation was the matchlock which allowed the weapon to be gripped firmly when fired.
Corned gunpowder also allowed the development of more effective cannon. Long thin cannons were needed which could still fire a projectile. This was greatly facilitated by the high quality of European metallurgy in the fifteenth century. It was the experience the Europeans had in making church bells particularly which allowed them to develop this technology.
Once the weapons made possible by corned gunpowder became established they had a dramatic effect on European warfare. It took a while because - although an arquebus could fire through armor - so could a longbow or a crossbow. Both weapons competed for several decades but the arquebus would win out due to it's ease of use and psychological effect. Cannons with stronger yet longer barrels were now enough to destroy city walls and castles. This was brought home in 1453 when a huge cannon was cast for the Ottoman army by a Hungarian gunsmith and was able to breach the walls of Constantinople. During the French invasion of Italy in 1496 castle walls were destroyed in a matter of hours. Cannons were now small enough to go on a ship but powerful enough to cause serious damage. Galleons were developed which could deliver broadsides and this created a revolutionary type of naval warfare.
The point of this is to demonstrate that when assessing the history of an invention we shouldn't merely look at it's earliest documented appearance but also key stages in it's development and it's take-up by different civilizations.
Anyhow the reason I bring the post up is that I just checked back after some months and it appears the comments are still going over a year after it was first put up - mainly due to a bitter dispute between Richard and one Steve Kellmeyer. It's worth a read for a bit of amusement. I'm still due to post on the idea that the figure given for Domesday Mills is a wild over-estimate prompted by Christian Apologists seeking to aggrandize for Medieval Christianity - something that came as a bit of a surprise to the expert in Medieval Milling I emailed.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Hmmm
For your perusal:
Keith Parsons, "No Creator Need Apply: A Reply to Roy Abraham Varghese".
Paul Herrick, "Job Opening: Creator of the Universe—A Reply to Keith Parsons".
Via Victor Reppert.
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Keith Parsons, "No Creator Need Apply: A Reply to Roy Abraham Varghese".
Paul Herrick, "Job Opening: Creator of the Universe—A Reply to Keith Parsons".
Via Victor Reppert.
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Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Enlightenment Contested
Anyone who follows the various historical debates over the Enlightenment will be aware of Jonathan Israel’s hulking 2 volumes, ‘Radical Enlightenment’ and ‘Enlightenment Contested’. These widely acclaimed works rejected the focus on the mainstream enlightenment - including such figures as Hobbes, Locke and Voltaire - in favour of the radical rationalism of Baruch Spinoza. In this view Spinoza and the radical enlightenment – including Diderot, d’Alembert, Condorcet and Bayle - were the true originators of modern ‘Western Atlantic ‘values; individual liberty, universal equality, democracy and rationalism. The mainstream moderate enlightenment by contrast were fence sitters seeking to ameliorate the more radical elements of it’s opposing movement. This argument is probably the antithesis of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s book ‘The Roads to Modernity’ which saw the British enlightenment – centred on a humane social ethic - as on a more solid moral foundation than the Radical French enlightenment. In my opinion anyone who wants to wholeheartedly advocate the French Enlightenment has to deal with the fact that France after 1789 became a bloodbath; Israel does so by blaming the whole thing on Rousseau – which seems a bit harsh.
Perhaps inevitably –such is the way of academia – the negative reviews have begun appearing now that Israel is close to completing his third volume and has revealed most of his argument. A critique by Samuel Moyn – a professor of intellectual history at Columbia University has appeared in ‘The Nation’. It’s lengthy but worth a read, as is the book by Dan Edelstein which Moyn recommends, ‘The Terror of Natural Right’. Moyn writes:
‘Contrary to Israel, Edelstein argues that Enlightenment naturalism turned out to be a recipe for terrible wrongs. Edelstein wants to know how the Jacobins, whom he rightly credits with some of the most progressive and egalitarian aims any political movement has ever professed (notably the invention of social rights to work and education), ended up orchestrating a reign of terror. Against interpretations that simply blame circumstances, Edelstein too insists that ideas mattered. But the most provocative argument in his book is that the ideas that made the revolution spiral out of control were the cult of nature and the belief in natural rights.’
Perhaps inevitably –such is the way of academia – the negative reviews have begun appearing now that Israel is close to completing his third volume and has revealed most of his argument. A critique by Samuel Moyn – a professor of intellectual history at Columbia University has appeared in ‘The Nation’. It’s lengthy but worth a read, as is the book by Dan Edelstein which Moyn recommends, ‘The Terror of Natural Right’. Moyn writes:
‘Contrary to Israel, Edelstein argues that Enlightenment naturalism turned out to be a recipe for terrible wrongs. Edelstein wants to know how the Jacobins, whom he rightly credits with some of the most progressive and egalitarian aims any political movement has ever professed (notably the invention of social rights to work and education), ended up orchestrating a reign of terror. Against interpretations that simply blame circumstances, Edelstein too insists that ideas mattered. But the most provocative argument in his book is that the ideas that made the revolution spiral out of control were the cult of nature and the belief in natural rights.’
Update
Jonathan Israel replied to Moyn's review on the History News Network and Moyn then published another response
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Thinking of Tunisia
My family had a wonderful two week holiday in Tunisia a little over two years ago. We stayed in the town of Hammamet which has now suffered considerable damage, according to the TV pictures. The heavy police presense when we stayed was undeniable but I did not find the atmosphere so oppressive as I had in Syria or the old USSR. That said, we knew it was a dictatorship and Ben Ali's potrait was everywhere to ensure we never forget it.
At one point we were pulled over at a road block. My wife was driving but had left her driver's licence at the villa. This left both the policeman and us in a position of some embarressment. He wasn't supposed to hassle tourists and we weren't suppose to drive without carrying a licence. The conversation skated around this problem for a while. Eventually, I asked if there was a fine for driving without a licence. The policeman considered this carefully. "Twenty Euros," he said. We handed over the cash and drove back to the villa. It was only a bit later that we realised that the transaction between ourselves and the policeman probably wasn't entirely legitimate. But from that moment on, we never went anywhere without a driver's licence.
We still have fond memories of the country and its superlative museum. I hope that the revolution leaves the Tunisians freer and with the potential to become richer.
Discuss this post at the Quodlibeta Forum
At one point we were pulled over at a road block. My wife was driving but had left her driver's licence at the villa. This left both the policeman and us in a position of some embarressment. He wasn't supposed to hassle tourists and we weren't suppose to drive without carrying a licence. The conversation skated around this problem for a while. Eventually, I asked if there was a fine for driving without a licence. The policeman considered this carefully. "Twenty Euros," he said. We handed over the cash and drove back to the villa. It was only a bit later that we realised that the transaction between ourselves and the policeman probably wasn't entirely legitimate. But from that moment on, we never went anywhere without a driver's licence.
We still have fond memories of the country and its superlative museum. I hope that the revolution leaves the Tunisians freer and with the potential to become richer.
Discuss this post at the Quodlibeta Forum
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