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Entry: The Right's Science Problem Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_rights_science_problem#17207 Post contents: 1. It’s not just the “Neoconservative” Whigs who attacking current natural science. January 2007 I heard a leading Paleoconservative intellectual label Pasteur’s germ theory as “crazy”. He gave no argument, and a physician at the conference and I exchanged glances. I have wondered ever since why this Paleo intellectual, a man whom I respect, should say such a thing. Mr. Seitz article is article is thus very enlightening. I thank him. 2. Before we take the splitter out of the Neocon eye, let’s take the log out of the Paleocon. The ultimate “Paleoconservative” hoax and faux-science is racialism. I say “Paleoconservative” with hesitation; of course we’re really talking about fascist and racialist nationalists, who – to use a Pasteurian metaphor – are alien bacteria that infect the Tory conservative movement. I regret to have found out the Derbyshire (sort of) is among them. The Browns, basically lifting their material from Alfred Rosenberg, peddle mendacious stuff far worse than attacks on Pasteur, Darwin, and global warming. I’ve also read from our racialists, and read here on this site, Lamarckanism worse than Lysenko’s – proof positive that our Browns and our Reds have a lot in common. 3. Classic natural science, since the days of the Royal Academy (1661), has depended on demonstrated <i>ad oculos</i> experiment. Yet one can’t perform an experiment on something that happened 10 million or 4 billion years ago. So Natural Science, grudgingly, must admit that it too is also a hermeneutic as well as experimental/empirical science. 4. Darwin deserves to be quoted correctly. His theory never attempted to explain the origin of life. It was set up to explain the origin of speciation, as the title of his work says, and it explains it far better than Lamarck’s theory. Darwin also knew zero about genetics, not bothering, at the suggestion of friends, that he get in touch with an Austrian monk, Mendel by name. Darwin also had one characteristic with “Don”: both men are ignorant of Carbon 14 dating. Darwin had a good excuse. “Don” just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 5. By the way, serious biology obliges a mastery of organic chemistry and physics, and both of these natural sciences obliges higher mathematics. And Math is a humanity, not a "science". 6. Another problem is the childish modern faith in the wonder-workings of natural science and technology. Our high tech army and police are being bested repeatedly in 4th Generation War. Despite all the high tech and wiz-kid machines, it was box cutters – a tool as old as the Paleolithic – that gave us Sept 11th. And as I’ve said before, the best jury to render a verdict on “progress” through natural science and technology should be 6 men from Hiroshima and 6 from Nagasaki. 7. “Natural science” or even worse, “science”, is a silly name. The 18th C had the good sense to call it for what it is: “Natural Philosophy”, the first of whom were the pre-Socratics. 8. One professor of cell biology (and thus a master of organic chemistry) once told me that natural science remains Parmenidean, when it should be Heraclitan. And Husserl correctly said that <i>Naturwissenschaft</i> isn't a <i>strenge Wissenschaft.</i> 9. Tory conservatives should have joined the ecology movement long ago, if not taken it over. John Ball is right about this. Someone called environmentalism “the conservatism of the Left”. Aside from the bad Left/Right metaphor, the purport is correct. I again thank Mr. Seitz. Sent at: 2008 07 09