Interesting analysis.. i agree with a great deal of your perspective. The urbanization & industrialization in the 'modern' world brought new dynamics & a different way of relating. But in some ways, it was just part of the old way. Land ownership in the old world became concentrated in the hands of a few, as the rich got richer & the working man became a serf. America provided a brief respite from that, with free land for those who would come & work it. But that era is over, & once again wealth is becoming concentrated in the hands of the elite & powerful. Money follows the power, & power follows the money. Even the last housing collapse had the effect of transferring the real estate wealth from the people to the mortgage holding banks, & their politician cronies. It could not have worked better than if it had been planned.. ..and i agree that the concept of 'individual rights', such as found in the american founders, locke, & others, is fading. Now, caretaking is emphasized. We want to be treated like we are in day care, with some arbiter dividing the toys evenly & adjudicating disputes. 'Natural rights' are unimportant.. now it is 'fairness', or social justice. But to reach this lofty goal, we need to empower a collective entity to meet the task. Unfortunately, the history of those entities is not very encouraging. In our quest for social justice & economic fairness, & to build the tools to keep the rich from getting richer & exploiting the working man, we build a leviathan.. a nanny who is sometimes fickle & often shows favoritism.. not fair at all.
I am not a scientist. I do feel that the whole world is slowly turning back to dark age, besides the material technology. Democracy is like a veil, beneath that is feudalism. As it's more and more difficult for one to break through his own social status at today's society. The big business men control media, politicians, education system, etc. The ruling class at modern society is way more hard to fall than the brutal kings in the old days. With the deal with politicians and current financial system, they can simply long live. / __ \
Yes it is. While the Christian nations of Europe were living in the Dark Ages rejecting science Alhazen, an Arab Muslim, was insturmental developing the "Scientific Method" that we use today. Today Christians seek to impose the New Dark Ages with their new found rejection of science based upon the religious writings of unknown authors selected letters contained in a book of myth and superstition.
It is a complete joke to compare today's Christians with Muslims. Christians are not running around committing mass genocide worldwide like Muslims are. Christians are not imposing any form of Sharia law, at most some of them want creationism taught in schools which is a far cry from setting up Wahabi schools that radicalize students. Muslims today are far worse than Christians are there is no comparison whatsoever. If the best you have is to have to go back 600 years and farther then you have lost the argument.
This is a valid point, though not really topical. The roots of the scientific method go way back.. to unknown cave men wondering about their world. But the statement, 'Today Christians seek to impose the New Dark Ages' is clearly false.. i know of no christians who want this.. it is a bigoted statement to demean a group, with no evidence. The roots of science are very much in the 'christian' scientists, who saw a world of order, & sought to understand this world. The same is true with muslim or hindu or buddhist scientists. The west has a better written history & knowledge base for their science, but it is no more valid than discoveries or explanations from other religions. IOW, religion is NOT a factor, really, in scientific discovery. People's philosophical views do not automatically provide better or worse skills in the search for scientific truth. That is an individual thing. We can go back in history & find many brilliant thinkers & scientists who have made profound discoveries, & their religious views were not a major factor.
Quote these religious writings? The main problem of the church was analogous to the new anti-science we see today on the left where science becomes "consensus" and dogma. Most of the scientific dogmas of the dark ages weren't even written by Christians but ancient Greeks. One could not question Aristotle just as today one cannot question Dr. Micheal Mann.
Religion is early science. Even before Newton codified it man understood Newton's first law of motion. The supernatural aspects of all religion is simply an application of Newtons first law. There must be a force to create an action. Why is lightning shooting from the sky? The god Thor is angry and is beating his mighty hammer upon his anvil. This is a perfectly valid explanation for a phenomenon that we didn't understand until Ben Franklin flew a kite.
Thor beating his hammer on an avil is NOT a valid explanation for lightening. What kind of stupidity does it require to believe it's a valid explanation? First and foremost science must strip away the myth and superstition that is religion before it investigates natural phenomena. It didn't matter if the scientist was a Muslim, Christian, or whatever religiously the first thing that they had to do was dump the myth and superstition of their religion before embarking on a quest for truth.
Its a perfect valid explanation. The prime example of a phenomenon similar to lightning is the sparking of ferrous materials. We sit on the shoulders of giants Shiva. You aren't half as smart as you think you are. You simply had far smarter people figure things out for you.
The Feminist movement is for the most part an anti-science movement that uses anti-intellectualism to further it's agenda. For example, a Dean of Harvard was fired for suggesting the reason there are more men in science at Harvard than women was the result in the difference in standard deviation between men's inelligence and women's intelligence, and he was fired for making that suggestion. He was fired even though, it has been found that there is greater standard deviation amongst men's intelligence than there is amongst women's intelligence. Morevor, the 1 in 4 women have been raped statistic is still used even though the study this statistic comes from has been largely discredited. In a follow-up study to this study over 3/4 of the women who were counted as rape victims said they had not been raped. Moreover, taxpayers withdrew 66 million euro from the Nordic gender research institute after it was found that they used bogus science to further their agenda that gender is nothing more than a social construct... ec cetera...ec cetera....ec cetera.....
I can only assume you are referring to Summers....and ignorant of reality, still an interesting use of data to manipulate: "Harvard and Andrei Shleifer, a close friend and protégé of Summers, controversially paid $28.5 million to settle a lawsuit by the U.S. government over the conflict of interest Shleifer had while advising Russia's privatisation program. The US government had sued Shleifer under the False Claims Act, as he bought Russian stocks while designing the country's privatisation. In 2004, a federal judge ruled that while Harvard had violated the contract, Shleifer and his associate alone were liable for treble damages. In June 2005, Harvard and Shleifer announced that they had reached a tentative settlement with the US government. In August, Harvard, Shleifer and the Department of Justice reached an agreement under which the university paid $26.5 million to settle the five-year-old lawsuit. Shleifer was also responsible for paying $2 million worth of damages. Because Harvard paid almost all of the damages and allowed Shleifer to retain his faculty position, the settlement provoked allegations of favoritism on Summers. His continued support for Shleifer strengthened Summers's unpopularity with other professors, as reported in the Harvard Crimson: "'I've been a member of this Faculty for over 45 years, and I am no longer easily shocked,' is how Frederick H. Abernathy, the McKay professor of mechanical engineering, began his biting comments about the Shleifer case at Tuesday's fiery Faculty meeting. But, Abernathy continued, 'I was deeply shocked and disappointed by the actions of this University' in the Shleifer affair."[41] In an 18,000-word article "How Harvard lost Russia" in Institutional Investor by David McClintick (January 2006), the magazine detailed Shleifer's alleged efforts to use his inside knowledge of and sway over the Russian economy in order to make lucrative personal investments, all while leading a Harvard group, advising the Russian government, that was under contract with the U.S. The article suggests that Summers shielded his fellow economist from disciplinary action by the University, although it noted that Summers had forewarned Shleifer and his wife Nancy Zimmerman about the conflict-of-interest regulations back in 1996." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Support_of_economist_Andrei_Shleifer
Why Lawrence Summers Was Fired from Harvard What Summers said: It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it’s not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it’s talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class. http://www.aei-ideas.org/2007/02/why-lawrence-summers-was-fired-from-harvard/
I see examples of this. Student loans, for example, have been declared 'non dischargeable'. This is definitely a move to dark ages practices. I suppose next they will sell the debtor into indentured servitude.. which is kind of what they do, once you are obligated to work for years to pay back these predatory loans. I agree that upward mobility is also more difficult.. entrepreneurialism is discouraged, as big business, big money, & big crony favoritism is given to the ruling elite & their buddies. The money & power have merged, as usual, & the experiment of a govt of, by, & for the people seems to be fading into history. Our representatives do not watch out for the citizens, but special interests. Your statement, 'Democracy is like a veil, beneath that is feudalism,' is pretty deep.. & i can see where you are going with it. Each bubble seems to concentrate the wealth of the nation into fewer & fewer, while the left distracts us with cries of 'social injustice!' & pickets wells fargo, & the right distracts us with randian fantasies or anarchist wishful thinking. But the bigger problem of collusion between money & power is ignored.. or at least deflected by more hysterical distractions. A powerful ruling elite has built up, with a good old boy network (that also includes good old girls!) that controls the narrative. It does seem like the ruling elite are harder to depose than brutal kings or dictators of old. American congressmen & senators mooch for decades, building their network, fleecing the taxpayers, corrupting the system... & the electorate just keeps voting them back in & enabling them. The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men. ~Alexander Hamilton This seems to be a valid example of the OP. PC trumps science. The agenda is furthered over the truth. The 'scientific' way to deal with this is to produce evidence rebutting the claim, or a critique questioning the methods or data. But instead, ridicule & dismissal, seem to be the favorite way to deal with 'inconvenient truths'. I had not heard of this study, or the repercussions, but i have heard of others, where any deviation from the status quo is met with indignation & contempt, rather than a scientific rebuttal.
Just got done looking at an article on the massive outbreaks of pertussis, whooping cough, in California since so many scientifically brilliant Californians refuse to get their kids vaccinated because they are so smart and Madonna told them it was bad. The downside of modern grade inflation. These people actually think they are smart. New flash you aren't the reason you got an A in physics was because if your teacher gave anyone a B the parents would have their heads.
I grew up in the post ww2 time. It was a strange mix of optimism & impending doom. We practiced bomb drills, where a nuclear blast was expected. Some schools issued dogtags, so they could identify the charred remains after the holocaust. But there was optimism, too. People were buying every time & labor saving device they could. Automobiles got better every year... well, mostly. Technology was growing in leaps & bounds, & computers were changing everything. People were more religious, then, & many went to church, believed in god, AND revered science. There was no conflict in their minds. Faith was faith, & science was science. One did not try to be the other. My older step brother got a set of encyclopedias for a birthday gift.. he was like 9 or 10. I had friends who got chemistry sets, or telescopes. Inquiry was ENCOURAGED in grade school. By high school, if you were good at school, it was assumed you'd go to college & pursue engineering or a technical field. The dumb jocks got jobs at the factories, or went into construction, or other trades. But then, there was the cultural revolution in america. The 60s. Vietnam. Civil rights. Disillusionment with the 'establishment'. Question authority. Tune in & drop out. The back to the land movement. Simplicity. Ecology. Anti war. Anti technology. Anti religion. Kids didn't get science sets for christmas anymore. Self actualization & the 'ME' generation was born. They would engineer a new society.. one without the failures of the previous generation. One of peace, harmony, & social justice. One with sex, drugs, & rock & roll. A generation that reinvented the wheel. Society could be molded, & the elite could usher in an era of Enlightenment. That was the dream, but like all dreams like this throughout human history, it can become a nightmare. It was in this setting that the anti science trend began, imo. Feelings trumped reason. Psychobabble replaced common sense. Hysteria became evidence. Academia moved to teaching dogma, instead of fanning the flames of inquiry. God was ridiculed & reduced to a caricature, & pseudoscience took the place of religious beliefs, in the new enlightened society. All of these things combined for a perfect storm of national decline. Crime rose. The nuclear family disintegrated. Domestic policies changed & social engineering became the new 'science'. But instead of bringing peace & harmony, they have brought decline & destruction. Instead of a generation of thoughtful analysts, we have bred feeling based, propaganda driven ideologues, who reject critical thinking, skepticism, & the scientific method for emotion based methods. Fantasy & utopian dreams of how things 'ought' to be displace reality. Hard solutions to problems are rejected outright, since they don't 'feel' good. Simple cause & effect principles are dismissed for more happy explanations, or a simpler scapegoat that requires no responsibility or work from the individual. .. sorry.. i got to rambling, here, & got too broad. There is some cultural evidence of these things, but i know there are a lot of factors. There also seems to be a pendulum swing in a culture between empiricism & mysticism, & we are probably approaching the end of the 'mysticism' swing. Hopefully we'll swing the other way, & the next generation can use science & reason to solve problems.
According to a 2010 report published by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, the most popular college majors at the bachelors degree level include: Business Social Sciences/History Health Sciences Education The largest numbers of masters degrees were awarded in the following fields: Education Business The most popular doctoral degrees include: Health Professions and Related Clinical Sciences Education Engineering Biological and Biomedical Sciences Psychology Physical Sciences A few years ago in an interview with Steve Jobs, when asked why all Apple manufacturing was outside of the USA, and sorry but I don't remember the exact numbers he quoted, but he said for the 500,000 manufacturing workers that were required to produce Apple products, they needed 50,000 engineers to support manufacturing...and in the USA those engineers simply were not available. With more and more US manufacturing being done offshore, we can assume more and more engineers are offshore as well.
IMO, the global warming movement is symptomatic of this issue. It is primarily political, with very sketchy data. In the last 50+ yrs it has taken center stage, & hides behind a lot of pseudo science to scare people, & enrich the proponents. I just saw this (long!) video about an old time scientist, & was struck at the difference. He was liberal, politically, but was true to the science.. unlike the profiteers, who use with the politics to mold the science. [video=youtube;SyUDGfCNC-k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyUDGfCNC-k[/video]
Another indicator of the Rise of Anti-Science... Equating emotional issues, framed in pseudo scientific jargon.. ..and at MIT, no less. What's next? Homophobia equated with hurricanes? Racism destroying the ozone layer? https://mitgsl.mit.edu/news-events/islamophobia-accelerating-global-warming
That's because the jobs and high salaries simply aren't there anymore. Many of the science jobs were tied to manufacturing, and this has all been outsourced to other countries. What hasn't been outsourced has been insourced, as many U.S. companies have brought in cheaper skilled engineers and scientists from China and India through the H1B visa program. Combine that with huge budget cuts over the years in government-funded science programs. It's no wonder there are fewer American youth going into science. After many years in school, they are not sure whether there's even going to be any good jobs waiting for them. The country simply doesn't really want American scientists anymore, that's what it comes down to. Oh sure, there's always talk about how "America needs more scientists", but it's all just talk. It's easier to try to push some students into a science program than it is to actually provide a place for these science majors when they graduate.
You do not need government programs to teach or learn science. The sad fact is that fewer students are interested.
IMO, it is a result of a change in values. In times past, there was a direct correlation between working & survival. You got the crop in, or led the herd to pasture, or you didn't eat. Engineering & technology were seen as DIRECTLY improving the quality of life, aiding survival, & making the world a better place. The ESSENTIALS of survival, food, water, housing, & protection were something you worked for, & had to earn. Now, those things are taken for granted, in modern, affluent cultures. They are seen as rights, not something you earn. So instead of pursuing engineering, agriculture, construction, or other basic human need skills, modern students are enamored with fluff. Money shuffling careers are esteemed & pursued. Have you noticed that most of those who pursue engineering degrees are from 3rd world countries? They do not take for granted the necessities of life, & they see people starving & homeless all the time. Even if they are from wealthy families, which most are, they see the need for technological advancement to meet the survival needs of society. The shift from productive work for human essentials to arts, financial, & socio/political career choices has been going on in America for decades. IMO, WW2 was the pinnacle of engineering & technology in America. Science was pursued as a means to raise the output of production, improve society, & meet the needs of humans everywhere. They got so good at it that they thought they made themselves irrelevant.. that technology alone could provide our needs, & we only had to enjoy the ride. But the massive increases in population, along with dwindling cheap fossil fuels & decreasing arable land has made us realize there is not only a 'peak oil' concept, but a 'peak food' one as well. But i agree that people do not value science or engineering anymore. Reality show hysteria is more fun. Sports, entertainment, music.. the things that in times past were the domain of wandering minstrels & court jesters.. these things are now esteemed above productive, useful labor. Compensation for these trifles shows the values people have on them. So it is the society that reflects the values of the govt, not the other way around. We have the govt we deserve, & they reflect our values. Americans do not esteem farming, manufacturing, construction, or any social survival based careers. Huckstering, money shuffling, entertainment, mocking, wheeling & dealing... these are the esteemed values of the New American Conscience. So it is no surprise that our youth gravitate toward those things.
