Durant wrote:
> I had no response to my arguments;
>
> Science is only a tool and even art would be non-existent without
> scientific problemsolving.
What is the date on the invention of the modern scientific process? Method?
> It is the social/economical/cultural system that poses and applies/buys science; so
> blame that for any "miscarriages".
No I blame the personality of scientists who believe that science has all the answers
and everyone else is stupid. I prefer to listen instead to people like Bohm and
Gell-Mann who seem to understand what it means to be a complex adaptive system,
dependent upon all of the tools given us by the Creator. Especially those perceptual
tools that are developed prior to conscious thought and that give rise to such.
> >The simple fact is that
> > science has a history with the wolf that makes trusting them tough at times. It
> > was science as a tool that fascilitated changes in industrial practices for the
> > better. But it often was the morality of religion that made them use the
> > science.
>
> you mean the economical/social/cultural system
No the spiritual, social, aesthetic, economic system. Science and technology were the
nails but not the thought that conceived of the building.
> >As Mike Hollinshead has pointed out on many occasions as he described
> > the actions of the non-conformist industrialists who were Quaker. Science
> > wants to take credit for them, but they no more deserve that credit than the
> > piano does for the pianist.
>
> when did science wanted to take credit for the few quakers? Or for
> anything for that matter; accrediting blame or credit is not part of
> science, but of the social/cultural establishment. Sorry to be
> repetitive, but there seems to be a difficulty with getting through...
I think you are mistaking the creative balance that goes on between the material
sciences and engineering and the cultural sciences like anthropology and the practice
of excellence as expressed in the arts and the morality that comes from the
contemplation of Ultimate Concerns. That would be a pretty wobbly table with only one
leg, if I understand you correctly, but you could dance on a table with four legs.
> Mengele's stuff was adopted by a fascist (capitalist social/cultural)
> system. (I don't even know if it can be excepted as science, how well
> his data was duplicated and repeated in peers's studies, etc, but
> that is irrelevant here.)
No Eva, you're wrong it wasn't "adopted" it was paid for and the subjects were
provided by the Reich, but the science as in "method" is there. As for replication,
the reason we don't, isn't the science but the humanity.
> Most economics do not skip Marx and Lenin,
> as their definitions of some aspect of economy and social system and
> their conclusions are as valid as ever. Their "science" was
> sloganised but not applied, if it were applied, all socialist system
> would have been democratic, as that was a basic principle of Marx's
> and even Lenin's theories. What country you are refering to in the last sentence?
> US?
The U.S., Spain in middle and South America as well as Portugal, and England in North
America. 100 million people at first contact, with a decline of 23 out of every 25
with no appreciable growth in birth rate until a low was hit in North America of
100,000 at the turn of the century. After forced sterilizations were rescended in the
1970s there has been a bounce back of 1.5 million certified Indian people at present.
> We would be just an other type of ape without any art if we had no
> science.
Well, according to that definition we were just a bunch of apes up until the 17th
century. But I think we would probably make pretty poor apes, don't you think?
> The only question is how it is managed. The present
> establishment is obviously not into integrating the various branches
> and in looking into global solutions.
You must realize that there is no hierarchy, just legs for the table of life.
Hierarchical thinking is about politics and is doomed to failure because it becomes an
issue of power. For every action there is a reaction.
> So what you propose we do with the 5 billion + people that are
> extra to requirement if we adopt the native american way of living?
The Native American way of living is to be responsible, move slowly, have patience,
hurt no one and remember that we are all related. Everything including the animals
and plants. The balance is between hurting no one and eating to survive. Solve
that first.
There is nothing that frightens me more than billions of Western economically educated
Chinese making "things" out of everything that was and is alive.
> > All of this being said, I am not an anti-European or an anti-Scientist.
>
> you sound pretty anti-scientist to me... by the way scientists
> are all over the place, not only in Europe...
Does that mean if I criticize Hitler that I am being anti-Art?
> What's wrong with being an academic? If someone is into biochemistry,
> they can be friendly with the neighbours... am I confused...
> I don't think scientists are a different breed, they have as much
> ground in culture/art as the next person. At the present, like
> everybody else, they trying to survive, which means serving a
> profit-hungry, insane, capitalist establishment.
A "profit-hungry, insane, capitalist establishment" based largely on science as the
only legitimate knowledge. I'm disagreeing with that proposition. I think there are
four types of knowledge with Science being one of the four.
> Some o fthem are
> more couragous than others to fight, to risk family and careers to be
> whistle-blowers etc., but happens in just the same proportions as to
> artists, though artist usually have less responsibility on their
> shoulders, even if a few do feel all the guilt of the world...
Nonsense! That is the attitude of which I speak. How do you arrive at that
conclusion? How is it that you see Art as being less responsible? I, as an
artist, am required to know about science, economics, philosophy, history,
industrialization, etc. to be able to speak of the future with all of you. But if I
asked you to make the same kind of analysis in art about the creation of the modern
world, could you do it? Like "perspective" in 15th century Florentine art that opened
the door on modern engineering, or the Artist Leonardo who sat and used artistic
methods to create practical science, or the development of the brain through the use
of abstract thought created through the practice of musical instruments, etc. Or the
works of Neuro Musicologists like Paula Washington and David Krahenbuehl. (References
available on request) Would you be able to have this conversation with me?
I gave a musical joke test on another list that was making wild generalizations and
they said the specificity of the test was unfair. But the test came from the musical
high school students where my daughter attends. The issue here is respect. As long
as there is a "Messiah profession," then everyone else is unequal and must follow.
Then the only thing to do is to kill the Buddha. Which is the root IMO of that saying
about "meeting him on the road."
Anyway. I can't talk anymore about this. But I would recommend a little read through
something like Morris Berman's books for the science or Herbert Read so you at least
realize those cave artists weren't scientists first. Come to think of it, they may
have been Shamans. They too understood perspective but not geometry. It took
Brunelleschi and his fellow Florentines to figure that out. Come to think of it.
That is not a bad image. You might look up the Florentine Camarata. They did a
little bit of everything and invented modern Italy in the process as well as the
Operatic form.
Got to go,
REH
