���Michael Smith wrote in reply to my posting below: >I think common sense has a lot going for it.
Of course it has – but in terms of understanding the natural world in its widest sense, other people, other cultures, etc, it also has severe limitations. Mike then provided instances where >No formal science or experimentation needed. I don't think anything I wrote conflicts with this. >I would say that politics and money has provided far more sources >of conflict than religion ever has or ever will. I wrote that culture and religion are as much a source of dissension as of stability. Perhaps I overstated this, perhaps not. But I didn't (and wouldn't 20for one moment) suggest that there are not other major causes of conflict than religion, though in the case of some of these religion may exacerbate the problem – for example in Northern Ireland where what was essentially a political and social conflict arising out of a long-running colonial history also contained within it powerful religious motifs deriving from historic catholic versus protestant conflicts. The religious element was not a cause of the recent conflict, but for many people it was certainly in the forefront of their minds to an extent not seen in the rest of the UK for very many generations. >I would also say that a scientific understanding of nature and the >universe has got pretty much nothing to do with quelling the sources >of human conflict and is indeed incapable of doing so. Arguably, >money spent on the space program would be better spent on health care. Much (though by no means all) of the health care on which the money might have been better spent is dependent on a scientific understanding of the nature of disease and other physical disorders. >Do we really need to spend the billions of dollars on yet another particle >accelerator and related experiments so physicists can keep their jobs? Whether spending billions of dollars on a bigger and better particle accelerator is justified is certainly a discussion wort h having, but I would suggest that the motivations of the physicists who have lobbied for it go rather beyond just wanting to keep their jobs. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org ----------------------------------------------------------------- On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Allen Esterson < [email protected]> wrote: > Michael Sylvester wrote: > >The Eurocentric perspective remains obstinate and obdurate despite > >the common sense of culture, religion and other factors that propels > >human stability. > > Looking at human history I see the "common sense" of culture and > religion as much a source of dissension as of "hum an stability". But > perhaps Michael means individual human stability, in which case, yes, > culture and religion play a strong role in that. But I would say at > some cost, e.g., in providing a source of conflict between groups, and > in failing to provide the conditions for understanding nature and the > universe in scientific terms that (ideally) are modified in the light > of fresh reliable information. > > For > example, the small society in this article is no doubt stable (both > for individuals and collectively), but at a cost that many of us would > rather not experience ourselves (for instance, it hardly allows for > divergent thinking!): > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6370991.stm > > There is nothing in principle in the scientific perspective that makes > it "obstinate and obdurate" – one would hope that at its best it is > quite the reverse. Though such modes of thought first arose in Europe > it is now an essential part of many non-European cultures, the educated > classes of which rightly regard it as universal, and not specifically > European. In any case, a perspective in psychology (say) that did not > allow for, indeed investigate, factors due to culture and religion > (more likely to be a source of common unsense than common sense :-) ) > would be lacking an important dimension of human behaviour. I don't > think so-called "Eurocentric" modes of tho ught necessarily exclude such > factors – they certainly shouldn't. But "common sense" in trying to > make sense of the physical world is one of the factors that the > scientific perspective has often had to displace to produce consistent > (reliable) knowledge. Otherwise we would still be left with imaginative > stories about how the natural world works that remain obstinate and > obdurate. > > Allen Esterson > Former lecturer, Science Department > Southwark College, London > http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
