Peter Ferrara has an article in Forbes drawing climate-science lessons from the disgraceful career of Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. Not caring that much for the tone of the article, and especially of the comments, I'm not going to quote from it. Instead I'll summarize Lysenkoism as I understand it. I find it interesting that the public discourse on the "science" of climate change is now so debased that Lysenkoism is being trumpeted as a cautionary tale both by warmists and by skeptics.
Lysenko was a Ukrainian agronomist who discovered as a young man in 1927 that he could improve the sprouting qualities of winter wheat by exposing them to unusual cold and moisture. He then concluded, on the basis of no apparent (or perhaps falsified) evidence, that the improved qualities of the wheat seed would breed true, such that future generations of seeds would sprout more successfully even without the cold/wet treatment. This attempt to overturn the principles of modern genetics in favor of the inheritance of acquired characteristics (a throwback to Lamarck) went on to enjoy an enthusiastic, confused, and scandalous vogue in the Soviet Union for several decades. In 1938 Lysenko was named president of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, from which position he wielded enormous power in Soviet science. The Soviet Union showered him with accolades, including seven Orders of Lenin and the title of "Hero of Socialist labor.”
Despite his deep confusion about the underlying mechanisms of genetics, Lysenko continued to implement genuinely helpful agricultural innovations that mitigated, to some degree, the disastrous famines caused by communist policy. Lysenko's alignment with his leadership's political goals then bled over in the illogical but common human way to his evidence-free assertions about genetics. So important were his anti-famine successes, combined with his politically correct background as a member of the peasant class untainted by bourgeois education, and his ability to motivate peasants to return to farming in the wake of collectivist confiscation of their farmlands, that Lysenkoism became official Soviet policy under Stalin. Lacking actual evidence for his eccentric theories, and facing new pressure when his later theories did not pan out (such as the requirement to till the fields to a depth of five feet), Lysenko succumbed to the temptation to use political power to silence his enemies. Andrei Sakharov charged him with having the arrest and death of "many genuine scientists" on his hands. Under his influence, for instance, the founder of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences was sent to his death in the gulag.
About a decade after the conclusion of Stalin's reign of terror in 1953, there was a movement toward the restoration of the scientific method in the Soviet Union and a purging of pseudo-science inspired by political fashion.
Truth over theory: it will always lead to better science and generally to better public policy. My own view, in addition, is that it makes for better people and happier relations among them. When I see beliefs that can't be maintained in the population except through lies, self-delusion, and force, I see beliefs that belong on the ash-heap of history. As C.S. Lewis describes the techniques employed by unscrupulous tempters: "You see the little rift? 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.'"
15 comments:
The first part of that, unsurprisingly, I have no problem with.
The last paragraph is where we find our disagreement, which is both huge and yet clearly limited. It is limited because I agree with you entirely in almost every sphere -- in history, which is only the facts; in science, where we must be clear-eyed and dispassionate; even in philosophy, here, where we have to talk about the truth as we find it.
So here is what I think is true: I believe that every good civilization absolutely requires a willful embrace of true myth over apparent fact.
One of the things my father taught me from the beginning was that it was utterly important -- a part of the measure of a man -- that he treated everyone he met in a servant capacity with the greatest respect and courtesy. If you were a janitor, the trash-man, the guy who pumps sewage out of septic tanks, the middle-aged busboy at the restaurant, the rarely-but-still-sometimes-encountered guy who hands out towels in the bathrooms on the very unusual occasion that we should go to the theater or something in Atlanta... any of these people my father went to special trouble to engage as an individual whose needs and interests were absolutely equal to his own.
Were they? There's a sense in which they are, but it's the sense least obviously true, the sense that requires faith in a myth. It is a true myth, as Tolkien or C.S. Lewis might say, but it is myth and not demonstrable fact: and that is that God exists, and made each soul with an equal dignity.
That myth allows you to put aside facts of inequality of intelligence, of status, of class, of culture, or of mental or physical capacity. It's the last good thing that our cultural left really believes in, but they've forgotten why they believe in it -- which is why they enforce dissent against the proposition in increasingly vicious ways. The proposition is inestimably valuable, but entirely without defense in the world of facts. It can only be an article of faith. Since they can no longer defend it as such, having abandoned the faith, they can not discuss it at all: they can only punish dissent, because they can no longer reason with it.
That is just to say that only way to get to what is right is to put aside the obvious, the demonstrable, the very clear facts, and believe instead in something that we only have reason to hope. A great deal of demonstrable, apparent facts stand against this myth. I hold it to be true anyway, and further, that holding it true is more important than any fact.
When a person recognizes the innate value of another, this is something innate to the individuals in question. Society, laws, and force can compel people to act in a certain fashion, aka noblesse oblige, or the responsibility of social betters for their social inferiors. That is just a case of society looking down on people, one way or another.
Innate nobility requires that a person, either against his upbringing or totally independent of the social rules he lives in, recognizes the value of another person.
The government, society, tribal myths and legends, can no more make someone like that than the strong can make the weak stronger by suppressing them with force. Those who are weak, must find their own innate desire for strength.
There's a great importance in whether an individual chooses to believe in something or chooses reality, and whether society makes that individual believe in something or makes that individual choose society's reality.
The Left's God is Obama, or to put it another way, a Deus Ex Machina. Humanity is its own God, and can thus decree which parts are Good and which parts are Evil. Thus they have so decreed. This is very different from the traditional Western or even Eastern sense of divinity.
Human civilization becomes stronger the more workers it can field (or force to work). Human individuals, however, only become more virtuous, better, and stronger by living apart from society.
The Ymar-bot strikes again.
I don't see a necessary disagreement between what T99 says in her last paragraph and what Grim says. A belief in God (if I may so short-hand Grim) is not, to me, what T99 describes as a belief "that can't be maintained in the population except through lies, self-delusion, and force".
I have a number of atheist friends who disagree on that point, Elise. My own sense is with you, of course, that nothing could be less self-delusional; but, they would say that I'm deluding myself about that. :)
The question is priority. Do we prioritize the facts that these atheists and I might agree about -- the obvious, the clear, the demonstrable? Or do I prioritize what my faith teaches me, though I cannot prove it or even test it?
I don't think Tex is against religion! In fact, I expect her to largely agree with the argument I've just given. One thing about this dispute that is interesting to me is how fiercely we've been disagreeing given that we agree about almost everything we're discussing. :)
I agree fiercely with Elise.
I have neither the power nor the right to compel anyone else to believe in God. Not even God tries to do that. Nor do I have the right to try to persuade someone to believe in God by lying. If I can't do better than that, I'd do better to keep my mouth shut, for fear of undermining more faith than I inspire. The starkest proof of an idea's invalidity is the need to resort to lies or force to gain support for it.
As for faith that I may have within myself, despite an inability to prove it, test it, or persuade anyone else of it, that's my business, and has no bearing on my right to mess with anyone else's mind. I can perfectly well go on witnessing to what I believe without forcing (or tricking) anyone else to agree.
As always, I draw a sharp distinction between how I come to my own conclusions and how far I'm permitted to go in making those decisions for others. But to Grim's attempted counter-example: by "lies or force," obviously I'm not referring to the amiable practice of forgiving flaws in other people, or even of concluding that the flaws are so irrelevant that they should be overlooked or flatly ignored. Honestly acknowledging the existence of something is not the same as judging it good or bad, important or trivial.
It's a little more than recognizing that they are flawed but forgiving it, though. It's certainly not 'recognizing it but setting it aside as of little importance.' It's recognizing that it a stark and tremendous difference between people, and setting it aside because of a theory -- or, if you like, a teaching -- that contradicts it. It is obviously true, it is obviously real and important, and we will go out of our way to act as though it did not exist because of a greater truth we believe in, but which we cannot prove at all.
And it's a little more than 'what I do' versus 'what one is free to make others do,' because we in fact do enforce the principle of the moral equality of mankind even though it cannot be proved (indeed, even though all the evidence is unified against it). I think we even agree that the law ought to enforce this principle, at least some of the time: we might disagree about the limits of free association, or the military exception, but in general we think this is a good principle for founding a society even though it is not provable, and even though it is contested by many things that are demonstrable facts.
I take your point about the importance of remaining tied to reality. Sometimes, though, we find the truth of our reality otherwise than in the facts that present themselves to us. Sometimes we do find truth in ideas, in things that we must only hope for because we cannot show that they are so. Even in terms of how we arrange our society, that can be a valid form of truth. It just isn't a fact, and indeed may be contradicted by facts.
The thing about atheism (and I'm off on a bit of a tangent here) is that it is (at least to me) no more rational than faith in God. To say that we know and can prove either that God exists or that He (or She :+) does not, extends the idea of proof into areas where it does not belong.
Back on track. I don't believe truth can be contradicted by fact. There is, to me, no fact that contradicts the principle of the moral equality of mankind. There are people who reject the concept of "moral" equality but that doesn't mean they have contradicted the principle. And, on the other hand, while it is a fact that some people are decent and honorable while others are a waste of fresh air and sunshine, that fact does not, at least to me, contradict the idea of the moral equality of the two groups.
Grim, our conversations often derail on this point of confusing what one man should use as the grounds for his own belief, vs. what basis he has for imposing that same belief on others.
I have no problem with one man setting aside a fact and acting as though it weren't true for reasons of his own. That's just a matter of his deciding for himself that there are more important facts that take precedence in regulating his behavior. "I see that Jim is 6 feet tall and Pat is 5-1/2. Without denying this fact in any way, I decide that it doesn't affect whether either of them is welcome to join me at the communion rail." That's a far cry from either lying about the facts or penalizing other people because they accurately report the facts.
I would never argue that no one must ever adopt personal convictions that are based on things that other people might not recognize as facts. Each man adopts his own convictions according to his own standards. It's just that he doesn't have any right to impose them on other people by force or fraud, if others don't find the grounds for his belief (whatever they may be, "facts" or other kinds of basis) compelling enough. If he can persuade others to adopt his ideas by fair means, I have no problem with it. If he has to use force or fraud to get people to agree with him, he has invalidated his own convictions.
It's just that he doesn't have any right to impose them on other people by force or fraud, if others don't find the grounds for his belief (whatever they may be, "facts" or other kinds of basis) compelling enough.
Again, we're very close to agreement on this. Most of the time, I agree as well. I just don't think this can stand as a first principle, because there are a very few other, more important, principles that transgress it.
I would be glad to dispose of many of the force-and-fraud sorts of equal-rights-and-affirmative-action laws and mechanisms that we have. Others I think we need, but only in the public space (e.g., governing state-run bureaucracies and agencies, but not private industries who might be permitted free association rights).
But when it comes to the bedrock principle equality of dignity for the individual soul, as oppose to any sort of practical equality of result, I think it is proper to insist. I think we as a civilization have a duty to insist -- not that you believe as we do, but that you behave in many practical ways as if you believe as we do.
I've already demonstrated how limited this precious principle is, by endorsing the liberty of the head of the KKK. I think they're an odious organization, but I believe in their free association rights and freedom to believe and become what they wish to be. What I don't believe in is that they should be allowed to bring those beliefs into, say, the jury box. Since they can't practically be kept from doing so if allowed in the jury box, I think we have the duty to deny them what would otherwise be part of citizenship, i.e., the ability to serve on a jury. If they conceal their membership from the court, then using force -- such as contempt rulings -- seems fair to me.
I've said nothing about using force to prevent actions, only about force or fraud to impose beliefs.
So what's left that we disagree about? Something, probably. :) But surely you can see now why I think it must be something deep, the kind of thing that's very hard to put into words? Everything we say we agree about; the lurker is very hard to name.
It's not so much that we disagree as that we're not on the same subject at all.
I think that's actually what we disagree about. There is a reason why I'm reading all of this together, and trying to make distinctions within what seems to me to be one field. From your perspective, there are clearly entirely separate issues that don't need distinctions or careful delineations because... what have they to do with each other anyway?
The dispute began, you may remember, when someone (neither one of us, actually) made a point about the essential unreality of categories of thought. That's what the discussion is about for me, finally, and few issues are more important. You're interested in a much more limited epistemological question, which you think has some moral/political consequences. What I'm disputing is that you can derive those consequences from the epistemological point -- with which I agree -- because there are deeper first principles with which those consequences would conflict.
In other words, the ground for the conflict is in just the kind of abstract philosophy you always tell me you hate. :) But there really is an important point here. The question of whether (or to what degree) our categories of thought are real and should inform our morals and politics is absolutely fundamental to human action.
This is why I keep raising points that you think you're not talking about, which in turn makes you think I'm not listening to you enough to understand what you are talking about. And since what you think you are talking about is a perfectly reasonable point, you can't understand why I'm being so stubborn! It's very understandable, but I promise that do have a reason for it.
I'm about to leave, this morning, for the Slickrock Wilderness and the Tail of the Dragon. I'll be back on Monday, though.
There will always be people in this world that want to force other people to do their bidding.
The only difference is whether they have the guts to act on that impulse or whether they are all talk and no game. The first can be recognized or feared, the second one can only be despised and used as tools.
When you aren't willing to put your life in your words and actions, they don't exist as anything important. Whether one is for Good or Evil, the same applies. In the hierarchy of strength, the former has strength and the other is non-existent, produced by a non-existent entity.
Eric Holder has the power to ignore contempt in Congress type rulings. Whether that is just or moral is a side point. The power exists, first and foremost. Even if nobody agrees on justice or morality, the power itself cannot be denied.
In a fashion, the contest between power produces more just results than words about fairness has.
Post a Comment