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AR 21:8 - Abandoning the logical foundations of science
In this issue:
ORIGINS - squirming under the Big Bang's implications, cosmologists abandon the logical foundations of science
SOCIALISM - having struggled in the world while winning the academy, will socialism gain popularity via the US presidential race?
YOGA - campus political-correctness police find a new target
Apologia Report 21:8 (1,281)
February 24, 2016
ORIGINS
"Proving Grounded" by Denyse O'Leary -- begins by emphasizing that philosopher of science Karl Popper argued "a theory should make predictions that could be tested and, potentially, proven wrong. An unfalsifiable theory is just not science." However, "today, some scientists want to throw falsifiability overboard. They hope by doing this to protect the concept of the multiverse. Put simply, there is currently no evidence for the existence of any universes other than our own, making the theory of the multiverse unfalsifiable. But if the proposal to dispense with falsifiability were accepted, that would be very convenient for naturalist atheists. They could then argue that any stream of events that occurs in our universe may well have occurred differently in any one of an infinite number of other universes. So no inferences (other than their own) could be drawn from a given state of affairs here in the only world for which we have information.
"Thus, falsifiability was one of the ideas included in This Idea Must Die [1], a recent book on Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress."
One of the book's contributing authors, cosmologist Sean Carroll, says that "the unwillingness to accept this speculation as science is 'as non-scientific as it gets.' Indeed, PBS took up the cry recently, pointing out that we live in a universe 'by some estimations, too good to be true' <www.goo.gl/8o9f3j>, so maybe we should ignore falsifiability in search of comforting secular explanations. ...
"There are opposing voices, to be sure. ... In December 2014, respected cosmologists George Ellis and Joe Silk defended the integrity of physics against multiverse theory in Nature: <www.goo.gl/U35RqK> 'Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue - explicitly - that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree. As the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued: a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific.'
"But that is precisely the idea that is under attack. What if 'scientific' just means 'supports naturalist atheism' and nothing more? And 'unscientific' is whatever doesn't support it?
"Here is a prediction: To the extent that science is dominated by naturalist atheists, falsifiability will not survive as a criterion. That's because it depends on the idea that there is something out there that can falsify things - call it 'god' or whatever you want. Instead, whatever speculation supports the multiverse or some similar shibboleth will count for far more than any failure of evidence.
"And the naturalist atheists' next war will, of course, be against the very idea of evidence. What evidence counts for will depend on who is presenting it and what causes it is thought to support. That is what post-empiricism must necessarily mean in the current environment." Salvo 33 - Sum '15, <www.goo.gl/zDjjGe>
This sort of thing cries out for cynical conclusions. One example (video fact #1 of the "Top 10 Mind Bending Facts about the Universe") reports: "According to some models of cosmology, there are an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of people watching this video." <www.goo.gl/g0u7z9>
In the land of unrestrained pronouncements, anything goes.
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SOCIALISM
"Marxism Failed in the World, but Conquered Western Academia" by Philip Carl Salzman, professor of Anthropology at McGill University and Writing Fellow, Middle East Forum <meforum.org> -- begins: "One of the great lessons of the 20th century, paid for with the suffering and blood of hundreds of millions, is that communism was a failure in both economy and governance. This was demonstrated repeatedly with the fall of the Soviet Union, the switch in China from communes and central planning to capitalism, the vast slaughter of the Khmer Rouge, the breakdown of the Cuban economy, and the starving prison house that is North Korea. ...
"Marxism-Leninism is now the dominant model of history and society being taught in Western universities and colleges. Faculties of social science and humanities disguise their Marxism under the label 'postcolonialism,' anti-neoliberalism, and the quest for equality and 'social justice.' And while our educational institutions laud 'diversity' in gender, race, sexual preference, religion, national origin, etc., diversity in opinion, theory, and political view is nowhere to be seen. ...
"Postcolonialism is the view that all ills in the world stem from Western imperialism and colonialism. ...
"The dirtiest word in the Marxist vocabulary is 'neoliberal,' which stands for an economy based on capitalist principles and processes. [Students] have been taught that the only products of capitalism are exploitation and oppression. ...
"Students are taught that the primary value is equality: not liberal equality of opportunity, but the equality of result idealized in Marxist theory. ...
"The alliance between Marxist politics and Islamism as seen in the support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood follows logically. Students now see themselves as defenders of Islam, along with all other non-Western cultures, although they know little about these other cultures and their histories.
"It has been imagined that the West would fall through materialist decadence; but now it appears that the West is most at risk from self-hate, fostered by the treason of the academics." Daily Caller, Jan 11 '16, <www.goo.gl/P85ghJ>
One imagines that Marxists observing the US presidential campaign are inspired by the growing popularity of "democratic socialist" candidate Bernie Sanders (a great fan of controversial American socialist Eugene Debs - see <www.goo.gl/TPpEuv>).
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YOGA
"University yoga class canceled because of 'oppression, cultural genocide'" by Justin Wm. Moyer -- in question: "at [the University of Ottawa], a yoga class designed to include disabled students has been canceled after concerns the practice was taken from a culture that 'experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy,' according to the group that once sponsored it."
In her appeal to have the judgment reconsidered, the teacher of the class "speculated that the problem might be the branding.
"'What do you think about having a class that is just stretching for mental health?' she wrote. 'We don't have to call it yoga (because that's not really what we are doing, we are just stretching), I think that will work because it would literally change nothing about the class.' ...
"'As the multi-billion dollar yoga industry continues to grow with studios becoming as prevalent as Starbucks and $120 yoga pants, the mass commercialization of this ancient practice, rooted in Hindu thought, has become concerning,' according to the website of the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., with a initiative called 'Take Back Yoga.''With proliferation of new forms of 'yoga,' the underlying meaning, philosophy, and purpose of yoga are being lost,' reads a Web page <www.goo.gl/IWUKRE> for the initiative.
"Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been trying to take yoga back for almost a year now. His nation even has a yoga minister.
"'There is little doubt about yoga being an Indian art form,' Shripad Yesso Naik [the central government's first Minister for Yoga and Traditional Medicine] said in December. 'We're trying to establish to the world that it's ours.'
"The Ottawa controversy - just one of many involving colleges and alleged political correctness - was widely reported, and picked up by at least one Canadian conservative news site.
"'The day yoga needs a safe space is the day parody meets reality,' the Rebel <www.goo.gl/bLCtFs> wrote. 'That day has come.'" Chicago Tribune, Nov 23 '15, <www.goo.gl/HGHHtT>
In "University of Ottawa students derided for cancelling yoga classes over fears of cultural appropriation," Andrew Duffy (writing for the Canadian paper National Post) recognizes what may have been an appeal to sympathy by the university when he notes that "on the centre’s website is a description of its effort to create a safe space at the university. It highlights the complexity of the centre’s commitment to 'challenge all forms of oppression.'
“'We also acknowledge that ableism is not a siloed issue, but one that affects a variety of communities and individuals. In working to dismantle ableism, we also work to challenge all forms of oppression including, but not limited to, heterosexism, cissexism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, queerphobia, HIV-phobia, sex negativity, fatphobia, femme-phobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, racism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, sexism, and linguistic discrimination.” <www.goo.gl/FAeaor>
The "complexity" evoked gives the impression that it may well be self-inflicted. See also "Yoga as ‘Cultural Appropriation'" in the Wall Street Journal, Nov 22 '15. <www.goo.gl/ydZIoM>
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