Natalie Angier In The NY Times: Curriculum Designed To Unite Art And Science.

Full post here.

Ah, we’re so close…

Angier quotes David Sloan Wilson:

“If you do statistics in the context of something you’re interested in and are good at, then it becomes an incremental as opposed to a saltational jump,”

You see that the mechanics are not so hard after all, and once you understand why you’re doing the statistics in the first place, it ends up being simple nuts and bolts stuff, nothing more.”

Not a bad argument…if the imagination is piqued and the interest is there, perhaps a platform for other areas of study, especially the sciences, can be more easily developed. 

Perhaps (though isn’t this always the way?) there has been cultural erosion enough to make science a misunderstood field among the public.  If this is true, then clearly English departments busy with continental philosophy, cultural relativism, the denial of meaning etc have helped make this state of affairs possible…

So how do you unite the arts and sciences?

To illustrate how the New Humanities approach to scholarship might work, Dr. Heywood cited her own recent investigations into the complex symbolism of the wolf, a topic inspired by a pet of hers that was seven-eighths wolf.

Dear Lord.  Apparently in a way that doesn’t do justice to either one.  After all, the arts require entering into the creative imagination and genius of great artists like Shakespeare, Milton, and Melville.   Science is different.

“Dr. Wilson is determined to avoid romanticizing science or presenting it as the ultimate arbiter of meaning, as other would-be integrationists and ardent Darwinists have done.”

Good luck with that, Dr. Wilson…though some political and social good may come out of your work… 

Some good scientists and writers of science who are much better than this Angier’s loyalty to more political and social concerns: Nigel Calder, Carl Zimmer, George Smoot, Richard Feynman…

See Also: The moral thinking both Angier and Sloan Wilson neglect in The Economist On Moral Thinking:  David Sloan Wilson’s Research and Natalie Angier In The NY Times: In Most Species, Faithfulness Is A Fantasy

David Sloan Wilson At The Huffington Post: Atheism As a Stealth Religion

Here’s his first post and here’s the second.

From the first:

“The new atheists hate religion for causing between-group conflict and especially for its wanton disregard of the canons of rational thought. Yet, both of these problems extend far more widely than religion”

Agreed.  Also…

“The new atheists will need to display a virtue typically associated with religion–humility–if they wish to join this enterprise.”

Yes, they will, if they wish to honor the free thinking that helped create the intellectual roots of their atheism….but what enterprise would that be?

“…the circle of cooperation…”

You’re kidding me.  This almost makes me want to go join an organized religion.  Wilson seems to have made the mistake of not separating his evo-biology/anthropological research from current thinking and politics, and a pretty naive politics at that.   

Is there something about evolutionary biology that appeals to liberalism?  liberals to evo-biology? liberals to less objective fields of science?  Karl Popper seemed to think evolution wasn’t a science, but why were Popper and the Vienna Circle so interested in a radical empiricism in the first place?

Or does politics have nothing to do with science unless we insist that it does?

See Also: The Economist on Moral Thinking: David Sloan Wilson’s Research, A Sympathetic View Of Noam Chomsky?  From New York Magazine: If God Is Dead, Who Gets His House?

Via Althouse: Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals

Full article here:

Why? 

“Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives,” the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, “apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light.”

Of course the pursuit of equality is an idealogy…

…oh wait…this is psychological science.

A knock-off of David Sloan Wilson’s research?

See Also:  A Sympathetic View Of Noam Chomsky? What if Chomsky were a Burkean conservative?  Would that in any way follow from his linguistic/philosophical contributions?

Jared Diamond: “Vengeance Is Ours” In The New Yorker

Full piece here. (abstract only now, subscription required)

Diamond focuses on a young man who’s a member of the Handa clan in Papua New-Guinea.  The clan, like many others, devotes a lot of time and energy to fighting, and specifically, getting revenge.

Daniel, the young man in Diamond’s portrayal, clearly likely feels honor and a sense of pride when acting on his desire for revenge…and gets satisfaction from it as well.  Diamond argues the lack of organized religious and moral codes (largely in service of the state here in the West) don’t exist in Papua-New Guinea.

In other words, most of the reasons we don’t go revenge killing here in the States and defer (usually) to the police, the courts, or to God aren’t really in effect.

This is one of Diamond’s conclusions:

“My conversations with Daniel made me understand what we have given up by leaving justice to the state. In order to induce us to do so, state societies and their associated religions and moral codes teach us that seeking revenge is bad. But, while acting on vengeful feelings clearly needs to be discouraged, acknowledging them should be not merely permitted but encouraged.”

So let me get this straight: from our own true nature, moral codes have deferred…

“feelings…natural and powerful”

…into a “cold monster” of the state?

Yet, if we invested in our feelings, wouldn’t we make the state more powerful by increasing its desire to control our feelings too?

Wait…I thought the state was bad, or un-natural?

Okay…so…according to Diamond, if we just feel enough, we’ll think clearly?

See Also: This post about David Sloan Wilson’s research.  Is a common thread between evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, and perhaps even psychologists the attempt to base morality in feeling?  Or a certain type of thoughts about feelings?

So…is Diamond an anthropologist?  It appears not.  My mistake.

Addition: So where do you look to deepen evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences?  To Nietzsche for starters, but Jesse Prinz looks to David Hume:  Another Note On Jesse Prinz’s “Constructive Sentimentalism”…Jesse Prinz Discusses “The Emotional Construction Of Morals” On Bloggingheads.…More On Jesse Prinz. A Review Of “The Emotional Construction Of Morals” At Notre Dame.

Remember that as with all utterances of truth, there will be a large percentage of the population who considers these ideas not a matter of debate, but as true.

Updated: From Savage Minds: More On The Lawsuit Against Jared Diamond…From The Chronicle Of Higher Education: Jared Diamond’s Lawsuit

The Economist on Moral Thinking: David Sloan Wilson’s Research

The Economist (full article here) asks a deep question:  Whence morality?

“two and a half millenia of [philosophical] debate, have…failed to produce a satisfactory answer.”

It goes on to mention the work of two researchers (evolutionary biologists) who examined two groups of self-identifying liberal and conservative teenagers, monitoring them often.  Their interpretation of the evidence suggests that the liberal teens often pride indivualism and confrontation, while the conservative teens valued collectivism and conformity.

“Dr Wilson suspects that the liberal package of individualism and confrontation is the appropriate response to survival in a stable environment in which there is leisure for learning and reflection, and the consequences for a group’s stability of such dissent are low. The conservative package of collectivism and conformity, by contrast, works in an unstable environment where joint action, and thus obedience to their group, are at a premium.”

As an insight into politics, human social structure, and an introduction to Wilson’s ideas of evolutionary biology, it’s a good start.

Of course, the philsophical arguments are still there (I’ll call the Economist once an intellectually satisfying answer is provided for moral thinking)…and it also seems foolhardy on Wilson’s part to apply the intellectual fruits of evolutionary biology directly to current politics…but interesting nonetheless.

See Also:  David Sloan Wilson’s page and Blog Posts At Huffington, Evolutionary Biology (wikipedia). The Trolley problem (wikipedia) often used to argue a non-rational (perhaps emotional) base for morality.