[MD] Science Wars

[Platt Holden]

[Krimel} 
> You offer up a key phrase that I would really like to highlight, "The
> more
> useful these structures are, the more they are used." This really gets
> to
> the heart it. As a structure is used and reused it is strengthened. It
> grows. We see this in our muscle cells, we see it in the flow of rivers,
> in
> the trunks of tree, in paths that become roads which get paved and then
> widened. This is the essence of how networks with their fractal
> structure
> form and grow. I think this is what Pirsig is pointing to with
> "betterness."
> While his focus on value, I fear leads to mushy thinking, "usefulness"
> focuses on function and points to how static structures arise and grow as
> a
> result of the flow of dynamic forces. 

"Usefulness" or practicality is a poor standard for judging the advances of 
science, as Pirsig rightly points out:

"But the Metaphysics of Quality states that practicality is a social  
pattern of good. It is immoral for truth to be subordinated to social 
values since that is  a lower form of evolution devouring a higher one.The 
idea that satisfaction alone is the test of anything is very dangerous, 
according to the Metaphysics of Quality. There are different kinds of 
satisfaction and some of them are moral nightmares. The Holocaust produced 
a satisfaction among Nazis. That was quality for them. They considered it 
to be practical. But it was a quality dictated by low level static social 
and biological patterns whose overall purpose was to retard the evolution 
of truth and. Dynamic Quality. James would probably have been horrified to 
find that Nazis could use his pragmatism just as freely as anyone else, but 
Phaedrus didn't see anything that would prevent it." (Lila, 29)

Scientifically based eugenics, for example, was a very popular to 
progressives in the early part of the 20th century. It was a useful way to 
assure the evolution of society. Today some scientists support a phoney 
global warming crisis to give progressives more power. After all, most 
funding for science comes from the state. 

Marsha, WillBlake2 and others are right to raise cautionary flags about the 
religion of science. 

Platt