Be more wholistic
The Women’s studies list is on a roll at the moment – I’m going to have to regale you a little more. All this sagacity must not blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air, wouldn’t you agree?
This seems to have something to do with the discussion of dimorphism, though it’s hard to be sure, because the chain of reasoning is a little…well, missing some links in places. But it starts off with biology, via Wikipedia. Then it gets into critical thinking…
The questionable variable here is what these guys considered ‘fundamental’ and the mindset that created the idea of biology as ‘socially acceptable’ at the time when life was first described by biological scientists – especially in the terms and roots that are still being used some 200 years later – unchanged since their creation. Biology is a socially constructed concept too – dated. It categorizes and defines ‘organisms’ a certain way – not wholistically – and not the
only way possible, I might add. I am no science major, but I know Einstein’s theories and Physics has already proven most of the fundamentals of biology to be faulty.
See?
I admit, I am a science heretic. It is a belief system and I’ve confronted it’s limitations – quite soundly and concretely – for my own understandings…Frankly, I am tired of seeing ‘respected’ scientific studies that continually study an environment that they deny exists in the first place. It is not logical thought. What we were taught as logic is simply what we were taught and thus not logical, but you have to question it before you can see it as ‘not logical’. My views can be perceived as not ‘logical’ because they are deviating from taught beliefs. Logic doesn’t mean it makes sense. It means it follows a certain line of thinking. It is the certain line of thinking women have attempted to confront.
Ah yes – logic is a ‘certain’ (male, patriarchal, phallic, linear, hierarchical, situated, constructed, stupid, wrong, smelly) line of thinking, and women have attempted to confront it, because women have something different, and better, than mere ‘logic.’ Women have – uh – holistic (or do I mean wholistic) different better womanier stuff. Women have holistic critical thinking, which beats logic any day.
>…blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air< O/T: Oh, Ophelia, you’ve won my heart! Is it only we old-timers (no offence, luv) who know such poetry off by heart from our (distant in my case) school days – and can still recall snippets of poems we learned (yes, the tyrants made us learn chunks of poetry by heart in those days, even Shakespeare, begorrah). How could something like this stanza, also from Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, ever cease to be relevant to human affairs: The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’inevitable hour:–
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
That’s a worthy companion to Ozymandias: http://poetry.eserver.org/ozymandias.txt
At the time I was much more interested in playing football (soccer, of course, to you guys over the pond) and in truth I’ve never been “into” reading poetry rather than, say, novels, but the value I put on the poetry I learned at school is immense – perhaps a lesson current educationalists might ponder (but won’t).
“Frankly, I am tired of seeing ‘respected’ scientific studies that continually study an environment that they deny exists in the first place. It is not logical thought. What we were taught as logic is simply what we were taught and thus not logical, but you have to question it before you can see it as ‘not logical’.”
Eh?
Wha..?
She has warped my fragile little mind…
>I’m going to have to regale you a little more< Good–Oh. Do continue to regale us on a topic most of us have little chance of getting a glimpse of. >I know Einstein’s theories and Physics has already proven most of the fundamentals of biology to be faulty.< Errr… Relativity (or quantum theory, or whatever) has proven, say, Darwinian biological principles to be faulty? Where do they get this stuff from? Or does the teaching in Women’s Studies classes encourage the development of original ideas of this order?
It would be interesting to know what proportion of the women “Hillary Democrats for McCain” supporters attended Women’s Studies classes at College. That might explain the ‘logic’ of a Hillary Clinton supporter rooting for McClain.
Hillary supporters for McCain
http://tinyurl.com/66hz2x
Nobama Democrats
http://www.nobamademocrats.com/
“I am no science major…”
She got one thing right.
-CM
It would be interesting to know what proportion of the women “Hillary Democrats for McCain” supporters attended Women’s Studies classes at College.
I would say none, Allen. That Women’s Studies demographic is too far left for the Democratic party.
Allen, you mean it’s only now that I’ve won your heart?!
Hee hee.
I know, about poetry…I hated learning it at the time, but value it now. Most of the poetry I know now though dates from much later – when I discovered some time in my late 30s that I actually like the stuff, and I memorized some. I didn’t memorize Gray though – but lots of phrases stick, here and there – bits of Donne, bits of Wordsworth, etc.
>I would say none, Allen. That Women’s Studies demographic is too far left for the Democratic party.< Assuming I’ve understood you aright, Jenavir, that doesn’t necessarily mean that many women who are not left of the Democratic Party didn’t attend Women’s Studies classes that I understand are widespread in Colleges in the States.
What is a “science heretic”? Isn’t that term some kind of category mistake? Heresy has to do with dogma, especially religious dogma, not with science. In any case, to go back to the bigger issue involved, it seems to me that logic and reason are useful tools for any oppressed or powerless group, for example, women.
She leadeth men to tour upright, And stoops only to conquer ignorance.
A favourite, for you OB.
All I ever learned in Womens Studies I got from a link on Tim van Gelder’s Critical Thinking on the Web: (new link republishes old article)
http://www.boundless.org/2000/features/a0000432.html
“Masculine intellectual systems are inadequate because they lack the wholeness that female consciousness, excluded from contributing to them, could provide,” we learned from cultural feminist and award-winning poet Adrienne Rich.”
She should try to use her system of “logic” to design a computer, and see whether it can add two numbers properly. But that comment is probably in itself, sexist. The answer that would come out of it would certainly be wholistic, and entirely correct, according to her own belief system…
To challenge biology as dimorphic from a field called Women’s studies: a gift of irony to help with any bad day.
This is such great fun —- they should invent Men’s studies as well. The place where Republican candidates can have it on with the increases of femininity.
(oops, now probably somebody will point out that already exists)
(or maybe these studies have already an achievement in the creationist creation of pitbulls with lipstick?)
Upon further thought, I realize that a feminist computer would really be an analogue computer. These do not use logic gates like digital computers, but instead use electrical or hydraulic or some other phenomenon that is a continuous function, not on or off (binary) to model the question under consideration. They can be quite powerful and solve problems that digital computers find very difficult. The problem is that they are very specialized (one computer to solve one problem), and they need to be completely rebuilt for each problem. They cannot easily change their programs, which is why you do not see very many of them any more. They do, however, use at least some of the despised male logic models, though.
Interesting comparison. I see lots of parallels.
The elegantly doubled feminine logic of the non-digital computer, like the doubled involutions of the female sex [we learn this from Cixous and Irigaray] would give not one answer, but two, and would always leave it to the seeker to provide the solution.
BTW, I agree these people are pitiable, but take a blog like Crooked Timber – many people there, most of whom I suspect to be men, spend their time making pitiable assertions about all manner of things from macroeconomics to international relations theory… If I had a choice between putting those tossers in charge of something, and the womyn of your list, I’d strain, but I think the sisters would get their chance…
Ah but Crooked Timber is not a contrast to Women’s Studies types, it is (all too often) part of the same continuum.
Re: B&W News item regarding the popes’ recent visit to Lourdes.
“After a candlelight procession Saturday night, the pope called on worshipers to recall “innocent victims who suffer from violence, war, terrorism or famine,” as well as people facing “suffering caused by unemployment, illness, infirmity, loneliness, or their situation as immigrants.”
No mention of clerical child sexual abuse in Lourdes. He would not want to be by the faithful, (of which many were Irish) found wanting.
Lourdes, as with most Marian Shrines, is, for the RC church, monetary wise a most lucrative market. One has only to contemplate the fifty thousand people or thereabouts – who gathered in this rocky region of France on the occasion of the popes visit. It is self evident.
Rock stars would not be up to the likes of the pope when in comes to raking in the crowds. He knows how to gather the flock into his precious religious corals. They could learn from him very valuable lessons by seeking audiences with him in his palace in the Vatican city. The former will surely learn from his holiness that continually reinventing themselves is not the best way forward.
They must go, like he does, with ‘the ancient flow’ if they are to succeed.
In with the old rituals out with the new.
Rock on in the rocky old religious region of France!
Sorry to be off topic, OB.
Surely to be a heretic of any type you must have originally been conventional?
To be a science heretic must mean that you have to be a scientist.
A science heretic would be someone who has a new hypothesis which is incompatible with some aspect of established science. Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg etc. were all scientific heretics.
This person is just a science disbeliever.
Meanwhile she proclaims her disbelief in logic while attempting to use ‘logical’ language to prove it.
My eyes have just crossed and I can’t see…
Ah yes – logic is a ‘certain’ (male, patriarchal, phallic, linear, hierarchical, situated, constructed, stupid, wrong, smelly) line of thinking, and women have attempted to confront it, because women have something different, and better, than mere ‘logic.’
I’ve seen this kind of anti-rational gobbledegook trotted out by American romance-novelists to justify their use of formulaic plots and stereotyped characters (which they grace with the name of ‘archetypes’). Some of them even accuse other women who criticise the genre of having had too masculine an education and having internalised ‘masculine’ notions of literary merit. (As a woman and a feminist myself, I find it offensive that they seem to think that clichéd writing is somehow inherently ‘feminine’!)
Exactly. This kind of ‘women don’t do logic, women are better than that’ offends the hell out of me as a woman and a feminist.
Exactly. This kind of ‘women don’t do logic, women are better than that’ offends the hell out of me as a woman and a feminist.
Me, too, but I’m equally offended by ‘women don’t do logic, they’re too stupid’ argument that too many people (of both sexes) still seem to believe. Few people in my circle of acquaintances will say that out loud today, but actions suggest the belief persists.
Unfortunately, the Women’s Studies classes are proving in a rather embarrassing way that some women DON’T “do logic”! It’s a shame they have to flaunt it though.
I’m a rationalist feminist too, so I share your pain OB. I’m also an environmentalist, and I find that field similarly peppered with anti-rationalist sentiment which drives me up the wall.
Just so. One huge reason I’m so infuriated by the ‘women are superior to logic’ line is precisely because it gives ammunition to the ‘women don’t do logic, they’re too stupid’ line.
All you cynics above. Of course we can have non-logic-based, holistic computers. And they should be a whole lot funkier than the current binary-based ones (and zeros).
All we need to do is to replace the ubiquitous, dull logic gate with “holism gates” (available from any good branch of Body Shop). As with most things good and whole, holism gates kind of resemble crystal pyramids. Using these powerful nine dimensional devices, dreary predictable output will be replaced with tantalizing uncertainty, far better suited to those whose minds are not constrained by the patriarchal strictures of reality. In response to input, a wholism gate-based machine might return a string of text, a rainbow, or perhaps even a hug.
C’mon squares, get with the, err, program, it’ll be cool!
Ah, you’d think they’d watched this, and got the wrong end of the stick…
:-)
All this Grey’s Elegy quoting is causing me flashbacks to about 23 years ago, when I memorised a (slightly abridged, because it does sag a little in the middle, and it would have been inadmissably long if I’d done the whole thing) for the school poetry recital competition…
I remember watching a great live performance of it by Rick Wakeman & Robert Powell on the BBC’s “A Little Night Music”…but couldn’t find any online video. It’s on his “Night Music” DVD, and studio album version on RW’s “Cost of Living” from 1983…
“I am no science major, but I know Einstein’s theories and Physics has already proven most of the fundamentals of biology to be faulty.”
Fortunately Einstein’s theories were actually created by his wife (see past articles on B&W), so this is an example of feminine intuition defeating masculine logic.
In this case the half-remembered masculine logic of anti-evolutionists who argue that evolution contradicts the laws of thermodynamics.
What crap this is – inviting you to tell them to leave all the brainy, logical, analytical stuff to the men while they get on with embroidery and flower arranging.
It’s the Greenham Women’s tendency – rationality and argument were male things like nuclear weapons so let’s give the Cruise missile base a big hug.
They would always tell you that you could push intelligence too far. “I wouldn’t worry too much in your case,” was the obvious response.
OB, Karen, Rose – exactly! These women simply don’t understand that their rejection of rationality only serves to marginalise them and make them look ridiculous, with the knock-on effect of reinforcing sexist prejudice. I think they emerged from the hippie end of the feminist spectrum, but they seem to be vocal across a range of subjects. It worries me that we now have this over-valuing of so-called ’emotional intelligence’: I’d like to see more value attached to real intelligence.
>In this case the half-remembered masculine logic of anti-evolutionists who argue that evolution contradicts the laws of thermodynamics.< Thanks for that. Now I understand what the woman in question was vaguely recalling!
——————–Beginquote
…
“I am no science major, but I know Einstein’s theories and Physics has already proven most of the fundamentals of biology to be faulty.”
——————–Endquote
This womyn has obviously not a clue.
The fundamentals of biology are not acting according the idealised examples of ordinary tetbook physics.
Biological entities are OPEN themodynamic systems. They are maintaining their reversed entrophy (“order”) at the cost of the surroundings (thereby increasing entrophy there).
They are of course in compliance with the physical laws governing the relevant size/time dimension of the universe they operate in.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
But.. what have Einstein’s theories to say about biology?
Dude, it’s EINSTEIN. He was a very clever man. He’s a scientist, biology is science, his work doesn’t mention biology, it’s the most famous bit of science ever so if the most famous bit of science ever doesn’t mention biology, I think you’ll find it doesn’t exist.
(Identifying the logical fallacies carried over from the original is left as an excercise for the reader.)
:- )
@Paul Power
When you study biological processes at sufficiently small scales, (e.g. time or space) quantum mechanics can be a relevant tool. Electron transport in respiration (within mitochondria) and photosynthesis comes to mind.
While Einstein hardly had these aspects of biology in mind when doing his work, it have nevertheless had a significant impact.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27582
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Cassanders,
Love your sig. Your work too, but the sig is good.
Cassanders:
You forgot Newton’s apple ;-)
I’m curious to know how anyone could think that Einstein’s ideas refute modern theories in biology.
It was Mileva Marić who created the theories that androcratic society assume only her husband could make. Her theory of relativity proves that things look different from within different frames of reference. This proves that epistemic relativism is true. So within one frame of reference, for example a college mailing list, biology might be false. Which means that biology has been disproven by Einstein (or actually his wife).
Now, which cup is the coin under? ;-)
The special theory of relativity starts with two principles:
1) The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference
2) The speed of light is the same in all inertial frames of reference
From 1), epistemic reltivism is incorrect. From 2), God exists.
These two deductions are nonsense but are more in tune with the theory than the usual claims made.
Special relativity is best when explained by Marilyn Monroe, with a train set and a torch…
Five points for the film?
Blimey, no idea. The Misfits? No. Some Like it Hot? No. Seven Year Itch? No. All About Eve? Hardly. No idea.
Insignificance (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1985).
23 years after MM croaked. Trick question – okay.
Paul, FTW!
Next time I’ll put bunny-ears round “”Marilyn Monroe””, OK?