Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Christians Threaten ‘Art World Vandalism’

    ‘Christians won’t tolerate insults to Jesus Christ,’ threatens Stephen Green.

  • Education and Wishful Thinking

    The article by Charles Murray, discussed in a Note and Comment with a measure of disapprobation, raises awkward questions that need to be faced and which rarely are. The problem is that liberal-minded people, and I am one such, are not immune from falling into the trap of believing what we wish to be true rather than that which is true.

    Let me first digress to tell a story. Almost twenty years ago, a senior colleague of mine became quite well-known for
    writing highly regarded books on relativity and quantum mechanics (the `Uncle Albert’ series) that were targeted at
    young teenagers. He gave our (physics) department a talk on the research that he did in preparation for writing
    these books. It included getting down on the floor amongst children at the local public library, the better to
    understand what appealed to them. More relevant to my present point, he also did research into the
    current state of research into Piaget’s theories of cognitive development. In particular, he cited the then recent work by
    Shayer and Adey which showed that Piaget’s series of transitions did indeed seem to occur in the order found by Piaget.
    However, Piaget had studied small groups and had failed to pick up the fact that the final transition (effectively that to
    abstract thought, the one that is essential to understanding multi-parameter or multi-causal systems) is undergone
    by no more than 20 percent of the population.

    I clearly remember how shocked some members of the audience at the talk were. The belief that we can teach
    science, at least at foundation level, to `anyone’ if only we learned to teach it properly, has been deeply held by
    many in our institution. Indeed, it is closely linked to the ethos of our founders. And yes, what Shayer and Adey
    claimed, has deeply political consequences, especially in a climate where the word `elitism’, its vague and mutually
    contradictory meanings notwithstanding, has become a fearful political weapon. However, for many of us who had
    spent many years teaching physics to a wide range of students, it made everything fall into place. It is hard to escape
    the biological fact that many students simply do not have the mental templates on which the understanding, which
    we strive to impart, can fit.

    What Shayer and Adey said seemed to fit with our experience, but that does not prove they were correct.
    Were they? I spent some time in the library trying to see what had come out in the wash over nearly
    two decades. One of the two authors (I forget which) had spent the intervening period trying to devise ways in which
    special coaching could get students to make the jump. The results seemed to be very marginal. This is a matter
    which desperately needs an agreed consensus – so much educational policy rests, or at least should rest, upon
    it. Maybe there already is such a consensus, but I have not heard it; but then it is far outside my field of expertise.
    I suspect that politics does not help.

    In the meantime, in the UK, we have a school curriculum that, at lower levels at least, is tailored to getting
    as many as possible of the 80 percent though a monkey-see monkey-do test. One teacher has characterised the
    curriculum as training in not thinking. Many students will, at 16, pass `GCSE science’ and still have
    an understanding of the world so remote from reality that they are suckers for every form of snake oil. Can we face
    the fact that this might always be so? In the USA there are special breadth requirement science courses at college level,
    and my small experience at coaching students for such a course suggests that not much is gained. There are no
    courses of this kind in UK universities. In UK secondary schools there are not, at pre-17 year levels, what Piaget’s
    biology seems to make essential: parallel science courses requiring different cognitive levels. I don’t expect soon
    to see the required courage from the educational authorities, although it was just this morning that one privately
    agreed with me that such was needed.

    I often feel that I can tell from listening to someone speak whether that person is in the 20 percent or the 80 percent.
    I do believe, in all seriousness, that we (the UK) got into the Iraq war through having a leader who got a good degree in
    spite of being in the 80 percent that are not strong on multi-causal situations.

    So, you see, I don’t think that Charles Murray was completely wrong in everything he said, which, I thought, was far
    more than an attack on pointy headed intellectuals. I can well see that the issue I have raised, is just one corner of
    the huge one of how to assimilate Nature’s capricious distribution of abilities in a democratic and egalitarian society.
    The specific `elitism’ issue that has been prompted by the recent US election is just another aspect of it. There are
    many others: I was first jolted into an awareness of the issue when, in 1966, some professor of music claimed that
    Beatles’ songs were as good as Schubert’s, something I went along with for a couple of days, until I next listened to
    Schubert. The depth of the problem is signalled by the fury that can be aroused when I state my views on this
    among young people. Is it too much to hope that an examination of these issues will cease to be a victim of crossfire
    in the left-right war?

    Raymond Mackintosh is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University.

  • Untested ‘Cures’ Advertised on the Net

    Leading medical experts are warning patients against using untested remedies advertised on the internet.

  • Joan Smith on Secularism in America

    Or rather, its absence.

  • Secular v Haredi in Jerusalem Mayoral Election

    Both candidates favour expanding settlements.

  • Prop 8 Protests at Rick Warren’s Megachurch

    Gay-rights advocates protested over Saddleback Church’s support of Proposition 8.

  • P J O’Rourke Looks Forward

    ‘The South Side of Chicago is what everyplace in America will be once the Democratic administration have etc etc’

  • A Useful Emetic

    If you’ve just accidentally swallowed some poison, this is just the ticket. Otherwise don’t bother.

  • Victory to the elitists!

    Of course one reason I was so pleased about the recent election is that it’s such a nice victory for elitism. About time.

    Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.

    Damn straight. A blatant, unashamed, undisguised, unapologetic intellectual, who doesn’t pretend to be thicker than he is in order to reassure the envious or the threatened or the hostile. Staggering, isn’t it?

    Compare the ineffable Charles Murray, asked what he thinks of Sarah Palin:

    I’m in love. Truly and deeply in love…The last thing we need are more pointy-headed intellectuals running the government.

    So the more unthinking and incurious and ill-informed the better? Why, exactly?

    Ah but that’s the kind of question that pointy-headed intellectuals ask.

  • Katha Pollit Says Sayonara to Sarah Palin

    Palin models what feminism isn’t.

  • Visit the New Age Shop

    Reiki; readings that combine tarot cards, angel cards and crystal dowsing; ‘Balanced Therapy’; much more.

  • Anti-Semitism in 9/11 ‘Truth’ Movement

    ‘Texe Marrs outlines the eight pillars, or foundations, of the Zionist elite conspiracy to undermine the US.’

  • Armistice Day in the War on Brains

    American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.

  • CFI London: Science and Religion

    Simon Singh, Mary Warnock, Jack Cohen, Stephen Law, 25th April, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square.

  • You can’t detect it, but you know it’s there

    As you may have seen in News the other day, David Colquhoun provides excerpts from ‘a lengthy set of notes for a first year course on “The Holistic Model of Healthcare”…from the 2005 course at Thames Valley University’ (along with a link to the whole thing). It’s fascinating stuff – and it raises a familiar question.

    [T]he subject of Wholistic Nutrition transcends the area of human understanding for which science, alone, is appropriate. The reason is that it is ‘vitalistic’. It recognises the presence in all life forms including the human body, of subtle (or ‘etheric’) energy forces not easily measurable by the physicist’s equipment. It shares that position with the ‘energy medicine’ disciplines such as homoeopathy, traditional acupuncture and spiritual healing. It follows an approach to those subtle energies that is embodied in the discipline and philosophy of naturopathy. Vitalism is the notion that life in living organisms is sustained by a vital principle that cannot be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. This vital principle, often called “the life force”, is something quite distinct from the physical body and is responsible for much that happens in health and disease.

    The question is familiar (around here) because I keep asking it. If there are subtle energy forces not easily measurable by the physicist’s (or anyone else’s) equipment, then how do Wholistic Nutritionists or Vitalists or anyone else know they are there or anything about them? It’s just like the god question. We’re always hearing that god transcends science and is completely different and can’t be measured by our mere scientific equipment. Okay, but then what equipment can it be measured by? Nobody ever says. In the god case some people do say it can’t be measured by any equipment, but then they still don’t say how they know it’s there. They pretend they say (it’s ‘experience’; one just knows; it’s an interaction), but they don’t.

    But so then how do the Vitalists know any of the things they claim to know and pronounce on with such confidence? What is the source of all the palaver in the Thames Valley University course notes? There’s a grotesque disconnect between the frank declaration of Zero Knowledge at the outset and the abundant unbashful proliferation of truth claims in the rest of the document.

    There is a kind of admission of the problem:

    At the root of most hoIistic therapies lies the belief that all life is animated by a subtle force. We call this the Life Force. You either believe it or you do not. It cannot exactly be proved at the moment and the belief is not in accord with the yardsticks that we call ’scientific’, The belief is a little akin to the belief in God or in spirits or ghosts, and yet at the same time it is not, because the Life Force is by no means so remote from us.

    You either believe it or you do not, but we will go right ahead and give medical advice as if we had something more than ‘belief’ backing up our whacked ideas.

    As mentioned above, toxic foci (deposits) in the body show up in the iris of the eye. The iris is arranged so as to encompass a complete ‘map’ of the body. with all the organs and systems laid out upon it. Hence the location of a toxic deposit in the iris shows the iridologist its position within the body. The toxins may appear as colours, spots. blobs and smears in particular places in the iris, or as darkened areas.

    Uh…right. Bye now.

  • Child-torture in Nigeria

    Now for something more serious. Something intolerable.

    Ostracised, vulnerable and frightened, she wandered the streets in south-eastern Nigeria, sleeping rough, struggling to stay alive. Mary was found by a British charity worker and today lives at a refuge in Akwa Ibom province with 150 other children who have been branded witches, blamed for all their family’s woes, and abandoned. Before being pushed out of their homes many were beaten or slashed with knives, thrown onto fires, or had acid poured over them…Many of those branded “child-witches” are murdered – hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive in an attempt to drive Satan out of their soul. The devil’s children are “identified” by powerful religious leaders at extremist churches where Christianity and traditional beliefs have combined to produce a deep-rooted belief in, and fear of, witchcraft. The priests spread the message that child-witches bring destruction, disease and death to their families.

    And the priests get rich on ‘exorcisms.’

    The exorcism costs the families up to a year’s income. During the “deliverance” ceremonies, the children are shaken violently, dragged around the room and have potions poured into their eyes. The children look terrified. The parents look on, praying that the child will be cleansed. If the ritual fails, they know their children will have to be sent away, or killed. Many are held in churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they “confess” to being a witch. The ceremonies are highly lucrative for the spiritual leaders many of whom enjoy a lifestyle of large homes, expensive cars and designer clothes.

    The ‘spiritual leaders’ – even in a piece like this the flattering labels are pasted on. ‘Spiritual,’ forsooth – spiritual in what sense?

  • Faith, any faith

    Michael Binyon in The Times slobbers over Charles for being interested in lots of religions.

    [N]o monarch since the Stuarts has taken an intellectual interest in religion, and none has devoted time and respect to other faiths. The Prince, however, counts bishops and moral philosophers, rabbis, priests and Islamic scholars among those whom he regularly meets and with whom he discusses the spiritual dimensions of life in Britain today.

    Find the odd one out. Got it in one. What are ‘moral philosophers’ doing in that mob? Does this beezer think moral philosophy is a ‘faith’?

    For him, the concept of faith — any faith — is important in the crusade against the rising tide of secular materialism and scientific reductionism, both of which he detests.

    Ah, does he. He prefers the tyrannical rule of an unreachable unaccountable unknowable god, does he. Well that makes sense in a way, of course, given that he too represents a silly anachronistic semi-magical form of government.

  • Child ‘Witches’ in Nigeria

    Unbearable to read.

  • ‘Faith-based’ Groups Fret About Future

    Obama said he would not allow religious groups to get federal funding if they discriminate in hiring.

  • Charles Hates Secularism and Science

    ‘Faith — any faith — is important in the crusade against the rising tide of secular materialism and scientific reductionism, both of which he detests.’