Author: Ophelia Benson

There was some discussion yesterday of what to call the ‘argument’ that goes along the lines ‘Galileo was ignored/suppressed/censored, I’m ignored/suppressed/censored, therefore my ideas are on a par with Galileo’s ideas.’ I said I simply thought of it as the Galileo fallacy. (Chris Williams on the other hand offered an alternative in the Bozo the clown fallacy. ‘They laughed at Newton, they laughed at Einstein…’ ‘Yes and they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.’ That works.) Once I’d said that, I thought I might as well google it – and behold, a few citations of the Galileo fallacy.

At Bad Logic for instance.

Just about every logical fallacy ever imagined turns up in pseudoscience, including: “Galileo Fallacy” “They laughed at Galileo, and he was right. They laugh at me, therefore I must be right.” Variation common in education: “Einstein didn’t do well in school, therefore any kid who does poorly in school is like Einstein.”

And in this list of fallacious arguments, under Appeal to Pity (Appeal to Sympathy, The Galileo Argument):

Some authors want you to know they’re suffering for their beliefs. For example, “Scientists scoffed at Copernicus and Galileo; they laughed at Edison, Tesla and Marconi; they won’t give my ideas a fair hearing either. But time will be the judge. I can wait; I am patient; sooner or later science will be forced to admit that all matter is built, not of atoms, but of tiny capsules of TIME.”

Apparently people who edit philosophy magazines see a lot of that kind of thing. ‘Please read my complete theory of everything, available at www.randomnutter.com.’

And there’s a variation at Evowiki: Galileo Wannabe:

You commit this fallacy if you compare yourself to Galileo Galilei or another scientist suppressed by authorities or disbelieved by your peers. This is very popular among pseudoscientists…A popular answer is, “they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Columbus, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown”. Indeed, being “suppressed” is not correlated to being right.

No, it’s not, but it’s such fun to imply that it is!

Update: I missed one. At Orac Knows, we have Galileo’s Gambit, enriched with a lot of parallel examples.

I’ve just been re-reading Judith Shklar’s 1989 essay ‘The Liberalism of Fear.’ It’s good stuff.

Skepticism is inclined toward toleration, since in its doubts it cannot choose among the competing beliefs that swirl around it, so often in murderous rage. Whether the skeptic seeks personal tranquility in retreat or tries to calm the warring factions around her, she must prefer a government that does nothing to increase the prevailing levels of fanaticism and dogmatism.

I read it the first time several years ago. I liked it – but certain resonances are even more resonant now than they were then (let alone than when she wrote the article, which was for instance before Yugoslavia fell apart).

To call the liberalism of fear a lowering of one’s sights implies that emotions are inferior to ideas and especially to political causes. It may be noble to pursue ideological ambitions or to risk one’s life for a ’cause,’ but it is not at all noble to kill another human being in pursuit of one’s own ’causes.’ ‘Causes,’ however spiritual they may be, are not self-justifying, and they are not all equally edifying.

No, they’re not.

The consequences of political spirituality are, moreover, far less elevating than it might seem. Politically it has usually served as an excuse for orgies of destruction. Need one remind anyone of that truly ennobling cry: ‘Viva la muerte!’ – and the regime it ushered in?

Viva la muerte – it’s back.

Unless and until we can offer the injured and insulted victims of most of the world’s traditional as well as revolutionary governments a genuine and practicable alternative to their present condtion, we have no way of knowing whether they really enjoy their chains. There is very little evidence that they do…The absolute relativism, not merely cultural but psychological, that rejects the liberalism of fear as both too ‘Western’ and too abstract is too complacent and too ready to forget the horrors of our world to be credible. It is deeply illiberal, not only in its submission to tradition as an ideal, but in its dogmatic identification of every local practice with deeply chared local human aspirations.

Madeleine Bunting, please note.

Too great a part of past and present political experience is neglected when we ignore the annual reports of Amnesty International and of contemporary warfare. It used to be the mark of liberalism that it was cosmopolitan and that an insult to the life and liberty of a member of any race or group in any part of the world was of genuine concern.

As above.

Since I keep picking fights with Michael Ruse’s recent arguments, it’s only fair that I should point out this item I’ve just read on Philosophy of Biology. It’s a letter Ruse sent to the dean, which he posted by way of encouraging others.

As the disaster unfolds in New Orleans, I am sure I am not alone in wondering what I can do. So far, the FSU response seems to be that we must go on with the football game. Is it at all possible to offer something to the students of Louisiana? For instance, could we take some of them in for a semester or two and wave fees? It is surely not too late in the term to think about this. I am sure that I am not alone in saying that my family would consider it a privilege to house and board for free a couple of students for the year. I am an Englishman born in 1940. I owe so much to America that for me it would be paying a very small part of the debt.

No comment necessary.