Archaeologists have investigated the crash site of either a weather balloon or an alien ship. If they find it was the former, will the alien story go away?… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Germaine Greer in Piss-taking Mode
Nov 16th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA mix of fanciful evolutionary psychology, teasing and polemic for weekend reading.… Read the rest
Elitism, Egalitarianism, Passionate Attraction
Nov 15th, 2002 7:16 pm | By Ophelia BensonAn interesting article in the Guardian discusses the paradoxical way the discoveries of ultra-elitist Newton were found by Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, Jefferson and Adams and Franklin, Saint-Simon and Fourier, to be full of progressive implications. Gravity affects all people everywhere, which made Newton the supreme philosopher of equality during the French Revolution. Fourier connected the gravitational principle of “passionate attraction” with the free love of his Utopian communities. And oddest of all, “in the debate between John Adams and Benjamin Franklin over a unicameral or bicameral legislature, it was an appeal to Newton that resolved the dispute. Adams argued that only a system with both a House of Representatives and a Senate conformed to Newton’s third law of motion: … Read the rest
Newton the Inadvertent Egalitarian
Nov 15th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGravity is the great equalizer, it makes the rich fall down with the poor.… Read the rest
18 to 34 Nirvana
Nov 14th, 2002 4:11 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere is a story in today’s Guardian about US newspapers competing to attract the ever-popular 18 to 34 year old “market”. Apparently they are crashing into one another and banging heads in a foolish way in Chicago, as each tries to be dumber than the other. The whole subject gives one a feeling of despair. It is so taken for granted that the point of the enterprise is for newspapers to insinuate their way into everyone’s wallets. It is made so drearily obvious that the actual dissemination or clarification of news and knowledge and understanding is just a kind of pretext for or prettification of the real work of delivering customers to advertisers. Is it any wonder that alien abductions … Read the rest
Amanda Foreman on Biography
Nov 14th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhat is history, what is theory, is biography a branch of history or is it creative writing (let’s hope not!), is theory as important as research, do readers want narrative, and more questions.… Read the rest
What works versus what ought to work
Nov 13th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJames Traub on the conflict between research and ideology in US education, where a priori beliefs have ‘tremendous force’ in shaping judgments of effectiveness.… Read the rest
Fantasy and Skepticism
Nov 12th, 2002 6:11 pm | By Ophelia BensonSciTech Daily Review currently has a link to this highly interesting 1996 article from the Skeptical Inquirer. It cites studies by George Gerbner and others that say people who watch a lot of television are more likely (than those who don’t) to be hostile to science and friendly toward pseudoscience, including after controlling for education and other variables. It then goes on to detail the way science and skepticism are the bad guys in several movies and tv shows, while nice, regular, credulous people are the goodies. Of course, this has been true as long as the ghost story has existed (which is probably as long as humans have), because it’s such an excellent device, to have a lot … Read the rest
Pooh Goes PoMo
Nov 12th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFrederick Crews updates his perplexed Pooh with lashings of jargon, obscurantism, and pretention.… Read the rest
Bernard Williams Talks to Guardian Readers
Nov 12th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe philosopher answers questions on the Guardian’s Discussion Board, including one from Butterflies and Wheels.… Read the rest
The last hope
Nov 11th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSurely adult education is the best weapon against woolly thinking. It would be nice if it could be well funded.… Read the rest
British Academy prize shortlist
Nov 11th, 2002 1:22 am | By Ophelia BensonThis is an exhilarating article in the Guardian about the six books on the shortlist for the British Academy prize, “launched last year to celebrate the best of accessible scholarly writing within the humanities and social sciences.” What an excellent idea for a prize. Two words that don’t normally seem to go together–accessible and scholarly–joined up and rewarded. Accessible scholarly writing is perhaps my favorite kind of reading, there is a lot of it about, and more attention should be paid to it. It always strikes me as odd how much more glory there is in writing fiction, even (all too often) quite mediocre fiction, than there is in writing good or even brilliant history or biography or sociology or … Read the rest
Is Grade Inflation Real?
Nov 10th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOr are there other explanations. ‘Maybe instructors used to be too stingy with their marks and have become more reasonable.’ Hmm.… Read the rest
Holocaust Denial and the French Courts
Nov 9th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA French court has ordered an encyclopaedia publisher to remove a passge from the next edition that questions the numbers killed at Auschwitz.… Read the rest
Evolutionary Psychology and its Enemies: an interview with Steven Pinker
Nov 9th, 2002 | By Ophelia BensonSteven Pinker has a new book out, The Blank Slate. We have been closely observing and reporting on the reception of this particular volume of science for the public, because that reception and the probable reasons for it are closely related to the subject matter of Butterflies and Wheels. Evolutionary explanations of human nature and behavior and ways of thinking make many people very suspicious and afraid, and hence willing to make some highly dubious arguments.
But as many people have noticed and pointed out in the last few years (e.g. E.O. Wilson in The Philosophers’ Magazine), the tide does seem to be turning. Pinker’s book has been getting a largely favorable or at least attentively respectful hearing, … Read the rest
Invisible Assumptions
Nov 8th, 2002 7:19 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis review in the London Review of Books considers a number of inter-connected ideas that are so taken for granted, so entrenched, so the way we all think now, that they are invisible and hence not questioned, even (or least of all?) by people who pride themselves on questioning such things, and even make a living at it, or at attempting it.
For instance the assumption that the self and concern with it are warm and objectivity is cold. And the assumtion that warmth is good and coldness is bad. Then, the assumption that the way to consider these issues is via morality rather than epistemology (which could imply that morality is more important than epistemology and hence should be … Read the rest
But the psychology of stupidity is so interesting!
Nov 8th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Economists had long assumed that beliefs and decisions conformed to logical rules.’ What a strange thing to assume. But Kahneman and Tversky did the studies that corrected the mistake.… Read the rest
Perhaps the war is over
Nov 7th, 2002 11:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonSteven Pinker’s new book The Blank Slate is reviewed
in The Nation, the US’s oldest leftist magazine (which I’ve been reading for years), this week. The review is long, favourable, and not opposed to evolutionary psychology. I say ‘not opposed’ rather than sympathetic because the latter seems an absurd word to use about scientific research. It’s not as if evolutionary pyschology is going to have hurt feelings because some people disapprove of it. As Steven Johnson points out, advocates of the ‘blank slate’ view of human nature are being made into Flat Earthers by the science. But there are still a good few of them about, and it is both surprising and heartening to find a sentence like the … Read the rest
Favorable review of Pinker’s book in The Nation
Nov 7th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAre the stars reversing course? If evolutionary psychology is accepted in The Nation, perhaps the protracted attempt at denial finally is ending.… Read the rest
Dawkins on the Church
Nov 6th, 2002 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe damage religion does to the mind is worse than sexual abuse by the parish priest.… Read the rest