Tag Archives: science

Buht Wat Abowt Teh MENS?!

While perusing the Princeton University Press Anthropology catalog, I came across a book that induced such an extreme Liz Lemon eye-roll that I’m just now getting un-stuck.

Orange book cover with a white man walking - left half black and white, right half color

This may as well be called Old White Men: In Case You Forgot, We’re Really Important! Sure, we may have power over the entire species, but when you consider our deep-seated anxiety about our perceived dwindling power and cultural relevance, we don’t feel quite as on top as we assume we should be. Our supremacy is the natural order of things, after all!

The description of the book includes the phrase “how older men may have contributed to the evolution of some of the very traits that make us human.” UGH.

Old White Men: the unmarked category BECAUSE SCIENCE.

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Filed under Contemporary, Gender Trouble, Power

Positivism, History, and Optimism: NPR’s 13.7 on the Endurance of Scientific Knowledge

“Religious repression and wars pass, but scientific knowledge remains.”

So goes theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser’s argument in a recent opinion piece on NPR’s 13.7 Cosmos & Culture blog. To which I thought:

Not necessarily.

Knowledge can be suppressed, corrupted, or simply lost. In one of the latter (lesser?) books of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, a character describes the problem of chronicling millennia of human history. In short, you can’t preserve everything. Choices are always made. Topics fall out of vogue. Those in power can produce countering knowledge, or bury unfavorable information. Even the most meticulous archivists, following the most stringent of professional standards, are guided by prevailing cultural assumptions about what is worth saving.

Later in the blog post, Gleiser writes:

“Kepler witnessed the state collapsing around him, and felt helpless. He couldn’t pick up a sword to fight, for he was a hero of ideas and not of bloody battles. Instead, he looked up. And so did Galileo. And what they saw, and their diligence in pursuing the truth, changed the world forever.”

How can one make such an eternal claim? For someone who lauds the scientific method and the “objective” power of observation so heartily, this is quite the leap of faith.

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Filed under Contemporary, Historical, Media, Power

Poetic Interlude: Past Particle

A tale from the end of the Universe

The last particle
Torn asunder

Drifted farther

From anything
Before

Shredding

Silent

No companion
To share its dissipation

Not even consciousness
Remained to witness

Ultimate solitude

Preceded nothing


Inspired by this news story from August, 2015.

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Filed under Wordplay