Actually, I've seen some VERY AWESOME procreating machines. Living in Florida, the beaches are FULL of them. Of course, if I was to get to know any of them, I am sure they would turn out to be more intelligent than many of the folk h ....
Well, let me just say, I love women. I put them on a pedestal. They are evolution's ultimate pinnacle. My Wife knows just how much I love her, respect her and need her. We are perfect together. She greatly admires the male forms walking up and down the beach, too. We're people watchers. We're members of the top of the food chain (at the present) and proudly admire all our achievements. We also credit ALL of those achievements to Humans and our own abilities ... not to some mythological father/son/ghost conglomerate creature.
Well that's convenient, then. Gould's dead, so I wouldn't get very far arguing with him
(And the emergent properties are defined not by the constituent atoms, but how the atoms interact in the water molecule.) Gould wasn't saying reductionism is never useful, but as the guiding principle in uniting science and the humanities, it's inadequate.
I picked up on your water example because it's the only real concrete thing I've noticed you mention, and yet it seems such an odd choice because it demonstrates the opposite of what you appeared to want it to. The best way to understand the properties of liquids is reductionism.
Reductionism gets an unfairly bad rap, I feel. Every now and again you come across someone announcing that it's a thing of the past, and people who cling to reductionist ideas are intellectually unreconstructed relics, but it seems to me that reductionism remains the way forward. The properties of any complex system are always the product of the properties of its constituent parts (or as you put it more accurately, generally the way these constituent parts interact).
Now how reductionist we want to go depends on the level of explanations we're seeking for any phenomenon. It's not necessary to discuss the behaviour of individual atoms of H2O to explain the functioning of a steam engine - you can just rely on known properties of water, but if you want to explain why water has those properies, reductionism is the only way to do so.
Aside from this one substantive claim, which seems to be wrong, everything else appears to be a vague lament about modern culture.
Okay, fine, calm down. You were kidding, you were exaggerating, stuff had brackets, whatever. Let's move on.
Except I was not kidding. I was not exaggerating. Nothing was in brackets.
So, again, are you deliberately misrepresenting my position or can you not comprehend what you read?
When I say "dehumanizing," I mean degrading and trivializing human experience with machine fantasies that objectify us.
Takes you out of that special place you seem to need? Makes you less than supreme in the universe? Puts you right down there on the same level as all other life on this planet? Doesn't grant your chemical-filled apebag enough special superior status? Makes you feel sad?
It has been instrumental in helping humanity eradicate disease and explore space, but it has also represented a tool whereby humanity has made war more efficient and oppression more comprehensive. It's a tool that serves the powerful in helping perpetuate their power.
Oh, I'm sure a whole lot of other tools were used by people to oppress each other, barbed wire, electric fences, bibles. All science did was find out that there was such a thing as electricity. Human ingenuity and greed took care of the rest.
Blame the technician, not the torturer.
...science: it's an answer for everything, it's the way and the truth and the light, and no one should say anything bad about it.
Finally! Now you begin to understand.
Gould was a celebrated scientist, and he wrote very authoritatively on its historical and cultural context. It's too bad you don't have a nuanced enough understanding of the phenomenon to appreciate what Gould wrote.
He was great, wasn't he? I especially liked The Mismeasure of Man. He opened a lot of eyes with that one. But, your idolization of Gould has blinded you to the fact that, in some things, like his non-overlapping magisteria, he was very wrong. Look at Dr. Tim Hunt. Even the great minds of the age harbor some really bad ideas. Gould was wonderful. He was also wrong.
That aside, it's this mistaken idea that's causing all the problems. You, like all your ancestors, proved to themselves how special they were by creating a god to create them. After all, only a god could create someone as special as you.
How do people let themselves make up fake explanations for other peoples' motives like this, and pronounce it all so dogmatically too?
However, you also missed what I said: I thought humanity special before I was a Christian. God didn't tell me.
I was not kidding. I was not exaggerating. Nothing was in brackets.
So, again, are you deliberately misrepresenting my position or can you not comprehend what you read?
And again, why are you being such an overbearing nutcase who's desperate to get me to admit to something I never disputed in the first place? Human bodies are made of biochemicals, we share ancestry with all life on Earth, and our knowledge has nothing to do with divine revelation. I've never said otherwise.
Takes you out of that special place you seem to need? Makes you less than supreme in the universe? Puts you right down there on the same level as all other life on this planet? Doesn't grant your chemical-filled apebag enough special superior status? Makes you feel sad?
Creeeepy.
your idolization of Gould has blinded you to the fact that, in some things, like his non-overlapping magisteria, he was very wrong.
No, he wasn't. All he did was make a distinction between things that are scientific matters and ones that aren't. You yourself said that the scientific fact that we're ape-shaped bags of chemicals doesn't hinder us from constructing meaning for ourselves and our society. The chemicals are the scientific part. The meaning isn't.
This part of the issue is not your view, but your misrepresentation of mine, remember?
Um, okay. So this isn't about me, or even about Gould, whose ideas we're ostensibly discussing in this thread. It's all about you and your perceived misrepresentation issues.
Since you're so sensitive about misrepresentation, can I ask where I ever said the human is "supreme in the universe"? Or is misrepresentation okay when you do it?
You can go argue that last part with a psychologist.
I don't think I'm the one that needs a psychologist, amigo.
Since you're so sensitive about misrepresentation, can I ask where I ever said the human is "supreme in the universe"? Or is misrepresentation okay when you do it?
Since you're so sensitive about misrepresentation, can I ask where AZPaul ever said that you ever said the human is "supreme in the universe"? Or is misrepresentation okay when you do it?
can I ask where I ever said the human is "supreme in the universe"? Or is misrepresentation okay when you do it?
Again with the reading comprehension. I did not say that was your view. I was asking if that was your motivation. You miss all those question marks? It was interrogatory not statement.
When I say "dehumanizing," I mean degrading and trivializing human experience with machine fantasies that objectify us.
Takes you out of that special place you seem to need? Makes you less than supreme in the universe? Puts you right down there on the same level as all other life on this planet? Doesn't grant your chemical-filled apebag enough special superior status? Makes you feel sad?
In comprehending the written word you have to pay attention to punctuation. It is very important. And I did this because, to me anyway, it is important to ask rather then to put words in peoples' mouths.
I don't think I'm the one that needs a psychologist, amigo.
I don't think you do either, amigo. But when it comes to meanings for human beings you might want to talk to one about what they do, how they do it and whether their discipline constitutes a science.
Creeeepy.
™ Version 4.2
