Sorry to interrupt this thread, which has become very erudite recently (less than 24 hours ago it was about toilet problems), but I've seen a preview of the Dawkins TV programme which starts on Monday and it seems very disappointing. It's all about exposing fortune tellers, mind readers, water diviners etc as having no legitimate scientific basis. All old stuff that won't surprise anyone. It doesn't seem to be about religion at all. Perhaps a series that attacked religion would be very hard to sell to the USA.

I'll let you know when I have my new copy (probably discarded the old one along the way). I agree with you about pop science literature. Apart from Penrose, Deutsch, Smolin and one or two others most of it seems to be written to order rather than for any good reason. I certainly agree with Penrose that it's better to have the equations in the book even if some won't understand them, than try to explain them in words which is frequently done in a way that nobody will understand. Large parts of his Road to Reality sail right over my head (and I do know a bit about maths and physics) but I'm still glad they're there.

To George: both you and Richard have strongly advocated the work of a very hard-line right wing neo-con scientist, David Deutsch. Now, whilst I don't believe someone's work necessarily simply mirrors the rest of their thought, I rarely believe that such things are totally independent, though sometimes they can come into a contradictory relationship (as for example, with Schoenberg). I'd be surprised if Deutsch saw his scientific and political work as entirely separate, any more than Popper did (to name another hard-line right-winger who has received advocacy here, and unsurprisingly is backed by Deutsch against Kuhn). But I'm prepared to read Deutsch if you can convince me that his scientific work, and the ideologies contained therein, are not simply at one with the rest of his politics (I wouldn't believe for a moment that they, or anyone else's scientific or other work, would be 'apolitical'). What do you think?

I do also bear in mind that very often those scientists (and historians, and some involved in other professions) who receive the most prominence and support are often those whose work and ideas best accord with the interests of those in power. Is this the case with Deutsch, or not?

Yes I do! especially about the sloppiness about some of the writing and all of the editing (though I've seen worse editing than that, for example James Harley's book on Xenakis for which one is expected to pay an "academic" price and which has the highest density of typos I've ever seen. But enough of this offtopic rambling). Still, Penrose writes his books becaise he wants people to get involved in what he thinks are the important issues in fundamental science, and in so doing is trying to raise the level of sophistication of the discourse, a praiseworthy aim I think.

You 'avin' a go at my CD buying, Tony?

Is there a "not" missing from your first sentence, Ian? I never thought you were criticizing any particular sections but society in general. Real values are lacking, I think, but it's getting everyone to agree on what those values should be that's the problem. And we should always look to ourselves and not just blame "them", whoever they may be. I read an article in the Guardian (yes, the Guardian!) written by someone who wanted Wales to be a self-contained, pure country free of the evil influences of tabloid culture imposed on it by England (and south Wales, just to show how parochial it was). What nonsense. They buy the newspapers and watch the TV in Wales as much as anywhere else. They're not forced to do it. It's always someone else's fault.

Here's something about Dawkins and his new TV programme.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,2145124,00.html

OK, I will give it a try at some point. Can you not see what I might mean if I say that 'scientific' views which directly affect conceptions of the possibilities (and permissibilities) of knowledge, and of possibilities for how things can/might occur in the world, have strong political implications (as they clearly do with Popper)? Issues of computation and evolution, for example, are certainly politically charged matters.

That is not and never has been my wish. I read stuff by right-wing historians where the political implications of their work is much more immediate, and sometimes this work can be of a higher level of scholarship to some of that by liberal or socialist historians (there's some really terrible propagandistic history out there by left-wing historians, though there is by right-wing ones as well). Though ultimately the work is often limited when it refuses to even countenance the value of such things as social history, labour history, women's history, black history (all within the realms of their particular subject of enquiry). I would advocate people do read some of Roger Scruton's work as well, at least that on philosophy (I've probably said this before, but I'd recommend his Short History of Western Philosophy way over Russell's). And I read poetry of Eliot and Pound and Yeats, at least two of whom had fascist sympathies, and the other was a thoroughly nasty and arch-reactionary individual. But, I do think in all of these and other cases the politics and the work cannot be wholly separated, and a true appreciation of the work and its wider meanings entails some degree of apprehension of the ideologies involved.

Now, with science, I find intensely irritating and spurious the sort of arrogant attitudes perpetuated by some (though by no means all) scientists, and their advocates, which says something along the lines of 'everyone else deals with pure speculation, with pie-in-the-sky theories, whereas we deal with hard facts, evidence, and objective truths'. I'm not saying anyone here is saying that, but it is an attitude one comes across often, and is particularly used in order to denigrate the humanities, not least philosophy, which in Britain is not taught in schools and still treated with a large degree of disdain. And that is certainly the attitude of the group called 'The Edge' which Deutsch belongs to. They lay claim to a 'third culture' which supposedly sublates C.P. Snow's 'two cultures', but not least on account of their sneering attitudes towards literary intellectuals (not unlike attitudes one finds towards musicologists) I find this hard to believe - I'd be interested to see any evidence that shows that they also learn from the developments in literary scholarship and cultural theory in the last few decades. As well as the fact that I do not at all accept the empiricist assumptions that underlie such a philosophy of science, I also think there is a machismo entailed in a 'scientistic' attitude that has a contempt towards such things as emotion, sexuality, social issues, and other murkier things that resist scientific models; as I said earlier in this thread, that attitude towards science is one deeply embroiled with domination and subjugation, and has little time for human values. And Dawkins fits this model all-too-well, also; his idle and cavalier denigration of vast theological traditions of which he clearly knows little (and I'm not saying that I do, either), and which have had profound effects upon the whole development of knowledge in the Western world, the Arab world, the Far East, and elsewhere, and crazy implications that somehow if we only shared his fundamentalist faith in science, most of the world's problems would go away, warrants very little respect at all.

This is not to denigrate science, just a scepticism towards some of the more over-exalted claims made for it. In the broadest sense, it encompasses a particular spectrum of modes of enquiry which by no means supplant or supercede all others. I'm interested to know what Deutsch tells us that has some meaning in terms of our lives, in terms of the world around us, and so on, whatever else might make it relevant other than to other scientists in the same field?