Scientism

Another example of scientism, from the comix "Non Sequitur." This illustrates why the translation of the term "Science," in the lexicon of some folks, is "Look how much smarter I am than you peasants."

Several points want making:

"vs. Everything else." Does that include haute cuisine, English lit, the Parthenon, history, mathematics, etc.? Everything?

"Answers." Is it really and truly only "answers" that are sought? Might not some folks be seeking insight? Understanding? Wisdom? Or does the whole world want only to be told answers.

"Simple but wrong." Are the two arrows the only options? Might not some answers be simple by right? Others, complex but wrong? How do we classify eugenics or phlogiston or natural selection? The last is eminently simple -- an interesting side-effect of death. Does that mean it's wrong? What about simple but wrong answers in history regarding Galileo, Bruno, Hypatia, or the Library of Alexandria? How does "simple but wrong" square with Ockham's Razor, which urges simplification upon us, or the development of scientific theories based on perfect elastic collisions, point-source gravitation, ideal gasses, etc.?

"Complex but right." Is science about being right or are its theories paradigmatically falsifiable and therefore mooted with the expectation that they will one day be superceded? What about complex conspiracy theories?

Winding road. Is it TOF's aging eyesight, or does that road less traveled still wind up going over the cliff in the distant background?

E Pluribus

The first proposal submitted to the Congress for the Great Seal of the United States:

It was described thusly:
Shield: "The shield has six Quarters... pointing out the Countries from which these States have been peopled."

Three British:
    Rose for England, Thistle for Scotland, Harp for Ireland

Three European:
    Fleur-de-lis for France, Belgic Lion for Holland, Imperial Eagle for Germany

The shield is bordered with the initials for "each of the thirteen independent States of America."

Crest: "The Eye of Providence in a radiant Triangle whose Glory extends over the Shield and beyond the Figures."

Motto: "E PLURIBUS UNUM"


Evidently the pluribus from which it was considered an unum to come were six countries, which then accounted for most of the inhabitants of the thirteen "independent states." Imagine what it would have to look like now. There had been a brief Swedish colony as well, but they seem to have all gone home after handing the keys over to the Dutch. The Spanish were down in Florida, but Florida wasn't part of the United States yet. No one apparently considered the Indians as being a pluribus contributing to the unum. The Irish at the time were primarily Irish Protestants, a/k/a "Scots-Irish," who were the descendants of the Scotsmen who had been imported to colonize Ulster. That there were Africans as well seems to have escaped their notice. 

TOF once described an unpainted painting in his Firestar series, titled E Pluribus. The painting, by one of Belinda's Kids -- "Karen Chong," I think -- replaced each star in the flag with a symbol of a people who had been among the pluribus, pretty much in order of arrival. Each was arranged as nearly star-like as feasible. The Oklahoma flag device for the Indians, an Igbo mask with crosses spears for the Africans, then (in eerie coincidence) the rose, thistle, shamrock, fleur de lie, doppeladler, and so on. The Tao for the Chinese, the Rising Sun for the Japanese, the spinning wheel for the Hindustanis, and so on. One of these days, TOF hopes someone will paint it.

The Reverse of the Seal, suggested by Franklin, was a depiction of Moses on the far bank of the Sea closing the waters upon Pharaoh and his army:

"Pharaoh sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his head and a Sword in his hand, passing through the divided Waters of the Red Sea in Pursuit of the Israelites: Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Cloud, expressive of the divine Presence and Command, beaming on Moses who stands on the shore and extending his hand over the Sea causes it to overwhelm Pharaoh. Motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God."


That motto was a special favorite of Jefferson. Jefferson's suggestion for the seal was:

The children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. For the reverse side of the seal: Hengist and Horsa, the two brothers who were the legendary leaders of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain.

which seems a bit more Anglo-oriented than the first. John Adams suggested the following:

The painting known as the "Judgment of Hercules," where the young Hercules must choose to travel either on the flowery path of self-indulgence or ascend the rugged, uphill way of duty to others and honor to himself.  

But the Committee of Three turned the job over to an heraldic expert, who produced the design described above. 
The design was tabled. 

Two more committees labored to create a design, neither of which was approved. Then finally, the redoubtable Charles Thomson took things in hand and added elements from the previous three attempts and produced the seal we have today. 

 

Oh the Humanity!

The forces of demography, we find, preponderantly favor the devout: rather than a bright idyll of rational humanism, secularism creates a culture of almost mystical triviality, and Homo secularis turns out to be a creature so devoid of any sense of purpose that he can scarcely be stirred to reproduce.
-- David B. Hart

It's old news now, or maybe it was always old news, but Playboy claims it will not run nudie pix any more. It was done in by its own success. The Revolution had so commodified women's bodies that what the skin mag sold can now be gotten for free in every corner of the Internet. Why pay for the cow when the milk is free? as guys used to ask in a different context.

Oh, of course, there were the articles and the short stories and the interviews and profiles, but no matter how many claimed that they bought the magazine for those reasons, that was not the cause of its circulation figures; for why should the circulation have plummeted so drastically, given that the articles, short stories, interviews and profiles were still available.

Hefner described the "Playboy Man" in his first issue:

‘If you’re a man between the ages of 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for you. We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex …’

Oh, yeah. The guys who read playboy asked the girls up to their rooms to talk about Nietzsche and Picasso. But these, like jazz, are now as passe as that phonograph. Or maybe that really was the demographic: those '50s swingers who paved the way for the '60s with their perpetual adolescence, their faux sophistication, and their mid-life crises. Once that generation was off the stage, the whole scene became old-fashioned overnight. Mood music? Really? 

Hefner was selling a product and women, along with the cars and electronics whose ads filled his pages, were simply another commodity.  

Now, the interviews and stories and such that it ran really were quite good; better than the sniggering cartoons and photo-arrays that carried them. And even the girlie pix were a cut above the norm for that sort of thing. There was some attempt at composition, and the women were shown as clean-cut all-American girls-next-door, assuming the girl next door was a bit slutty. This was the era of Gigi, Lili, Lolita, and Daddy Long Legs. Not to mention Heinlein's Door into Summer. So it was clearly an epoch of older men in love with girls and so the initial audience.

(TOF was misfortunate, girl-next-door-wise: next door to him was a field overgrown with weeds and an elderly couple of Protestant missionaries who seized and kept whatever baseballs were hit into their yard. The nearest girl to TOF's age in the neighborhood was on the next block, and she was his first cousin.)

Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, writes in valediction:

On some level, the image of manhood and sexuality that Hefner was selling was always contradictory. You don’t get to be a cultured and refined modern man without exercising judgment and self restraint, but the sexual revolution that Hefner helped kickstart encouraged men and women to abandon the very inhibitions that helped make sex so alluring in the first place.

And so no wonder that the libertine ultimately ends with a magazine without nekkid wimmin in it. 

Much is Hereby Explained

The Numbers Racket

A Taxonomy

h/t Gary Armitage

Coincidence? We Think Not

Visitors from the stars???  Lots of aliens visiting New Hampshire these days.

h/t Gary Armitage