GODS AND EARTH GIANTS

Caption: Seamus McGoogle is a keen student of the science of hummingbirds.

It's interesting that some of the current debates on the nature of science and knowledge have ancient roots.

Consider the following questions: does science give objective knowledge about the world that is certain, universal and necessary? Or are all it's results provisional and tentative?

Other ways of putting it might consist of asking whether "laws" of science are discovered or made up? Is it about what is true or what seems to work best to account for experience?

This one goes all the way back to Plato, and probably farther. Plato, inspired by his teacher Socrates, believed that universal knowledge of truth was possible beyond the realm of senses or opinion. His main enemies were the sophists, traveling teachers of reasoning and rhetoric, who tended to be relativistic and pragmatic.

One such was Protagoras, who said "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." Plato was not amused.

In his dialogue The Sophist, Plato, through the character of the Stranger, describes this controversy as a war between gods and giants:

There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of essence...

Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body...

And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging concerning these matters.

Plato, of course, thought he was on the side of the gods. It looks like the earth giants have won a few lately though.

SPEAKING OF GIANTS, congratulations to Jean Edward Smith, professor of history at El Cabrero's alma mater, Marshall University. Smith has won kudos for his recent biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt--peace be unto him. The title is FDR and the publisher is Random House. It has gained many positive reviews around the country.

Dr. Smith was quoted in the Marshall Magazine as saying "Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt stand head and shoulders about the 40 other men who (have) occupied the White House. Washington founded the country, Lincoln preserved it and Roosevelt revived it." Amen.

In El Cabrero's childhood home, it was less risky to make irreverent religious jokes than to dis the Roosevelts. It is now safer for my (legally) adult kids to do the same in my presence.

SPEAKING OF MARSHALL, the same issue of the magazine has an interesting article about how public investments in research at Marshall is starting to (literally) pay dividends. This is yet another example if any is needed of the vital role that public investments in education, research and infrastructure can lead to a high road approach to economic development--in contrast to the low roaders who want to cut these investment, eliminate the minimum wage, and eliminate regulations that protect workers from injury and death on the job.

NATTERING NABOBS OF NEGATIVISM. On a similar note, here's an op-ed by yours truly from yesterday's Gazette about the good things that are happening in WV that can get and keep us on the high road.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE TRAIL OF THE HUMAN SERPENT

Caption: This is him.

This week, in addition to whatever else comes up, El Cabrero has been pondering how people make sense of the world and the uncertainty of our knowledge. If this is your first visit, please scroll down to the earlier entries.

Professor James Hall of the University of Richmond comes up with quite a list of the different ways we try to gain knowledge of the world in his Teaching Company course "Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason."

His list includes experience, memory, association, pattern recognition, reason, invention, and experimentation. None of these are infallible or completely reliable ways of getting at The Truth, although in combination they might get us closer to it.

One reason it's hard to get there is that we can't step outside of ourselves. We're creatures not only of reason but of passion and interest and we see the world as we are rather than as it is. As William James put it, "The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything."

There are two extreme schools of thought on the subject of truth these days. One is that of the post-modernists, who are sometimes kind of irritating. They hold that there is no truth, only different perspectives and narratives.

The other school is that of the authoritarians, who are sometimes kind of homicidal. They think Truth is their sole possession.

I try to compromise. My theory is that there may well be such a thing as Truth but we can't quite get to it from here, though we may get closer. Final truths are elusive. This may be just as well--we probably couldn't handle it.

WEST VIRGINIA RANT. Here's the lead of a rant I posted yesterday in WV Blue:

Is anyone else out there as tired as El Cabrero and the critters at Goat Rope Farm re of the ceaseless barrage of commercials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about what a terrible legal climate we have here?

They love to harp on a survey of the corporation-backed American Tort Reform Association that claims to show that WV is a "judicial hellhole." Most likely, they surveyed members, corporate defendants and their attorneys.

Scientifically, methinks it's almost as good as asking eighth graders whether algebra sucks and using the results as a basis to evaluate that branch of mathematics. Here's an evaluation of the "judicial hellhole" rankings from The Center for Justice and Democracy.

The rest is here.

DYING TO WORK. The AFLCIO recently released the latest edition of Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, which covers deaths and injuries in the workplace for 2005 (the latest year for which full data is available). The good news is that the number of deaths declined. In 2005, 5,734 workers died from workplace injuries, compared with 5,764 in 2004. However, the number of injuries went up, as did fatalities among Hispanic and foreign-born workers.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"CAUSE I SAID SO" AND A GUIDE TO SLASHING POVERTY

Caption: That's Venus' answer to everything.

This week El Cabrero is musing over how people explain the world (and other stuff too). If this is your first visit, please scroll down to the earlier entries.

It's really easy to say x causes y. We do it all the time, even when it's a bit of a stretch.

Philosophers have racked their brains over this topic from the beginning. Aristotle thought everything had four causes: material (what it's made from), formal (the shape it takes or what something essentially is, sort of), efficient (what made it happen) and final (the purpose of it all, assuming there is one, which he did). Unless you are a hardcore Thomist, that's kind of out of style these days.

The 18th century Scottish philospher David Hume thought that we just attribute causality to things because of habit. As in, we see one thing happening after another and assume the first caused the latter.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant didn't like that much. He argued that our minds are hardwired to see things in terms of causality. The downside was that we can only know the world of appearances, not the things in themselves. I think I'm with him.

Here's the Goat Rope version: before we can say with a high degree of confidence that one thing causes another, we need three things:

*First, the cause and effect have to be associated with each other (otherwise, we wouldn't think about it).

*Second, Aristotle aside, the cause has to happen before the effect.

Pretty easy so far. Here's the kicker:

*Third, we have to rule out everything else. And that's easier said than done.

Suppose I attribute bad driving in a neighboring state (let's call it Ohio) to the eating of French (or Freedom) fries. I'll bet most people there have not only eaten French fries, but they ate them at some point before they drove. So far so good.

(Dear Ohio cousins, I'm just using this as an example, I swear! I know you guys have a similar theory about drivers in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.)

Hold the Nobel Prize...I'm stuck at number 3. There might be something else going on besides Freedom fries (like the negative effects of flat land) causing the problem. Back to the drawing board...

Finally, even if you think you have all three, there's always the possibility you missed something and may have to revise your conclusions later.

REDUCING POVERTY BY HALF. The Center for American Progress has released a new report called "From Poverty to Prosperity," which suggest a number of concrete steps aimed at slashing poverty, which has increased each year since 2000.

Many of the recommendations have solid evidence to support them. Steps include raising the minimum wage, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and early childhood education, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, child care assistance for low income families, making higher education more affordable, and more.

A BELATED THANK YOU TO WV IRAQ VETERAN JESSICA LYNCH for speaking truth about power at congressional hearings earlier this week!

BONUS FEATURE ON REPTILIAN SEX CHANGES. In case you run out of things to talk about today, here's a conversation starter. Did you know that female bearded dragon lizards turn into males when exposed to extreme temperatures while still in their eggs? Me neither.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED