Bad Science Research Articles

Economics as Science and as Culture

Two aspects of contemporary society motivate this paper. First, is the recognition of a growing awareness that our society is in a period of major social-cultural change, and second is the recognition of science as the major institutionalized and organized basis of knowledge within society (Bell). The implication is that science can either impede or facilitate the change. The proposition that economics is both science and culture recognizes that economics as a discipline embodies society's traditional sense of historical purpose and values but that it does so in the name of science. Culture is used conceptually to designate society's common sense of purpose and meaning (Bell). We conceive of a cultural tradition as the embodiment of society's historical, experiential knowledge (Cassirer). The paper develops around the proposition that experiential knowledge is the basis of human meaning and purpose and is prior to, and takes precedence over, scientific knowledge as a ground for action and choice (Cassirer). The thrust of the paper is to clarify the distinction between cultural and scientific knowledge and, thus, the role of science, to give some historical background on how economics developed as both, and to develop some implications from this analysis regarding the future. This discussion necessitates considering science and the social sciences generally. Agricultural economics is an applied social science, and the implications will be expressed in terms of that discipline. One conclusion is that agricultural economics as now practiced is both bad science and uninformed culture. Culture, Science and History

The IQ Controversy and the Philosophy of Education

Although my two colleagues on this panel are bona fide philosophers who clearly have a bona fide interest in the ongoing controversy over IQ and the educability of children (which should mean that the topic requires no further defense), I nonetheless feel constrained to say a word in defense of our topic as a viable subject for discussion in a forum devoted to the Philosophy of Science. Perhaps this is because, as the representative of the discipline which created this mess, I fear you might associate me with it. You might feel that bad science is a bad subject for study by philosophers of science, and furthermore that anyone associated with such a discipline would be the last person to have anything intelligent to say about philosophy.While it is true that we do not need a philosophy of bad science, a kind of Gresham's Law seems sometimes to operate, in which bad science drives out the good.

A Rose for Behaviorism

Among the several classes of psychologists, behaviorists I would judge are least anxious to view their constructions in historical perspective. If it is good economics it is bad science; if it preserves the morale of a fledgling movement it falsifies the nature of the knowledge process. Neither constructs nor maggots are generated spontaneously, and while none would propose that the behaviorist is a sort of untutored pork butcher graduated to academia, the image, it must be confessed, does exude a certain charm. Nor is it unmitigatedly pejorative. Pork butchers too share in sense and sensitiviry. There is an esp-cially fine fellow of this calling in Garches, a small town just outside Paris, who with instinctive pre-Raphaelite flair decorates the pig rumps that hang from his stall with a boldly placed plastic rose. The purpose of this note is to add one small item to the reluctant history of behaviorism. It is a literary statement, published originally in 1920, by the sublime subjectivist Marcel Proust, of the reinforcing effect of reduction. The formulation appears in the first volume of Le CBtd de Guermantes (1954) , at a point in the narrative where Robert de has just effected one of his many final separations from Rachel his mistress. The relevant passage reads (my translation) : Saint-Loup suffered horribly from this falling out, but that description is too simple and falsifies the idea one ought to have of his pain. When he found himself alone, his only thought that of his mistress departed with the respect that she shown seeing him act so forcibly, the anxieties that he the first hours came to an end before the irreparable, and the cessation of an is a thing so sweet that the estrangement, once certain, took for him a little of the same sort of charm as a reconciliation would have had (D. 121) . .And again, arguing for the primacy of the emotion over the referent person, but in a work not appearing until 1925: Before that, when i t was still attached to her, we believed that our happiness depended on her being: it depended only on the termination of our anxiety (La Fugitive, 1954, p. 433). A writer is of his place and time. W e may as easily call correspondences between early literary and late scientific statements remembrances of things past as anticipations of those to come. In a discipline whose actual history is as old as man himself, the relative infrequence of self-conscious recollection is harshly restrictive. Proust holds not one but many roses for psychology, and in this he but epitomizes the situation of countless other artists. The science is not so far along in its development that it cannot be enhanced by these florations.

From the Dinnsenchas to Proust: The Folklore of Placenames in Literature

SINCE THE RENAISSANCE and the beginnings of modern critical history the eponym and the folk etymology have been in bad repute. Two centuries of scholars disputed over the manifest absurdities of the twins Romulus and Remus, their virgin birth from Mars as sire and the Vestal Rhea Sylvia, and their fostering by a she-wolf. However impressive the sculptures which made the wolf a milkgiving symbol of Rome's power and prosperity, the skeptics made Lupa into the nickname for a prostitute.1 It was the task of critics to clear the etymological debris away and to erase the myth. But the more we learn about both folklore science and onomastical science the more we realize that the full view includes the mythical history, the false conception, the poetry as well as the factual history and the art or science of etymology. The surer we are of the ground of our knowledge, the more secure we may be in recognizing that Wissenschaft demands the total view, and that the folklore, accurately recorded and rigorously interpreted, is a part of that view. Poetry may, of course, be made about bad science: Joyce's penchant for the occult and Milton's pre-Copernican universe were conscious choices, which recognized that man's imagination cannot be ignored by those who pretend to speak for his reason. Who would forsake the countless gods and heroes whose name becomes attached to the place which honors him, even to the point of sometimes inventing the eponymous name 1 The Table of Nations in Genesis x is full of instances:2 Gomer and the Cimmerians, Madai and the Medes, Canaan for the aborigines of a land still

Scientific Language and the Language of Religion

Scientific Language and the Language of Religion

The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr by Edward J. Carnell

BOOK REVIEWS 317 The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr. By EDWARD J. CARNELL. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951. Pp. ~50 with index. $3.50. The American school of neo-orthodox theology has appropriated the term realism for its doctrines. This school has been strongly influenced by modern liberalism as well as by the dialectical theology of Karl Barth on the Continent of Europe. Reinhold Niebuhr is at present its most influ~ ential representative. Mr. Carnell's book includes a clear presentation of the salient features of Niebuhr's thought and, at the same time, a very acute appraisal of it from the standpoint of early Reformation theology. The author devotes considerable attention to the anthropological and philosophical views which underlie Niebuhr's Ethics and Theology. Idealism and naturalism are sharply opposed to one another as impossible extremes, and intermediate positions, like that of Aristotle, are almost completely neglected. The anthropology which emerges from this dialectical discussion is strongly tinged with voluntarism. The will is " at the very center of human personality," and theoretical reason is not clearly distinguished from practical reason. (Human Nature, pp. 16 and ~60) Reason is viewed as a manifestation of freedom, the most fundamental and distinctively human trait. This freedom is almost unlimited and separates man from nature. The theory of natural law is rejected. " It raises ideology to a higher degree of pretension, and is another of the many illustrations in history of the force of sin in the claim of sinlessness." (Human Destiny, p. 253) Nevertheless, Niebuhr does admit "certain permanent norms such as monogamy which . . . are maintained not purely by Scriptural authority but by the cumulative experience of the race." (Human Nature, pp. 28~-3) He has a profound respect for " science," and often uses the supposed results of " science " to justify his sceptical doctrines. But for philosophy itself, especially metaphysics, he has no hope at all. This anti-philosophical philosophy runs through all of Niebuhr's work, and plays a crucial role in the development of his theological dialectic. Its key concepts are derived from an interpretation of the moral or " existential " experience of men, and the chasm which yawns between the ought and the is. According to Niebuhr, this chasm is sin, something for which we are responsible, and yet is ~at the same time inevitable. (Human Nature, ~50 ff.) It is caused by the persistent refusal of men to remain within their appointed limits. This may happen in two ways. On the one hand, men may hold to their unlimited freedom as an absolute, which leads to anarchy. On the other, they may identify the norm with some imperfect status quo, which leads to tyranny. "These twin evils ... represent the Scylla and Charybdis between which the frail bark of social justice must saiL ..." (Human Destiny, p. ~58) The only sound escape from this dilemma of moral experience lies in the recognition of a 318 BOOK REVIEWS transcendent, religious norm beyond history but sufficiently in history to clarify human possibilities and limitations. This dialectical tension between time and eternity is the heart of Biblical Christianity. According to Niebuhr, the interpretation of Biblical revelation is confronted by two dialectical extremes, liberalism which remains oblivious to the transcendent references and implications, and orthodoxy which takes th~m literally and reduces them to bad science and worse metaphysics. The truth is accessible only to an intermediate, dialectical position which takes Biblical concepts as symbols for what transcends all rational insight, and Biblical doctrines as myths. The truth is revealed, though in a confused and uncertain manner, in the inner, moral experience of men. The Bible must be interpreted in the light of this experience rather than vice versa. Thus the Jesus of history was a finite and imperfect creature. " It is not possible for any person to be historical and unconditioned at the same time." (Human Destiny, pp. 60-1) Christ is an abstract symbol. " Christ is the symbol both of what man ought to be and of what God is beyond man." (Beyond Tragedy, p. ~3) Any attempt to work out a coherent interpretation of the doctrine of the Incarnation is condemned as a metaphysical corruption of the purity of faith. " The logical nonsense is...

Quakes Have Bad Reputation but Science Finds Their Uses

Quakes Have Bad Reputation but Science Finds Their Uses