{"id":188304,"date":"2021-07-12T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=188304"},"modified":"2021-07-12T05:05:10","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T04:05:10","slug":"todays-science-deniers-what-we-owe-galileo-after-400-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/07\/todays-science-deniers-what-we-owe-galileo-after-400-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Science Deniers: What We Owe Galileo after 400 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 Jul 2021 – On June 22, 1633, a sick and beaten old man, on his knees, had to \u201cabjure, curse and detest\u201d his view that \u201cthe earth moves and is not the centre of the world.\u201d It was \u201cone of the most deplorable acts of the Inquisition\u201d, relevant to our times, according to astrophysicist Maria Livio in a new book. [i]\u00a0He\u2019s right, but not because of \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201calternative facts\u201d. Galileo\u2019s relevance hits much closer to home.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He thought abstractly. In his Discorsi <\/em>he imagines how a body would behave acted upon by no force whatsoever. It is hard to do because friction is ubiquitous, slowing down every motion. Galileo had \u201ca truly phenomenal power of abstraction\u201d, according to Livio. It was part of his science.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He had capacity for philosophy and art. Galileo did not see\u00a0<\/em>mountains on the moon. He saw blemishes and reasoned\u00a0<\/em>they were mountains. His artistic experience, with light and perspective, helped him. Galileo had an extraordinary grasp of Aristotle. And Galileo took poetry seriously.<\/p>\n

All this is in the book. But Livio does not follow Galileo. Worse, \u00a0he is unaware. He says there should not be \u201ctwo cultures\u201d: science and humanities. But there is more to the connection between art and science than simply declaring them connected. Art and science were torn apart\u00a0<\/em>by a vision of human beings. Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed<\/strong>, leader of Cuba\u2019s last war of independence, found the European view so damaging he declared it a greater danger to Latin American independence than US power itself.<\/p>\n

It undermines truth.<\/p>\n

Livio writes that Ren\u00e9 Descartes\u2019 individualism enabled the \u201cGalileo phenomenon\u201d, by which he means resistance to truth-denying convention.\u00a0 Descartes\u2019 individualism, though, was unscientific. He was great, true, but for his question \u2013 how to know? \u2014\u00a0 not his answer. Descartes and David Hume, also mentioned uncritically, were wrong. We study them for this, to go beyond, as Galileo with Aristotle.<\/p>\n

Descartes separated mind and body. Hume gave us the \u201cfact\/value distinction\u201d, saying we know what is <\/em>but not what ought to be. <\/em>No truth about value. They\u2019ve been refuted, whichis progress. Or it should be, if we expected truth from philosophy, which Galileo did. It means some philosophers were wrong, like some great scientists were wrong. Cuban philosopher, Ra\u00fal Roa<\/strong>, argued in 1953 that the uncritical acceptance of European liberalism, solidified by the rise of US global power, was \u201cthe world\u2019s gravest crisis,\u201d separating art and science, feelings and intellect, body from mind.<\/p>\n

Art gives truth. Toni Morrison\u2019s Beloved\u00a0<\/em>is a work of fiction. The story <\/em>is fiction. But when you feel Sethe\u2019s reality as a dehumanized slave, and you understand her choice to kill her children out of love, you get truth. It is true about slavery that it can make it reasonable <\/em>(not morally right, a different question) for a mother to kill her children out of love.<\/p>\n

It is a truth <\/em>about slavery, and colonialism and imperialism. It is why philosophers in the South, like Roa, and others \u2013 Juan Marinello, Jos\u00e9 Carlos Mari\u00e1tegui, Sor Juana In\u00e9s de la Cruz<\/strong> \u2013 did not split art and science. \u00a0They knew, as Galileo did, that sensitivity and imagination permit naming <\/em>what you see. Galileo did not see <\/em>mountains, and many, in a dehumanizing world, do not see <\/em>human beings, or some.<\/p>\n

Descartes\u2019 appealing (mistaken) picture presumes individuals are discreet entities, unified by some coherent story we pursue our entire lives, but which can never in fact be coherent. Dostoevsky knew this. Whatever his politics, Dostoevsky\u2019s understanding of the human condition was closer to Marx and Lenin than Descartes. It was because he observed human beings and he trusted intuitions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Galileo (second from right) showing the Doge of Venice how to use a telescope.<\/p><\/div>\n

He described his writing as \u201cexperimental\u201d.[ii]\u00a0He felt <\/em>ideas, but ideas \u201conly flash; and what\u2019s needed is full embodiment, which always comes about unexpectedly and suddenly\u201d. That is, he follows no script but instead, like a good improvisor, has a feel for direction, grounded in real life.<\/p>\n

Dostoevsky\u2019s characters are contradictory. They face contradictions. In The Idiot<\/em>, Ippolit, expecting death, makes a surprising declaration: \u201cSo be it! I will die looking straight into the well spring of force and life\u201d.He speaks truth. In fact, we all die \u201clooking straight into the well spring of force and life\u201d. We die day by day, moment by moment, as we live. It is the nature of existence: decay, decay, decay.<\/p>\n

We avoid this truth in ways Ippolit identifies and rejects. He decries \u201cChristian morality\u201d: \u201cthe happy thought that, essentially, it is even better that you\u2019re dying. (Christians like [the prince] always get to that idea: It\u2019s their favorite hobby horse).\u201d The \u201chobby horse\u201d is obsession with silver linings. Ippolit does not buy it. It is what Lenin called \u201cphilosophies of hope\u201d, dependence on invented futures.<\/p>\n

Lenin shouldn\u2019t be buried with Stalin.[iii]\u00a0In the heat of political organizing, preparing revolution, he urged revolutionaries toward Hegel, not Kant. He knew the value of abstract thinking, which is always integral to political organizing, to any <\/em>organizing, just as it\u2019s needed to identify mountains. Hegel was a relational thinker. Marx was influenced by Hegel although he turned his dialectic upside down.<\/p>\n

Lenin knew the nature of truth has practical consequences. According to Livio this very question concerned Galileo his whole life. But Livio doesn\u2019t address it. He tells us there is progress in the Humanities, as in science. But if he believed it, as Galileo did, he\u2019d ask \u2014 about Galileo\u2019s question \u2013 who got it right and who didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Marx got it more right than Descartes. Dostoevsky\u2019s characters, realistically, lack the mythical unity Lenin called \u201chocus pocus of priests\u201d, the real \u201copiate of the people\u201d, namely, a \u201cyearning for harmony\u201d of self and community that distracts from the reality of existence, which is contradictory. \u201cLes extremit\u00e9s se touchent\u201d,[iv]\u00a0Ippolit says. Unity of opposites.<\/p>\n

It matters to how we live in the world, or ought to. Ippolit declares that his impending death does not in fact distinguish him from the wild, rich, sensual Rogozhin who leads an \u201cimmediate, full\u201d life. He even declares that Rogozhin knows it. It is probably true. Most of us know, in quiet moments.<\/p>\n

Galileo believed that \u201cfacts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant observation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.\u201d This includes facts about truth and existence, which is causally interdependent. We can know from science, from philosophy that respects science, and from art showing reality as it is, even if it hurts.<\/p>\n

In Galileo\u2019s time, there was \u201calmost religious acceptance of [Aristotle\u2019s] general approach to science.\u201d Today, the \u201calmost religious acceptance\u201d is of Descartes\u2019 individualism and Hume\u2019s denial of moral and philosophical truths. Galileo was not one for such \u201chocus pocus\u201d. For this, his story matters now.<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[i]\u00a0Galileo and the Science Deniers<\/em>(Simon and Schuster 2020). See review here https:\/\/www.nyjournalofbooks.com\/book-review\/galileo-and-science-deniers<\/a><\/p>\n

[ii]\u00a0Cited in Richard Pevear, \u201cIntroduction\u201d, The Idiot <\/em>(Vintage 2002)<\/p>\n

[iii]\u00a0E.g. Tom\u00e1s Krautz, Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual biography<\/em>(NY: Monthy Review Press, 2015)<\/p>\n

[iv]\u00a0The extremes meet.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Susan E. Babbitt is associate professor in the Philosophy Department at Queen’s University, Kingston Ontario, Canada. She received a PhD at Cornell University with a dissertation on rationality. She is specialized in feminism, moral psychology, epistemology and the philosophy of science.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – globalresearch.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 22, 1633, a sick and beaten old man, on his knees, had to \u201cabjure, curse and detest\u201d his view that \u201cthe earth moves and is not the centre of the world.\u201d It was \u201cone of the most deplorable acts of the Inquisition\u201d, relevant to our times. Galileo\u2019s relevance hits much closer to home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":188306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[309,2589,107,304],"class_list":["post-188304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-galileo","tag-inquisition","tag-religion","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}