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STRUCTURAL_FAILURES

                                                  January  9, 2006
The history of
attempts at            FUSILE_LINK
bridging the two
cultures is          And there
not encouraging...   have been        CONSILIENCE_PRIZE
                     many of them.
  Newton kicked                                               GOLDEN_SPIRIT
  Goethe's ass.
                                     "Flaubert the
                                     anti-romantic writes to
                                     Louise Colet: 'The more
                                     Art develops, the more
                                     scientific it will be,
                                     just as science will         Literary
                                     become more artistic."       realism
                                     The more scientific, the     itself
                                     less the personality of      an attempt
                                     the artist matters; or       at infusing
         One of Bruce Sterling's     as Flaubert says about       art with
         more clever short           writing _Bovary_: 'No        scientific
         stories is about a kind     lyricism, no comments,       values...
         of Gonzo Science where      the author's personality
         personal involvement is     absent.'"
         no longer forbidden.
                                      -- Wylie Sypher,
         A classic paper                 "Rococo to Cubism
         in the genre is                  in Art and              "wily
         titled something                 Literature" (1960)      cypher"?
         like "My Grand
         Fun in Decoding                      (A book from          Come on.
         the Lymphatic                        the free box
         System Regeneration                  out front of
         Mechanism"                           "Know Knew Books"
                                              in Palo Alto.)




Flights of fancy,
poetic license,
conceit...

Run contrary to the
extreme precision demanded
in scientific concepts.

   Yes, the theortician can -- even must --
   follow leaps of intuition, but if
   these can not be brought back home and
   grounded in the minutiae of observation
   and calculation, then the theory is
   abandoned.



   Science is not without
   the creative impulse.

   Perhaps it's the humanities
   that's lacking?  It has no      There's no way
   effective catabolism.           for the flight
                                   of fancy to       The poet may
     No way to be wrong,           run aground.      always make
     means no way to be right.                       both choices.

  So: the integration,
  the "consilience" can not
  be concilitory?

    The humanities must surrender
    to scientific rigor, to be
    reborn?


Or could it be that the technical
is also in need of some assault...

An embrace of serendipity,
A greater respect for intuition?

An oft made claim: There's
a need for science to
develop a sense of ethics,
a "social conscience"...

But that notion has been
around long enough for us
to see problems with it.                  Currently, many fear that
                                          environmental scientists
       The corruption of objectivity,     are themselves fear-mongering...
       (or any approximation of it).
                                          There have been too many
                                          cases of exaggeration,
                                          attempts at manipulating
                                          the masses into doing
                                          the right thing.

                                          So the scientists
                                          are not trusted      Corporate
                                          to be scientific.    PR flacks
                                                               are awarded
                                                               equivalent
                                                               credibility.


                                        (August 20, 2008)

  Were science incorporated into
  the realms of religion or poetry,
  it might make them stronger,
  but it would very likely make          MONKEYTRAPS
  itself weaker.






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