Author: Traditional Logic, Classical Rhetoric. Editor: Classical Teacher magazine. Provost: Memoria College. Podcast: Classical, Et Cetera. Memoria Press
Kentucky, USA
Joined January 2009
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"History is to social identity what memory is to individual identity."—Wilfred McClay, "History as a Way of Knowing"
Everyone is allowed one mistake.
I was talking to Wendell Berry one day, and I asked him who was better, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, and he said, "Dostoevsky." You were there when I asked him, if I recall, @MartinCothran.
In a fable there is an explicit intention of the author to illustrate a meaning, oftentimes very explicitly (e.g., Aesop). If the fable is competently written and the meaning is on the surface (or near it), as is the case in most fables, then the meaning should be clear to the reader, and if the reader doesn't see it, it is a problem with the reader.
Would this be true of a fable?
My opinion is that an author sets out to tell a story. And if it is really a story (with a setting, characters, plot, and conflict), then it will have meaning. If it doesn't have meaning, then it's not a story.
"We can speak of something called the 'human condition', whereas it is unlikely that tortoises brood under the shelter of their shells on the condition of being a tortoise. Tortoises are in this sense remarkably similar to postmodernists, to whom the idea of the human condition is equally alien. Language, in other words, allows us not only to get a fix on ourselves, but to conceive of our situation as a whole."—Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life, p. 13
I think you're misinterpreting her "pulling a string to open a sack of chicken feed" remark. What she was deriding is the idea that the theme or meaning of the story could be detached from the story, not that it doesn't have one.
I was talking with Wendell Berry one day while he was sitting in the school lobby waiting to pick up one of his grandchildren after school. I noticed he was reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. I asked him what he thought. He said, "Ohhhh, it's okay."
"...These were exactly the areas to which men and women had traditionally turned when they inquired about the sense and value of their existence: love, religious faith, and the preciousness of one's kin and culture—Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life, p. 21
"The genius of Greece evolved and gave the world two principles of life, the love of knowledge and the love of beauty...These principles...were as leaven to the Latin race...The Christian Fathers, with other classically educated men, recognized them."—Henry Osborn Taylor, The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, p. 107
"In the foundations in particular, physicists have hit on the rather obvious simple fix of producing theories that simply have no relation to the real world and then discussing them forever, claiming that paper production counts as progress in some sense. I'm not having it and neither should you. This nonsense needs to stop."
I thought it'd be a good idea to do a quick summary of the points I have made about the problems in the foundations of physics, just to make it more difficult for the offended physicists on X to pretend misunderstanding me:
(A) The problem with the foundations of physics is that physicists continue to use methods that demonstrably do not work. They have made tens of thousands of so-called "predictions" for new particles, forces, extra dimensions etc etc, that were simply wrong. You can check this yourself. The literature is full of this nonsense. It has come to the point where a "prediction" in this field no longer means anything. It's embarrassing. And they're not doing anything about it.
I have NOT said that the problem is that it takes them a long time to make progress. It is true of course, that that theory development in the field has basically stalled since the completion of the standard model. But who is to say whether this is just because the questions are difficult.
If you think I have said that it is taking too long, you are confusing me with someone else.
I have said instead that the problem is that they are using methods that evidently do not work. And that they do not update these methods is hugely worrisome because it demonstrates a failure of science to self-correct. It shows that the self-correction in this community is broken.
(B) I have been very clear with saying that the problem is theory development in the foundations of physics. Not the foundations of physics per se (clearly experiment has made progress), not physics per se (clearly there is more to physics than the foundations), but theory development in the foundations of physics.
(C) In my book Lost in Math, I explain that historically the method that has worked best (for theory development in the foundations) has been requiring mathematical consistency. This is why I argue physicists in these areas should prioritize solving problems of mathematical consistency and/or inconsistency with experiments. Examples: quantum gravity, measurement problem in quantum physics, dark matter. This is not an exhaustive list.
(D) I did not say that mathematical consistency is either sufficient or necessary for a successful new theory. I made a much weaker point, which is that historically it has worked well. Evidence speaks for it.
Obviously just because a theory is mathematically consistent doesn't mean it also correctly describes nature. Meaning: Physicists must also make sure their theory can, and will be tested. If they work on a theory without thinking about how to experimentally test it, that is not scientific.
(E) People who haven't read my book sometimes think I say physicists use too much maths. This could not be farther from the truth. I argue they need to take maths more seriously.
(F) Because of the above, I have repeatedly said that string theory has a good motivation. If you think I am a big critic of string theory, again, you are confusing me with someone else.
(G) I have said that while these issues seem specific to the foundations of physics, they are symptoms of a bigger underlying problem that affects all of academia, which is that scientists get rewarded for producing papers that they themselves call progress. Progress in academia has no tangible external measure, hence they are optimizing irrelevant goals. It's a systemic problem that has been much discussed by sociologists and economists and many, if not most, academics are to some extent aware of it.
In the foundations in particular, physicists have hit on the rather obvious simple fix of producing theories that simply have no relation to the real world and then discussing them forever, claiming that paper production counts as progress in some sense. I'm not having it and neither should you. This nonsense needs to stop.
(H) I have been writing and speaking about this for about 20 years. Indeed it's how I got to know @ericweinstein , because I organized a conference about this a long time ago. The idea that either of us is going on about this because it is somehow "popular" contradicts facts. Rather what has happened is that at last at least the more informed public is paying attention to what we have been pointing out for a long time is a huge problem.
I agree with this with the proviso that things labeled "art" which forsake beauty in favor of shock value or to score political points shouldn't come under this admonition.
Art shouldn’t come with caution tape. “The trigger warnings before ‘Titus Andronicus’ would be longer than the play,”
wsj.com/opinion/free-express…
