Thoughts Inspired by a Cosmologist, Hooray

Science is a discourse and a method. There is nothing else like it. Its fundamental premise is that we humans can understand the physical universe through observation with the help of math. It has made marvelous progress. There is nothing humans have ever done that is more exciting. But let’s not let our enthusiasm run away with us. That essential premise has never been proved. The progress is phenomenal. We’ve gone so much farther than it seems we could have hoped when the enterprise began (though we did have that comprehensive hope). And there have been times when we thought were almost there, with Newton, with Einstein. But the scope of what we do not know keeps getting clearer and larger. The real likelihood of vast realms of being that we cannot understand grows, so that now we instead of saying “we’ll get there some day,” say “how amazing it is that we can know as much as we can.” What banged in the big bang? What exactly is this dark matter? How will we ever know anything that cannot be described by math?
Science is a discourse and a method. It should not be an ideology or a religion. It excludes a priori what cannot be brought into its orbit, God and spirit and soul. It gives no testimony against these concepts. I heard a Harvard cosmologist become verbally entangled when she attempted to exclude beauty as a principle of truth. She was right to exclude beauty, since beauty comes from a realm of being outside the realm of science. It is a religious or a purely evolutionary concept. There may be no such thing as beauty is science understands “thing.”
But there also may be. This cosmologist dismissed what (it seems to me) she has no time for. The demands of science are enormous both professionally and personally. Every scientist knows the breakthrough he/she is working for, dedicated to, may not happen in his/her lifetime. May not happen at all. Every scientist knows his/her theories may be dead ends or may lead where experiment and observation cannot go. It is necessary then to dismiss God and beauty with a wave. Wave them off. We all benefit from this work, though in waving off these things it seems to me the scientist reduces the quest to the status of a game, a very expensive way to satisfy nothing more profound than curiosity. (Yes, we know there will be effects, from GPS to nuclear weapons, and the discoveries will change the world, but it is quest is never for the effects. The opening of Pandora’s box, the revelation of Goddes privetee, it’s done to find out what’s inside.) Of course, this too must be accepted if the ideology of science, which would require that humans in their brief lives find something interesting to do. To while away the time.

A Good Right-Wing Response to the Football Protests

Mike Pence went to a Colts-49ers game today with the single intention of walking out with great hue and cry in order to stoke the anger of what’s called the Republican base.

It was a dumb move.

But it makes one think about what a good right wing move would be. And that’s neither hard to see nor difficult to do. A good right wing response to the protests would go like this:

I understand the motive behind this protests. And I agree that too many black men are being shot and jailed in America, and I realize that too often the law makes the situation worse. More needs to be done to solve that problem. And it’s good and proper to bring attention to the problem.

However, this particular form of protest strikes a number of good and loyal Americans as unpatriotic. That may not have been the intention, but it has been amply shown that to many people this appears to be a protest against the nation and the flag. To many it dishonors the sacrifice of the military while doing nothing to advance the cause for which it was begun. I therefore believe is not a suitable way to protest the injustice it was designed to protest. Let’s come together and find another way.


It happens that I disagree strongly with that second paragraph. But I know there are good people, good Americans who cannot see past the perceived affront to patriotism. And I could respect anyone who, while maintaining his dignity and seeking common ground, refuses to sanction what he/she sees as an affront to the country.

What I cannot stand is the divisive grandstanding of party hacks like Mike Pence, whose view of the protest is deliberately divisive and belligerently blinkered. He ignores the legitimate complaint that underlies the protest while painting in the bright colors of his cartoonish logic—all to score political points. (I say that assuming his not really stupid enough to believe his own rhetoric, though I have to say I haven’t seen a whole lot of evidence to support that generous allowance.)

Mike Pence is under the delusion that his presence at an NFL game lends dignity to the event merely (I guess) because he is Vice President. This would perhaps be true if he were doing his actual job. He’s not. Pence’s actions as well as his rhetoric paint the issue in provocatively black and white terms, both logically and racially. That is the worst possible reaction particularly from the White House whose job is unite.