James D. Watson-A Modern Galileo
Galileo before the Inquisition
V-Dare's Steve Sailer nails another one.
I know the Left is nervous about this. They'd like it to end so they can go back to screaming about the manipulation of science by politics - and think it's all about white people from the suburbs who want to drive their SUVs.
Science has always been the handmaiden of money an politics.
"Yet, as demonstrated once again by the vast uproar aimed at silencing legendary Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA James D. Watson for daring to mention racial differences in average IQ:
When it comes to genetics and intelligence, academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so extraordinarily high.
Last year, then-Harvard President Larry Summers was fired from his job presiding over an endowment now worth $34.9 billion largely for pointing out that evil patriarchal discrimination isn't the only reason women don't achieve as much as men do at the very highest levels of math, science, and engineering. Instead, the greater male variance in IQ simply means there are more male geniuses. (And morons, but there aren't many morons at Harvard, except morally).
Now, Watson, perhaps the second-most famous living scientist after Stephen Hawking, has been suspended by Long Island's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for what can only be called, to adopt the prescient totalitarian terminology of Orwell's 1984, crimethink. "
Labels: Galileo, James D. Watson, Orwell
posted by Puckpan at 3:05 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Puck-You are right that Larry Summers, Watson et al have come under the wrath of the PC brigades. Nevertheless, why is it (per Steve Sailor) that the outrage following the remarks of a scientist are always compared to the Galileo trial? I believe the church was right in restricting Galileo. The heliocentric theory was not altoghether superior to the Ptolemaic. Besides, the motion of the earth around the sun has never been proven - and now, even according to relativity theory, the motion of the earth around the sun,and the motion of the sun and stars around a stationary earth, are functually equivalent. Anyhow, the circumstances of the Galileo trial and the Watson remarks are so totally different. The Church was justified in my opinion in wanting to restrict Galileo, for it may have (presciently) seen how heliocentrism would be put into the service of an anti-God, anti-ecclesial ideology. Indeed, this has been the case.
As for Watson, his remarks are probably true. But of what good are they? what good is intelligence if you have a corrupted soul and morality? - this seems to me the situation of Western mankind.
Cheers-Caryl
Hi Caryl,
First - let me say that I agree with you part. I am a epistemological relativist - therefore I won't reject the Ptolomeic model. Neither will I reject the Galilean model. I don't think either necessarily maps to transcendent Truth. I don't understand why the Catholic church felt it had to take a stand on this issue. I wish it hadn't.
Still, perhaps I used a poor example. My reason for the Galileo comparison is because it's one so much embraced by the Left. I just love pointing out their hypocrisy.
I started to disagree with your over your use of the word "restrict." I would have been so much more comfortable with the term "argue with." But on reflection I would say that there is no system of truly free inquiry possible. I've noticed that as Catholic values have retreated - they are supplanted not by free inqury, but rather by Jewish values based on their views of the Holocaust - and these values are destroying Europe. I know also that Islam sees no distinction between Mosque and state. Given my druthers - I'll take European Catholic values over any other system.
But I do agree that intelligence is far less important the soul. And whatever it takes to protect the soul of Western man I'll support.
..tom
PS: I'll always remember fondly our supper together at Fergies on Sansom St.
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