The Tahirians fear and avoid new knowledge because it might upset their carefully engineered social stability. I think that that attitude is insane in any rational species.
In conversation with a Tahirian, Nansen supposes that human beings will always ask questions and raise discontent wherever they are:
"'(Yes, because your race is mad.)'
"''(Maybe, and maybe that is why we voyage.)'
"The wind blew, the waves ran." (p. 410)
(The wind provides the background, of course.)
Not "Maybe." Nansen is far too willing to accept this false dichotomy. Born in this universe, a sane race must learn about this universe, not shut itself off. Why should new scientific knowledge upset anyone's applecart? Those who do not want to study science can continue to devote themselves to the arts, culture or entertainment. A society unable to incorporate new knowledge must really question its presuppositions and reorganize itself on a basis that is not so easily upset.
We have to have some understanding of how long we have left so that we can either prolong life or, longer term, come to terms with mortality. I heard of a hospice patient who, because he had "Catholic" written somewhere in his documentation, was asked whether he would like to see a priest for Last Rites. Instead of replying either "Yes, please" or "No, thank you" - both acceptable answers in the circumstances - he freaked out at the suggestion that he was that close to death! Unprepared.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Like Captain Nansen I don't believe humans, and their institutions, are going to drastically change in any fundamental ways.
Yes, the gentleman you mentioned could have been given some preparation for the situation he was in.
Ad astra! Sean
"fear and avoid new knowledge"
Anderson didn't have any lack of human examples of such behaviour to make him think it might occur in another species.
See Islam rejecting science because it might conflict with the Koran. The Mongols destroying the libraries of Bagdad at about that time probably helped with the anti-intellectualism.
The Catholic church condemning Galileo, also comes to mind. Sure it didn't help that Galileo was a jerk about it, but simply pointing out the (genuine) weaknesses of Galileo's argument is all that would be justified. Punishing someone for disagreeing with the official position is *wrong*, even when the official position happens to be correct.
The main actual weakness was that Galileo was still hung up on orbits being perfect circles so he couldn't fit the observations to his calculations even as well as Ptolomaic epicycles. However, Kepler fixed that problem with his ellipses.
Then there is some branches of Christianity condemning evolution. (The Catholic branch seems to have learned from its centuries earlier mistake with Heliocentrism.)
An ideology doesn't have to be a religion to make this error. See Stalin & Lysenko.
I have no doubt there are many more examples than I know of.
Sean: "I don't believe humans, and their institutions, are going to drastically change in any fundamental ways."
I doubt any such change will happen in the few decades you or I have to live. Over millennia however is another matter.
How much change would it take to be 'fundamental'?
There is the historical long term shift toward larger scale groups, especially the early shift to groups larger than about 150 so humans had to learn to get along with more people than they could know personally. That took a lot of social innovations.
Larger & larger scale governments each required innovations. Ways to get the majority of the population to have some say in how the governments ran tended to lag the growth in scale. So it took a long time for small band discussions to be modified to Greek democracy to work on a city state scale, and then another long time to a British style parliamentary system.
Are none of those changes 'fundamental'?
Kaor, Jim!
I'm sure I'm not the only one to find the Galileo affair confused, confusing, and muddled. With a lot of that confusion being caused by the personal spite of Galileo and his opponents among scientists.
Yes, I think the Church learned a lesson: to wait, to think long and hard about scientific innovations before speaking out about them. Thus 91 years passed after THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES was pub. before any official statement was made about evolution by Pius XII in HUMANI GENERIS.
i have no objection at all for the State, any State, broadening its base of support/consultation. But mere political changes will not eliminate whatever the innate flaws we all have that makes us so flawed and prone to error, folly, wickedness, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
We do not have innate flaws that make us prone to error, folly, wickedness etc.
Everything in us results from interaction with nature and society and changes. Nothing is innate. If the characteristics of an organism were innate, then innate animality would have prevented the emergence of humanity.
Kaor, Paul!
These are points about which we are not going to agree. I don't believe in materialism or with those who deny the supernatural and how flawed we are.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You have to bring the supernatural into it. Otherwise, there is no basis for saying that anything is unchanging. Fully developed "materialism" is not mechanical or reductionist and does not deny but affirms qualitative differences and transformations. Materialism is the theory that being has become conscious. Natural selection is not purposive. Quantitatively increasing organismic sensitivity was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation and thus purposiveness originated. Now animals and human beings exist and consciousness can develop further.
Paul.
Just saying that we either agree or disagree with "materialism" is too abstract to be meaningful. I disagree with some interpretations of materialism.
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