I've been musing a bit lately on the difference between an accumulation of facts and a theory which explains those facts and provides a framework for them. This musing was brought on, of course, by my continuing to follow the Dover, Pennsylvania "intelligent design" trial. (See the sidebar for links related to Kitzmiller v Dover.)
One of the defense witnesses was the "intelligent design" advocate Michael Behe (whose testimony I discussed earlier here). Behe is a trained and practicing biochemist, and yet he does not accept Darwinian evolution theory. As a biochemist, Behe will certainly know an awful lot of facts about biology, much more than I ever will, but without a theory that fruitfully ties those facts together (or holding to a false theory that cannot serve to provide a useful framework for those facts), Behe will never really understand biology, no matter how large his accumulation of facts might get. He'll have a lot of information, but he won't have any real knowledge, and he'll certainly never achieve biological wisdom.
Science is built upon facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science that a heap of stones is a house.
Henri Poincare Science and Hypothesis (1905)
[I]solated facts don't make an education. Meaning doesn't come from data alone. Creative problem solving depends on context, interrelationships, and experience. The surrounding matrix may be more important than the individual lumps of information.
Clifford Stoll Silicon Snake Oil (1995)
Facts may accumulate without theory; but they will prove to be unstable and of little profit in the end. Theories may flourish if their basis lies not in scientific fact but in opinions and interpretations acceptable only to the members of a limited faction; but they will be bad theories.
Edwin R. Guthrie "Psychological Facts and Psychological Theory" presidential address of the Am. Psychological Assoc. (9/6/45) first published in Psychological Bulletin, 43, 1-20
This is not something that holds only for biology, psychology or the sciences, it's true in other academic endeavors as well. A Marxist historian, for instance, could well outstrip every other historian in knowing masses of accumulated facts, but because those facts are interpreted through a strongly biased theory, the analyses that results will frequently be useful only up to a point. Certainly, Marxist analysis can provide some novel interpretations that can make us think again and see situations more freshly, but when put to the test, the built-in biases that are part and parcel of the theory, which are, in fact, their warp and woof, without which it wouldn't be Marxist, overwhelm the analysis and make it problematic and less reliable.
If we're looking to historians to interpret the past for us, for help in understanding the present and determining what we should so in the future, it wouldn't do to rely on theories which lead to erroneous conclusions.
(I think the same point can be make regarding Freudian analysis, that it occasionally throws up interesting ways of looking at human behavior, but, because it lacks a credible theory to explain that behavior, its usefulness is of a limited sort, and more inclined to be invoked in a literary manner than a scientific one.)
Another issue involved in looking at facts and theory is the nature of the information which is being accepted as "fact", and utilized in that way.
[Some schools of history assert] that all "facts" claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructions. In short, there is no clear difference between fact and faction. But there is, and for historians, even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely essential. We cannot invent our facts. Either Elvis Presley is dead or he isn't. The question can be answered unambiguously on the basis of evidence, insofar as reliable evidence is available, which is sometimes the case. Either the present Turkish government, which denies the attempted genocide of the Armenians in 1915, is right or it is not.
Where there's a fact vacuum, pseudo facts, opinion, and outright fantasy come rushing in.
Kurt Anderson "The Age of Unreason" in The New Yorker (3/3/97)
Anderson's remark seems very well applied to what's happened in recent weeks in regards to the Fitzgerald investigation of the Plamegate scandal. The investigation was, laudibly, remarkably leak free, which lead to an absence of hard information. The ensuing vacuum was quickly filled by not only material leaked by the witnesses' representatives, but also all sorts of bizarre and outlandish speculations about what where the investigation was going, what Fitzgerald was after, who was going to be indicted, and what would be the ultimate result of all the revelations which were sure to see the light of day. While some of the initial speculation was built on a foundation of fact, the accumulated architecture of the castle in the air that resulted from layer after layer of guesses, intuitions, speculations and hypotheticals, all glued together with healthy globs of wish fulfillment, was, to say the least spectacularly fantastic.
(One of the fantasies that I found particularly unrealistic and outrageous was that "Fitzmas" would see all the members of the White House Iraq Group frogmarched -- that was the word that was used -- out of the White House in handcuffs, into waiting paddy wagons! And this came from a person who fancies herself an historian and an acute observer of politics and interpretor of current events!)
It's not news to any of us that we're living through a pretty awful period of American history. We've got an administration in office which is hell-bent on re-making the country for the benefit of their corporate clients, undoing most of the political and economic progress that's been made over the last 70 years. They control not only the Executive, but the Legislative and, when pressed, the Judiciary. Their support comes from social reactionaries who themselves have a program that rolls back our social progress and aims to turn us into a close approximation of a theocracy. The party in power uses, with great skill, propaganda techniques and wedge issues to divide and conquer and keep themselves in control.
In short, we're pretty much fucked, at least for the time being.
In such a dilemma, it's not unexpected that people would prefer to believe in fantasies that tell them, for instance, that Fitzgerald's investigation will lead to Bush's being impeached, and it's hardly a surprise that people will react with anger when it's pointed out to them how unreasonable and unlikely such an outcome would be. Nor is it a suprise that they would prefer to forget about those fantastic predictions after it indeed turns out that they're unfulfilled, and then try to pretend that they never happened. Happiness, it seems, at least to some people, is a state best achieved through ignorance, since the wisdom that knowledge can bring is too hurtful.
Of course, I can't see it that way. I much prefer to have a take on the world that is as close to realistic as I can get it, and to that end, I prefer to rely on the judgment and analysis of people who respect facts and who utilize a coherent and rational theory of the world to interpret them. Lacking that, however can we claim to be "part of the reality-based community"?
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
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not candid
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oblivious
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philistine
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rapacious
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warmongers
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without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
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recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.