I am one of a large number of people who went into the
sciences to search for The Truth. I was raised to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. I went into the branch of physics that
announced the discovery of the Higgs Boson on July 4, 2012. The field generated one of the Clay
Mathematics Institutes Millennial problems http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems
. My professional work and interests
have touched on all the other problems.
I was very interested in being the first to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem. At this time, only the Poincare’ Conjecture
has been solved. I was honored by my
undergraduate school for “community service” in 1980 for saving the free world
from the Warsaw Pact.
When I did my studies in Physics, Mathematics, and
Chemistry, physics was defined in Encyclopaedia Brittannica as:
“Physics, which may be defined broadly as the study of
nature, was long called natural philosophy (from the Greek physikos); its exact scope is not fixed nor easily delimited. From decade to decade in modern times, the
principal effort in physics has changed as, on the one hand, fields of scientific
knowledge were reduced to practice, whereupon they were regarded as branches of
engineering or applied physics; and, on the other hand, new fields were opened
by fresh experimental or theoretical discoveries. Physics may be called a point of view about
the natural world and a method of attack on its problems, a method based upon
certain general principles and disciplined by the close interplay between
experiment and theory. With a kind of
confidence that the understanding of nature may be reduced to a few
comprehensive principles, physicists seek for those central ideas by which
great areas of common experience may be brought into order and coherence. To achieve their purpose, they proceed by
use of mathematical and logical tools, and by experimentation.”
My education was in the 1950s and 1960s. This was coincident with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s struggle for civil rights in the United States,. King synthesized the teachings of Christ and Mahatma Gandhi to create a method of nonviolent resistance that carried Americans toward justice during the turbulent years of the 1950s and 1960s. King’s life and legacy are an excellent topic with which to review how far the philosophy of freedom has come. Once the province of academics, it now inspires activists and political leaders in nonviolent struggle.
In his Letter from
Birmingham Jail, King has to describe how to explain violating human laws. The letter shows how he reconciled his
actions in breaking the law and going to jail with his teachings of law and order. He had to
carefully distinguish the laws that he broke from what he called the highest
law of the land. He
argued that an unjust law is no law at all, as St. Aquinas said. A
just law was one that squared with moral law, and an unjust law degraded human
personality. Segregation
laws give the segregator a false sense of superiority, and the segregated a false
sense of inferiority. Therefore they were morally wrong.
Narratives written by arithmetically-challenged
people cannot be transformed into a lawful order.
You
chose your career with the PSAC Report, the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr, and the 1969-71
RETRENCHMENT being recent history.
In 1962 the President's Science Advisory Committee
published a report entitled Meeting Manpower Needs in Science and Technology. The "PSAC Report" declared that the acceleration of graduate
training in engineering, mathematics, and physical sciences, especially at the
doctoral level, was a matter of urgent national priority requiring immediate action,
without which severe shortages of engineers and scientists would occur.
Engineering was identified as an especially crucial area. The federal
government was to provide the funds needed, through increased research
expenditures, provision of training grants, and fostering of new centers of scientific excellence. The country
was, of course, reacting to shocks to its prestige caused by the success of Sputnik , and was also riding the crest of the greatest economic boom in
its history, and these events simultaneously provided both the motive and the
means for a major expansion in engineering graduate programs. Engineering
education responded immediately, and the numbers of graduate students rose to
unprecedented heights. (Just eight years later, the
magnificent declarations of the PSAC Report were negated by a new
conventional wisdom—that Ph.D.s were a drug on the market.)
Even before the Retrenchment, I was skeptical of Government
Intervention/Programs beyond its core Defense mission.
You received your
B.S. degree in microbiology from the University of Florida in 1978 and your J.D. from the
Stetson University College of Law in 1982.
Perhaps because your school is ranked #1 in trial advocacy, you wouldn’t
recognize the truth unless it was conveniently packaged as a rhetorical narrative. You
came along at a time when the narrative paradigm was being formed. See para 3.2 http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/narratives-rhetorical-discourse
. Ms. Baccus-Horsley fed you those galore.
Your “formative years” coincided with Michel Foucalt’s
popularity in the US.
I read Gerald Holton’s Science
and Anti-Science shortly after it was published in 1998.
“Employing the case-study method and the concept of
scientific themata that he has pioneered, Holton displays the broad scope of
his insight into the workings of science: from the influence of Ernst Mach on
twentieth century physicists, biologists, psychologists, and other thinkers to
the rhetorical strategies used in the work of Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and
others; from the bickering between Thomas Jefferson and the U.S. Congress over
the proper form of federal sponsorship of scientific research to philosophical
debates since Oswald Spengier over whether our scientific knowledge will ever
be ‘complete.’ In a masterful final chapter,
Holton scrutinizes the ‘anti-science phenomenon,’ the increasingly common opposition to
science as practiced today. He approaches this contentious issue by
examining the world views and political ambitions of the proponents of science
as well as those of its opponents-the critics of ‘establishment science’
(including even those who fear that science threatens to overwhelm the
individual in the postmodern world) and the adherents of
‘alternative science’ (Creationists, New Age ‘healers,’ astrologers). Through
it all runs the thread of the author’s deep historical knowledge and his
humanistic understanding of science in modern culture.”
About this time, I was reviewing manuscripts prepared by my
father-in-law, Paul Edward Brown, Sr., PhD. Doctor Brown had a PhD from Drew University in
New Testament and Systematic Theology.
He was/is a Theist. Dr. Brown
knew that Secular Humanism (France) was the Devil Incarnate. He also knew that The Big Bang implied a
beginning – consistent with the Judeo-Christian Creation Myth. Dr. Brown’s two sons: Paul Edward Brown, Jr and Samuel Isaac Brown,
the First, are real doctors and have significantly more income than their PhD
father (and (former) brother-in-law).
A “culture war” is a clash of ideas about what one believes
to be true, and others with different viewpoints. A person’s experiences, family, friends,
education, and the media help to form your belief system, or World
View.
I was shielded from the full force of the anti-science forces
by being a part of the Military-Industrial Complex. My coworkers and friends were predominately
active or retired military or naval officers, many of them had graduated from
the Service Academies with degrees in engineering. From my perspective, “the enemy” looked like Postmodernism.
Dr. Paul E. Brown, Sr., described intellectual/philosophical
history through David Hume. I had
watched The Ideas of Great Philosophers, 1st Edition by
Daniel N. Robinson and had taken an interest in philosophy about 1969. I purchased two paperback books by the Sahakians one being comparable
to http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-Great-Philosophers-William-Sahakian/dp/1566192714
. From the two, I identified 17
Conceptions of/theories of Truth.
The reviewer cautions that although the first chapter gives a very cleanly written summary of the mechanics
of epistemology: listing many of the criteria of truth, the problems of truth,
and the main fallacies of reasoning, it is still selective rather than
exhaustive (category errors for instance are not mentioned). But most
egregiously, the essential philosophical definitions needed to understand the
explanations are not given here: but are "assumed to be understood"
by the reader. The second Sahakian
book is described as having been “one of the most
important books of my life. Not only does it provide an introductory survey of
the field of philosophy, but it covers truth and fallacies. In fact, for
decades it was the only source to reference Negative Pragmatism, a superior
criterion of truth that was developed in the early 20th century and explained
in detail by Nobel Prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman in 1964.” My second
Sahakian book did not Include Negative Pragmatism.
The Teaching Company’s new set and format meshed well with
Professor Lawrence Cahoone’s Modern Intellectual
Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida. I felt that
watching this course sort of completed my studies in philosophy. I recently completed watching Cahoone’s The Modern Political Tradition: From
Hobbes to Habermas.
The term “postmodernism” first entered the philosophical
lexicon in 1979, with the publication of The Postmodern Condition by Jean-François Lyotard. Another Frenchman Michel Foucault had a lot to do with
it. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels, preferring to
present his thought as a critical history of modernity. His
thought has been highly influential for both academic and activist groups.
In 1976 Gallimard published Foucault's Histoire de la
sexualité: la volonté de savoir (The History of Sexuality: The Will to
Knowledge), a short book exploring what Foucault called the
"repressive hypothesis". It revolved largely around the concept of
power, rejecting Marxist theories of power and rejecting psychoanalysis. Foucault
intended it as the first in a seven-volume exploration of the subject. Histoire de la sexualité was a best seller
and gained a positive press reception, but lukewarm intellectual interest,
something that upset Foucault, who felt that many misunderstood his hypothesis. He soon became dissatisfied with his publisher. Along with Paul
Veyne and François
Wahl, Foucault launched a
new series of academic books, known as Dex Travaux (Some
Works), through the company Seuil, which he hoped would improve the state of academic
research in France. He also
produced introductions for the memoirs of Herculine
Barbin and My Secret Life.
“There exists an international citizenry that has its rights,
and has its duties, and that is committed to rise up against every abuse of
power, no matter who the author, no matter who the victims. After all, we are
all ruled, and as such, we are in solidarity." - Michel Foucault, 1981
Foucault remained a political activist until his death in
1984. He focused on protesting
government abuses of human rights across the world. He was a key player in the
1975 protests against the Spanish government to execute 11 militants sentenced
to death without fair trial. It was his idea to travel to Madrid with 6 others to give their press
conference there; they were subsequently arrested and deported back to Paris. In 1977, he protested the extradition
of Klaus Croissant to West Germany, and his rib was fractured during clashes
with riot police. In July that year, he organised an
assembly of Eastern Bloc dissidents to mark the visit of Soviet Premier Leonid
Brezhnevto Paris. In 1979, he campaigned for Vietnamese
political dissidents to be granted asylum in France.
In 1977, Italian newspaper Corriere della sera asked Foucault to
write a column for them. In doing so, in 1978 he travelled to Tehranin Iran, days after the Black Friday massacre. Documenting the developing Iranian Revolution, he met with opposition leaders such as Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari and Mehdi
Bazargan, and discovered the
popular support for Islamism. Returning to France, he was one of the
journalists who visited the Ayatollah Khomeini, before he visited Tehran again. His articles expressed awe of
Khomeini's Islamist movement, for which he was widely criticised in the French
press, including by Iranian liberal dissidents. Foucault's response was that
Islamism was to become a major political force in the region, and that the West
must treat it with respect rather than hostility. In April 1978, Foucault traveled to
Japan, where he studied Zen
Buddhism under Omori
Sogen at the Seionji temple in Uenohara.
Although
remaining critical of power relations, Foucault expressed cautious support for
the Socialist Party government of François Mitterrand following its electoral
victory in 1981. But
his support soon deteriorated when that party refused to condemn the Polish
government's crackdown on the 1982 demonstrations in
Poland orchestrated
by theSolidarity trade union. He and
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu authored a document
condemning Mitterrand's inaction that was published in Libération, and they also took
part in large public protests on the issue. Foucault
continued to support Solidarity, and with his friend Simone Signoret traveled Poland as part of
a Médecins du Monde expedition, taking time out to visit
the Auschwitz concentration
camp. He continued his academic
research, and in June 1984 Gallimard published the second and third volumes of Histoire de la sexualité.
Volume two, L'Usage des
plaisirs, dealt with the "techniques of self" prescribed by
ancient Greek pagan morality in relation to sexual ethics, while volume three, Le Souci de soi explored the same theme in the Greek
and Latin texts of the first two centuries CE. A fourth volume, Les Aveux de la chair, examined
it in early Christianity, but it remained unfinished at Foucault's death.
In
October 1980, Foucault became a visiting professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, giving the Howison Lectures on "Truth and Subjectivity",
while in November he lectured at the Humanities Institute at the New York University. His growing popularity in
American intellectual circles was noted by Time magazine, while Foucault went on to lecture
at UCLA in 1981, the University of Vermont in 1982, and Berkeley again in 1983, where
his lectures drew huge crowds. When in California, Foucault spent many
evenings in the gay scene of the San Francisco Bay Area. He would praise sado-masochistic activity in
interviews with the gay press, describing it as "the real creation of new
possibilities of pleasure, which people had no idea about previously." Through sexual activity, Foucault
contracted HIV which developed into AIDS. Little was known of the virus at the time; the first cases had only been
identified in 1980. In summer 1983, Foucault developed a persistent
dry cough, which concerned friends in Paris, but Foucault insisted it was just
a pulmonary infection. Only when hospitalized was Foucault
correctly diagnosed and treated with antibiotics. He delivered a final set of
lectures at the Collège de France. Foucault entered Paris' Hôpital de la
Salpêtrière on 9 June 1984. He died in the hospital on 25 June 1984.
Foucault's discussions on
power and discourse have inspired many critical theorists,
who believe that Foucault's analysis of power structures could aid the struggle
against inequality. They claim that through discourse analysis,
hierarchies may be uncovered and questioned by way of analyzing the corresponding
fields of knowledge through which they are legitimated. This is one of the ways
that Foucault's work is linked to critical theory.
In 2007, Foucault was
listed as the most cited scholar in the humanities by the ISI Web of Science among a large quantity of French
philosophers, the compilation's author commenting that "What this says of
modern scholarship is for the reader to decide – and it is imagined that
judgments will vary from admiration to despair, depending on one’s view".
A prominent critique of Foucault's thought concerns his refusal to propose positive
solutions to the social and political issues that he critiques. Since no human
relation is devoid of power, freedom becomes elusive - even as an ideal. This
stance which critiques normativity as socially constructed and contingent, but
which relies on an implicit norm in order to mount the critique led
philosopher Jürgen Habermas to describe Foucault's thinking as
"crypto-normativist", covertly reliant on the very Enlightenment principles he attempts to deconstruct.[163] A similar critique has been advanced by Diana
Taylor, and by Nancy Fraser who argues that "Foucault's critique encompasses traditional moral
systems, he denies himself recourse to concepts such as "freedom" and
"justice", and therefore lacks the ability to generate positive
alternatives "
The experts say, “That postmodernism is indefinable is a
truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and
rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the
trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts
such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the
univocity of meaning.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/
Michel Foucalt was not one of the bad guys. Had he not died in 1984, he might have led
the rediscovery of Hegel.
The Nietzschean
method of genealogy, in its application to modern subjectivity, is another
facet of philosophical postmodernism. Michel
Foucault's application of genealogy to formative moments in modernity's
history and his exhortations to experiment with subjectivity place him within
the scope of postmodern discourse. In
the 1971 essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Foucault spells out his adaptation of the genealogical method in his
historical studies. First and foremost, he says, genealogy “opposes itself
to the search for ‘origins’” (Foucault 1977, 141). That is, genealogy studies
the accidents and contingencies that converge at crucial moments, giving rise
to new epochs, concepts, and institutions. As Foucault remarks: “What is
found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of
their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity” (Foucault
1977, 142). In Nietzschean fashion,
Foucault exposes history conceived as the origin and development of an
identical subject, e.g., “modernity,” as
a fiction modern discourses invent after the fact. Underlying the fiction of
modernity is a sense of temporality that excludes the elements of
chance and contingency in play at every moment.
In short, linear, progressive history covers up the
discontinuities and interruptions that mark points of succession in historical
time.
Is this a return to
Hegel? http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-texts/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel-science-logic
This new translation of
The Science of Logic (also known as ‘Greater Logic’) includes the revise Book I
(1832), Book II (1813), and Book III (1816). Recent research has given us a
detailed picture of the process that led Hegel to his final conception of the
System and of the place of the Logic within it. We now understand how and why
Hegel distanced himself from Schelling, how radical this break with his early
mentor was, and to what extent it entailed a return (but with a difference) to
Fichte and Kant. In the introduction to the volume, George di Giovanni presents
in synoptic form the results of recent scholarship on the subject, and, while
recognizing the fault lines in Hegel's System that allow opposite
interpretations, argues that the Logic marks the end of classical metaphysics.
The translation is accompanied by a full apparatus of historical and
explanatory notes.
