Dinosaur extinction and Thomas Kuhn

Psychological Musings, Science

A couple of days ago – maybe a couple of weeks by the time I get this posted because I keep getting interrupted by going to Tahoe and Pussy Riot – The Guardian had an interesting article on Thomas Kuhn, or, more accurately, his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I have never heard of Kuhn, but I think he has been a major shaper of my world outlook.

To quote directly from the article, But what really set the cat among the philosophical pigeons was one implication of Kuhn’s account of the process of paradigm change…. imply(s) that scientific revolutions must be based – at least in part – on irrational grounds? In which case, are not the paradigm shifts that we celebrate as great intellectual breakthroughs merely the result of outbreaks of mob psychology?

YES!  That is exactly the case. We in the West, at least my generation, have been brought up to believe in the Scientific Method (not as an ideal, but as a reality). We have been taught that part of what made The West great was coming up with a theory, testing that theory with experiments and observations -facts – and then, and only then, accepting the Theory. We are told that it is the difference between Evolutionists and Creationists. It may still be the ideal but it is not reality. In reality, scientists use the facts to justify their position even if they have to twist the facts a little.

It is only when the crowd’s idea of reality changes, when society as a whole changes, when the paradigm shifts, that the Theory changes. In most cases, the facts are known to not fit the Theory for a long time before the Theory changes. When I was in college, we had a required two year course in the physical sciences including Geology. At the end of the Geology section, the teacher presented the theory of continental drift  by Alfred Wegener. They presented all the facts that teachers now use – continents fitting together, biological dispersion, blah, blah – and it all seemed so logical to me, but the teachers dismissed it as This wild theory by some crazy German who thinks the continents are floating around. Ha ha.

As an aside, I now know that I am a sucker for almost any new theory (or almost any new thing that comes down the pike for that matter). My experience is that I am almost always right because today’s hair-brained theory is soon conventional wisdom and the new thing coming down the pike is the future. But I am old enough to know that I am not always right: right when I feel in love with Ferraris when Cadillacs were the gold standard, right when I got a BMW and people were asking me in gas stations if it was Japanese, wrong when I thought  Peugeot was the next BMW, but right when I thought Continental Drift just seemed right. End aside.

About 30, maybe 40, years ago, I started noticing bumper-stickers that said Shit Happens. About the same time, scientists first started proposing the Asteroid Impact Theory as the reason the dinosaur extinction came so quickly. Scientists knew the facts but didn’t come up with the theory until the concept of Shit Happens became the dominant paradigm. Until then, scientists thought dinosaurs had died off because they were stupid.

To circle back, I would postulate that good science only works because of mob psychology.

Neil Armstrong RIP

Americana, Current Affairs

 

Neil Armstrong died today and it has almost no emotional meaning for me. He was the first man on the moon and, somehow, he always seemed like he was a cog in a bigger program. He was a Navy pilot, became a test pilot – including flying the F101 Voodoo which I feel in love with when we were both at Hamilton AFB – he flew combat missions in the Korean war, got shot down1, and he always seemed like he wasn’t real to me.

Even his “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” quote seemed so perfect as to be plastic (a favorite term of disparagement in the 60s). Part of it was the over-choreographing, by NASA, of all the Astronauts (this was the height of the Cold War and it was – in a major way – the Christian west against the godless Commies, it was important that we look good and that only included, for some reason, white men). Part of it was the complete inaccessibly of something so outside our normal, daily, life and part of it must have been watching  the whole thing through a low-resolution, black and white, TV camera.

So, while I can remember every detail of my watching the moon-landing and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon and my emotional experience, I never felt emotionally connected to the guys on the otherside of the fuzzy, black and white image. The Apollo astronauts never had their Right Stuff movie to make them real. So, it was only when I learned that Armstrong had manually landed Eagle and that it was getting low on fuel – with the Low Fuel light flashing as I remember reading much later – that the enormity of what he had done really hit home with me.

I imagine, driving home from San Francisco – late at night – when the low fuel light comes on and the effect it has on my stress level. Then I imagine that light coming on with no gas stations for the next 240,000 miles: with only enough fuel, not to mention battery power, cooling water, and breathing oxygen to return to lunar orbit, and now the fuel gauge is showing “low fuel”. I imagine not ever having flown a real lunar lander before and having the presence of mind to switch to manual control to find a place to set down.

In a way, taking huge risks right on the edge of oblivion – like the lunar landing – is what the entire Man-on-the-Moon program was about and Neil Armstrong was the Poster Child. What a guy!

 

1 technically he got shot up, lost the outer six feet of his wing while evading more fire, and managed to fly back to safety.

Pussy Riot

Current Affairs

Richard Taylor took exception to my post on Pussy Riot and, because I think he is right and I was wrong, I am posting his comment on the front page (so to speak).

I agree that protest comes at a price. The goal of protest is to call attention to extremism and prompt criticism from outside. And, protesters take a chance that what comes form the outside will not be criticism, but instead support for the system. I appreciate the disclaimer of any affinity with Putin but am saddened to see this space being used to support a verdict that is based not on breaking and entering or for injuring anyone but for “offensively violating public peace in a sign of flagrant disrespect for citizens.” (http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=9734) Oh, and because the song was also blasphemous from the point of view of the church. And this a verdict handed down with very little of what we would call due process.

So, being offensive or blasphemous in the eyes of the church can get you 2 years in jail? Not a system I want to defend. I think it is a system that should be questioned if not condemned. While I view them as mainstream, I’m sure the occupy protesters (http://tinyurl.com/93vscou ) offended a good portion of the public and I’m certain the Gay Pride Parade (http://tinyurl.com/8rwnh7n) is both profoundly offensive and blasphemous to many. Yes, the Pussy Riot actions were offensive to many devout members of the Russian Orthodox church (and bravo to the Church for asking for clemency for PR), but I’m not sure that offensiveness alone (there was no damage to property, nobody injured) should land someone in prison for two years.

I do want to add – and I hope it is not just because I want to be argumentative – that because of their arrest and prison sentence, Pussy Riot is now one of the most famous girl bands in the world (and, certainly the most famous that has never sold a recording or given a real concert). Russia, by arresting Pussy Riot, trying them while they are in a guarded glass box  – like they may infect the court or make a mass jailbreak – and then giving them a two year sentence in prison, had made itself look foolish.

It is amazing how Russia couldn’t help but act self-destructively in this case.  I think that all governments have that tendency, but the tendency to do stupid things is worse in direct relation to the level of autocraticness. (There must have been dozens of people in power in Russia who knew the jailing of Pussy Riot was not a good idea, that it would not make the state look powerful, it would just make the state look scared of three young girls.)

21 Years WTF

Current Affairs

Anders Behring Breivik was declared sane and given a sentence of 21 years. That seems preposterous to me. He is 33 now so he would be 54 when he is released. I read that Norway has a maximum prison sentence of 21 years and, presumably, no way to make that 21 years for each murder.

Then I read that Breivik could also be sentenced to indefinite preventive detention after his sentence is over and I realize they are just screwing with us.

 

 

Michele, my dad, and me at Lake Tahoe

California, Politics

Michele and I went to  Ed Z’berg Sugar Pine Point State park today. It was a longer drive than we wanted, but we were looking for a place to take a walk along the lake, and it is one of the ugly facts about Lake Tahoe that it is hard to take a long walk along the water. Along the shoreline, it is almost wall to wall private property.

Driving south on the lake-shore highway, we passed miles of private homes – most of them gated to keep us from getting to their private, backyard, waterfront – interspersed with resorts and small open spaces, usually private beaches, giving us views across the lake. Along California’s Coast, it is less troublesome to get to the water because of what some would call the Socialist Coastal Access Act but Tahoe doesn’t have an equivalent act leaving the shoreline pretty much access proof.

My dad had been Chairman of the California State Park Commission under Governor Pat Brown when the Isaias Hellman1 estate at Sugar Pine Point came on the market. It was a major stretch of private water front and, today, would be a prime candidate for an hyper-expensive, gated, still private, development (most likely based on a golf course….uggg!).  But the 60’s were a different time and the state bought it and turned it into a Sugar Pine Point State Park. Among other things, the park provided, for the first time, a long stretch of Tahoe shoreline accessible to regular people.

Thinking about that, as we drove down Highway 89, brought back memories of Daddy – as my sister and I still call him – and how influential he was in getting this property and how proud he was that the state did get it (and how much he enjoyed the perk of spending the night at the mansion including being entertained at a a special dinner in the dining room). It brought back memories of how much Daddy was a democrat – with a small “d” – as well as a Democrat. Memories that included the California of the 50’s and 60’s when Governor Pat Brown’s motto was Make no little plans and California was a boomtown – uh? boomstate? – with all the good and bad that involved.

When we got to the Park, the first thing I noticed was the entry Gatehouse built by the state 1n 1965. It was lovingly designed and built to match the existing mansion including diagonal muntins separating diamond shaped panes of glass over the double-hung windows and featured a native stone base.

I had forgotten Daddy’s love of architecture and how much he knew about it but, now, I remember his taking me to hear Frank Lloyd Wright give a lecture when I was eight (and, years later, while in the Army, making a special trip to see Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo that was a direct result of that lecture). I remembered how surprised I was, when first discovering the Farnsworth House in an architecture class, finding out that Daddy already knew about it.

We parked the car and walked by the public beach. Watching the people on the public beach – the people’s beach – enjoying the water and the sun, brought tears to my eyes. Tears of love and admiration mixed with the sorrow of how little I knew my father – how distant he was – and how much, on a day like this, here, I miss him.

(I also thought of how many of people enjoying the beach, with their boats tied up nearby, wouldn’t vote for a Democrat because they didn’t want “big” government.)

We had a picnic lunch under a gazebo with a view of the mansion which was designed by San Francisco architect, Walter Bliss, wandered around the outside of the building – both of us were most taken with the Sugar Pine porch columns with the bark still on and then we went for our long walk in the trees overlooking Lake Tahoe.

1. Isaias Hellman was a very interesting guy. (The following is from The Web, to save you the trouble.) A Jewish immigrant from Germany, he came to California when he was 16 in 1859. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into a modern metropolis. He became California’s premier financier of the late 19th and early 20th century by founding LA’s Farmers and Merchants Bank, LA’s first successful bank and then transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West’s biggest financial institutions. Hellman invested with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds to discover California’s huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in acquiring full ownership of the Los Angeles Times.  He controlled the California wine industry1.1 for almost twenty years and, after San Francisco’s devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, Hellman calmed the financial markets alowing San Francisco . Oh, he also had exquisite taste in architecture.  

1.1 A group calling themselves Wine Beserkers recently tried a 1875 Cucamonga Vineyard Angelica Wine Isaias W. Hellman Private Stock saying Bricked medium cranberry red color with clear meniscus; fascinating, VA, coffee liqueur, chocolate, raisinette nose; tasty, rich, chocolate, orange, raspberry, coffee liqueur, raspberry syrup palate with good acidity; long finish (bottled from wood in 1921; reminiscent of both a mature Port, but with greater color — no doubt due to the 46 years in wood before bottling — and a mid-1800s vintage Madeira Bastardo, i.e., vintage Madeira from a red grape, with the acidity of a Terrantez or Verdelho) (97 pts.)