Kooky
Freedom from Sanity
When was the last time he was done research in his chosen field of expertise?
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The false histories of Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Thread starter Hop_David
- Start date
Augustus
…
iirc, he was one co-author on one published paper 5 or so years ago.
Basically he has a phd in Neuroscience but isn't exactly active in the field.
Hop_David
Member
Are you talking about the 2007 and 2008 Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) papers? Tyson's name appears very late on a long list of authors on what seem to be review papers.
Don Barry is a real astrophysicist. Here is his answer to someone asking if Tyson was a practicing astrophysicist:
And here is a similar assessment in a discussion of Tyson in the physics subreddit. In particular the argument between cantgetno197 and Hikaruzero. Hikaruzero tries hard to defend Tyson be even he has to admit his C.V. is very weak.
Again, he has done little if any research since his dissertation in the early 90s. And, judging by all the physics he gets wrong, hasn't opened a textbook in that time either.
Heyo
Veteran Member
Why is it invalid? It's two examples of religious organizations trying to stifle science.
Yes, religions have always been there and they have always been unscientific fairy tales. And when the fairy tales are dogmatic, religions are religiously unscientific. A religion may tolerate science that doesn't touch its core beliefs but no religion accepts scientific primacy.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
It's a simple and rather obvious observation.
Imagine a country filled and ruled by YEC's.
Do you think they will bother with significant progress in fields that contradict their beliefs?
Why would they look for answers? They already have the answers. God dun it.
Augustus
…
"Unscientific fairy tales" can sometimes lead to scientific progress though...
Interestingly, one of the reasons science (in the modern sense) gained traction in society, was its link to theology which made it something worth studying. Experimental science was widely considered pointless, and a waste of money at first (no benefit of hindsight here). It was even mocked in Gulliver's Travels; the people of Laputa with their interest in completely impractical knowledge were based on Swift's contempt for experimental scientists. He even viewed it as actively immoral given resources could be better used to help the poor. We tend to think what has value now has always had value, yet this is not the case.
Also an important part of modern scepticism developed in a specifically Christian context related, somewhat surprisingly, to the Fall of Man. Due to the Fall, humans were flawed and thus couldn't trust their senses. The ancient Greek 'rational sceptics' displayed no such doubt.
The experimental approach is justified primarily by appeals to the weakness of our sensory and cognitive capacities. For many seventeenth-century English thinkers these weaknesses were understood as consequences of the Fall. Boyle and Locke, for their part, also place stress on the incapacities that necessarily attend the kind of beings that we are. But in both cases, the more important issue is the nature of human capacities rather than the nature of the Deity. And if the idea of a fall away from an originally perfect knowledge begins to decline in importance towards the end of the seventeenth century, it nonetheless played a crucial role by drawing attention to the question of the capacities of human nature in the present world...
One of the first texts that [Francis] Bacon would have had to contend with was the ‘Organon’, a collection of Aristotle’s writings on logic. All undergraduates were expected to become familiar with its contents, and until well into the seventeenth century university statutes prescribed monetary penalties for those guilty of transgressions against Aristotle’s logic.
Bacon’s early resistance to the Aristotelianism he encountered at university and his later ambition to establish new foundations for learning are both evident in the title of what is probably his best known philosophical work: Novum organum – (The New Organon, 1620). At this point it should be unnecessary to labour the fact that Bacon has a conception of natural philosophy as an enterprise devoted to a recovery of Adamic knowledge of nature and dominion over it.
Each of the two sections of the Novum Organum concludes with an injunction to recover the dominion over nature that was lost as a consequence of the Fall. As for the impediments to this recovery, Bacon saw in the long-standing tradition of Aristotelian logic an implicit recognition of the fact that ‘the human intellect left to its own course is not to be trusted’. But Bacon was convinced that the purveyors of logic had systematically misidentified the nature of mental errors and the means by which they were to be corrected. The champions of the old Organon ‘have given the first place to Logic, supposing that the surest helps to the sciences were to be found in that’. In Bacon’s judgement, ‘the remedy is altogether too weak for the disease’. The impotence of logic in the face of the human propensity for error could be attributed to two factors. First, the logicians had simply underestimated the extent of the problem they were seeking to rectify.154 ‘The root cause of nearly all evils in the sciences’, Bacon wrote, is that ‘we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind.’ As a consequence, ‘we neglect to seek for its true helps’.155 Second, not realising that error stems from multiple failures of the human mind, they had prescribed a single generic remedy.156
In order to arrive at a true interpretation of nature, Bacon insists, we need to begin with an understanding of human faculties and their limitations. In the Novum Organum, then, Bacon identifies the senses, memory, and reason as the faculties involved in knowledge, and seeks specific ‘ministrations’ or ‘helps’ to heal their inherent infirmities.157 These infirmities, which for Bacon ‘have their foundation in human nature itself’, are referred to as ‘the idols of the tribe’, the first category of four ‘idols of the mind’ to which Bacon attributes the errors of human knowledge.158 For Bacon, the deficiencies of the senses provide the first occasion for error: ‘By far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding pro- ceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses.’159The senses, which are ‘infirm and erring’, fail us in two ways. Sometimes they provide no information; sometimes they provide false information...
Bacon believed that a better ‘help’ for the senses was experimentation: ‘For the subtlety of experiments is far greater than that of the sense itself, even when assisted by exquisite instruments.’" Peter Harrison - The Fall of Man and the foundations of modern science
exchemist
Veteran Member
Tyson is getting blamed, in the OP, for false history, i.e. disseminating untruths.
But what he seems to be claiming, by way of these untruths, is not that religion fails to advance science, but that it stifles it.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Hop_David
Member
I am pleased to hear that.
Over the past two thousand years there have been billions of Muslims and Christians. It's inevitable that misteps were made.
But weighing the good and the bad what is the net effect? I happen to believe Christianity has had a positive effect over all. Or I would not be a Christian.
Early Muslim and Christian philosophers institutionalized the scientific method. They reasoned that a universe created by an intelligence would follow predictable laws. And they set about find those laws by testing different hypotheses with repeatable experiments. They advocated worshiping God by studying the book of nature as well as scripture.
Muslim clerics and Catholic priests taught literacy. They preserved and copied books. They built schools, libraries, universities, hospitals and observatories. Galileo was taught reading, writing and arithmetic by Catholic priests. He attended and worked at a university built by a pope. He did some of his best work while under a comfortable house arrest in the latter part of his life.
It can be argued that without the Catholic Church there would have been no Galileo.
Regarding Ghazali he developed a system of doubt that some scholars believed influenced the epistemology of René Descartes. Ghazali challenged the notion that the ancient Greeks were unquestionable authorities. I believed he paved the way for Galileo to challenge Aristotle. Or Copernicus to challenge Ptolemy.
I happen to believe Ghazali and the Ashari school did a lot to *enable* the scientific revolution.
TL;DR I believe religion has done more to promote and enable science than to hinder it.
But it remains an open question for me. I'm willing to discuss it. However I will loudly object when false history is brought to the table.
Even though there is great wealth, it can be argued the oil exporting countries were originally governments put in place by western powers. They are still victims of colonialism.
Not true. The United Arab Emirates recently sent a probe to Mars.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Probably a lack of interest. Agnostics are known for not discussing religion much (such as we see here in the essentially dead Agnostics DIR). Tyson has affirmed his stance by saying he doesn't have the energy for it and he is first and foremost a scientist.
And a bonus point is he's actually not that hard against religion and has criticized Dawkins for a "fang and claw" approach towards the subject.
Hop_David
Member
A good evangelist for science would have a high regard for rigor and accuracy. Tyson does not. He is a source of bad science, wrong math and false history.
His bad math and science are merely annoying. For example who cares if he tells us there are more transcendental numbers than irrationals? It's not as if Tyson's pseudo nerd fans will ever actually study Cantor's ideas on infinite sets.
Much worse is when he uses his poor memory and sloppy scholarship to invent history. And then uses his false history to push a narrative. Falsifying history is a serious offense.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
Someone clearly feels threatened by Mr. Tyson.
Augustus
…
He still peddles a load of ahistorical myths in his public lectures and, more significantly, in his narration of Cosmos though.
If he's not interested in actually researching what he puts his name to, he can't expect to escape criticism for perpetuating silly myths.
Augustus
…
Shouldn't a 'Questioning Mind' care about factual accuracy over ideological bias?
Or are obvious falsehoods fine as long as they align with your own prejudices?
firedragon
Veteran Member
Fallacy of composition.
That kind of statement will never ever prove what you set out to in your entire life. So since making statements like that is your way and method, there is no point in conversing. It just seems like you are looking for entertainment.
Have a good day.
Hop_David
Member
Yes I do feel threatened by Tyson. He is influential with a wide audience. And he is a source of misinformation. Pretty much the same reasons I feel threatened by Trump.
And you? Are you comfortable with charismatic people who make false claims?
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Explain with evidence.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
People speak inaccuracies all of the time... I find it interesting that the only one the OP is calling out for it is Neil.
QuestioningMind
Well-Known Member
There's a huge number of people peddling false information that is far more dangerous... I find it interesting that with all of the dangerous misinformation out there that Mr. Tyson is the one you think is dangerous enough to warrant a thread.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Who do you think warrants a thread in RF?