Scarlett Thomas Quotes
I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it's as if they can't get past their emotions, and in their rage they become as faith-driven as the beliefs they criticise. I always said they give scientists a bad name. After all, science has to be about asking unthinkable questions, not closing down debate.
Thomas, Scarlett. Our Tragic Universe. Canongate Books, 2010.
Thereafter Ball argued against the Vietnam War at every staff meeting where it was discussed. The President never cut him off. With the exception of Chief of Staff Marvin Watson, none of the other staff members realized that Ball was following the directions of the President, and tended to be annoyed with him for constantly opposing the war.
Al-Maarri’s quotations are not only meaningful in their own right, but they illustrate the openness and free thinking that was allowed in the early days of Islam before about 1100. If anyone wrote such things today in most Islamic countries he would at least be jailed if not executed for blasphemy. Al-Maari view of the unreliability of authority preceded Western philosophers like Spinoza by over 500 years. When the Jews and Christians, and the Muslims of the day, read Spinoza, they all excommunicated him. But al-Maari, in the intellectual flowing of Islam in Syria at the time was unmolested.
This turns out to be very much a cultural phenomenon. Amongst educated Englishmen and many scientists and philosophers from America and other cultures but in some cultures opinions stated without passion are often not believed�this is particularly true in the Middle East but exists in many subcultures of America. In science, and the logical philosophy that Russell was so expert in, either you could prove something or you could not. If you could, the passion was unnecessary. If you could not, it was irrelevant. However, in most political issues, except those based on science, most assertions are not provable and although there may be some evidence for a view, it is not determinative. So volume. Bombast, and passion tries to persuade where logic cannot. Russell and many scientists and Philosophers distrust these statements, but the politician must deal with most of them, as public policy must be made whether the issue is scientifically demonstrable or not. Life and society must go on. However, when scientists testify before Congressional committees or in other political arenas, their lack of passion is taken by many as a lack of conviction or a lack of surety, while if they did speak with great passion, they would break the norms of the scientific community in which they work, for it is regarded as unethical to persuade people with anything but the evidence and logic.
In science it is instinctive and necessary to accept and consider seriously contrary views because if not considered, we may go in an erroneous direction and not learn the truth. This instinct is just the opposite of the norm in politics. In partisan politics, ideology is a dominant driver, and ideas contrary to our ideology are rarely considered because of this logic: If the idea is wrong, we will just waste our valuable time and resources. If it might possibly be right, it would throw our ideology into question and this would cause too much disruption of shake our institutional values which are more important than one point. Besides, if we changed on the basis of a contrary thought, we would be accused of being a flip flopper with no basic principles. For scientists, change and expansion of ideas is essential to the advancement of science. In politics, most practitioner regard it as success if the can govern in the exact way that their political ideology guides them. Few want to reform or alter their ideology. Those who do so are either rejected by the body politic, or who become the greatest of our leaders and politicians.
Alvarez was one of the key physicists who developed the atom bomb and was the scientist selected to accompany the plane bombing Hiroshima. There was considerable friction in the Manhattan Project development of the bomb between the scientists and the military.
Mathematical analysis is a much sounder method for determining truth than argument but it only is applicable where the real world fits the mathematical structures that we have which unfortunately is not enough to answer most of the political questions facing us.
Scarlett Thomas is an English author who writes contemporary postmodern fiction. She has published ten novels, including The End of Mr. Y and PopCo, as well as the Worldquake series of children's books, and Monkeys With Typewriters, a book on how to unlock the power of storytelling. She is Professor of Creative Writing & Contemporary Fiction at the University of Kent.
