Today in my social ecology class, I had to hand in a paper, or should I say a review of Murray Bookchin's social ecology theory. The subject of our discussions in class were broader, and included a roundup of ecosocialism, wertkritik (critique of value) and theories of "degrowth" (décroissance in french). What bothered me most upon reading Bookchin was the faith he had in mankind, and the very soteriological argument that humans, because of their ability to act autonomously on the world, had the responsibility to carry its faith on their shoulder. So far so good, but his optimism goes further, when he affirms that this belief he has that we must act on the world and change it is based on the idea that we, through our reflexivity, not only can improve it or want to, but that the cosmos needs us to help it evolve and complexify further. This redemption of mankind, this utopian view of humanity putting aside its dualisms (dualisms which are at the very heart of our capacity to reason, ironically) supposes that we're not only able, but obligated by a transcendant nature of nature that must "think itself" through our consciousness to dogmatically trust our ability to do good.
The problem with this is the evident denial of our intrinsic tendency towards alterity: we think ourselves in terms of the other, by comparing ourselves to that figure of "the other". It's at the very heart of the Christian doctrine, God is the ideal of man, of the "creator", his follower the "believer", and his opponents "the other". What modernity brought was this disassociation, this division of nature and man, religion and politics, essentially of "me" and "the other". We went from a world where faith in a perfect being (a God) was the best way to legitimate the political power of man on man, because the man in power represented God, and if God is perfect, than I can trust the person that incarnates him in the world. Same goes with the pope, priests, etc. When systematic doubt was introduced by science, the idea of this idea crumbled, as the "ideal" was no longer shared universally, and when philosophers "killed God", humanists were unable to find the same ideal in men, and so had to find systematic ways of alleviating doubt, or creating it. Basically, they either play the political game and "lie legitimately" to be elected democratically, or fall into totalitarian states of forced, heteronomous social norms. By claiming that we're capable of doing good upon the environment, Bookchin isn't so wrong: where he is dead wrong however is by placing this capacity for good within the realm of reason, when morality, as we'll find, has very little to do with reasoning, and much more to do with feeling. We need to feel responsible for the Earth and its ecosystems, in fact we need to have enough faith in humanity to believe that we can survive our environment should it crash, or be hit by some mortiferous asteroid. By postulating the "freedom of nature" originating in human reason, Bookchin is doing precisely the opposite and brings a religious notion to his humanism, by placing the future of natural evolution in the hands of men.
It's precisely this problematic of political instances in large empires that prompted Constantine to convert to Christianity, as reported in St. Augustine's City of God: the virtue of a few was responsible for the Glory of Rome, the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom and to fight the evils of division in the empire. To translate this in Bookchinian terms, our intelligence, our reason and the faith we have in our capacity to alter the world for good, supersede the egotistic pressure of natural selection and vanquishes our fear of others (alterity) through our confidence in our ability to help the cosmos along in its evolution and provide it (and us along with it) with the ultimate freedom, legitimized by nature itself. If it doesn't sound soteriologic to you, it does to me! I'm not anti-humanist, but Bookchin's perception of human nature is unrealistic. Domination is a social phenomenon that's all too very real, caused by the tension between faith (or trust in the social realm) and science (or doubt), and the world is, more than just evolving blindly, just complexifying, and so is life along with it. By keeping science central to his argument, or should I say technique, he is basically debunking his own essentialist basis for his action theory, and is proposing something that is pretty close to pantheism, except in his insisting on founding a non-mystical movement. Whereas his analysis finds hard facts, his justifications for action are purely based on idealistic utopias, based on a conception of human nature closer to that of a God than that of a man. This is why his argument for a social reflexivity with nature, to share the burden of natural evolution as active agents of good, evokes elements of religious humanism, and are laughable at best to anyone who knows anything about what makes humans tick. We're scared of doubt, and reason is the ultimate tool of control: scare the crap out of people, then present yourself with the solution. This is the bread and butter of environmentalists. It is also the bread and butter of politicians and religious men: wherever there is power to be had, be it on nature, men, or reason, there'll always be irrational behavior, war, jealousy and all those other less-than-praiseworthy human flaws in play.
Ironically, while trying to reconcile us with Nature, Bookchin attempts to bring us out of our own nature. If only it worked like that in real life...
There's a South Park episode that reminds me of this fundamentally feuding nature of men, featuring a South Park Richard Dawkins. The release of the Nintendo Wii was delayed, and Cartman, unable to wait that long, cryogenized himself and woke up centuries later, in the middle of a religious war. He lies about his intention to help both crews, his apparent altruism only a scheme to find an "ancient Wii machine" and finally play Nintendo Wii. At the end of the episode, you find out that both factions of this "future society" are atheists. Dumbfounded, Cartman wonders why they're fighting if they're both atheist groups, and finds out they can't agree on the name of their atheistic association. This just illustrates our prerogative: we'll find ways to argue about most anything, because when it comes down to important things, we don't trust "the other", because deep inside, we know that "the other" is as flawed as we are.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Stargasm
Well first I'd like to address the fact that I couldn't have chosen a worse timing to start a blog. I won't get into details about the reasons behind the strike at school, but the short version goes a bit like this: we had a strike against a 82% tuition fees hike, and it worked. BUT, since we were on strike all last spring, we're stuck with a crazy, compressed, two semesters in one type deal this fall. In September, I was finishing my winter 2012 semester (10 university classes a week, with cases of conflictual scheduling), and now since October 1st, I'm completing another 5 university classes in 12 weeks (as opposed to 15 in a regular setting), with no break in between or lecture week or anything. So no breather. I'm quite exhausted, and have very little time for anything other than mandatory readings and writing papers for class. That being said, I still wanted to take a moment to write a bit about what I've been working on lately.
The PH Paradigm
One of my classes last semester was Sociology of science and technology. I had a paper to write for that class, and decided to write it on the search for exoplanets. I was originally gonna write about theories of everything, another subject I'm quite fond of, but upon my involvement in a project called Planet Hunters, I decided to go for a sociological study of the PH project, a "citizen science" project. I like it when they put a little bit of "human" in their science! :P
Anyhow, to make yet another long story short, the principle of PH is using human eyes to look at light curves and spot transiting planets in the Kepler Field. The effort is quantitative, meaning the success of the method depends on the volume of classifications more than the quality, and in this perspective, the volunteers are viewed as tools better left untrained. There is however also a qualitative aspect to the PH postulate, in that human eyes are better at spotting patterns than any computer algorithm (a certain team from Princeton, however, would probably disagree), and also an unexpected sense of community, of shared knowledge (in the figure of PH Talk) that has functions of public education, outside of the main scientific goal of PH.
I'll probably end up talking more about PH as time goes by, I'm gathering more data in the meantime (still waiting on my first paper's grade and comments before I translate/complete it). I started a thread on the PH Forum today, asking PH users to talk about their motivations in engaging in a citizen science project like this, I can't wait to see what they have to say! I'll keep the blog posted on any further developments in the study.
What's Funded by NASA Stays at NASA...
Through my study of Planet Hunters, I also stumbled upon another "citizen" project called Pale Blue Dot. It's another case altogether, as PBD has a completely different finality: funding a scientific enterprise through grassroots public funding initiatives. The functioning is simple: you can "adopt" a star, for a minimum donation of 10$ (100$ for a star with a planet), and all the profits go to research, through the Kepler Astroseismic Science Consortium, an international collective of exoplanet scientists. These guys can't get funding through NASA because NASA only funds 100% american projects (nationalistic bastards...). Since I'm all for the collective, non-deterministic funding of science, I was delighted by the project, and happy to contribute my 10$ to 'adopt' KIC9958387, a star around which I spotted a possible HZ candidate last summer. Even if I don't end up "officially" discovering the planet, I still feel like I contributed to the advancement of science, even if it's just symbolically through PH and financially through PBD.
I don't feel like my work is done in vain, since I gained knowledge (and still do!) from this whole PH experience, and a better sense of the place of "profanes" in the scientific enterprise. Last spring was all about the fight for accessibility in education, and important questions were raised about the funding of research and post-secondary institutions. I'm studying to become a sociologist, but also ultimately to become a teacher. The mobilization of knowledge in universities and the governance policies in such institutions are therefore issues that are very close to my heart. I found something interesting in projects like PH, like an intuition confirmed: there are imperatives of collegiality at the heart of all sciences. It's more than just the effectiveness of the scientific method, it's also fundamental to our collective consciousness. The division and diversification of social work modified our universities' finality, from one of transmitting the collective knowledge reflexively and critically, to one of training experts, who invest in their "human capital", which they can later sell on the market against a higher wage in the context of the knowledge economy. Basically, diplomas aren't earned anymore, they're bought against a better chance of faring on the highly competitive job market.
I'll leave it at that for now, if I get into an argument against the utilitarian, neoliberal conceptions of education, we'll still be here tomorrow morning! :P
For now, let's just enjoy a (somewhat) related video by one of my favorite artists, Mastodon. This song is great, my favorite from their latest album and one of my favorites in general, plus the video features TRANSITS! ...I mean C'MON!!! :P Hehehe.
The PH Paradigm
One of my classes last semester was Sociology of science and technology. I had a paper to write for that class, and decided to write it on the search for exoplanets. I was originally gonna write about theories of everything, another subject I'm quite fond of, but upon my involvement in a project called Planet Hunters, I decided to go for a sociological study of the PH project, a "citizen science" project. I like it when they put a little bit of "human" in their science! :P
Anyhow, to make yet another long story short, the principle of PH is using human eyes to look at light curves and spot transiting planets in the Kepler Field. The effort is quantitative, meaning the success of the method depends on the volume of classifications more than the quality, and in this perspective, the volunteers are viewed as tools better left untrained. There is however also a qualitative aspect to the PH postulate, in that human eyes are better at spotting patterns than any computer algorithm (a certain team from Princeton, however, would probably disagree), and also an unexpected sense of community, of shared knowledge (in the figure of PH Talk) that has functions of public education, outside of the main scientific goal of PH.
I'll probably end up talking more about PH as time goes by, I'm gathering more data in the meantime (still waiting on my first paper's grade and comments before I translate/complete it). I started a thread on the PH Forum today, asking PH users to talk about their motivations in engaging in a citizen science project like this, I can't wait to see what they have to say! I'll keep the blog posted on any further developments in the study.
What's Funded by NASA Stays at NASA...
Through my study of Planet Hunters, I also stumbled upon another "citizen" project called Pale Blue Dot. It's another case altogether, as PBD has a completely different finality: funding a scientific enterprise through grassroots public funding initiatives. The functioning is simple: you can "adopt" a star, for a minimum donation of 10$ (100$ for a star with a planet), and all the profits go to research, through the Kepler Astroseismic Science Consortium, an international collective of exoplanet scientists. These guys can't get funding through NASA because NASA only funds 100% american projects (nationalistic bastards...). Since I'm all for the collective, non-deterministic funding of science, I was delighted by the project, and happy to contribute my 10$ to 'adopt' KIC9958387, a star around which I spotted a possible HZ candidate last summer. Even if I don't end up "officially" discovering the planet, I still feel like I contributed to the advancement of science, even if it's just symbolically through PH and financially through PBD.
I don't feel like my work is done in vain, since I gained knowledge (and still do!) from this whole PH experience, and a better sense of the place of "profanes" in the scientific enterprise. Last spring was all about the fight for accessibility in education, and important questions were raised about the funding of research and post-secondary institutions. I'm studying to become a sociologist, but also ultimately to become a teacher. The mobilization of knowledge in universities and the governance policies in such institutions are therefore issues that are very close to my heart. I found something interesting in projects like PH, like an intuition confirmed: there are imperatives of collegiality at the heart of all sciences. It's more than just the effectiveness of the scientific method, it's also fundamental to our collective consciousness. The division and diversification of social work modified our universities' finality, from one of transmitting the collective knowledge reflexively and critically, to one of training experts, who invest in their "human capital", which they can later sell on the market against a higher wage in the context of the knowledge economy. Basically, diplomas aren't earned anymore, they're bought against a better chance of faring on the highly competitive job market.
I'll leave it at that for now, if I get into an argument against the utilitarian, neoliberal conceptions of education, we'll still be here tomorrow morning! :P
For now, let's just enjoy a (somewhat) related video by one of my favorite artists, Mastodon. This song is great, my favorite from their latest album and one of my favorites in general, plus the video features TRANSITS! ...I mean C'MON!!! :P Hehehe.
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