"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness
I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
Gene, you can't be serious? Do you really think this clash of the cultures thing is real?
ReplyDeleteI'm honestly not sure how to interpret the data. The first thing that comes to mind is that the "multiculturalism" did do it, but that this is not an essential part of it.
What?! Cultures are different. The results of making Sweden multicultural are real. What exactly is "not serious" about admitting this?
DeleteOf course cultures are different. I'd be an idiot if I denied that (I also do not think all cultures or, rather, all cultural practices, are equal). That doesn't necessarily mean that two of them are going to react like water and sodium if they mix together. This idea always seemed like a conservative bogeyman to me. Now, I don't deny that certain mixtures can react badly (think liberal America and Islamic fundamentalist Saudi Arabia), but I don't think is inherent to multiculturalism. I'm also not sure how Sweden made itself multicultural through legislation. (Was it a declaration? A change in certain crime statutes?)
Delete"This idea always seemed like a conservative bogeyman to me. "
DeleteSo when a particular example crops up -- and we see this problem with attitudes to women in public and rape all over the world now (Gene could have cited Rotherham) -- how do you react to the fact? Not like Keynes it seems.
"Not like Keynes it seems."
DeleteUh, what? My knowledge of economics topics is basic, so I'm probably missing something here.
Do you draw a distinction between multiculturalism and diversity? And why do you think multiculturalism leads to destructive results?
ReplyDeleteSamson, my post was on immigration.
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