Interesting comment thread on the Collins appointment. Just a few.
P.Z. Myers bitterly attacks Kenneth Miller, who has provided expert testimony against “Intelligent Design” in court, as a “creationist.”
Perhaps Myers does so attack Miller somewhere, but in a posting this morning he speaks quite gently of Miller as a “friend” on evolution and a “worthy opponent on the issue of tactics in science education.” I understand Tom’s hostility to P.Z. (he has explained it to me very eloquently), but having — as Andrew says — no God in the fight, I don’t mind the guy. He’s on my Google Reader “subscriptions” list because he often says interesting things. He is of course a screaming lefty, but that’s probably due to some nutritional deficiency or digestive disorder.
the religion that created Western culture …
My impression has been that pagan Greece (philosophy, math, epic poetry, drama, military science, representative government, etc.), pagan Rome (law, engineering, military science, administration), and pagan Germany (moots and assemblies, loose kinship, naval technology, days of the week), had something to do with it. Christian solidarity got us through a nasty patch in the middle Middle Ages there, but for the rest, it was in the way at least as often as
not.
Newton was a Natural Philosopher. Scientists came later.
In 1833-34, according to Richard Holmes, whose new book The Age of Wonder I’ve just been reading (for review in the September issue of The New Criterion).
I can’t think of anything more unjust than taking tax-dollars from Christians to pay for a post they are excluded from by a religious test.
I can, without trying hard, think of several things more unjust. It’s a fair point none the less. There’s the thin end of a wedge peeping out from under it, though. The NIH Director has a job to do: disbursing public money to research projects in the human sciences. If a certain cast of mind is necessary for that job to be done properly, then its presence will be a legitimate qualification for, and its absence a legitimate objection against, appointment, regardless of the distribution of that cast of mind among the population at large. Strange, extremely non-modal casts of mind are often required in government work. Think of spies (and their bosses) or diplomats, or senior military men for that matter. You could add the average politician to that list — “an arse upon which / everything has sat, except a man,” if I remember my e.e. cummings correctly.
Further, the people most affected by Collins’ decisions will be working biologists — the least likely of all scientists to hold supernatural beliefs about human nature. (See here). Something is owed to them, too.
Now here comes Andrew himself:
[Harris] fails to make adequate allowance for the fact that all humans are a mix of the rational and the irrational, and, critically, that we are often quite skilled at understanding that fact about ourselves.
Agree with the first clause there but not the second. My own scattered readings in modern neuroscience lead me to suspect that we know next to nothing about ourselves, and just make up most of what we think we know. Our brains are terrible liars. The other week I was reading about a neurological condition called anosognosia, which is the condition of having neurological dysfunction but not knowing it. There are some very startling instances in the literature. You can, for example, be totally blind and not know it! Unable, because of some lesion, to process information from the eyes, your brain just makes up a visual field. You are, of course, stumbling over “invisible” furniture, but you can’t understand why.
It’s really amazing that we have any grasp of reality at all. With this understanding (supposing it to be a correct one) as a frame, the hopes of people like Dawkins and Harris for a coming reign of pure reason just look preposterously utopian. The beginning of wisdom is to see humanity plain.
Thus we ‘believe’ stuff and yet, at another level, we don’t.
Following Mr. Hume’s recommendation, I bought and read Jason Slone’s book Theological Incorrectness, which does a very good job in this area. I second the recommendation.
Collins’ beliefs are what they are, but I see nothing in them which is likely to prevent him applying the ‘scientific’ part of his mind to the science, and, for me, that’s what counts.
I’m afraid I disagree. There is a distinction to be made between science and high-level science administration. The average scientist works in a tiny patch of the garden, and doesn’t bother much with metaphysics or philosophy of science. As I’ve noted before, being interested in that stuff, and wanting to do science, are characteristic of two almost disjoint, only-just-barely-overlapping personality types. Supernatural belief or religious practice can easily be accommodated by such people, without any psychic stress at all, as Tom’s examples (Lemaitre, Mendel, Faraday) illustrate.
Director of the NIH is a very big Science-Administration post indeed, though. At that level, a candidate’s notions about science at large become salient.
Collins has nutty supernaturalist ideas about science at large. Sure, we all have nutty ideas; and sure, Collins’ particular brand of nuttiness should be discounted some on grounds of cultural/historical respectability. Making all allowances, though, I believe Collins is over the line of acceptable nuttiness for the position to which he’s been appointed. I think his ideas about science at large disqualify him.
Collins’ “sterling scientific credentials” make him a fine candidate for a position as a researcher, or supervisor of researchers, perhaps even director of a major lab. If I were running a lab, I’d hire him like a shot.
But … Top-of-the-heap NIH director dispensing tens of billions in research funding, most of it in the human sciences, which are (or soon will be) the last redoubt of supernaturalist pseudoscience? Collins would not have had my vote.
For Astronomer Royal, maybe.
