Here’s a little advertising video for the book Good Science. It’s a great little book if you ask me and its message, that scientist always look to find out the truth of things, timely and important, especially considering the collapse of POMO theory. But it’s also a challenge. As Tim points out, accessing the truth of things is not always so straightforward. What’s more, in order to get to the truth, scientists often have to be revolutionaries. We never take the world “as it is” but always challenge ourselves, and others, to work towards the truth. Some might call it a calling, I just call bloody hard work.

Epistemology = How do we know the world that we know? Ontology = What is the nature of the world that we know? In this short article Dr. Tim argues not only that the world is a materialist presence that exists independent of our observation (his ontological statement), but that this materialist presence can be known basically through a process of empirical trial and error. The empirical trial and error is necessary because the human is fallible, given to delusion, and open to manipulation and contrivance. That much is true, we are too easy to fool it seems. But is that in our nature, or is it a function of our flawed socialization process? That’s the rub. Personally, I think socialization but then hey, this a Sociology journal and I’m a sociologist, so maybe I’m biased (or maybe, it is the Truth).

Science is as science does, but science isn’t infallible. In fact, as global information democracy trundles on we can start to see just how fallible the scientist really is. Neither our methods, nor our ontology, nor our epistemology provide us with a privileged preview of the truth. The capital “T” truth is, we are subject to political, economic, sexual, even class based bias just like everybody else. The only difference between us and the priests discredited by the scientific revolution? We admit our bias…. Sometimes….

Greetings today children, and welcome to my neighborhood. Our word of the day today is “hypocrite.” Can you say that? “Hypocrite? I thought you could, and so can Dr. Mcgettigan. Though he is saying it in a far nicer way, he is saying it just the same. We are a nation of contradictions, with a morality based on profit and domination, and a sensibility that dictates the end justifies the means. Dose up with those performance enhancing drugs sir ’cause not even your health and well-being takes precedence over the need to dominate another living being.

Big bucks in buff bods and super-powers. Collectively we have a fantasy, a fetish perhaps, with notions of super power and hidden divinity. From the X-men to Superman to The Hulk, perhaps there is something more than the the mere dust and detritus of human existence. As Bruce Cockburn once sang, “Behind the pain fear, etched on the faces, something is shining like gold, but better…” As Dr. Tim says, let fantasy lead where science fears to tread.

So what is intelligence? What is IQ? What makes one person smarter, and thus more deserving of reward, then another. Well, as Tim points out, and according to many psychologists its a magic number. Like a gypsy’s gaze into the crystal ball, this number, derived with suitably esoteric and “unbiased” (not!) scientific instrumentation, reveals all. Or does it? And, as Tim asks, can it? Can a simple number like 42 really reveal all the secrets of the human experience, or is just (as Douglas Adams has suggested) a big joke.

It’s not often you get a honest account of the foundation of modern science. To be honest, accounts of science, especially those given to second year initiates” is often more polemic and ego that it is science and rationality. But here’s an account that exposes the irrational roots of our rational inquiry. Science, it seems, is as much founded on the irrational (and often egoic and competitive) pursuit of fantasy and imagination than the cold hard facts of reality. And in fact that’s a good thing because, as Tim points out, without fantasy and imagination to drive us, we’d not have achieved the technological wonders of the modern world. It is interesting though. If imagination can bring us the technological world of Captain Kirk, can’t it also bring us the social world of the future as well, a world where money is abolished, everyone is provided for, and nobody suffers or goes hungry. Perhaps you’ll say its just “human nature,” but perhaps its really just a failure of imagination!

Are humans basically good, or basically bad? Some people, like Freud, Hobbes, and Foucault, say bad. We’ve got a beast within and the only way to control that beast is to beat it down and repress it. You want proof? Just look at how badly the adults in this world act. They are greedy, selfish, violent, and brutish. But is that the result of human nature, or is it simply the result of toxic socialization? Personally, I think its the latter. Take one giggling, innocent, bubbly, effervescent child, subject them to two decades of disregard and abuse (statistically, rates of child abuse are high), and turn them loose damaged, angry, and desperate! It’s no wonder we live in the world we do. But is it human nature, or should we fault our The System and its agents of socialization? It’s up to you to decide. But be careful, the choice you make determines the society we build.

When I was a kid I was always disappointed by the toys I got. They never lived up to the crazy expectations generated by dissembling advertisers as they manipulated my soft and malleable child-mind. I remember, and now I tell my own kids to watch out because the toys they see on television are never, ever, ever as good as they appear in the commercials. Well I guess not everybody remembers their childhood disappointment because now we have a new generation of older children who, dutifully obeying the media manipulators, buy the lie and live with disappointment. But then, at least they get to live. Can’t say the same for the workers at the Foxconn (where Apple builds its iPads) are so disappointed with the way the company treats them they’ve actually had to install nets outside the windows to prevent the workers from jumping out and killing themselves as a result. Thanks S. J. for a job well done! – Mike Sosteric

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of watching the U.S. is that government always precedes some big, mind numbing global intervention (war, invasion, occupation, nuclear bomb, etc. etc.) with some sort of diversion. Like any magician knows, you can do a lot by diverting someone’s attention. And so here we have the latest diversion, a magical invocation guaranteed to catch consciousness and steer it away from whatever is coming next. Keep an eye out. Something wicked this way comes. Ed.