It is a profoundly racist worldview which asserts than science, math, or great works of art and literature are "Eurocentric" or "white supremacist." The great tools of understanding the universe and the human condition transcend time and individual identities. And then there are lots of cool smaller bodies of knowledge that have helped people survive and make sense of the world around them for generations-- which plants are safe to eat, which materials are best for building, the ebbs and flows of nature-- that aren't universal but are, in most cultures, passed down from one generation to the next.
A major problem here, I think, is that education systems, taking on the role once assumed by family and community, are seeking to claim the latter bodies of knowledge are not just equal in importance to the former but superior. They are certainly easier to learn and teach, which is why they appeal to so many teachers and students. But we are beginning to see the results in many parts of the world of what happens when even the supposedly elite portion of the population is scientifically and mathematically illiterate: we are gulls, easily taken in by those who likely DO know what they're doing.
I entirely subscribe to the view that "science" is always and only the provisional attempt to describe and control aspects of our shared empirical reality, by whatever tools men and women may craft in the course of that pursuit. And yes, the test of any scientific theory is whether it coheres enough with its targeted domain of reality to yield useful and predictable results, and in a manner superior to other competing theories relevant to that domain. Whatever works in terms of applied science has nothing to do with 'race.' On the other hand, within the institutions where science is pursued, there is the thorny issue of 'politics,' and this explains why a man like Planck was forced to observe that science truly only progresses one funeral at a time.
As for the 'politics' of science, so, too, for matters of race, and I'll here defer to Fanon, and you can substitute for 'black' or 'white' any color that you like :
"I, the man of color, want only this:
"That the tool never possess the man. That the enslavement of man by man cease forever. That is, of one by another. That it be possible for me to discover and to love man, wherever he may be.
"The Negro is not. Any more than the white man.
"Both must turn their backs on the inhuman voices which were those of their respective ancestors in order that authentic communication be possible. Before it can adopt a positive voice, freedom requires an effort at dis-alienation. At the beginning of his life a man is always clotted, he is drowned in contingency. The tragedy of the man is that he was once a child.
"It is through the effort to recapture the self and to scrutinize the self, it is through the lasting tension of their freedom that men will be able to create the ideal conditions of existence for a human world.
"Superiority? Inferiority?
"Why not the quite simple attempt to touch the other, to feel the other, to explain the other to myself?
"Was my freedom not given to me then in order to build the world of the You?
"[. . .] I want the world to recognize, with me, the open door of every consciousness.
"My final prayer:
"O my body, make of me always a man who questions!"
Doesn't this all lead back to the left's attack on the legitimacy of logic?
Remember when they started to tell grade school kids that 2 + 2 = 5 can be right for some people?
If you don't keep logic/science above the fray of subjective belief systems and regional traditions and folk knowledge, then how are you going to determine what is real? What laws are just? What rights people should even have? That anything other than who wields the 'biggest stick' should rule?
And people wonder why Woke ideologues are the most fanatical Covid cultists.
Subjective reality, destruction of language, fascist domination.
Viruses gonna virus, leftists gonna left.
It is a profoundly racist worldview which asserts than science, math, or great works of art and literature are "Eurocentric" or "white supremacist." The great tools of understanding the universe and the human condition transcend time and individual identities. And then there are lots of cool smaller bodies of knowledge that have helped people survive and make sense of the world around them for generations-- which plants are safe to eat, which materials are best for building, the ebbs and flows of nature-- that aren't universal but are, in most cultures, passed down from one generation to the next.
A major problem here, I think, is that education systems, taking on the role once assumed by family and community, are seeking to claim the latter bodies of knowledge are not just equal in importance to the former but superior. They are certainly easier to learn and teach, which is why they appeal to so many teachers and students. But we are beginning to see the results in many parts of the world of what happens when even the supposedly elite portion of the population is scientifically and mathematically illiterate: we are gulls, easily taken in by those who likely DO know what they're doing.
In regards to the snippet of letter from the Vice-Chancellor of Auckland, "Power Heave!"
In regards to all the sciencey stuff that worked so well, we gotta do it over, "SSDD."
I'm obviously sick of both kinds of people represented.
I entirely subscribe to the view that "science" is always and only the provisional attempt to describe and control aspects of our shared empirical reality, by whatever tools men and women may craft in the course of that pursuit. And yes, the test of any scientific theory is whether it coheres enough with its targeted domain of reality to yield useful and predictable results, and in a manner superior to other competing theories relevant to that domain. Whatever works in terms of applied science has nothing to do with 'race.' On the other hand, within the institutions where science is pursued, there is the thorny issue of 'politics,' and this explains why a man like Planck was forced to observe that science truly only progresses one funeral at a time.
As for the 'politics' of science, so, too, for matters of race, and I'll here defer to Fanon, and you can substitute for 'black' or 'white' any color that you like :
"I, the man of color, want only this:
"That the tool never possess the man. That the enslavement of man by man cease forever. That is, of one by another. That it be possible for me to discover and to love man, wherever he may be.
"The Negro is not. Any more than the white man.
"Both must turn their backs on the inhuman voices which were those of their respective ancestors in order that authentic communication be possible. Before it can adopt a positive voice, freedom requires an effort at dis-alienation. At the beginning of his life a man is always clotted, he is drowned in contingency. The tragedy of the man is that he was once a child.
"It is through the effort to recapture the self and to scrutinize the self, it is through the lasting tension of their freedom that men will be able to create the ideal conditions of existence for a human world.
"Superiority? Inferiority?
"Why not the quite simple attempt to touch the other, to feel the other, to explain the other to myself?
"Was my freedom not given to me then in order to build the world of the You?
"[. . .] I want the world to recognize, with me, the open door of every consciousness.
"My final prayer:
"O my body, make of me always a man who questions!"
-- Frantz Fanon, 1968
Doesn't this all lead back to the left's attack on the legitimacy of logic?
Remember when they started to tell grade school kids that 2 + 2 = 5 can be right for some people?
If you don't keep logic/science above the fray of subjective belief systems and regional traditions and folk knowledge, then how are you going to determine what is real? What laws are just? What rights people should even have? That anything other than who wields the 'biggest stick' should rule?