Thanks largely to the heroic efforts of the DIE-hards, the University now only exists, as an institution, in some long-forgotten dream. The universities always were, I suppose, like many great and noble ideas, only ever partially living up to the idealization. This is always the case for any great human endeavour; we set out our principles, our most cherished ideas, and then do our very best to live up to them. Being human, however, we rarely fully succeed.
The DIE derangement, however, has produced an entirely different entity, very different from the traditional understanding of the role and function of a University.
Today, we don’t have Universities but Looniversities; we have Lackademics instead of Academics.
In SJW™ (SocialJusticeWorld™) the main function of a university is not to churn out knowledge, but activists. Activists who will, by their unstinting devotion to praxis, rather than scholarship, produce that utopian society that we all know will result if only we could get the hands of damned whitey off the steering wheel.
Physics has largely resisted the wilder claims of such woke gobbledegook as “different ways of knowing” and what I want to call systemic ism-izing.
If a black physicist came up with some theory and it turned out that it didn’t work (failed experimental tests) what are the Lackademics going to say? The universe is racist? That it is rooted in white supremacy? That it’s systemically oppressing black ideas?
Well, sort of.
I came across a paper with the glorious title “Making Black Women Scientists under White Empiricism: The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics” which can be found in the journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
The author is a bona-fide physicist; a cosmologist and particle physicist. She is black, agender, and queer, whose husband is a lawyer, and describes herself as a black feminist theorist. I mention these latter things not because I think they are even remotely important for her work as a physicist, but because she clearly does think they’re important in that regard. It’s important to have as many intersectional participation trophies as one can muster.
She’s clearly very capable as a physicist, but what about the other work she’s engaged in, her social justice activism?
This is where my perspective (on physics) and hers are almost diametrically opposed.
The paper itself is rather jargon-laden with many of the typical SJW™ evidence-free assertions that one finds in Lackademia.
You can get a good sense of the direction of travel of the paper from the abstract, which I quote in full here
In this article I take on the question of how the exclusion of Black American women from physics impacts physics epistemologies, and I highlight the dynamic relationship between this exclusion and the struggle for women to reconcile “Black woman” with “physicist.” I describe the phenomenon where white epistemic claims about science—which are not rooted in empirical evidence—receive more credence and attention than Black women’s epistemic claims about their own lives. To develop this idea, I apply an intersectional analysis to Joseph Martin’s concept of prestige asymmetry in physics, developing the concept of white empiricism to discuss the impact that Black women’s exclusion has had on physics epistemology. By considering the essentialization of racism and sexism alongside the social construction of ascribed identities, I assess the way Black women physicists self-construct as scientists and the subsequent impact of epistemic outcomes on the science itself.
It’s an abstract - and we assume all the ‘evidence’ for assertions made in an abstract are fully explored in the body of the paper - but even so, we hit upon some interesting terminology.
Black women have been “excluded” from physics? How so? It has certainly been true in the past when nearly all women were discriminated against on the basis of their sex when it came to academic pursuits. But can we say quite the same thing is happening today?
Here’s an example from my own “lived experience”. First day on the job - a large industrial research lab in the UK - I’d finished my PhD and was just embarking on my post-doctoral career. Sitting opposite me? A black woman physicist, with a PhD and all. This was 35 years ago.
Doing my PhD? The group I joined had 3 (out of 7) female PhD students. The professor whose offer of a PhD place I turned down1 ended up taking on 2 (out of 2) female PhD students that year.
So my own “lived experience” tells me that’s it’s not, really, a picture of deliberate exclusion, and little evidence of unconscious bias operating, either. Unless things have got worse than they were over 3 decades ago, which hardly seems credible given the massive expansion of DIE initiatives since that time.
The claim, in the abstract, is that the exclusion of black women in particular has had an impact on “epistemic outcomes” in physics; which is a fancy way of saying ‘knowledge’. You use the word ‘epistemic’ when you want to sound all inturrlekshual like.
I didn’t know that skin colour (or sex, for that matter) had such a profound effect on physics. If only Einstein had been black, eh?
Epistemology is a branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge; how it is produced, what it is, how it is verified - that sort of stuff.
I’m a quantum physicist, although not a particle physicist, and so I’m well-aware of the tendency of people in my field to stick the word “quantum” in front of everything in order to make it sound more sexy. We have quantum processing, quantum retrodiction, quantum games, quantum computing, quantum information, quantum teleportation, quantum cryptography, and so on. If you want to ‘big it up’, with an eye to next year’s funding, just stick the word quantum in there and it’ll get them all reaching for their chequebooks.
The people who live in SJW™ use the same technique - except they stick the word “justice” onto everything.
One of the classic Lackademic examples of this is one we’ve met before; the paper on the ‘feminist theory’ of glaciation which explored ‘justice’ in human-ice interactions. Yes, it seems like parody, but it’s not.
We have all also seen people talking about things like climate ‘justice’ and reproductive ‘justice’ and, in this paper, we see that there are also things called epistemic justice, testimonial justice and hermeneutical justice.
If someone rejects your “lived experience”, or your interpretation of that experience, they are doing you a testimonial injustice. Well, that’s all very good, but if you’re going to describe a phrase like “the best person should get the job” as racist, then I’m going to rather question your judgment as to what is, and isn’t, racist in your worldview.
So, yeah, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to blindly accept anyone’s interpretation of events. I am, in fact, going to be rather colour-blind about it. Don’t care if you’re white, black, or pink with purple spots, if your interpretation of events doesn’t seem realistic or reasonable to me, then I’ll say so if the occasion warrants, and you can stick your ‘testimonial injustice’ where many greenhouse gases are said to originate.
The death of St George of the Fentanyl was, almost universally, interpreted as a ‘racist’ incident and yet, to this day, there has not been a single shred of actual evidence that it was so. Lots of claims that it was ‘racist’, but no actual evidence. I reserve my judgment on this until more credible evidence of racism is forthcoming. Meanwhile, I’m going to view this as an unfortunate (not to mention tragic), but racially-neutral, incident in which several people, including the victim himself, bear some culpability.
I mention this incident because the author of the paper is a member of Particles for Justice, a group of particle physicists who advocate for, erm, justice in physics. They had a bit of a meltdown after St George suffered an untimely death at the hands (knees?) of negligent cops2.
What really interested me in the paper was the author’s use of a fundamental concept from physics to argue for her position.
Ever since Einstein did his relativity thing and Schrödinger (and others) did his quantum thing, there’s been an uneasy truce between the two theories. The universe, it is supposed, does not suffer from some kind of dissociative identity disorder. We assume that, whatever it does, it is governed by one self-consistent set of ‘laws’ that can all be described within the same mathematical framework.
Physicists have been searching for this GUT (Grand Unified Theory) for quite some time. The problem is that the underlying geometry of quantum mechanics does not fit so well within General Relativity, which is entirely based on geometry. In standard QM time enters as a kind of ‘parameter’ whereas in GR it is part of the very fabric of things. Getting the two theories to play nice with one another has been something of an intractable problem.
One of the leading ‘contenders’ to achieve this unification is something called String Theory. The basic idea is that everything is made up of the same thing, a string, and what we interpret as a different particle is a different mode of vibration of that string. That’s the very simplistic picture anyway - and I don’t know enough about it to be able to tell you how far that simple picture actually describes the math. It will be, like many such nice ‘pictures’ in physics, something of an oversimplification.
The problem is that in order for these String Theories to be tested experimentally we’re looking at having to build colliders the size of the solar system (I may, or may not, be exaggerating here). The energies required to properly test these theories are completely beyond our capabilities for the foreseeable future.
This has led some physicists to seek alternative approaches to ‘verification’ which might be interpreted as a kind of rejection of empiricism. This is the tack which the author uses. She compares the difference in standards of physicists requiring less experimental verification for String Theory, and yet holding up the experience of black women physicists as being subject to more ‘experimental’ verification.
Something like that, anyway. In her words :
In string theory, we find an example wherein extremely speculative ideas that require abandoning the empiricist core of the scientific method and which are endorsed by white scientists are taken more seriously than the idea that Black women are competent observers of their own experiences.
I’m looking at this and thinking not so much in terms of comparing apples and oranges, but apples and nematode worms. I would agree that any rejection of the rigorous standards of the scientific method for String Theory is not a good idea - but that does not mean these physicists are arguing for the rejection of such anywhere else. I think it’s more desperation on their part. They’ve constructed all this highly-technical math wizardry and nobody can tell, yet, whether any of it corresponds to reality.
So there’s this weird over-extension to ‘social’ issues going on here, but there’s an even worse one. There’s a ridiculous mix-up between an ‘observer’ in a physics context and an ‘observer’ in a social context.
She writes :
Albert Einstein’s monumental contribution to our empirical understanding of gravity is rooted in the principle of covariance, which is the simple idea that there is no single objective frame of reference that is more objective than any other
So far, so good.
What this term “covariance” is really trying to capture is the notion that if Alice is in one lab, she will measure stuff - and she will attach her own coordinates to things. If Bob is in another, he will measure stuff - and he will attach his own coordinates to things. The laws of physics shouldn’t change because someone is moving with respect to another person - and so this means the physical laws, expressed in terms of these coordinates, can’t change when one ‘transforms’ between Alice and Bob’s reference frames and coordinates. Neither Alice, nor Bob, has a ‘better’ frame of reference than the other.
All frames of reference, all observers, are equally competent and capable of observing the universal laws that underlie the workings of our physical universe.
Uh-oh.
Now we’re starting to see some iffy language creep in here. All observers are equally competent and capable? You can already see where this is heading. The very next sentence :
Yet the number of women in physics remains low, especially those of African descent. The gender imbalance between Black women and Black men is less severe than in many professions, but the disparity remains.
We’ve gone in a few sentences from Einstein’s notion that no frame of reference is ‘better’ than any other to a numerical disparity in the pursuit of physics and/or hiring practices.
And here’s the rub, according to the author
Given that Black women must, according to Einstein’s principle of covariance, have an equal claim to objectivity regardless of their simultaneously experiencing intersecting axes of oppression, we can dispense with any suggestion that the low number of Black women in science indicates any lack of validity on their part as observers.
What kind of blithering bollocking balderdash is this bilious bolus of bullshit?
Einstein’s principle of covariance implies no such thing. There’s a fundamental category error going on here. You don’t even need an ‘observer’, as such, in Einstein’s formulation. That’s just a convenient mental image to help us fix things. Typically we imagine, yes imagine, a system of measuring devices moving along with the imaginary ‘observer’. The devices are recording what they need to record. Another frame of reference has an imaginary identical set of such devices all moving along with that reference frame - associated with our imagined observer in that frame.
You can, if you want, remove the notion of an ‘observer’ or a system of measuring devices entirely. They’re there simply as a convenient mental aid to help us concretize the math.
But in the author’s mind we seem to have to this being about a “claim to objectivity” on the part of black women.
I don’t even know what the right metaphor is here. Something about mountains and molehills? Except that’s not right, either, because at least mountains and molehills share a common feature - they are similar ‘kinds’ of things.
Reading between the lines, it would seem she’s upset at a situation in which someone claims racism and they are not automatically 100% believed. Which has sweet FA to do with Einstein’s formulation of physical laws.
The SJW™-speak is, as is usual for this kind of paper, liberally spewed all over the place. Here’s just one example from later on in the paper :
Evelyn Fox Keller talks about Western epistemic constructions of science as “male” and nature as “female,” leading to what Banu Subramaniam and Mary Wyer have called “dementoring”—the training of women in STEM by “untraining them as women” and assimilating them as scientists. Effectively, one can argue that Black women, famously in the double bind, experience untraining as women along with efforts to patch up the (constitutionally mandated) two-fifths deficit in our humanity. Here, the wake of slavery is telegraphed by society: by virtue of birth we are unconstructed as potential scientists.
First thing we do when we get a freshly-minted female PhD student is to “untrain them as women”. I have no idea why black women are said to have a 2/5 deficit in humanity (there’s no reference here), or why such a thing is constitutionally mandated, but there you go, it’s in the paper, peer-reviewed and all, so it must be true.
There’s probably one thing I would agree with the author on. Past sexism and/or racism has been really shitty. It has almost certainly stifled progress in physics. The classic example is Emmy Noether, an absolutely extraordinary genius, female, who, back in the early part of the 20th century faced serious discrimination at the hands of her sexist university. How many other Noether’s have we missed out on because of our previous disastrous attitudes to women in academia?
To claim that women, today, face a similar level of blatant sexism would be utterly absurd given the massive preference afforded to things like sex and race when hiring these days. We only need look at a certain Gay example (of the Claudine variety) to realize this.
That’s not to say that certain ‘adjustments’ might be warranted in any typically male environment when a female is employed. And a good thing too. But we’re talking about relatively minor social stuff and not some major dark and dreadful oppressive force that keeps women subjugated.
But it’s always the same in SJW™ ‘logic’ - any numerical disparity anywhere has one, and only one, cause; big bad systemic oppressionalizing.
The author bemoans a double standard in physics - String Theory is, allegedly, treated more leniently than the claims of racism of black women - and yet there’s a double standard being applied in the logic. If you tried to apply this kind of “Kendi logic” of everything is caused by oppression in physics, you’d get nowhere. You have to apply proper logic and determine real cause and effect.
SJW™ cultists are big on claims - just liberally thrown around - and they expect you to believe them without evidence.
Apply the scientific method, dearies. Let’s see the evidence and the analysis.
You’re fond of the phrase “do the work” - well just fucking do some.
I had offers from 2 really good research groups. It was a difficult choice, but I had to make one. As it turned out, I later got to work really closely with the Prof I had turned down. The company I worked for hired him as a consultant and he worked one day a week at our labs.
I do not view Floyd’s death as a racially-motivated murder. The cops, in my view, had a duty of care to their suspect and should have been aware that he was really struggling long before they finally did. They were guilty of negligence in that regard. But this wasn’t ‘murder’ in the way that term is commonly understood.
I can explain the “(constitutionally mandated) two-fifths deficit in our humanity” business, for what it’s worth. The fact that she (or whatever) doesn’t shows how much privilege the wokies get to walk around with unabashedly, being they’re the ones with exclusive use of the cancel button, since it’s a purely American reference.
The U.S. Constitution originally incorporated a compromise between southern states with large slave populations, and northern ones with relatively few or none, as to how slaves (euphemistically referred to as “all other persons”) would be counted for the purpose of apportioning representation in Congress. The southerners wanted slaves counted (since the slaves couldn’t vote, that would boost the political power of the free southern population), while the northerners wanted them excluded. The compromise was to count each slave as 3/5 of a free person. The post-Civil War amendments ended this, of course.
It’s worth noting that stupid people (including woke academics like this) think the injustice was the “two-fifths deficit,” when in fact it was the slave owners who wanted slaves counted full value, and the more anti-slavery arrangement (in that context) would have been not to count them at all.
Personally, I realized physics was racist when I read about conservation of the color charge in the strong nuclear interaction. Who else but whitey would demand the color mix never change?
That's not a physics paper at all. It is a political racist screed.
If she'd bothered to look at data, she'd immediately would have found that if 99.9% of women of any race were "excluded" from physics in the 19th century, well so were 99.9% of men.
Oops.
Drat. Maybe, just maybe, the "exclusion" has to do with something else than your race and ding-a-ling or lack thereof.