Thursday, April 08, 2010

Two Species


George Monbiot is concerned — very concerned! — about the exoneration of Dr. Phil Jones. The failure of other people to be as concerned as he is points, as such failures often do, to systemic corruption. Or maybe to something even more troubling.

None of it made sense: the intolerant dismissal of requests for information, the utter failure to engage when the hacked emails were made public, the refusal by other scientists to accept that anything was wrong. Then I read an article by the computer scientist Steve Easterbrook, and for the first time the light began to dawn.

Easterbrook, seeking to defend Jones and his colleagues, describes a closed culture in which the rest of the world is a tedious and incomprehensible distraction. "Scientists normally only interact with other scientists. We live rather sheltered lives … to a scientist, anyone stupid enough to try to get scientific data through repeated FoI requests quite clearly deserves our utter contempt. Jones was merely expressing (in private) a sentiment that most scientists would share – and extreme frustration with people who clearly don't get it."
Monbiot concludes that journalists and scientists live in Two Different Worlds. You'd think that someone who's been following the climate "debate" for years would've figured that out long before now.
What scientists might regard as trivial and annoying, journalists and democracy campaigners see as central and irreducible. We speak in different tongues and inhabit different worlds.
Or as Pierre Bourdieu puts it in Science of Science and Reflexivity, "each discipline (as a field) is defined by a particular nomos, a principle of vision and division, a principle of construction of objective reality irreducible to that of another discipline." Roll over Wittgenstein, and tell Saussure the news!

Obviously, this raises interesting questions. But I think it's fair to say that the possible advent of a new "scientific" species — Homo sivanus, let's call it — is not one of them.
Perhaps eventually we'll split into two species. Reproducing only with each other, scientists will soon become so genetically isolated that they'll no longer be able to breed with other humans.
Perhaps. But another, more likely possibility is that Monbiot worried that the CRU hack posed a threat to his own credibility, was accordingly a wee bit hasty in calling for Dr. Jones to resign, and is now trying to backpedal by, like, getting all philosophical and shit.

Anyway, if we're to forestall Monbiot's imaginary evolutionary catastrophe, scientists must stop walling themselves off from the everyday world.
Painful and disorienting as it is, they must engage with that irritating distraction called the rest of the world. Everyone owes something to the laity, and science would die if it were not for the billions we spend on it. Scientists need make no intellectual concessions, but they have a duty to understand the context in which they operate.
See, I'd argue that Phil Jones et al did understand the context in which they operate, on the grounds that they recognized McIntyre's FoI filings as "trivial and annoying." Had these scientists really been as cloistered as Monbiot suggests, they may've been more likely to view McIntyre as an honest truth-seeker with whom there was no good reason not to cooperate. And indeed, political calculation is precisely what they tended to be accused of, precisely because they ran afoul of the Virgin/Whore Complex that outsiders tend to impose on the sciences.

Monbiot understands that while science and journalism are both closed worlds, one of them is much better at self-regulation than the other. Instead of thinking about why that might be, and considering "Climategate" — and his own reaction to it — in that context, he resorts to maudlin abstractions like these:
The incomprehension with which science and humanities students regard each other is a tragedy of lost opportunities. Early specialisation might allow us to compete in the ever more specialised labour market, but it equips us for nothing else. As Professor Don Nutbeam, the vice-chancellor of Southampton University, complains: "Young people learn more and more about less and less."
Right. 'Cause the orchestrated misrepresentation of a bunch of hacked e-mails has everything to do with the philosophical schism between science and the humanities, and little if anything to do with the political and economic interests of the people who own the media.

Which just goes to show that OMG we all live in different worlds, and as Krazy Kat pointed out, "lenguage is, that we may mis-unda-stend each udda."
We are deprived by our stupid schooling system of most of the wonders of the world, of the skills and knowledge required to navigate it, above all of the ability to understand each other. Our narrow, antiquated education is forcing us apart like the characters in a Francis Bacon painting, each locked in our boxes, unable to communicate.
Oh, please. Once again: What happened here is that some climate scientists had their e-mails stolen, the media allowed denialists to define what those e-mails meant, and Monbiot found it professionally expedient to portray himself as God's Last Honest Man. Now that the hysteria has died down somewhat, and someone owes someone else an apology (hint hint), Monbiot sees fit to hide his head in the sands of existential angst.

The cheaper the hood, the gaudier the patter.


12 comments:

Rmj said...

C.P. Snow wasn't that interesting the first time around, and he really hasn't worn that well in the interim.

I don't even accept the "closed worlds" argument arguendo. Shaw was right, all professions are a conspiracy against the laity, but they are always conspiracies conspicuously aware of both the laity and the public nature of the conspiracy. Jargon is shorthand for the convenience of the players (LOL), not just to baffle the rubes. There is, indeed, a tendency to wall off from non-members, but it never gets very far (it simply can't) and never furthers the cause of the group.

Monbiot's hand-wringing, as you say, is a form of special pleading, a way of ignoring the log in his eye by squealing about the splinter in the climatologists' collective eye. Which, as every, is nothing more than a reflection.

Maybe if he backed away and got some perspective, rather than try to inspect the "other" so up close and personally....

Phila said...

I don't even accept the "closed worlds" argument arguendo. Shaw was right, all professions are a conspiracy against the laity, but they are always conspiracies conspicuously aware of both the laity and the public nature of the conspiracy. Jargon is shorthand for the convenience of the players (LOL), not just to baffle the rubes.

Which is pretty much Bourdieu's point, right down to the focus on "players" (and with the requisite hat-tip to Wittgenstein).

And you're right, these worlds aren't "closed" in any literal sense. But there's a "price of entry" (per Bourdieu, again) and there are rules to follow. "Skeptics" tend to overlook these little details, natch, except inasmuch as they can be portrayed in a negative light. (Which is not exactly news to you, of course.)

As for jargon and rubes, I thought Acephalous did a nice job on that topic:

The problem with nonspecialists reading the private correspondence of experts is that their ignorance transforms all the technical points into nefarious inkblots. To continue with the example above, skeptical nonspecialists encounter the word "trick" and ask for clarification. Schmidt provides evidence that the word is innocuous, but because nonspecialists can interpret neither the context of the original nor that of the further examples, they redouble their efforts: now the rhetorical situation in which the word "trick" is uttered matters; now the appearance of quotation marks matters, etc. They are convincing themselves that those black blobs represent what they insist they represent, and when experts inform them that those are not Rorschach blots to be subjectively interpreted — that they are, in fact, statements written in a language that skeptics simply do not understand — the nonspecialists look over them again and declare that it could be a butterfly, or maybe a bat.

Phila said...

Incidentally, RMJ, I wonder what you think -- as a sort of idealized version of the complete Renaissance man -- about Monbiot's claim that our education is "antiquated" to the extent that it produces specialization.

I tend to think he's got that exactly backwards, for better or worse.

Rmj said...

Incidentally, RMJ, I wonder what you think -- as a sort of idealized version of the complete Renaissance man -- about Monbiot's claim that our education is "antiquated" to the extent that it produces specialization.

Well, the Penguin sketch was right: knowing everything does take all the mystery out of life; so I've tried to forget a lot lately. Drinking helps.

On the other hand, I do look like a sort of Flemish merchant....

As for Monbiot's claim: poppycock. In a word. I thought the claim that "young people are learning more and more about less and less" was a joke. Was that serious?

Of course, I thought Monbiot was a failed Turing Test do, so what do I know?

Rmj said...

Of course, I thought Monbiot was a failed Turing Test do, so what do I know?

Or "too," instead of "do."

Obviously the drinks are taking over at this hour....

jokerine said...

Right, because the only place that science communication happens is in "science journalism" and oviously the only places people learn things are in school. I'm not a huge fan of specialised university education, but to posit that this is the only place students learn, so as to be shut off of all other worlds is... silly.

Phila said...

Of course, I thought Monbiot was a failed Turing Test do, so what do I know?

He's not usually this bad. That's one of the main reasons I think he's just tying himself in knots instead of confronting the fact that he overreacted, at best, to "Climategate."

Certain people, when they get a basic point wrong, always seem to switch their perspective to the Big Picture. Which they also get wrong, of course, since they only brought it up to change the subject.

Phila said...

Jokerine,

Good point.

Rmj said...

Had to clear my head to properly answer your question, Phila:

No, of course specialization does not lead to inability to communicate across disciplines, nor to the problem of "knowing more and more about less and less." In fact, I'd argue that specialization leads to understanding clearly how much ones does not understand about the larger picture, and how important more knowledge/information/insight, is.

Dom Crossan is an excellent example: his better work is a mixture of scriptural studies, literary theory, anthropology, archeology, and sociology. He's not an expert in all those fields, and sometimes goes quite astray in applying them to his subject: but the result is a fascinating analysis and an enlightening look at his subjects, one that draws in other interested readers, rather than walling them out because they don't have Crossan's scholarly training (well, he can be a tough read, but that's another matter).

Or, as I said: "poppycock." It is, as you say, precisely the opposite. Drawing more and more particularity from other fields allows us greater and greater understanding. Unless, of course, you're Dawkins or Harris or Hitchens, and refuse to allow your ignorance to be disturbed by knowledge from outside your field of expertise. That can be a problem of specialization.

But I don't think that's caused by specialization.

Rmj said...

Certain people, when they get a basic point wrong, always seem to switch their perspective to the Big Picture. Which they also get wrong, of course, since they only brought it up to change the subject.

Funny, I was just teaching two composition classes about the dangers of vague and glittering generalities, and the need for definition to both combat it, and to make sense in what you write.

They looked at me like I was a sort of Flemish merchant, though, so I'm not sure how well I did.

Gail said...

Hi, I found your blog from your comment at climate progress and I love it! It's so random!

Also this post is the best smackdown I've read anywhere of that bizarro screed from Monbiot. Why do he and Pearce want to eat their own?

Phila said...

Thanks, Gail!

I usually think of being "random" as a bad thing. I'm lucky that it seems to appeal to some people!