Disagree with Tyson? Racist!
Or, Gödel Versus the New World Order
By: Jay
In the land of the blind, the 80s black science guy with 80s black guy mustache is king. In a recent interview, high priest of neo-Darwinian scientism, Neil de Grasse Tyson expounded the true profundity of his worldview. Tyson stated on a recent podcast:
“interviewer: At a certain point it’s just futile.
dGT: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it’s, what are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?
(another) interviewer: I think a healthy balance of both is good.
dGT: Well, I’m still worried even about a healthy balance. Yeah, if you are distracted by your questions so that you can’t move forward, you are not being a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world. And so the scientist knows when the question “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” is a pointless delay in our progress.
[insert predictable joke by one interviewer, imitating the clapping of one hand]
dGT: How do you define clapping? All of a sudden it devolves into a discussion of the definition of words. And I’d rather keep the conversation about ideas. And when you do that don’t derail yourself on questions that you think are important because philosophy class tells you this. The scientist says look, I got all this world of unknown out there, I’m moving on, I’m leaving you behind. You can’t even cross the street because you are distracted by what you are sure are deep questions you’ve asked yourself. I don’t have the time for that. [Note to the reader: I, like Neil, live and work in Manhattan, and I can assure you that I am quite adept at crossing the perilous streets of the metropolis.]
interviewer [not one to put too fine a point on things, apparently]: I also felt that it was a fat load of crap, as one could define what crap is and the essential qualities that make up crap: how you grade a philosophy paper? [5]
dGT [laughing]: Of course I think we all agree you turned out okay.
interviewer: Philosophy was a good Major for comedy, I think, because it does get you to ask a lot of ridiculous questions about things.
dGT: No, you need people to laugh at your ridiculous questions.
interviewers: It’s a bottomless pit. It just becomes nihilism.
dGT: nihilism is a kind of philosophy”
This is so ridiculous, I am at a loss as to where to begin. Tyson represents the latest, popular PR front man for the New Atheist club that have taken the Internet, bookstores, sub reddits and mama’s basement-bound neckbeards by storm. Before launching into this, I would like to remind readers that just as the media’s fixation and focus on planned events is engineered, so is the obsession and worship of these faces of so-called science. These “scientists” are given to you as men to follow and look up to, when they are utter and complete fools. Let’s unpack this.
Tyson’s statements are ahistorical beyond belief. Like any discipline, philosophy is a broad subject that encompasses all kinds of associations and related fields. Philosophy relates to mathematics, in number theory. Philosophy relates to technology, insofar as computer technology emerges from the philosophical presuppositions of Leibniz. Philosophy relates to modern scientific methodology, as modern science originated from philosophers. Aristotle, the father of science, was a philosopher. Logic, which is the science of argumentation is philosophy. Logic directly relates to mathematics and math theory. Tyson uses words, and words are part of a linguistic web, which is philosophy. Philosophy of science is an entire sub discipline, but the New Atheists have spoken from Olympus on that, too, as Feynman famously said: “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”
It’s so liberal and sciencey!
Read the full article at - http://jaysanalysis.com/2014/06/10/philosophy-phoenix-arises-to-annihilate-degrasse-tyson/#more-5259