Tuesday 19 May 2015

My consilient Zeitgeist

The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) has its critiques. I found them by Googling ‘tzm critique’ – duh!

TZM includes a lot of “wouldn’t it be nice if …” from a libertarian (anarchic) point of view. (Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SZT7MZop44)  But TZM assumes that economics is at the root of all things and thus underplays the psychosocial.

Having engaged with the topic there are now a lot of ideas swimming around in the attention centre. I will collect some
  • There is only the one thing which is everything (Note – the cosmic zoom puts things in perspective – we are star dust)
  • The one thing is the mega system which is made up of subsystems which are made up of subsystems. (Ref: systems theory)
  • Nothing stands alone, everything is connected (Note: Thich Nhat Hahn has the concept of Interbeing which links to deep ecology.)
  • Scientists operate using the best working hypotheses presently available. (Note: there is a tendency for older scientists to get stuck in outdated hypotheses. Science progresses one funeral at a time.)
  • Science is a product generated by a process. The product is (a) a theory based on evidence and (b) the theory being applied. The process is in part technical (eg controlled experiments etc) and in part psychosocial (the scientist operates in a cultural context with deep rooted values).
  • Modern ways of thinking are evolving away from the myths and magic that guided past ideas. They had their uses in times past but times have changed.
  • The only constant thing is change. The only certainty is doubt.
  • The thoughts about consilience (ref Sociobiology) from E O Wilson and from David Sloan Wilson are in the same ballpark
  • “In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) refers to the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" to strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence are very strong on their own. Most established scientific knowledge is supported by a convergence of evidence: if not, the evidence is comparatively weak, and there will not likely be a strong scientific consensus.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience

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