Rules of Patheos: Midgley appears to violate TOS 10x

[_Physics Guy]

Yeah, sheesh. The blog entry on which all these posts were comments was a long quote from C.S. Lewis, and the title of the entry was "Interesing thoughts from C.S. Lewis ...".

Maybe Midgley didn't know that Lewis, who never earned a doctoral degree and wrote most of his books as an untitled Oxford don, did eventually get a professorial chair by moving for it to Cambridge. Midgley might have guessed, though, that a reference to "Lewis" in a comment on a blog entry about C.S. Lewis was more likely to be about C.S. Lewis than about Louis Midgley.

Thinking about it more, in fact, this is one of those slips that looks less like egotism to me and more like cognitive decline. It just makes too little sense. I'm feeling again that we should stop calling out Midgley because he's just not fully responsible any more. Not only do the gears sometimes slip; it must also be maddening to be frequently confused when they do, and horrifying to suspect what is happening. That's enough to shorten anyone's temper.

It was an interesting Lewis quote. From what I know about the history of early science, Lewis was quite right to call magic the stillborn twin of science, inasmuch as science and magic were both about pursuing strange thoughts, and undertaking precise and peculiar activities, in the quest to gain power over nature. Keynes maybe put the same thought more pithily by calling Isaac Newton "not the first of the age of reason" but rather "the last of the magicians". Newton wrote tons more about alchemy and esoteric Bible interpretation than he ever did about science. Keynes knew that because he bought a bunch of those Newton documents at an auction one time.

The quest for power, as opposed to the disinterested search for truth, isn't something that science has ever outgrown. Most scientists to this day are quite eager to find practical applications, and those who work on subjects that don't offer many practical applications usually admit this as a drawback to their fields. The whole scientific emphasis on empirical testing was never only epistemological. It was always practical. Making something work in the lab is a good way to test an idea, but making something work in the lab is also the first step towards putting it to work in the kitchen.

What I don't get is Lewis's apparent conclusion that this magic-like lust for power is a congenital moral taint for which science ought to repent. I don't buy for a moment that the majority of humans have ever been content just to accommodate our souls to the way things are. Lewis thought that pre-modern wisdom was all about humbly doing that, but I think he was deluded by the fact that all he knew about the pre-modern era was writings by rich and privileged people who could afford to be complacent.

I think science and magic emerged together in western Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries because after the horrible wars and plagues of the European late Middle Ages, even rich people were desperate for power over nature. So they tried all kinds of desperate things, and some worked. Stringent quality control to discard ideas that didn't work turned out to be important, and the difference between magic and science was getting that message. That was pretty much the only difference between them, though. And so be it. I see no need to repent.

(Doctorates didn't use to be de rigeur for Anglo-Saxon academics until the vogue spread from Germany over the first half of the twentieth century. Lewis didn't catch the wave but in his day that just wasn't important.)

[_Gadianton]

Good thoughts, Physic's Guy, Newton was a nut and the history of science isn't a clear-cut victory of truth over superstition, but it hardly needs to be to make some of the general points regarding the benefits of secularism.

Sympathetic magic isn't that different from basic science, the biggest difference between Newton finding correlations between objects falling by an indescribable force or figuring out the dates in the book of Daniel is that the next generation could pick it apart with controlled experimentation.

What the SeN crowd doesn't get is that in the case of water dowsing, we don't care so much about the mystery of the forces at work but getting a rough idea of the causal arrow. Oddly, on that last dowsing thread, one of the Jr. guys out of the blue said he'd be up for controlled experiments for dowsing and DCP upvoted that comment. lol. This was after downvoting Gemli's ideas for creating a test scenario.

Where the big fail comes for the SeN guys, though, is they're stuck on this island of personal witness for the sake of protecting their beliefs from the dangers on the mainland, but they aren't so hot on allowing others to share their island. Back when the first "sealed portion" came out in early 2000s, the apologists ridiculed its soft-spoken proponents on ZLMB. Midgley has dedicated a part of his life to whitewashing Maori lore in order to make it compatible with his precious Limited Geography Theory. The Book of Mormon is a matter of personal faith, but if there's a chance to write a 12 part series on horses in America they'll take that over faith any day. They certainly reject the right for the Heartland crowd to have a testimony of the North America model. I defy them to show how Hartman Rector Jr's life of self-important faith as described by his daughter in the business of priesthood blessings and so on was any different than his bold support of the Heartland model.

And how supportive are they of John Pratt and the recovered plates of Gold? Do they remember the story of Snite the Jeweler? All of their blustering about the space for religion is for themselves and people they like only. For anyone else, prepare for the common-sense objectivity treatment Gemli is famous for.

[_moksha]

Not only do the gears sometimes slip; it must also be maddening to be frequently confused when they do, and horrifying to suspect what is happening.

On top of that, imagine reading on some other Mormon website that you passed away. That would have been sufficient for Dr. Midgley to exclaim, "Damn it, why didn't someone tell me?!"

[_Dr LOD]

Louis Midgley - I could post my report on Skinny to sic et non. Why not. God willing, I will do it. And Kiwi57 can report if I got anything right.

http://disq.us/p/276rzid

So does this mean the Skinny-L list still active in some form?

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

So does this mean the Skinny-L list still active in some form?

The Skinny-L list is bigger than ever, and it leaks like a sieve. I’ve enjoyed reading the emails.

[_Paloma]

I noticed that 'skinny' reference too.

Years ago, someone in the know (i.e. a Mormon from Provo as distinguished from myself, a non-LDS, non-American observer) suggested to me that the skinny-l was the real community and life-blood for its members. If there was any reason for a subset of LDS believers (maybe apart from their source of employment) to remain tight with the Church and with each other, it was the camaraderie and mutual reinforcement enjoyed through this "club" where humour and (often, sadly) derision of 'others' were in abundance.

Sounds like a kind of partisanship ... a particularly ugly kind.

Maybe idolatry too.

[_Dr. Shades]

Sounds like a kind of partisanship ... a particularly ugly kind.

Maybe idolatry too.

Our own Philo Soffee was a member of that list for many years. Perhaps he can fill you in with a few details if you're interested.

[_Dr Exiled]

Where is this "Skinny-L" and how can it be accessed?

[_moksha]

Where is this "Skinny-L" and how can it be accessed?

Pretty sure it is on the dark web and that to register you first have to perform various rituals that involve chicken entrails, being paddled by elders with dark hoods and robes, and drinking the nectar of Zaitan and dancing around in goat leggings. Finally, Grand Visier Midgley must draw a skinny L across your forehead with the blood of a poodle. After that, you just sign on with your usual password such as DPeterson666.

[_Dr Exiled]

Where is this "Skinny-L" and how can it be accessed?

Pretty sure it is on the dark web and that to register you first have to perform various rituals that involve chicken entrails, being paddled by elders with dark hoods and robes, and drinking the nectar of Zaitan and dancing around in goat leggings. Finally, Grand Visier Midgley must draw a skinny L across your forehead with the blood of a poodle. After that, you just sign on with your usual password such as DPeterson666.

Thank god that's all I have to do ... knowing DCP and his penchant for ___ , I thought there would be some sort of real violation involved