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Killing Lincoln

5/24/2020

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KILLING LINCOLN
By Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011, 324 pages
Review by Michael Beach
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This is one in a series of similar books by this author duo. Each book looks at the assassination, or attempted assassination, of some famous person. The book is written as a narrative story, but pulls on the works of many historians. The first part of the book concentrates on the ending battles and scenes of the American Civil War. Interactions of generals and troops north and south, as well as Lincoln’s actions shed light on an important part of our history. John Wilks Booth and his fellow conspirators are addressed only lightly in the first half of the chapters. When they are spoken of the depictions at times relate to the war and its leading figures, other times their lives seem to have little to do with larger historical events.
 
The second part of the book shifts and is almost the opposite of the fist. The authors now focus now shines brightly mostly on the conspiracy and its participants. Government and military leaders, including Lincoln, are still mentioned, but more from how their actions are noted and interpreted by the assassination ring.
 
Like many concentrated histories, many lesser-known characters are brought to light. It seems surprising to hear some of the important roles played by people you never learn about in formal history classes growing up. These stories make the history less sterile, more human, and more believable. This certainly was a sad chapter in human history, not just because of the presidential murder, but also to see how the war effected the psyche of Americans on both sides. All involved saw their deeds as necessary evils, but some were really evil. Personal motivation is at the heart of what makes one willing to sacrifice, as opposed to those who use the same language in their willingness to sacrifice others for personal benefit.
 
I don’t know how much of this book is accurate. It seems as likely true as any other history I’ve read. My personal feelings on history, or even documented contemporary events, is that they are all colored by the original sources. Original sources are also colored by those who create them. My guess is this book represents a reasonable proximity to what actually happened. It says a lot about both the highest and lowest of human motivation and choice. 

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Representing and Intervening

5/21/2020

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​REPRESENTING AND INTERVENING
By Ian Hacking
Cambridge University Press, 1983, 287 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
In this work, Hacking reviews philosophical thought related to science and technology from the perspective of how scientific and technological ideas do or don’t represent reality. He also shows argument around scientific use of ideas and technology to create reality (intervening). Aside from reviewing the main arguments and philosophers involved on the topics he often interjects his own stands on the issues.
 
An example of a key philosophical debate is eluded to in a quote by Lakatos. His reading of Popper on knowledge growth stated simply is, “people propose, nature disposes” (114).
 
Hacking makes a number of comparisons between the philosophical perspectives of Lakatos and others such as Popper, Kuhn, Putnam, and Kant. The key phase is one focus, specifically on how (and if) science progresses. For Lakatos, successive research either progresses a theory, or degenerates it (117). In this way, theories are bolstered or unsupported by empiricist efforts.
 
Some direct comparison between Kuhn and Putnam allows Hacking to clarify. For instance, while Kuhn speaks of scientific revolution, Putnam is focused more on evolution in terms of knowledge growth through rationality (111). Putnam further muddies the knowledge-growth question through the concepts of reference and extension. One of his arguments, for example, is that a given reference may be understood differently by different people, making the extension, including knowledge growth though experiment, essentially impossible (101). If one accepts this premise, then proposals by people (theories) are not universally understood, nor the disposition of nature as neither the proposition nor the disposition are held in common among scientists.
 
Putnam’s struggle is with meaning. Hacking denotes that a reference is the meaning, or thing, represented by the word. Sense is more like the connotative understanding of the thing, the reference in question (75). If Putnam questions one’s ability to concur with others on either reference or sense, then his questioning of knowledge growth is understandable. The scientific world seems to get around the difference through the practice of dubbing. Where Lakatos would argue that knowledge growth can only be understood in retrospect (118), Hacking argues in favor of dubbing “new natural kinds” which are “often the result of initial speculations which are gradually articulated into theory and experiment” (82).
 
Ian Hacking’s work shows a mixed message claiming varying schools of scientific philosophy share common ground, yet differ in fundamental ways, stating how such point-by-point opposition between philosophers only means there is ‘underlying agreement’.
 
By introduction, Hacking makes a case for ‘common ground’.  He shares seven areas where he believes Carnap and Popper, and by extension philosophers of science in general, tend to agree (5). Natural science is the best rational thought. Distinction exists between observation and theory. Knowledge is cumulative. Science has a deductive structure. Science depends on precise language. Unity of science methodology exists in each discipline. Finally, the context of justification differs from the context of discovery.
 
Despite these unifying assertions, pretty much all the rest of the reading shows an evolution, along with examples of fundamental change of thought. For example, Hacking’s first positivist instinct refers to falsifiability as a ‘variant’ of verification (41), yet early in his work (3) he refers to the divided image of Carnap and Popper as betraying a ‘deeper’ difference. It seems difficult to justify such ‘deeper difference’ with simply being ‘variant’. Difference is variable, on a subjective scale. Qualifying words expose subjective opinion. At times Hacking depicts difference as minor, other times as significant.
 
Hacking describes schools of thought within his own form of structure; realism vs anti-realism, causal vs anti-causal, theoretical entities vs anti-theoretical entities, and the list continues. A specific example referred to earlier was the divided image of Carnap and Popper. Carnap was in favor of science as verifiable. By this he claimed metaphysics is not science, inductive reasoning should be employed, and there are important meanings in language. Popper, on the other hand, stood for science as falsifiable. By this he argued metaphysics leads to science, deductive reasoning should be employed, and calling meanings and language only ‘scholastic’ (4).
 
Difference can be understood subjectively by degrees. Hacking seems simultaneously to both emphasize and downplay difference. Readers could easily see downplayed example differences as significant.
 
Among the topics around speculation and experimentation I found the bridging concept of calculation particularly important. A calculation is a form of modeling. Hacking referenced many ideas of his own and others about meanings of speculation (theory) and experimentation (observation). However, until he addressed the bridging aspect of calculation in the speculation-calculation-experimentation framework, the two seemed somewhat independent. In fact, many of Hacking’s reference philosophers argued specifically a lack of connection between theory and empirical data.
 
This framework also answered a longstanding question for me. So often in science classes teachers would introduce the idea of constants. These constants were usually attached to the name of a scientist who ‘discovered’ or ‘introduced’ the constant. They never were explained. We were just taught how to incorporate a specific constant into a formula to obtain the answer to a specific scientific process. Hacking explains how a calculation comes about from a need to explain a given observation or experimental data set (artifact, phenomenon). Adding a constant to make a calculation consistently approximate the expected outcome allows science to adopt a theory that adheres to accepted scientific principles. The beauty of such a bridging approach is it also allows for change in both theory and experiment without shifting the calculation. The same calculation can be used to support different theories or outcomes.
 
The resulting approximation becomes yet another central argument Hacking spends considerable time discussing. If a formula and data from empirical observation consistently approximate theoretical prediction, is that bringing us any closer to truth, or just substantiating a theory that purports to stand for truth? Perhaps the substantiation is merely for a given system generally accepted by the larger scientific community at the time of the speculation-calculation-experimentation linkage.
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Notre Dame

5/10/2020

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​NOTRE DAME DE PARIS
By Victor Marie Hugo
PF Collier & Son Company, 1917, 531 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
Many have heard of this work as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The story is timeless, and nothing like any of the movies I’ve ever seen on the topic. Quasimodo is the protagonist who watches over Esmeralda, protecting her from the evil priest, Claude Frollo. Hugo originally published the 15th century story in 1829. This publication is in one volume of a series called The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction.
 
The story has a fairly pessimistic outlook on humanity. About the only two people who have positive motivations are Quasimodo and Esmeralda. Despite their motivations, their decisions seem just as foolhardy, or even destructive, as every other character in the story. Judgments by every character are always ill-informed, and influenced by personal preference, or personal benefit. In the end just about every character dies under unnecessary circumstances, including Quasimodo and Esmeralda. The ends of each character come by some combination of poor decisions of their own and others.

For example, Esmeralda’s mother has her daughter stolen from her as an infant. She repents of her promiscuous life, and removes herself to suffering in a convent cell. Eventually she sees Esmeralda from time to time through her cell window and curses the girl out of anger at the gypsies whom she blames for taking her child. Assuming Esmeralda to just be another gypsy and not suspecting her to be her own daughter, she reviles Esmeralda every time she sees her. When the two are reunited and the truth exposed near the end of the story, the mother holds her too long in her cell and is unsuccessful at keeping the king’s guard from capturing the girl. Esmeralda was accused and convicted in the death of her love, Pheobus, who is not dead, but only wounded. His attacker was not Esmeralda, but Claude Frollo. Claude continues to offer Esmeralda freedom if she will consent to marry him. She always refuses. Meanwhile, Phoebus avoids exposure around Esmeralda because despite taking her as a mistress for a few months, he remains betrothed to another and in the end abandons Esmeralda to the gallows.
 
Quasimodo it not much better in his judgments. He seeks to protect Esmeralda within Notre Dame. Because of his deafness, when the gypsies storm the cathedral to free her, and steal some of the riches within, he mistakes their attack as an attempt to kill Esmeralda. In his efforts at defending her he kills many of them from the towers above.
 
I found the story intriguing. It was hard not to follow to see the outcomes. Aside from that there was some disappointment in the ultimate resolution. Only one character seems to have escaped unscathed despite some of his own poor judgement, Pierre Gringoire. He is a failed playwright at the beginning. When he takes refuge with the gypsies and is almost executed by them, Esmeralda frees him by marrying him. She does not actually intend to honor the marriage in any way, but rather pines for Phoebus. She never gives herself to Gringoire, but does give herself unvirtuously to Phoebus leading to the attempted murder by Frollo, and the subsequent hanging of Esmeralda. Gringoire does help Esmeralda temporarily escape the gallows by cooperating with Frollo. He even helps her get to her mother, but he ultimately only manages to save Esmeralda’s goat. The two of them seem to be the only survivors among all the characters.
 
If the reader is hoping for hopeful outcomes, don’t read the story. If the reader is interested in the literary perspectives of French writers of the 19th century, then this work is surely a prime exemplar.
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Philosophy of Science

5/5/2020

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PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION
By Samir Okasha
Oxford University Press, 2016, 140 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
The title is very descriptive of the content. The book is one in a long series of ‘very short introductions’ published by Oxford. In an earlier similar review I looked at Simon Critchley’s version of a related topic. One of the major themes of his work was the split between the analytical and continental schools of scientific philosophy. Okasha takes up many themes. I’ll focus here one theme, the continuum between scientism and obscurantism, as an example of unresolved issues within the larger philosophical community. These continuum extremes seem at least partially aligned with analytic and continental philosophies respectively. The issues are central and remain unresolved.
 
Scientism is a belief that only science and the scientific method can expose truth. This approach leads to ignoring information not always testable, yet pertinent, such as the moral application of knowledge. Philosophical outcomes such as the discouragement of humanity through a belief in meaninglessness can follow. Supporters of scientism consider such a concern a non-issue. This outcome might be a logical extension of the arguments of Rudolf Carnap.

Obscurantism emphasizes thought over experiment which can lead to questioning the importance of science. Such questioning encourages speculation with less emphasis on searching out supportive facts. Supporting logic of this approach are a possible extension of the views expressed by Martin Heidegger.

Critchley attempted to seek some balance along the continuum “by defending a notion of phenomenology that aims to undermine scientism without falling into obscurantism” (Critchley 113). He goes on to explain how pre-theoretical experience, or pre-science, is a “reflection upon what precedes reflection.” Perhaps Okasha’s review of the arbitrariness of species classification seeks a similar balance. He also asks the question if science is value-free (Okasha 123). He notes how specialization can make it difficult to move from the micro to the macro.

Philosophical camps still line up along differing points in this continuum, including the absolutes. Though these readings share perspectives, the path to resolution, if there is one, seems foggy at best.
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