• In total there are 6 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 6 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

Ch. 3 - Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's...

#46: Mar. - April 2008 (Non-Fiction)
User avatar
Chris OConnor

1A - OWNER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 17019
Joined: Sun May 05, 2002 2:43 pm
21
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 3511 times
Been thanked: 1309 times
Gender:
Contact:
United States of America

Ch. 3 - Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's...

Unread post

Ch. 3 - Social Pseudoscience in the Morning of America's Culture Wars

Please use this thread for discussing Chapter 3.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Unread post

The subject of pseudoscience is one that I'm sure the log-time members of this group have delved into. Is the U.S. somehow unusually prone to the allure of pseudoscience? Pseudoscience seems to be akin to hucksterism, but is the speciality of educated, rather than ignorant, citizens. Pseudoscience is a way a selling people a bill of goods, a high-class sales technique.

I did become a little confused by the way Jacoby seemed to shift her targets from the conservative, anti-intellectual sector of the population to the intellectuals themselves. She makes it clear that intellectuals were responsible for distorting Darwin's theory for the sake of justifying laissez-faire capitalism. They were of the intellectual class, but apparently not in her mind good examples of intellectualism, a quality she always praises.

I also thought it interesting that she gives backhanded credit to the same fundamentalists she scorns. She says that the religious beliefs of William Jennings Bryant prevented him from going along with social Darwninsm (or simply Darwinism, since he conflated the two), so here we have an example of religious values holding the line against a fairly destructive, modern influence.

Pseudoscience is certainly very much with us today. My candidate for the sneakiest pseudoscience is theory supposedly based on neuroscience. This has been responsible for the Baby Einstein products as well as promoters such as Dr. Amen, who had a recent special on PBS about how we can all change our brains. He showed viewers brain-scan images that he says are diagnostic of various problems. He told us how we can change these pictures by doing certain things. The audience was eating it up, but a check on the Quack Watch website shows that he has little scientific substantiation for his techniques and conclusions and is probably in it for the money.
User avatar
LanDroid

2A - MOD & BRONZE
Comandante Literario Supreme
Posts: 2800
Joined: Sat Jul 27, 2002 9:51 am
21
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Has thanked: 195 times
Been thanked: 1166 times
United States of America

Unread post

Very good points, DWill. One characteristic of intellectualism that Jacoby keeps bringing up is fairness, or the ability to examine opposing viewpoints.
The ideological fixations of otherwise intelligent men in America's Gilded Age offer a recognizable precursor of the imperviousness to evidence that permeates many ideologies in our current age of unreason. p. 61
So yes, living the life of the mind isn't necessarily the ultimate - if you're bullheaded, you can become "quagmired". For open-minded intellectuals, these dead end roads can be self-correcting, rather like the scientific method.

However, I suspect Social Darwinism is alive and well today. I think if you scratch a little deeper, many Americans believe the poor are lazy and stupid.

Jacoby discusses the Baby Einstein videos several times, she agrees with you...
Post Reply

Return to “The Age of American Unreason - by Susan Jacoby”