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Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 2:48 am
by Mr. P
geo wrote:
Mr. P wrote:I've decided that I am not going to discuss this book in the context of religion vs science. This isn't a fiction discussion. It's sad to see some of that already present. This should have been a FACTS only Discussion IMO.

Anyway, I am not going along with hijacks. I want to discuss the main theme. Science writing and how enriching, entertaining, and inspiring it can be.

Who's with me?
I see your point and we should try to steer clear of false dichotomies but I also think science and religion are sometimes incompatible. Certainly Dawkins thinks so! Likewise, some of Dawkins' ideas (and his tone) are often seen as controversial. But I think this is all good for a book discussion as long as we stay on topic as much as possible. I think this book will take us in many directions due to the diversity of its subject matter.
I 100% agree that religion and science are not compatible. I also feel strongly that religion should be eradicated from our existence. But that's neither here nor there in my mind right now.

I just still find I am having the same exact discussions that I have had for decades. It's like I never left... Same folks same strokes. It's not constructive to me anymore to see the same old same old paragraph after paragraph with the same arguments that have been answered so many times.

It's irrelevant to me if someone does not get that not being religious does not equate with immorality, That a fact based approach to understanding the world is enriching and does not diminish a thing when it came to awe of and appreciation or existence. That just because so many believe in something does not make it right because it 'works' when it is based on myth. That's idiocy and ignorance, not revelation or knowledge.

I just prefer to discuss with like minded folks sometimes. I was hoping here to just discuss what we enjoy about this topic without having to defend or retort. I'm going to try that anyway. I will just add my thoughts. Not looking to derail any convo.

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 7:44 am
by Robert Tulip
Mr. P wrote:I am not going to discuss this book in the context of religion vs science.
In that case you will need to ignore a lot of the book, since it is a major theme, at least in the Tyson interview, which is all I have read so far.
Mr. P wrote: This isn't a fiction discussion.
Not sure what you mean by that? Dawkins is trying to understand how human evolution made belief in fiction adaptive, so exploring that theme could be quite interesting.
Mr. P wrote: It's sad to see some of that already present.
The religion v science debate is actually central to Dawkins’ public profile, involving the problem of how popular compelling stories in religion can be fact free, and looking toward how scientific knowledge could be presented in an equally influential narrative form.
Mr. P wrote:This should have been a FACTS only Discussion IMO.
With Booktalk being a relatively small forum, having all comments in the public view is advantageous.
Mr. P wrote: Anyway, I am not going along with hijacks. I want to discuss the main theme. Science writing and how enriching, entertaining, and inspiring it can be. Who's with me?
It is laudable to see scientific literature as enriching, entertaining, and inspiring. Dawkins certainly achieves that goal to a limited audience (the scientifically literate) in his great books on evolutionary philosophy such as The Selfish Gene. Yet reaching broader popular audiences often requires that ideas be simplified and even distorted, in order to avoid prejudicial rejection. Considering how literature can teach scientific knowledge, achieving that balance between interest and elegance is a pretty tough challenge. It is important that where someone like Dawkins over-simplifies issues then this should be analysed and challenged.

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 10:56 am
by Mr. P
Robert Tulip wrote:
Mr. P wrote:I am not going to discuss this book in the context of religion vs science.
In that case you will need to ignore a lot of the book, since it is a major theme, at least in the Tyson interview, which is all I have read so far.
So the whole book is about that, but you admittedly only read the first interview? Are we taking this on faith then? :D

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 12:33 pm
by Mr. P
Keats thought that Newton was destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the spectrum. And the message of my book is that you don’t: that by destroying the mystery you increase the poetry, you don’t decrease it.
How could anyone feel that knowing how a rainbow manifests takes anything away from the beauty? I just cannot make myself comprehend that. It absolutely adds to it, unless you prefer answers that are not answers. That makes it better? More poetic? More... Real?

I have experienced wonder at what I have not known or understood, marveled at the mystery...but I have always then done my research. I have to know why and how. And after that learning, after gaining true understanding, or better understanding at the least, of the thing...I have mostly found myself truly AMAZED and more baffled and awed by the occurrence.

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 8:20 pm
by DWill
The Keats thing is a bit of a straw man anyway. What's so decisive about some stray remark this young poet made?

I haven't looked ahead in the book, but as Dawkins is a controversalist, I suspect we'll be commenting on controversial topics as we go through. An anthology of the best science writing would have a very different purpose, but that's not what RD wanted to do.

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 8:45 pm
by geo
DWill wrote:The Keats thing is a bit of a straw man anyway. What's so decisive about some stray remark this young poet made?

I haven't looked ahead in the book, but as Dawkins is a controversalist, I suspect we'll be commenting on controversial topics as we go through. An anthology of the best science writing would have a very different purpose, but that's not what RD wanted to do.
Dawkins did edit a book of science writing (The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing) in 2009. I haven't read it yet.

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 9:06 pm
by geo
Mr. P wrote:
Keats thought that Newton was destroying the poetry of the rainbow by explaining the spectrum. And the message of my book is that you don’t: that by destroying the mystery you increase the poetry, you don’t decrease it.
How could anyone feel that knowing how a rainbow manifests takes anything away from the beauty? I just cannot make myself comprehend that. It absolutely adds to it, unless you prefer answers that are not answers. That makes it better? More poetic? More... Real?
Keats and other romantic poets showed reverence for the natural world, among other things, and saw science and technology as one of the things that estrange us from the natural world. Keats' narrative poem is undoubtedly much more than a diatribe against science. I apologize for my poor paraphrasing of it.

Also I'm sure Dawkins alludes to Keats' poem as a way to frame his own reverence for science. "Unweaving The Rainbow" makes a catchy title. I find myself wanting to read this book.

Apoparently "unweaving the rainbow" comes from Edgar Allan Poe's own poem, which pays homage to Keats' poem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamia_(poem)

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Sat May 22, 2021 9:59 am
by geo
I see that Section I of this book includes the following subchapters:

- In conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson
- The uncommon sense of science
- Are we all related?
- The timeless and the topical
- Fighting on two fronts
- Pornophilosophy
- Determinism and dialectics
- Tutorial-driven teaching
- Life after light
- A scientific education and the Deep Problems
- Rationalist, iconoclast, Renaissance man
- Revisiting the Selfish Gene

Sections II - VI also contain subchapters.

Do we want to add additional discussion threads for each of these subchapters or keep it like it is? Due to the diverse subject matter contained in this chapters, I think it would be more conducive to discussion to create additional threads. What do you guys think?

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Sat May 22, 2021 2:59 pm
by Harry Marks
geo wrote:Keats and other romantic poets showed reverence for the natural world, among other things, and saw science and technology as one of the things that estrange us from the natural world.
I have started a fascinating book by Iain McGilchrist, Oxford psychologist, called "The Master and His Emissary" about the way the "Two Cultures" argument made 60 years ago by C.P. Snow plays out in differences between left and right brain modes of processing. Snow observed that the two cultures, science and the arts/humanities, not only don't talk to each other but in many ways can't. To McGilchrist, it isn't mutual incomprehensibility, it's the very different nature of the endeavors and how the difference leads to such different questions that they can't make sense of each other's perceptions.

Snow thought it was about specialization, and that is certainly part of it, but McGilchrist observes that specialization is a mainly left-brain process, and the problem is not that the humanities have gone down a different road so much as that they are specialists and therefore left-brainers. We discount the values that the humanities embody. We're all seeking tenure, now, and no one is looking after the culture.

The rainbow is at the heart of this problem. The right brain handles just seeing things, and knowing them as themselves. Once unwoven, that set of ways of perception gets demoted to minor amusement.

Re: I: Tools of the Trades: Writing Science (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Posted: Sat May 22, 2021 9:32 pm
by DWill
geo wrote: Keats and other romantic poets showed reverence for the natural world, among other things, and saw science and technology as one of the things that estrange us from the natural world. Keats' narrative poem is undoubtedly much more than a diatribe against science. I apologize for my poor paraphrasing of it.

Also I'm sure Dawkins alludes to Keats' poem as a way to frame his own reverence for science. "Unweaving The Rainbow" makes a catchy title. I find myself wanting to read this book.

Apoparently "unweaving the rainbow" comes from Edgar Allan Poe's own poem, which pays homage to Keats' poem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamia_(poem)
I think there's reason to be cautious about Romantic antagonism toward science. Keats really didn't delve much into social topics, and unlike Wordsworth and Coleridge, never set foot in a university. Wordsworth and Coleridge were the prominent intellects behind the movement. Both were quite interested in the science and scientists of that day, including Darwin--Erasmus Darwin, that is. Anyone who had the "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads" assigned might recall that Wordsworth finds commonalities between poets and men of science, and looks forward to the day when the average man will have command of what scientists are revealing. It seems the fact, though, that some of the science was highly speculative without experimental support. Erasmus Darwin's "The Botanic Garden: The Loves of the Plants," has a lot of what reads like flights of fancy, actually likely to inspire imagination. He also brought out a theory of evolution.

One of Wordsworth's most familiar poems begins, "The World is too Much with Us, Late and Soon." To me, it reads as a denunciation of industrialism and consumerism but not of science in particular.

Looking at the later Romantic movement in America, both Emerson and Thoreau had no animus toward science that I know of. They did insist that science should make us only more aware of the divinity in nature.