Friday, March 6, 2015

Are we the new Saxons?

As you all know, the Romans journeyed to the British Isles around 100 BCE, thought it nice, and returned in force 100 years later. They remained until around 450 CE, when they were informed they should 'look to their own defenses'. The Roman Empire could no longer support it's various colonies around Europe.

While in Britain the Romans built roads, various viaducts to transport water, and houses, villas. Many of the villas were large, and had creature comforts such as running water, and sometimes heating systems and elaborate bath houses.






During the period (I'm getting to the point here, albeit slowly) 400-550 CE, the British Isles were either  being invaded or settled, depending on your viewpoint, by some other cultures: the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, coming from various points on the mainland of Europe. At the same time the Roman population was leaving, or dying out in Britain, leaving these elaborate living quarters.

Archeologists, discovering the remnants of these structures around 1800 years later, found what seemed to be a curious thing......they had not been lived in by any of the new cultures that came after the Romans left. The Angles and Saxons lived in dirt and wood structures, with no amenities.

The conclusion is that neither the Angles or Saxons could figure out how the abandoned structures worked. Therefore they could not maintain them, or fix them if something broke. The road disappeared over time, the structures largely sunk into the earth. A few viaducts remained, being made of stone. The newer cultures were a regression from the knowledge and social structure that preceded them. I think there are similarities to the Saxons scratching their heads over the Roman baths, and our world today.

The events in the Middle East, with the Islamist loonies destroying the artifacts in Nimrud are a obvious example, but I'd rather stick closer to home for the moment. We've got our own examples of what might be thought of as reverse entropy, if one were to pervert the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Since there are so many examples of what I'm going to call anti-science, I'll just refer to two things, Evolution and Climate.

Roughly half of Americans don’t accept evolution. (I don’t like to use the phrase “believe in” evolution; it’s like choosing whether or not to believe in gravity.) Darwinian evolution (including the modifications biologists have brought forth over the years) is the only explanation that scientists have found for the relevant data. The wealth of data is so vast, evolution explains these data so well, and nearly the entire community of professionally trained biologists is so persuaded by this explanation that it is unlikely any other explanation will come along to supplant it. However, as good scientists, we remain open to the possibility of a better idea developing to explain the data. Until it does, there is no scientifically valid reason to hold any other view than that our species (and all other species of animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria) have arisen on the planet through the process of evolution.

But more than that, this denial of evolution speaks to an anti-intellectualism, a brand of antiscience that contributes to human suffering. If people can deny evolution, which is well supported by scientific evidence and widely accepted by the professional scientific community, then they will deny any scientific findings they dislike. The same methods and insights that have informed how scientists understand the movement of the planets, how molecules work, and what medical remedies are most effective have also informed our understanding of evolution. We can choose to cherry pick only the data that support a particular bias about how the world works, but how does that help us if the world does not work that way?

A Gallup poll in 2012 showed that 58% of republicans believe that god created humans in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. 

It's the same with human-caused climate change. There is nearly unanimous  consensus among scientists that it is real, and one of the most important things we need to address. Less than 50% of US citizens believe it is real. Over half of the republicans in congress deny the science is real. In the senate, it's nearly 75% of the GOP deny the science.

We're leaving out the attacks on education, though it figures highly in the above.

We're left to wonder are we like the Saxons, too uneducated to understand the culture that preceded them, or is this something less benign than being dumb? Whatever it is, it has us at the point where we are less advanced when measured by progress from one year to the next. In science, particularly aerospace, we cannot match the feats accomplished 40 years ago. Each year, fewer and fewer US-born students enter science graduate programs.

The US is unraveling at a stunning speed, and at a staggering decree. The decline is breathtaking, and the prospect is dim. Especially when what we seem to depend on to rescue us is faith. 



23 comments:

  1. There is hope. Here in the UK evolution is mainstream thinking and only a very few religious nuts reject it. We have an election coming up and our Green Party is riding high with a new party member (not just a potential voter) signing up every 5 minutes. That party's major concern is climate change. I'm appalled by what you describe from across the sea but focus on the positive. Ignorance and religious fundamentalist rhetoric are not universal.

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    1. I'd like to see something like the green party here, they had a slight bump back decades ago, but we're just odd people now.

      They may not be universal, but they have some strength regionally.

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  2. Few ideas are quite as unpopular in America nowadays as the suggestion that the fate of past civilizations has something to teach us about the likely destiny of our own. This lack of enthusiasm for the lessons of history pervades contemporary culture; what makes this interesting is that it is also among the most fruitful sources of disaster in the modern world.

    I agree with Marianne that the problem isn't universal.

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    1. No, we're our just our own, special people.....what happened before is not relevant. sigh....

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  3. Let's see, brain accounts for what, 2% or 3% of body weight, yet consumes like 1/4 of our oxygen and 3/4 of our glucose. If we average all these factors, it yields about 50% --very close to your social statistic. No reason, really, to perform this calculation except to juggle apples and oranges into convenient statistics --the same sort of illogic that enables a psychologist to presume the existence of a brain in everybody. Presumption is antithetical to empiricism, to science. As we entered this century, we elected a leader and presumed he had a brain, like psychologists would. Even considering the problems his successor has had trying to fix things, it's still possible W. had a brain but we should have hired a proctologist to find it and assess its health. I'm not usually so venomous but when humans are encouraged to ruin in ignorance, I am incensed. Enough, it's the same phenomenon that keeps me off the road late Sunday mornings when people are practicing faith-based driving.

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    1. I think like me, you overestimated the current prez....wishin' and hopin', etc.
      Nice rant, Geo.

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  4. A very interesting post. I am afraid human socieities are only a few steps from elective barbarism but I had not made that analogy before. When Copernicus who was persecuted about his ideas by the church I believe he retracted, but muttered under his breath, "well the earth does go round the sun anyway" I hope he said that! I think I will tweet this post, it could do with wider exposure.

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    1. the apocryphal quote was, as he walked off, muttering "Eppur si muove"....."And yet it moves". The original printing of the quote was around 125 years after Galileo's death, so the accuracy is somewhat in question.
      Nice topical quote.

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  5. I agree one hundred percent with your analysis of the wingnut version of modern "Saxonism". As to the their ancient predecessors, their lack of engineering skills may, in part, have had something to do with their inability to carry on with Roman civilization.

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    1. Hey TB
      Yeah, you're correct. However, some centuries later, they did the romans one better, in terms of democracy....the magna carta.

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  6. Nothing we say or do will change the momentum in the short term; nevertheless we say and do against the possibility change will begin.

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  7. As much as I hate to say it, we're circling the drain. I just hope the USA doesn't totally break down while I'm still around. I believe ruin is inevitable at this point.

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    1. You got kids? Mine are the ones I worry about.

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    2. No kids, thank goodness. I'd be terribly worried for their future if I did. My husband and I talk about that all the time--what a relief it is to be childless when things are likely to only get worse in time.

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  8. It pains me to contemplate how pig-headed so many people have become. They seem to revel in their lack of intellectual prowess. Pains me.

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  9. Thank goodness we still have the Democrats. Or maybe I should say the progressives. Your trenchant writing is "right" on the money.

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    1. Yeah, I suppose. But our democrats have been in such a rush to get to the middle of any issue that they've trampled the ones on the left, what would have been the moderates in years past.

      Trenchant. Heh.....might ask the girls to put that on the headstone.

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  10. Your piece reminded me of this article;

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-fly-from-facts/

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    1. Good article, I've mailed it to a couple people.
      Thanks Robbie

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