![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
More on "Here Comes Science"
There was some minor and relatively uninteresting controversy over the album's forthright discussion of evolution, and, to a greater degree, over "Science Is Real"'s lumping-together of "angels, unicorns and elves" as unscientific and implicitly unreal notions.
What I find more interesting is that "Science Is Real" seems to give the philosophically trained fits for espousing what they consider a naive scientific realism right in the title. It inspired a couple of interesting discussions on Crooked Timber and Matthew Yglesias's blog, the first of which is partly in song. They seem particularly peeved that John Linnell quotes Rudolf Carnap in the introduction, though the actual song's take on science as a privileged probe of objective reality is probably not a sentiment Carnap would endorse without qualification (and Yglesias argues that the Carnap quote is an inadequate description of science as well).
I point to this not to mock philosophers of science. It actually gives me pause, too, since I spent years studying a field where there are radically different competing ontologies describing the same set of results, and nobody can quite agree on what reality is even in broad outline, so about the best you can do is fall back on an operational description of what you're doing: if you do X you have probability P of getting Y, and what that means is left as an exercise for the reader. Also, I guess I've seen scientists beaten up so long with accusations of scientism that anything that looks like an opening, even coming from a rock band of nonscientists, puts me on guard (even though I am not even an aspiring scientist any more!)
And yet, and yet. It seems to me that a description suitable for a three- or four-year-old that, say, captures the essential difference between dinosaurs and dragons (a point on which Jorie is not entirely clear) is going to lean heavily on the naive realism, and science has something to do with that. Also, the mere fact that there are about three songs on this album that even deal with science as a process, rather than science as repository of received wisdom or enabler of technology, is pretty remarkable. "The truth is with science" is a bit too strong a statement, but "A scientific theory isn't just a hunch or guess/It's more like a question that's been put through a lot of tests" is pretty good as a first approximation.
Apparently John Flansburgh cold-emailed PZ Myers to offer him a free copy, which may possibly give additional insight into Flans's position on the angels/unicorns/elves question.
In other news, I vote "Why Does The Sun Really Shine? (The Sun Is A Miasma Of Incandescent Plasma)" as Most Fun To Noodle Along Stupidly With On Your Guitar.
What I find more interesting is that "Science Is Real" seems to give the philosophically trained fits for espousing what they consider a naive scientific realism right in the title. It inspired a couple of interesting discussions on Crooked Timber and Matthew Yglesias's blog, the first of which is partly in song. They seem particularly peeved that John Linnell quotes Rudolf Carnap in the introduction, though the actual song's take on science as a privileged probe of objective reality is probably not a sentiment Carnap would endorse without qualification (and Yglesias argues that the Carnap quote is an inadequate description of science as well).
I point to this not to mock philosophers of science. It actually gives me pause, too, since I spent years studying a field where there are radically different competing ontologies describing the same set of results, and nobody can quite agree on what reality is even in broad outline, so about the best you can do is fall back on an operational description of what you're doing: if you do X you have probability P of getting Y, and what that means is left as an exercise for the reader. Also, I guess I've seen scientists beaten up so long with accusations of scientism that anything that looks like an opening, even coming from a rock band of nonscientists, puts me on guard (even though I am not even an aspiring scientist any more!)
And yet, and yet. It seems to me that a description suitable for a three- or four-year-old that, say, captures the essential difference between dinosaurs and dragons (a point on which Jorie is not entirely clear) is going to lean heavily on the naive realism, and science has something to do with that. Also, the mere fact that there are about three songs on this album that even deal with science as a process, rather than science as repository of received wisdom or enabler of technology, is pretty remarkable. "The truth is with science" is a bit too strong a statement, but "A scientific theory isn't just a hunch or guess/It's more like a question that's been put through a lot of tests" is pretty good as a first approximation.
Apparently John Flansburgh cold-emailed PZ Myers to offer him a free copy, which may possibly give additional insight into Flans's position on the angels/unicorns/elves question.
In other news, I vote "Why Does The Sun Really Shine? (The Sun Is A Miasma Of Incandescent Plasma)" as Most Fun To Noodle Along Stupidly With On Your Guitar.
no subject
no subject
The fun thing about that song is that besides being a parable about evolution, it is also a song about feeling awkward at family reunions.
no subject
no subject
On the other hand, depictions of dragons in modern fantasy illustration may well have been influenced by knowledge of dinosaurs. Older dragon pictures from various cultures tend to look more snake-like to me.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
(Oh hey, it's a Shel Silverstein poem. Figures.)
no subject
I remember that song from campfire singalongs and such. I've heard someone mention an old Herblock cartoon on the same theme, though I haven't seen it--I don't know whether it or the Silverstein poem came first.
I think that at the time, creationism was at a low ebb and neither would ever have imagined that people would resume taking this kind of story seriously in a big way. It's kind of sad reading the chapter of Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies on George McCready Price, and seeing him talk about young-Earth creationism as if it were a quaint and largely vanished delusion.
no subject
As a kid I had Childcraft books with stories about finding fossils and how old the Earth was. I suspect nowadays these would be considered controversial.
no subject
I think the YEC resurgence was well underway by the mid-1980s; if anything, now there's a substantial backlash reacting to it, and many creationists have retreated to more nebulous "intelligent design" advocacy.
The interesting thing is that Gallup has been polling people about this for decades, and though the questions as I recall are kind of badly worded, the answers they get given the same questions are remarkably constant over time, with only minor change. So maybe the political/academic/media currents are obscuring a more stable situation in which people basically believe in evolution or not depending on what kind of person they think they are.
no subject
They mention the duty they incurred of having to fact-check pop-songs, and hired the head of the Hall of Science in Queens, by email, to check their lyrics for gross mistakes, hence the conversion from live-hit "Why does the Sun Shine" to the new "Why Does the Sun Really Shine." And it is noted that as they are pioneers in this, considering, but I think nearly everyone's willing to offer them the leeway they've earned. And I bet "Contrecoup" stands up to neurotraumatic scrutiny.
I look forward to Christmas, when my nieces will unwrap this treasure. And I'm addicted to "Meet the Elements," perhaps because it's essentially the CD's 'single,' but also because I just finished Oliver Sacks' "Uncle Tungsten," with its wonderful history of the discovery of the elements and a conversion from 4-element science to 92-element science, the coming and going of the atom, and so on (in addition to being the autobio of a not-always-functional english kid with an uncommonly brilliant and supportive family).
no subject
no subject
When my sister first heard about "HCS" she assumed it was a compilation, since they've done so many quasi-educational songs already.
Many of them are about subjects other than science, though (particularly history). "Mammal" from Apollo 18 would have fit on this album nicely, though "My Brother The Ape" covers some of the same territory.