Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.
Friend Xerxes, as a gentleman of the left, may have put his finger on why our society is falling apart. He heralds the supposed good news that science has recently discredited the whole idea of “top-down” reasoning—that is, deduction. Without giving details, he thinks this is because of what quantum physics posits about subatomic particles. Actually, I think he has this backwards: quantum physics actually discredits the usual scientific “bottom-up” approach. Which means, drawing general conclusions from observation. Quamtum physics argues that observation does not work at this level.
Science has always been “bottom up”—that is, inductive. Philosophy, religion and mathematics are deductive, working from first principles down to the specific. Xerxes prefers science, apparently. I gather everyone on the left does. Math is racist, after all.
One problem with inductive reasoning is that it can never arrive at truth. It can only draw provisional conclusions, which may be disproven in the next moment by some “black swan” event.
Another problem is that it cannot arrive at any concept of value, of what is good or bad. It cannot distinguish between right and wrong.
This makes it a useful tool, but a terrible master.
And our modernist culture has elevated it to our religion.
No wonder, then, that we begin to doubt, with the postmodernists, whether there is any reality at all underlying mere opinion. No wonder there is a crisis of meaninglessness leading to drug addiction, mental illness, suicide, and despair. No wonder that we object to conventional morality and to being “judgemental,” and social morals are collapsing. No wonder modern psychiatry is left to define sanity as merely thinking the same way as everyone ese, making dissent madness—an obvious logical fallacy, but they have nowhere else to go for any standard of truth or right.
Xerxes has decided that because it is “top down,” moving from the general to the particular, deduction supports and leads to authoritarianism. He heralds accordingly the supposedly new inductive approach as leading to a new age of human liberation.
Yay. Now men can become women and if math is hard, you ignore it.
But this, that deductive reason leads to authoritarianism, is demonstrably the opposite of the truth. When you remove judgement, there is no way to peacefully resolve disagreements. Bullying and force are all there is. No wonder then that so much of modern thought, from feminism to intersectionality, is about “power relationships” and “power imbalances’ and power. Whoever has power simply uses it to impose their will and their interests; and that is taken as a given.
There is no way, then, of course, to end power imbalances. All you can do is put another group in power. Everyone fights to the death for the crest of the hill. And in the long run everyone loses and dies.
Those political philosophies that have built on an inductive, “scientific” approach have been the most authoritarian in history: Fascism, Nazism, and Marxism. Deductive regimes, even at the most authoritarian, like Iran, Spain under the Inquisition, or Saudi Arabia, are mild by comparison.
Liberal democratic principles, on the other hand, are entirely deductive. This is clearly expressed in the US Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness….”
The idolatry of science has our tail spinning into havoc and madness. Xerxes, unknowingly, suggests why.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
