I’ll be giving a talk at Hillsdale on April 11th. Festivities begin at 5 PM, and continue long into the night (maybe 9 or 10 PM).
Do me a favor, will you? Please pass this on to those who you think might have an interest. (I’ll remind us of this again once or twice before the event.)
This is part of Hillsdale’s Academy for Science and Freedom and the The Broken Science Initiative.
Those wishing to attend must RSVP at Hillsdale.edu/BrokenScience. According to the powers, “All events are complimentary”. So be prepared to be flattered.
Or maybe it was complementary. Whatever.
The topic is “Philosophy of Science”. Greg Glassman, who co-founded the Broken Science project with Emily Kaplan, will introduce events, then I will give a long, long speech. Hint: bring a pillow.
Schedule is:
3 PM Registration Opens, Searle/Dow Center Lobbies
5 PM Reception, Searle/Dow Center Lobbies
6 PM Dinner, Searle Dining Room
6:30 PM Talks, Searle Dining Room
8 PM Hospitality, Searle Dining Room
I’m hoping the Hospitality part includes plenty of wine, since I get powerful thirsty shooting my mouth off.
According to our official bios:
Greg Glassman founded and wholly owned Crossfit Inc. until 2020. He is now revolutionizing science with The Broken Science Initiative, which seeks to educate citizens on what science is and what it is not.
William M Briggs is a writer, statistician, scientist and consultant. Previously, he worked as a Professor at the Cornell Medical School, a statistician at DoubleClick in its infancy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, and an electronic cryptologist with the US Air Force. Briggs is a collaborator on The Broken Science Initiative.
Philosophy of Science
My talk will be a working-man exploration of the philosophy of science and its (im)practical effects. I first demonstrate, calling on only those authorities who told us we must not question “The Science”, that science is indeed broken. And that even they say it is.
From there, after a brief digression on an argument that there is too much science, I show some (certainly not all) the reasons why science is broken because of bad philosophy.
I only touch on scientism. That needs a whole talk, and more than a whole talk. Scientism is, in fact, one of the main failings not only of bad science, but of bad culture. Scientism is not just the false belief that science can answer all questions. It’s much worse. It is the corrupting and horrible fallacy that transcendence can be dispensed with.
As fascinating as a lecture on how, therefore, scientism gives rise to gender theory, and the like, there is only limited time, and since this is an inaugural formal lecture of the BSI, we have to survey the land. So I chose to prove first that science is in a mangy state, philosophically. All areas of science, too. Not just medicine, sociology, climatology, and other fields in which it is obvious. But everywhere, including physics.
This is a mighty topic, the areas vast. I can do no more than provide a rough sketch. We not only need to demonstrate via example of the spread of the rot, but we require a full correct understanding of they very goals of science.
That requires a proper metaphysics. Requires. Metaphysics proceeds physics. What the right and proper metaphysics is needs not only one lecture, but a whole series of lectures. This cannot be done in forty five minutes. Best I can do is leave the listener with a sour ringing in their ears that something has gone wrong.
So I start easy. Bring up a few of the fallacies regular readers here are familiar with. Then move into more complicated ones. Explaining how models and theories work, again, would take a series of lectures. I can only wave my hands.
I should create quite a breeze by the end of the night.
I hope to see you there.
Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card click here. Or use the paid subscription here. For Zelle, use my email: matt@wmbriggs.com, and please include yours so I know who to thank.
Wunderbar!
I will double my annual charitable contribution to Hillsdale. Had I money enough and time, I would also endow there for Briggs the Fauci Chair in Debunking Fake Science and Imprisoning Fake Scientists.
Good stuff! However, always keep in mind that using the Trebuchet Of Logic when disagreeing with an ideologue usually elicits a violent response. They don't like it when you start hammering cracks in the fortress of intellectual concrete they have so carefully constructed. Tends to piss em off....