Cpsyllogism3

67.1 In June of 2013 Gilles Paquet wrote a
paper published in Optimum online which began:

“This paper addresses some concerns
raised by Pitirim Sorokin some 50 years ago
(Sorokin 1956). At the time, Sorokin was somewhat
distraught by social sciences falling prey to all
sorts of manias and foibles – mindless application
of methods in use in experimental sciences to
social sciences issues, sterile formalization,
useless number-crunching, and the like – that were
in danger of derailing socio-economic inquiries
away from the purposes that had given rise to
social sciences to begin with – which were to
respond to une fringale de sens.



Sorokin’s book attacked a variety of pathologies,
but spent two chapters on what he called quantophrenia.”

67.2 Then Paquet and by extension Sorokin adds this
caveat:



“It should be clear that Sorokin’s attacks were not
directed at quantification per se.”



67.3 But why the caveat? One fundamentally agrees
with the Paquet’s statement and once again by
extension Sorokin that “Quantitative methods have
been used from time immemorial as a powerful
instrument of reasoning.”



67.4 Paquet goes on to write, “The problem arises
when the use of such tools becomes the basis of a
cult roughly captured by Lord Kelvin’s positivist
embroidered tea cozy “if it cannot be measured, it
does not exist.””



67.5 Does this statement not also perfectly describe
the situation on the hard sciences? In fact, in the
hard sciences isn’t the line between existence and
non-existence even more starkly drawn?



67.6 After all, modern precepts for mathematization,
formalized systems, quantification, binary systems,
digitization et al have their origins in the hard
sciences, most notable the Calculus and algorithms.



67.7 And doesn’t such a prohibition conflate nicely
with the last proposition, prop number 7 of
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: “Wovon man nicht sprechen
kann, daruber muss man schwiegen.”  (“What we
cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”)



67.8 Is this not the final aspiration of the
mathematical formalism of the Logical Positivist
movement spearheaded by Moritz Schlick and the
Vienna Circle? And would not the Vienna Circle come
to regret the sea change in Wittgenstein’s later
philosophy exemplified by his Philosophical
Investigations.



67.9 Sorokin’s point is that over quantification can
lead to harmful e.g. bad social policy.



67.10 Quantification in the hard sciences led to
technologies which in the short term ‘benefited’
varying numbers of mankind usual succinct minorities
in the West. But those self-same hard sciences which
made mathematical quantification their non plus
ultra are ultimately responsible for the destruction
of the planet and their seat is the West.



67.11 If a lesser bad outcome in the social sciences
can be construed as bad social science, what would
prevent most modern technologies abutting and
abetting our current planetary denouement from being
assessed as ‘bad science’? Isn’t the literal end of
the world at the hand of the mathematical sciences a
worse outcome than any social policy has brought
about?



67.12 Paquet’s paper almost immediately begins to
define sound and unsound social science methodology
through the metaphors of classical and quantum
mechanics/physics.



67.13 Outside of a raw sociopath like Edward Teller
most people, physicists included, would at best see
nuclear weapons as a ‘necessary’ evil.  Only
recently after many adverse nuclear events
highlighted by Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and
Fukushima Daiichi have been brought to the public
consciousness has nuclear power itself begun to be
viewed as at very best a ‘necessary’ evil with that
‘necessity’ largely induced by economic forces.



67.14 With one of the planet’s most obvious and
historically validated denouements concerning
nuclear power plants already known e.g. the disposal
of nuclear waste, spent fuel rods etc., quantified
analysis that is in no way methodologicaly different
than that which drives say social welfare policy
will find formulas to justify more nuclear power
plants even when faced with planetary destruction.



67.15 Here public policy and science conflate. And
their common denominator is the quantification, the
mathematization that drives the hard sciences. In
essence, it’s quantification which created both. But
only one is destroying the planet, the one which is
derived from and vociferously defends the
technologies that are the products of the
mathematical sciences.



67.16 The reliance on mathematical sciences and the
‘endtimes’ they create have become so ubiquitous
e.g. dire, that this writer recommends you ignore
this paper altogether, put your head down and bask
in the thought that it’ll be a lot worse for the
grandkids.



67.17 If you think the present state of the planet
has anything to do with bible thumping, think again.
Such an interpretation would have to go something
like this:



67.18 Surprise! The mathematical sciences are
responsible for the end of the world. Damn, with all
of our prophecies and prophets, we all saw it coming
but never could figure the agent. But it makes
sense. All them godless scientists destroyed the
planet. Or better yet god played a trick on them and
made their mathematical hubris responsible for
destroying my family and making my pick up truck an
environmentally lethal weapon. Even the Grand
Inquisitors didn’t suss out ‘quantification’ as the
culprit. Enough of this biblical apocalyptic
nonsense.



68.1 But let us reverse, ‘flip’, the process. If the
processes of quantification become more complex the
more we involve biological complexity, in particular
human biological complexity, what does that
biological complexity bring with to the problem as
the heretofore undiagnosed observer?



68.2 Are not scientists who rely on mathematical
processes first and foremost biological entities?



68.3 What are such beings subject to? Does this not
suggest ‘perceptual’ limitations especially
quantified ones?



68.4 Paquet writes: “The production of useful but
limited observations merrily blended into broader
aggregates may not constitute meaningful syncretic
measures of the performance of the whole cluster of
policy arrangements.” Remove the word ‘policy’ and
is this not descriptive of the so-called hard
sciences too faced with the complexity and
limitations of the biological entity which has
fostered them?   



68.5 On the various chat lists I used to visit at
this point where it was challenged a fierce defense
of western epistemology would ensue.



68.6 This usually took the form of examples of the
predictive power of physics or the immutability of
mathematics.



68.7 “In my world 1 + 1 = 2” a correspondent would
defiantly point out when clearly on the machine he
was typing this eternal equivalency relied on binary
systems and Boolean logic which clearly do not
depend on the “1 = 1” truism nor 1 + 1 = 2. (A
student and publisher of philosophy actually posited
this as proof of the inviolability of mathematics
and by extension the mathematical sciences.)



68.8 Mathematical physics was usually conjured for
its predictive powers vis a vis trajectories either
subatomic or planetary.



68.9 But because mathematics was available to so
few, resolutions of ‘quantum wave packet’ or
wave/particle paradox were rather few and far
between.



68.10 Actually they were non-existent like Lord
Kelvin’s unmeasurable objects so that in some
bizarre way by not being subject to explanation
these quantum phenomena which clearly defy all logic
and sensible explanation are none the less real but
unavailable to the sensibility of their defenders
lay or otherwise.



68.11 Pointing out that ontologically such examples
were at best anecdotal and insisting it was the same
mathematical process in the interface that is
responsible for the end of the world brought little
more than a bewildered and inchoate western
epistemological defense among scientists and layman
alike.

 

69.1 Taking into account that the input mechanism is
constituted of the very limited species and its
reliance on finite variables that has brought the
planet to the brink of ruin furthered by the
established fact that the particular epistemology
most responsible has no coherent response to the
problem and in most cases cannot even hear it, I
think it’s fair for this correspondent to claim that
the entire western mathematical scientific
enterprise can best be described as “Garbage in.
Garbage out.”