Since I’m going away for a few days, I’m posting a special bonus post today. A couple of years ago I was in a waiting room ready to go into a focus group thing for the BBC. The subject was the kinds of science programmes that should be shown in BBC 2 television.
I love science programs. In 1981 there was a Horizon about the development of computer graphics that was the inspiration for an entire ten-year career in computer games. Other programs about space, computers, aviation and so on have inspired and moved me over the years. I was delighted to be there.
But I hadn’t realised that science had become old hat. Yesterday’s news. Perhaps even something sinister and dangerous. WHile we were waiting, a conversation started about horoscopes and star signs. After about five minutes I launched into my now-traditional tirade about horoscopes: there’s no scientific basis, all ‘readings’ apply to all readers, etc. etc. etc. I expected everyone to agree with me. Not a bit of it. A roomfull of intelligent-looking young people rounded on me. “What do you know about the wisdom of the ancients,” was one phrase that sticks in my mind.
The most popular programme ideas that came out of the focus group were “the science of celebrity addiction” and “inside Hugh Grant’s brain.” Really. I’ve never been to a focus group again.
So, I was delighted to read about this event – “The selfish gene – 30 years on“. Several of my friends were tutored by John Krebs and Richard Dawkins when I was at Oxford and Krebs made an amiable figure wandering around my college, Pembroke, where he was a tutor. Sadly I never met either of them. I was particularly drawn to Krebs’s citation from “River out of Eden”:
“‘Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I’ll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes are built according to scientific principals and they work. They stay aloft and they get you to a chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications such as the dummy planes of the Cargo cults in jungle clearings or the bees-waxed wings of Icaraus don’t.’ “
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Just found this interesting column on The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/
The problem with most cultural relativists is that they cannot properly explain themselves–and that absolutists cannot properly listen to them.
The reality is that cultural relativism has nothing to do with physics; it has to do with metaphysics and with ethics, along with forms of practical knowledge, or praxis.
I once heard a man called “worse than a baby” because he didn’t know where his food came from, or how it was made. I cannot image the epithets we might brand the man who made this claim–if he came to this country, he would likely not know how to use a telephone or even to read. He likely does not know multiplication. Cultural relativism comes into play when we ask something like, “Who between them is ‘smarter’ or ‘more knowledgeable’”?
Never assume that just because a position is defended by its worst representatives that it is wrong. Or I might as well go around telling people there are major flaws with physics because, e.g., my high school teacher didn’t go into the strong and weak forces.
Oh, and while I’m being polemical: your “argument” that the BBC is being dumbed down relies on ONE show that you watched ten years ago, and ONE show you watched recently. While I am certainly no scientist, is it exactly good science to draw a conclusion from two examples drawn over several years of ‘research’?
Another version of “bad science” is assuming knowledge in one area means that you are qualified in another. I would suggest that you leave what amounts to social science, in the form of cultural and media analysis, to the social scientists.
I didn’t make this judgment on the basis of two episodes. I’ve watched pretty much every episode of Horizon for the last couple of decades. Also, I based it on the market research that the BBC was doing and the kind of people they invited and the focus they had for it – good evidence of their intentions. As for my qualifications to do cultural and media analysis – not that you, me or anyone else need any – how about a degree in modern history, 12 years developing computer games and five years as a journalist. Besides being married to an actress / director.
The more important point here is that the BBC has a duty, in my view, not to pander to or represent the “worst representatives” but to put forward whatever is insightful, well-informed and excellent. Give me Richard Dawkins over Mystic Meg any day.
I’m married to a surgeon, so come over here and let me operate on you!
In your qualifications, you said nothing about being a philosopher–the true home of what I above mentioned are the culturally relative issues, metaphysics and ethics (here I leave out praxis, since it can easily be reduced to ethics)–let alone a social scientist, one who actually studies (not produces, as you claim) the materials of culture. “I work in a factory making computers, hence I’m as qualified as a computer scientist to make claims about computing.” Tell me how your claim is different from this.
You may have based your conclusion on those facts, but you did not present them in your article. Once again, I do not believe that is the common practice of those who call themselves scientists or researchers in any field.
And once again, your comparison between Dawkins and “Mystic Meg” is unfounded. You yourself suggest that the BBC should put forward what is well-informed–hence the representative for cultural relativism should have been the late Jacques Derrida, or the very much alive Slavoj Zizek. Give me one of them over “Mystic Meg,” as well. At least we agree on that: “Mystic Meg” should not be on TV, especially not the BBC. That type of ‘information’ hurts the cause it ‘attempts’ to ‘represent’.
And I would suggest that you acquire some qualifications (not necessarily the Ph.D. I’m working on), but at least READ the true proponents of cultural relativism.
Yeah, whatever.
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