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From physics to feminism, from high-energy particles to hype
This is from Columbia Magazine, the alumni magazine of Columbia University:
And she’s fresh-faced and pretty, too! It’s just like real life, as brought to us on TV each night, where beautiful women in their twenties and early thirties are the heads of heart-surgery teams, homicide squads, anti-terrorist task forces, and international corporations.The Nature of the Neutrino
There are several types of hype at work in this article and similar articles. First, there is the postmodern hype of sub-atomic physics, with its ever multiplying population of absurdly evanescent sub- and sub-sub-atomic particles. If physicists discover yet another such particle, in this case, a fourth “flavor” of neutrino, which is what the research of Janet Conrad and her colleagues is aimed at, can we really say that they have “changed our fundamental conception of the universe”? Would it “rock the field of high-energy physics,” as the article claims? Conrad and her colleagues are trying to find out if neutrinos oscillate, which, if they do, indicates that neutrinos have mass. And since there are so many neutrinos in the universe, this newly discovered mass could account for the “missing mass,” which would explain why the expansion of the universe is proceeding more slowly than it ought to given the amount of mass believed to exist. Ok, that’s very interesting. But let’s get real. If it turns out that neutrinos have mass, would that really “change our fundamental conception of the universe”? Or would it change something of what we know about the universe? I know that it wouldn’t change my fundamental conception of the universe. The central problem with science journalism today is that every week we’re told in breathless tones that “all our ideas have been overturned,” “everything that we thought we knew has been thrown out,” “everyone is gaga,” “the field of [fill in the blank] has been rocked.” But given that all our ideas about this field were also overturned just last week, and were also overturned just the week before that, how could they even have existed long enough to be “overturned”? If all there is, is revolutions, what are the revolutions a revolution of? Such is the world of liberalism, where there is only the afflatus of revolutionary desire, and no truth. The underlying problem is that the modern liberal mind cannot relate positively to any subject unless it is put in terms of overthrowing stale, repressive conceptions. The scientific enterprise must be treated as though it consisted of a permanent 1968. If some scientific knowledge is just true, rather than coming along as a shattering of our old-fashioned notion of the universe (old fashioned because it was discovered last week, which is really, really old), it doesn’t touch liberals where they live. As the philosopher of nihilism, Nietzsche, put it, “The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it…. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving…” Or, in more contemporary terms, the question is, how far an opinion is ego-enhancing, career-furthering. The first type of type, the overplaying of each discovery in a cultural setting in which buzz matters more than truth, is exacerbated by a second type of hype, which consists of hailing a discovery before it has been made. Isn’t that a tad premature? How about waiting until the fourth flavor of neutrinos is actually found before announcing a change in our fundamental conception of the universe? It reminds me of the PBS series about string theory a few years ago hosted by physicist Brian Green of Columbia University. In this stylishly produced program, filled with jumpy camera work and constant visual tricks designed to convey the strangeness of the sub-atomic world, Green treated string theory as the opening to a radically different conception of the universe (a universe which just happened to mirror fashionable postmodern notions of radical indeterminacy), when in fact it’s not even known if strings exist. It also reminds me of how G.W. Bush and his shameless journalistic promoters spent years ecstatically hailing the birth of democracy and freedom in the Mideast when it hadn’t happened and was only a hope. They repeatedly spoke of a hope as though it were an achieved fact, or on the very edge of becoming an achieved fact. Third, to return to where we began, there is the hype of making the fresh-faced female the hero and celebrity. (As for Conrad’s age, she received her Ph.D. in 1993, and the undated article, which I happened upon by chance while looking for something else, was, as indicated at archive.org, published in 2002). In fact, the article mentions her “colleagues,” but only names one of them, a male professor. She is a member of a team, not the leader. Yet she gets the celebrity treatment as the person who “may change our fundamental conception of the universe,” because she is a woman. By the way, nothing in the above should be seen as a criticism of Janet Conrad. My targets are the hype of feminism, of much of contemporary science, and of science journalism, and the liberal world view that underlies all three. Also, as far as the hyping of female accomplishment in our culture is concerned, the Columbia Magazine article on Conrad is a relatively mild example. But precisely because it is not as extreme as many other examples that could be used, it shows how normal and ubiquitous the hyping of women and their abilities has become.
Paul Nachman writes:
Your point taken. Fresh-faced, yes. But pretty? In my view, no.Adela G. writes
You write: “It’s just like real life, as brought to us on TV each night, where beautiful women in their twenties and early thirties are the heads of heart-surgery teams, homicide squads, anti-terrorist task forces, and international corporations.”John B. writes:
“For someone who spends so much of her time thinking about neutrinos, Janet Conrad is surprisingly down-to-earth”—as will be unsurprising to any person whose brains have been emulsified by the dozens of folksy scientific portraits published in America each year.May 5 James P. writes:
“And she’s fresh-faced and pretty, too! It’s just like real life, as brought to us on TV each night, where beautiful women in their twenties and early thirties are the heads of heart-surgery teams, homicide squads, anti-terrorist task forces, and international corporations.” Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 04, 2009 11:24 PM | Send Email entry |
