If Science, by defenition, is rational, why are today’s scientific debates cluttered with so much irrationality? The demagogery I have seen from many people who claim to represent the “scientific” side of many technical isssues really confuses me.

I’m afraid your question simply does not compute in this crowd. Science! is by definition rational, truth-generating and self-correcting, but it seems only as long as the self-correcting is taking place somewhere else, at some other time, among some other people.

The religious followers eventually come up with a very specific prediction of disaster, and they then begin to proselytize about it. And of course, the day comes, and they’re wrong.

How does this notion of cognitive dissonance and the failed apocalyptic prognostications of religious prophets compare and contrast with the failed apocalyptic predictions of individuals like John Holdren, Paul Erlich, Donella Meadows etcetera? Is there a similar level of “cognitive dissonance” between these the secular and religious apocalyptarians?

This book is really hilarious, and I think it is partly intentional (although honestly, how could you fail with such material!). A few quotes, generally involving the details of the group’s preparations for the end of the world and being “beamed up”:

“Early in the evening each member present was issued a ‘passport’ (a piece of blank stationery and a three-cent stamped envelope) to be shown when boarding the flying saucer that would pick him up….Some members were even assigned a numbered seat on a specified saucer.”

“On December 10, she also asked the question of Bertha–i.e., the Creator. The Creator hesitated a moment before replying, then turned the question back to Marian, asking what light she had on the invitation.”

“In one room downstairs there was an air of excitement. Dr. Armstrong was busily ripping the zipper out of the fly of his trousers…It turns out that all the members in their private consultations with Mrs. Keech had received orders to remove all metal from their persons and had zealously complied…”

Dewey, John (1929), The Quest for Certainty : A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action, Minton, Balch, and Company, New York, NY. Reprinted, pp. 1–254 in John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 4 : 1929, Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), Harriet Furst Simon (text. ed.), Stephen Toulmin (intro.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1984.

Sorrentino, Richard M., and Roney, Christopher J.R. (2000), The Uncertain Mind : Individual Differences in Facing the Unknown, (Essays in Social Psychology, Miles Hewstone (ed.)), Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA.

That last part has always lead to splits and misunderstandings in “education” (in quotes because here I mean formal education that has divided areas of knowledge into distinct sub categories such as “math”, “reading”, “history” or what not – in the real world there are no such clear distinctions and all areas of knowledge tend to overlap…).

My only advice to you is that rather than reading it as a “what silly people *THEY* are” type thing, one would be much better served to realize that we are actually all very much like that, though perhaps we are better at using academic methods to make it less apparent.

If you doubt such I suggest you start laying out all the “rational” and “logical” reasons for why two people in a relationship (any relationship – friendship, marriage or what have you) should or should not be in such. Make a bunch of logical rules about what such “is” (as in a friend would never cheat me, for example) and then see if there is a single real world relationship out there that hasn’t blown holes in almost all of those “rules”.

Logic says the rules are the rules.

Life says otherwise, and that we misunderstand ourselves in a very detrimental way if we miss that point.

One of those things all those in the “hard” sciences seem to have a real hard time grasping as they point out to many of us why no one needs to study those social things…