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Can someone help me understand this part? > Enlightenment advances were tied to empire building and the nascent Industrial Revolution, predicated not just on n
by warent 9y ago
Can someone help me understand this part?
> Enlightenment advances were tied to empire building and the nascent Industrial Revolution, predicated not just on noble ideas and scientific curiosity, but also on slavery, genocide, exploitation and cultural triumphalism. Like the Renaissance, it ended in chaos and conflict, including the French revolutionary wars of 1792–99.
> Both eras show that science and evidence-based thinking do not necessarily triumph over irrationality and ideology
I can't tell if Ian is saying:
1) Science and evidence-based thinking are the direct cause of these eras "ending in chaos and conflict", and that "irrationality and ideology" could have been preferred, or
2) Science and evidence-based thinking were insufficient.
If it's 1, I doubt that's really true and would definitely need evidence.
If 2, then insufficient at what? Insufficient to act as a moral compass? Insufficient at convincing people to hold similar values in utilizing science and evidence-based thinking? Something else?
- westoncb 9y agoI think there's a '3' here: Science and evidence-based thinking are (relatively) orthogonal to the emergence of social chaos and conflict. If I'm not mistaken this is implied in Marxist thinking, so it is an idea that is 'out there' (in the sense of being available). I think the idea there is that our rational thinking largely serves as justification rather than being something very powerful on its own. The way I see it is that (at least much of) rational thought is the latest stage in 'elaboration' of lower-level mental/emotional processes. In which case, our rational thinking on subjects which impact real circumstances in which we're invested will be constrained and influenced by our goals, values, and something like coefficients for strength of influence of various emotions etc.
- MichaelMoser123 9y agoi think he is omitting a few words: he might want to say that science created the means for European powers to build empires by dominating people in far off places; these empires ran on slavery, racism & genocide in far off places (the colonies); much later in the twentieth century the violence & genocide came back to continental Europe in the form of two world wars (when the same weapons and ideologies that were developed to kill 'colored' people were turned on the Europeans). in the aftermath some people try to make sense out of this mayhem and they ask the question of 'what's the point of this project ? Are these ideas of enlightenment at fault of getting into such a mess? (or might it have been something else like how we applied them) ? and what can we do about it ?' . Is that correct ?