Monday, March 12, 2007
Sex, HIV, Milton, Kuhn, Fleck, and Margulis
This year marks the 340th anniversary of the publication of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), the 45th anniversary of the publication of T.S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), the 40th anniversary of the Lynn Margulis article “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells” in the Journal of Theoretical Biology (1967), and the fifteenth anniversary of the establishment (1992) of the Ludwik Fleck Prize for the best science and technology studies book.
Milton sought to “…justifie the wayes of God to men.” Kuhn popularized “paradigm” and “paradigm shift.” Margulis (the first wife of Carl Sagan) champions the idea of symbiosis in evolution, and asserts that “Darwinism” thrives because of an “Anglophone-capitalist culture.” Fleck invented the notion of “thought collectives,” better known as social constructivism.
The scientists “hang together” for obvious reasons, but why I would lump Milton with this group requires some explanation.
It all goes back to sex.
Well, to be precise, it alls goes back to Milton’s treatment of women. As an undergraduate, I remember sitting in an English Lit class while some of my fellow students (Co-students? Student colleagues?) of the female persuasion argued against reading Paradise Lost because of Milton’s patently atrocious attitude toward, and treatment of, women.
There’s no denying that Milton did not have anything remotely resembling a “modern” attitude toward women. His first marriage to sixteen-year-old Mary Powell (whose father owed Milton money) was hasty and ill- conceived (a somber, virgin Puritan scholar married to a lively young girl – not a match made in heaven). Milton’s new wife left him after a month and remained away for the duration of the English Civil War. She returned when her royalist family needed the protection of the “icon breaker.” His mother-in-law complained that Milton was a disagreeable and petulant man (she wanted money from him that he refused to give). Later, his daughters virtually accused him of child abuse and slave labor (they had to read to him after he went blind). Yet, after Mary returned she and John had four children together, and Milton’s second and third marriages seemed genuinely happy (Mary and Katherine, his first and second wives, died due to complications related to childbirth; Betty, his third wife, survived him).
A.N. Wilson, in The Life of John Milton, argues that we can’t know just how bad Milton was toward the women in his life. Much of the evidence is second-hand, based on the recollections of one of Milton’s young students and a disgruntled mother-in-law. Milton did fawn over certain women: he had a weakness for women with titles, and his Eve is quite sexy (of course, both of those could be construed as sexist!). Whatever the particulars, Milton clearly believed men were superior to women – as did nearly every man in the seventeenth century.
Should we banish Milton from the Western canon because he had some unenlightened attitudes? Should we similarly dispose of Areopagitica?
I don’t think so.
I’m (sadly) out of touch with contemporary Milton criticism, but I don’t recall ever reading a serious Milton scholar who (a) doubted that Milton treated women badly (although how badly, as A.N. Wilson’s comments show, might be open for discussion), or (b) believed that he shouldn’t be read because of his negative attitude toward women.
In other words, let the facts speak for themselves. Fact: Paradise Lost is a poem of great depth and beauty. Fact: The poem can be read and enjoyed without regard to Milton’s ideas on women, divorce, or the Trinity (although knowledge of any of those subjects might inform our reading of the poem). Fact: Milton’s work most certainly should not be banned because we, in the 21st century, find some seventeenth century attitudes objectionable.
What do we gain by substituting one paradigm (standard Milton scholarship) with another (feminist scholarship)? What injustice is corrected? Milton’s wives and daughters are long dead, as is Milton himself. What remains is the beauty of his poetry.
We can’t attribute all of the abuses of “science studies” to T.S. Kuhn; I doubt he really intended to criticize science at all. Instead, I think he was interested in describing one of the ways (although not the only way) in which science works. He may have overstated the role that “revolutions” play in science, but he himself was a scientist who appreciated science. He doubted that science progressed toward “truth,” but he did not doubt that science led to a detailed and refined understanding of nature.
But it is true that his notions of “paradigms” - shared beliefs about what problems need to be solved, and how to go about solving them - fueled the post-modern critique of science as nothing more than (to put it crudely) the fascist musings of (mostly) dead white guys. I don’t think Kuhn believed that the existence of paradigms justified the rejection of any “special status” of science as an explainer of the natural world, although some post-modernists, following in his footsteps, seem to advocate such a rejection.
Kuhn was inspired, in part, by the work of the Polish physician and philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck, who devised the notion of “thought collectives.” Fleck believed that the attainment of truth through science was impossible because different researchers were stuck in different thought collectives. Change was possible only if one collective overthrew another, but there was no guarantee that the winner of these battles possessed “the truth.”
Lynn Margulis approvingly cites Fleck as the philosopher who got it right. She, of course, has some personal experience in battling existing “paradigms” or “thought collectives.” Margulis faced stiff opposition from evolutionary biologists when she proposed the idea that eukaryotic cells evolved when prokaryotic cells formed symbiotic systems. Her idea is now accepted, although not all of the implications of its extension. Margulis has generalized symbiosis (cooperation) into the prime mover behind evolution. She dismisses most contemporary evolutionary theory (based on the slow accumulation of changes in genes plus natural selection – i.e., competition) as an artifact of “an Anglophone-capitalist culture.”
It’s a big leap, it seems to me, from saying scientists are a product of their cultures to rejecting scientific work because it’s part of “an Anglophone-capitalist culture.” After all, there are facts involved in evolutionary theory; some of those facts support competition and some of those facts support cooperation. Right now, the preponderance of facts lends credence to the notion that competition is a prime mover in evolution; that doesn’t mean cooperation doesn’t exist (it does, at many levels).
Margulis also rejects the idea that HIV causes AIDS. She’s not really an AIDS-denier, but she doesn’t believe there is enough peer-reviewed evidence to unequivocally say that HIV causes AIDS. She says the CDC never sent her the scientific papers that demonstrate a causal link, even though she requested them. Ergo, the link must not exist.
Might it be, instead, bureaucratic laziness on the part of the CDC? Who wants to spend time copying papers for someone who could just as easily do the research and copy them herself? Naw, bureaucrats are never lazy!
In general terms, Margulis’s criticism is fair enough. As she has fiercely stated, doubt fuels science. But before she creates yet another “scientific controversy” (think evolution and climate change) with policy implications, she needs to come to the table with evidence that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. She needs a testable, falsifiable hypothesis (although, if she follows Kuhn, a falsifiable hypothesis isn’t possible). She needs data. So far, she hasn’t provided anything.
Remember, if you want to foment a scientific revolution (ala Kuhn), you need an alternative theory and data.
I suspect Margulis doesn’t want HIV to cause AIDS because that contradicts her theory of symbiosis. When HIV enters a cell, its effect is anything but symbiotic; instead, it resembles the “red in tooth and claw” that Spencer wrote about. HIV causing AIDS might be one of those gosh-darned “Anglophone-capitalist” competition things!
In fact (to overuse the word), Margulis’s rejection of standard evolutionary theory, and the idea that AIDS is caused by HIV, strikes me as poor scholarship and bad science, akin to rejecting Milton’s Paradise Lost because he held a less-than-modern attitude toward women. I didn’t accept it as an undergraduate, and I don’t accept it now.
Milton sought to “…justifie the wayes of God to men.” Kuhn popularized “paradigm” and “paradigm shift.” Margulis (the first wife of Carl Sagan) champions the idea of symbiosis in evolution, and asserts that “Darwinism” thrives because of an “Anglophone-capitalist culture.” Fleck invented the notion of “thought collectives,” better known as social constructivism.
The scientists “hang together” for obvious reasons, but why I would lump Milton with this group requires some explanation.
It all goes back to sex.
Well, to be precise, it alls goes back to Milton’s treatment of women. As an undergraduate, I remember sitting in an English Lit class while some of my fellow students (Co-students? Student colleagues?) of the female persuasion argued against reading Paradise Lost because of Milton’s patently atrocious attitude toward, and treatment of, women.
There’s no denying that Milton did not have anything remotely resembling a “modern” attitude toward women. His first marriage to sixteen-year-old Mary Powell (whose father owed Milton money) was hasty and ill- conceived (a somber, virgin Puritan scholar married to a lively young girl – not a match made in heaven). Milton’s new wife left him after a month and remained away for the duration of the English Civil War. She returned when her royalist family needed the protection of the “icon breaker.” His mother-in-law complained that Milton was a disagreeable and petulant man (she wanted money from him that he refused to give). Later, his daughters virtually accused him of child abuse and slave labor (they had to read to him after he went blind). Yet, after Mary returned she and John had four children together, and Milton’s second and third marriages seemed genuinely happy (Mary and Katherine, his first and second wives, died due to complications related to childbirth; Betty, his third wife, survived him).
A.N. Wilson, in The Life of John Milton, argues that we can’t know just how bad Milton was toward the women in his life. Much of the evidence is second-hand, based on the recollections of one of Milton’s young students and a disgruntled mother-in-law. Milton did fawn over certain women: he had a weakness for women with titles, and his Eve is quite sexy (of course, both of those could be construed as sexist!). Whatever the particulars, Milton clearly believed men were superior to women – as did nearly every man in the seventeenth century.
Should we banish Milton from the Western canon because he had some unenlightened attitudes? Should we similarly dispose of Areopagitica?
I don’t think so.
I’m (sadly) out of touch with contemporary Milton criticism, but I don’t recall ever reading a serious Milton scholar who (a) doubted that Milton treated women badly (although how badly, as A.N. Wilson’s comments show, might be open for discussion), or (b) believed that he shouldn’t be read because of his negative attitude toward women.
In other words, let the facts speak for themselves. Fact: Paradise Lost is a poem of great depth and beauty. Fact: The poem can be read and enjoyed without regard to Milton’s ideas on women, divorce, or the Trinity (although knowledge of any of those subjects might inform our reading of the poem). Fact: Milton’s work most certainly should not be banned because we, in the 21st century, find some seventeenth century attitudes objectionable.
What do we gain by substituting one paradigm (standard Milton scholarship) with another (feminist scholarship)? What injustice is corrected? Milton’s wives and daughters are long dead, as is Milton himself. What remains is the beauty of his poetry.
We can’t attribute all of the abuses of “science studies” to T.S. Kuhn; I doubt he really intended to criticize science at all. Instead, I think he was interested in describing one of the ways (although not the only way) in which science works. He may have overstated the role that “revolutions” play in science, but he himself was a scientist who appreciated science. He doubted that science progressed toward “truth,” but he did not doubt that science led to a detailed and refined understanding of nature.
But it is true that his notions of “paradigms” - shared beliefs about what problems need to be solved, and how to go about solving them - fueled the post-modern critique of science as nothing more than (to put it crudely) the fascist musings of (mostly) dead white guys. I don’t think Kuhn believed that the existence of paradigms justified the rejection of any “special status” of science as an explainer of the natural world, although some post-modernists, following in his footsteps, seem to advocate such a rejection.
Kuhn was inspired, in part, by the work of the Polish physician and philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck, who devised the notion of “thought collectives.” Fleck believed that the attainment of truth through science was impossible because different researchers were stuck in different thought collectives. Change was possible only if one collective overthrew another, but there was no guarantee that the winner of these battles possessed “the truth.”
Lynn Margulis approvingly cites Fleck as the philosopher who got it right. She, of course, has some personal experience in battling existing “paradigms” or “thought collectives.” Margulis faced stiff opposition from evolutionary biologists when she proposed the idea that eukaryotic cells evolved when prokaryotic cells formed symbiotic systems. Her idea is now accepted, although not all of the implications of its extension. Margulis has generalized symbiosis (cooperation) into the prime mover behind evolution. She dismisses most contemporary evolutionary theory (based on the slow accumulation of changes in genes plus natural selection – i.e., competition) as an artifact of “an Anglophone-capitalist culture.”
It’s a big leap, it seems to me, from saying scientists are a product of their cultures to rejecting scientific work because it’s part of “an Anglophone-capitalist culture.” After all, there are facts involved in evolutionary theory; some of those facts support competition and some of those facts support cooperation. Right now, the preponderance of facts lends credence to the notion that competition is a prime mover in evolution; that doesn’t mean cooperation doesn’t exist (it does, at many levels).
Margulis also rejects the idea that HIV causes AIDS. She’s not really an AIDS-denier, but she doesn’t believe there is enough peer-reviewed evidence to unequivocally say that HIV causes AIDS. She says the CDC never sent her the scientific papers that demonstrate a causal link, even though she requested them. Ergo, the link must not exist.
Might it be, instead, bureaucratic laziness on the part of the CDC? Who wants to spend time copying papers for someone who could just as easily do the research and copy them herself? Naw, bureaucrats are never lazy!
In general terms, Margulis’s criticism is fair enough. As she has fiercely stated, doubt fuels science. But before she creates yet another “scientific controversy” (think evolution and climate change) with policy implications, she needs to come to the table with evidence that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. She needs a testable, falsifiable hypothesis (although, if she follows Kuhn, a falsifiable hypothesis isn’t possible). She needs data. So far, she hasn’t provided anything.
Remember, if you want to foment a scientific revolution (ala Kuhn), you need an alternative theory and data.
I suspect Margulis doesn’t want HIV to cause AIDS because that contradicts her theory of symbiosis. When HIV enters a cell, its effect is anything but symbiotic; instead, it resembles the “red in tooth and claw” that Spencer wrote about. HIV causing AIDS might be one of those gosh-darned “Anglophone-capitalist” competition things!
In fact (to overuse the word), Margulis’s rejection of standard evolutionary theory, and the idea that AIDS is caused by HIV, strikes me as poor scholarship and bad science, akin to rejecting Milton’s Paradise Lost because he held a less-than-modern attitude toward women. I didn’t accept it as an undergraduate, and I don’t accept it now.
