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THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

~ Science, logic, and ethics, from a Whiteheadian Pragmatist perspective (go figure)

THE QUANTUM of EXPLANATION

Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Gary Story

13 Friday Aug 2021

Posted by Gary Herstein in Personal History, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

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Personal, Science

Sometimes, the good guys win. This was brought to mind by a recent story at OpenCulture that tells of Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She is the discoverer of pulsars, in case you didn’t know (which is likely.) Because her – and, of course, it is always HER – male advisor took the credit and was awarded the Nobel prize for it. You can read the original OC story HERE.

However, not all such stories are as infuriating (and even Bell Burnell’s is far from being the worst example from a seemingly endless list of women being denied earned credit.) For example, there is this one that I can attest to as a witness: I was there and I knew the people involved, and I saw it come to light in real time. So, this being my blog, it is my right and privilege to deviate from my normal focus on philosophical topics to tell personal anecdote. This one is from about 40 years ago, back when I was well and thoroughly ensconced in the computer and high-tech industry as a professional technician. So permit me to tell you a Gary Story.

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Cry Babies

10 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

American Progressivism, Critical Thinking, Politics

This is the promised follow up to my “American Fascist” post. I began writing this a long time ago, but was never happy with it. So what appears now is a massive rewrite in the context of contemporary events.It ought to go without saying that the persons I am being critical of in this post form a small (albeit, vocal) minority of American Progressives.Crying-baby-white-background

Contemporary events are informed by, and created from, past events. And the past events that need to be resolutely, uncompromisingly, born in mind here, all have in common the FACT that fascism only ever came to power because those on the political left were so divided and busily bickering amongst themselves that their infantilism and ideology prevented them from presenting a unified front against an enemy that was unimaginably worse than their own childish, internecine grievances. Among our contemporary grievances is the rather presumptuous coronation of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee by major news outlets, before the final round of voting actually made her so. (Fantasies of Sanders “flipping” superdelegates at the convention were always nonsense on stilts; the results from New Jersey and California make them even more so.) This premature declaration has generated a considerable amount of complaint from the political left, including questions of whether it might have skewed the vote in California. Still, great deal of that complaint has taken on the air of the sort of cry-baby-ism we often see from persons with politically progressive leanings. And that is a problem. Continue reading →

Pando Populus

06 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Pando is the largest living organism on the planet. It spans an area of over 100 acres in So. Utah, and is over 80,000 years old. It might not survive this century.

Pando is an Aspen (genera = “Populus”) forest. But Aspen’s are not individual trees; they share a common root system, and as such are a single living organism within that root system. Pando is the largest such known, and we are killing it. It has been chosen as the symbol of the encroaching ecological catastrophe, and the image of hope and imperative that is the driving force behind the 10th International Whitehead Conference. When the conference is finished, Pando Populus will be the ongoing site for linking activism, philosophical and scientific information, and community in a common root system of energy and life. Continue reading →

Trees and Ph.D.’s

05 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

There was a long time before this evenings unofficial dinner, and this night’s big plenary. So I managed to catch up with some friends and spend the day strolling (and drinking) on Venice beach. We gave ourselves 2 hours to get back to Claremont, and L.A. traffic still managed to preclude reaching the 5:00 dinner on time. But we were only 10 minutes late, and I was able to call ahead to offer apologies.

The first plenary was rather different than what I had been expecting.

Bill McKibben did get up to talk — eventually. As expected, several other people got up to talk first, so that a string of folks could introduce another string of folks. The first surprise was that the strings were much longer than I had expected. Even more surprising was that many of them were downright charming. Continue reading →

Bombs away

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Dunce-cap

Wisconsin and their Republican “governance” has declared total war on their public education system, from Kindergarten to their Universities: Bombs away.

For additional reading, see Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works

For a perspective from 100 years ago (that lends perspective to today’s situation), Thorstein Veblen’s classic The Higher Learning In America is hard to beat

It is on the Program, so it must be TRUE

25 Monday May 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

A small measure of satisfaction always comes with seeing someone else mention my name:

TRACK 2.
INTUITION IN MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS
Chair: Ronny Desmet
Mason Hall, Rm 005
Mathematics and physics need to be imaginatively re-envisioned by taking our deepest intuitions into account. Physicists focuson “lifeless nature” and hence exclude from their descriptions all characteristics of “nature alive” such as feeling, creativity,purpose, and value. By contrast, in these sessions we challenge the separation and turn the opposition between physics and intuition into a fruitful contrast.
Presenters:
Ronny Desmet, Jean Paul Van Bendegem, Arran Gare, Henry Leonard Jr., Ron Phipps, Gary Herstein, PeterFimmel, Hank Keeton, Michael Epperson, Timothy Eastman, Robert Valenza

The Times, They are a’ … well, moving on …

23 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

I’ve been away so long, I scarcely know how to make a new entry.

My time away, if not well spent, has at least clawed its way to the surface of something like recognizable human existence.

I will soon (June 3) be leaving for the 2015 International Whitehead Conference. I will be delivering two invited papers, and acting as moderator for two other sessions. I hope to delay my projected nervous breakdown until I am back home and my cat can yell at me for being an inadequate human. In the intervening time, I will have the opportunity for numerous personal and professional contacts and interactions.

My cat will be singularly indifferent to these lame attempts at developing myself as a person and a scholar.

I plan on blogging (very short snippets) while I am at the conference. I will have more considered thoughts once I get home, and will also return to my not entirely regularly scheduled screeds on matters of science, metaphysics, and logic.

(And the Oxford comma, which I hope you all appreciated in the above.)

Tom Harris – hypocritical peddler of deceitful climate change editorials

16 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

As I’ve noted, I’m consumed by several projects of my own that prevent me from engaging in any substantive blogging for the moment. However, the folks over at S&R have done a nice job of logical analysis that deserves to be widely shared.

Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues

Eight related commentaries written by Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition since mid-December are packed them with distortions, errors, hypocrisy, and more.

Tom Harris, Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) Tom Harris, Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) Tom Harris, Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) Starting in the middle of December, 2014 and continuing through February, 2015, Tom Harris, Executive Director of the industrial climate disruptionA denying International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), wrote at least eight nearly identical commentaries. They were published mostly in small local newspapers and websites around the United States, Canada, and South Africa. The stated purpose of the commentaries was to call for scholars and philosophers to engage in the public argument over climate disruption (aka global warming or climate change), and Harris wrote that “philosophers and other intellectuals have an ethical obligation to speak out loudly when they see fundamental errors in thinking

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Projects

25 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Personal History, Uncategorized, Whitehead

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

2015 International Conference, Presentation, Whitehead

I will be taking a bit of a break from this blog for the next couple of months, doing little more than occasionally posting some odd bit of flotsam that amuses me, as I need to dig in and complete a couple of fairly large projects. The project most on the front burner right now is the presentation I’m committed to for the 2015 International Whitehead Conference. Continue reading →

Just This …

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

I’ve been away on vacation for the past 8 days, and have nothing substantive to say on my own account. (Don’t worry, that won’t last for long … )

But I thought this might be a good time to mention an upcoming event that is rather near and dear to my heart: the 2015 International Whitehead Conference.

Alfred North Whitehead is, hands down, one of the most important and original thinkers in the entire Western canon. My own not so modest — but, at least, peer-reviewed! — reasoned and researched evaluation of his contributions may be found HERE. (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent resource, specifically aimed at a non-academic, non-specialist audience. But they do seem to be down for maintenance a great deal of late, especially over the weekends. If you have trouble pulling up the article, I beg your patience and encourage you to come back sometime during the week.)

Continue reading →

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“But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is, that it adds to interest.” – Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality

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Science, logic, and ethics, from a Whiteheadian Pragmatist perspective (go figure)

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