Episode 04 - Too Cultured
Jeff and Darron discuss scientist and novelist C.P. Snow’s influential 1959 lecture “The Two Cultures”, describing the growing cultural schism that he perceives between the sciences and the humanities, and why it’s a barrier to human progress. They take a look at this argument 60 years later and try to bring it into the context of today as they explore the question “Why can’t we talk about science?” This episode was recorded in January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, but many of the ideas discussed have even more resonance in light of events that have unfolded since then.
Notes:
2:00 - Context with Brad Harris podcast episode “The Two Cultures, by C.P. Snow” from November, 2018
2:06 - “The Two Cultures” by C.P. Snow
2:53 - Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
3:16 - “What is Science?”
3:34 - History of Science
4:45 - Snow gave the Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge in 1959 - “The Rede Lecture”, named for Sir Robert Rede, an English judge who provided an annual stipend to Cambridge University for lectures in logic, moral philosophy, and the humanities, is a tradition that dates back to the 16th century. In 1858 it became a single annual lecture with one appointee per year, a tradition that continues to this day, with the most recent lecture, “Reasons for Hope,” being given by famous primatologist Jane Goodall in 2019”
8:43 - See “From the anti-vaxxers to flat earthers: what makes people distrust science?” and “Why flat-Earth theory and anti-vax conspiracies exist” (video)
10:00 - “What is a pandemic?” from Live Science
13:44 - See “Advances in weather prediction” from Science Magazine (January 2019) - “According to research summarized in Science Magazine, “Modern 72-hour predictions of hurricane tracks are more accurate than 24-hour forecasts were 40 years ago” and “Weather forecasts from leading numerical weather prediction centers have also been improving rapidly: A modern 5-day forecast is as accurate as a 1-day forecast was in 1980, and useful forecasts now reach 9 to 10 days into the future.”
14:25 - Outcome bias
14:50 - See the “manifest image” and the “scientific image” as proposed by the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars in his work Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man, which is erroneously referred to here as the “manifest reality” and the “scientific reality”
21:45 - Humans want narrative and story, see “The Neurology of Narrative” or “The art of storytelling: Researchers explore why we relate to characters”
21:55 - See Chapter 3 of Speaking of Culture by Nolan Weil for a good summary of creation myths
22:19 - See Dunbar’s Number
24:20 - Ode to a Flower, spoken monologue from Richard Feynman (video, highly recommended)
25:38- See “Explainer: Where fossil fuels come from” from Science News for Students
26:38 - Modern Marvels: The Invention of Indoor Plumbing (video)
28:29 - Is your blue different from my blue? See “Is Your Red The Same as My Red?” (video from Vsauce) or “Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue” from Live Science
29:56 - According to “Sweet Music to Your Nerves” from Physics, “A recent mathematical model suggests that the key may be the rhythmically consistent firing of neurons in response to a harmonious pair of frequencies.”
29:59 - An Octave is “the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is common in most musical systems.”
32:46 - “What is the Difference Between Pure and Applied Science?”
33:42 - See Max Martin - Jeff is likely referring to the Norwegian songwriter and pop producer Karl Martin Sanberg. Sanberg, better known as Max Martin, is the most notable of a number of Norwegian pop songwriter-producers who use a formulaic approach combining pleasing components of past pop trends to churn out hits. Since 1998 he has written or co-written, and produced or co-produced, 23 Billboard Hot 100 number one hit songs for artists such as Brittney Spears, NSYNC, Katy Perry, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Maroon 5, and Taylor Swift. The 3 number ones as a songwriter place him third all time in the category behind only Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and the 23 number ones as a producer are tied for first all-time in the category with yet another Beatle, George Harrison.”
34:35 - “Hit Charade: Meet the bald Norwegians and other unknowns who actually create the songs that top the charts.” published by The Atlantic in October 2015
35:10 - We might be confusing people like Max Martin who are writing/producing the music, with researchers who analyze past hits to generate formulae or descriptors of what makes a “hit” - see “The Secret Math Behind Feel Good Music” or “Love That New Single? Mathematical Equation Predicts Music’s Hits and Flops” and “The Hit Equation”, but the point still stands that a scientific analysis of the music we like is on some level possible and able to be applied in a more direct way during the creation of new music.
37:19 - Magical thinking
38:05 - Quote from The Big Picture by Sean Carroll: “The pressing, human questions we have about our lives depend directly on our attitudes toward the universe at a deeper level. For many people, those attitudes are adopted rather informally from the surrounding culture, rather than arising out of rigorous personal reflection. Each new generation of people doesn’t invent the rules of living from scratch; we inherit ideas and values that have evolved over vast stretches of time. At the moment, the dominant image of the world remains one in which human life is cosmically special and significant, something more than mere matter in motion. We need to do better at reconciling how we talk about life’s meaning with what we know about the scientific image of our universe.”
39:54 - Romanticism
43:09 - See “Overcoming status quo bias in the human brain” and “Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control” and the “Illusion of Control”