Is Philosophy a Science?

Sociology, philosophy, music performance, almost any pursuit can be a science, if the scientific method is applied.  The scientific method is the process of rational-empiricism.  You need both sides of that, the analytic and synthetic, theory and practice, logic and experiment.  If you begin with a falsifiable question, explore it, and explain it, and test your explanation, then the activity is scientific.   

(This is based on my reply to “What is Philosophy? a Status Seeking Answer" by Fabio Rojas on the OrgTheory blog here.) 

I find a dose of humility in Tom Lehrer's singing about "Sociology" (... they can snow all of their clients/ by calling it - heh - 'science' / when in fact it's only sociology...), but in truth any pursuit can be a science without mimicking physics.  And of course, we all know that physics is taken as the standard.  The problem with that is that human beings are not billiard balls.  History and philosophy and the all the rest are, indeed, sciences, but you can have two or more very different answers to the same question and have both be valid.  “Do the American people support President Obama’s policy in Afghanistan?”  is a complicated question, and perhaps a set of questions, but with statistical - rather than absolute - answers.

The scientific method is the process of rational-empiricism.  You need both sides of that, the analytic and synthetic, theory and practice, logic and experiment.  You can have a useful tool that you do not understand - the steam engine for it's first 150 years; maybe even computer chips today... - but it is not science until you can explain it. 

With history, in particular, we cannot experiment on the past, but any explanatory theory can be validated and falsified by testing it against different experiences, e.g., the Greeks and the Mayans; or different records from the same time and place.  

On whether philosophy is a science, Prof. Rojas suggested: "...  but falsifiability through logic is qualitatively different than falsifiability through experiment or observation." 

My reply is that we understand the unreality of formal logic - "Socrates is an elephant. All elephants are blue.  Therefore, Socrates is blue." - but that is trivial and demeaning when contrasted with, say, Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Conjecture for which all the experimental evidence never was and never would never be sufficient.  

Also, seemingly ethereal mathematics has proved worldly: irrational, negative, and imaginary numbers are easy examples of mathematical "fantasies" that became practical tools of business and technology. Indeed, the very concept of "number" was an idea with no "reality" as long as our languages differentiated a brace of pheasants from a pair of shoes. In Japanese, we still count sticks (pencils) differently than leaves (pages).  The problem with linguistic analysis from Wittgenstein on is that such discussions seldom get past English and rarely exceed the bounds of Indo-European. So, when philosophers attempt to argue “meaning” or “the meaning of meaning” they often stray from what is truly empirical and therefore cannot come to a falsifiable claim.  That is not science.  But the errors and omissions of some do not invalidate the entire field.

Prof. Rojas also wrote:  “In the end, through, I approve of McGinn’s status seeking exercise. Systematic investigation of logical arguments is different than art history or music performance.”

Again, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. I could claim that photography informed painting in the 19th century; and I could argue the contrary as well; but eventually, I must show some examples, i.e., provide some evidence. You don't need to play the piano to figure out how to write a piece that no one could perform.  However, you might enjoy reading it; and perhaps, it could be programmed via computer and synthesizer.  Again, the performance validates or falsifies the claim. As performance plus theory music is a science.

While philosophers worried about how we know the sun will rise tomorrow just because it always has, they never worried about “the problem of deduction.”  From valid axioms you can “prove anything” even if you never find one -- again, the square root of minus 1, negative numbers, etc. In fact, the development of double entry bookkeeping and alternating current electricity provided the empirical evidence for those rationalist conjectures.  But the point is that academic philosophers were more troubled by everyday experience than they were by higher mathematics.  The basic problem with academic philosophy - as academic sociology or academic physics - is that it avoids testing.  

Objectivist philosopher David Harriman offered a solution to “the problem of induction” in his book, The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics.  The presentation left some aspects unanswered.  Also, it might have been more productive for Harriman to call his program "objectivism" and leave the word "induction" where it resides, rather that attempting to drag it into his narrative space.  His work remains significant and should be considered by anyone who questions whether philosophy can be a science.

Reality is real.  If something is logically true - not just a blue Socratic elephant - or perceptually evident - not just a trompe l'oeil - then the logical analytic rational side must support the empirical synthetic experiential side, or the “structure” just will not “stand” and the claim must be regarded as unproved. When philosophy is carried out according to the scientific method, then it is a science.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

NUMISMATIC TRUTHSEEKERS 

Numismatics: The Standard of Truth in Economics 

Forgery and Fraud in Numismatics 

Aaron Feldman: Buy the Book Before You Buy the Coin 

Gresham's Conjecture

We learn it as "Gresham's Law" the claim that "bad money drives good money from the market." But the general rule has many exceptions.

Free market economists quickly amend Gresham's Assertion to insist that both moneys must be legally equivalent. If a gold dollar and a silver dollar both circulate, and if their relative value changes, then the under-valued one will be hoarded.  If you can get $1.10 in silver for a gold dollar, you will save the gold coin and pass off the silver dollar, which is overvalued: worth only 90.9 cents in gold; it is good for 100 cents of a dollar. Therefore, people will hoard the coin with the greater intrinsic value.  This has some truth; history provides examples. 


Even that thumbnail explanation may be too broad; and unwarranted extensions and expansions are issued by shallow thinkers such as the "anarcho-capitalist" Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) of the Austrian school. In his book, A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II, on page 126, Rothbard claims that the nickel-copper small cent was hoarded (true) and exported (not true). Rothbard also asserts: "The penny shortage was finally alleviated when a debased and lighter-weight penny was issued in the spring of 1864, consisting of bronze instead of nickel and copper." This is utter nonsense.

There was no incentive to export a coin in the uncommon nickel alloy 88% copper 12% nickel. Nickel was chosen largely from the influence of Joseph Wharton who owned a mine. The Mint found the nickel alloy too hard: dies wore out.  The Mint turned to the more familiar and softer "French bronze" 95% copper with a 5% tin-zinc mix. The lighter coins did not drive the older issues from the market. The success of the Northern armies in the War Between the States brought confidence to the markets, though perhaps any peace  would have, regardless of who won.  In point of fact - facts often being absent from the works of Rothbard - when the smaller cents (called "nicks" or "nickels") were first issued in 1854, people lined up at the Philadelphia Mint to turn in their heavier (and therefore more intrinsically valuable) Large Cents (1793-1857). The Mint was exchanging old cents for new, one for one, but boys who had been early in the lines sold their Small Cents for premiums.  They were curios.  Eventually, they fell to parity ... and Large Cents (now scarcer) were pursued even more passionately by numismatists.

Proof  Three Cent Silver  1858
Heritage Auctions Sept. 2010 Long Beach Signature Sale Lot 5029

Proof Three Cent Nickel 1870 
Heritage Auctions Sept. 2010 Long Beach Signture Sale Lot 5132 

The history of United States federal coinage provides other counter-examples to Gresham's Conjecture.  The silver half dime circulated alongside the nickel 5-cent coin. The 3-cent silver circulated alongside the 3-cent nickel. While gold and silver did fluctuate in value, causing problems for the Mint, which was a huge consumer and reseller of both, mostly, US silver coins and US gold coins went into separate channels.

Proof Seated Half Dime 1870 
Heritage Auctions 2010 April-May Milwaukee Lot 2515 

Proof Shield Nickel  1870
Heritage Auctions 2010 January Orlando, Lot 3679 

From 1878-1904, the US Mint struck over 24 million ounces of silver dollars per year, far in excess of anyone's demand, to meet the political agenda of Western mining interests. The Comstock Lode and other strikes flooded the markets with cheap silver and the price of it fell relative to gold.  Nonetheless, silver dollars sat in bags; and even today fully one-third are in uncirculated condition.  According to Gresham's Suggestion, silver dollars should have driven gold dollars from the market.  They did not. It seems that gold dollars were not in demand at all. (See http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n30a13.html)

The tendency just described is, however, limited by the fact that coins of different metals are unlikely to be equally useful in different transactions. In particular, gold coins will generally be of larger denominations and as such cannot supply the need for smaller change (cf. Sargent and Velde 2002). Consequently, even though gold may be legally overvalued relative to silver, and silver may cease to be voluntarily rendered to the mint, silver coins are unlikely to disappear from circulation altogether.  "Gresham's Law" by George Selgin at Economic History here.

Gresham's Rule does have some validity.  In the Middle Ages, when coins hundreds of years old still circulated, old, worn coins were spent while new, heavy coins were held.  As Europe experienced perhaps putative "silver famines" the purity of coinages fell. As silver became relatively more valuable, it took less to buy the same goods and services. Coins fell in purity.  Had they not, you would have needed tweezers to hold a penny's worth of silver. Debasement was a convenience.  But it still meant that if two coins are both "pennies" and one has more silver than the other the common choice is to spend the lighter coin.  Even so, history provides many examples of heavy coins such as the stable and reliable English sterling penny being the engines of commerce.

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Science Fairs and Science Frauds

Last month, I volunteered to judge the exhibits in “Behavioral and Social Sciences” at the Austin Energy Regional Science Festival.  After the judging, I spent an hour walking the hall, looking at other exhibits and talking with the entrants.  Overall, I was impressed.  Woody Allen quipped that 85% of success is showing up and every exhibit was worthy of some positive acknowledgement.  Largely, these were winners at school science fairs; and competition gets tougher the further up the pyramid you go.  Of course, the bell curve applies: most exhibits were honest C+ efforts, midrange examples of high schools science.  What else could they be?  Some were outstanding; a few were tagged for us by the sponsor panel as being ineligible for award. 

Ineligibility is defined as failure to make the minimum benchmarks.  The rules and guidelines are provided on the local website – and they are the universal Intel International Science Fair rules and guidelines.  The materials for the judges are available to the exhibitors as well.  Among the many materials simple searching will uncover is a blog from Scientific American on what not to say at a science fair.  (“How to Answer the Five Most Common Questions from a Science Fair Judge,” by Dr. Maille Lyons, here.)

There was one exception.   And it bears on the “mass mediated hyper-reality of crime”  when television shows such as the CSI franchise inform us of what we tell them we believe.  “Criminal Eyewitness Identification” was a reasonable effort for a high school science fair project.  Having left the required log book and final paper (with reprint file) in the car after the first TV interview should have disqualified the entry for an award, but did not.  There was no “green warning tag” from the oversight committee.  The exhibitor was personable, even charming, conversant, and not at all nerdy, and garnered another television interview literally on the heels of the judges.  We judges noted the lack of data and methodology.  The poster display identified two different hypotheses being tested at the same time.  We even heard one of the Five Wrong Answers: “My cousin did it last year.”  The exhibitor seemed to believe that any criminal conviction is a correct conviction; and that convictions fail because witnesses cannot agree on identification of the perpetrator.  Like most of the others in the hall, this was a nice effort by an early high school student; and it could open the door to refinement, improvement, and well-earned recognition.  The judges could not give a place award; but the television cameras – shepherded in by the sponsor committee – were all the recognition required.  This was mass media, not science. 

We know that science collides with mass media in the courtroom.  It is an old story.  Tainting Evidence: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab by John E. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne (Free Press, 1999; 2002) is at once a shocking exposé and a tiresome rant.  Any large, old organization will have bad experiences.  The FBI is not alone in wanting to be perceived as the paragon of best practices.  We all think well of ourselves.  Moreover, the authors rely heavily on public documents which are evidence of internal controls and corrections.  The authors claim that too little is done too late; and that real champions of justice is Frederick Whitehurst, whose insistences led to retaliations by a bureaucracy that could not admit its errors.  And the evidence is damning.  In case after case, the FBI crime lab worked backwards, starting with the prosecution’s claims and finding evidence to support them.  Compounding the falsehoods, FBI agents – the lab was run mostly by field agents, not professional scientists – committed perjury, when testifying under oath. 

Tainting Evidence examines the Oklahoma City Bombing, the O. J. Simpson case, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Unabomber and Ruby Ridge, among other cases.  Of special interest to me was the case of former Green Beret doctor Jeffrey Robert MacDonald whose guilt was proclaimed by Robert Bidinotto, an investigative writer in his book, Criminal Justice? The Legal System versus Individual Responsibility.  I know Bob Bidinotto from Objectivist blogs where we disagreed on basic issues of criminology.  He believes that MacDonald talked himself into murdering his wife and daughters and only denied it to escape responsibility for his actions.  The evidence – or lack of it – suggests otherwise: and an innocent man has spent 15 years in prison while the perpetrators are among us.

That said, Kelly and Wearne imply, also that the people we think are guilty – Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski, O. J. Simpson, Nidal Ayyad, and others – may only have been railroaded or left holding the bag.  It is a bit of a stretch.  But it does not excuse the documented errors, oversights, omissions, fabrications, and denials.  If the FBI lab failed in these high-visibility cases where all available resources were marshaled, what then of the day-to-day work?  When the laboratory begins with the conclusions needed by the prosecution, science has been excluded from the process.

Online Universities is a resource for students interested in going to college via the Internet. "OnlineUniversities.com's goal is to assist students in finding the best online university that fits your needs and demands as a student."  They have a blog for February 27, 2012, “The 10 Greatest Cases of Fraud in University Research” (link here). 

A hundred years ago, criminologists sought to use biology to identify criminals, not in the pursuit of evidence, but in the prevention of crime by culling the population of genetic defectives.  The eugenics movement attracted Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and millions of others, many of them highly placed public officials.  Based on the work of Cesare Lombroso (among others), the theory was that physical measurements of body parts could reveal ratios and proportions indicative of criminality.  Today, we seek it in genes, but it remains pseudo-science, what Richard Feynman called “Cargo Cult Science” i.e., the outward forms without the inner substance.

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Another Cheer for American Education

A hundred years ago, an eighth-grade education was sufficient.  In 1910 only 5% of Americans entered high school.  Then, the “high school movement” began.  The fact that now 30% of Americans have earned post-secondary degrees (associate's and above) promises a renaissance in the coming generation.

 America invested millions of dollars (equivalent to billions today) in the construction of high schools, supported by taxes.  In addition to “operating levies” those property taxes stood behind the bonds that were sold to investors.  America took on a tremendous public debt.  Despite the Depression of the ‘30s and war of the 40s, by the 1950s, the high school education was a ticket to success in the job market.  More importantly, the general education level of the nation was raised.  Did it make a difference?  Daily newspapers still ran (and still run) horoscopes.  But they also ran crossword puzzles on the same page.  The general education level had been raised. 

Now, our high school students lag behind those of 20 other industrialized (informatized) nations.  But my test is this: What can you count on one hand?  Nokia did not come from the high math scores of Finland's gymnasium students.  What other companies are there in Finland?  Where is the economic growth in the Czech Republic? They are doing well, certainly but invention, innovation and enterprise are different from that.  Risks entail losses.  The Japanese are risk-averse.  How many Nobel Prize winners are in Japan?  Then we have to consider the people who never finished college, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  Of course, if Edison had Tesla's (incomplete) university education, he would have had the mathematics to get past direct current.  There are no easy answers, but overall, nothing bad can come from mass education.  A hundred years ago, we massively educated ourselves to the high school level. It worked out well enough. 

John D. Rockefeller’s family lived in Strongsville and he rented a room in a boarding house in Cleveland in order to attend Central High School 1853-1855.  He then enrolled in a ten-week course at Folsom's Commercial College to learn bookkeeping.  At sixteen,  he went to work for 50 cents a day.  He was 30 when he organized Standard Oil of Ohio. 

Master of Arts, Social Science, April 23, 2010

American high school students often need remedial mathematics classes in college -- but they take them.  That is the point.  In France, class content at university is less important than the "narrative" your education carries in the corporate and government bureaucracies.  In Japan, getting in to college is the important thing because the university you attend pre-determines the corporation you will work for.  They have a lot of C+ college students in Japan.  So do we.  The difference is that our society encourages individual choice.  Few others do.  So, their best and brightest come here for their university educations.  


The subject of useless college majors was extensively explored on OrgTheory a blog by professors of sociology.

  “I like ‘useless college majors,’ but debt undermines the humanities and other fields (like sociology!). People will rightfully resent education and the labor market. That’s what I’m worried about. When we make education into a high priced job placement test, it undermines the liberal arts. We need to stop that from happening further.” – Fabio Rojas on “Police Beat Unarmed Poet” here.  

 “As long as dance education is inexpensive, that’s not such a big deal. If people want to pursue the dream, that’s great. But huge college debt makes that choice hard to sustain.” – Fabio Rojas on “Dance Majors” here.

 Colleges are filled with people who are there because they think it will lead to jobs. So, then, why are job hungry students flooding non-vocational areas? The explanation is fairly simple.  ”Good” jobs require college degrees as a test of ability and emotional maturity (being able to sit and do work), even if the job itself requires no college level skills.  – Fabio Rojas on Useless College Majors here.

Another possibility is that the Department of Education statistics show humanities BAs have been a fairly stable percentage of degrees since 1971 (decline to mid-80s, more or less a slow rise since then) while there’s been a huge rise in business (peak in the late 80s, but still much higher than 1971) and “other” (which appears to include mostly professional/vocational degrees, and is at its highest point). Also, pre-law and pre-ed people often major in the humanities. It’s almost like those subjects have some use for them. – Andrew in reply

Per Andrew, above, the big jump since 1971 for BA degrees (other than business) has been in what NCES treats as a residual category:
"Includes Agrciculture and natural resources:

• Architecture and related services;
• Communication, journalism, and related programs;
• Communications technologies; Family and consumer sciences/human sciences;
• Health professions and related clinical sciences;
• Legal professions and studies;
• Library science;
• Military technologies;
• Parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies;
• Precision production;
• Public administration and social services;
• Security and protective services;
• Transportation and materials moving; and
• Not classified by field of study.  

Without doing a lot of digging, the biggies appear to be Health and Communications.  The latter is a major that seems murky to me. I believe most institutions treat it as part of liberal arts; it would be interesting to know something about career outcomes.  I any event, both of these are overwhelmingly female dominated, matching the change in undergraduate demographics over recent decades.    Eweininger in reply.

I am not an enemy of humanities but I believe that higher education must be carefully managed. It’s not a problem if *some* people major in fields with poor job prospects. After all, novelists, artists, and other creative types improve the world in important ways. We should have institutions that support the arts. But it’s a big deal when when *lots* of people major in areas with poor job prospects. These people take out massive loans for skills they will never use. – Fabio Rojas on Useless College Majors here.

I think we overemphasize the importance of the kind of bachelor’s degree you get. Yes, type of undergrad degree helps you acquire job skills but isn’t a bachelor’s increasingly being used as a stepping stone for a graduate degree? I’m amazed by how many of the MBA students we teach have their undergrad degrees in “soft” majors, and yet they’re still able to get into a top business school. I think the mistake that Fabio is making in interpreting these numbers is assuming that these are terminal degrees and/or that future employers even care that much about what undergrad degree you have. – Brayden King in reply

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Education in America: at least two cheers

The greatest strength in the American system of education is that there is no system.  The pluralism of our society allows choices, options, and alternatives at every level.  The USA has more than 14,000 school districts (for primary and secondary education) and over 5,700 institutions of higher education (two-year and four-year colleges and universities).  These all serve 81 million client learners.  About 10% (5 million plus) attend private schools K-12.  Also, about 2 million are homeschooled. Peculiar to the USA, annually, about 65,000 unauthorized immigrants graduate from high school. 

We are a nation of autodidacts, self-taught learners.  Historically, most of the justices on the Supreme Court never went to law school and four of those sitting now hold bachelor degrees, not juris doctorates.  Perhaps we are best explained by the fact that Josiah Willard Gibbs earned a doctorate in engineering in 1863; Thomas Edison was home schooled; Nicola Tesla immigrated to the USA in 1884 after dropping out of university (twice).  In our time, while T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor earned his masters and doctorate from Stanford by inventing VMOS chip technology, it is famous that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs found college less rewarding. 

But no one complains much about American university education.  Most of the world’s best universities are here: 35 of the top 50 and 55 of the top 100, according to Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities (here).

The key is that our colleges all compete against each other: Harvard vs. Stanford vs. Ohio State vs. UCLA… Competition impels toward excellence.  And it allows diversity.  For over 100 years in America “academic freedom” came not so much from the First Amendment, but from the plethora of places to take your teaching.  That also applied to Europe, especially Germany, during the Middle Ages  and continuing until the rise of nationalism.  Once you alienated the king of France or England your goose and you were both cooked: “Play the man, Mr. Ridley and we shall this day by God’s grace light such a fire in England as shall never be extinguished.” 

Moreover, Americans seem to wake up in college: this is the real world, away from home.  As a result, according to Michigan State University's Jon Miller, Americans are slightly ahead of their European and Japanese colleagues in general scientific knowledge, though everyone has room for improvement. 

“A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults, but the truth is that no major industrial nation in the world today has a sufficient number of scientifically literate adults,” he said. “We should take no pride in a finding that 70 percent of Americans cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times.”

Approximately 28 percent of American adults currently qualify as scientifically literate, an increase from around 10 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Miller's research. (Science Daily here.)

It is at the primary and secondary level that our pupils do poorly compared to others in the leading industrialized nations of Europe and Asia.  And there are no easy answers.  Those 14,000 school districts are government monopolies, but so are the schools of Finland.  Our teachers are typically union members, but so are others; and in some countries, they are civil servants.  Private schools may compete well (as in USA and Japan) or exist by permission of the state, or hardly exist at all.  Some nations (France, Germany, Japan) track children early and cull out those who are not college-bound.  Other nations (Singapore and the USA) educate all children.  In Singapore parents who allow their children to miss school are charged with a criminal offense.  Most of the leading nations are small, with unified cultures: the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia.  The USA ranks closer to Russia and India.  But the leader is still Singapore, a variegated society. 

Money correlates only weakly: you do have to spend something; but beyond a basic investment, throwing money at education achieves little. This is known internationally and applies to the G20 nations. (here)  For a parent, the most important thing you can do is simply to be involved.  This correlates  better than money or family status or neighborhood.  There is an old joke known to sales people about the two merchandisers assigned to a remote tropical village. One sent back the message that business was horrible because no one wears shoes. The other expected to sell out since no one yet had shoes. We all play the hand we are dealt. 

"Strong performers in PISA are those countries and economies that believe - and act on the belief - that all children can succeed in school. Among wealthier economies, those that prioritise the quality of teachers over smaller classes tend to show better performance. When it comes to money and education, the question isn’t how much? but rather for what?"  (OECD PISA here.)

Higher education does not guarantee economic development, progress, invention, or quality of life. In the USA, the areas with the highest percentage of people 25 years and over with a bachelor's degree are the District of Columbia, followed by Massachusetts, Maryland, Colorado, and Connecticut. Lack of higher education does correlate with diminished opportunities. The states with the lowest percentages are West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

It may be wrong to look at states, when cities are the true generators of wealth (and learning). At least, that is the theory posited by the late Jane Jacobs, who educated herself with a wide range of classes at Columbia’s extension school while working as a stenographer in New York City.  Most of the cities with high educational percentages are college towns, of course. However, Seattle and San Francisco are among the complexes that draw highly educated producers. According to the Daily Beast, (here) the smartest cities are: Boston, Hartford, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, Denver, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Washington DC, Rochester. The dumbest are: Las Vegas, San Antonio, Fresno, Houston, Memphis, Orlando, Tampa, Louisville, Miami, and Greensboro.  On the US DoE National Assessment of Educational Progress, of necessity, some states were above average, and others below.  And of course scores vary even greater by local school district.  But education does not necessarily bring prosperity.  San Antonio (among the lowest) enjoys an economy as strong as here in Austin (among the highest). 

Chief Justice John Roberts: LLB Harvard; JD Harvard
Justice Antonin Scalia: AB Georgetown; LLB Harvard
Justice Anthony Kennedy: BA Stanford; LLB Harvard
Justice Clarence Thomas: AB Holy Cross; JD Harvard
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: BA Cornell; LLB Yale
Justice Stephen Breyer: AB Stanford; BA Magdalen College, Oxford; LLB Harvard
Justice Samuel Alito: BA Princeton; JD Yale
Justice Sonia Sotomayor: BA Princeton; JD Yale
Justice Elena Kagan: ABPrinceton; MPhil Worcester College, Oxford; JD Harvard.

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There Really are "Civil" Engineers

The Austin chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers partnered with the Greater Austin Contractors and Engineers Association to bring "Be an Engineer for a Day" to about 970 people who visited the Austin Children's Museum  from 10:00 AM to 2:30 PM on Saturday, February 18. 

The Austin Children's Museum always provides many interactions: gears, pulleys, wheels, blocks, bricks, pipes, sorting games, agility tests, a simulated dairy, a restaurant playset, and more.  A special area is set aside for toddlers.


The ASCE brought hands-on challenges to build a tower out of newspaper, a paper airplane and a paper helicopter, a balloon-powered car, building a bridge from spaghetti and marshmellows, and more.  Kids were given a hard hat and an agenda.  As they completed each challenge, they got a sticker on their agenda. A full set of completed projects earned each of them a special t-shirt for their work.

Most of the volunteers were professional civil engineers across the spectrum in seniority and specialty.  Many were members of the ASCE student section from UT.  Working engineers earned "Professional Development Hours" credits.  

Having worked at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum (2005-2006) and having served as vice president in the Daniel B. Jett student chapter of the ASCE at New Mexico State University (1978-1979),  I was stationed at the Paper Helicopters for the afternoon. They twist when they fall because the forces are unbalanced.  You can fold the body long or short, and give it long or short wings.  You can make the two wings different sizes.  For ballast, choose a large or small paperclip. The best results usually come from symmetry in the middle ranges. But you  can spend an hour making them all different ways and dropping them off a staircase.

Austin at Night

Downtown Austin is party central.  The police cordon off streets for the convenience of people walking among bars, restaurants, clubs, and hotels.  Sunday and Monday are pretty quiet.  By Tuesday enough people have recovered from the previous weekend.  Wednesday looks like the weekend in most other places.  Thursday is the warm-up for Friday. Friday night and Saturday night are what it's all about.

David Navarro plays the hackdrum
he bought custom made in Switzerland. 

The Chronicle is the weekly entertainment newspaper, about 60 pages of ads for things to do thinly wrapped in a few liberal editorial complaints about the state and local governments. (Some people just cannot get enough government intervention in their lives... or maybe they just prefer it be in someone else's life...)  The Onion is published here, also.  Once you get past the humor (and the only rational opinions hereabouts on current events), the regular columns and advertising are all about things to do: music, comedy, and theater (live and cinema). The two public broadcast radio stations do not compete.  KUT-FM from the University of Texas carries "Morning Edition" and all the rest sandwiched within hour after hour of original music and new standards.  Musicians come to the studio to play live.  KMFA-FM is all classical (Romantic, Baroque, etc.) and no political news at all: local concerts and recitals only.   "Composers Datebook" lets us glimpse into the present century, "reminding you that all music was once new."

"If I had a name, it would be Drummer."

The party is everywhere in downtown, though Sixth and Congress is pretty much ground zero.  Going east on Sixth, you find the younger crowd, university kids and locals.  Going west you have the older set. But generalizations fail in three square miles of anything you want.  And that's only north of the river.  Austin has much more all over; and if South by Southwest is not enough, there is "North by Northwest" an entertainment brewpub near Tech Ridge


Myself, except as I keep some downtown offices safe and secure, I would never see any of this.  When I moved here, I got a library card first and then a driver's license.  I joined the local Macintosh users group, and found Dragon's Lair bookstore for D&D gaming.  I also have lunch once a month with the Austin Tech Republicans who do very little impromptu music.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Around Austin
Stadtluft Macht Frei
South by Southwest 2013
Images from SXSW 2013
South by Southwest 2012

Valentine's Day: Love and Money

"Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy on life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. ... Love is our response to our highest values–and can be nothing else. …" Francisco d'Anconia to Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged.

Common image found all over the web,
likely from the ANS catalog

The gulf between love and money in our culture goes to the root and rock of who we are as a society ... now...  But there is no dichotomy between love and money. Both derive from the same source.  In the near future, when a significant minority of individuals expresses the unity of love and money, that will have changed.




A.N.A. MONEY TALKS Transcript No. 1400
ANCIENT HEARTSby Michael E. Marotta, first aired February 14, 1994

Look around . . . heart symbols are everywhere on Valentine's Day.
Maybe even on a coin.

The first heart symbols that appeared on ancient coins were produced 2500 years ago in North Africa.

The town of Cyrene was founded in the 7th century B.C. by Greeks. Their town was eventually destroyed, but it was near what today is the city of Benghazi, along the coast of Libya.

The city enjoyed modest prosperity . . . until its inhabitants discovered the silphium plant. (The plant is extinct now, but its closest living relative is a key ingredient in Worcestershire sauce.) Silphium was used as an herb. Its stalk was edible. Its pungent sap was the basis for cough syrups, and gave food an interesting flavor. But the most important use for silphium was as a contraceptive.

From The New York Sale XXV 5 January 2011 Lot number: 126
Ex J. P. Rosen coll. and ex Münzen und Medaillen AG,

Basel sale 72 (1987), 424

Modern research suggests that silphium actually worked, and because of this, it was in great demand. Attempts to cultivate it in Syria and Greece were unsuccessful. It only grew near Cyrene--and, starting in 500 B.C., it became a steady source of income for the townspeople. By Roman times, silphium had been harvested to extinction.

Over the centuries, the silphium plant came
 to symbolize Cyrene. The plant appeared on the town's gold, silver and bronze coins, starting around 500 B.C. Often the entire plant was shown. But sometimes, only the seeds of the plant were depicted. The silphium's seeds were heart-shaped, and those heart-shaped seeds that appeared on Cyrene's coins eventually came to symbolize love--a symbol that's still with us today.

 
"Ancient Hearts" is archived at the NumisSociety and Coin Talk websites.  Francisco d'Anconia's speech on "Sex and Morality" is transcribed and posted at "Sharing is Living."

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

To Make Money

Merry Newtonmas 2011

Merry Newtonmas 2012

Nerd Nation 4.5

Republican Rebels

The first tyrants were rebels: self-made men on the rise in the archaic Greek world 700-500 BCE.  They replaced kings just as the parallel invention of coinage replaced cows for money, and philosophy replaced religion, and published writing replaced public speaking.  Tyranny led inevitably to oligarchy and then to democracy.  In 514 BCE, at Athens, Aristogeiton and Harmodios assassinated the tyrant Hipparchos making way for the reforms of Kleisthenes in 508 that created democracy.  Since then, rebels have been republicans. 



Julius Caesar and King George III were both denounced as “tyrants” not “dictators.”  The dictator was a constitutional office in Rome, a leading citizen chosen to take command during a crisis.  The most famous was Cincinnatus, the farmer who returned to his plow after soldiering for the republic.  In his name veterans of the American Revolution founded the city on the Ohio River. 

In our time, the dictator came and went with fascism.  We have forgotten how popular fascism was to the Progressives of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: it promised a unity of business, labor, arts, and sciences under the coordination of the government.  Even those who opposed it thought it would work. 



American Dime 1916-1945 displayed the fasces symbol of unity.
Right: German half-mark and American quarter of the 1930s.

The world suffered Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini; Atatürk, Franco, Metaxas, and Perón; and still others.  Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler and Prescott S. Bush plotted a “Wall Street Coup” against the New Deal, itself a form of American fascism.  On March 21, 1933, the Michigan Legislature passed the McNitt-Green bill, granting Gov. William Comstock “dictatorial powers” (literally) over banks and then later over insurance companies.  Gov. Comstock had the good sense to turn them down, but it was emblematic of the times.  The democratic republic was considered dead as civilization was submerged under nationalism and socialism. 

Today, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are nearly indistinguishable as President Obama continues the domestic and foreign policies of the former Bush administration.  Where now are the republican rebels? 

Perhaps resistance comes not from different politics but from abandoning political power entirely.  By its nature, it allows no plurality: once we vote - or the decision is made for us - there is no minority choice. 

In the marketplace, your preference does not prevent your neighbor's equal right to any other decision -- or none at all.  I have never seen a Super Bowl, even though over 100 million Americans enjoyed the previous one.

We all have the same President.  Only one Congressman serves my district.  One school board argues with itself and the public over what children should learn -- and are failing to learn.  Here in Austin, a 1% city sales tax provides the only bus system.  "Political choice" is a contradiction in terms.  If there is a "res publica" a "public thing" it is the agora, the marketplace, where all choices are supported -- and where None-of-the-Above is always your right. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Unlimited Constitutional Government
Contradictions in the Constitution
Debt: the Seed of Civilization
Entrepreneurship

An Objective Foundation for Government

Ayn Rand’s famous essay “The Nature of Government” in The Virtue of Selfishness seems to appeal to almost everyone, right and left.  Whether or not we want the government to do more, we all accept that it must at least provide an army, police forces, and courts of law.  To sociologists, any government that cannot achieve these is called a failed state.  The problem may be more complicated…

Ayn Rand did not invent this theory.  She took it almost literally from German sociologist Max Weber’s 1919 essay “Politics as a Vocation” (Politik als Beruf), originally an address to the Free Students at Munich University. 

“Sociologically, the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in hand … Ultimately, one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely, the use of physical force.  …

Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the 'right' to use violence.”  (C. Wright Mills translation)

This specific formulation did not come from John Stuart Mill or John Locke or even Aristotle.  For Aristotle, government was a natural consequence of the state as a union of families.  As such, it cannot have the form of rule limited to one family, to that of the master or head of household.  For Locke, we invoke a social contract in which the pursuit of those who violate our property is the work of the state by a division of labor.  Moreover, for Locke, the courts were not a branch of government.  In The Second Treatise, the three functions of government are given as diplomatic, legislative, and executive.  Courts of law derive from the community; and in England, they were a bulwark against the government: the king’s men had to come before a court and apply for a warrant.  For John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1869) government’s role was to prevent harm, which is not necessarily the same thing as preventing crime. 

Weber’s essay reflected the structural and functional methods of sociology, consonant with the positivist tradition of objective description, rather than subjective prescription.  However, modern Objectivists insist that fact and value are inseparable.  Therefore, the justification for government must proceed from observations that are abstracted into an explanatory theory which is then tested (and hopefully supported) by other facts.  

Ayn Rand asserted that capitalism requires objective law.  By “objective” she did not mean good, only consistent.  She pointed out – cogently – that dictatorship is not really iron rule, but caprice: the whim of the bureaucrat.  Capitalism requires property rights.  Hernando de Soto has shown how the trillions of dollars of value owned by the poor is lost for the want of such rights in the so-called “under-developed” nations.  

Beyond those observations, little has been achieved to develop a theory of government that is consistent with objective fact and value.  It may be that all that is required is a legislature, meeting infrequently of course, to review the statutes.  Courts and police can come from other sectors of the economy.  

Rand also asserted that only voluntary funding can be moral: taxation is theft.  It may be then that granted voluntary funding and market solutions for adjudication and protection, the primary purpose of government would be social welfare in the Rawlsian sense: a “floor” under every citizen to ensure against the involuntary want of basic needs.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
UNLIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF UNLIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT