In a recent piece for the Daily Sceptic Chris Morrison alluded, ironically, to the ‘settled science’ on the subject of climate change. I have recently been reflecting on the oxymorons of our time, and this is one of the most provocative.
An oxymoron is a combination of words which offers us a contradiction. It is a contradiction in terms. The word comes from the Greek, oxus, ‘sharp’ and moros, ‘foolish’: meaning, literally, sharply or pointedly foolish. The reason why it is pointedly foolish is because the words are not vague or confusing: they are clear, but point in two different directions, like crossed swords. Hence what we see is something paradoxical.
So let us note, an oxymoron is not a simple weapon. A sword is a weapon. Crossed swords are something much more beguiling and odd. Anyone who uses an oxymoron in speech is attempting to confuse us by waving two swords around and clashing them together. Recall Sergeant Troy’s wooing of Bathsheba in Far From the Madding Crowd. This is, pretty much, what the authorities are doing to us now: playing soldiers, bent on seduction, using threat as part of that seduction.
There are many oxymorons in modern politics. One of the best is ‘sustainable development’. But that, at least, is obviously flawed: though perhaps it takes some knowledge of economics and history to know why. That is for another time.
‘Settled science’, however, is an affront to not only language, but also to science and to politics.
Let me make this as clear as I can.
Science is a scientific word.
Settlement is not a scientific word, but a political one.
Science seeks exactitude; it seeks truth; but though it attempts exactitude, it is aware that the price of seeking exactitude is tentativeness. We postulate the existence of a solution, but we propose hypotheses, which we test in various ways, through argument or observation or experiment.
Anything which is settled is not solved. But it is also not tentative, not hypothetical. It is actual: it is certain. It does not care about truth or exactitude. It is certain because it has come out of agreement, and this agreement may have involved compromise and cutting corners and concessions to the other side. It is decisive: but it is not decisive because it is true, but because it has been decided. A decision has been made. A settlement has been reached. And it is final. Everything is final and certain in politics – until the next settlement. But nothing is final and certain in science. There are no settlements.
The phrase ‘settled science’ has nothing to do with scientific truth, or scientific hypothesis. What settlement suggests is that a scientific hypothesis has been transposed from one sphere – that of science – to another – that of politics – and therefore its nature has been changed. It is no longer a hypothetical or tentative truth. It is settled, so it appears to be certain. But it is certain not because it is true: it is certain because it is agreed, and then decided. And we are entitled to ask about who is agreeing, and why, and who is deciding and why, and how, and who is paying for it, and what economic and moral and institutional incentives there are.
‘Settled science’ is a phrase which should curdle in the mouth of any scientist. Any ‘scientists’ who use the phrase ‘settled science’ are not making a scientific argument. They are making a political argument: and they are doing so coercively, by appealing to the authority of that exact, truthful, tentative thing, science. They are not arguing as scientists. Perhaps in the mornings they are scientists. But in the afternoons when they speak of ‘settled science’ they are no longer scientists. They are politicians, doing political work, and doing it by misusing the authority which comes to them from the high status of the work they do in the morning.
This of course applies to the IPCC, and all other institutions and individuals who speak of ‘settled science’.
Dr. James Alexander is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Type in ‘Sean Lock Eight out of ten cats does countdown, Rachel Riley’. Utterly hilarious, filthy and outrageaous in equal measure. Sean Lock was a comic genius.
I suspect that he got more outrageous when he knew that he wasn’t going to live to be an old man.
That said – he was, I suspect, always on the edge of being cancelled.
It was funny in 2008, it’s funny now ….this thread has been running on the Spectator for a few days.
It’s agreed that Doris O’Brien is a hypocrite.
…ah bless…it’s the new way isn’t it…if you don’t like my beliefs and convictions today…. don’t worry I have plenty more that might suit the occasion!!
Do not click on Dory Oh Brian’s twitter unless you’re ready to read some of the most stupid things ever written by man. Absolute king-knob of the virtue signalling blob.
What a fuckwit he is.
He’s far better on programmes about astronomy, provided you can suspend your knowledge of his other personas.
Dory Oh Brian is a prick, always was, always will be.
Once a prick, always a prick.
Comedy is the modern ersatz for culture. It’s basic principle is to supplant continuous movement in circles for substance and it’s implict message is Nothing matters because everything can be ridiculed. Keep laughing, otherwise, you might start thinking and that’s soo boring!
Not everything can be ridiculed though – mock any unfunny lezzer (Hannah Gadsby and Rosie Jones are two good examples) and watch most social meeja come down like a censorious ton of bricks
Hannah Gadsby (born 1978) is an Australian comedian, writer, and actor. They began their career in Australia after winning the national final of the Raw Comedy competition for new comedians in 2006.
[Wikipedia]
Both Hannah and Gadsby, I presume. Do they sometimes fight over control of the single body they’re apparently sharing?
Apart from that, I was trying to make a technical point: Everything is open (or perhaps vulnerable) to ridicule by professional ridiculers. The people who were making jokes about womb-man in 2008 are nowadays probably making very similar jokes about transphobes. I didn’t mean to say that the establishment believes it would be culturally ok to ridicule everything, only whatever they disapprove of today.
So now we all know what a cultural revolution looks like.
It is driven by terror and makes people do things they don’t really want to do out of fear.
The courageous stand up and get devoured. The “smart” ones play along and will flip back if the wind changes direction again.
Like with lockdowns, covid jabs and vax passports. Against, then for, then against again.
The only silver lining is that we get to find out who people really are.
The reason I’m ‘far right’ is that these type of people are ‘far left’.
When someone moves so far left most folk are far right, and I’m most definitely, proudly, unashamedly to their far right.
It’s a relative term, like east and west.
In 40 years I have gone from centre left to far right without substantially changing my position on anything.
My first GE was 1979, and I’ve always been on the political right – by now I probably make Hitler look moderate.
I believe, with respect, Hitler was actually far left.
In modern usage, these terms are simply meaningless labels supposed to signal relative approval or disapproval. People calling themselves left use right when they mean to say “I disapprove of that” and left for “I approve of that”, people calling themselves right do it the other way round. The disapproval direction may be qualified with far or extreme to make it “I strongly disapprove of that!”.
In historical usage after the French revolution where left meant repulicans and right monarchists, this being derived from the sitting order in the revolutionary French national assembly, left converges towards internationalism based on the idea of the universal equality of all people and right converges towards nationalism and valueing individuals for their unique qualities (or condemning them for the lack thereof).
Not if you listen to the woke.
In a completely unconfrontational but curious way, I have to ask for an example or two of the non-change to which you refer. I myself definitely held vaguely leftie views as a student (on some things but certainly not all), which I’ve abandoned over the years as reality has acted on me; but I have changed. Is there anything you can put your finger on, as an example of your not having changed, or is “substantially” the key word here?
Me and many others too
I’ve just discovered that I have a copy on an old back-up hard drive
Groucho knew:
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”