Old Email Archive

digest 1997-03-02 #001


11:27 PM 3/1/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 1 Mar 1997 07:14:07 -0800
From: Thomas_Weissert@irwins.pvt.k12.pa.us (Thomas Weissert)
Subject: Re: sheep
From Tom,
Now I know your question really is sincere, and I'm overjoyed that we
are
continuing this discussion.  Ann, I was very much struck with what you
just
wrote:
>Ann Weinstone writes:
>
>
>What is the nature of our misunderstanding? Are we misunderstanding
>
>science qua science? Are you saying that we don't know what's
really
>
>important? Are you saying that while we are discussing
"friendliness," you
>.
>and your colleagues are using our tools (literature/sf/consideration
of
>
>ehics/etc.) to better effect?
For some reason, this question and the asking of it represents just
exactly
what is most misunderstood.
Several years ago, at SLS in Portland, I brought a scientist friend of
mine to
a panel, where he gave a paper on Calvino.  After the second day, I
caught up
with him walking down the street to have a coffee, I asked him how it
was
going, how he liked it, and he said "Tom, these people just don't
understand
how we think."  He hasn't been back.  What did he mean?  I don't
think he meant
"science qua science,"  but more fundamentally, he meant the
profound
differences in thought brought about by dramatic differences in
intellectual
training.  Of the three possibilities put forth above by Ann, the first
seems
meaningless to me, the second is probably closest to the mark, and the
third is
hostile, defensive, proprietary, and in general, displays what I have
called
the "holier-than-thou" stance.
I'm sorry, I don't intend to offend anyone, but if we are to succeed, we
must
lay cards on the table.
best
Tom Weissert
- ----------------------------------
Sent from The Agnes Irwin School
http://www.irwins.pvt.k12.pa.us
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Date: 1 Mar 1997 07:59:38 -0800
From: Ann Weinstone 
Subject: bah bah
Dear All,
Tom, I am not at all offended. I agree that "profound differences
in
thought [are] brought about by dramatic differences in intellectual
training.  That's a fascinating topic.
But I ask you, if someone wants to speak about cloned sheep, why don't
they simply introduce the topic? Why must they tell others that their
interest is more important? That this difference in interest denotes
"a
profound lack of understanding" on the part of others? Why must
they even
assume anything about the interests of those involved in a discussion?
I
assume none of our interests are limited to what gets discussed on this
list over a period of a few days.  And, why must they claim the ethical
high ground in the process?
I am sorry if *I* offend anyone, but I cannot see any reason, other
than
as a performance of epistemological and ethical superiority.  Nea, a
demand for recognition of same.
Here is a heartfelt question.  You imply that my response would not
help
SLS "succeed." How does one respond, then?
warmly,
Ann Weinstone
Stanford University
Modern Thought and Literature
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Date: 1 Mar 1997 08:43:07 -0800
From: richard nash 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science?
OK, I am swamped with various activities (including submission's for
next 
year's program, if I can plug it one more time), but I have to bite on
this, twice.
I'll take Joe Duemer's response first, and then Keith Garbutt's
original
question.
On Fri, 28 Feb 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote:
> Actually, the most interesting objection to cloning I've heard is
> aesthetic, and came from a breeder of race horses: breeding a
winner, he
> said, was difficult, but fun. Cloning Seattle Slew wouldn't prove
> anything, and it wouldn't be any fun.
Before I got into this racket, I use to work with thoroughbreds, and I
have to say that from my end of the business, this sounds like exactly
what a breeder would say.  From my end, the day-to-day training, way
too
much is assumed in this position.  If you could clone Seattle Slew, you
might very well wind up with an animal with identical cell structure,
but 
that's miles away from identical performance.  Seattle Slew is, in
fact,
a particulary well-chosen counterexample, because while his race record
was outstanding, he was named and sold cheaply as a yearling because of
a 
physical defect.  One of the reasons cloning Seattle Slew wouldn't be
any 
fun is because half the time the clones would never make it to the
races.  If current breeding technology remains in the tradition of
breed
the best to the best and hope for the best, it's the last part that
matters most in the end.  I don't see how cloning would eliminate that.
Back to Keith's question.  In part, I have been quiet about Dolly,
because I still have very little solid information to work with.  I've
seen her on CNN and read a wire service report.  The relevant issue of
_Nature_ has not yet made it to my bookstores, so I am still early in
this learning curve.  But it did happen that I was teaching
_Frankenstein_ when this story broke.  In that context, the most
interesting talking point in undergraduate discussion came out of the
novel's relation to vitalist debates of the early 19c.  Victor animates
his creature by the addition of a "vital spark" of electricity
to mere
matter; Shelley granting the vitalist premise that life requires more
than
matter and taking (for the purposes of her novel) the Galvanic
hypothesis 
seriously.  Now in the news stories that I have read, Dolly's
conception
takes place by a precisely similar addition of a "vital spark of
electricity"
that initiates cell division.  So I want to know a good deal more about
what
this exercise in cloning mammals says about vitalist science and the
Galvanic hypothesis, and remembering cold fusion I want to get more
information.
Back to the program,
Richard
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Date: 1 Mar 1997 16:01:58 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science?
Richard Nash Wrote:
"From my end, the day-to-day training, way too much is assumed in
this
position. If you could clone Seattle Slew, you might very well wind up
with an animal with identical cell structure, but that's miles away
from
identical performance."
I see what you mean, but is this just another version of the old
nature/nurture circle? I am myself pretty suspicious of materialist /
determinist arguments; but, Richard, are you saying that training makes
the difference, or are you after some principle I'm not grasping?
I'm not sure if this is related to the above, but it certainly comes
out
of my thinking about Keith Garbutt's recent posts: Yesterday as I was
driving home I heard on the radio a teaser for a new public radion
science show, Sounds Like Science. I can't remember the voiceover
exactly, but it went something like: "Science is everywhere in our
live:
Gravity sticks us to the earth, electricity gives us light, etc . .
."
Aside from being hopelessly anthropocentric, the rhetoric and language
of the teaser clearly conflated several natural phenomena and
"science,"
as if nature and the the study of nature occuppied the same ontological
space. Is this a common attitude in our society? Among scientists?
Among
culture critics? Or is it just journalistic shorthand?
Finally, Tom thinks that the culture-types "think differently"
because
of profound differences in training. (This sounds suspiciously like the
thoroughbred example, above.) But this strikes me as the most
superficial possibility, though it seems to have hidden in it the
assumption that scientist's training is, if not superior in quality, at
least more useful in the real world. As for the culture-types
holier-than-thou attitude--please! I work at a tech school, and the
scientists around her--with a few wonderful exceptions--are utterly
dismissive of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. They're
better-paid, teach fewer courses, and have more power in the
university.
If anybody is holier than thou, it's the scientists, at least where I
work.  Sorry, Tom, but as you suggest, I'm laying my cards on the table
here.
Finally, nobody from either side of this debate has picked up on Joe
Amato's interesting naming of the division between the culture-types
and
those involved directly in the arts, like Joe and me.
- --
- --
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466
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Date: 1 Mar 1997 16:25:25 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science?
All:
I just read my own post. Please forgive the typos!
- --
- --
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466
"Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial,
but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to
mistake it for a universal one."
-- Hannah Arendt
"People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so
pleased with bad."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Date: 1 Mar 1997 17:50:26 -0800
From: "Wayne Miller" 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science?
>Finally, nobody from either side of this debate has picked up on
Joe
>Amato's interesting naming of the division between the culture-types
and
>those involved directly in the arts, like Joe and me.
Hi,
To pick up on the division between "culture-types" and those
involved in the
arts -- in fact, among the crowd I've seen at SLS, I would correlate the
two
main divisions discussed ("culturists" - scientists,
culturalists -
practitioners). Those in the sciences who have shown an interest in SLS,
in
my albeit limited experience, seem to be "practitioners" or
are at the least
interested in the arts. They are, if you'll allow me this generalization
for
a moment, humanists in a traditional sense of the word. Therein lies
another
rub.
I think the operative division at work in SLS and in all sorts of arenas
is
that these culturalists (I count myself among them) have moved away
from
studying literature as an aesthetic arena towards studying literature
(and
culture, science, etc.) as artifacts that require analysis, and
something 
else -- critique. The tool that has enabled this shift is theory. The
bodies
of theory involved are arcane, and their practitioners sometimes bear
no
resemblance to the genteel humanist who stands for what a literature
professor "should be."
I personally hold that the shift to theory was necessary, and that the
shifting grounds of aesthetic interpretation could not hold a
self-reflective
field of inquiry.
- -- My last soapbox comment: We can all survive just fine without each
other.
Even the ever-besieged culturalists have jobs (most of them - I myself
spend
the greater part of my day working on, in or with computers), arenas
for
their work, etc. But what makes SLS and similar organizations so
fascinating
to me is the opportunity to speak our respective jargons to each other,
if
only obliquely! Since the culturalists have in some ways abjured the
literature that has brought many scientists into this fold, we may have
more
to gain from this exchange than they. Of course, we can all show how
within
our worldviews the other is naive, irrational, perhaps even
self-aggrandizing. There is no difficulty and no gain in that. I say the
gain
is in holding back that self-supplied ammunition and experiencing the
Other.
Wayne
/-------------------------------------------------------/
Wayne Miller                     waynem@humnet.ucla.edu
Germanic Languages               2326 Murphy Hall, UCLA
Humanities Computing Facility    343 Kinsey Hall,  UCLA
(310) 206-2004                   FAX:    (310) 825-7428                 

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