Every astronomer knows this poem, not with any special fondness:
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Now, I really like Walt Whitman, but this was not his finest moment. These days, the don’t-bother-me-with-explanations torch is carried by the Insane Clown Posse — two middle-aged white guys, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, who put on makeup and rap approvingly about violence and misogyny. (Sorry for the comparison, Walt, but you brought it on yourself.) They received a lot of scorn from scientists for their recent song Miracles, which featured the immortal lines
Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherfuckers lying and
getting me pissed.
Now there is a scary and illuminating interview with the duo by Jon Ronson in the Guardian, where they double down on their dislike of explanation and understanding. (Via Ezra Klein.) It’s all good, but here’s an especially clarifying moment:
“I did think,” I admit, “that fog constitutes quite a low threshold for miracles.”
“Fog?” Violent J says, surprised.
“Well,” I clarify, “I’ve lived around fog my whole life, so maybe I’m blasé.”
“Fog, to me, is awesome,” he replies. “Do you know why? Because I look at my five-year-old son and I’m explaining to him what fog is and he thinks it’s incredible.”
“Ah!” I gesticulate. “If you’re explaining to your five-year-old son what fog is, then why do you not want to meet scientists? Because they’re just like you, explaining things to people…”
“Well,” Violent J says, “science is… we don’t really… that’s like…” He pauses. Then he waves his hands as if to say, “OK, an analogy”: “If you’re trying to fuck a girl, but her mom’s home, fuck her mom! You understand? You want to fuck the girl, but her mom’s home? Fuck the mom. See?”
If you’re confused, Violent J doesn’t actually want to have sex with his paramour’s mother. He is simply advocating not changing your behavior just because a parent is in the house. One word serving many purposes.
Oh yes, and they are evangelical Christians. There are many different senses in which science and religion might come into conflict — personally I care about “religion makes claims about how the world works that aren’t true,” but there are certainly others. Here is one of them. As Shaggy puts it: “But since then, scientists go, ‘I’ve got an explanation for that.’ It’s like, fuck you! I like to believe it was something out of this world.”
I don’t think religion is causing these lovable mop-tops to rebel against the power of scientific explanation; that’s too cheap an explanation. Rather, there is an underlying attitude that both pushes them away from science, and toward religion: a strong preference in favor of believing a certain set of things about the world, well before any evidence is in. First we decide that rainbows and magnets and Stonehenge are miraculous and mysterious things that cannot be accounted for by ordinary, understandable processes; then we reject science and turn to religious beliefs because that’s what flatters our preconceptions. It’s hard to know how to reach people like that. I’m thinking Phil Plait and Brian Cox should put on clown makeup and start rapping about Maxwell’s equations.
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It may just be me, but I’ve tried several times now. I still don’t understand the analogy regarding his girl and her parent. What does not leaving the girl alone in the presence of her mother have to do with fog?
“It’s hard to know how to reach people like that. I’m thinking Phil Plait and Brian Cox should put on clown makeup and start rapping about Maxwell’s equations.”
Oh dear God, no. Tim Minchin, on the other hand…
Guillermo, I could explain, but that would just ruin the magic.
“What does not leaving the girl alone in the presence of her mother have to do with fog?”
The ICP are trying to get jiggy with the fog’s magical mystery you see, and the scientists are all: “Yo, that’s my naturally explicable daughter”. And the ICP are like: “Screw you, I’m trying to get it on with the mysterious chick.”
Okay … this is where this post went off the rails. Please reconsider coming back from your hiatus.
I wouldn’t mind some homoerotically charged photoshoots with Cox and Ben Goldacre, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGbdomlBnJM&feature=related
SNL parody, in case anyone hasn’t seen it yet.
Anyway, I think I get how magnets work… but WHY do magnets work? :-9
Yet these same clowns are wonderfully OK with using all the benefits of the science they don’t want to understand and make efforts to undermine. Do they think the many conveniences of modern life came from magic?
If you want to believe in unicorns and magical fairies, OK. Fine. But at least reserve enough of your brain to recognize that you are living IN science. And if you degrade science, you are ultimately hurting your future and the future of your children. The fairies aren’t really going to help you with that.
I think they’re expressing an attitude that’s a lot of people feel – at least in the U.S. – but wouldn’t have the nerve to confess to. Really.
I still always loved that poem despite my BS in astronomy. I think even the learn’d astronomer does exactly what Whitman did from time to time. There is an aesthetic appeal that the numbers will never quite convey. I think this is what the poem is about, not a glorification of ignorance chalked up as mysticism, but a basic, guttural reaction to the beauty and infinitude of the sky. I think those who know the stars will actually appreciate the starry sky all the more…
‘The ICP are trying to get jiggy with the fog’s magical mystery you see, and the scientists are all: “Yo, that’s my naturally explicable daughter”. And the ICP are like: “Screw you, I’m trying to get it on with the mysterious chick.”’
Magic = Ruined.
Though (as far as I know) it wasn’t directed at Whitman specifically, Feynman had the most insightful response I’ve ever encountered to the “knowledge negates appreciation” idea:
“The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth. I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination – stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern – of which I am a part – perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the “why?” It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
One of the more unhelpful analogies I’ve read in recent memory.
It’s interesting that science doesn’t really have anything enlightening to say about how magnets work. Saying that it’s due to intrinsic magnetism of electrons doesn’t really explain anything, it just transforms the problem slightly.
This doesn’t mean that I support ICP morons.
Good physics rap:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
I dispute that “they are evangelical Christians”. Aside from their many violations of Biblical commands to Christians, in their own words: “I don’t go to church or anything. I like to believe in God.”
http://www2.metrotimes.com/music/story.asp?id=13394
As a musician/scientific-abstracter, I feel the gouge of ignorance felt by these “clowns of posse”. I couldn’t stand them in my not-to-distant-youth; nor, can I stomach them to this day. These pitiful “entertainers” are as sad as they are untalented.
Music and science are all some of us have. And having people set in opposition to question these pillars of modern culture is quite natural; a way of checks and balances, if you will. But it’s truly sad that,they get opposed, by a bunch of clowns.
I’m not beneath casting shame on the untalented; I didn’t make them stupid and lame, (the best part) science did. They must have had far too many mutations in their genetic-clown-makeup (zing). With that, ICP, you suck.
Now, back to writing music, about science.
The good fight is fought-
There’s also the unfortunate fact that a lot of people see science as “the man” giving them information that they are forced to accept as truth. Of course the point of doing science is the opposite, but not everybody is doing science.
Fuck scientists, you can’t.
*sigh*
I guess it’s no surprise why they wear the clown makeup. I would want to try to hide my identity too if I were working to make a living that way. He makes the assertion at the end of the articles that if Alanis Morrisette had made the ICP song “Miracles” it would be called genius. How these two read in print, I think probably not. Can’t consider yourself a creator if all you ever do is tear other people down.
While I understand what you’re saying, I think, I would like to point out that all science has done as explain possible reasons _why_ someone is stupid… I don’t think science has ever actually made someone stupid (except perhaps for the odd stress-induced cerebral hemorrhage felt by someone during their degree comprehensives at some point).
Science is the truth (until the next version of the truth is “discovered”) sort of like rap lyrics….
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Whitman’s poem gushes bliss. I can always dry off later.
I always wonder how people can have such a reflexive hatred towards scientists, or towards science in general. And then I open up my browser and read one of Sean’s posts and think “Oh. Well, they have a point.”
Everyone likes being healthy until the doctor tells them to stop eating fried food. But people really hate it when the doctor makes fun of them for being fat, and then parades around in his little speedo.
Get off your horse…the lowly masses aren’t nearly as dirty when you’re not so high up.
” two middle-aged white guys, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, who put on makeup and rap approvingly about violence and misogyny.”
Whew! That was close. Thank god there are no black guys rapping approvingly about violence and misogyny, eh?