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.
You all are wrong.
ICP is appealing to their fan base. The rocker lifestyle and attitude, particularly for an “out there” group like Clown Posse, is the old sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll trinity. All authority figures are bad, and both science and scientists smack of The Man.
The good news is that they’ll next write a put-down song about preachers, then school teachers, then politicians, then parents, then police, then economists, then accountants…
The even better news is that most fans can’t really hear the lyrics, or if they can they don’t care. I mean, millions listen to rap music, but how many live the lifestyle? It’s mostly a safe way to experience the dark side and play with things your Mom told you not to. My cousin flirted with the gangsta attitude (briefly) and it was the funniest thing you ever saw. She was the farthest thing from gangsta you can imagine!
ICP is a sideshow and this hand wringing is pointless. Remember when the Stones were “dangerous”? How about Kiss? Oh my goodness, Jefferson Airplane wrote a song about being high (or maybe not).
I agree with Chad Gardner’s interpretation of Whitman’s poem. I also enjoy the piece because I don’t think that Whitman was celebrating ignorance, but the unfiltered strength of observing Nature in all its glory.
I’m doing a PhD in astrophysics, but I’m also an amateur astronomer, and I can see how the fascination felt from looking at the night sky is different, but complimentary, to the one experienced when doing science. This is also the line of reasoning of the comment with Feynman’s quote.
The reason for this may be even biological; the night sky has been observed, revered, and feared, since the dawn of our species, so its beauty is more primal, and that’s maybe what’s being highlighted in the poem. Our current understanding of celestial phenomena gives us pleasure on a higher, more intellectual level, but it’s a separated experience.
We have to be thankful for that primal fascination, because the roots of science are planted in that soil.
On ICP, what Brian Too said.
Sean, why did you waste bytes on these guys?
[PS: I think they would be disowned by most evangelical Christians, as nothing but a couple of foul-mouthed poseurs.]
http://laughingsquid.com/the-sane-clown-posse/
And Chad Gardner #10, I very much agree with you.
ICP are idiots, but it seems a bit disingenuous to call them evangelical Christians, regardless of their statements in interviews. Most Chrsitians wouldn’t touch them with a 100 foot altar lighter.
You are missing an important point.
How do magnets work/ The standard explanation explains nothing. It posits more magical things to evoke an explanation.
Why can’t science get the the nub of it? Because it’s beyond knowing.
#28, Chris W. Said:
“Sean, why did you waste bytes on these guys?”
Yes indeed, why?
The only answer that comes to mind is that Sean was looking for an opportunity to tag them as Evangelical Christians and therefore smear religion.
Increasingly Sean’s writing shows evidence of this atheist creed:
1. God does not exist
2. I hate God
What a pity he allows his Angry Atheist persona to distort his writing which otherwise shows so much insight and clarity.
I used to think that this attitude was prevalent only in third-world countries like India. It is unspeakably sad to see it in the US.
I agree with Chad and Marcos’ interpretation of the poem.
I also think Whitman may have been referring to the presentation and atmosphere of a seminar, because I had a very similar experience as a grad student at U.Chicago some years back.
Being an avid amateur astronomer, I decided to audit a course in astrophysics. In the very first lecture, the prof (who had a strong nasal twang) starts off with, “Supp(n)ose we have a st(n)aaar..” and starts scribbling on the board.
Now there was nothing wrong with the material, and the prof was doing a decent job too, but I kept getting the feeling that something amazing and wonderful was being made mundane and pedestrian.
A decidedly mixed feeling because I also know how science has revealed what magnificent entities stars really are, and technology has revealed astonishing beauty of the Universe totally inaccessible to our naked eyes.
But there you are. I’d still much rather be in Bryce Canyon on a clear night rather than that class at U. Chicago.
ICP never calls themselves Evangelicals or Christians. The guy who wrote the Onion article did and now this website and many others picked up and ran with the story. The rest or your article about Whitman is fine but you should edit out the phony baloney stuff that your homeboy Ronson imagined in his head.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, and wondered, fuckin’ magnets, how do they work? But when I became a man, I put away childish things, and wondered, fuckin’ relativistic jets driven by magnetorotational instabilities in quasar accretion disks, how do they work?
charon, LOL awesome
The “how” is just the description. Science can more than adequately describe magnetism, so science is capable of answering that question. If you are asking “why” in some metaphysical, teleological sense magnetism works the way it does and not some other way, then you are right that science doesn’t have an explanation for that. But really, any ICP-types who feel that science needs to account for metaphysical teleological questions of this sort must themselves account for the existence of metaphysical teleological entities FIRST, or else this line of inquiry is a meaningless non-starter.
Timely! I’m working on a song about electrons and in my second verse I take ICP to task
next up what I’m telling all ya’ll
why you can’t Shadowcat through walls
magnetic field makin things solid
ask a scientist – get some knowledge like
lined up atoms spin like Sprees
boost electron’s force like SHEESH!
they can get a push, they can get a pull
but I wouldn’t call all that a miracle
insane clown disgraced lost cases
I wanna defibrillate your faces
J, Shaggy, you guys are jerks – its
damn sexy knowing how things work
ignorance is tragic, magnets
are science, not magic – I’m
hoping this verse costs me
every single listener of Insane Clown Posse
You may know me as funky49 from Fermilab’s “Particle Business” music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaG6umMkbxg
I’m working on a song about electrons and in my second verse I take ICP to task:
next up what I’m telling all ya’ll
why you can’t Shadowcat through walls
magnetic field makin things solid
ask a scientist – get some knowledge like
lined up atoms spin like Sprees
boost electron’s force like SHEESH!
they can get a push, they can get a pull
but I wouldn’t call all that a miracle
insane clown disgraced lost cases
I wanna defibrillate your faces
J, Shaggy, you guys are jerks – its
damn sexy knowing how things work
ignorance is tragic, magnets
are science, not magic – I’m
hoping this verse costs me
every single listener of Insane Clown Posse
You may know me as funky49 from Fermilab’s “Particle Business” music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaG6umMkbxg
Pingback: Fucking Geomagnetism, How Does That Work? « Arcsecond
one more bunch of childish idiots who glorify ignorance and want to think themselves special snowflakes who have a magical sky daddy that cares about them and only them.
Agreed: Charon, you gave me the best laugh of the day!
Hey- any REAL musician who fails to understand that music and mathematics are one and the same needs to quit the biz. And those who take musicians who depend on gimmicks to get noticed seriously…well, get a life. Tons of music being made by people who have science minds!
Gee, rappers who are idiots? who would have thunk it ? move along, nothing to see here. But a very nice, very cogent Feymann quote by KWK above, thanks. oh, and the Whitmann poem has never bothered this astronomer.
Back to Walt Whitman’s poem. You can view it as a freeze-frame comparison, which prefers the sublime grandeur of the night sky to the astronomer’s lecture. Then you could justly claim that the poet’s point of view is blind to the value and elegance of science – perhaps ungrateful also. Although I recognized the viability of such an interpretation, I chose to experience the poem as a succession of feelings rather than attitudes.
After listening for a while, Whitman felt a boredom, bordering on a pall. Seeking to feel better, he slipped away to where he felt free, unassailed. He enjoyed the night air and the beauty of the stars. I have felt all these emotions: the tedium, the escape, the relief, the contentment. The work is a river rather than an ice cube.
I looked through the Guardian article more carefully – ICP never called themselves Christian, and neither “Jesus” or “Christ” appears anywhere in the interview. ICP merely came out with a generic belief in God – or desire to believe in a God – which could indicate their alignment with any number of world religions. The label “Christian” – and especially “evangelical Christian” was applied to them by the ignorant or axe-grinding author of the article.
dafodil sunshine – sorry – I obviously didn’t see your earlier post until now…
Now I stop reading Cosmicvariance.
Sean, thanks for having the courage to expose the anti-intellectual demographic who couldn’t even record their infantile thoughts without utilizing magnets.
Many astronomers have an especial fondness for Whitman’s poem; I’ve seen it used as an introductory quotation in more than one PhD thesis. People who prefer the raw mystery of the night to seminar-room explanations make excellent observers. They happily spend their nights freezing at the telescope, and they do their Popperian best to knock down whatever theory Sean and his friends can throw at them.
The rumour is that the Learn’d astronomer was Simon Newcomb. An hour of hardcore solar-system astrometry would give anyone a funny turn.