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Expose yourself!
May 1, 2005 00:00
I just had the great privilege of attending a fantastic concert at Clowes Hall here at Butler University. The program was Stravinski's Symphony of Psalms and Vaughan Williams' Symphony No.1, 'A Sea Symphony'. Although illustrating different sorts of music composed in the 20th century, they both share my overlapping interests in religion/spirituality and music.
I also had the unhappy experience of witnessing a few female students, presumably from JCFA, deciding to simply go, get programs and then leave. Given that we've just voted to incorporate a cultural requirement into our core curriculum, this was particularly disheartening to see.
I can't imagine anyone not wanting to listen to Vaughan Williams, but a lot of this is a matter of taste. I should also cut the students some slack - it is exam time, after all. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that exposing oneself to different kinds of music is the same sort of horizon-expanding experience as learning about other cultures. In fact, in one sense, learning to appreciate music that is 'not your cup of tea' IS learning about other cultures.
When asked why they don't go to more of these sorts of concerts, I suspect that many students would say 'Because classical music sucks'. Yet this statement is patently untrue, just as it would be to say that 'Popular music sucks'. Surely no one in the history of the human race could dismiss all music, old or new, 'high' or 'low'. Sure, there are concerts and performers that suck, but they are rare enough and one can quickly learn to avoid them. But when heavy metal fans say 'Rap sucks' or R&B fans say 'Rock sucks', this is not what is meant. Really all that is being said is "I don't particularly like this kind of music", just saying it in a less polite way.
No one expects students to suddenly fall in love with a new kind of music - although some do. But being able to appreciate why others enjoy something, even if you don't enjoy it yourself, it part of becoming a better person. It can also make you a better spouse (surely your significant other will have some interest that you will not share). It can even make you money - after all, how often have important business connections grown out of a conversation about something else? Being able to listen to a different sort of music, to talk about it, is important. And if you're talking to someone the least bit educated, being able to explain what you don't like about a particular genre of music can still lead to a friendly conversation, whereas 'The music you like sucks' is unlikely to lead to a conversation that turns into a friendship, or a million dollar business deal, or anything else constructive.
And so, students, as this semester ends, my advice to you is to go out there and expose yourselves...to music, art, culture, of all sorts. You won't like all of it, but I can say with reasonable certainty that even your exposure to and greater understanding of stuff you still don't listen to for pleasure will benefit you in the long run.
But is it science?
May 5, 2005 09:05
The debate is unlikely to cease anytime soon, in spite of the relative consistency of judicial rulings on the subject. "Why not allow equal time for creationism and/or intelligent design? What are proponents of evolution afraid of?" I will tell you what we are afraid of. We are afraid of the separation of church and state being compromised. We are afraid of students missing out on a high quality scientific education. We are afraid of the public becoming even less clear about science than it already is.
I'm sure you've heard it said before: "Intelligent design is not science." But perhaps no one has explained to you precisely why. To put it simply, science proceeds by looking at causes and effects, repeatable phenomena, and hypotheses and theories that allow one to explain the workings of the processes that are observed. Although one can only see evolution taking place on a 'micro' level with the naked eye (either too slowly to see in larger organisms, or incredibly quickly in bacteria), it makes sense of the data. Few question the legitimacy of an evolutionary view of language: one sees similarities between Spanish, Italian, and French, and although one does not have all of the missing links, one can most plausibly explain the similarities by appeal to a common origin in Latin. When one moves further afield, one finds similarities of grammar and vocabulary with other languages, and thus one can posit an earlier Indo-European language that evolved into not only the Romance languages but also Greek, German, Sanskrit and Hindi, Farsi/Persian, Russian, and so on. Few question the legitimacy of this sort of explanation in linguistics. Biological evolution essentially says the same thing, except that the language is encoded in DNA instead of speech or texts.
Why is intelligent design not equally scientific? Because it does not posit a testable hypothesis to explain observed phenomena. On the contrary, its point is precisely that because certain phenomena are supposedly inexplicable, therefore one has to posit a creator God. But can one run tests to confirm this hypothesis? Clearly not. It is for this reason that intelligent design is said to be something other than science.
Let me put it another way. Imagine that a scientist wants to test how certain bacteria grow when exposed to sugar. She designs a simple experiment, placing two petri dishes in the same climate-controlled environment, so that the only difference between them is the presence of sugar. Overnight, one of her colleagues sneaks in and adds sugar to the other petri dish, and salt to the one that had sugar. What can one say about the results of the experiment? They will have become invalidated scientifically by the intervention of an intelligent personal being. Essentially the same thing happens when one speaks of a personal God as creator. Could it be true? Certainly! And one can (perhaps even should) look for evidence of such intervention. The problem is that many things that were assumed to be inexplicable in the past (and were attributed to action of God or gods) can be explained by science in our time. The problem with intelligent design is that it is saying that, because there are things that are still not conclusively settled on the basis of the scientific evidence currently available, scientists should throw up their hands and simply say 'God did it.'
There may be a time when we may have to admit that we will never be able to answer certain questions. But what supporters of the teaching of evolution (or better, opponents of teaching intelligent design as science) are REALLY afraid of is that this in fact invalidates the whole scientific endeavor. Intelligent design says, "Look, we can't explain this, so stop trying to explain it and believe!" Apart from the problem that many of the allegedly inexplicable things in fact CAN be explained, and apart from the problem that many scientists DO believe without compromising their intellectual or scientific credibility, the biggest problem is the message intelligent design says: stop trying to explain, to understand, to discover. It calls for an end to curiosity - indeed an end to science itself. In view of all the positive contributions science has made to all our lives, hopefully you can understand why the idea of undermining science in this way is a frightening prospect.
Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (some reflections on ethics in the universe George Lucas created)
May 20, 2005 15:52
Well, the final installment in the Star Wars series has appeared, and it is pretty great. All one has to do is attribute the weepiness of Padme to hormones to make that plausible, given her strength in the previous two episodes. As for the speed with which Anakin goes from wanting to kill Palpatine for being a sith, to killing Jedi younglings, I chalk it up to the need to deal with developments of personality in a 2-hour film that normally take significantly longer.
It is interesting to look at the whole question of relativism in the Lucas universe, since it is explicitly brought to the fore in this episode. On the one hand, the force has a 'dark side', but is it evil? The Jedi definitely say yes, but they are willing to compromise their values when they think it 'serves a higher good'. That includes spying on Palpatine even though it is treason, and killing Palpatine even when he is unarmed.
Is it still treason if the guy is evil? Yes, but maybe it is justifiable treason. But that is the whole point, the big issue that Episode III raises. Is there a clear line between right and wrong, one that can be seen clearly in the heat of the moment? Anakin, provoked by Palpatine, decides that Dooku is too dangerous to keep alive. Mace Windu, one of the greatest Jedi masters, reaches the same conclusion about Palpatine on his own! How evil does your enemy have to be for it to be OK to compromise your principles? Should one have principles in terms of absolutes...such as 'Never kill an unarmed prisoner.' Why should the fact that you have disarmed the person make a difference in every circumstance? Can a person capable of throwing lightning bolts be disarmed anyway? As an older, perhaps wiser Ben Kenobi says in Episode VI, many things depend on your point of view.
When Anakin 'brings balance' at the end of ROTJ, it is not only (perhaps not even primarily) by tossing the Emperor to his death. Luke is just becoming a Jedi, and so clearly the Jedi of the title who RETURNS is Anakin. He and Luke show that Yoda was wrong when he said 'Once you start down the dark path, forever will it control your destiny.' Nor was Obi-Wan being honest when he said 'Only a sith thinks in absolutes'. The Jedi say that the sith are pure evil, and they believe themselves to be pure good (more or less). What Anakin proves and Luke believes is that people (and the force) are much more complex than either the Sith or the Jedi have historically acknowledged. It is possible to get angry at injustice, at mistreatment of others, and yet to not let it consume you. It is possible to form attachments and yet not cling to them so tightly that they make you become greedy. Presumably it is in keeping with this that the new Jedi order has Luke married to, and having children with, a redeemed sith (although I haven't read those books so I can't really comment more than that). What Anakin does is something greater - or I should say, more difficult - than simply killing an evil enemy. He gets enticed by evil and falls, and yet finds his way back.
One could argue that Anakin brought balance to the force in this movie. The sith were the underdogs for millenia. The jedi regarded the different sides or the force as polar opposites. But in fact, they need to be kept in balance - like yin and yang, they are not opposites, but two sides of a coin that cannot exist in total independence of one another. That is what Luke discovered in Episode VI - that one can allow one's anger to give one focus, but one also needs to stop before it consumes you, when the balance of 'an arm for an arm' has been reached. You can form attachments and genuinely care about people, without becoming so attached that you will compromise your values for them. And rather than killing one's enemy, the ideal is to win them back, to redeem them.
If you haven't seen Episode III yet, I highly recommend it. There are some very entertaining bits involving R2D2, Palpatine is not only great as a lightsaber-wielding sith but is also highly entertaining as well. And two thumbs up to Hayden Christensen, for portraying a believable Anakin Skywalker and a believable Darth Vader, and getting us to feel the confusion, tension and pain as the one develops into the other.
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