[Oe List ...] CS-I

[Jack Gilles]

Herman,

I am happy for your New Year's resolution, you have so many good things to say.  I like your insights regarding science and cosmology.  Your "downside" of the cultural revolution sub-points we taught in CS-1 are also true.  My only quibble is that as I remember CS-1 we taught those three as indicatives, not so much as promise.  The question was (is): If that is what is happening, what is the significance for us and what is the imperative we need to operate out of?  I think you've hit well on the second.  The same can be said of how the "western" value system are destroying indigenous cultures, it is just happening and the question is: "How do we respond?"
On Jan 1, 2011, at 10:19 AM, Herman Greene wrote:

> One of my New Year’s resolutions is to not be so sharp with my tongue/pen. Does anybody else have a hangover from our illusion-busting days?
>  
> I continue to think about urban scientific and secular. A more complete thought than the one I expressed yesterday is that I think what we were trying to do was to bring the church into the 20th century. There was also, however, in my opinion, a stance of celebrating these changes uncritically as well as the general economic development model,.
>  
> Science has given to us the gifts of modernity and at the same time is laying waste to the world. Berry said “Science is not a cosmology. When science thinks it is a cosmology it becomes destructive. When science functions within a cosmology, it becomes a wisdom.”  His effort was to establish a new cosmology. I had many arguments with him about this because he seemed to think the universe story by itself was such a cosmology. In his followers, the universe story as a scientific story and as a philosophical cosmology has become confused. Berry and Swimme’s philosophical cosmology that was the heart of their universe story was not consistent with what we may call “scientism.” For example, they say there is an intentional or teleological aspect to evolution (“the universe is about something”), something that is outside “science” and for many scientists is “heresy” (because for scientists their trade has become more than an aspect of reality, it has become the whole of reality—a scientific and philosophical cosmology).
>  
> It is certainly true we are becoming increasing urban. It is also true that cities have been the source of “civilization” over the last 3,000 years at least. This is reflected in such ideas as the pagans (in other words those who live in the country) or the heathen (those who live in the heath). Now I think the growth of cities is probably more problem than promise. For example in the next 20 years 350 million people are expected to move into cities in China (more than the entire population of the United States) and this is on top of those who already live in cities in China. Just the new settlers in the cities will require the installation of electrical power greater than the entire installed electrical power in the United States today and most of it will be powered by coal. Further the role of cities as the centers of global industrial civilization is problematic.
>  
> The secular is something I think I understand and then I think I don’t. We can call the world secular and yet we can call it more religious than ever and the effect of religions is having as much impact on affairs as ever. The secular is part of what allows science to operate as a cosmology. The secular is what allows the economic man to exist, the one driven only by pain and pleasure principles and utility. The secular is what relativizes all moral values, so that nothing is right or wrong, it is only a preference.
>  
> So if we were to teach CS-I again, we may still talk about the urban, the scientific and the secular but we would be talking about them as much as problem as promise and we would not be looking to them for values as such, rather we would be speaking to what is the basis of value and meaning in an urban, scientific, and secular-yet-very-religious world.
>  
> Herman
>  
>  
>  
>  
> _____________________________________________
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