The Unified Theory of Christopher’s Scholarly Interests

For My Zilsel Friends, Gordon Tullock and Public Choice: The Dissenter as Gadfly

I. Gordon Tullock and Joseph Agassi- A Brief Digression.

In the course of talking with Joseph on the first day of my questioning of him, I mentioned Gordon Tullock. Tullock and Joseph were good friends. Agassi met him where he was at Stanford and Tullock tried to work with Popper. Undeterred by Popper’s inability to work with Tullock, Tullock then went on to be a post-doc at the University of Virginia (though he only had a J.D) while spending most of his later years at George Mason University. Tullock, throughout his writings acknowledged his fondness for Popper, particularly his suspicion of dogma. By dogma, Tullock meant almost all of economics not written by Gordon Tullock. There are many Tullock anecdotes related to me by Agassi, but one which I shared with him was Tullock’s objection to seat-belts. Seat-belts were instituted in the 1970s to protect drivers from death. No, Gordon responded, the way to make drivers safe is to place a knife in the middle of the steering wheel, so that if drivers speed and shop short, they will be impaled instantly. There is also a page of Tullock insults.

Read More…Read More…

For My Zilsel Friends, The Boar in the Vineyard: The Anthropology of Napoleon Chagnon

The “boar” of the title refers to Martin Luther and his heresy, referring to the famous bull of Pope Leo X. In the early modern world, the boar stood for the problem of heresy in the faithful church.

I. The “World’s Most Controversial Anthropologist”

Napoleon Chagnon has been christened the “world’s most controversial anthropologist” by the New York Times. Chagnon enjoys the label, it is on his faculty web site. Why is he the world’s most controversial anthropologist? I give two reasons. 1) in a book published in 2000, “Darkness in El Dorado,” he was accused with James Neel, a well-regarded epidemiologist, of exacerbating a measles outbreak in order to test the fitness of tribes of Yanomami in Northern Brazil and Southern Venezuela. These charges, offered by a journalist, were dismissed by the American Anthropological Association. 2) his linking of social status, with reproductive success or of cultural success with biological success. Chagnon argued, as had his adviser and mentor the geneticist and epidemiologist Jim Neel in the 1970s and 1980 (most explicitly in “On Being Headman” in 1980) that those Yanomami villagers who were good at warfare, good at killing had high social status. Aggression and warlike behavior (through mechanisms not really explained) have become social virtues due to their biological benefits. As a result of their high social status, they enjoyed reproductive success. They had more children than villagers less adept at warfare. Aggression persists, moreover, because it is evolutionarily adaptive and it is the result of human beings acting rationally, in the pursuit of their own self-interest as well as those of their kin.

Read More…Read More…

For My Zilsel Friends, The Dissenting Sciences

I. Some Opening Thoughts On My Motivations

My friends at Zilsel have invited me to speak on a topic which I have been working on for quite some time, through my various researches in biosocial anthropology and human behavioral ecology, behavior genetics and public choice economics (in the work of Gordon Tullock especially) the “dissenting sciences.” I keep changing my mind on what to call them, having referred to them as “heterodox” and “pariah” sciences.

I am a bit in a muddle and I have decided to write my way out of this confusion. I have submitted two introductions to introduce my case studies. This is a version of those introductions.

I do this because our field not only suffers from the privacy of criticism but also the privacy of ideas. As Will has written about many times, historians of science are too concerned with only publishing their very polished thoughts. This means that much of the knowledge of the profession is hidden from public view. This behavior is elitist.

And now everyone reading this hopefully has a better sense of my motivations. My thoughts on pseudoscience are a bit of a muddle, I am using this blog as a way to puzzle out this muddle, as a prelude to puzzling out some of my confusions in a talk on Tuesday. I am deliberately not holding back my unpolished thoughts in the hopes that others will do so.

Read More…Read More…

Joseph Agassi’s Philosophy and Influence Resist Simple Answers

I. My errors thus far (I have changed the title, so this portion of the post is somewhat dated.) The discussion of influence is still fresh.

At the start of this series (which by the way I am not concluding for some time, so don’t worry!) I gave a broad outline of Joseph Agassi’s major philosophical tenets. I think my title, “Why Joseph Agassi is No Longer Read as Much,” is unfortunate now. If I would have written the post today, I would resist cleverness at the expense of correctness. I would change the title, but the posts seem to be very popular and the nature of my mistake should be clear for everyone to see. Having stated that Agassi is not as read as much, I revise my statement: This may be true. This may be false. I have no way of knowing.

I think this is an important statement, because historians and philosophers of science are typically very cavalier in assigning importance and influence. I will be equally cavalier and underscore that we historians and philosophers of science have no clear way of doing so. Perhaps we will never have the ability to do so. How does one really measure the influence of a philosopher and historian of science like Agassi?

Read More…Read More…

If You Read Joseph Agassi, Man and Nature Become More Complex

For other entries in the series, please see most especially this post as well as this post

I. Dichotomies pose problems for philosophy and the social sciences

In “The Rationality of Science is Partial” in Towards a Rational Philosophical Anthropology (1977) TRPA Joseph Agassi points out the two of the key dichotomies in philosophy, namely between nature and convention and between the “utterly universal” and the “utterly particular.” It is possible to view any”specific society as merely arbitrary” … “because although from the outside a custom in a given society may look quite arbitrary, from within it may look quite rational” (263). Many social institutions, such as organized religions, contain both rational and supposedly irrational elements. They are a mix of the universal and the particular. Because they appear to be a mix of dichotomies, social scientists and philosophers are at a loss to explain them. They then explain one and explain away the other. Explanations typically end in an arbitrary manner.

Thus, many have concluded that religion is rational, but not rational enough (Ludwig Feuerbach). Because social institutions are rational, but not rational enough, various solutions have been applied. Relativism more or less declares the debate useless: everything is particular (266-7). For relativists, one can only describe and not engage in causal reasoning. For functionalism, customs, like religious institutions are “natural” and perfectly reasonable, “though only from within.”

Functionalism presents every institution as 100% conducive to good order. Opposite to relativism, everything may be explained. Functionalism also promotes a kind of quietism. If customs and institutions are rational and perfectly reasonable, “natural,” even Hegelian, then how they are to be improved remains a mystery. Their naturalness speaks against their reform. “How can natural things have errors in them?” one would ask. Of course, any modern biologist would tell you that nature is full of errors. Some of them quite interesting.

Read More…Read More…