cspawn

Here’s a nice piece on the Catholic Church’s astronomical research just outside of Tucson, AZ at the Mt. Graham observatory. More than four centuries after the Church went after Galileo for abandoning geocentrism (and only 17 years since his Edict of Inquisition was officially lifted) Jesuit priests are now conducting highly secular scientific work (they don’t even say grace before dinner!) in God’s name.

One of the story’s most interesting points comes toward the end, which explains the logic of theological/scientific boundary maintenance at work in the observatory:

In the Vatican Observatory’s annual report, at the point where a corporation might describe its business strategy, is a section delineating the difference between creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) and creatio continua: “the fact that at every instant, the continued existence of the universe itself is deliberately willed by God, who in this way is continually causing the universe to remain created.”

Theologians call these “primary causes,” those that flow from the unmoved mover. Sitting atop this eternal platform is another layer, the “secondary causes,” which can be safely left to science.

One wonders whether and how this philosophical barricade will be pushed back or eroded in the coming centuries. Peace seems to have broken out on the astronomical front between Catholicism and science while the biological front is just beginning to flare up.

Finally, in a hilarious/classic turn, apparently even this happy reconciliation between the two historical giants of western knowledge authority wasn’t without its discontents:

Building on Mount Graham was a struggle. Apaches said the observatory was an affront to the mountain spirits. Environmentalists said it was a menace to a subspecies of red squirrel. There were protests and threats of sabotage.

This week AI-affiliated doctoral student Christine Luk took a look at the debate over “scientific” vs. “alternative” medicine, apropos of comments by the Soapbox’s favorite polemical physicist/science warrior, Dr. Alan Sokal. After exploring the other side of the debate, Christine raises several good questions, among them:

If we believed in Sokal’s criticism on the deconstructive (and thus destructive) signpost the school of “social construction of science” is taking us to, how can we be more constructive? Apparently some people believe in homeopathy and some people don’t. But is it simply a matter of faith? What is at stake here?

Check out the full article here.

A thought on citizen science, open, participatory democracy….:

“On Jan. 21, his first full day in office, President Obama promised to open up the government, ordering officials to use modern technologies like Internet message boards and blogs to give all Americans a bigger voice in public policy. The White House made its first major entree into government by the people last month when it set up an online forum to ask ordinary people for their ideas on how to carry out the president’s open-government pledge. It got an earful — on legalizing marijuana, revealing U.F.O. secrets and verifying Mr. Obama’s birth certificate to prove he was really born in the United States and thus eligible to be president.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/technology/internet/23records.html

This is sort of an interesting thought on identity, (perceptions of) expertise, and Science as authority.

“If white coats are so bad, why do doctors still wear them?  Because a white lab coat says ‘I am a scientific healer.’”

http://www.slate.com/id/2220925/?from=rss

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8100988.stm

I found this article on BBC news and thought it was an interesting read.  It compares China’s expanding economy and how they are attempting to compensate this vilification of their industry  by means of government sponsored environmentalism projects.

The following is an exerpt from the article:

“China’s rapid economic expansion in recent years has been matched by its increasingly voracious appetite for energy and natural resources, says William Bleisch. But, as he explains in this week’s Green Room, the nation has sometimes been unfairly portrayed as the world’s biggest environmental villain.”

In an attempt to pull the discourse on the CSPO main page into the more comments-friendly realm of CSPAWN, here’s a review of the latest entries into the Soapbox!

Last week Catherine Slade discussed problems in healthcare administration and put forth a provocative proposal for peer review in administrative as well as scholarly practices. To wit:

Can we incentivize a peer-review type approach to accountability in health care delivery, and can we remove legal barriers to discussing why the current delivery system is failing? If not, then health care reform is more likely to enter a black hole than trigger a harmonic convergence.

Most recently on the CSPO Soapbox, Cynthia Selin attempts to reconcile patriotism and optimistic American leadership amid the cloud of uncertainty sourrounding some of the country’s “messiest problems” Here’s a clip:

As a scholar investigating the ways and means of anticipation, as a mother, as a blogger on Flag Day, this commitment to responsibly governing the future is heartening. I am watching to see if foresight methodologies will have a role in structuring the abundance of ignorance, uncertainty and complexity that plague our messiest national problems. I am curious to see whose future prevails.

What do YOU think?

I thought this might be interesting to some - another take on women in the sciences….:

A Formula for Success: Want more women to study science? Hire more female professors.

By Ray FismanPosted Friday, June 5, 2009

http://www.slate.com/id/2219701/pagenum/all/#p2

Britt Crow posted an insightful discussion of the ethical questions surrounding the gender disparity in China in this week’s CSPO Soapbox. Here’s a sample:

In Imperial China (221 BCE - 1911 CE), dramatic gender imbalances were the result of widespread female infanticide and sex-selected infant neglect. Today, the male surplus is the result of sex-selective abortion, made possible by the introduction of neonatal ultrasonography in the late 1970s. This major unintended consequence, one that has dramatic implications for the world’s most populous nation and one that raises important ethical questions, is an issue that our CSPO-indoctrinated brains cannot allow us to pass over without some critical discussion.