Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (6): Jamila Bey reports

So I’m Not The Only Black Skeptic by Jamila Bey. NPR, October 8, 2010.

Lovely Jamila (at right, above) is charming as ever. I can't believe she was unattractive in high school. In any case, kudos to her for learning Yiddish. (Also in photo: Faron Coggins, Mark Hatcher, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Ayanna Watson.)

Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (5)

Dawkins, moved by the technological prowess of physicists poised to penetrate the secrets of the universe, extols  the Large Hard-On Collider.

Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (4)

Here is a video recording of the entire proceedings of 28 September. (I can be seen in the audience, but I won't say where & when.)

Howard University symposium 2: Science & Faith in the Black Community (2)

Here is the video of the entire panel discussion.

Howard University symposium 2: Science & Faith in the Black Community

I have already blogged about the first symposium at Howard University on 28 September 2010, a dialogue on "The Poetry of Science" featuring Richard Dawkins and Neil de Grasse Tyson. In the evening there was a second event, a panel discussion on the topic "Science and Faith in the Black Community", with Howard University student Mark Hatcher again serving as moderator, and panelists Richard Dawkins, Anthony Pinn, Sikivu Hutchinson, and Todd Stiefel. I have not yet got around to writing up my notes, but you can find my report on this panel as well as on the Dawkins-Tyson dialogue on the latest installment of my Internet radio show "Studies in a Dying Culture", recorded and posted on 18 October, courtesy of Think Twice Radio:

10/18/10 Manny Fried's memoir published / Science, Religion & the Black community: symposia at Howard University

Following my preliminary remarks and my tribute to labor organizer & playwright Manny Fried, my segment on the black freethought movement begins at 18 minutes into the broadcast. My account of the evening panel discussion begins at the 43-minute mark. My apologies for the misremembering of names and other details. Finally, remarking on my forthcoming review of a new scholarly book on the "New Atheism", I have time only to comment (beginning at the 57-minute mark) on a regrettable historical amnesia that disables an honest accounting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson stops a religious troll

The final audience question posed at the Sept. 28 symposium featuring Tyson and Dawkins was a hostile one. Here is a video record of the question and Tyson's riposte:

Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (2)

Nothing terribly original was said, but presumably the goal was to stimulate the imagination of the audience via the two fields of expertise represented here: evolutionary biology and astrophysics. Both Dawkins and Tyson emphasized the way science has enlarged our vision of the universe beyond our given natural biology of mid-range physical beings evolved to engage mid-range natural objects. Of course trying to extend our imagination through millions of years of biological evolution involves a stretch, but it seems that astrophysics' challenge to the imagination is much greater. Whether feigning incomprehension or serious, Dawkins admitted as much, asking Tyson to explain the notion of an expanding universe and what it means to be on the edge of it. Tyson rose to the challenge and attempted to explain it via analogy with a ship in the ocean. He claimed it need not so mysterious, but I believe he is incorrect.

Dawkins' explanation of evolution did not demand as much. Tyson acknowledged the counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics, the dependence of physics on mathematics, and the fact that theoretical physics provides explanations that, in the ordinary intuitive sense, we do not understand. Science begins with sense experience, but instruments extend our range far beyond our innate sensory ability, detecting entities and phenomena we cannot directly perceive, and mathematics extends our ability to map reality beyond our limited and not completely reliable senses. Interestingly, once the counterintuitive nature of contemporary physics was acknowledged, Dawkins interjected the thought that mathematics becomes intuitive, so that physicists are able to navigate their terrain like pilots. He suggested an analogy with surgeons, who intuitively feel what they are doing with micromanipulating instruments, and in the future might conduct their surgeries mediated by virtual reality devices.

Tyson in turn introjected Dawkins' specialty into a consideration of exobiology, i.e. extraterrestrial life forms, and especially intelligent life forms. How do we know that we are intelligent in comparison to related animals whose difference from us might appear minuscule to a much more intelligent alien intelligence? Dawkins ran with this subject. Tyson reiterated his usual complaint against science fiction aliens being too anthropomorphic. Their discussion of the genetic code and what could conceivably be different indeed stimulated the imagination.

The questions subsequently posed by audience members were varied, but for now I will dwell only on one of them. Someone mentioned an impending abolition of the Philosophy Dept. at Howard University and asked for comments on the philosophy of science. Tyson responded that philosophy contributed to science until the 20th century, but with quantum mechanics became useless. While philosophy has other worthy objects of study, Tyson sees no further contributions by philosophy. Physics is high tech; armchair science is no longer possible.

Dawkins pointed out that philosophers could have easily thought of natural selection but did not. There are some good philosophers of biology, but these are the ones who are so thoroughly immersed in the science that they double as scientists.

I found Tyson's remarks especially revealing of how the scientific mind differs from the philosophical mind, and in this case I think he is dead wrong. He admits the largely counterintuitive nature of physics (while minimizing--at least this time around--the same viz. cosmology), and claims that philosophy of science is superfluous, when the revolutions in physics in the 20th century presented philosophers--and philosophically minded physicists--with the greatest challenges they ever faced. The nature of physical explanation and the theories that have emerged are far from uncontroversial, and the attempts to popularize them among the general public are fraught with pitfalls the scientists do not seem to understand. Tyson repeatedly warned against hubris, but how confident can one be now that physics is in for another revolution on account of dark matter and dark energy? (And I will add, what can Hawking possibly mean when he suggests that the universe was created out of nothing? Is this truly an empirical statement, and not philosophically controversial?)

Dawkins doesn't have this big of a problem as far as strictly biological evolution is concerned, but what about the metaphorical extension of biological evolution into social evolution? Is the concept of the "meme" a genuine scientific concept, or merely sloppy ideological reasoning by analogy? What about the sociobiology war of the 1970s?

All this and much more is fodder for a whole lot of additional discussion, as well as the question of applied science in the real world that is driven by big money, big business, and the military, which might not respect the integrity of pure research that characterize the scientific objectives of Tyson and Dawkins.

Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson at Howard University (1)

I attended the dialogue between Richard Dawkins & Neil de Grasse Tyson on "The Poetry of Science" at Howard University in Washington at noon on Tuesday, 28 September. The two speakers were at their charming best. Tyson cracks more jokes and makes more pop culture references, but Dawkins interjected a few quips as well. I've seen them both before separately but not together.

I'll report more on the intellectual content more later. In particular, I want to say something about physics and philosophy, a theme which Tyson addressed.

I noticed that the demographic of the audience did not reflect the demographic of Howard University itself: this event attracted a lot of white science buffs and atheists, which seemed to constitute the majority of the audience. Why that is, I do not know: perhaps the students were in class or on lunch break between classes.

Atheism was not the subject of this discussion, but a couple audience members brought up the issue of religion in the Q & A. The final questioner apparently thought he would bait the speakers, or so I gathered from the tone of his question. After referencing Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy, the questioner asked: if you were about to be executed, what would you have to say, relying on your knowledge of science alone? Tyson took that question, responding: "I would ask to be buried rather than cremated, so that my body would provide nutrients for other organisms just as I have fed off the nutrients from the organisms preceding me."