April 24, 2013
American science writer Michael Shermer has described as ‘wronger than wrong‘ the mistake addressed in what he calls ‘Asimov’s axiom,’ after the noted author Isaac Asimov, who discussed the issue in his book of essays, ‘The Relativity of Wrong.’
A statement that equates two errors is wronger than wrong when one of the errors is clearly more wrong than the other. As Asimov put it: ‘When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.’
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April 24, 2013
The Relativity of Wrong is a 1988 essay collection by Isaac Asimov, which takes its title from the most ambitious essay it contains. Like most of the essays Asimov wrote for ‘F&SF Magazine,’ each one in ‘The Relativity of Wrong’ begins with an autobiographical anecdote which serves to set the tone.
Several of the essays form a sequence explaining the discovery and uses of isotopes; the introductory passages in these essays recount Asimov’s not particularly pleasant personal relationship with physical chemist Harold C. Urey, whom he met at Columbia University.
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April 24, 2013
The phrase not even wrong is generally attributed to theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or sloppy thinking. Rudolf Peierls writes that ‘a friend showed Pauli the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly, ‘It is not even wrong.” Peierls remarks that quite a few apocryphal stories of this kind have been circulated and mentions that he listed only the ones personally vouched by him. He also quotes another example when Pauli replied to Lev Landau: ‘What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not.’
It has come to be used to describe any argument that purports to be scientific but fails at some fundamental level, usually in that it cannot be falsified (i.e., tested with the possibility of being rejected) by experiment or cannot be used to make predictions about the natural world. ‘Not even wrong’ has also been used by Peter Woit to mean proposed scientific theories that are well-meaning and based on current scientific knowledge, but can neither be used for prediction nor falsified. He has applied the phrase to aspects of string theory in physics on the grounds that, although mathematically elegant, it does not currently provide predictions or tests.
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April 24, 2013
Bullshit (also bullcrap) is a common English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism BS. In British English, ‘bollocks’ is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is commonly used in British English. It is a slang profanity term meaning either (literally) bovine excrement or, more commonly, ‘nonsense,’ especially in a rebuking response to communication or actions viewed as deceiving, misleading, disingenuous, or false. As with many expletives, the term can be used as an interjection or as many other parts of speech, and can carry a wide variety of meanings.
It can be used either as a noun or as a verb. While the word is generally used in a deprecating sense, it may imply a measure of respect for language skills, or frivolity, among various other benign usages. In philosophy, Harry Frankfurt, among others, analyzed the concept of bullshit as related to but distinct from lying. Outside of the philosophical and discursive studies, the everyday phrase bullshit conveys a measure of dissatisfaction with something or someone, but does not generally describe any role of truth in the matter.
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April 24, 2013
The Big Lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book ‘Mein Kampf,’ about the use of a lie so ‘colossal’ that no one would believe that someone ‘could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.’
Hitler asserted the technique was used by Jews to unfairly blame Germany’s loss in World War I on German Army officer Erich Ludendorff.
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April 24, 2013
‘Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology’ is a 1943 book by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Its main purpose is to assert the individual’s existence as prior to the individual’s essence. Sartre’s overriding concern was to demonstrate that free will exists.
While a prisoner of war in 1940 and 1941, Sartre read Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time,’ an ontological investigation through the lens and method of Husserlian phenomenology (Husserl was Heidegger’s teacher). Reading ‘Being and Time’ initiated Sartre’s own inquiry leading to the publication in 1943 of ‘Being and Nothingnes’s whose subtitle is ‘A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology.’
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April 24, 2013
Bad faith is a philosophical concept used by existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir to describe the phenomenon where a human being under pressure from societal forces adopts false values and disowns his/her innate freedom to act authentically. It is closely related to the concepts of self-deception and ressentiment (an assignment of blame for one’s frustration).
A critical claim in existentialist thought is that individuals are always free to make choices and guide their lives towards their own chosen goal or ‘project.’ The claim holds that individuals cannot escape this freedom, even in overwhelming circumstances. For instance, even an empire’s colonized victims possess choices: to submit to rule, to negotiate, to act in complicity, to commit suicide, to resist nonviolently, or to counter-attack.
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