Old Email Archive

digest 1998-10-31 #001.txt


Friday
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
-> Re: the truth in plain language (was quietude)
by J.Cartwright@chester.ac.uk
-> Re: the truth in plain language, epistemological confidence
by Everdell@aol.com
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Date: 30 Oct 1998 05:15:01 -0800
From: J.Cartwright@chester.ac.uk
Subject: Re: the truth in plain language (was quietude)
Could Joseph please send his message again. Mine came out with a large
chunk missing.
Thanks
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Date: 30 Oct 1998 22:12:17 -0800
From: Everdell@aol.com
Subject: Re: the truth in plain language, epistemological confidence
In a message dated 10/30/98 3:32:38 AM, J. Duemer quotes the CEO of the
New
York Academy of Sciences:
". . . But the problem of how to combat ignorance is large and
growing . . ."
and then comments:
<
>
But may it not be the reason Americans believe in satanic cults is that
those
cults have precisely the breathtaking epistemological confidence and
the
Olympian tone that our not-so-smart and not-so-well educated fellow
citizens
seem to require for assent.  I'm very glad that the Academy, of which I
am a
member, realizes this and takes an active role in promoting science
teaching
in New York, my city, where to decry increasing ignorance can be
platitudinous
but hardly bland.  But I suppose I should say that the hope that _The
Sciences_ will reach the "general public" is now very faint
since although
it's well written, it's a hard read for most math-phobic humanists, and
quite
impossible for a general public, of which possibly half is functionally
illiterate.  In any case, to attack the ignorant squarely in their
epistemological confidence seems to me to be a recipe for disaster.
- -Bill Everdell, History, St. Ann's School, Brooklyn