Footnote Physicist

          “Pseudoscience is easier to contrive than science, because distracting confrontations with reality           —where we cannot control the outcome of the comparison—are more readily avoided.  The           standards of argument, what passes for evidence, are much more relaxed.”           – Carl Sagan I PSEUDO-SCIENCE           Pseudo-science has the appearance of science, especially to the layperson, but none of the substance.  Precisely because the sciences have had so much success at explaining the cosmos, its philosophical competitors, and mere hucksters and salesman, have attempted to insert a patina of scientific language into their claims in the hopes that a patina of its convincing power will rub off.   Pseudo-science comes in three distinct flavors: the continued belief in a hypothesis, pos...

by Steven Gussman             0 When Karl Marx composed his ideas on economics, he claimed they were descriptive as opposed to just normative . 1 However, the man's legacy is not as a scientist , so much as an engineer; no science and plenty of failed social engineering have been the fruits of his labor. 2 Karl Marx's bloated hypothesis was at least two-fold, sociological and economic: 1. that any society of homo sapiens would follow a natural state machine from oppressive capitalism, to intermediate socialistic overthrow, and ultimately into a shared communist utopia with no individual property or labor ownership 3 wherein everyone shared the means of production rather than competing for (and creating) wealth through free-market innovation; 4 and 2. that the entire culture of a nation are but a means for keeping the “powerful” in “power”—this he called the superstructure . 5 The ill-defined word, “power”, has always been a bugbear for me (it is q...

by Steven Gussman             0 The ancient Greek Sophists were populists—they fancied themselves practical philosophers for laypeople, as opposed to those ivory tower elitists, who horded knowledge for themselves. 1  Surely, we are just as capable as any elite at adducing truth, they thought. And surely you deserve affordable advice about the way the world works, they advertised. Indeed, the enterprise was something of a private market sector phenomenon: it was a for-profit teaching business for practical folk. 2  It is perhaps here in the spirit of populism that we find the root of their vain hubris in thinking they could start from scratch and see further than all past knowledge combined, for the Sophists were relativists. 3             The Sophists were not only moral relativists (believing there are no such things as absolute, objective moral facts), but a much rarer breed: epistemological relativists (bel...

The Sophistructure  Table Of Contents Acknowledgements (coming soon) Introduction (coming soon) PART I: A Grand Narrative Chapter 1: Sophistry Chapter 2: Marxism COMING SOON PART II: Facts And Feelings COMING SOON PART III: The Civil War On Civility COMING SOON Afterward: (coming soon) Bibliography Index (by author) (coming soon) Index (by topic) (coming soon)