Niall Ferguson

Poor man. He has been in thrall to the ridiculous right in the US for years, busily describing their useless evil doings as righteous and progressive. Anything they did was correct as long as it kept the masses in  check and made America safe for his rich paymasters. Now the masses have got themselves a president but not the one the right feared- think Bernie. What was poor Niall to do. He got in step and  put a brave face on it. Now he is stuck and to keep faith with the right wing plutocracy in the face of presidential meltdown he has jumped ship. Has he gone too soon? What if we get a no party coup by the president and his family? What will poor Niall do then poor thing?

Philosophy and Theology

These are essentially mutually incompatible activities, one for adults and one for children of all ages. On the one hand we have a purely thought base, rational exploration of  essentially unanswerable questions and on the other endless contorted thought based attempts to invoke a single implausible human artefact as the explanation of everything. Both are seriously if not fatally flawed. They both rely on argument with only perfunctory attention to experience. For a more useful though still imperfect method of comprehending the universe we require the method of science with observation and reason inextricably linked and sequenced. Where this fails there are those who would revert to philosophy or theology in a bewildering array of combinations to reveal order where sadly none may exist. Life as experienced by humans in intransigently casuistic. We need to accept that messy fact but continue with the method of science to see how far we can get. There is no other useful approach.

Science and Scientists

There is a curious confusion in the minds of many between these two entities - science as a method of inquiry with its consequent body of knowledge and the individuals who espoused the method of scientific inquiry and their attendant notions. A range of writers cannot it seems distinguish these. A number of "Histories of Science" have appeared by authors in this confused state which have distressed scientists in need of a history of science. What these confused authors give is some form of history of scientists. There accounts are replete with the contradictory and paradoxical doings of famous scientists much of which for a history of science is irrelevant "noise". It is of no concern to a scientist what his predecessors' views were on alchemy, astronomy, the bible or whatever. What is of concern is that the individual did some work which has proven to be of lasting value. How did he do it?