Preface

Every intellectual endeavor is a work-in-progress, to the extent that the intellect continues to function. This stems from the intricate feedback mechanism inherent to the organic circuitry of the mind. This truism applies with absolute certainty to this opus.

While I consider the piece in its first stage of completion, because of the scope of the subject, I intend to revisit it for occasional revisions. I therefore enjoin the more proactive segments of the reading public to volunteer some comments, good, bad, helpful, harmful, or otherwise indifferent.  

I have absolute faith in my doubts, and I believe in the inherent perfectibility of the imperfect. Every aspect of my feedback circuitry most definitely falls in that genre. It is an integral part of my farm boy upbringing to constantly endeavor to assimilate any feedback, to enhance my chances at survival.

It probably serves to emphasize that every part of the work is “in progress,” including even this “Preface.” That is to say, subject to modifications depending on the author’s whims and maybe incidental sparks of inspiration and/or additional materials that may come to my attention, and be deemed relevant.

It is in this spirit that I beg your indulgence and enjoin you to occasionally check for updated versions of the article.

Live long and prosper and enjoy the ride, for to paraphrase Omar Khayyam(c.1038-1123), and be internet adaptive,

LXXI
The Clicking Keyboard writes; and, having writ,
Clicks on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

With a song in my heart: regards & carpe diem,

Constancio S. Asumen. Jr.

Table of Contents

Preface

Table of Contents

I. Prolegomenon: Preliminary Escapades

I.1 Personal Dimension

I.2 Professional and Political Conjectures

II. Fundamental Considerations

II.1 Elements of Knowledge

II.2 Three Types of Knowledge

II.2.1 Recursive or Operational Knowledge

II.2.2 Descriptive or Attributional Knowledge

II.2.3 Discursive or Propositional Knowledge

III. The Architecture of Inquiry

III.1 Philosophical Inquiry

III.2 Scientific Inquiry

IV. Practical Implications

IV.1 On Antrophogenic Global Warming

IV.2 On Darwinian Theory of Evolution

V. Concluding Observations

VI. Bibliography: Itemizing Primary Sources

VII. Suggested Keywords

I. Prolegomenon: Preliminary Escapades

“. . . as soon as we think that we correctly perceive something, we are spontaneously convinced that it is true. . . . if . . . it is impossible for us ever to have any reason for doubting what we are convinced of, then there are no further questions for us to ask: we have everything that we could reasonably want. . . .”

-- Rene Descartes, (as quoted by L. Newman)

I propose to start with the purely subjective observation that for anything that I consciously decide to do, there is an associated purpose and a concomitant motive which propel me to do it. If this sounds pompous and outlandish, being in the subjective realm, I can nevertheless claim it to be indisputably true.

I.1 Personal Dimension

For reasons I hope will very shortly become self-evident, by way of an introduction I deem it appropriate to reproduce in its entirety, grammar mistakes included, my email to Joan Swirsky which was composed and sent Tuesday, 2-Mar-2010 (9:26am EST, emphasis added):

Joan,

I missed you.  You are one of the unique rare souls generous enough to indulge my whimsy.  I pray all is well with you, and I mean every aspect of your being.

My February was consumed in a medical sabbatical.  I spent the first half being aware that something was not right with my body but could not quite figure out what.  I landed in the ER on the 15^th with a TIA.  I got discharged on the 18^th with Cobalt-Chromium stents on all four of my cardiac-arterial grafts.  I’m back at my computer to recuperate.  I submitted my latest article to Frank yesterday.  Frank said it’s queued for tomorrow’s posting.  I suspect something might be amiss when you did not reply.

Today I embark on an ambitious project which I labeled “Inquiry into the Nature (and Understanding) of Knowledge.”  It is provoked by my umbrage at the Oval Office spearheading the marketing and funding of Global Warming initiatives despite the fraudulent nature of the knowledge behind the GW narrative.

This about covers everything.  Here’s hoping I hear from you real soon.

Live long and prosper,

Stan

With a song in my heart: regards & carpe diem,

Constancio S. Asumen. Jr.

Being connected  makes all the difference!

Admittedly, this may fall into what I elsewhere dubbed, albeit in a different context, “The Fallacy of Exhibitionism.” I consider Joan to be my spiritual Rabbi and inspiration in the realm of authoring. She has been very generous and critically forthright with her opinions. How we got connected is a narrative that deserves, nay, demands to be told. It is instructive of the nature of communication in the age of the internet. It can be revealing of the internet’s pitfalls and immeasurable benefits.

The quasi-saga started on the night of Sunday, 25-Oct-2009. Coming home from work, I heard on the radio a replay of an interview with then candidate Obama pompously deploring the U.S. Constitution as a proscriptive constraint on governance rather than a prescriptive sanction for governance.  This was rudely and inadvertently cut off when I parked on the driveway.  I promptly proceeded to Google-search for the text string “Obama, U.S. Constitution.”

The first item in the hits list returned by my search propelled me to send the following email:

Dear Ms. Swirsky,

I stumbled onto your column when I googled for the keywords “Obama, US Constitution”.

You are exactly the kind of columnist/journalist/author we need more of in the U.S.  I regret that I did not stumble onto your work sooner.

If you have some kind of a mailing list for your articles, kindly include my email address in it.

I thank you very much.

With a song in my heart: regards & carpe diem,

Constancio S. Asumen. Jr.

Being connected  makes all the difference!

Since then the volume of our correspondence through four hours ago (9:52 am EST) tallied 36 in my inbox and 63 in the sent folder. In range of subject matter and wealth of substance, this is rivaled only by my correspondence with a graduate school colleague, through the Spring of 1973, who wrote me last on 1-Feb-2010. She is the only acquaintance from my college days who keeps me posted albeit on a less than regular basis.

Joan and I seemed to have been yapping away in barely three months (February ’10 being a hiatus) as if we have known each other forever. She has that uncanny effect of bringing out in me what she dubbed “a wealth of memories screaming to be told.” What I find piquantly remarkable is the near-certainty that she would not recognize me from a hole in the wall if by a confluence of circumstances, we bumped into each other wherever people bump into each other these days.

{Any one of the following locations could be my favored venue for such a pleasant accident: the Intermission cocktail lounge at the New York Metropolitan Opera House, ditto the Carnegie Hall, the 18^th Green grandstands at Augusta National during the Masters, or St. Andrews Old and Ancient during the British Open, ditto the Pebble Beach Golf and Country Club during the U.S. Open. I don’t have the vaguest idea what genre of venues Joan may happen into, and there is no point speculating about them. There is no such thing as speculative knowledge.}

Joan, having posted her facial likeness on her website, I most definitely have a slight advantage as far as such a scenario goes. I would not bet the mortgage on it, though. Years of trying to stay under the radar somehow rendered my facial recognition skills somewhat jaded.

Herein lies the relevance of this quasi-saga to the project at hand: should such a fortuitous event come to pass, the only things we may know about each other are those which are true of who each one of us is. What we may not know about each other is for the time being essentially unknowable. To know that you don’t know does not constitute any kind of knowledge, as it does not make you know what you don’t know. At best, it may only make you want to know what you don’t know.

I.2 Professional and Political Conjectures

As I write, I will never know the content of the conversation that might ensue from such an encounter. Yet I’m certain I would find it, to paraphrase Spock, one of my all time favorite movie characters, fascinating to eavesdrop on. For reasons I cannot explain, and I hope she would not take offense at, I confess that contemplating on the above scenario in part inspired me to embark upon this project.

Finally, it behooves to touch on the political angle to my motivation. For this I invoke Patrick J. Buchanan’s conclusions, quoting H.L. Mencken, to a recent column on “Global Warming” and “Theory of Evolution” with the following indictment of the powers that be, especially the purveyors of information:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Both Darwinian Theory and moderate-period global temperature fluctuations were topics covered by An Introduction to Historical Geology, a course I used to teach to college juniors. Professional decorum compels me to think that an inquiry into the nature of knowledge with due diligence may help, in however minor way, exterminate those hideous hobgoblins, from the national polity. 

I am acutely aware that ideologues in the corridors of power, e.g., the Oval Office, both houses of Congress, the ‘main stream media,’ etc., have their designs to the contrary. Precisely for this same reason, it is essential that a wider and larger segment of the national polity be made aware that the paradigm these hoaxters are committed to perpetrate on the nation is abominable to a more enlightened populace. This article is my attempt at a modest contribution to such an urgently needed enlightenment. 

II.  Fundamental Considerations

Let me stipulate as a primary axiom that the ultimate purpose of human knowledge is the perpetuation of the human species. This is one of three equally fundamental axioms I adhere to as the basis of this inquiry. What you know does not count for much of anything if you end up being extinct, as did the dinosaurs of geologic antiquity.

It is necessary to postulate further, as a starting point, that the physics of the universe mandates that everything exists in space and time. Moreover, there are two intertwining and interacting realms of existence, namely the material and the conceptual. As a corollary, both space and time being themselves concepts, the material realm is necessarily subsumed by the conceptual realm. This is the main basis for ‘mind over matter’ to be axiomatic.

If idea is primary, how do you initiate an idea? Or the other side of the same question, how do you prevent ideas from being formed in your mind? How, when, and where did my knowledge of anything begin? I assert, contend and maintain that it began with my Will to know.

At the instant of conception, i.e., when the sperm unites with the ovum, the human soul is endowed by Divine Providence with the Will as the “essence of the soul,” or the “Divine spark of life.” This is another one of my three axioms. 

To put it another way: It is beyond the need of a proof that I have a soul. I just know that I have one. Since I cannot locate in time or space when and where I started having a soul, the moment of conception is as good a beginning as any. Better yet, it is the only beginning I can conceivably point to with more than just a significant degree of certainty. I am absolutely sure of it.

The immediate necessary consequence to my second axiom is that any instance of indecision is the most grievous sin you can ever commit. A forfeiture of your Will, is a betrayal of your soul, and an affront to Divine Providence.

II.1 Elements of Knowledge

"To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob the concept of all of its life... Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information that matters." ­­--Churchman (1971, p. 10)

[as quoted by Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, BRINT Institute,]

Nothing exists in isolation.  This is the third (not in order of importance but in order of reference) of the three axioms alluded to earlier. That is, existence, in and of itself presupposes a relationship. Knowledge may be construed as the state or condition of comprehension of this relationship, rather than just of the existent, by a process of knowing. 

For any notion of knowledge to be valid and viable, the process of knowing requires at least three necessary elements: first, the existence of the one that knows, aka, the knower, the sentient observer or subject; second that which needs to be known, aka the object of knowledge needs to be addressable by the subject; third the attribute of translatability of the knowledge thus established has to be verifiable.

This architecture is congruent with what seems to be ubiquitous in the literature, such as that laid out by Jonathan Dolhenty as follows (emphasis omitted):

“There are three elements which enter into knowledge:

·         (1) the knowing subject,

·         (2) the known object, and

·         (3) the mental act of knowing, which is called cognition.

. . .

“The object of knowledge is anything and everything that is, or becomes, or can be, known by man. The objects of man's knowledge are himself, conscious states of his self, and also realities other than himself. Every act of knowledge must be knowledge of something and refer to some object.”

I differ with Dolhenty in two significant ways. The entity of my object of knowledge is focused on the relationships concomitant to the existent’s existence rather than the existent itself. Second, the element of translatability as a condition to the establishment of knowledge is a requirement I claim to be my own contribution, although it arguably appears to somehow follow from expositions on “justified true belief” (M. Steup) analysis of knowledge, more so than from Bertrand Russell’s (1926) definition of knowledge. 

I further stipulate that when it comes to sentient being, I mean human beings. When it comes to thinking, and kindred activities, I am unapologetically anthropocentric. I cannot care less what the hen ‘thinks’ or ‘feels’ about it when I consume a soft boiled egg. My concern is primarily with human knowledge.

II.2 Three Types of Knowledge

For pedagogical purposes, I recognize and propose to deal with three basic species or types of knowledge , to wit: discursive or propositional, descriptive or attributional, and recursive or operational. This is not to claim that the list is exhaustive. It is merely to concede that the limits of my understanding recognize these three types to be relevant to the mission of prevailing over the processes and phenomena, encountered in both nature and society, that the mind needs to muster to control, and hence both beneficially and beneficiently, utilize its environment.

I acknowledge a somewhat radical departure from the classical formulation of Spinoza’s three kinds of knowledge, namely:

knowledge of the first kind is based on sense experience and imagination;

knowledge of the second kind is based on reason or understanding;

knowledge of the third kind, which "proceeds [directly] from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things."

In my scheme of things, imagination does not formally belong in the realm of knowledge. While imagination may encourage and hasten the acquisition or augmentation of knowledge, it cannot be construed as an integral part of knowledge, per se. Likewise, his third kind of knowledge rather belongs in the rubric of Divine enlightenment or revelation, more in the genre of inspiration.

{Parenthetically, I deem it useful to emphasize in passing, that the fanatical acolytes of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) in politics and academia, notably including President Obama and his cohorts, and some friends of mine who I otherwise respect, are the classic victims of the trap laid out by Spinoza. 

{Wittingly or unwittingly, they exploit the inherently ambiguous and overlapping boundary between knowledge and imagination to promote the sinister AGW agenda with the view of enhancing the benefits they may derive therefrom.  For Obama and other politicians it is economic and political leverage to justify taxation. For the academic types it is the continued funding of research or teaching projects, in progress or being proposed.}

Let us examine each one of these types, with the view of enabling us to vary the approach of dealing with each type to better equip our endeavors with the tools to properly and adequately promote our ability to deploy it to serve the mission of knowledge as noted above, namely, the perpetuation of the human species.

II.2.1 Recursive or Operational Knowledge

Of the three species, the third, namely operational knowledge is the simplest kind to prove and establish. I therefore find it expedient to deal with it first. This is exemplified by “how to do things,” kind of knowledge, where the proverbial “the proof is in the pudding” mantra is particularly applicable. 

The know-how used is valid if and only if the process yields the intended and expected results. As with every type of knowledge, the degree of difficulty of the proof is proportional to the degree of complexity of the object.

Thus, for instance, how to prepare a soft-boiled egg depends on what market grade of eggs you are using and who is the intended consumer of the dish. I prefer ‘barely comfortably peelable’ while Jack Lemmon’s Felix Unger prefers ‘spoonable.’ For a Rhode Island White Leghorn medium grade sized egg, Felix’s optimally requires three-and-a-quarter minutes in boiling water; mine is best done in four-and-a-half minutes. 

On the other hand, how to package explosives for remote detonation would require a more intricate construction and commensurate attention to detail. Obviously, in comparison, building the superconducting super collider particle accelerator entails an almost immeasurable degree of complexity.

II.2.2 Descriptive or Attributional Knowledge

Any attempt or effort to codify the attributes of an existent such that it acquires enough coherence to be communicated to another subject or knower, falls in the rubric of establishing attributional knowledge. This type encompasses descriptions of places, people, events, phenomena and imminently knowable objects, etc. These include both tangible (matters, events and places) and intangible objects such as the narrative of a dream episode.

The declarative statement, “my daughter is blonde and she has blue eyes” represents a good example of this type of knowledge. Made to a predominantly Scandinavian or Eastern European audience, it most probably may elicit a shrug of the shoulders or a “big deal!” in response. But made to an Oriental or Asian audience, as happens to be my ethnicity, it might elicit a “how did you manage to do that?” dismissive disbelief kind of response.

In either case, colors of the hair and the eyes being standard features of a person’s likeness traditionally employed for personal identification chores, the audience need not delve into the intricacies of light wave mechanics or the physics of refraction of light to confirm or deny the truth or falsity of the statement. The use of commonplace metrics would suffice to prove the verity of the statement.

The point being, that the ease or difficulty with which knowledge can be established primarily depends on the credulity or gullibility of the recipient public or audience, and the complexity of the knowledge being proved and probed into. Thus the statement “the earth is round,” to be conclusively proved, needed the circumnavigation of the globe to take hold over the proclivities of the “flat earth society.” By contrast, the statement “the sky is blue” needs only the ability of the audience to look up and the vagaries of the weather to get confirmed, or otherwise nullified.

A dream episode is a more cumbersome phenomenon to deal with. That dreams do occur has been chronicled since biblical antiquity. By a dream episode I refer to the sequence of events, scenes and interactions that unfolds while the subject is in a state of sleep which can be recalled in a coherent gestalt after waking up. The subject is involved either as an active participant to the event scenario or as a passive outside spectator. 

Regardless, the narrative of the episode falls under descriptive knowledge. This stems from the dictum of Descartes’ that knowledge emanates from the thinking subjective self. Both the interpretation of the dream and the cause that triggers the episode falls in the rubric of propositional knowledge, as they involve looking into the intricacies of physical activities of the brain and the dynamics of mental functionalities.

II.2.3 Discursive or Propositional Knowledge

This is by far the most complex of the three types of knowledge. As already noted above, the realm of dreams, their analysis and interpretation, appropriately belongs to this type of knowledge.  The realm of poetry, wherever and whenever it crosses the threshold of pure imagination, and becomes knowledge, most definitely falls in this category.

The case of poetry is uniquely instructive. It helps to be cognizant of the following meticulous and astute formulation by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; . . . the pains and pleasure of his species must become his own. . . . Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all otherthoughts,. . . Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, . . .”

At such juncture poetry crosses the threshold of pure imagination into the realm of knowledge, translatable and susceptible of being understood and embraced by another subject, with the requisite sublime faculties, other than the creator of the poetry in question.

By way of an Illustration, I propose to use a first-hand experience which pertains to what I dubbed the Schumann-Spinoza Sonnets. This nomenclature stems from the historical fact that the first four sonnets in the series were written during a period, circa Sep-1980, when for an extended while, I was engrossed on Spinoza’s Ethics, while the Complete Symphonies of Robert Schumann would be serially playing full blast in the background.

I was struggling with a particular passage in Spinoza’s Ethics when like a clap of thunder a passage of Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony seemed to have completely submerged the universe. At that specific instant, I knew I completely understood what Spinoza meant and I had to take a break to capture the moment.

I proceeded to take my Saturday afternoon constitutional which consisted of a leisurely jog to the hilltop of nearby Fort Tryon Park, practically next door to my dwelling. To my complete surprise, a neighborhood art exhibition was in progress. A painting, labeled “The Storm,” in one of the booths caught my attention and I ended up staring at it for well over an hour until the artist, Jacqui, accosted me to inquire if something was wrong.

I politely begged my apologies for my utter consternation and went home and minted all four sonnets on my portable Olivetti in one setting. I went back to the park the next day and handed a copy of the sonnets to Jacqui. I never know what she did with them. I have not seen nor heard from her since.

It really never mattered whether or not she had read them. In my excitement, I took a copy of the sonnets to work the following Monday and showed them to a colleague who politely expressed his appreciation. But it is important to me that I know how they were written, including the sequence of events that preceded it. The experience was quite exquisitely exhilarating. Although I get only occasional comments on them, the very existence of the sonnets has become part of my personal knowledge.

Obviously, propositional knowledge as a type, encompasses a plethora of all sorts of scientific endeavors, notably mathematics and the natural sciences. It is in this area that a vigorously rigorous feedback mechanism is essential to thoroughly utilize previously proved other branches of knowledge to further enhance a particular branch of knowledge under consideration. 

Thus, mathematics is deployed to lend both elegance and rigor to formulations in physics, and vice versa. Biophysics had emerged into existence via a judicious and simultaneous eclectic deployment of mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, computer science, and other kindred disciplines. Similarly, geology utilizes the basics of biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics, etc.

III. The Architecture of Inquiry

The pursuit of truth through disquisition may arguably be traced back to the historical person of Socrates (469-399), BC. He is credited with the formulation that virtue is knowledge and knowledge is virtue, and that

“. . . truth needs to be pursued by modifying one's position through questioning and conflict with opposing ideas. . . .”

In short, he is the best known pioneer of intellectual inquiry. The dialectical method which was later developed into a framework of philosophical thought by the Hegelians from Hegel himself, to Karl Marx and the modern day materialists may be construed as the intellectual brainchild of Socrates.

The [Socratic] method includes the following components:

• interrogating a range of questions regarding a pivotal issue
• providing answers to these questions
• defending certain points of view

·         the ideal method to achieve triumph is that if the opponent asserts something opposite to his own statement, then this is an evidence that the enquirer is correct

Christopher Phillips, writing in Socrates Café for the Society of Philosophical Inquiry, delineates the disquisitional methodology of Socratis as follows:

What distinguishes the Socratic method from mere nonsystematic inquiry is the sustained attempt to explore the ramifications of certain opinions and then offer compelling objections and alternatives. This scrupulous and exhaustive form of inquiry in many ways resembles the scientific method. But unlike Socratic inquiry, scientific inquiry would often lead us to believe that whatever is not measurable cannot be investigated. This "belief" fails to address such paramount human concerns as sorrow and joy and suffering and love.

A typical college syllabus on the subject of Inquiry is described by K. P. Mohanan to contain something like,

“. . . equipping students with the ability to:

·         understand various modes of inquiry and apply them to a range of issues and ideas;

·         examine ways in which knowledge is constructed;

·         critically evaluate arguments and opinions;

·         engage in academic writing and research; and

·         effectively articulate and defend their views orally.“

III.1 Philosophical Inquiry

For pedagogical purposes I prefer to refer to the exquisite expositions by James F. Courtney, David T. Croasdell, and David B. Paradice, all of Texas A&M University (CC&P@TA&MU), on “Inquiring Organizations.” They managed to elegantly recast

“. . . the theories of knowledge of philosophers Leibniz, Locke, Kant, Hegel and Singer ‘in the language and design of inquiring systems,’ providing ‘a description of how learning can be designed, and how the design can be justified.’ Reflections on creating knowledge are shaped and interpreted in the context of designing inquiring systems.”

Having been brought up in the philosophical ambiance of the Yin and Yang that permeates Oriental culture, the theories of knowledge associated with Kant and Hegel readily resonates with my mental and emotional proclivities. For this reason I choose to further focus my attention on the heuristics associated with the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel as shown in the table below (modified from CC&P@TA&MU):

As the authors of “Inquiring Organizations” meticulously noted,

“The models of inquiry, being systems, have inputs, processes, and outputs. The output of an inquiring system is "true" knowledge, or at least knowledge that is believed not to be false. One of the most distinctive features of inquiring systems design is the inclusion of elaborate mechanisms for "guaranteeing" that only "valid" knowledge is produced. . . .”

It can hardly be overemphasized that the validated output of the inquiry is further utilized as a feedback input for further iterations of the inquiry process, with commensurate adjustments on the models or dialectical constructs, as deemed appropriate by the subject. It is this feedback mechanism which when properly nurtured to flourish, guarantees the subsequent growth, progress, and aggrandizement of knowledge.

This feedback loop neglected, would ensure the reign of lethargy and ignorance, which almost for certain leads on to decadence and societal dyslexia. For as Shakespeare once deliciously put it,

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. . . .

III.2  Scientific Inquiry

“. . . No methods exist to guarantee truth. Nonetheless, science, as it has developed over the centuries, has improved its methods. As the philosopher of science Dudley Shapere (1984) puts it: we learn how to learn as we learn.”    

      -- Lindley Darden, Ph.D.

Protecting and upholding the integrity of the method has always been the hallmark of scientific inquiry. The historical record is replete with instances of scientists correcting their conclusions or re-examining their assumptions to accommodate experimental results or empirical observations.

Fidelity to the protocols of inquiry is a requisite aptitude for any investigator of scientific phenomena. Thus, Lord Kelvin could ill afford to suppress Ernst Rutherford’s discovery of radioactivity in order to maintain his assumptions on the sources of heat energy available to the earth in calculating its age.

He had to abandon the 20 to 400 million years range estimated age of the earth he obtained based on purely thermodynamic assumptions. These days the accepted age of the earth based on radioactive dating is in the neighborhood “of 4.54 billion years with an uncertainty of less than 1 percent.”

Selective reporting of empirical observations and/or experimental results in order to support the initial assumptions has never been an accepted practice in scientific inquiry. Any such attempt would categorically undermine the inquiry process itself and render all associated results and observations unworthy of being taken seriously, let alone hasten to advance the initial hypotheses.

The preponderance of quantifiable variables involved in most fields of scientific inquiry renders the process easier to handle. This stems from the rigors that mathematical formalism can potentially be brought to bear on the undertaking. On the other hand, excessive quantification courts the danger of losing the context of the initial hypothesis. The investigator needs to be always vigilant to keep the balance. Otherwise the inquiry can succumb to the danger of missing the forest because of the trees.

The Cartesian methodology probably represents the intersection of philosophical and scientific inquiry. In the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason (1637) Descartes demonstrated that much of his work was concerned with the provision of a secure foundation for the advancement of human knowledge through the natural sciences. He supposed that

 “The progress and certainty of mathematical knowledge . . . provide an emulable model for a similarly productive philosophical method, characterized by four simple rules:

1.   Accept as true only what is indubitable.

2.   Divide every question into manageable parts.

3.   Begin with the simplest issues and ascend to the more complex.

4.   Review frequently enough to retain the whole argument at once.”

Anybody engaged in scientific inquiry can scarcely do wrong by adhering to these simple rules of engagement.

IV.  Practical Implications

The recent discovery of shrimp-like creatures and jellyfish frolicking six hundred feet beneath a massive sheet of ice in the Antarctic engender momentous implications. At the very least, it should entail a rethinking of the assumptions brought to bear on the interpretation of fossil marine animal life respecting local and regional ambient temperatures.

On the other hand, enthusiasts and acolytes of AGW may take the opportunity to leverage the discovery and represent it as one more incontrovertible evidence that AGW is for real and here to stay. No one amongst the researchers who made the discovery expected to find organisms higher than microbes because of the frigid ambient conditions. 

The AGW advocates would be bold enough to assert that precisely because of global warming that these organisms managed to be where they never were expected, given the prohibitive conditions respecting both sunlight and temperature. A largely uninformed public would take the mainstream media balderdash as gospel. 

So like a political campaign, the matter is reduced to sensational journalism. Whoever is able to generate the most effective spin garners the leverage on public opinion, agents of influence, and policy formulations and implementation. What crystallizes as knowledge is a far cry from the product of Descartes’ “four simple rules of engagement” in scientific inquiry.

We are at a crossroads when political decorum disregards well established protocols of intellectual inquiry in order to pursue and forcibly implement political agenda as demanded by ideology of the Progressives genre. The will of the governed is completely and unabashedly ignored by the ruling elite so obsessively blinded by their determination to control and lord it over the political landscape.

IV.1  On Antrophogenic Global Warming

Prominent in the litany of woes for the AGW narrative is Edward Towne’s observation that

“. . . the ‘Summary for Policymakers’ is written first, by policymakers no less, and then the rest of the report is doctored and manipulated by a handful of "lead authors" to fit the summary’s agenda.”

His concluding admonition should be posted on every family dining room, and/or wherever human beings ordinarily congregate such as community centers, game arcades, beer parlors, places of worship, etc.:

“A lot of the responsibility for how this [AGW] is handled rests on you and me.  If someone tells you that the world is going to end in 100 years time because of the gases that come out your mouth and backside, you should have the intellectual fortitude to critically question that claim, and not treat like heretics those who do.”

The concerted effort to imagine and fabricate information to retrofit into the template which buttressed the Policymakers’ agenda was an egregious subversion of every principle and protocol of scientific inquiry. As I emphasized earlier elsewhere,

“It is a breach of protocol . . . that would have warranted sending the offenders to the stakes, if not for the fact that doing so would be a serious sacrilege to the noble memory of Giordano Bruno.”

Or, to invoke a less personal source, as The Washington Times pointedly editorialized more recently (emphasis added),

“The simplistic and increasingly discredited theory of carbon-based, man-caused global warming needs to be discarded, and the scientists who sought to squelch skeptics and artificially inflate their own reputations must be disciplined.”

The arguments I presented in that earlier work bear repeating with even stronger emphasis, as they have increased in relevance and urgency after the White House had persisted to be a part of the vanguard of the AGW crusade:

“Anthropogenic Global Warming, as postulated by the Kyoto Protocol is not even a scientific theory. It is only an unprovable hypothesis. The notion of "Greenhouse Effect" postulated in the context of the entire planet earth is, at best, an extrapolation of boundary value conditions, not otherwise warranted by experimental constraints.

“It is the process of experimentation that elevates an hypothesis into a theory, i.e., when replicable results supportive of the hypothesis are obtained, repeatedly. No such experimentation has been deployed in support of Anthropogenic Global Warming. A computer simulation is not an experiment. It is nothing but an exercise in modeling reality. Its validity depends largely on the set of assumptions that govern the set of process relationships stipulated in the model. It does not prove anything, by any stretch of the imagination.”

Another feature of the AGW movement which cannot be over-emphasized is its association with the paradigm of Command and Control Economics which reigns supreme in communist regimes. Once again, it behooves to recall somewhat extensively the nexus I indicated earlier elsewhere,

“The seminal beginning of the present-day AGW is traceable with unmistakable certainty to the Stockholm Declaration of 1972. Said document, reads, in part:

“Principle 5: The non-renewable resources of the earth must be employed in such a way as to guard against the danger of their future exhaustion and to ensure that benefits from such employment are shared by all mankind.

  “Principle 14: Rational planning constitutes an essential tool for reconciling any conflict between the needs of development and the need to protect and improve the environment. “

“In other words, a Command and Control Economy needs to be established to guarantee the equality of outcome for all peoples. The resources of the planet must be leveraged by a Global Government and deployed with precision to achieve that goal. What better tool to galvanize the support of the entire planet than a common danger with the tragic existential implications of Armageddon. Hence AGW as recently celebrated in Copenhagen came into being.”

The traditional notions of “valid knowledge” as established by the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel have been summarily abandoned by the intellectual brainthrust of AGW as represented by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Consequently, any self-respecting intellect should summarily dismiss any and all pronouncements coming out of that disgraced body. 

Thus when the POTUS brazenly claimed in this year’s State of the Union Address of an "overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change," he was counting on what he perceived as the ignorance of the American peoplewhich elevated him to the Oval Office. Or, to be more charitable, he was reciting meaningless talking points platitudes with the assurance that a rubber stamp Congress can push through every whimsical scheme he embraces.

On President Obama's radical plan for the environment, in his book (which deserves to be in the required reading list for middle schoolers) “Red Hot Lies,” Christopher Horner warns that

“. . . global warming is the latest and greatest excuse for Obama's socialist agenda—which includes energy controls, economic interventions, and the explosion of the nanny state.

“When it comes to ‘saving the planet’ (read: controlling your life), liberal pundits and politicians will do anything to keep you under their Green thumb.”

The point is, there is money to be made by jumping onto the Global Warming bandwagon, provided you are on the taking side of the financial equation. Politicians and pundits of all shades and flavors conveniently embrace the Global Warming dogma not only as a matter of intellectual indolence, but more so as a matter of economic advantage.

Patrik Jonsson, staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor more explicitly noted,

“. . . Obama has set the scene for expanding the reach of climate-change imperatives – and science – into the lives of everyday Americans.

“He has made a ‘green economy’ a hallmark of the $787 billion stimulus package . . . He has prioritized the cap-and-trade bill and put into effect new auto mileage standards. And the Environmental Protection Agency has for the first time characterized carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, as a pollutant that it can control.”

Purveyors of political and economic policies who give a penny’s worth to the IPCC’s agenda, starting with Barack Hussein Obama himself should more properly be run out of town by sundown. We desperately need a new sheriff in town who is ready, willing, and able to preserve, protect, and defend the American way of life starting with the most cherished value of human knowledge.

 IV.2  On Darwinian Theory of Evolution

The theory of evolution as propounded by Charles Darwin in “The Origin of Species” (1859) should be more properly looked at as the hypothesis on evolution. Despite strong evidence of random mutation taking place in geologic history as inferred from the fossil records, no matter how ubiquitously voluminous, there has never been a documented instance that proved incontrovertibly, of new species emerging from an entirely different species just on the basis of environmentally leveraged random mutation.

The search for the so-called “Missing Link” which was deemed to prove once and for all that the human species are all descended from the apes, has largely been abandoned. Not because the need for a “link” to prove the “theory” has been rendered moot, by a preponderance of supportive evidence but because of the putative inertia of failure. 

No sooner than the announcement of the fossil found purported to be the “missing link” was celebrated with great fanfare, that contrary evidence was unveiled to debunk it. The purveyors of information were so eager to present what they construe as evidence of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution that wittingly or unwittingly, they were willing to disregard the traditional rigors of scientific inquiry.

Darwin’s theory of evolution got assimilated into the realm of knowledge on the strength of journalism, not of scientific inquiry. This came about on the heels of the secularist tide that swept European thought in the 19th century. This intellectual ferment has been chronicled succinctly by Keith Thomson of the American Scientist, especially as pertains to Darwin and Malthus.

As The New York Times put it barely four years ago,

“. . . contemporary Europe is the closest thing to a godless civilization the world has ever known. Does this place it in the vanguard of world history? That is what many Europeans think, which is why they have been caught off guard by the challenge of radical Islam even in their own back yard. They find it hard to believe that people can still take God seriously . . .”

Consistent with Thomas Kuhn’s formulation of shifting paradigms that usher in scientific revolutions, peer reviewed scientific literature became weighted towards the adoption of Darwinian Theory as a legitimate challenge to the religious doctrine on the origins of life. Most crucial to this dominance is in the production of science textbooks in every level of the educational system.

In effect Darwinian Theory became a self-fulfilling prophecy (as obtains in theories on social prejudice) whose trajectory into dominance is analogous to Allen MacNeill’s, alleles:

“If the environmental change persisted, new alleles might arise, but they would begin with a ‘norm of reaction’ that would produce significantly larger mean beak sizes, along with a normal distribution with significantly larger beaks at the upper tail of the distribution.

“In other words, the existing alleles for such a trait would bias subsequent mutations in the ‘direction’ of larger beaks, simply because the pool of potential new alleles would already start out biased in that direction. Therefore, the mutations and developmental changes that were available from one generation to the next would be biased in the direction of whatever phenotypic trait resulted in the highest reproductive success.”

James Lennox suggested in summary that Darwinian Theory “can be set out as a series of causal elements that, working together, will produce the needed transformations” (emphasis added): 

1. 1.   Species are comprised of individuals that vary ever so slightly from each other with respect to their many traits.

2.   Species have a tendency to increase in size over generations at an exponential rate.

3.   This tendency, given limited resources, disease, predation, and so on, creates a constant condition of struggle for survival among the members of a species.

4.   Some individuals will have variations that give them a slight advantage in this struggle, variations that allow more efficient or better access to resources, greater resistance to disease, greater success at avoiding predation, and so on.

5.   These individuals will tend to survive better and leave more offspring.

6. Offspring tend to inherit the variations of their parents.
7. Therefore favorable variations will tend to be passed on more frequently than others, a tendency Darwin labeled ‘Natural Selection’.
8. Over time, especially in a slowly changing environment, this process will cause the character of species to change.
9. Given a long enough period of time, the descendant populations of an ancestor species will differ enough to be classified as different species, a process capable of indefinite iteration. There are, in addition, forces that encourage divergence among descendant populations, and the elimination of intermediate varieties.

I included the list in its entirety to illuminate two significant points about the doctrine. First, items (8) and (9) provide the escape clause that renders any need for tangible proof of the theory as untenable, therefore unnecessary. The duration of human history is simply negligible compared to the span of geologic time.  Furthermore, item (9) guarantees that the “missing link” can stay undiscovered and would not in any way affect the validity of the theory. If it is supposed to be eliminated then it can forever remain “missing.”

Secondly, items (2) and (3) confirm the well-documented Malthusian pedigree of Darwinism. As Darwin himself suggested in his autobiography (1876), Malthus was the spark of inspiration for his Theory on Natural Selection (emphasis added):

 “. . . I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population. . . . it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work.”

Finally, it is important to emphasize that the strong tendency to cannibalize the private sector respecting wealth creation, as evinced by most of the policy formulations of Barack Hussein Obama is simply another mutation of this Malthusian-Darwinian cognitive dissonance. President Obama being a self-professed Christian, I concede him his professed faith. I only dare suggest in passing that judging by his policies alone, he appears to be most likely a Progressives Secularist unless there is such a thing as Christianity of the godless variety.

V.  Concluding Observations

“All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research. . . . a crisis may end with the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing battle over its acceptance.” (Kuhn, 1962)

The battle over the acceptance of paradigms encapsulates the crisis of our time. On the one hand, there is the Repugnant Obama Paradigm with designs to fundamentally subvert the ideals which undergird the founding of the Republic. On the other hand, the Conservative Paradigm’s ‘super’ majority of the populace, some undoubtedly having voted for Barack Obama, remain faithful to the Founding Principles as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, are determined to prevent any such transformation.

With the leviathan of the Federal government at its disposal, the battle is definitely stacked in favor of the transformationists . The jury is still out on who will eventually prevail. The underhanded way in which ObamaCare was passed through both houses of Congress does not bode well for the Republic.

This unfolding of events is consistent with my earlier observation that President Obama is the Zen Master of “the nexus of political subterfuge so effectively employed by both Lenin and Stalin against their rivals to pull off the Bolshevik revolution.” That poll after poll indicates a sizeable majority of the populace are opposed to his socialistic agenda provides a glimmer of hope that there are still institutional safeguards that may be brought to bear in lending impetus to this opposition.

Numerous reports of legal challenges to the legitimacy of the recently passed Health Care bill are indeed encouraging. This glimmer of optimism has to be taken with more than just the proverbial grain of salt, however, especially that Obama is well schooled in the art of packing the courts, pioneered by his professed model for governance, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The electoral process remains to be our most potent weapon against the usurpers of power throughout the political landscape. Until that opportunity to throw out in the midterm elections the acolytes to the Obama Regime in Congress comes, judicial challenges remain a potent vehicle both for stalling the devastating effects of ObamaCare and for formulating a viable alternative to Obama’s designs to downsize, to oblivion, this last best hope of man on earth.  

VI. Bibliography: Itemizing Primary Sources

Item numbers denote the section<dot>sequence (of appearance) of the sourcing item indicated within the section.

Preface:

http://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html

http://www.fleurdelis.com/rubaiyat.htm

I.0 Prolegomenon

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/

I.1 Personal Dimension

       http://www.joanswirsky.com/

http://townhall.com/columnists/Column2.aspx?UrlTitle=rethinking_political_virtue&ns=MonaCharen&dt=02/19/2010&page=full&comments=true&submitted=true

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/5974

I.2 Professional and Political Conjectures

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Home

http://townhall.com/columnists/PatBuchanan/2010/03/02/hoax_of_the_century?page=full&comments=true

II.1 Elements of Knowledge

       http://km.brint.com/km.htm

       http://www.brint.com/ym.html

       http://www.brint.org/

       http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5108/

       http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/e/epistemology.htm

       http://www.futureperspective.com/know.htm

       http://www.radicalacademy.com/epistoa.htm

       http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#JTB

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/russell

II.2 Three Types of Knowledge

http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/rutherford/phil104/spinoza4.html

II.2.1 Recursive or Operational Knowledge

       http://www.clarion-call.org/yeshua/pudding/proof.htm

       http://www.freebase.com/view/en/felix_unger

       http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4884506.html

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/ssc-and-future.html

II.2.2 Descriptive or Attributional Knowledge

       http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/

II.2.3 Discursive or Propositional Knowledge

       http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/shelley-poetry.html

       http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/

       http://acelilacs.webs.com/schumanspinozasonnets.htm

http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.3,_Op.97_(Schumann,_Robert)

http://www.music-with-ease.com/schumann-symphony-1-b-flat.html

III. The Architecture of Inquiry

       http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/SOCRATES.HTM

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/socrates-philosophy-and-socratic-method.html

mailto:socratescafe@gmail.com?subject=I_have_a_qestion!

III.1 Philosophical Inquiry

       http://www.bauer.uh.edu/parks/fis/fisindex.htm#jc

       http://www.bauer.uh.edu/parks/fis/fisindex.htm#dc

       http://www.bauer.uh.edu/parks/fis/fisindex.htm#dp

       http://www.bauer.uh.edu/parks/fis/inqorg.htm

http://phiyakushi.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/the-philosophy-behind-macrobiotics-understanding-yin-and-yang/

http://www.ist-world.org/ProjectDetails.aspx?ProjectId=e87c34e7583c4d32a6a11c9a9907999c

http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/05/dialectic.htm

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6820084/claims.html

http://www.bauer.uh.edu/parks/fis/inqorg.htm

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/julius_caesar/full.html

III.2 Scientific Inquiry

       http://hist-analytic.org/Baumrin.htm

       http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Kelvin.html

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1908/rutherford-bio.html

       http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/Faculty/LDarden/sciinq/

       http://earthsci.org/fossils/geotime/radate/radate.html

       http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html

       http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/59

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/text/descart/des-meth.htm

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4b.htm#disc

http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/i9.htm#indub

IV.0 Practical Implications

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100315/ap_on_sc/us_sci_antarctica_sea_life

http://www.nolanchart.com/article7402.html

IV.1 On Antrophogenic Global Warming

       http://www.nolanchart.com/article805.html

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/asumen/2009/11272009.htm

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_kessler/giordano_bruno.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/02/osama-and-obama-on-global-warming/

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/asumen/2009/11272009.htm

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/27/obama-is-no-kennedy-redefines-nasas-mission-as-global-warming/

http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2009/03/japanese-scientists-rejecting-global.html

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/asumen/2010/01042010.htm

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=97&ArticleID=1503&l=en

http://www.prisonplanet.com/monckton-secretive-copenhagen-treaty-creates-larcenous-global-govern

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/02/osama-and-obama-on-global-warming/

http://books.google.com/books?id=1W6dMudInpkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Red+Hot+Lies&source=bl&ots=-54efVI4_o&sig=TuI1EXcHel0zBftlVrLMeq9u5Fk&hl=en&ei=QBKvS424LcKblgf0uaGQAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDQQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

IV.2 On Darwinian Theory of Evolution

       http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter6.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/05/19/2009-05-19_missing_link_found_fossil_of_47_millionyearold_primate_sheds_light_on_.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100302131719.htm

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/1798-darwin-and-malthus

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/arts/31iht-idlede1.html

http://www.motivation-tools.com/workplace/social_prejudice.htm

http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2006/06/random-mutation-and-natural-selection.html

http://www.pitt.edu/~jglennox/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/darwinism/#PhiProDarDar

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/malthus.html

V.0 Concluding Observations

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Thomas-Kuhn.htm

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/asumen/2009/11112009.htm

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/asumen/2010/03032010.htm

http://www.thehopeforamerica.com/play.php?id=3416

http://hoosierpundit.blogspot.com/2010/03/zoeller-readies-legal-challenge-to.html

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=119783

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20100228_Obama_should_expand_court.html

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0799fdrcourt.htm

VII. Suggested Keywords