Physics 206. Week Four: Sept. 25 and 27.
Chapter 4 points: Wasteland

1. The idea of a wasteland goes back hundreds of years in European history. After the disasters of World War I, T.S. Eliot wrote a poem by the same name meant to echo the disillusionment that accompanied the loss of cultural confidence in Europe. Today, 'multiculturalism' and politically correct 'fairness' nicely illustrate the nihilistic attitudes too common among self-proclaimed intellectuals in Europe and North America.

2. Doctrinal religions
a. For doctrinal religions, the wasteland is the part of humanity outside their religious communities. Salvation comes only from their faith. Having the single, absolute truth, doctrinal religions contrast the benefits within the religion to the tribulations that those otuside the religion will suffer both in life and after death.

3. Science
a. Within science, the wasteland is 'scientism', believing that the only truths are those found by using science. Scientism argues that only what can be observed and measured exists. Among the resulting absurdities, this implies that the composition of the world changed as our technology for making measuring instruments changed.
b. Several religions have lost authority with many people precisely because the benefits of science and technology, including longer life, fewer physical afflictions, and an easier life, were opposed by religious leaders. From literacy (e.g., the printing press), machinery to innoculations to the science ideas underlying the technology, there is a long history of religious leaders opposing innovations that have helped people. Unfortunately, this has sometimes led to an uncritical approval of any ideas coming from science, including the malevolent.
c. Science is often, and we argue incorrectly, portrayed as free of values. The argument that science innately has values is a strong argument against scientism. Other arguments include:
	(1) Scientism reduces people to the same status of study as rocks;
	(2) Science inevitably leads to the idea that nothing is special or sacred;
	(3) Scientism leads to the idea of collective progress, which itself is a bad idea.
d. One way, and perhaps a particularly good way, to judge scientism is to see it in action. We discuss two examples: eugenics and, in a later chapter, the Lysenko episode in Soviet science.
e. Eugenics: Eugenics is an area of supposed science that says a given person can be racially categorized, and that there are 'superior' and 'inferior' races. In the U.S., with eugenics treated as reputable science for decades, this led to the egregiously wrong U.S. Supreme Court decision of Buck vs Bell (1927) finding forced sterilization constitutional. Over 60,000 people in the 28 states with such laws were forcibly sterilized after this decision.

4. Art
a. Art, and artists, react to the presence of a wasteland by criticizing it and by alienation if the wasteland is too ubiquitous. The word 'wasteland' can refer to more than one quality in society. One quality is a lack of hope, of meanings, as we quote Eliade on. So one way to describe the wasteland in the arts is despair.

5. Synthesis: How to cope with wasteland conditions?
a. Reason: Accompanied by and drawing on experiments and observations, reason is still  an essential part of coping.
b. Gumption: Also known as courage or fortitude. Here we contrast the cowardly, nihilistic and pessimistic view of many Europeans with the more positive response of Indian philosophers.
c. Subversion: In both the sciences and the arts, subversion is an essential mechanism for coping with wasteland conditions.
d. Face reality: without illusions, and unblinkingly.