Neil DeGrasse Tyson - SDN rundown.

[Napoleon the Clown]

re: bullets - Still cheaper than making an effective dispersal method for chemical weapons.

re: blistering agents - I've been specifically referring to nerve agents the entire time because that's what was in the news why he made his comments.

re: accidental explosives in a person - Not a feature when it's an accident. Contamination in sarin is not a bug, it's a feature.

re: civilians vs soldiers - Yeah, soldiers are better equipped to handle it, and targeting civilians with anything is shitty. My point the entire time has been that there's damn good reason that nerve agents are a war crime to use.


At this point the conversation is going way in the hell off-topic. I'll discuss it in another thread if we really want to go around in circles of "Well, there's this bad thing too." "My point isn't that other stuff isn't bad, it's that nerve agents are considered so horrible because they are in no way efficient at killing people and are used because they make for agonizing death and responders getting affected too."



Back on the subject of NDT, everything I've seen indicates that he's a genuinely cool dude. Only thing I've really disagreed with is comparing sarin to a bomb because "both have chemicals."

[Guardsman Bass]

I read his book Space Chronicles*, and he comes across as a more pessimistic (realistic?) version of Carl Sagan when it comes to space exploration. He's been pushing stuff like the "NASA penny", but in the book he doesn't seriously think manned space exploration support from the US will pick up unless there's a geopolitical competition factor to it with China, and I think at one point he says that if he had the choice between one manned mission and its cost's worth of robot rovers (say 50 rovers), he'd probably send the rovers.

* Don't bother buying it, by the way, unless you're doing it to support him financially. It's just a bunch of his essays and interviews condensed into book form.

[hongi]

He's simply wrong about how Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (extremely influential muslim theologian) single-handedly destroyed the Islamic Golden Age. That's not a big surprise, seeing as how scientists can and often have put their foot in their mouths when talking about things outside of their field. But it's disappointing that he didn't research it (e.g. ask a historian) and never retracted it afaik. It also really annoys me how various atheists have latched onto his claim as definitive proof that religion is poisonous to science, either because they trust authority figures especially when they're scientists or because it confirms their pre-held narrative that religion and science are in conflict.

[Havok]

I was always under the assumption that chemical agents were initially created to kill while leaving property and infrastructure intact. How the enemy is killed and conquered is of no consequence, concern or consideration.

[Terralthra]

He's simply wrong about how Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (extremely influential muslim theologian) single-handedly destroyed the Islamic Golden Age. That's not a big surprise, seeing as how scientists can and often have put their foot in their mouths when talking about things outside of their field. But it's disappointing that he didn't research it (e.g. ask a historian) and never retracted it afaik. It also really annoys me how various atheists have latched onto his claim as definitive proof that religion is poisonous to science, either because they trust authority figures especially when they're scientists or because it confirms their pre-held narrative that religion and science are in conflict.

From what I understand, Tyson did ask a historian. His conclusion about al-Ghazali regarding the Islamic Golden Age is sourced from Abdul-Fattah Sawwaf's étude de la réforme ghazzalienne dans l'histoire de son développement.

[Grumman]

I was always under the assumption that chemical agents were initially created to kill while leaving property and infrastructure intact.

The only ones that come to mind where this is true are pesticides, not anti-personnel poisons.

[hongi]

From what I understand, Tyson did ask a historian. His conclusion about al-Ghazali regarding the Islamic Golden Age is sourced from Abdul-Fattah Sawwaf's étude de la réforme ghazzalienne dans l'histoire de son développement.

Where did you hear that Tyson asked this historian? I'd be surprised, it's in French and seemingly has never been translated into English. Normally this wouldn't be a problem for me, I have to read French a lot, but Sawwaf's doctoral dissertation dates from 1962 and is unavailable to me even through my university. It seems known only to specialists of Islamic philosophy. And Tyson does not speak French, so far as I can make out.

[Elheru Aran]

From what I understand, Tyson did ask a historian. His conclusion about al-Ghazali regarding the Islamic Golden Age is sourced from Abdul-Fattah Sawwaf's étude de la réforme ghazzalienne dans l'histoire de son développement.

Where did you hear that Tyson asked this historian? I'd be surprised, it's in French and seemingly has never been translated into English. Normally this wouldn't be a problem for me, I have to read French a lot, but Sawwaf's doctoral dissertation dates from 1962 and is unavailable to me even through my university. It seems known only to specialists of Islamic philosophy. And Tyson does not speak French, so far as I can make out.

It's possible that he simply asked a Francophone colleague to translate it for him. Alternatively, he may have contacted Sawwaf directly or secondhand through another colleague. He doesn't seem the kind of fellow to simply spout off one way or another without at least a cursory check over the material he discusses, but it's happened before with smart people...

[hongi]

He doesn't seem the kind of fellow to simply spout off one way or another without at least a cursory check over the material he discusses, but it's happened before with smart people...

It has nothing to do with smart people, it's about people who are qualified in their own area of specialty not being qualified in others.

I really do want to know where NDT got his ideas from (I have my suspicions), ideas which he has verbalised and shared as part of his work as a science populariser. And which have had a profound impact on the general public's already shoddy knowledge of Islam. Really, before hearing NDT go on about how this religious fanatic supposedly destroyed scientific progress (confirming already existing Enlightenment metanarratives about how religion always keeps the proud scientist down), how many atheists had even heard of al-Ghazali?

Well maybe that's an unfair question to ask, seeing as how the general public doesn't know much if anything about Augustine let alone al-Ghazali, but shouldn't that be cause for more care and more concern and further investigation, not just blind acceptance of what someone says on a pulpit in a lecture, especially when that person has a responsibility and duty as a scientific educator to be accurate with regard to the scientific facts? Does that just not apply to history?

How many atheists were inspired by NDT to actually go look up scholarly publications or translations of al-Ghazali's work? Or endeavour to see what al-Ghazali's reception was and is like in the Muslim world? AKA what do Muslims think about this seminal thinker? He's widely read and very popular among Muslims. But I guess what Muslims think about a Muslim thinker doesn't matter...?

[hongi]

He's simply wrong about how Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (extremely influential muslim theologian) single-handedly destroyed the Islamic Golden Age. That's not a big surprise, seeing as how scientists can and often have put their foot in their mouths when talking about things outside of their field. But it's disappointing that he didn't research it (e.g. ask a historian) and never retracted it afaik. It also really annoys me how various atheists have latched onto his claim as definitive proof that religion is poisonous to science, either because they trust authority figures especially when they're scientists or because it confirms their pre-held narrative that religion and science are in conflict.

From what I understand, Tyson did ask a historian. His conclusion about al-Ghazali regarding the Islamic Golden Age is sourced from Abdul-Fattah Sawwaf's étude de la réforme ghazzalienne dans l'histoire de son développement.

Are you sure you didn't just get it from wikipedia?

Others[who?] have cited his opposition to certain strands of Islamic philosophy as a detriment to Islamic scientific progress.[10][full citation needed]

10. ^ Sawwaf, A. (1962) al-Ghazali: Etude sur la réforme Ghazalienne dans l’histoire de son développement (Fribourg).

[Terralthra]

He's simply wrong about how Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (extremely influential muslim theologian) single-handedly destroyed the Islamic Golden Age. That's not a big surprise, seeing as how scientists can and often have put their foot in their mouths when talking about things outside of their field. But it's disappointing that he didn't research it (e.g. ask a historian) and never retracted it afaik. It also really annoys me how various atheists have latched onto his claim as definitive proof that religion is poisonous to science, either because they trust authority figures especially when they're scientists or because it confirms their pre-held narrative that religion and science are in conflict.

From what I understand, Tyson did ask a historian. His conclusion about al-Ghazali regarding the Islamic Golden Age is sourced from Abdul-Fattah Sawwaf's étude de la réforme ghazzalienne dans l'histoire de son développement.

Are you sure you didn't just get it from wikipedia?

Others[who?] have cited his opposition to certain strands of Islamic philosophy as a detriment to Islamic scientific progress.[10][full citation needed]

10. ^ Sawwaf, A. (1962) al-Ghazali: Etude sur la réforme Ghazalienne dans l’histoire de son développement (Fribourg).

He mentioned Sawwaf, along with some other historians he briefly rattled off, at a Q&A session at a talk at the university at which I got my postgraduate degree. I remembered Sawwaf because the name sounded Arabic, unlike the other names which sounded stereotypically European. I don't know that he read (or was citing) that specific thesis, that's just the only one I could find that mentions al-Ghazali, so it was an educated guess. I got that particular paper title from the Wikipedia, yes. I haven't been able to find a full text version of that text at any rate to read myself, though in truth I'm not sure my French is up to an academic paper on philosophical pedagogy and religion.

More to the point, where would NdGT have actually gotten the information? Articles on al-Ghazali doesn't mention him thinking that rational explanation of the cosmos is impossible (which isn't true at any rate) or that numbers are the devil (which also, to my knowledge, is not true), nor that most historians correlate his teachings with the decline of the Islamic Golden Age (subject to interpretation, but again, widely held to be untrue). So, he's not citing common knowledge, nor did he do his own independent research (which would have told him his information is not accurate). Mind you, this is a guy who - in the same talk he mentions al-Ghazali - mentions several astronomers and natural philosophers, traces a very detailed path through the advancement of European knowledge of the solar system, and quotes from their books, letters, and correspondence at length. When he does his own research, he's pretty thorough.

So, to me, there are two main possibilities. One: he looked up the Islamic Golden Age, found a prominent theologian who lived during it and said some stuff that could be interpreted as anti-science, and ran with it because it supported his thesis; or, two: he found some historians who said that was the cause and didn't critically investigate their claims, since their claims supported his thesis. The second seems more likely to me, as prominent historians are frequently cited well after their points of view and positions are discredited.

[Guardsman Bass]

. . . Uh, so what actually did kill the Muslim Golden Age of Science? At least after the Mongols trampled the heart of the medieval Arab region?

Sorry, that might be worth a spin-off.

[Alyrium Denryle]

As far as I am concerned, NDT is better than most physicists when it comes to not being an asshole. He gets worked up for comedic purposes, but other than that is not a titanic douche. Nor does he spout off about biology in dumbass ways like *other* physicists I can mention. His interaction with my particular field of study is cursory familiarity coupled with infectious childlike wonder when presented with leeches, and that is the way it should be.

[Simon_Jester]

. . . Uh, so what actually did kill the Muslim Golden Age of Science? At least after the Mongols trampled the heart of the medieval Arab region?

Sorry, that might be worth a spin-off.

By the time the Mongols subsided, including aftershocks such as Tamerlane (who managed to kill something like 5% of the human race by sheer murderous razing of cities), anything resermbling a "Golden Age" was already over for Islam. The real question is, had the Muslim Golden Age ended before the Mongols arrived? Because if it didn't end before them, the Mongols are a perfectly adequate explanation all by themselves.