Following on from my post about the left thinking the right are evil and the right thinking the left are dumb …
at the Australian libertarian’s website it says:
Often libertarians are described as ‘economically right-wing’ and ‘socially left-wing’. While this isn’t a perfect explanation, it’s a helpful shortcut and one that has been used by www.self-gov.org in their ‘world’s smallest political quiz’.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
You can’t be both ‘economically right-wing’ and ‘socially left-wing’ without living in perpetual conflict – one philosophy is for a free (unregulated) market and the other is for a State regulated society.
There’s another on this site:
http://www.gravett.org/yobbo/quiz/quiz.htm
I’d like to think there are a few more dimensions, including ‘culture’.
Steven Jay Gould wrote a fine series of essays in “The Panda’s Thumb” particularly those in “Science and the Politics of Human Differences”. They poked fun at how the top scientists of 19th century got so many things wrong. Gould’s essays mount a compelling case that no matter how objective the science, and I also include politics, we are all irretrievably influenced by the prevailing ‘culture’.
Through Jennifer and Louis’ work I like to think I can see some cracks in the ‘prevailing culture’ as epitomised by the ABC, State Education Departments, Fairfax press and the ‘Watermelons’ (or ‘Bong Brigade’).
Forester
You are right Forrester, but mindful of the fate of Gallileo and, of course Bruno, who was burnt on the stake, scientists I am associated with accept that change won’t occur in our lifetimes.
Hence we are documenting everything for the next generation to discover.
Scientific paradigm shifts, as Paulli noted, don’t occur when the new generation convince the older, but from the dying of the older.
This is scientifically problematical but in the real world in which we must live, a fact.