Owen Harries writes in today’s Financial Review,
“On political matters, intellectuals tend to share two characteristics: they are slaves to fashion; and on the big questions, they tend to get things hopelessly wrong.”
Harries proceeds to give a few thousand words of relevant examples beginning with,
“If you had been a man of affairs living in 1910 or thereabouts, it is likely that you woiuld have been well aware of the increasing tense international atmosphere, as Germany not content with having the most powerful army in the world, sought to challenge Britian as a leading naval power. But if you had been an intellectual living in the same period, chances are you would have subscribed to the view, propagated by Norman Angell in The Great Illusion, that war was a dying institution… ”
The Club of Rome predictions in the 1970s – that unless we limit population and industrial growth the world would self-destruct by the end of century – are included in Harries list.
Harries asks, “Why do intellectuals get things so wrong, so often? The question is worth asking because they are still with us, still vocal, still taken seriously by many as the interpreters of the course of human history. A large part of the answer, surely, lies in the intellectuals’ search for – demand for – coherence in human affairs, for pattern, for meaning and consistency. Once this was found in the form of religion; for the past hundred years or more, most intellectuals have found it in the form of ideology.”
Does this provide some insight into how and why some of our most revered environmentalist academics get it so wrong – from Paul Ehrlich to Ian Lowe?
……………………
The piece by Owen Harries titled ‘The parochialism of the present’ is to appear “simultaneously in the inaugural issue of The American Interest” at www.the-american-interest.com. But I can’t find it there.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Subscription required
http://www.the-american-interest.com/cms/abstract.cfm?Id=17
More opinion on Harrries;
http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_print.php?cdate=2005-09-13
Looks spot on to me.
Jennifer, you can’t possibly be serious quoting the work as being of any rigour or value at all.
HArries first ludicrously attempts to divide the world into two broad classes: 1. intellectuals and 2. the people who do the real work of society.
Not only is this an unrealistic generalisation, but I’m sure you’d agree that Harries is committing Rule 1 of the rules of propoganda – dividing into two groups, one who is bad, and the other who is good.
She is also commiting rule 2, by trying to parody her opposition as a made up collection of people who she calles ‘the intellectual class’, and smearing this group. Hello, there is no such group. Its a total construct.
She then goes on to present a few anecdotes of people who she has decided to fit into her ‘intellectual class’ and how they got things wrong. She then commits rule 4 of the rules of propoganda by drawing the conclusion that because these handful of people were wrong, all intellectuals (ie all people who she disagrees with) must be wrong most of the time, and everyone with common sense knows this.
This is the lamest of commentary Jennifer, surely you are against this kind of coarse analysis of society, separating into broad made up categories like that.
It is the antithesis of an “evidence-based” approach.
Don’t expect me to let up on you on this. You’ve staked your credibility on being all about an evidence-based approach. Stick to it. Don’t let everyone down.
A couple of posts ago we were discussing how people refer to themselves as scientists for the purpose of bolstering their authority.
You have often enough talked of your drive for an evidence-based approach. Maybe you are just saying this to boost your own authority, similar to ian lowe needing to discribe himself as a scientist. Because quite a few of your posts are like this one: linking to opinion writers who are publishing passionate, polemical tripe, rather than evidence.
Do you really buy into the idea that there is a well-defined group of people called ‘intellectuals’ who, back in 1910, all thought that war was a thing of the past? Honestly.
Harries doesn’t divide the world into two groups, he just proposes that there is a group that can be classified as ‘intellectuals’. And I am sure Harries would agree that some intellectuals get things right… make correct predictions. I have observed that the group is often sought-out by the media for comment e.g. Lowe, Flannery, Cullen, Quiggin. The media still quote Ehrlich even though he has been predicting wrong for decades. Consider the Harries piece an opinion piece with a few hypotheses. It can be fun to explore an hypothesis even if you don’t agree with it – suggest an alternative hypothesis perhaps. Harries doesn’t pretend to be a scientist – as far as I can tell. I wonder if anyone is familiar with the book ‘The Great Illusion’? AS I read Harries in the Fin Review I was pondering why Ian Lowe so completely misrepresented my work on the Murray River in the final chapter of his book – but I will keep this for another blog post. Quiggin has done the same – that is completely misrepresent my work.
oooo – so who had a bad night then …
Jen – you have got to be kidding. Wild generalisations. So I suppose all those intellectuals that have produced the technology we use in the 20 and 21st century must be in another basket of goods.
Yep Club of Rome got it wrong – boo hoo. Did anyone lose any money on it.
But the systems modelling principles are still good – and there are resource limits. Otherwise the Chinese would not have done the one baby policy. But do we think that resources are infinite and that technology will always save the day (which is where Club of Rome got it wrong). DO we think that every single ecological/environmnetal notion is wrong.
The argument for a better balance or serious alternatives is severely lacking.
I am not sure intellectuals have produced a lot of technology.
🙂
Jennifer, have you often been sought out by the media for comment?
And have you got John Quiggin’s agreement that he misrepresented you? Or is it merely that you disagree?
So we now define an “intellectual” as a pseudo-academic time wasting university (or other) numb nuts or greenie or non-right wing annoying person or anyone who thinks for themselves and doesn’t want to turn the planet into a parking lot ?
and who won’t have done anything useful in their entire life but rave on …..
hmmmm…. ah ha … yep …
reckon we’re getting somewhere here…
Says it all really.
The so called “Latham Diaries” are further evidence of the intellectual Left’s inherent psychosis and lack of relevance to contemporary issues.
http://solohq.com/Articles/Pritchard/Come_Back,_Karl_All_Is_Forgiven.shtml
Well Rog – while you right wing dudes are wallowing in a soup of self congratulatory rhetorical drivel some of us are keeping up with the literature.
I just happened upon this while having my chamomile tea and rocket-leaf whole grain sandwich…..
Read it and weep boyo …
Science, Vol 309, Issue 5742, 1844-1846 , 16 September 2005
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1116448]
Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment
P. J. Webster,1 G. J. Holland,2 J. A. Curry,1 H.-R. Chang1
We examined the number of tropical cyclones and cyclone days as well as tropical cyclone intensity over the past 35 years, in an environment of increasing sea surface temperature. A large increase was seen in the number and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5. The largest increase occurred in the North Pacific, Indian, and Southwest Pacific Oceans, and the smallest percentage increase occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean. These increases have taken place while the number of cyclones and cyclone days has decreased in all basins except the North Atlantic during the past decade.
1 School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
2 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA.
We deliberately limited this study to the satellite era because of the known biases before this period (28), which means that a comprehensive analysis of longer-period oscillations and trends has not been attempted. There is evidence of a minimum of intense cyclones occurring in the 1970s (11), which could indicate that our observed trend toward more intense cyclones is a reflection of a long-period oscillation. However, the sustained increase over a period of 30 years in the proportion of category 4 and 5 hurricanes indicates that the related oscillation would have to be on a period substantially longer than that observed in previous studies.
We conclude that global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes, corroborated by the results of the recent regional assessment (29). This trend is not inconsistent with recent climate model simulations that a doubling of CO2 may increase the frequency of the most intense cyclones (18, 30), although attribution of the 30-year trends to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.
Ian Lowe may have the last laugh after all…
We love you Ian – “they know not what they do – forgive them their sins…”
Don’t you just hate those left-wing intellectual smart alecks doing research ?
I am happy to be considered an intellectual along with Lowe, Flannery and Quiggin. Just cranky they misrepresent my work – in my view because it does not support the ideological position they defend.