Against the Idols of the Age: A Contrarian's Critique of the Twentieth Century

There is something appealing about contrarians. People who see things from a different perspective may often be on to something. Hence my attraction to David Stove's Against the Idols of the Age, a provocative collection of essays that challenges dominant intellectual trends of the 20th century. 

The book gathers Stove’s critiques of scientific irrationalism, modern philosophy, and cultural orthodoxies, arguing that many influential ideas—especially in the philosophy of science and evolutionary theory—rest on faulty reasoning and misplaced reverence for fashion-able thinkers. Stove targets figures like Popper, Kuhn, and Darwinist interpretations of human behavior, while defending common sense, empirical realism, and logical clarity.

I've read a few books over the years by authors dissecting and debunking contemporary "experts" by pointing out the king had no close on. One of these examined papers in physics that were called brilliant when, in fact, they were primarily gobbledygook. When Camille Paglia tears into Michel Foucaut, and Norman Finkelstein slaughters contemporary golden calves (e.g. I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It), I applaud.

You don't have to agree with everything, but there's a lot of meat on them bones. Our capacity to think more deeply may be challenged. So be it. Exercise that brain muscle. Make it sweat. It feels good.

Here's the table of contents for Stove's book:

Against the Idols of the Age

Introduction: Who Was David Stove?

Acknowledgments and a Note on the Text

The Cult of Irrationalism in Science

Cole Porter and Karl Popper:

The Jazz Age in the Philosophy of Science

Sabotaging Logical Expressions

Paralytic Epistemology, or The Soundless Scream

Idols Contemporary and Perennial

D'Holbach's Dream:

The Central Claim of the Enlightenment

"Always apologize, always explain":

Robert Nozick's War Wounds

The Intellectual Capacity Of Women Racial and Other Antagonisms

Idealism: A Victorian Horror-story (Part Two)

Darwinian Fairytales

Darwinism's Dilemma

Where Darwin First Went Wrong about Man
Genetic Calvinism, or Demons and Dawkins

"He Ain't Heavy, He's my Brother," or Altruism and Shared Genes

For an introduction to this author, read Roger Kimball's Who was David Stove? in The New Criterion. It may give you just the courage you need to swim upstream against the current in your own battles.

His beef with Darwin is elaborated on in his 1995 book Darwinian Fairytales, which critiques sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. He argues that Darwinism fails to explain human behaviors like altruism, which he sees as contradictory to the "selfish gene" theory. Though a non-creationist, Stove argues that while natural selection is a successful biological theory, its application to human behavior is overblown and often relies on "fairytales" to explain away inconsistencies, such as why humans engage in self-sacrificing or non-reproductive behaviors. 

Stove is best known for scathing attacks on a variety of concepts, especially Popperian falsificationism, Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism. 

David Stove's comments on Cole Porter are classic. Evidently Stove repeatedly quoted Cole Porter’s lyric “Anything goes” (from the 1934 musical of the same name) as a shorthand critique of modern intellectual culture. For Stove, Porter unintentionally captured the spirit of relativism: the idea that there are no firm standards of truth, reason, or evidence.

Here are a few reviews of this book, pilfered from Amazon:

"Stove was undoubtedly the most stylish and witty writer of all philosphers of the last one hundred years, if not of all time. When it comes to attacking the absurdities of twentieth century intellectual movements no one else came close, and certainly no one else was as funny." --The Review of Metaphysics

"What separates Stove from your average angry-eyed reactionary is the startling brilliant way that he argues, combining plain horse sense with the most nimble and skillful philosophical reasoning this side of Hume, along with a breathtaking wit."
--The Parisian Review

"As most reviewers before have acknowledged, it seems impossible to be able to agree with everything Stove says. But that only adds to the enjoyment. The book may be controversial but it certainly is FUN. What's more, even when making the most preposterous claims, Stove will usually do two other things: 1) lay out his argument in an innovative, surprising and clear way, 2) make several brilliant and true observations on the side, which otherwise would probably never have crossed your mind." --MrOzik

And one more from Amazon:
Critically, Against the Idols of the Age offers sharp, lucid, and often entertaining arguments, marked by wit and rigor. Reviewers praise Stove’s analytic precision and polemical force, though not all will agree with his conclusions; his style is combative and opinionated, which makes the book both stimulating and controversial. It serves as an engaging introduction to Stove’s thought and a trigger for readers to question prevailing assumptions in science and culture.

California Keeps Lawyers Occupied as Common Sense Falls by the Wayside

Here are two California stories that caught my eye this weekend. This first appeared in Reason magazine.

San Francisco Bill Would Let People Sue Grocery Stores for Closing Too Quickly

A proposed ordinance would empower people to sue supermarkets that close without giving the city six months' advance notice.

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Now, here is my question: Will a bill like this incentivize ANY businessperson to start a grocery store in San Francisco? The intentions may be good (to take care of the community's food necessities during the six months they prepare for alternative grocery supplies) but the long term effect will be to create the opposite effect. No new grocery store will move into that neighborhood because it's too high risk. 

There are already too many regulators and regulations in California. I remember reading a story a number of year back in which someone wanted to start an albacore business. They had to get approvals from nearly 50 agencies before they even opened. After opening they were fined $25,000 because they had not obtained approval from yet another agency that they had never even heard of. 

The story in Reason noted that grocery store executives had been warning that layers of process (red tape) would make it less likely that grocery stores would even do business there in the first place.

As I've noted repeatedly, incentives matter. Make it easy to do business and you get more businesses (and jobs). The harder you make it to do business, the fewer entrepreneurs and risk takers you'll have in your town, city or state. 

Read the full account here at Reason.

ON THE ENERGY FRONT

In January, Joe Biden and the Department of Energy coughed up $1.1 billion to keep Diablo Canyon running. This move came after Governor Gavin Newsom of California put his foot down, saying the plant, originally slated to shut down in 2025, had to stay open to prevent blackouts.

In response, California environmentalists are now throwing a fit and suing to shut down the very same Diablo Canyon reactor, the state’s final nuclear power plant. This plant produces about 9% of California's juice. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers are running feasibility studies to see if they can get buy-in for next-gen nuclear reactors. They know Californians won't be thrilled if they don't keep the lights on. It's not a given.      

You can read a more complete account at The Center Square: California enviros sue to close last nuclear plant providing 9% of state's power 

  

The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

Photo by The Good Funeral Guide on Unsplash

“We need a new idea of how to govern. The current system is broken. Law is supposed to be a framework for humans to make choices, not the replacement for free choice.”
--Philip K. Howard, The Death of Common Sense

Niall Ferguson, in his book The Great Degeneration, identifies the four pillars that lifted Western Civilization, which Ferguson calls The Four Black Boxes. They are:

1. Democracy -- the consent of the governed.

2. Capitalism -- and the vibrant society healthy markets produce.

3. Rule of law -- secure property rights, fairness and (in theory) equality.

4. Civil society -- how we treat one another.

Ferguson's book is a warning though. The 2010 volume is subtitled How Institutions Decay and Economies Die. In the book he shows how all of these platforms have become corrupted and are in the process of decay. It's not a pretty picture. 

I mention Ferguson's book in order to reference point 3, the importance of the rule of law. When I read Philip Howard's The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America in the 1990s, I immediately placed it on my Top Ten Recommended Readings list. It's apparent that regulations and red tape are both strangling our economy and stealing our joy. 

Here's a quick overview of the book.

The bloated bureaucracy; the rules; the laws; the regulations; are so integral to our lives that we no longer would recognize a life without these burdensome evils. We continue blindly with no discretion, a growing behemoth, with no end in sight; this was never meant to be. With the thousands upon thousands of pages of rules and regulations we believe we can remove all conceivable risks, contemplate every eventuality, plan for everything; all in the name of "rights", and fairness. What is meant for good, and to bring about harmony, only results in stagnation, closed businesses, higher prices, less choice, rise of litigation, etc. We all pay a price. Ingenuity pays a price. Ironically, "[t]he more precise we try to make law, the more loopholes are created." Mandated perfection only ends in the opposite, along with an incredible waste of money and manpower, not to mention it treats individuals as criminals. This expansion of law into agencies and programs was never meant to be. Three big culprits (though there are many) are OSHA, EPA, and the USDA.

For example, right now the U.S. is experiencing a housing crisis. Even though most community leaders are aware of it and are making pronouncements about fixing it, very few seem to recognize how deeply entrenched government regulation is contributing to the problem, almost always in the name of virtuous aims such as safety and fairness. Examples abound.

Here's another example. We complain about the high price of meds while failing to see the mind-boggling amount of paperwork required by the FDA to get a drug approved. I once read that the paperwork alone would fill a semi trailer. There has to be some kind of incentive for doing 10 years of research to get a product approved. (This is not a defense for the excesses of Big Pharma, but important for the sake of perspective.)

Ferguson, in his book, tells a story about how it took a little girl months to get a permit to set up a lemonade stand in New York City.

Here's more about Howard's book:

"The Death of Common Sense" consists of four long chapters, presented without an introduction or conclusion. They deal with (1) the impossibility of devising laws and regulations that will sensibly address every variation and permutation of a given problem without the need for human judgment; (2) the pitfalls of elevating legal process over objectives; (3) the destructive consequences of creating "rights" for more and more disadvantaged groups without much heed to the burdens imposed on the rest of the population; and (4) the author's proposed solution to the problems discussed, which is for all concerned to stop looking to the law as a source for "final answers."

Reviews from Amazon:

Totally Amazing and Scary!
The message is quite clear: our legal system is very sick, if not broken. The result is that no one wants to take responsibility for fear of being sued or inconvenienced. Plus, the definition of "rights" has been so badly distorted by legislation and court system that the social and actual costs to Americans is becoming intolerable. The direction we are all heading is only making the conditions worse. Something has to change, but how long are we willing to wait?

Frustrating In Its Accuracy
This book came highly recommended by an attorney friend. I have not finished reading yet because it is so frustrating in its accurate portrayal of government and its often illogical way of operating. Having worked in government, I do understand the need for rules and consistency, however the examples portrayed in this book so clearly display how so many rules exist for the sake of the rules themselves. The intent behind the rules are lost and the results often are more harmful than good. If only our government officials could take off their blinders and take to heart the messages from this book. This country would be in a far better place.

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Something to think about.

If interested, you can find a copy of this book here on Amazon.

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These Are The Times That Try Men's Souls. Is Paine Still Relevant Today? You Decide

Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Gottlieb Luetze

This weekend the quote "These are the times that try men's souls" crossed my mind. Certainly these have been quite trying times for our lives and our nation, so I decided to investigate further into its origin. 

I knew that Thomas Paine, pamphleteer and author of Common Sense, was the man who penned it, but I recalled little else.

When I found the quote I read the rest of this essay and found it quite illuminating with many passages quite relevant for our own trying times. It is the opening essay of a compilation of essays under the title The American Crisis.

I also discovered that in order to fortify the resolve of his troops, George Washington ordered that this essay be read aloud to his men the night before they crossed the Delaware in their December 26 surprise attack on Trenton. 

Portrait of Thomas Paine by Matthew Pratt

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated” 

The American Revolution had one pre-eminent ideal: Freedom.

In the first section Paine writes:

'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. 

Does this sound like today? The next sentence amplifies that with the reminder that "All nations and ages have been subject to them."

Next, he points out that panics have value and can be useful. Why?

Their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered.

* * * *
So it is that we are in a time of crisis, times that try men's souls. There are forces at war which have lain dormant and below the surface. What is emerging has been coalescing for a long time. The American Revolution did not "just happen." It had been evolving for quite some time.

I've been reading C.S. Lewis again lately. His book The Abolition of Man sheds light on this cultural rift, a collision of worldviews. In That Hideous Strength, the third book in his sci-fi space trilogy, he uses fiction to illustrate how these ideas emerged and what the intentions are.

Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984 point to seeming different dystopian scenes, yet they all have a common denominator, which I hope to elaborate upon in a future post.

* * * *
Paine's essay then outlines events that had occurred up in the vicinity of Hackensack and the Colonialists escape from the Brits there, which sets up this section a little further:

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other.

How relevant are these notions to our situation today? I believe parallels can be drawn. This is why so many voices are being raised. Something big appears to be at stake.

There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.

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This document, one of a series, was written December 23, 1776, approximately six months after the Declaration of Independence.

Full essay:
https://www.ushistory.org/Paine/crisis/c-01.htm