THE IDOLS OF MODERNITY: THE HUMANITY OF SCIENCE AND THE SCIENCE OF HUMANITY by LUKAS SZROT Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN SOCIOLOGY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON May 2015 Copyright © by Lukas Szrot 2015 All Rights Reserved ii Acknowledgements My thesis committee deserves many thanks for guiding me to this point and helping me keep my sanity in the process. I am grateful for the assistance of my thesis advisor, Ben Agger, who aided in the conception and execution of this project while providing sage advice regarding the fascinating and often strange world of academe. It has been an honor. I also appreciate honest and beneficial feedback regarding both this project and a career in sociology from thesis committee member Beth Anne Shelton and Sociology graduate advisor and thesis committee member Heather Jacobson, without whom I am sure I would not be writing these words today. Over the years I have been at UT Arlington I have shared in the triumphs and struggles of both undergraduate and graduate studies with colleagues and friends too numerous to mention. I am indebted to each and every one of you, but it would have been a far more difficult journey without the assistance and support of Mary Faye Hanson-Evans and Jamaica Kennedy. Sociology faculty members past and present Dana Dunn, Jason Shelton, Linda Rouse, Robert Kunovich, Chunping Han, Bob Young, and my late mentor and professor Denny Bradshaw from philosophy, you have inspired me on the journey toward this moment. Thank you. Thanks also to Mark Graves and Patricia Woodward of the Sociology and Anthropology department staff, who have helped me adjust to academic life as a teaching assistant and helped me stay organized and on track through my graduate studies. I would (quite literally) not be here without my parents, Cindy and Lou, who were always there for me growing up, through a long and winding labyrinth of tenaciously- sought goals and semi-quixotic dreams alike. I hope my niece and my three nephews iii will pursue goals and dreams of their own, guided by loving, supportive families in the years to come. Thanks for being there, all of you. Most of all, I am grateful to my wife Charline, who has put up with me for the past fifteen years and all the aforementioned goals and dreams. Thank you for your love and support, especially on those days when I spent all my waking hours staring at books and computer screens constructing this and other works. You have believed in me and stood by me through all the triumphs and pitfalls of graduate education, and life. I love you. April 8, 2015 iv Abstract THE IDOLS OF MODERNITY: THE HUMANITY OF SCIENCE AND THE SCIENCE OF HUMANITY Lukas Szrot, M.A. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2015 Supervising Professor: Ben Agger The Idols of Modernity draws upon the work of early thinkers in the sociology of knowledge such as Karl Mannheim in an effort to delineate the history of--and unmask the ideology behind--many of the formative aspects of scientific knowledge that enjoy both a central and potentially controversial role in the twenty-first century. In touching upon the role of imagination and speculation in the ‘hardest’ sciences, normative disputes between biological and social sciences, and the intellectual history of modern science, I attempt to reveal the humanity of science. In examining the democratization of the written word, the profound consequences of language as disciplinary gatekeeper, implications for the humanities and sciences of a methodologically pluralistic sociology, threats to human agency issued forth by the trend toward medicalizing deviance, and finally, the role of the intellectual in society and history, I probe the promise, and problems, faced by a science of humanity. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................... v Chapter 1 From the Sky and From the Ground .................................................................. 1 Chapter 2 Space, Time, and the (In)finite ......................................................................... 11 2.1 The Widgets of Physics .......................................................................................... 12 2.2 The Demotion of Humanity ..................................................................................... 16 2.3 Physics and Philosophy: Odium Scholasticum ..................................................... 24 Chapter 3 Living Things .................................................................................................... 29 3.1 Just What is a Grand Unified Theory?.................................................................... 30 3.2 Marxists and Other Devils: Evolution in Social Discourse ..................................... 33 3.3 Divided We Stand: The Social Implications of the Struggle for Existence ...................................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 4 From Democritus to Hiroshima ........................................................................ 52 4.1 An Ocean of Time ................................................................................................... 54 4.2 Dividing the Indivisible, or “There’s No Such Thing As Scientific Neutrality” ..................................................................................................................... 59 4.3 The Dawn of Doubt and the ‘Third Way’ ................................................................ 67 Chapter 5 Enlightenment for All ........................................................................................ 75 5.1 The History of History and the Written Word .......................................................... 76 5.2 “Vulgar Enlightenment”: Fragmentation or Democratization? ............................... 80 5.3 Where Science, Religion, and Magic Meet ............................................................ 88 Chapter 6 The Dystopian Thread ...................................................................................... 99 6.1 At the Crossroads of Technology, Poetry, and Justice ........................................ 103 6.2 One-Dimensional Thought and the Language of Subterfuge ............................... 107 vi 6.3 Three Cultures and the Discourse of Success ..................................................... 117 Chapter 7 The Improvers of Humanity ............................................................................ 124 7.1 Of Lepers and Ships of Fools ............................................................................... 125 7.2 From Biology to Psychology to Behavior: The Diseasing of Humanity ............... 131 7.3 Behavior, Agency, and Experts ............................................................................ 137 Chapter 8 The Demons Begin To Stir ............................................................................. 142 References ...................................................................................................................... 150 Biographical Information ................................................................................................. 166 vii Chapter 1 From the Sky and From the Ground [The sociologist] must not forget that, if, like any other scientist, he tries to contribute to the construction of the point of view without a point of view which is the point of view of the scientist, as a social agent he is caught up in the object that he takes as his object, and that in this capacity he has a point of view which does not coincide either with that of others or with the bird’s eye view of the quasi-divine spectator which he can attain if he fulfills the demands of the field. He knows therefore that the particularity of the social sciences requires him to work towards constructing a scientific truth capable of integrating the observer’s vision and the truth of the practical vision of the agent as a point of view which is unaware of being a point of view and is experienced in the illusion of absoluteness. – Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity My paternal grandfather was a test pilot in the Air Force during the Cold War. I can think of few more exciting, or dangerous, jobs. As a kid I wondered what the world looked like as viewed from the camera lens of a high-flying reconnaissance aircraft. In a sense, sociology can offer such a perspective of the world; a view from above. Individuals might fade from view, giving way to the crisscrossing latticework of power lines and roads, the patchy green polygons of agriculture and parklands interspersed with the gray and brown of buildings. I do not remember the first time I saw the world from the stratosphere, the day my parents, infant sister, and my beloved cat Sasha got on a plane in my birthplace of Milwaukee, Wisconsin with little more than the clothes on our backs. My father, a mechanic, and my mother, a machinist, had been the victims of what I later learned was called de-industrialization. Their jobs had been effectively moved elsewhere, perhaps overseas, where people might be willing to work longer hours for lower pay under more lax safety regulations. It was the first time I had experienced the social