Maybe it's not always desirable, but progress has generally been desirable overall.
And you're really really not gaining any ground with this whole "nobody does things for the sake of progress." I mean, do you want me to go digging around in historical texts showing you instances where people have made things expressly because they were better? And because they wanted to make something better? Or do it in a way that is better than it was done before?
Yes, the impetus to progress is often something besides plain ol's progress, but the aim is still to go forward or change. These things are not mutually exclusive.
Much like there is a fairly significant difference between libertarianism and Libertarianism (small-'l' vs. big-'L'), I think there is a difference between conservatism and Conservatism. I think a little bit of small-c conservatism isn't necessarily a bad thing, provided that it's not rigid and inflexible. Sometimes rapid progress isn't always the best thing and having a little time to "slow down, catch our breath, and make sure the progress we're making is a good idea" is a good thing. For example, look at some of the crazy stuff people thought about nuclear power back in the 50's -- I mean, they were experimental nuclear powered airliners built and flown (yes, that's right, flying nukes with minimal shielding) back then -- before people slowed down and realized, "hey wait a minute, there are actually some dangers with nuclear power we need to address before we do things like build flying nuclear reactors." Of course, a small-c conservative should be flexible enough to adapt to said progress once any legitimate concerns about progress have been addressed. Granted, one may feel that these small-c conservatives would be accurately labeled as "moderates" given the current state of big-C Conservatism.
The problem with the big-C Conservatives is that they want to slow down (retard, if you will) progress completely and are entirely inflexible. They've gone from merely being careful to actively being obstructionist, and that's the major problem with the current Conservative movement.
I don't know, I think progress often involves skepticism and scientific inquiry, and I think that we should constantly reevaluate our ideas. It is the Conservative idea that the present, or, worse yet, the past is a-okay and should not be changed that I disagree with. That kind of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality contrasts with my "things can always get even better" ideas. This is how I picture the two sides in my mind: There are two cats, the conservative cat and the progressive cat. You put a new pillow in the middle of the room. The progressive cat sneaks over to it, watches it, bats at it, decides it is safe, and curls up on it to sleep soundly on the new comfortable bed. Conservative cat hides in the corner and yowls because something changed and it is unsettling.
I don't know, I think progress often involves skepticism and scientific inquiry, and I think that we should constantly reevaluate our ideas. It is the Conservative idea that the present, or, worse yet, the past is a-okay and should not be changed that I disagree with. That kind of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality contrasts with my "things can always get even better" ideas. This is how I picture the two sides in my mind: There are two cats, the conservative cat and the progressive cat. You put a new pillow in the middle of the room. The progressive cat sneaks over to it, watches it, bats at it, decides it is safe, and curls up on it to sleep soundly on the new comfortable bed. Conservative cat hides in the corner and yowls because something changed and it is unsettling.
Well, true, but sometimes people can get a little too caught up in scientific inquiry and maybe neglect the skepticism at times -- such as the love of all things nuclear in the 50's. Plus, there is a lot of new-age woo on the far fringes of the progressive/liberal movement that's just as bad as some of the religious woo of the Conservative side.
I'm reminded a bit of a little political cartoon in my high school freshman year American Government class comparing different political philosophies at a very over simplified level. The issue is the debate as to whether or not to build a new train station. The points of view:
The Radical thinks we should just blow up the old station with dynamite and force the issue of building a new station to replace the destroyed old one.
The Liberal thinks we need a new train station and properly tears down the old and builds a new one.
The Conservative thinks nothing should be done because the current train station is sufficient
The Reactionary thinks the old station should be torn down and not rebuilt because he/she doesn't believe in trains.
Looking at this simple comparison, both the Liberal and the Conservative could have valid points and maybe even could reach a compromise (i.e. instead of building a new station, maybe expand and renovate the current one). However, there is no validity to the views of the Radical and the Reactionary as well as no room for compromise. The problem with the modern day Conservative movement is that they have much more in common with the Reactionary from this cartoon than with the Conservative.
Maybe it's not always desirable, but progress has generally been desirable overall.
That's debatable, and strongly dependent on your definition of progress. For instance, I could talk about the "progress" of Spain's refinement and perfection of the encomienda system during the late 1500s, and its impact on the lives of Native Americans and Africans. As I mentioned before, the concept of progress as something that is by definition desirable only dates to the early 20th century. In fact, novelty in ideas was something entirely undesirable in Western academic discourse up until at earliest the mid-1600s, when Descartes and Bacon decided they wanted to entirely replace Aristotle, rather than just reinterpret him.
Moreover, this depiction of the history of science as this inevitable march of "progress" and advancement is basically constructed in hindsight by historians, and that narrative is questionable at best. (As in, I'm taking a college course now specifically aimed at deconstructing the standard historical narrative applied to the Scientific Revolution)
Yes, people intentionally made gradual improvements to technology over time. The narrative I'm trying to combat here is that progress is desirable and inevitable. There's a narrative here that makes the claim that society today is the inevitable result of scientific advancement, and that the changes to the theory and practice of science over time were somehow natural, unstoppable, and could only possibly result in the changes that we have been able to observe.
Finally, I'm sick and tired of this fetishisation of "progress." Change for its own sake is not a good thing. When you're not paying attention to where you're going, this progress you're so goddamned fond of is going to worsen social and economic inequality and effectively leave whole chunks of the non-first-world behind.
Finally, I'm sick and tired of this fetishisation of "progress." Change for its own sake is not a good thing. When you're not paying attention to where you're going, this progress you're so goddamned fond of is going to worsen social and economic inequality and effectively leave whole chunks of the non-first-world behind.
Yah, definitely agree with this, but there's a big difference between social conservativism and economic conservativism. US social conservatives are actually economic liberals (neoliberalism). Anti-social conservative motives, like allowing US companies to exploit 3rd world citizens, are economically progressive in that they facilitate the creation of larger and more cutting edge markets and technologies; but they're hellishly regressive when it comes to human rights.
What do you mean by "change for its own sake?" I keep seeing this phrase being thrown around and I keep swatting it down as "not what I'm talking about." You need to explain this more.
Changes are made because we perceive a need to change something. To fix or improve it for some purpose. Rarely do we change things just because we feel like changing them. By and large, organisms desire stability, not change. We're not terribly different in that regard.
And where exactly are you finding this narrative? Ayn Rand certainly has the narrative you're describing, but she's full of shit and also not a scientist. If you're talking about the public perception of scientific progress, that's full of problems in the same way that public perception of scientific principles is full of problems.
You're using lots of loaded words that the vast majority of scientists won't. In particular, I'm latching onto the word "inevitable." The implication is somehow that this world must be the best one. It's the one we've got, and it is the result of everything that came before, yes. But if something else had come before, then we'd have something different today.
It's awesome that you're taking a college course and learning about all this now, but you're learning some narrow interpretation of events. Why is this class the authority on this subject?
What books are you reading right now? I'd like to take a look at this "deconstruction of the narrative of scientific progress."
EDIT: Also, while life is still pretty shitty for some people, and some cultures get left behind, are you really going to argue that life isn't substantially better for the vast majority of humans than it was, say, 500 years ago? If that's your gods-honest perspective, we simply cannot have a productive discussion.
Yes, people intentionally made gradual improvements to technology over time. The narrative I'm trying to combat here is that progress is desirable and inevitable. There's a narrative here that makes the claim that society today is the inevitable result of scientific advancement, and that the changes to the theory and practice of science over time were somehow natural, unstoppable, and could only possibly result in the changes that we have been able to observe.
Finally, I'm sick and tired of this fetishisation of "progress." Change for its own sake is not a good thing. When you're not paying attention to where you're going, this progress you're so goddamned fond of is going to worsen social and economic inequality and effectively leave whole chunks of the non-first-world behind.
Why does everyone think that we are not going to observe or test out new developments? Progress is, as long as we experience time as a linear concept, inevitable (can I safely use this word here?). There is no such thing as a static, inert society. So are we going to let our problems linger, or are we going to address them as best we can? Damn well I am going to champion "progress," not for its own sake, but because we are moving toward a goal, and that goal is understanding, enlightenment, and the betterment of our world. I have specific things I want to progress toward, as do others.
Well, I realize I hadn't said it outright, but my primary problem is with the earlier claim that "conservatives are wrong for impeding progress," which ignores the very real possibility of there being good reason for opposing "progress."
I made the mental leap from there to the assumption that you were using the idea of progress as something that is by definition good. In that situation, progress is simply just change that, when viewed in hindsight, is viewed to be good. I can actually accept that as a definition of progress, but the thing is that we can't then use "progress" to refer to potential or ongoing changes. The people who use that definition accuse conservatives of "impeding progress," but what they're really doing is opposing change, which is not the same thing. If progress is always good, you can't judge whether a change qualifies as progress except in hindsight, and you have no standing to declare a change that hasn't happened yet as "progress."
Alternatively, if progress isn't by definition good, but merely a word for the evolution of society/technology/politics over time, then I raise two objections. The first is that progress isn't something that can be applied to one or two issues or even on a short-term basis, as it applies to evolution. I'll accept the obvious counter-argument that conservatives generally oppose most changes, and so impede progress on the whole. The second, though, is that progress is not necessarily good, and that attacking conservatives just because of an opposition to progress is, well, silly.
The "fetishisation" I referred to in my last post is a observation primarily made of nerds on the Internet who (like, say, Rym) are of the opinion that progress is something that we should always embrace. This is notwithstanding the fact that you can't really embrace "progress" as it's broad, slow, and generally only visible in hindsight. In fact, what they tend to imply is that we should always embrace change, and will say this without really evaluating change's utility beforehand. In short, this camp takes the ideas that "progress is good" and "change is progressive" and concludes that all changes are progressive, thus embracing the "change for the sake of change" that I mentioned before in the name of progress.
As for that history-of-science narrative I talked about, it was basically thrown out by serious academic historians fifty or so years ago, but it still pops up in the public understanding of science, in more general European History courses (especially high-school-level) courses, and in my experience among nerds on the internet. It's often used to justify the views of progress as something always positive that I outlined above, which is one of the reasons it's problematic. The other reason, obviously, is that it ignores many nuances in the change over time of scientific theory and practice, especially in regards to the motives of the involved scientists.
As for the reading on the course, The main secondary source is Peter Dear's Revolutionizing the Sciences Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is also informative. The rest of our reading is mostly primary sources.
Where do the crazy environmentalists who oppose progress fall in the political spectrum? Are they the retards of liberalism?
I'm really not sure where environmentalists really fall on the liberal/conservative wedge, up until recently many major conserative figures were environmentalists...
Where do the crazy environmentalists who oppose progress fall in the political spectrum? Are they the retards of liberalism?
I'm really not sure where environmentalists really fall on the liberal/conservative wedge, up until recently many major conserative figures were environmentalists...
Utopian Radicals don't really fall into the Left vs. Right dynamic since it is the Left and Right of our current society and the Utopian Radical wants a new society.
This is the reason that people like Ron Paul are hard to pin down on the Left/Right scale; he isn't on it.
Where do the crazy environmentalists who oppose progress fall in the political spectrum? Are they the retards of liberalism?
Yep, that more or less sums it up. There are crazies on the lunatic fringes of both sides. Unfortunately, the mainstream GOP these days is a lot closer to the lunatic fringe than it should be.
Well, I realize I hadn't said it outright, but my primary problem is with the earlier claim that "conservatives are wrong for impeding progress," which ignores the very real possibility of there being good reason for opposing "progress."
Name one thing the Republican party or the American conservative movement opposes or wishes to impede for which there is a reasonably good reason for doing so.
Also, you're trying to make a straw man. No one said "all" change is good here. We're saying change of some kind has to happen in government to adapt to a constantly evolving technological ecosystem and society.
Big time environmenalist "off the grid" types are economically ultra-conservative, in that they tend to believe we should move way way back to a pre-economic system. They also tend to be socially quite liberal. It's not a super simple dichotomy dirving everything, and sometimes moving one aspect of civilization forward will move other things back.
Well, I realize I hadn't said it outright, but my primary problem is with the earlier claim that "conservatives are wrong for impeding progress," which ignores the very real possibility of there being good reason for opposing "progress."
Name one thing the Republican party or the American conservative movement opposes or wishes to impede for which there is a reasonably good reason for doing so.
Well, I realize I hadn't said it outright, but my primary problem is with the earlier claim that "conservatives are wrong for impeding progress," which ignores the very real possibility of there being good reason for opposing "progress."
Name one thing the Republican party or the American conservative movement opposes or wishes to impede for which there is a reasonably good reason for doing so.
abortion culture
What?
What "abortion culture?"
I'll assume what you mean, and I have a simple refutation. A woman should have the right to an abortion for whatever reason she wants one. End of story. Anyone can try to convince people otherwise, but the right must be absolute.
As for the "aborting defective babies" argument, I think that's generally a good thing. Someone who isn't willing and able to care for a deeply disabled child shouldn't be forced to bring it to term. Period. Independent of that, I look forward to a future where prenatal testing and genetic screening/manipulation is such that no child is ever born again with a disorder like Downs Syndrome.
I supplement the argument by noting that:
1. Abortions are most prevalent in societies where it is banned or heavily regulated. 2. The same people against abortion are also against plan b and many forms of contraception in general. 3. The same people against abortion are also generally against sexual eductation. 4. There's no such thing as an "abortion culture" and I defy you to make an argument that there is.
Well, I realize I hadn't said it outright, but my primary problem is with the earlier claim that "conservatives are wrong for impeding progress," which ignores the very real possibility of there being good reason for opposing "progress."
Name one thing the Republican party or the American conservative movement opposes or wishes to impede for which there is a reasonably good reason for doing so.
Admittedly, I haven't really liked American conservatives since Hamilton was secretly running the Federalists. However, "liberals" have done uncool things in the past, like, say, Andrew Jackson. Or, if you're not limiting yourself to American movements, Maximilien Robespierre, oh god, Robespierre.
Also, you're trying to make a straw man. No one said "all" change is good here. We're saying change of some kind has to happen in government to adapt to a constantly evolving technological ecosystem and society.
My major problem is really that you're using the word progress for those changes at all. Progress is a label you should be applying in hindsight. The argument that conservatives oppose necessary adaptations on the part of government is reasonable. The argument that conservatives oppose progress is nonsensical insofar as using the word progress to refer to future change is itself nonsensical. The implication that the opposition to change is fundamentally a bad thing, which you've come close to making a number of times, is just wrong.
Well, I realize I hadn't said it outright, but my primary problem is with the earlier claim that "conservatives are wrong for impeding progress," which ignores the very real possibility of there being good reason for opposing "progress."
I didn't emphasize it, but I did say this:
I'm willing to say that anyone who impedes progress solely because they're afraid of progress is defective. If you object for some rational reason, that's great. If you're fear-mongering, you're defective.
Critical analysis of any progress is required. I mean, it's really instrumental to progress anyhow - if you don't critically analyze any given premise, then all premises are on equal footing and you don't really get anywhere. You need to be able to figure out which ones are better-supported, in order to figure out what to do.
What we are referring to is opposition for the sake of opposition.
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is also informative.
I'll assume you've read Karl Popper too, right? The conflict between these two was instrumental in the development of modern scientific philosophy.
I made the mental leap from there to the assumption that you were using the idea of progress as something that is by definition good. In that situation, progress is simply just change that, when viewed in hindsight, is viewed to be good. I can actually accept that as a definition of progress, but the thing is that we can't then use "progress" to refer to potential or ongoing changes. The people who use that definition accuse conservatives of "impeding progress," but what they're really doing is opposing change, which is not the same thing. If progress is always good, you can't judge whether a change qualifies as progress except in hindsight, and you have no standing to declare a change that hasn't happened yet as "progress."
Alternatively, if progress isn't by definition good, but merely a word for the evolution of society/technology/politics over time, then I raise two objections. The first is that progress isn't something that can be applied to one or two issues or even on a short-term basis, as it applies to evolution. I'll accept the obvious counter-argument that conservatives generally oppose most changes, and so impede progress on the whole. The second, though, is that progress is not necessarily good, and that attacking conservatives just because of an opposition to progress is, well, silly.
You're missing one important aspect of progress, which is that of implementation.
So maybe we have a cultural paradigm shift. Over time, a majority of the population shifts from one view of something to another. Social conservatism will often go against the popular grain and try to revert a social change that has already happened. In that case, you have a situation where someone is trying to drag us backwards, and we have to fight to keep moving forward in the direction we had already been heading.
Essentially, the introduction of regressive philosophy creates an active progression-regression paradigm.
This is what many social conservatives want to do - they actually want to revert change that has already happened.
It's sort of like the (stupidly) continuing evolution "debate." It's not actually a valid debate, because the scientific theories have been changing this entire time. However, many want to revert our understanding back to a much earlier point; that changes the perspective to one of a conflict between progress and regression.
There is also an issue where perhaps scientific understanding has discovered a concept already, and it has been accepted by the scientific community and thus a part of scientific "canon." Then we try to get this across to the public, and its implementation is resisted. So the knowledge exists - the change has happened - but we can't actually get that knowledge disseminated to the public because of resistance from intellectually regressive elements. Thus, we again talk about people "holding back progress" because they're preventing or distorting an extant reality.
But we do make actual positive progress in the field of science as well. It's not a linear scale, but within the "blob" of progress exists moments of linearity. Do remember that while Kuhn was huge in changing how we think about science, he didn't invalidate the old paradigms either. He, well, changed them. Shifted them, if you will. Appropriately enough.
While I'm in the middle of an experiment, there is definitely a sense of forward progression. I have to do [blah] before I can draw a conclusion. I have drawn this conclusion, but I see these flaws; now I must do [blah]. Actual scientific investigation often proceeds in a very linear fashion, and this often results in a linear gain of knowledge.
It's the more meta understanding - when we start talking about "progress" on large, abstract scales - that gets less linear.
Perhaps instead of the "conservative" approach, we should talk about the "regressive" approach. That's really the issue. I'm actually fairly conservative in many of my approaches to change. I'm never regressive, though.
Uh, Link, I think you seriously need to think about history a little if you think the ultra-states rights, laissez-faire-supporting, anti-federalist guy who opposed a national bank (because it stepped on states' rights) and ordered the Trail of Tears was a liberal in any sense of the word.
Remember, he was a leader of the Democrats in the days when the Democrats were the right and the Whigs were the left.
Wow, it's been a while since I screwed up that bad on American history. I was thinking liberal because he was a populist, but that's not really the case.
Wow, it's been a while since I screwed up that bad on American history. I was thinking liberal because he was a populist, but that's not really the case.
Yea Linkigi, Populist does not mean liberal, Sarah Palin is a Populist :-p
Wow, it's been a while since I screwed up that bad on American history. I was thinking liberal because he was a populist, but that's not really the case.
Yea Linkigi, Populist does not mean liberal, Sarah Palin is a Populist :-p
A populist cares about the people, Sarah Palin only cares about her book career.
Linkigi, I'm not sure if you're on Twitter (I might be peddling science books to some stranger), but you might be interested in reading The Firmament of Time if you like Kuhn.
Also, I agree that the term "regressive" is good, but wouldn't that be the same things as capital-C Concervatism (or, I suppose, the less bomb-y reactionaries)?
I would contend that some things often associated with extreme liberalism could also be considered regressive in nature. I think specifically of tree-hugging hippies.
But in any event, I think "regressive" really captures the crux of the problem moreso than "conservative."
Comments
And you're really really not gaining any ground with this whole "nobody does things for the sake of progress." I mean, do you want me to go digging around in historical texts showing you instances where people have made things expressly because they were better? And because they wanted to make something better? Or do it in a way that is better than it was done before?
Yes, the impetus to progress is often something besides plain ol's progress, but the aim is still to go forward or change. These things are not mutually exclusive.
This is how I picture the two sides in my mind: There are two cats, the conservative cat and the progressive cat. You put a new pillow in the middle of the room. The progressive cat sneaks over to it, watches it, bats at it, decides it is safe, and curls up on it to sleep soundly on the new comfortable bed. Conservative cat hides in the corner and yowls because something changed and it is unsettling.
I'm reminded a bit of a little political cartoon in my high school freshman year American Government class comparing different political philosophies at a very over simplified level. The issue is the debate as to whether or not to build a new train station. The points of view:
- The Radical thinks we should just blow up the old station with dynamite and force the issue of building a new station to replace the destroyed old one.
- The Liberal thinks we need a new train station and properly tears down the old and builds a new one.
- The Conservative thinks nothing should be done because the current train station is sufficient
- The Reactionary thinks the old station should be torn down and not rebuilt because he/she doesn't believe in trains.
Looking at this simple comparison, both the Liberal and the Conservative could have valid points and maybe even could reach a compromise (i.e. instead of building a new station, maybe expand and renovate the current one). However, there is no validity to the views of the Radical and the Reactionary as well as no room for compromise. The problem with the modern day Conservative movement is that they have much more in common with the Reactionary from this cartoon than with the Conservative.This is what we face, people. "What do you expect from a woman driver?"
As I mentioned before, the concept of progress as something that is by definition desirable only dates to the early 20th century.
In fact, novelty in ideas was something entirely undesirable in Western academic discourse up until at earliest the mid-1600s, when Descartes and Bacon decided they wanted to entirely replace Aristotle, rather than just reinterpret him.
Moreover, this depiction of the history of science as this inevitable march of "progress" and advancement is basically constructed in hindsight by historians, and that narrative is questionable at best. (As in, I'm taking a college course now specifically aimed at deconstructing the standard historical narrative applied to the Scientific Revolution)
Yes, people intentionally made gradual improvements to technology over time. The narrative I'm trying to combat here is that progress is desirable and inevitable. There's a narrative here that makes the claim that society today is the inevitable result of scientific advancement, and that the changes to the theory and practice of science over time were somehow natural, unstoppable, and could only possibly result in the changes that we have been able to observe.
Finally, I'm sick and tired of this fetishisation of "progress." Change for its own sake is not a good thing. When you're not paying attention to where you're going, this progress you're so goddamned fond of is going to worsen social and economic inequality and effectively leave whole chunks of the non-first-world behind.
Changes are made because we perceive a need to change something. To fix or improve it for some purpose. Rarely do we change things just because we feel like changing them. By and large, organisms desire stability, not change. We're not terribly different in that regard.
And where exactly are you finding this narrative? Ayn Rand certainly has the narrative you're describing, but she's full of shit and also not a scientist. If you're talking about the public perception of scientific progress, that's full of problems in the same way that public perception of scientific principles is full of problems.
You're using lots of loaded words that the vast majority of scientists won't. In particular, I'm latching onto the word "inevitable." The implication is somehow that this world must be the best one. It's the one we've got, and it is the result of everything that came before, yes. But if something else had come before, then we'd have something different today.
It's awesome that you're taking a college course and learning about all this now, but you're learning some narrow interpretation of events. Why is this class the authority on this subject?
What books are you reading right now? I'd like to take a look at this "deconstruction of the narrative of scientific progress."
EDIT: Also, while life is still pretty shitty for some people, and some cultures get left behind, are you really going to argue that life isn't substantially better for the vast majority of humans than it was, say, 500 years ago? If that's your gods-honest perspective, we simply cannot have a productive discussion.
Where do the crazy environmentalists who oppose progress fall in the political spectrum? Are they the retards of liberalism?
I made the mental leap from there to the assumption that you were using the idea of progress as something that is by definition good. In that situation, progress is simply just change that, when viewed in hindsight, is viewed to be good. I can actually accept that as a definition of progress, but the thing is that we can't then use "progress" to refer to potential or ongoing changes. The people who use that definition accuse conservatives of "impeding progress," but what they're really doing is opposing change, which is not the same thing. If progress is always good, you can't judge whether a change qualifies as progress except in hindsight, and you have no standing to declare a change that hasn't happened yet as "progress."
Alternatively, if progress isn't by definition good, but merely a word for the evolution of society/technology/politics over time, then I raise two objections. The first is that progress isn't something that can be applied to one or two issues or even on a short-term basis, as it applies to evolution. I'll accept the obvious counter-argument that conservatives generally oppose most changes, and so impede progress on the whole. The second, though, is that progress is not necessarily good, and that attacking conservatives just because of an opposition to progress is, well, silly.
The "fetishisation" I referred to in my last post is a observation primarily made of nerds on the Internet who (like, say, Rym) are of the opinion that progress is something that we should always embrace. This is notwithstanding the fact that you can't really embrace "progress" as it's broad, slow, and generally only visible in hindsight. In fact, what they tend to imply is that we should always embrace change, and will say this without really evaluating change's utility beforehand. In short, this camp takes the ideas that "progress is good" and "change is progressive" and concludes that all changes are progressive, thus embracing the "change for the sake of change" that I mentioned before in the name of progress.
As for that history-of-science narrative I talked about, it was basically thrown out by serious academic historians fifty or so years ago, but it still pops up in the public understanding of science, in more general European History courses (especially high-school-level) courses, and in my experience among nerds on the internet. It's often used to justify the views of progress as something always positive that I outlined above, which is one of the reasons it's problematic. The other reason, obviously, is that it ignores many nuances in the change over time of scientific theory and practice, especially in regards to the motives of the involved scientists.
As for the reading on the course,
The main secondary source is Peter Dear's Revolutionizing the Sciences
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is also informative.
The rest of our reading is mostly primary sources.
This is the reason that people like Ron Paul are hard to pin down on the Left/Right scale; he isn't on it.
Also, you're trying to make a straw man. No one said "all" change is good here. We're saying change of some kind has to happen in government to adapt to a constantly evolving technological ecosystem and society.
What "abortion culture?"
I'll assume what you mean, and I have a simple refutation. A woman should have the right to an abortion for whatever reason she wants one. End of story. Anyone can try to convince people otherwise, but the right must be absolute.
As for the "aborting defective babies" argument, I think that's generally a good thing. Someone who isn't willing and able to care for a deeply disabled child shouldn't be forced to bring it to term. Period. Independent of that, I look forward to a future where prenatal testing and genetic screening/manipulation is such that no child is ever born again with a disorder like Downs Syndrome.
I supplement the argument by noting that:
1. Abortions are most prevalent in societies where it is banned or heavily regulated.
2. The same people against abortion are also against plan b and many forms of contraception in general.
3. The same people against abortion are also generally against sexual eductation.
4. There's no such thing as an "abortion culture" and I defy you to make an argument that there is.
^_~
What we are referring to is opposition for the sake of opposition. I'll assume you've read Karl Popper too, right? The conflict between these two was instrumental in the development of modern scientific philosophy. You're missing one important aspect of progress, which is that of implementation.
So maybe we have a cultural paradigm shift. Over time, a majority of the population shifts from one view of something to another. Social conservatism will often go against the popular grain and try to revert a social change that has already happened. In that case, you have a situation where someone is trying to drag us backwards, and we have to fight to keep moving forward in the direction we had already been heading.
Essentially, the introduction of regressive philosophy creates an active progression-regression paradigm.
This is what many social conservatives want to do - they actually want to revert change that has already happened.
It's sort of like the (stupidly) continuing evolution "debate." It's not actually a valid debate, because the scientific theories have been changing this entire time. However, many want to revert our understanding back to a much earlier point; that changes the perspective to one of a conflict between progress and regression.
There is also an issue where perhaps scientific understanding has discovered a concept already, and it has been accepted by the scientific community and thus a part of scientific "canon." Then we try to get this across to the public, and its implementation is resisted. So the knowledge exists - the change has happened - but we can't actually get that knowledge disseminated to the public because of resistance from intellectually regressive elements. Thus, we again talk about people "holding back progress" because they're preventing or distorting an extant reality.
But we do make actual positive progress in the field of science as well. It's not a linear scale, but within the "blob" of progress exists moments of linearity. Do remember that while Kuhn was huge in changing how we think about science, he didn't invalidate the old paradigms either. He, well, changed them. Shifted them, if you will. Appropriately enough.
While I'm in the middle of an experiment, there is definitely a sense of forward progression. I have to do [blah] before I can draw a conclusion. I have drawn this conclusion, but I see these flaws; now I must do [blah]. Actual scientific investigation often proceeds in a very linear fashion, and this often results in a linear gain of knowledge.
It's the more meta understanding - when we start talking about "progress" on large, abstract scales - that gets less linear.
Perhaps instead of the "conservative" approach, we should talk about the "regressive" approach. That's really the issue. I'm actually fairly conservative in many of my approaches to change. I'm never regressive, though.
Remember, he was a leader of the Democrats in the days when the Democrats were the right and the Whigs were the left.
Also, I agree that the term "regressive" is good, but wouldn't that be the same things as capital-C Concervatism (or, I suppose, the less bomb-y reactionaries)?
But in any event, I think "regressive" really captures the crux of the problem moreso than "conservative."