| Helloplite said:
I am not asking you to see me as an 'academic equal' -- whatever that means. It is true that political theory, including international relations as a whole, is not a science. This is basic stuff, really. Science proceeds to operate through observation, testable experimentation, proof by repetition, and independent verification of findings. The arts, whether that is philosophy, sociology, psychology, politics, economics, or literary critique, is by definition not a science. One cannot 'prove' Plato, or Marx, or Nietzsche. You can only contemplate their views, weigh them up, and produce a substantive but ultimately subjective perspective of the topic/concept/idea you are studying. That does not however mean that to study politics is in its entirety an 'art' in the strict sense. Studying politics and IR is by nature the study of an amalgamation of other arts, which is why a student of politics must be well versed in philosophy, as well as in sociology, economics, and even history. My second bachelor's degree was actually in international history, rather than politics. History is an entirely different beast. It is not a science, either, but it does entail weighing up proofs, information, and points-of-view in order to distill the truth of an event. You cannot 'argue' that colonialism didn't happen. What you can do is demonstrate why narratives that portray it as a negative event were incorrect, based on other historical data and information. Do you endure far more ordeals? Quite possibly. Since my first bachelor's was in computer games development, I know full well that studying a science topic requires a far more rigorous mode of study, far more learning of formulae, calculus, and so forth. My experience studying in the field of computing gave me both an appreciation of scientific study, and was at the same time a process that resulted in me accepting that I needed to study something else, as I wouldn't have been a good game developer. That does not in any way however mean that studying politics all the way to doctorate level was a trivial or routine task. I assure you that it did not involve just coming up with stuff. I had to study everything from Marxist economics, to Criminal and International Law, including arduous and nebulous topics such as the British Politcal System, and the EU, its laws and its complex institutions. If your point is to merely underestimate then I will let others judge as to who between the two of us knows better what things they are talking about. |
So you blatantly admit that study of politics in itself can't hold up to scrutiny by it's own content ...
FWIW, "proofs" are literally a concept that can only exist in logic/mathematics. The word you are looking for is "evidence" and performing science is just another method for a systematic collection of information but unlike history which is nearly a method of recollection of information. Science has the benefit of having a far more elegant and higher standard verification process like having testable hypothesis however, history on the other hand has no such luxury so you're nearly left with just many unverifiable past accounts when studying further back in time so it'll be extremely difficult to verify evidence for many cases including potentially your example of colonization ... (as if the subject was relevant to this topic at hand)
Not saying that what you studied was trivial but you if you're going to denigrate a stranger's background then expect the same retaliation in kind ...
That being said you can't deny that there's a far lower barrier to entry with political science than there is with the natural sciences. It must be very nice being able to read or examine many old texts and documents that are at least dozens decades old then maybe give your own interpretation/analysis frequently once in a while ...
| Helloplite said:
Since this has become a ridiculous litany of assaults and ad hominems, I am happy to give you my name and full academic profile so you can judge for yourself, on the proviso that you do the same. As I said earlier, I am happy to allow others to pass on judgment as to whether I am making things up here, or not. |
It's as you yourself mentioned, "The arts, whether that is philosophy, sociology, psychology, politics, economics, or literary critique, is by definition not a science. One cannot 'prove' Plato, or Marx, or Nietzsche. You can only contemplate their views, weigh them up, and produce a substantive but ultimately subjective perspective of the topic/concept/idea you are studying." which means just about everything you've studied up to this point has being entirely conceptually arbitrary. I don't blame you one bit for it since you've subsequently denoted paradoxical thoughts like I've shown to you in many of your proceeding posts but that's what happens when many of the leaders in your field don't actually want to advance the framework itself and many are left without a bloody consensus of the definitions of many concepts involved ...
It's probably the reason why you feel threatened that any layman can compete against you in your own field when not a lot of details are built upon each other. Many of the ideas in your field can be competently grasped in less than a season which makes it very hard to paint an ordinary Joe who informally dabbles with the subject from time to time as incorrect than those with a similar educational background like yours but if they tried discussing a somewhat advanced topic in depth about the natural sciences, our progressive curriculum equipped with learning heavy-handed tools such as differential equations or organic chemistry means that they will serve as our best bullshit detectors while those with a specialty in the arts can hardly afford a similar solution ...
"Since this has become a ridiculous litany of assaults and ad hominems", LOL like you should be the one to talk when you were the first one who came headstrong at me along with some others so how very hypocritical of you ...
| Helloplite said:
No you couldn't. There is no rigorous scientific study of race and genetics that demonstrates a close link. For example, studies comparing the genomes of Bosnian Muslims, versus Bosnian Serbs (Christians), showed several consistencies across chromosome haplogroups (43.5% and 30.9%, respectively), which in the authors' words "shows that different ethnic groups in Bosnia [...] share a large subset of their paternal lineages" (1), despite these groups believing they have different ethnicity. The whole concept of 'race' is tenuous and political in itself (2). The use of biological concepts of race in human genetic research has been described as "problematic at best, and harmful at worst" -- not by political theorists but by geneticists (3). Of course, I am not trying to simplify a vastly complex topic here, nor to assert that there is no scientific research into how aspects of the concept of 'race' could indeed turn out to reflect actual different genetic characteristics between populations (4). Such research, like Reich's (professor of genetics at Harvard) article below, does exist but even there the author is careful to avoid completely denying the socially constructed aspects of the concept of race. This does not mean that there are no genomic differences between a group of people living in Mozambique and a group of people living in Iceland, but it does mean that at the individual level most of us have probably very little idea of 'where we come from', genetically speaking. 'Race' as we commonly understand it is mostly wishful-thinking. Dr Foeman, professor of intercultural communication, has focused her research on individuals whose sense of 'race' differs from what genetic studies about them reveal (5). She has come across 'biracial' people who were entirely of European descent. Christians of Jewish descent. I really could go on and on, but this is neither my field of study, nor do I think it is productive to do so. You, and anyone else interested, can have a look at the resources below. The National Geographic article, in particular, is the most useful for this discussion. But for a counter-point, I'd take a look at Reich's position as well. I am not pressing the +1 to "enforce a confirmation bias". The button is there. I don't know what makes you so sensitive about this, but let me clear this up for you, once and for all: |
Yes, I absolutely could otherwise and it's because you only demonstrated a socially constructed understanding of race rather than a biologically grounded one. I know you and left wing "race" deniers want to disconfirm the extent of natural selection as much as possible but if we take the biological definition of race to be genetically clustered subpopulations of a species then their perception of race is probably real and it's not some coincidence that these lineages are structurally lined up along the geographical continental boundaries either ... (here's your problem, you made a straw man that you thought that they thought that religion was equivalent to race so let me tell you now that it's not how most would view as "race")
@Underlined What you just wrote is not supported by current evidence which extended upon another previous work ... (the people of Mozambique is nearly devoid of neanderthal DNA while people in Iceland still have some of the neanderthal DNA left, an individual's ancestral origins can definitely be tracked down)
@Bold I don't care about the damn button but every time that you encourage users with a post saying "they know what their talking about", it seems in quite a few instances that you seek justification from others for your position. Don't seek validation with me, eh ? You realize that got protective over your credentials in your previous paragraphs ...
