He is Allah, the One!: September 2016

Saturday, September 17, 2016

There are plenty of science majors, far too many, who don’t know the history of this country; engineers looking for Noah’s Ark; people in AI pushing its development to a goal beyond human intelligence; science students whose awareness of Western world tradition goes back possibly a decade. One wonders if the world can really survive when you see hundreds of people every day gawking at cell phones, for which in many cases they paid $400 to $600 and up. And why do they have in their hands these expensive instruments, whose primary use is to relate the latest trivia? They have them, Ms Kim, because they were fooled into believing they needed them. And how were they fooled? They were hornblende, Ms. Kim, they were ninny hammered; they were sapped, scammed, and schlemieled by the knowledge that can only be gained from that faraway land Humanitarian on the other side of the campus from where you hang out. The pertinent subject is ‘rhetoric.’ Rhetoric is not a bad subject. It is, in fact, a very good and interesting subject to study. Good in many ways that you can discover for yourself by taking classes in the English, Philosophy, Classics, and Linguistics departments, to mention a few. But it is only bad when people, who set out to deceive, get a handle on it. Like technology. Nuclear physics is not a bad subject. But a scientific education does not teach its dangers when its technical mastery is used to make nuclear weapons and use them on human populations. It’s not a scientific question. It’s an ethical question. And ethics, Ms. Kim, is a subject taught in Philosophy and Religion classes. Justice Thomas had enough to learn in his undergraduate studies and in law school without taking superficial classes in science that by now would be out of date by a time too long to look up. What Justice Thomas did not learn well enough was professional ethics, which, if he had, he would have sought knowledgeable and disinterested technical advice in order for him to make a more competent decision. I believe that human, civilized life will always require good judgment, which, however surprising it may seem, will in most instances people face as they walk the streets, ride the buses and trains, wander into churches or budding meadows, gaze at interesting pilasters or granite monoliths, not be found a test tube. It will be found in experience, and ten times more than experience, it will be nurtured and reared, developed and matured, in a dutiful and constant study of our culture, and other cultures that make up this world.