We live as ants amidst ruins we don’t even see.
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Academia’s stability is its fatal flaw.
Tenure and established texts ensure a hostility to changes in curriculum evidence should bring.
College and university campuses should be places of continual debate, with new evidence given fair assessment and alterations to our view of the world adjusted accordingly.
Instead a campus is generally seen as a place of isolated calm, the exception being occasional socio-political stirrings among students. Science rarely if ever follows such a pattern of periodic shifting of hierarchy and view, but needs to.
Science’s method is to continually seek to disprove hypotheses yet in practice scientists and professors, with careers linked to prior papers and books, instead seek to protect their theories from fact that contradicts. This is bigotry, not science.
We need to make academia a crucible of continual change based on constant sifting of fact and new discoveries. New theories must be tested properly, not dismissed with a token debunking.
Fieldwork and experiments by independent researchers must be the standard — indeed, this is Science’s stated way of advancing, yet remains an ideal, ignored in practice to, say it again, protect careers.
Among the best examples of practice versus ideals is the shift in paleontology identifying dinosaurs as the ancestors of birds, not lizards. An initial error, the mounting of legs incorrectly to conform to a conception of reptilian forms, led to decades of incorrect science and teaching.
When a new generation of scientists looked at the bones and consulted anatomy, they realized the legs mounted at the sides, in lizard fashion, could not support the weight of dinosaurs. Further, the ball-and-socket joints matched bottom mounting, not sideward. Bones told their own story plainly if evidence was seen clearly; they resembled birds, not reptiles.
Proof accumulated quickly that the new view was correct. Further, impressions of feathered dinosaur skin was found. It had been seen before but ignored as a non-reptilian anomaly. Now, given the bird lineage there for all to see, it made sense that dinosaurs, many of them, perhaps most, maybe all, had feathers.
This view proved out through evidence, yet nothing changed in academia, which continued teaching the reptile view. Older paleontologists and professors refused to accept blatant, irrefutable evidence because doing so would tank their life’s work.
The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert T Bakker describes how a new generation with solid science had to wait for the old guard in academia to die off before evidence mattered.
It’s as bad in other fields. Archaeologists find themselves pushed to fringe journals, their papers rejected by peer-reviewed publications that define the field, if they dare proffer theories that fail to conform to consensus views.
An example is insisting Ancient Egyptians quarried and shaped stones of tens of thousands of tons using only copper tools, even though copper won’t make a dent in granite. Further, stones so big we cannot move them now with our power equipment were brought from hundreds of miles away, in some cases, and placed so perfectly a sheet of paper won’t fit between them.
Such examples go on and on. “Oh, copper tools. Oh, boats. Oh, slaves.” The assertions made by establishment archaeology are absurd when tested, yet remain in place, and suggesting anything else is a direct immediate loss of status, credentials, and membership in the scientific establishment.
When an archaeologist points to obvious water erosion on the Sphinx the establishment sees no water and denies the Sphinx could be old enough to have been exposed to water, so that archaeologist is instantly considered a conspiratorial flake out to undermine their established timelines and interpretations.
When one points out no mummy has ever been found inside any pyramid, and adds that pyramids are found all over Earth, not just in Egypt, the establishment scoffs, continues declaring them tombs, and ignores evidence to the contrary.
All this to protect a status quo with a shaky foundation.
Personal and socio-political considerations buttress such stubborn willful ignorance. Examples include Egypt wants to maintain its claim as the oldest civilization, even though other finds, notably Gobekli Tepi in Turkey are much older.
Further, the Egyptian is the only civilization to begin at its apex and gradually decline, instead of the usual pattern of starting small, building up to an apex, then declining. In other words, the First Dynasty appears in history fully formed and at its peak, and decays slowly from then on.
This indicates what is called the Egyptian civilization is a transplant, from elsewhere. Colonists brought a high civilization from elsewhere for an unknown reason. This notion rankles current Egyptian pride so it is rejected out-of-hand, again despite evidence.
Sites found in Egypt that seem to predate First Dynasty architecture are routinely re-buried and ignored, and access forbidden to any who would investigate them.
In Israel, Masada is a fortress top a mesa where … something happened. In the sanctioned official origin of the state myth, Jews suffered a long siege and were eventually forced to commit mass suicide rather than submit to Roman slavery. It was a Remember the Alamo kind of myth used to rally support for Israel as a free state.
To attain this tale of magnificent self-sacrifice in the name of remaining free, evidence was suppressed for decades. Only recently have new assessments been made. New access to records that went beyond General Sylvanus and historian Josephus showed that the Romans did lay siege, eventually building a ramp to reach the wall. Breaching the wall, they … escorted the siege survivors to new homes.
No mass suicide or slaughter happened. Roman behavior proved civilized. Gone was the stirring myth.
Much the same kind of fact-based eroding of useful lies occurred with the Alamo, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, (he made it only part of the first leg, was captured, later escaped, but never completed the ride to rouse resistance. A teenaged girl did that), and many another national myth.
It’s not only nationalism to blame for suppressing evidence to protect status quo science in academia, but this element can be strong.
Stalin destroyed much of science in his Soviet Union by insisting on pseudoscience, such as Lysenkoism, which suited is socio-political delusions of eugenics and creating the Perfect Soviet Man. Hitler did much the same thing, leading to the sadistic torture performed by Joseph Mengele and others.
Turning from fact leads to atrocity.
Academia should protect intellectual honesty and pursue fact where it leads, with continual revision of worldview a goal, not a shameful disgrace to be avoided. Too many academics find themselves unable to shrug and admit having been wrong when new evidence arises. They can’t bring themselves to assess the evidence fairly.
Academia must protect fact, not tenure or texts if ignorance is not to be ensconced as a lofty goal, if atrocities are to be avoided.
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