Professional skeptic Michael Shermer has written a blistering Substack post against “Wokeness” in science:

The infiltration of wokeness into the sciences is now well documented, from the hiring practices of academic science departments based on a bingo-card of intersecting identities (race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.) to granting agencies demanding statements explaining how the proposed research project will be supportive of or sensitive to oppressed minorities—even for scientific fields that have nothing to do with the woke focus on politics, economics, and social policies, such as astrophysics. Case in point: the German physicist Sabine Hössenfelder went out to her Twitter/X followers in 2022 to inquire what woke formulaic language she should plug into her grant proposal for studying black holes: …

The pushback she experienced in the comments section of the post led her to delete the tweet, as apparently even asking the question challenged the woke agenda, which must never be allowed. Another physicist and cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, has carefully documented the extensive politicization of the sciences, for example a Physical Review Physics Education Research paper titled “Observing Whiteness in Introductory Physics: A Case Study,” that includes an objection to the use of “whiteboards” in classrooms because:

“Though whiteboards have been shown to have a number of affordances when they are used as a collaborative tool that all members have access to, in this episode, they also play a role in reconstituting whiteness as social organization. In particular, whiteboards display written information for public consumption; they draw attention to themselves and in this case support the centering of an abstract representation and the person standing next to it, presenting. They collaborate with white organizational culture, where ideas and experiences gain value (become more central) when written down.”

“Wokeness Poisons Science: Part II of my series on why I am no longer woke,” December 21, 2024

Shermer, Hossenfelder, and Krauss all dismiss the idea of design in nature and a Mind behind the universe. Yet, in a way, fashionable skepticism and atheism are coming back to bite them. Wars on science, and rationality are destroying the life of the mortal mind and there is no hope of appeal to a Higher Authority that is the guarantor of a rational universe..
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Math is up for Cancellation too

Featured image: Seeing mathematics in everyday life/Reuben Tao, Unsplash

Here at Mind Matters News, we have mostly covered the “war on math” component of the overall Woke war on science. For example, here:

A classical way of helping people worldwide perfect their abstract thinking skills has been subjected to much recent politicking. In a 2017 anthology for math teachers, math education professor Rochelle Gutierrez was telling teachers that

“‘On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,’ Gutierrez argued.

“Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.” – Toni Airaksinen, “Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege,” Campus Reform, October 23, 2017.

Of course, the Pythagorean theorem and pi are fundamental mathematical principles. They were known to various ancient cultures but the Greeks, famously, developed a habit of formulating ideas in an easily transmissible way. That is why so many words for abstract ideas used in many languages today have Greek roots. Making that history into a problem doesn’t help students learn the math.

Incidentally, a number of words in mathematics have Arab language roots, including algebra, algorithm, cipher, average, azimuth, cube, zenith, and zero, because the Arabs had their own golden age of mathematics from roughly the eighth century to the thirteenth centuries A.D. Are these concepts somehow more (or less) useful because they feature Arab root words? Don’t students need to learn the basic principles anyway?

“Does Deep Social Change Underlie the War on Math?” August 17, 2023

It’s superfluous to point out that Gutierrez’s Woke beliefs will not help minority students do better in math. And perhaps that is not even the goal.

Cancelling evolutionary biology

Image Credit: freshidea - Adobe Stock

Mind Matters News also covered the Cancellation of evolutionary biologists who insist that humans, as primate mammals, are male or female, not “gender fluid”:

Science is as dependent on the concept of public truth as the great religions are. Thus, when private truth rapidly gains power, it is just as vulnerable. Example: “Here’s a sentence that appeared in a recent article in Scientific American: “The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.”

That’s classic private truth. A public truth analysis of the difference between male and female performance could not ignore anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry. But a private truth analysis can. In this case, perhaps it must.”

“The Cancel Culture Mob Comes For the Evolutionary Biologists,” January 28, 2024

A “Sunday” question

It’s a “Sunday” question whether theism is essential for rationality. But — as we try to sort out how math, physics, biology, etc., got into this mess — the question is bound to be asked, and should be. Maybe we need to believe that there is a Mind behind the universe in order to provide guardrails against deeply crazy stuff claiming to be science.

Atheism, it turns out, was no great friend to science.