That’s a well-written reply. However, I suspect that your way of looking at things is incoherent. On the one hand, you start things off with the social Darwinism I predicted you’d be committed to. But then you presuppose the superiority of one culture over another (STEM over the humanities). And you hold up “prosperity” as the ideal.
I’m not sure, then, you’ve grasped the full implications of this social Darwinism or of this reductive sociobiological, philosophical, scientistic naturalism. Someone who takes this cynical view of human affairs is entitled to speak only of social changes or of instrumental improvements (relative to goals), not of values that are more than tribal or personal preferences. So you could say that a tuba player is less likely to change the world than an inventor, but not that one change is really better than another. For example, you’d have no basis for saying that the survival of our species is better than the alternative in which an asteroid impact wipes us all out.
If you find yourself wanting to say, on the contrary, that there’s something ultimately precious about human life, or something sacred about your private property (your tall mango tree), you’re in the realm of the humanities. Science proves no such preciousness. That’s where scientism ends up being shallow and self-defeating.
I agree that the humanities as branches of the academy have become frauds (because they’ve been reduced to commodities defined by the army of administrators who’ve invaded universities, and because some postindustrial societies have been infantilized so they no longer appreciate the function of self-knowledge). I talk about that fraud in “From Academic To Freelance Writing: Coping With The Culture Shock.” But I deny that everyone is equally as proficient in the arts (in history, philosophy, political science, writing, etc). Everyone can do those things to some extent, but that’s like saying everyone can do science because they performed a toy experiment once when they were kids.
But I’d like to invite you to have a dialogue with me on this topic by email, so I could post it on my Medium page. I’ve had a few email dialogues with thoughtful readers (links below). Perhaps we could debate the nature of social progress or whether we should dispense with the humanities (philosophy, religion, fine arts, etc). If you’re interested, follow the first link below to my blog, scroll down (on the web-based view, not the mobile one) to the “Contact this blog’s author” section, and send me an email that way.
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2019/08/pragmatism-naturalized-platonism-and.html
