Parsimony and Syndicate

G20: Protests, Pittsburgh, Principles, and media comissars

2009-08-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

This was in response to one of the many articles coming out of the Post-Gazette that paints the protesters as a bunch of crazy violent people with no agenda, no principles, no reasons, and no legitimate purpose - not to mention the almost daily articles on how the police are training to resist us! It is a bit angry and perhaps not my most articulate but it will do for a start. I hope all of you who are considering protests will write to the Post often over the next weeks and months - it is important that they not succeed in driving up jingoist and antidemocratic sentiment that will divide our community. For those of you, and I assume a majority here, who are not protesting, who don't know what the G20 really is and does, who don't understand why anyone would participate in a rejection of the G20's principles, I hope you will not turn to the Post-Gazette for your information. Here is the link to the Post-Gazette article.

Dear Mr Lord:

I was very disappointed by your article in the paper this morning concerning the steps city council is taking to specifically curtail protest which will be taking place in September around the G20. Not only do you libel the protest movement with the same trope US media have been so fond of since Woodrow Wilson's Red Scare, that of the 'dangerous anarchist', but you also don't seem to understand any of the consequences this new legislation will have: by criminalizing our methods the city council is criminalizing us! And why? to prevent the residents of Pittsburgh from challenging the states authority to monopolize and hijack our public spaces? to prevent the residents of Pittsburgh from challenging the owners of the economy from continuing to put forward policy which creates refuges, drug wars, and land wars over resources. These newly considered laws will not stop protesters from having PVC or coming up with other creative ways to resist the police, the violent arm of the people who are the real purveyors of violence around the world: the world leaders descending upon our city. What this new ordnance(s) will do is make illegal the methods that the nonviolent peace and social justice movement use to resist war and economic mercantilism! It will add bodies in our jails and hospitals and will do nothing to discourage the movement from creative nonviolent resistance. You did put in several respectable objections to this unsurprisingly antidemocratic spirit coming from our 'democratic representatives' by council member Patrick Dowd... what you didn't add is that Dowd called for, on behalf of his constituents who've been asking for this, a meeting between the protest community and the police: a meeting which I understand has been largely rejected by council members who seem to be less interested in democracy than Dowd. More importantly, however, you let stand the vacuous and deleterious mantra of media coverage concerning protest: "Look at all the violence; what are we going to do about all this violence."
Perhaps if you weren't such a commissar, dedicated to tired and antidemocratic ideas such as 'good protester, bad protester', you'd have taken the minute or so to look and see what the principle of these "dangerous anarchists", as well as Raging Grannies -notice that we have the same principles- are! We publish them right there on the resistg20.org web page. I'll provide them to you know in the hopes that you will in the future actual be a journalist instead of a spokes person for state power in line with their efforts of red-baiting, violence-baiting, and fear-mongering:

Pittsburgh Principles

* Our solidarity will be based on respect for a political diversity within the struggle for social justice. As individuals and groups, we may choose to engage in a diversity of tactics and plans of action but are committed to treating each other with respect.
* We realize that debates and honest criticisms are necessary for political clarification and growth in our movements. But we also realize that our detractors will work to divide by inflaming and magnifying our tactical, strategic, personal, and political disagreements. For the purposes of political clarity, and mutual respect we will speak to our own political motivations and tactical choices and allow other groups and individuals to speak on their own behalf. We reject all forms of red-baiting, violence-baiting, and fear-mongering; and efforts to foster unnecessary divisions among our movements.
* As we plan our actions and tactics, we will take care to maintain appropriate separations of time and space between divergent tactics. We will commit to respecting each other’s organizing space and the tone and tactics they wish to utilize in that space.
* We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others. We oppose proposals designed to cage protests into high-restricted "free speech zones."
* We will work to promote a sense of respect for our shared community, our neighbors, and particularly poor and working class people in our community and their personal property.

In solidarity, the undersigned:
Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project
Thomas Merton Center Anti-War Committee
Students for a Democratic Society
Self-Described Anarchist Collective
Three Rivers Climate Convergence: United for Environmental Justice
Raging Grannies - Pittsburgh
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom - Pittsburgh
Iraq Vets Against the War - Pittsburgh
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I do not speak today on behalf of any of the above organizations, but as a resident of our city, when I say that your article today was vacuous and contemptible. I hope you will remember, in the future, that we are the ones protesting against violence and war! We are the people working for peace and social justice! We are the men and women who work day in and day out, organizing to create an actually democratic society. A society where it is not acceptable to pass new legislation behind closed doors in order that a specific set of people with a specific set of concerns intent on voicing them publicly will be targeted by our laws with out any intended public debate. We do not accept legislation handed down from on high that criminalizes our methods. I say again, when you criminalize our methods you criminalize us.

With concern over the state of our democracy and the forth estate,
Jonathan LaTourelle
Dangerous Anarchist-Communist, Student, Believer in Radical Nonviolence, pissed off member of the community, and reader of the Post-Gazette

Iran

2009-06-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

The amazing Allison Kilkenny on Grit and a good bit by the real news, both on Iran.

Peru

2009-06-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

Indigenous people being killed for 'free trade' of oil. These people are standing in the way of the corporations that are pillaging their country and our planet. As always, the local government is designed to protect business interests over the interests of the people - shareholders over stakeholders. First up is a good bit I found on TheRealNews Network. And second is the article that Democracy Now did yesterday.

Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa

2009-05-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian nonviolent activist who spoke out against Shell Nigeria's devastating environmental policies in his countries delta as well as advocating for the rights of indiginous people: notably the Ogonis. Shell is going on trial for complicity in the egregious state murder of Saro-Wiwa and a 7 other activists. Here is the article from the Independent. Here is the site, remember Saro-Wiwa. Here is Shell Guilty (image from them). Below is the most recent article that Democracy Now had produced concerning the trail, Saro-Wiwa, and Shell's policy in the Niger Delta. And below that I've posted the clip from the Canadian Documentary "The Corporation" concerning Shell and Ken Saro-Wiwa. Shell is having its day in court - lets see how the courts handle it shal we.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1184614595?bctid=25828275001

Painting the Roads White Without Fear of Decapitation

2009-05-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

Steven Chu, US Energy Secretary, proposed a wide rang of energy saving ideas this Tuesday, the best of which have to do with repainting roads, roofs, and anything else feasible, lighter colours: "making roofs and pavements white or light-coloured would help to reduce global warming by both conserving energy and reflecting sunlight back into space. It would, he [Chu] said, be the equivalent of taking all the cars in the world off the road for 11 years." The Independent has a good article on Chu's ideas here: (imagine from independent.co.uk.) Reading it, I couldn't help but think of the cards from Alice and Wonderland painting the white roses red - though I'm sure Obama won't send Chu to the chopping block, or even one of his permanent detention centers, (and no doubt there is significantly more merit to this proposal than painting roses) somehow such a sensible policy seems unlikely to be implemented. But I'm all for it.

Howard Zinn and Just War

2009-05-21T17:07:00.001-07:00

Just War theory is rather laughable - if you examine the arguments by it leading proponents (Michael Waltzer, Reinhold Niebuhr, etc), most of what it reduces to is an IV educated someone saying "I feel" or "I think" that this war was just. To call any of these ideas theories seems to abused the term beyond recognition.

That aside, this talk by Howard Zinn at the 100 year anniversary of The Progressive magazine examines what we normal think of as "Just" or "Good" wars: The American Revolution, The Civil War, and World War II. It is always refreshing to hear Howard speak.

Pirates and Emperors

2009-05-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

And in this vane, see Allison Kilkenny's bit in defense of the Somali pirates.

The Crime of Liberation: Clinton to have Haiti

2009-05-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

I am so socked, and dismayed, that Bill Clinton is going to become the UN envoy to Haiti (Foreign Policy Exclusive today). You have no business being in Haiti in an official capacity Clinton!

"I think I understand what its shortcomings have been but I've always believed most of its problems were not as some people suggested; cultural, mystical."

Oh do you Bill; that is good Bill. I do wonder who you've been talking to that is under the impression that the problems in Haiti have been cultural and not a direct result of US intervention (including the a brutal marine military occupation from 1915-34), support from brutal dictatorships, and aid to terrorists [CIA asset Emmanuel Constant who now lives comfortably in Queens because Clinton -and Bush II- refused or ignored multiple extradition requests for this man who is responsible for the deaths of between 4 and 5 thousand poor blacks].

What Clinton really understood was the "the threat of democracy can be overcome if economic sovereignty is eliminated" (Chomsky, Getting Haiti Right This Time).

H.R. 331, introduce by Barbara Lee of (D-Ca), is looking for a truth commission to explore the U.S. role in the 2004 regime change which lead to the second ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide from office under Bush II: see an article on this by Judith Scherr. I wish Barbara Lee would extend that to violations of international embargo under Clinton among other supported atrocities. There is a good bit on RebelReports on all this by Jeremy Scahill.

Here is something I wrote on December 10th in celebration of the UD:

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

For those of you who lived under Clinton or Regan or Jimmy Cater you should know that we have routinely violated Article 14 with respect to Haiti. If anyone is interested in WHY Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, you might find it interesting and edifying to look into Haiti/US relations. In any case, Jimmy Cater started an illegal blockade and Regan formalized it, turning away refugees seeking asylum from the terror and oppression experienced under the then dictator, Duvalier. And when, in 1991 a popular priest (Aristide) was democratically elected (In a great upset for the US, who was supporting a world bank official that only got 14% of the vote), the US started accepting asylum claims at about 50 times the normal rate, and changed aid to the support the military opposition. Good thing half a year later there was a military coup; after that we changed our asylum policy back to an illegal blockade and support for the new military junta.

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As to the cultural/internal problems Haiti has had, here is my argument -I can provide source to anyone interested-:

The Crime of Liberation

Epigraph: “In overthrowing me, you have cut down in San Domingo only the trunk of the tree of black liberty. It will spring up again by the roots for they are numerous and deep.” The last words of Toussaint Louverture.

In the analysis of the history of Haiti the kind hearted are, I think, disposed to one of two positions: outrage at the western world; or outrage at the internal corruption of Haitian elites. But I think that both of these are a kind of mistake, generated from the idea that Haiti’s experience is wholly unique: that is, that the economic strangulation, the subversion of sovereignty through external financial system, the levying of excessive taxes upon the poor masses, or the corrupt state system which grew in support of these facts, are isolate to Haiti. In fact these are not unique experiences, but manifestations of the tools used most western powers generally. It is especially true that local elites are left in charge of the formal state apparatus, while the real power is exercised, without the inconvenience of responsibility for the welfare of the populous, by the foreign merchant bourgeoisie¹.

Yet if the outside world acted towards Haiti with the standard tools of foreign policy in place at the time, tools of domination and capital control, they also had reason to be particularly brutal in the application of those tools. Haiti had many characteristics which were particularly displeasing: for one the Haitians were a very black people. Racism plays its part; but if we shunt off the extremity of western hatred towards Haiti as simple racism we might again miss the point: that is, that foreign policy with respect to Haiti was unprincipled in all regards except for one: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people…”². The maximization of profit was the guiding light in international relations and it is what, I think, caused these words to be spoken on the US Senate floor by a Senator from South Carolina in 1842: “Our policy with regard to Hayti [sic] is plain. We never can acknowledge her independence…. The peace and safety of a large portion of our union forbids us even to discuss it.”³ It is interesting that the safety of the US is invoked here; because in reality what is meant by these words is not that Haiti is a military threat to the US, but that the ideas of Haiti, if acknowledged, would be an economic threat, because of the large scale US slave society. Racism, while a problem in its own right, has deep roots in economic class interests; we do a disservice when we superficially apply the term to any complex, and predominantly economic, situation.

But we see that the very Idea of Haiti is an economic threat to US and European, especially French, interests. Let us turn, then, to the idea of Haiti; and, in doing so, touch on key elements of the Haitian political-economy as well as its sometimes complimentary, sometimes adversarial, social structures⁴; restricting the inquiry to the somewhat manageable period between National Liberation, in 1804, to the end of that century.

Haiti began its revolution formally in 1791 and the slaves, who were rejecting French rule, fought for 13 years to gain not only National Independence, but freedom from their brutal enslavement. Much has been made of the importance of this foundational time, the war generally and the militarism in particular, and its future sociological effects on Haiti by Trouillot; but this sentiment is more explicitly expressed by Brenda Plummer in her essay “Haiti and the Great Powers”⁵: “The Haitian conceptualization of tradition was linked profoundly to the Haitian Revolution.” She even points out that ‘General’ became a general honorific for “any man of wealth, status, or extraordinary power in Haitian society…”⁶. No doubt militarism was a necessity for an extended portion of Haitian nascence, protection from the threat of French invasion as well as serious threats from other Western and European nations⁷; no doubt the military provided opportunity for vertical social mobility⁸. But again we must be careful when implying, as both Trouillot and Plummer do, that the militarized agriculture, a kind of pseudo-feudalism/pseudo-slavery, was a result of a generalized military attitude; it makes more sense to see it in the same light that we are able to see the foreign interests: that is, through the lens of the Vile Maxim of the Masters of Mankind: that is, economic self-interest.

The early Hatian rulers are interesting and varied in methodology⁹ but they were all equally concerned with the same general end: that is crafting a state in such a way that it would be most profitable for them. Or, as Trouillot puts the situation “black leaders who arose in the battle… were in complete agreement with the masses of slaves on one point and one point alone: that slavery should be abolished…”¹⁰. The masses were variously, and often brutally, forced to return to the sugar plantations but the landed elites found it enormously difficult to keep a now freed people in an almost identical physical situation as they had been in prior to liberation; even if the name of the name of the situation had change, as had the color of the man in charge, the masses rejected the better efforts of the new black elite, convinced as they were that liberty meat possession of your own land¹¹.

But let us return to our central question, what is so threatening about the Idea of Haiti to Western powers. It seems to me that Plummer hits on the root of the issue, which is as I see it two fold, with the following:

In 1904 a Haitian diplomate confided his concern over border problems [with Santo Domingo] to the American secretary of state, John Hay. “You have an Monroe Doctrine too,” Hay concluded. The Haitian replied that Haiti had had one before the United States did.¹²

We can see here that Haiti not only threatens US political hegemony of the region –and Latin America in general-, which is effectively what the Monroe Doctrine establishes, but also did it first. That the Haitian could possibly lead by example, or as they did once by force in the case of Santo Domingo –invading, as they are said to have done, ‘to liberate the slaves’- was unacceptable. That Haiti could lead by subversion, as Plummer points out Colombia and the US thought they were trying to do, was totally intolerable. For the French it was of course also the great economic cost of losing their most profitable colony and “opening the way [for the US] to the expansion to the West by compelling Napoleon to accept the Louisiana Purchase…” as Noam Chomsky points out¹³.

The years of capital flight, unjust taxation, predatory finance, and state corruption, are one thing; but the greatest economic insult is got to be the 150 million franc indemnity imposed by France for the crime of the Haitian people of liberating themselves from the French¹⁴. This great insult caused Boyer, the then president, to seek foreign loan, among other things; ironically this came from the French. In return for this indemnity payment, the Haitian people were freed of the overt threat of force from the French; yet, this, and economic policies of this kind, lead to a system of indirect servitude (if not slavery). Trouillot does a wonderful job of showing how the Haitian state is very isolated from the mass of the Haitian people. In his analysis he focuses on the inequitable import and export taxes (the heavy burden on imports concentrating on necessary commodities and the heavy burden on exports concentrating on coffee); at the same time he shows how indirect taxes are perhaps more insidious, more, to use his word unjust, than direct taxation: indirect taxation is an obfuscation of the burden of taxes¹⁵. In the same way economic colonialization is an obfuscation of a system which imposes large scale odious debt upon an unwilling population; chattel slaves the people might not be, but a nation suffering under usurious debt, the cost of capital flight, and the monopolies of foreign business interests, is free in name only.

If only the west would drink its coffee ‘fair trade’, Haiti would have had a much different history. Or if, indeed, Wordsworth had be right when he wrote to Toussaint, post mortem in the latter’s case, about his allies:

Though fallen theyself, never to rise again,

Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind

Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;

There’s not a breathing of the common wind

That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,

And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

Transhumanism and Enhancement

2009-05-18T15:42:00.000-07:00

Philosophy Bites had an interesting interview with Allen Buchanan on biological enhancement; i.e., drugs, surgeries, or hypothetical genetic treatments which aim to 'improve' human capacities of one kind or another. I've been thinking more and more about this area of science and society for two reasons. The first being that government subsidy of high technology industry has, of late, been moving towards biotech (if not away from the more traditional technologies); and the second because I was under the impression that advancements in these areas will increase inequalities along class lines (for obvious reasons). Buchanan argues that enhancements won't increase inequalities in an interesting, if naive, way: basically by analogy he says that technologies are, on the whole, democratizing. What I think he forgets, and what many people tend to ignore, is that the technologies that people often hold up as democratizing are an elite activity: (the Internet is used by less than 20% of world population -under 5% in Africa-) Yet I think Buchanan has interesting things to say on the face value of enhancements and perhaps it is wrong of me to say that he is naive. In any case, transhumanists are generally the deepest thinkers on the ethics of biological enhancement. A blogger I enjoy is a good example of this ethical thought: Anarchotranshumanism. In addition The Institute for Ethical Technology always has interesting things to say: find them here.
I have deep doubts that capitalist industry will produce egalitarian enhancements -Monsanto is a fine example- yet I think I'm won over to the simple fact that enhancements are not intrinsically bad. The interview is well worth the 20 minutes.

Glenn and Inflamed AntiAmericanism

2009-05-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greewald is no doubt one of the most excellent and important journalists working today. He writes for Salon.com and is worth reading every day - today's article was especially important as it addresses very serious issues of media docility and subservience to state power as demonstrated by the establishment reaction to Obama's decision to try to suppress evidence of America's detainee abuse photographs. Check it out here.

Afghanistan and War

2009-05-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

Oh well, I guess the plus to this needless and violently immoral war being escalated is that I get to continue being part of a protest movement.
More at The Real News

Laboratory of Architecture @ Carnegie

2009-05-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

Fernando Romero

From May 5

Modeling Death

2009-05-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

Sean Gourley's TED talk is on the mathematics of war (insurgency). Quite interesting in that it is totally void of moral content - I'm not sure what to think really.

George McGovern and Obama

2009-05-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

From TheRealNews.com

Noneuclidean space and Margaret Wertheim

2009-04-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

What is truly interesting about the existence of Noneuclidean space is that it shows that math (or at least one axiom of math) is not a priori knowledge. That is, you have to check experience to see what kind of math is 'true' about the world. Since Socrates and before (but especially in "The Mino" by Plato where Socrates shows a young boy that he knows the truth of the Pythagorean theorem despite never being taught it) the axioms of math were said to be a special example of universal, necessary, and certain knowledge about the world which we (humans) had without reference to experience. Now we know that isn't totally the case.

Hilary Putnam and the Philosophy of Science

2009-04-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

Putnam's work is foundational in modern Philosophy of Science - I don't always agree with him -especially with respect to his ideas about language- but this BBC interview with Bryan Magee is quite good.

The Corporation

2009-04-17T14:47:00.001-07:00

An amazing Canadian documentary. Important, if you want to understand the world today.

Pirates

2009-04-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

Glen Greenwald had an interesting bit on the issues with Piracy of late - it reminded me of the below bit by Noam and his use of St Augustan's allegory of the Pirate and the Emperor. Check out Glenn's article here.

I love Noam Chomsky

2009-04-17T14:42:00.001-07:00

I love Noam Chomsky - his linguistics are beautiful and humanizing, his politics ethical and moralizing. Here's some politics.

Noam Chomsky on the Economy

2009-04-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

Economics is a quite interesting science - especially since, like most sciences, it disregards its own history in favor of current theory. Chomsky often puts economics in the framework of historical reality - making the economics, and the world generally, more intelligible. This is Noam on the IMF, World Bank, Third World Debt, and current Economic Politics.

Changing Directions - The People Speak

2009-04-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

I've fallen behind: no excuses. But I realize that I am excluding a large section of my interests when I narrow this to simply my academic major. Actually, I've never really done that - I've just been obtuse about referencing politics. So, I'm going to be more honest and give more attention to the society part of my tagline.

Pharaoh's Snake

2009-03-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

I guess this is like those fireworks you can buy which are called snakes for some odd reason. Nonetheless, cool to watch. This is Mercury Thiocyanate on fire. -don't do it at home because it lets off some nasty mercury gasses in the process.

Hippos!

2009-03-24T22:51:00.001-07:00

Meaning and Liquids

2009-03-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the meaning of words, reading too much Chomsky, so here are some thoughts plagiarized from, or inspired by, him:

What does the word water refer to? Obviously not H2O since when I ask for water and get tea I get mad, and when I ask for tea and get water I get mad. But these things are substantively equivalent (there is so slight a chemical difference it really is indistinguishable chemically) -I mean, there's lots of mineral salts and what have you in water which makes it not pure H2O when it comes out the tap too.

What does the word fire refer to? A phase state? Chemical combustion? Obviously not, science fusion is also said to be fire in a common language sense: "the sun is on fire," etc.

What does the world river refer to? Obviously not a body of water if water refers to H2O. I live by the Monongahela River and it most certainly isn't pure H2O. As you can see by this picture there are substantial locks on the river, does that change it's status? Hobbes said that River was individuated by its origination, but that isn't true either because if I froze over the river and painted lines on it we'd call it a road (see most roads in Alaska). Or even lets make a simpler change to the Monongahela, lets put in a cement channel - it comes from the same place and goes to the same place but isn't a river any more... it's a water way or an aqueduct. Or I could divert one of its tributaries, say the West Fork river, and everyone would still call it the Monongahela. I could even make in drain into a man made lake for use right here in Pittsburgh instead of allowing it to flow into the Allegheny to become the Ohio and people would still call it the Monongahela.

Rivers, water, fire, house hold pet, tree, etc. All these aren't world categories -they don't exist- but proper nouns and indexicals , as Chomsky points out. Each instance of them exists, but the categorizes doesn't and so defining substance is really quite elusive. Interesting to think on I think. So, next time someone says water is H2O, tell them they're mistaken.

NGC 6240

2009-03-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

(AP Photo/NASA/JPL) Colliding Galaxies - As imaged by Spitzer space telescope.

Causation Comic

2009-03-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

From xkcd

My Uncle on FORA.tv

2009-03-07T17:04:00.000-08:00

This is my uncle, Dr David Bisno, talking about Darwin and the future of science. It is worth the hour.

2009-03-06T12:09:00.000-08:00

Gustav Klimt. Philosophy, 1899 - 1907. Oil on canvas.

This painting has always fascinated me. I think it expresses how many people, including may students of philosophy, feel about philosophy. Klimt is best known for his The Kiss -which for some reason you see in dorm rooms across America- and, tangentially, there is a surprisingly terrible movie about him called "Klimt": (he's played by John Malkovich who I love, but I couldn't even finish the thing -my art history teacher said the same thing-.)
Anyway, this painting is just uncertainty packed into paint. Western Philosophy still works hard every day to get around uncertainty, you can see an example of that in the Philosophy Bites post I just did with the scientific realist, in large part, I think, because it leads them to psychologically uncomfortable places. A very smart friend of mine expressed this as 'feeling the void.' I don't think uncertainty leads to this generalized philosophical ennui -seems to me like one of the many odd orthodoxies which plague philosophic education- but Klimt captured something true here. If I could retitled the work it would be "sociology of philosophic malaise."
(a side note, Klimt is known for his colors and their amazing texture - so the work doesn't really come across from this image... or so I assume since the work was burnt in 1945.)

Philosophy Bites on Scientific Realism

2009-03-05T12:37:00.000-08:00

Philosophy Bites usually has interesting interviews on any number of interesting philosophical ideas; this one is on scientific realism and is quite good. I don't agree with David Papineau's form of realism and it seems as though his arguments are obviously flawed, but that is besides the point.

Tree of Knowledge

2009-03-02T22:01:00.001-08:00

The Science of Happiness

2009-02-28T01:49:00.000-08:00

The Imagistic Wonders of Phrase Structures and Category Errors

2009-02-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

This example of a category error was put forward by Chomsky in "Syntactic Structures" as an example of how "the notion of 'grammatical' cannot be identified with 'meaningful' or 'significant' in any semantic sense." So, meaning and grammar are very different. Another example of this but in the opposite direction would be 'that baby seems sleeping.' In this case you can understand what is being said but the grammar is wrong: (whereas 'colorless green ideas sleep furiously' has got fine grammar, but no meaning.) The basic idea of the biolinguistic turn, put forth by Chomsky, is the theory that grammar is innate to us (humans); that is, there is some kind of mental hardwire which defines a single human universal grammar. Chomsky calls this "syntax", and sometimes 'deep structure', and I think it can be shown most easily through an example of a question transformation: "The man is tall" becomes "Is the man tall" as a question: (We've taken the subject -man- and the auxiliary -is- that follows it and revered them to make a question.) Now take "The man who is tall is sad." How do you transform that into a question? You might say something like "Is the man who is tall said" which makes sense intuitively, but when we did that we did something different than we did in the first sentence; namely, we took the second "is" (the second auxiliary) instead of the first. If we were consistent in applying a uniform transformation we would have to say something like "Is the man who tall is sad." Now, this is obviously, and inntuitively, incorrect. What Chomsky showed was this, and also that no children ever make this mistake. If children are just following behavior that they see in the world, as B.F. Skinner said, you would think that they could easily make this kind of mistake; the fact that they don't is further evidence for generative, or universal, grammar: that is, that syntactical knowledge is innate. This lead to the biolinguistic turn -a.k.a the Chomskyian Revolution-, and also these good looking illustrations:

(From Publisher's Round-Up)
( From Retrofuturs)
(Examples of transformation from John McWhorter)

The Most Depressing TED

2009-02-26T16:02:00.000-08:00

This is got to be the most depressing TED I've ever seen: it is only a little over 10 minutes and is a must see.

Comet Luli

2009-02-26T15:14:00.001-08:00

Picture from The Independent.co.uk

Vaccines

2009-02-26T14:49:00.001-08:00

As long as I''ve been reading Science Blogs, I've seen posts about Vaccines. It is always quite amazing how people who are fond of science, who often think of themselves as scientists, are willing to evangelize with more zeal then you can find in most other secular communities; even plenty of religions ones. These Science Bloggers frequently get angry and abuse concerned parents who accept this pseudoscience nonsense, as they are fond of calling it: (here is a recent post of this kind by the name "Stupid Cubed" by a fine Science Blogger, Respectful Insolence, who's syndicated with SEED: (ironic that name since I've never thought calling someone stupid was very respectful.) Just a quick quote from our respectful blogger: "I try to get away from blogging about the nigh infinite level of stupidity and pseudoscience that emanates from the disease promotion movement (i.e., the antivaccine movement)"

Now, I have to admit that many of the concerns about vaccines and autism are unfounded, as study after study has shown; but if we are good inductivests that fact doesn't mean we'll just say "lets vaccinate again." The truth is, many vaccines have caused serious problems in the past, etc., etc. I'm not writing about all that today. Today I'm writing about the recall of meningitis C vaccine from clinics around the UK. These vaccines have been contaminated with Staphylococcus Aureus bacterium, a blood-poisoner. Here's the independent article. I hope you pro vacciners will cut parents a little bit of a break... after all, there's a nontrivial historical record to contend with. And these vaccine companies are not altruistic do-gooders: they're more concerned with profit than quality of product (as is the case will all companies in capitalists systems.)

Mind/Brain and the idiocy of NPR

2009-02-25T20:58:00.000-08:00

This is one of the worst NPR articles I've ever had the misfortune of listening to (and then reading again because I was so worked up). NPR "Science" article or listen to it here.
I was going to write out my thoughts but they are much too long. I'll just say two quick things:

First off, the mind/body problem is nonsense. There is no mind body problem, though for some reason most philosophers will tell you there is one. Most scientist will tell you there isn't and then proceed to give a nonsense answer about how there are only bodies. Newton killed the idea of the actual existence of physical bodies and no one has altered that empirical concept since: "a purely materialistic or mechanistic physics, impossible", he says. Not that I think you should just take his word for it; what he meant is that there's no proof a physical objects in light of action at a distance (what we now call the Theory of Fields and what he called Forces). This is again said by John Locke as "[god] annexed effects to motion which we can in no way conceive motion able to produce." (I'm almost positive that Locke didn't believe in God.) All this remains the case, there is no evidence for the existence of bodies -that is, of anything physical being ontologically substantive-. The Buddha and especially Nagarjuna's interpretation of the theory of emptiness, did the same much before either Newton or John Locke, but that is incidental.

For some reason one of the surgeons interviewed thinks this might amount to proof of God's Intelligent Design. What hogwash. This is just the argument from ignorance: basically it is an argument of this type (or so it was given in this NPR piece), if Evolution is correct then it should be able to explain complex systems. Evolution cannot explain complex systems, therefore Intelligent Design is true.
You see how the fact that Evolution is said, erroneously, not to be able to account for complex systems is in no way connected to the theory of Intelligent Design! That is, disproving one theory does not in itself provide support for any other theory. The logical form is If A then B, not B, therefore C. You can see that this mode of thought is fallacious.
(Image from SEED.COM)
"There is nothing about neurons that scientifically would lead you to infer consciousness from them. They're masses of gelatinous carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen, just like other kinds of flesh. And why would flesh have first-person experience? So, even logically, it doesn't hang together."

Nonsense, there are plenty about neurons that would lead you to infer consciousness: this is as much nonsense as saying I wouldn't get tired if I walked up a hill because the hill doesn't have any substantive ontological status. But of course, that isn't even what the man is arguing... he is arguing that there is something special about PEOPLE that makes us different from all other things: that is a claim not born out by any facts. Understanding that bodies are not truly existing does not lead to the conclusion that what we call a body and what we call a mind are separable -they're not. They are dependently arising phenomenon; not real in themselves which arise only together: they are dependent, as in any subject/object relationship. That is again to say that just because bodies don't exist doesn't mean or imply anything about Intelligent Design or Evolution. And if these antievolutionists want to know something about how complex systems come about, they might look into Systems Biology or Complexity Theory.

Tubular Eyes

2009-02-25T20:46:00.000-08:00

The Barreleye is quite odd, I must admit. Family Opisthoproctidae. Check her out.

Phenomenological Fields

2009-02-24T22:10:00.000-08:00

Queer ideas, these Phenomenologists have. But, it maintains the particularities of experience and the interdependence of knowing: though, the interdependence is not of subject/object, but of the community of knowers. The academic article is attached: " Intersubjectivity and Humanities-Based Psychology: Some Thoughts on Cleaning Up Our Language."

In my very humble opinion, these people have very mistaken ideas about the purpose and function of language; which does not need to, and cannot, be 'cleaned up.'

Blog Ethic and Bailiwick

2009-02-24T13:46:00.000-08:00

(Image shamelessly stolen from RevelationArt: check them out, the work is quite good.)

"Many blog readers will form opinions based on very simple things," says Wager. "Like words such as 'voodoo correlations.' There's no reason to use such loaded words when making a statistical argument. The argument should be able to stand on its own."
(This from a recent Seed article entitled "That Voodoo That Scientists Do.")

Tor Wager -quoted above-, a cognitive neuroscientist from Columbia University, is quite right about one thing (even if he is very wrong about what he wants to be right about). For all of you who read Seed, or who've been following the controversy through other media, you'll know that Dr Wager is objecting to a forthcoming paper titled "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience" (Ed Vul & Nancy Kanwisher, MIT, and Hal Pashler,UCSD). While I think Vul, et al, are basically correct in their assessment of some recent neuroscience, the more important point, at least for me as it concerns me, is that Bloggers pass themselves off as experts.

Now, lest it seem as though I'm one of the many people constantly maligning Bloggers and Blog Readers, I also think that New York Times writers pass themselves off as experts when the very often are not: (often with much more devastating consequences.) What I very blandly recommend is that you, the reader, come to your own conclusions. The good thing about blog posts is that they usually link to primary sources: if you want to have an informed opinion, read them. I am also of the opinion that a sound Science Education greatly helps critical analysis. I'll quote Chomsky, who makes this point more eloquently than I can:

"I think studying science is a good way to get into fields like history. The reason is, you learn what an argument means, you learn what evidence is, you learn what makes sense to postulate and when, what's going to be convincing. You internalize the modes of rational inquiry, which happen to be much more advanced in the sciences than anywhere else. On the other hand, applying relativity theory to history isn't going to get you anywhere. So it's a mode of thinking."

I feel obligated to qualify myself as vastly under-qualified; yet in the fields that I do feel qualified to have an opinion, I give my opinion: (generally that translates into areas concerning the History and Philosophy of Science & Technology, Astronomy, Physics -at least conceptually-, Geology, Philosophy, Linguistics, and just a little bit of Evolutionary Science.) I have my bailiwick and I try to stick too it. My intellectual honesty will hopefully translate into something usefully for you and I am always happy to debate and be corrected: (that's what the "Syndicate" part is about.)

NeoLamarckianism and Child Abuse

2009-02-24T13:11:00.000-08:00

I have a School Friend, whom I quote below, who researches Neo-Lamarckian ideas which I find quite interesting: (especially since Lamarck is so put upon in public education; rightly so in most respects.) In that vane, the Times had an article today on the effect of early childhood abuse on your biology and it, in my opinion, falls into this NeoLamarchian category.
A quick example of a neolamarckian idea: the act of breastfeeding imparts the mother's immune system on her child and that immune system is a trait that mom acquired by interaction with her environment. In other, better, words "parents acquire immunological resistance to certain pathogens, and then transmit the resistance to their children via breastfeeding." There are other examples concerning bacteria mutation and the remarkable way "viruses infect gametes with useful characters [which] cause[s] offspring to have those new traits."
The Times article sites evidence recently published in the Journal Nature Neuroscience by Dr. Michael Meaney, working out of McGill University in Montreal; the study was on human suicide, the thrust of which being that gene expression changes in abused children, making them more likely to commit suicide (as well as suffer from other mental disorders).
From the Abstract: "We examined epigenetic differences in a neuron-specific glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1) promoter between postmortem hippocampus obtained from suicide victims with a history of childhood abuse and those from either suicide victims with no childhood abuse or controls.... These findings translate previous results from rat to humans and suggest a common effect of parental care on the epigenetic regulation of hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor expression."
The moral, be a good parent: apparently there are books on the subject now: (actually, I think that Alfie Kohn is the person to go to in this last respect; or at least, with respect to early childhood education.)

Peeking under the Firmament

2009-02-23T22:14:00.000-08:00

And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth": and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: the stars also."

Journal of Philosophical Studies

2009-02-23T18:19:00.000-08:00

The Journal of Philosophical Studies new issue focuses on the Philosophy of Science. For all of you who are interested (a.k.a the insane) and are lucky enough to be a subscriber or part of a syndicate subscription (a.k.a students & teachers) the Godfrey-Smith Article on "Models and Fiction in Science" is quite interesting. I won't dilate further, at least not yet; though there's no promising that I might not be overcome with the urge at a later date.

The Political Economy of Our Food Systems

2009-02-23T17:48:00.000-08:00

This short news piece quite remarkably illustrates the subversion of science to corporate interests even when the outcome effects the health and well being of children. Many studies have shown that feeding children good quality food improves concentration abilities and grades over all with a negligible added cost: commonsense, simple commonsense.

Tonight with a good Scope

2009-02-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

Four of Saturn's moons will transit the planet early in the morning tomorrow (Tuesday the 24th at about 5:54 my time) and I'll not be able to see it: it is snowing in Pittsburgh and anyway, I don't have a respectable telescope. But for those of you who do... well, I envy you. A lot is learned through the observation of the transits, most famously, the transit of Venus across the Sun, but I doubt this is going to be especially exciting as far as data collection goes. It will be a fun sight however. Space.com has a fine article on the subject and they also point out that a comet will be visible, for all of you not being snowed on, tonight at tomorrow night near Saturn as well. If I can find some good Hubble Pictures post event I'll post them here.

Big Heads makes for Good Looking Babies

2009-02-23T13:27:00.000-08:00

The Science in this is all rather self evident; the basic question is why do we find 'cute' things 'cute.' The video argues, in a rather cute way, that we misplace the biological imperative to like our own species' young upon the features which the young have: (this is called Pedomorphosis.) It goes on to argues that the features the young have they have for other reasons than just cuteness (big heads = big brains, baby fat = insulation, etc.) and while that can generally be inferred it cannot always be; the causal relationships can be confusing here: we may have accentuated features as children precisely so that we are not subject to infanticide - that is to say that cuter children probably aren't the ones you kill and eat if you're super cold and hungry. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" as the Evolutionists are fond of saying. (I found this on Popular Science.)

The Evolution of Language and The BBC

2009-02-20T18:41:00.001-08:00

Quentin Cooper's Material World is one of the two popular science radio programs which don't drive me crazy with an overabundance of vacuous questions. This weeks show was particularly good; He had an interesting piece on the significance of historical climate data in modern climate modeling, but the best part was the last segment on the Evolution of Language. I have to say that I'm in love with linguistics, especially biolinguistics, as it solves so many interesting intellectual problems. Mark Pagel and Nick Chater were the guests on Material World and had quite interesting things to say about the coevolution of language biologically and sociologically: really, quite remarkable. I recommend a listen. They, Mark and Nick, casually mention another smart Linguist by the name of Steven Pinker, and if you haven't check him out on TED then you should watch him now. They of course talked about a hero of mine, Noam Chomsky: I say of course because he invented modern linguistics but he unfortunately doesn't do TED talks; you can, however, check him out on Google Video very easily as most of his talks are publicly posted.

Indispensable Cooking

2009-02-19T18:47:00.001-08:00

The Economist, that bastion of so many insensibly sensible people, had an interesting recent article about someone whose work think I rather like: Harvard Professor, Dr. Richard Wragham. I'm not totally convinced by his arguments but I do find them interesting, rigorous, and plausible. Among other things, Dr Wragham helped develop the idea that non-human animals often use non-foods to self-medicate: (in the technical literature this is called Zoopharmacognosy.) This latest article is concerned with the evolutionary role of cooking in human animals (erectus & sapian) and is based off the work published in his 2003 paper, "Cooking as a Biological Trait" and a 2006 book on the same subject (The Cooking Enigma). The paper is not unreadable and "suggest that cooking may be obligatory for humans" because of calorie needs which are satisfied by the increased efficiency of digestion from cooked food. I'm not really sure if this explains my need for a good curry or a home-cooked Pizza, but at least I now have good reason to not be a Raw Foods person.

Abstruse Higgs

2009-02-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

This was just too good: Abstruse Goose is always quality, but this captures, I think, the sentiment of so many people. While I really don't care who detects the Higgs first, Tevatron or CERN, I do feel rather badly for all the Ph.D students at CERN who are waiting on the Collision results to get awarded their degrees; it must be frustrating to have ones degree delayed a year because of relatively small technical malfunctions.

It is quite interesting, as a side note, that no one doubts that we will find the Higgs: quite an interesting fact about a lot of Astronomy and Physics of late is that prediction vastly proceeds our capacities for observation.

Why Not Bring John Tierney's Ego Back From the Afterlife

2009-02-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

John Tierney is I'm sure well meaning when he categorically disregards any objections to the artificial creation of a Neanderthal (wo)man in his piece in the Times recently: "why not", he says. Well, instead of answers such an idiotic question as 'why not' I'd like to ask a question of my own: since when have scientists, or their semi-articulate lay counterparts in the News Media, had the authority to reject objections without any critical examination? Well, maybe that is just as equally idiotic of a question; what I think I'm trying to get at is this interesting fact that advanced science today is so opaque to the lay community (even to those in the Media who claim subject expertise) that merely saying "because we can" is saying that we aught to: (is/aught problems anyone?)

How does one formulate a sincere objection to the creation of a living being so that it can have the great and unmissable opportunity to experience World of Warcraft? Often objection to science on ethical grounds are viewed as irrational yuk responses (as the philosophers like to call them) but this is often unwarranted and I think arises from the idea that ethics is generally considered a field so imprecise as to be meaningless: at least as it concerns the science minded. Yet, let me try to show how the foundations of the questions Mr Tierney poses are totally outrageous upon the simplest of moral principles: namely, if it is wrong for you than it is wrong for me.

Mr Tierney says:
"What do you think? Should we try to resurrect a Neanderthal? And if so, what kind of precautions should we take, and what kind of lives should we help them lead?"

Mr Tierney, I think that your last question is quite the point: we would be 'helping' them lead a life. You draw a comparison by saying that if we found some Neanderthal walking around in the woods we'd do everything we could to help him/her out. But of course, in both cases you don't really mean help: in the former case, where you create this being out of whole cloth, help means totally control (because there would be no other reasonable or ethical option left to you -not to mention all the incredibly interesting data you'd get out of giving this pathetic creation inkblot tests); in the later case, where you happen across Neanderthal walking through some Thoreauvian wood, you would be forcibly removing this creature from a natural environment so as to expose it to, again, World of Warcraft. Both cases are morally reprehensible because you would be depriving a free creature of any sort of liberty. If it is wrong when someone does it to you, it is wrong when you advocate doing it to someone, or something, else.

Now, it isn't really as simple as all that; Neanderthal, after all, isn't of our species and so, at least according to the barbarous wisdom of our time, might not actually warrant any moral considerations. Peter Singer I think would shine some light on this and I'd recommend him as one of the noble moralist of our time: a critical examiner could look to what it means to have "personness" even if you, for whatever reason, aren't willing to follow Peter to a life of ethical eating.

I do have one final objection, and this one is more of a personal sort: Mr Tierney, you or I would not be living again if someone cloned your or my genetic material as you seem to suggest by the following: "If our species disappeared and a smarter species took over the planet, I’d take the offer to be resurrected just on the theory that being alive beats being dead." I won't tread into stick philosophy about the properties of the mind here, but let me illustrate the problem with a quick rhetorical question: do you imagine that if you were to be cloned while you were still alive that there would be two of you? That is, there would be two of who you are at the very same time.

If you are so interested in Neanderthal man, read Jane Auel.

Thermodynamics

2009-02-15T16:07:00.000-08:00

I just wrote an overly long overview of Thermodynamics for a school function and I thought I'd share one of philosophically interesting ideas generated by the field: (I'm leaving off talking about Creationism, The Arrow of Time, and many other interesting, but more talked about, concepts in favor of my own personal favorite. And, of course, I though I'd share this Moxy Fruvous video, which says everything better than I ever could:

Moxy Fruvous - Entropy

Heraclitian versus Parmenidean metaphysics

This is to my mind the most interesting philosophical question posed by Thermodynamics. Heraclitian metaphysics are process conceptions, where as Parmenidean are substance conceptions. Parmenideas proposed the idea that the way to understand the world was through the idea of unchanging stuff (atoms). He said that in order to understand the world the natural philosopher much examine closely this unchanging stuff for its universal, necessary, and certain characteristics. Heraclitus on the other hand said that everyone recognizes experience to be particular, contingent, and positive of some uncertainty. He, therefore, said that in order to understand the world you should look at the Logoi (plural of Logos meaning rules or laws) for change. With the advent of the Calculus we were able to model change in a much more sophisticated way and as the Statistical Mechanical world view became more prominent we start seeing that the world has qualities which are not exclusively Parmenidean; that is, knowledge of the world cannot be said to be universal, necessary, or certain.

This is also sometimes called the idea of “stochastic law”, stochastic being a 75 cent word for statistical. It is quite odd, on its face, to say that a Law is only probably true. And of course this is what we do say with respect to Thermodynamics as well as many other areas of modern physics.

I’d rather not say that the Heraclitian and Parmenidean metaphysics are in conflict with each other, but rather complement each other. But I think if modern physicists had to give up either the idea of the ultimate reality Matter or the Idea of the ultimate reality Energy, they would en mass give up the idea of the reality of Matter: (that is, side with a process rather than with a stuff.)

Energy

The rise of the science of thermodynamics brings the idea of energy into the center stage. But energy is only real in specific forms and no specific form of energy is really Energy. That is to say that Energy has a generic character, but it only manifests itself as Heat E, Gravitational E, Chemical Binding E, ElectroMagnetic E, Etc. So there are rules,(logoi) to the transformation of energy, because if there weren’t you couldn’t talk about reality, but the ‘thing’ Energy does not itself exist: it is ontologically vacuous. So we believe that each specific form of Energy is an instance of a more generic concept which is not itself observable or necessarily real. Another way to put this is that the generic form of energy is what is conserved, and what the first law applies to: the specific forms can be mutilated however you like.

This really shows the gulf between atomistic/Parmenidean THINGHOOD thinking and process/Heraclitian metaphysics of dynamic change. Energy is immaterial, but it has explanatory characteristics of mater: it has properties: it can act upon matter and change it without being material itself.

Mutual Aid

2008-12-04T19:57:00.000-08:00

The November Scientific Fundamentalist has an interesting article by Satoshi Kanzawa about his Savanna Principle: the article argues that the recent Psychological work, done by Ilja van Beest and Kipling D. Williams, amount to demonstrative proof in support of his principle. The Savanna Principle is a thesis, as with all mechanical models involved in describing evolutionary thought; however it does seem to have a good amount of support -including this new work (done out at Pardue University in evolutionary psychology). While Kanzawa takes this Psyc study, called "When inclusion costs and ostracism pays, ostracism still hurts," as further proof of his thesis, I have to pause a moment: Williams and Beest work notwithstanding (and its factual implications for the Savanna Principle), it seems like intellectual honesty might incline Kanzawa (not to mention anyone working in the field of evolutionary psychology) to refer interested readers to Peter Kropotkin, who argued for the intrinsic biological nature of people which inclines them toward mutual aid and social cooperation: "Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle... mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle." This is of course from his 1902 book called Mutual Aid: a factor in evolution. Kropotkin I think is to this day one of the most interesting reads concerning these topics because his arguments are so engaging; not to mention full of his historical analysis which supports his thesis just as well then, 106 years ago, as any manner of modern experiments I've read: (admittedly, that might not amount to all that much.)

City Living

2008-11-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

The Seed Salon just published this talk between Steven Strogatz, a fine mathematician at Cornell, and, the lunatic MIT teacher/architect, Carlo Ratti: (Carlo does amazing work and I suggest you take some time to peruse his page.) I've got to say that MIT does produce the best crazy people in the world.

Carlo, in this interview, makes one claim that I just had to laugh at: namely, that people are moving to cities today because it is intrinsic to our nature, i.e. selected for via the mechanics of natural selection, and catalyzed by modern communications. His beautiful vision of cooperation and communal (city) living is very appealing to me –and you too I’m sure if you’ve looked at his work-; but I have to reject his description "that this law is something related to how we communicate as humans." When he says "this law" he means his general guess at a statistical model of human interaction which leads him to believe that humans innately want to live in cities.

We have many of these kinds of statistical models (say laws): for example, we can say, with a great amount of statistical accuracy, that X amount of people are going to commit suicide in Y season based on weather, economic, and other environmental conditions. So we have some sort of scare quoted "law" which accurately represents reality: (of course our laws of physical world are almost wholly statistical at this point, so it isn't unreasonable to think that modeled results just are what the world is.) But what I reject from Professor Patti's argument is that this movement to cities is innate.... That is, the movement to cities has increased because something intrinsic (natural) in the ways we create language (say communicate) and that has been accessed through new media and communication. That is to say that the new way we communicate, just now discoverable because of modern technology, is actually deeply old – we’ve just never found it before. He says: “from an evolutionary point of view it is good if we have a higher number of chances of meeting and mating with more people." This is of course nonsense and pseudo-sense at the same time.

The nonsense first: over all there is very little reason to believe that natural selection would be ‘benefited’ by increased availability of mates. For one it confuses availability, or access, with control. If you want a biological example, look at the, so called, Anglerfish: Lophiiformes; the male of most of these various fish physically attach to one female for all of their adult life -meaning no possibility of promiscuity: (Steven Jay Gould has a great article on this, "Big Fish, Little Fish," in his collection Hen's Teath and Horses Toes.)

Second, the pseudo-sense: some interesting studies have shown that human evolution is a current and continuing process, probably aggravated by the development of agriculture some 10k years ago. (Here is a not so terrible article from SciAm on the subject, who I normally don't care much for. There are other better articles out in the world too, if you look.) So we might, and further studies will answer this, be able to say that agriculture provided environmental changes which were sufficient to drive evolution in humans at a very rapid rate of change. Perhaps this 'unnatural' development -because a plowed field is just as unnatural as a road- drove evolution towards city living... but that is really testing, and slightly abusing, credulity.

And what's more, and more important, agriculture is an unnatural development: that is, not innate. Perhaps a better example is writing, which was invented, or mathematical notation, which was invented within the last 400 years, or any other number of unnatural mental constructs (what we call ideas). Ideas are how we interact with the world, and, while there may be natural limitations on the scope of our ideas -only so much our brain can do after all- that does not mean they are themselves natural. At least not in any sense of the word as it is used in the language game. If they were they would be deterministic: once the prereques are satisfied we'd get the output. But if we look at history we find that this is not the case; many civilizations has the prereques for mathematical notation, and they had them for a long time, but only the Western European nations developed it.

But leaving off natural science, saying that people are moving to cities more and more because of communication looks at one very isolated variable in a very large system, as Steven Strogatz tries to point out. If I were to make a wild claim about why people were moving into cities in record number, it would be that the IMF, the World Bank, and all the various US development models which we impose upon the developing world, are causing people en mass to flee the country and become part of the working poor required by our economic structure. Maybe Ratti could look at the architecture of money and make a beautiful corollary building.