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Recent
Stories
May
24, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Philosopher Kings: Leo Strauss
and the Neo-Cons
Uri Avnery
The Hannibal Procedure
Diane
Christian
Who's the Real Enemy?
"Just Cause" or "Kill the Bastards"
Alexander
Cockburn
Derrida's Double Life
William
S. Lind
Is Saddam Really Out of the Game?
William
Cook
Road to Nowhere
David Krieger
Bush's War on the Poor: Economic Justice
Ilan
Pappe
Academic Freedom Under Assault in Israel
Wayne Madsen
American Idle
Noah
Leavitt
Slowing Sowing Justice in the Killing Fields
Walt Brasch
Americans are Liars
Lenni
Brenner
John Brown and Dutch Bill
Mickey
Z.
Hope, Crosby & Al Qaeda
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Grievous Harm Here and Abroad
Adam Engel
Towers of Babel
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Guthrie, Alam, Orloski
May
23, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Lifting the Sanctions: Who Benefits?
Ron
Jacobs
Long Live People's Park!
Michael
Greger, MD
Return of Mad Cow: US Beef Supply
at Risk
Elaine
Cassel
Tigar to Ashcroft: "Secrecy is the Enemy of Democratic Govt."
Sam
Hamod
The Shi'a of Iraq
Christopher
Greeder
After the Layoffs (poem)
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog 5/23
May
22, 2003
Mark
Gaffney
Christian in Name Only
Carl
Estabrook
Republic of Fear
Carl
Camacho, Jr.
Reason for Hope
Ben
Granby
What Rates a Headline from the Middle
East?
Vanessa
Jones
Terror Alerts in Australia
Mickey
Z.
Instant Understanding
Don
Monkerud
Snowballs in a Soggy Economy
Barry Lando
The Nether-Nether World of G.W. Bush
Steve
Perry
Total Information
Awareness: Secret Shadow Program?
May
21, 2003
Dave
Lindorff
Ari Fleischer Quits the Scene: The
Liar's Gone, the Enablers Remain
Chris
Floyd
How Blood Money Becomes Business Opportunity
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Graham's God and Bush's Pathology
Patrick
Cockburn
In Post War Iraq, the Signs of Breakdown
are Everywhere
Brian Cloughley
The Fatuous Braintrust: Newt, Rummy and Wolfowitz
Saul
Landau
Shopping, the End of the World and the Politics of Bush
Larry Kearney
Two Morning Poems, May 2003
Steve
Perry
Chaos in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted?
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Justice Comes to Iraq
May
20, 2003
Tariq
Ali
The Empire Advances
Ahmad
Faruqui
Whither American Nationalism?
Ben Tripp
Dialysis with Osama
Linda
Heard
The Cage of Occupation
Cynthia
McKinney
Toward a Just and Peaceful World
Edward
Said
The Arab Condition
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Why Ari Should Have Resigned in Protest Long Ago
Stew
Albert
Yale Men
Steve Perry
The New Face of Al-Qaeda
May
19, 2003
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Letter to Kofi Annan on Powell's Missing
Evidence
CounterPunch
Wire
"Terror" Slut Steve Emerson
Eats Crow
John
Chuckman
Blair's Awkward Lies
Matt
Vidal
Corporate Media and the Myth of the Free Market
Michael
S. Ladah
The Fine Print to Bush's Road Map
Robert
Fisk
Bush's Eternal War Backfires
Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
Jonathan
Freedland
Ann Coulter's Appalling Magic
Steve Perry
Play It Again, O-Sam-a
May
17 / 18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Children's Teeth
Peter
Linebaugh
An American Tribute to Christopher
Hill
Gary
Leupp
Nepal Today
Rock and
Rap Confidential
The Republican Plot Against the Dixie Chicks
Walter
Sommerfeld
Plundering Baghdad's Museums
Ron Jacobs
Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades
Thomas
P. Healy
Dubya Does Indy
Tarif Abboushi
Bush, Sharon and the Roadmap
Francis
Boyle
Debating US War Crimes in Iraq
Mark Davis
An Interview with Richard Butler
Richard
Lichtman
American Mourning
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Overcoming Terrorism
Adam
Engel
Uncle Sam is YOU!
Alan Maas
The Best News Show on TV
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Elaine
Cassel
Good Enough for an Alien
Website
of the Weekend
The 37 Americans Who Run Iraq
Song of
the Weekend
Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues
May
16, 2003
Leah
Wells
In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix
Ben Tripp
Fear Itself
Sharon
Smith
The Resegregation of US Schools
Ramzy Baroud
Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating?
Sam
Hamod
A Nation of Fear
Phil Reeves
Baghdad Pays the Price
Robert
McChesney
The FCC's Big Grab
Mark Engler
Those Who Don't Count
Steve
Perry
We're All
Extras in Bush's Movie
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
May
15, 2003
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Junaid Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
Fooling
Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
Hot Stories
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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Memorial
Day Edition
May 26, 2003
Test Anxiety
Star Wars, Punctuated
Epistemology, and the Triumph of the Medieval
By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY
Few would argue with the proposition that the
replacement of medieval scholasticism 400 years ago with the
scientific method unleashed major advances in the human condition.
That triumph of facts and reason over
interests and faith rests on the invention of a self-correcting
cybernetic process known as the modern scientific method. Science
can be thought of as a process of Observation-Hypothesis-Test.
According to the eminent philosopher of science Karl Popper,
the essence of scientific proof is TESTING under the Principle
of Falsification. That is, an hypothesis can not be proven to
be true, it can only be proven to be false by banging its predictions
against the real world.
For a scientific hypothesis to have meaning,
therefore, it must be constructed in such a way that it is possible
to falsify it by rigorous testing. Under these logical conditions,
any test that confirms an hypothesis establishes "truth"
on a conditional basis only. The conditional truth is always
subject to further testing, elaboration, or possible falsification.
The result is a gradually expanding edifice of conditional truth
punctuated on rare occasions by stunning shifts in world views,
known popularly as scientific revolutions or paradigm shifts,
to use a much abused term.
The Michelson-Moreley Experiment in the
late 19th Century is perhaps the most spectacular example of
punctuated epistemology in action; it falsified the Newtonian
world view, which was previously accepted as being true, and
helped to open the door to Einstein's new world view. Under the
Principle of Falsification and the Theory of Conditional Truth,
science and the evolution of knowledge can be thought of, paradoxically,
as a creative search process for identifying what does not work.
Engineering is a similar self-correcting
search process, but in this case, it can be viewed as a trial-and-error
process of Observation--Design--Test. The emphasis on design
gives engineering a slightly different motivating force, even
though its method is the same as that of science. In contrast
to science, Engineering can be thought of as a creative search
process for what works in the sense of combining existing scientific
principles (conditional truths) and technologies into new products
that satisfy or create human needs. Engineering can be thought
of as the practical application of the scientific method, where
a "design" replaces a hypothesis. The principle of
falsification takes the form of realistic testing of a prototype
design. Once this approach determines a design that is viable
in the real world, production resources can then be committed
with relatively low economic or performance risk.
Tests that are biased to prove success
violate the principle of falsification and the self-correcting
essence of the scientific method. In the case of science, the
result is quackery. In the case of engineering, problems get
suppressed and products go into production prematurely with major
design flaws, with the end result being products that don't work
or incur excessive costs to make them work.
So, engineers use the self-correcting
scientific method to evolve new and useful product designs at
an acceptable cost. They do this by synthesizing and debugging
a sequence of increasingly comprehensive experimental prototype
designs. In short, engineers discover what works by a search
process that fixes things that do not work. This tinkering process
is not just technological; it also includes tests related to
management, production economics, and market research as well
as anything else that defines what works in the real world (including,
perhaps, a testing of the designer's faith that a novel product
will create a new market, as happened in the case of the invention
of snowmobile)
Classical prototyping can also be thought
of as a decision-making strategy for reducing technical and economic
risks while preserving management's freedom of action to terminate
the effort, should testing reveal a product design to be fundamentally
flawed or its costs are unaffordable.
The decision makers goal is to have the
engineers work the bugs out of a design before a decision is
made to commit substantial resources to its factors of production
(manufacturing engineering, specialized machine tools, unique
factory facilities, a network of supplier relationships, and
the hiring of production workers). Production engineers should
work closely with design engineers during a prototype's design
phase to insure the final product can be produced efficiently
and economically. Moreover, as more detailed information flows
out of the design and testing activities, production engineers
should begin planning for an orderly transition to production
by continuously refining their plans for factory layouts, machine
tools, worker skills, sub contractors, etc. But under a classical
prototyping strategy, the decision to commit resources to production
would be deferred until rigorous testing demonstrated the product
met its specifications.
The iron logic governing a classical
engineering process is that any decision to commit more resources
to an ongoing design effort must be justified by the demonstrated
performance in prototype tests to date. In the end, ruthless
testing of the final product in the competitive market or the
battlefield will be the ultimate arbiter of success or failure
of life or death of what really works. Prototyping can also be
thought of as the engineering way of realistically preparing
to meet that ultimate test. (Students of evolutionary biology
will recognize immediately that this kind of tinkering and testing
of prototypes is also nature's way of evolving new designs that
work in the real world -- what surprise, a living process follows
the pattern of life!.)
Viewed from these slightly different
but overlapping perspectives, the roots the engineering process
all lie in the fertile soil of the scientific method evolved
by Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and their successors, as well
as by the natural processes in evolutionary biology. At the heart
of this method is the theory of conditional truth revealed by
testing and the principle of falsification. While the scientific
method of searching for truth in the material world has contributed
much to Western Culture over the last 400 years, the theory of
conditional truth has always been viewed as anathema by certain
primitive religious sects, fortune tellers, swamis ... and the
power brokers or lobbyists or so-called transformationists in
the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC).
For those or you who may be wondering
why I have included the courtiers of Versailles on the Potomac
in a medieval milieu that that includes religious swamis and
fortune tellers, I urge you to read Fred
Kaplan's essay on the intellectual conditions (really,
the triumph of interest and faith over facts and reason) predicating
the collective decision to deploy the ballistic missile defense
system before it is realistically tested.
For those readers who might wonder why
our political process would risk our national treasure on an
irrational edifice with this kind of spooky intellectual foundation
-- I would urge you to consider the possibility that a medieval
scholasticism of a Buy Before You Fly procurement strategy (and
accounting chaos) makes perfect sense to the courtiers of Versailles,
because they make and benefit from decisions to risk other people's
money (and spill other people's blood).
At least Plato' Cave would have been
a comfortable residing place for the post-modern world of the
neo-Kantian anti-mind.
Franklin C. Spinney is a longtime Pentagon analyst. His writings
are available at the excellent Defense
and the National Interest Website. He can be reached at:
spinney@counterpunch.org.
Yesterday's
Features
Standard
Schaefer
Lifting the Sanctions: Who Benefits?
Ron
Jacobs
Long Live People's Park!
Michael
Greger, MD
Return of Mad Cow: US Beef Supply
at Risk
Elaine
Cassel
Tigar to Ashcroft: "Secrecy is the Enemy of Democratic Govt."
Sam
Hamod
The Shi'a of Iraq
Christopher
Greeder
After the Layoffs (poem)
Alexander
Cockburn
Derrida's Double Life
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog 5/23
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