That title was just intentionally obtuse for fun. This is an article about how one culture’s way of thinking is better than another.
As I see it, there are ultimately five basic reactions to new ideas (and I apologize in advance for the ethnocentric and possibly prejudicial terminology- I’m using trends I see in the history of a culture rather than anything inherent to a people, and I’m using Europe just because that’s where the distinction seems most clear to me). There is the Gallic, which sees new ideas and thinks, “oh, what is it? …it’s probably bullshit.” There is the Gaelic, which thinks, “Oh, it’s probably bullshit! …what is it?” There is the Roman, which thinks, “Oh, what is it? I don’t really care- can I use it?” and there is the Greek, which thinks, “oh, what is it? I don’t really care- I believe it.” Finally, there is the Teutonic, which thinks, “Oh, I don’t care what it is, it’s bullshit.”
Most people in Western culture have an inheritance of all five of these cultural reactions, though I would argue we in the US are basically Roman thinking ruling over Greek thought. For people who reject these two paradigms, I tend to see the majority settling into the Teutonic. Perhaps this is because it is the only other form of thought often represented in public debates, but it is far from the only other model of thought. I argue that Gallic and Gaelic thinking, while they lead a person more towards potential acceptance of bullshit, are also the only cultures of inclusion (meaning able to integrate new ideas) without a complete risk of infection (which you see in the history of Greek thought constantly).
And yes, there is a huge difference between the Gallic and Gaelic model. One starts at acceptance and leads as far towards disbelief as it can go, while the other starts at disbelief and leans as far towards acceptance as possible. I’m not sure which of the two is the better, but I am pretty sure that both are superior to the Teutonic model of starting at unbelief and driving towards more unbelief. And ultimately, as I’ll show below, the Gallic and Gaelic are basically the same thing.
I also think that both are much closer to the true scientific model (Gallic perhaps a touch moreso) than the Teutonic- the scientific method does not, contrary to many outside observer’s opinions, begin with the assumption that a thing is false and only admits its truth when it can’t possibly be proven otherwise. This is exactly identical to the assumption that the religious model begins with an assumption of belief and only admits falsehood when it can’t be proven otherwise- quite literally identical, in fact, because every idea is the antithesis of some other idea. This is my main problem with Karl Popper’s entire philosophy of science- he sees science as an art of disproving anything, and to me that is nothing more than defining science as an art of disproving everything.
Rather, I see the scientific mindset as one of constant testing and reinterpretation- a lack of total certainty moving either towards or away from certainty, but never arriving at it. If there was every anything science was 100% sure is correct, that would mean there is an opposing idea that science is also 100% sure is false. They would have to discount any evidence for that opposing idea as being inherently without merit- “Oh, I don’t care what it is, it’s bullshit.” But then, how would science have arrived at any truth at all in the first place rather than only at an infinite regress into nihilism? If science was solely about proving things false, science could not be said to support the Darwinian theory of evolution due to gaps in the fossil record, nor any number of highly convincing theories that do not yet have every piece of evidence needed to make a complete proof. In other words, if science was merely the art of disproving a claim, we would have no acceptance of a claim that is anything less than 100% true. And this is not and probably never will be the case.
Now, this is not to say that science does not reach high percentages of certitude- clearly it does- or that a person discounting your evidence is proof that they are not thinking scientifically- they might have already heard your argument many times before and do not want to go through the motions of the same debate again. But if you, when hearing a new argument, think, oh, that’s bullshit, without finding out exactly what it is you are stating is bullshit to the best of your knowledge, please do not state that you are thinking scientifically. You are simply thinking dismissively.
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