Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Overture: Reflections of a Metaphysical Flâneur
- PART 1 BRAINS, PERSONS AND BEASTS
- PART II PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSICS
- 8 Should We Just Shut Up and Calculate? Does Physics Need Philosophy?
- 9 You Chemical Scum, You
- 10 Did Time Begin with a Bang?
- 11 A Hasty Report from a Tearing Hurry
- PART III PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSIC
- Epilogue: And So to Bed: Notes towards a Philosophy of Sleep from A to Zzzzzzz
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - You Chemical Scum, You
from PART II - PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSICS
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Overture: Reflections of a Metaphysical Flâneur
- PART 1 BRAINS, PERSONS AND BEASTS
- PART II PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSICS
- 8 Should We Just Shut Up and Calculate? Does Physics Need Philosophy?
- 9 You Chemical Scum, You
- 10 Did Time Begin with a Bang?
- 11 A Hasty Report from a Tearing Hurry
- PART III PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSIC
- Epilogue: And So to Bed: Notes towards a Philosophy of Sleep from A to Zzzzzzz
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I am sick of being insulted. There seems to be a competition among some contemporary thinkers to dream up the most hostile descriptions of Homo sapiens, a species of which I am proud to be an example. Admittedly, badmouthing humanity is not an entirely novel pastime. There is a venerable religious tradition of currying favour with the Almighty by self-abasement, telling him (in case he had forgotten) what third-rate, degraded, fallen, creatures he has created. The female of the species tends to be particularly singled out. Augustine's description of women as “bags of excrement” is a characteristic gallantry. In recent centuries, however, the insults seem to be coming from non-religious sources and inspired by the claim that science has revealed our true standing in the order of things.
Voltaire got things off to a jolly start, quite a while back, by instructing the eponymous hero of his Zadig to visualize “men as they really are, insects devouring one another on a little atom of mud”. The notion of the earth as “an atom of mud”, or at least as a not-very-special address, was prompted by a growing appreciation of the implications of the first scientific revolution.
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- Reflections of a Metaphysical FlâneurAnd Other Essays, pp. 163 - 168Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013