Observation & Interpretation - N. R. Hanson (1963)

[@RosaLichtenstein01]

Hanson's premature death was a great loss to philosophy, but particularly the philosophy of science. Thanks for posting this video!

[@bradfordmccormick8639]

I took a course from Prof. Hanson in 1967. I understood nothing except duck-rabbits, but they are very intellectually important: What you see depends on your conceptual framework. I seem to recall he said that he once experienced "sense data": when the plane he was piloting crashed and his eyeball was dislocated in its socket. I also note that he was so genuinely loved by his graduate students that they completed and published the book he left unfinished on his untimely death when he crashed his plane, an F8F Bearcat fighter, in bad weather. Prof. Hanson was the opposite of sometime Alabama Governor George Wallace's characterization of an intellectual as a person who could not ride a bicycle straight: How many bikers -- he rode a Harley Davidson -- pilot their own private fighter plane? Vroom! Vroom!

[@johnmanno2052]

So amazingly cool that you had this guy for a teacher!!!

[@bradfordmccormick9501]

@@johnmanno2052 The only thing I understood of his course was duck-rabbits: What you see depends on your "theoretical framework" which need not be "theoretical" in the scientific sense. It applies everywhere. In ancient times, people did not get pancreatic cancer but they might be possessed by evil demons. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, etc.A ptolemaic astronomer sees the sun rise in the east; a copernican sees the horizon going down. Etc.

[@johnmanno2052]

@@bradfordmccormick9501 I get it. I think that's cool, actually. A refreshing change from the usual (and forgive me for saying this, but at this point tiresome) litany of "Science is Truth! Scientific materialism is the way! We actually observe things 'out there', and science is THE way to interpret what we DEFINITELY see" etc etc etc. Call me a philistine, but I find Richard Dawkins, Neil Degrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye insufferable.

[@bradfordmccormick9501]

@@johnmanno2052 Not sure I understand what you wrote but I think it is safe to say that Prof. Hanson was not a "scientific materialist", whatever that is. My understanding is that he influenced Thomas Kuhn who wrote "the structure of scientific revolutions". There are not preexisting "facts" "out there" which we discover but rather we get answers to questions we put to nature; it takes two to tango. I wish I had talked more with him, like about David Hume. I hope I hav ethat right?

[@johnmanno2052]

@@bradfordmccormick9501 Yes. He wasn't. And yes. He did. And that's why I like him. And yes. What I wrote was rather confused. But basically, if I may try again here, given what I see here on KZbin, whenever a philosopher who rejects Kuhn or Popper speaks, or whenever a prominent scientist speaks, their assumptions are that "naïve realism" is the way in which we perceive "reality", which in fact exists "outside of ourselves", and is in fact made up solely of "matter". And all scientific approaches to this "reality that exists outside of us and is made up of matter" are valid, they're "True", they are not "tangled up in" our preconceptions, but are a clear, accurate, and universally valid explanation of all phenomenon we all see, and have always seen, all humans, everywhere, and at every time period. This viewpoint is particularly widespread in the US (where I live). I've heard Searle on KZbin calling Berkeley and people like him "nonsense". And then there's Dawkins. And Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye utterly dismiss any kind of philosophy for even raising any questions as to our perceptions or about any epistemological question whatsoever. Finally, whenever I myself have raised any such question in a comment section, on for example videos about the abiogenesis of life, the creator of said video would caustically dismiss any such thing, saying that this is "what happens when you know more about the philosophy of science, than science itself". And this is why I enjoy listening to Prof. Hanson, he has a divergent, and therefore much more nuanced and interesting, perspective than the one that I mostly (almost always, actually) hear. I sincerely hope that that clarifies what it is I'm trying to express.

[@MatthewLund-j4s]

This is a note to Philosophy Overdose: this lecture is indeed given by Norwood Russell Hanson himself. I had earlier believed (as members of Hanson's family had believed) it was the work of a voice actor. However, other recordings of Hanson speaking in his academic guise have convinced Trevor Hanson and I that this piece is most likely Russ Hanson speaking.

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

After having since listened to him in various discussions from 1966 at the University of Minnesota, I must admit, he does sound a bit different here for whatever reason, but I wouldn't claim that it isn't him or anything...

[@MatthewLund-j4s]

@@Philosophy_Overdose Yes, it is a hard thing to figure out. The VOA lecture seems to have a different voice and that is why it appeared to myself and Hanson’s immediate family that it wasn’t him. We also had access to private recordings, where his voice tends much more to the bass register and the accent is much more American. However, upon hearing the 1966 Minnesota piece, we thought that the VOA was actually Hanson himself. We discussed was the practice in the 1960s and earlier of slightly speeding up the tape to give a shorter recording to air. Doing that would have raised the pitch a bit and made the voice sound a bit more forced. The thing that convinced me was the cadence of the speech and the particular notes of emphasis - those items in the VOA lecture match Hanson’s other recordings so well that that was the factor that compelled me to change my previous judgment. He had a signature style of vocal delivery.