{"id":515428,"date":"2010-04-05T08:44:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T12:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2234"},"modified":"2010-04-05T08:44:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-05T12:44:19","slug":"explanatory-neurophilia-%e2%89%85-physics-envy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/515428","title":{"rendered":"Explanatory Neurophilia \u2245 Physics Envy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Weinberg wrote to suggest that perhaps “explanatory neurophilia<\/a>” (the fact that people tend to be impressed and persuaded by neuroscientific details even if they provide no explanatory value) is part of a larger phenomenon that also includes “physics envy<\/a>” (the desire to achieve in other sciences the success of mathematical reasoning from first principles that Newton brought to physics).<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The cited post by DougJ at Balloon Juice suggests the relationship explicitly:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a more general science envy in the nexus of finance, social science, and media. In a few weeks, Bobo Brooks will come out with a book purporting to be about neuroscience which will in fact be a bunch of pop psychology about how conservatives are right about everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

This has certainly been a recurring theme in David Brooks’ columns over the past few years (see “David Brooks, Cognitive Neuroscientist<\/a>“, 6\/12\/2006; “David Brooks, Neuroendocrinologist<\/a>“, 9\/17\/2006; “David Brooks, Social Psychologist<\/a>“, 8\/13\/2008; “An inquiry concerning the principles of morals”<\/a>, 4\/7\/2009), but if he’s got a book on this topic coming out, you can’t pre-order it on amazon yet…<\/p>\n

Getting back to the “explanatory neurophilia \u2245 physics envy” idea, it seems to me that there are some analogies but also some striking differences. The research of Weisberg et al. on “The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations<\/a>” suggests that logically irrelevant neuroscience impresses novices and outsiders, but not experts. In contrast, Lo and Mueller argue<\/a> that the seductive allure of irrelevant but interesting mathematics has distorted the judgment of the most highly-regarded economists and financial analysts.<\/p>\n

For those who are interested in the sociology of economics (about which I obviously know very little), I recommend Deirdre McCloskey’s The Secret Sins of Economics<\/a> (summary and discussion here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

And in any area of rational inquiry, the best advice comes from Dick Hamming<\/a>: “Beware of finding what you’re looking for”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Weinberg wrote to suggest that perhaps “explanatory neurophilia” (the fact that people tend to be impressed and persuaded by neuroscientific details even if they provide no explanatory value) is part of a larger phenomenon that also includes “physics envy” (the desire to achieve in other sciences the success of mathematical reasoning from first principles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}