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Meaningness's profile
David Chapman
David Chapman
David Chapman
@Meaningness

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David Chapman

@Meaningness

Better ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—around problems of meaning and meaninglessness; self and society; ethics, purpose, and value.

meaningness.com/about-my-sites
Joined September 2010

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    1. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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      🧵 100 years ago today, the New York Times announced the death of rationalism.pic.twitter.com/0z9rqicWfB

      5 replies 37 retweets 135 likes
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    2. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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      The NYT reported Eddington’s announcement that a measurement of the deflection of starlight by the gravitational field of the sun had confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_experiment …pic.twitter.com/v2aDN8Myl3

      1 reply 4 retweets 13 likes
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    3. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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      Retroactively, after decades of difficult work by top philosophers, we understand this test of relativity as a triumph of the scientific worldview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity …pic.twitter.com/nazVLAd7F3

      1 reply 2 retweets 13 likes
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    4. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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      For decades, general relativity was popularly felt as a disastrous disconfirmation of the scientific worldview. Rationalism collapsed as a source of certainty, and never fully recovered. One could date the first crack of postmodernity to 100 years ago today.pic.twitter.com/ZoJFigDCCz

      4 replies 8 retweets 36 likes
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      David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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      It is now difficult to comprehend how completely and shockingly relativity shattered rationalism. For millennia, Euclid’s _Elements_ was *the* eternal source of absolute, unquestionable Truth about the fundamental nature of reality. Relativity showed it was just false.pic.twitter.com/x7N0RpeXS3

      9:28 AM - 10 Nov 2019
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      • 🔮 Eddie Talks Drugs edrive🚗⚡️ Evan Made in Cosmos 💫 Maria Górska-Piszek t u b e s More Seagulls Please Командир Гиперкуба James Torre
      3 replies 5 retweets 34 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          Cultural historians take Newtonian physics as the foundation of the European Enlightenment. It provided a complete understanding of the material world, with perfect certainty. Modernity consists of extending that paradigm to all realms of meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment …pic.twitter.com/QYkw7dV9Hf

          2 replies 1 retweet 25 likes
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        3. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          In the 1920s, intellectuals of all stripes tried to assimilate the disproof of Newton into some new version of modernity that would take relativity into account. This was entirely unsuccessful.pic.twitter.com/3cvH7nVCyI

          1 reply 2 retweets 14 likes
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        4. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          Meanwhile, popular faith in rationality, in modernity, in the world making sense, had already been profoundly shaken by the Great War, just ended. “Lights all askew in the heavens” was understood as more of the same: confirmation of cosmic senselessness. https://meaningness.com/systems-crisis-breakdown …pic.twitter.com/RSFHNMSceK

          2 replies 1 retweet 20 likes
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        5. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          The 1919 announcement that SCIENTISTS PROVE WORLD MAKES NO SENSE was a Big Deal in a way we have forgotten. It was misappropriated as a totem of nebulosity in general. Anti-rationalists seized it as justification for the general relativity of all truth. https://www.britannica.com/science/relativity/Experimental-evidence-for-general-relativity …pic.twitter.com/N2r784Vi43

          1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
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        6. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          It is hard now to understand relativity as disproof of scientific rationality because the current scientistic-rationalist worldview is profoundly different in form, as well as content, from that of the early 20th century. Logical positivism to the rescue! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism …pic.twitter.com/IIzJXqTqmG

          1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
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        7. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          Logical positivism attempted to rescue scientistic rationalism from two deep wounds: general relativity and the crisis of the foundations of mathematics. It succeeded in rethinking science in a way that made relativity acceptable. Unfortunately, that was overshadowed by events…

          2 replies 3 retweets 22 likes
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        8. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          Hardly anyone understood relativity; no one understood quantum. It said everything is inherently random, and statements could be true and false at the same time (Schrödinger’s cat). Again this was culturally appropriated as a general-purpose justification for irrational woo.pic.twitter.com/G6jdhFKzU4

          2 replies 2 retweets 24 likes
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        9. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          When quantum arrived, the logical positivists strove valiantly to incorporate it into their new rationalism. They didn’t get far, and the attempt was overwhelmed as new blows to rationalism kept coming. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem was the next most influential culturally.

          2 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
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        10. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          Logical positivism finally disintegrated altogether in the 1960s. It failed not for one reason, but for dozens, each individually fatal. I know of no discussion enumerating them all. _The Eggplant_ covers more of them than any source I’ve found.https://meaningness.com/eggplant 

          1 reply 1 retweet 22 likes
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        11. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          Logical positivism was the last serious attempt to rescue rationalism. All subsequent rationalisms have been unserious, in the sense that they don’t even try to address the well-known problems that wrecked the logical positivist program.

          4 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
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        12. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          No coincidence the postmodern era began shortly after logical positivism collapsed. Rationalism was the foundational ideology of modernity. Without that, the essential chain of justification broke, and the ship of modernity was wrecked on the stormy seas of meaning.pic.twitter.com/F0m2yM2M9u

          2 replies 4 retweets 21 likes
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        13. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          Science still works, some of the time, of course. Rationality is still better than irrationality. Why? Stubborn clinging to the wreck of rationalism renders asking that question impossible—much less answering it.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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        14. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          David Chapman Retweeted David Chapman

          We’re still floundering in the storm of postmodern irrationalism, announced by the NYT 100 years ago today. We can do better. We can rebuild the flotsam of a broken modernity into new, sea-worthy watercraft.https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1193573460103946240 …

          David Chapman added,

          David Chapman @Meaningness
          🧵 100 years ago today, the New York Times announced the death of rationalism. pic.twitter.com/0z9rqicWfB
          Show this thread
          1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
          Show this thread
        15. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          Follow-up to this thread. Several replies objected that relativity couldn’t have been a shock, because science consists of replacing incomplete approximate theories with successively better ones. >

          3 replies 0 retweets 13 likes
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        16. David Chapman‏ @Meaningness 10 Nov 2019
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          This is not at all how science was understood in 1900. Science in those days found absolute, eternal, exact Truths. The “successively better theories” story, taught in high school now, was invented in the 20th century precisely to account for relativity and quantum.

          10 replies 4 retweets 44 likes
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        17. End of conversation

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