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QUANTAVOLUTION AND CATASTROPHE

PART FOUR

by ALFRED DE GRAZIA


PROSPECTIVE CHANGES IN THE Q-C TEST

1. Placebos:

Placebos would designate items in the test that indicate nothing valid or useful to know for the purposes of the test. They function to prove a lack of unrelated differences between those who score differently on the test. For instance, it might be useful to add several items such as "Whether fast or slow, evolution by definition must occur in natural history." And, "Conventional science is more a matter of etiquette of science than it is a set of accepted theories." And, "A decline in the productivity of science, noticeable in the late twentieth century, is attributable in part to an increase in the extent of political corruption in advanced nations." It might occur that both C and Q respondents would score similarly on these items, whether by scattered or concentrated agreement.

2. Religious Dimension:
Creationism; agnosticism; mysticism; atheism; personal deism; scientific deism.

Religious ideologies have been shown to play a considerable role in adhering to scientific propositions of one kind or another. It would be possible to uncover some of these connections either by a couple of questions accompanying the test (such as, "How would you identify yourself in respect to the list of religious positions below: accept, reject, indifferent?" or by including distinguishing items as propositions such as "Quantavolution fortifies logically and evidentially religions that maintain a recent creation of the world and mankind by divine intervention."

3. Additional Items:

Adding a number of items would help to validate existing items and at the same time lend reliability to the test as a whole. Thus, proposing that the dinosaurs and most other species were destroyed en masse in a brief time interval by the impact of an extra-terrestrial object, or proposing that the continental crust of the earth has been creeping by tiny increments over most of the global surface over all of Earth's history.

4. Merging:

The Q-C Test will be henceforth merged into a mixed set of items, such that the respondent will be encountering items of C, Q and other significance randomly in the course of taking the test. Merging will promote a more independent series of judgements on the part of the respondent, and contribute to the significance of aggregated scores, in part and totality.

5. Validation:

Validating a test that seeks to elicit ideological syndromes can be most difficult, depending upon the degree of certainty that the Thing exists in the first place and then the elusive and unconscious ways in which people are disposed to mal-describe and conceal their ideologies. Still, with the improvements already suggested, some approach to defining a Q and a C nuclear ideology, and in the process a Q mind and a C mind, can find credence.

6. Randomizing and Cross-sectioning the Sample:

These ordinary problems of test development should present no unusual difficulties when developing the Q-C test. Inasmuch as over half of the adult population cannot read well enough nor are tutored enough to understand any considerable part of the test, either a special test should be constructed for them or they should be passed over in favor of administering the test only to persons who have passed three or more years of college. In the end, the test results most useful would be the results obtained from the professional and managerial classes. Since these are the people running the governmental, corporate, media and educational systems of the modern state, their ideologies are a matter of practical as well as contemplative interest.

7. Extending the number of special disciplines implicated in the results:

In Part Five below will be found a list of entries planned for the Encyclopedia of Quantavolution and Catastrophe. Every discipline will be found there, and thus a case is made for finding Q relevant to all disciplines. It would not be too difficult to revise the test so as to apply it more directly to each and every major discipline -- geology, anthropology, theology, astronomy, mythology and so forth.

8. Uses:

a) Abetting theoretical studies.

In this connection, the Q-C test can suggest that a wholesale replacement of received doctrines of science may be useful and possible.

b) Discovery of trends in public awareness of science.

Are popular notions of what is occurring in science changing? Perhaps the test will give some indication of how and why the contents of the mass media are changing with regard to science and scientists.

c) Discovering relationship between creationist belief and quantavolutionary belief.

Popular creationist belief is strong and seeks, spearheaded by a small group of intellectuals, to adapt quantavolutionary research and treatises to its own needs. Creationist scientists are inclined to dominate quantavolutionary circles, naturally, and certainly feel comfortable moving in and out of them. Much opposition to Q work by C scientists comes from a fear that Q is merely a front for creationism.

d) Q-C scores as a function of age, occupation, religion, formal schooling.

The sociology of science and educators would gain by the knowledge of how Q and C ideas have been penetrating various social formations and categories. Psychological applications are suggested: is there a radical and conservative position on C and Q that conforms to political, intellectual, and social radicalism?

e) Discovery of trends in ideology of scientists.

At a time when it is widely believed that the vast majorityof scientists would be high-scorers on the C-test and low-scorers on the Q-test, the distribution of the component beliefs in the population of scientists would reveal the actual condition in this regard. Too, one may expect to learn whether the scientific elite, the so-called establishment, has moved from the conventional center of gravity more or less than the mass of scientists.

f) Discovery of deficiencies and contradictions of belief brought on by specialization.

Especially with longer versions of the Q-C test, it may be observed how far and near the various special fields of the scientists stand in relation to the conventional consensus. What medical specialty, for instance, is most radical in acceptance of Q tendencies? How do homeopathic practitioners rate?

g) Enumerating the varieties of conventional and quantavolutionary thought.

A great many controversies characterize both the conventional and the quantavolutionary camps. From the hi-score C camp, it appears that the conventional scientists are divided and the Q enemy is united, whereas nothing is more obvious to the Q, and angrily regrettable, than the splintering into tiny fragments of the Q outlook.

h) Fostering interdisciplinary communication.

Scientists and educators who have deplored the lack of sympathy and understanding between the public and politicians on the one side and scientists on the other might regard the results of extensive Q-C testing as indicative of the gravity of the problem, or of improvements occurring. At the same time, tests results of different scientific groups might demonstrate that communication among scientists is as serious a problem as it is between science as a whole and the public. Test results among scientific cohorts might illustrate, too, the togetherness of the scientific fraternity as a whole. Deviations fro consensus might be regarded as deviations of thought or deficiencies in knowledge of sciences other than one's own.







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