Why I am
Not a Postmodernist
Edward R. Friedlander,
M.D.
I'm an honest doctor. I have chosen science
over prejudice, health over disease, opportunity over slavery, and love and
kindness over mean-minded make-believe.
There was a time when people were openly
grateful to scientists and physicians who dedicated their lives to making us
healthier and happier. There was a time when it was fashionable to express
appreciation for the system of government and the practice of dispassionate
inquiry which have brought us the unparalleled health, freedom, and prosperity
which we enjoy today.
There was a time when people thought that a
proposition was "valid" or "true" if, and only if, it ultimately squared with
the observable world around us.
There was a time when people thought that
respecting the beliefs and experiences of others, even when they differed from
your own, was the mark of an educated, decent person.
There was a time when people thought it was
right to judge each person by what he or she had done as an individual, rather
than for their race, skin color, ancestry, religion, gender, sexual preference,
or anything else.
There was a time when people enjoyed
discovering how much we all have in common, and how most of us wanted the same
things despite the superficial differences. There was even a time when we
thought the best way to overcome misunderstanding, prejudice, and hate was by
means of reason, common sense, clear-thinking, and
good-will.
We called this being scientific. We
called this being rational. We called this being enlightened. We
called this being liberal.
We called this being modern.
I am concerned here
only with the use of the word "postmodernism" as it usually gets used in
rhetoric, not with its use in real epistemology.
Real postmodernism is a thoughtful study
of the limits of scientific inquiry, the origins and perpetuation of
unreasonable prejudices, and the ambiguities of language. Even though I am not a
professional philosopher, I appreciate real postmodernism as far as I'm able to
understand it.
By contrast...
Here is my collection of "postmodernism"
links from the "Net."
Postmodern Culture. In the 1990's, it was
the principal site, and a good place to start. There is even a search engine.
It's no longer public. See NOTE 1.
Postmodernism by Michael Fegan. [Link is now
down.] "Postmodernism calls into question enlightenment values such as
rationality, truth, and progress, arguing that these merely serve to secure the
monolithic structure of modern capitalistic society by concealing or excluding
any forces that might challenge its cultural dominance."
Technoculture
Joseph Dumit's review of another writer's essay. "The Actors are Cyborgs, Nature
is Coyote, and the Geography is Elsewhere." This is the first site I found which
mentioned Sandra Harding, whose book "The Science Question in Feminism" accused
Einstein's relativity of being gender-biased, and called Newton's "Principia" a
"rape manual."
Postmodernism and Health: [link is now down]
"The body of the patient is inscribed by discourses of professional 'care' as
well as by pain and suffering." The author takes psychiatry at its most
unscientific as the prototype for scientific medicine.
Chantal Mouffe [link is now down.] She is
against democracy, and is the editor of "Gramsci and Marxist Theory",
"Deconstruction and Pragmatism", and so forth. When this page went up, the link
was to a review of her 1992 book, in which she envisioned a postmodernist future
dominated by minority group identities and minority group grievances. "The book
represents not just a discussion of the concept of democratic citizenship, but
the epitaph for it." Now down, we learn from her current site that "she is
currently elaborating a non-rationalist approach to political
theory."
Stanford Humanities Review 4(1): Link is now
down. Nobel laureate Herbert Simon thinks that great literature is about the
common experiences and concerns of all human beings. Professor Simon also cites
scientific work that he thinks shows that humans do, indeed, all have certain
understandings in common. Here are the postmodernists' outraged responses,
accusing Professor Simon of massive ignorance, bigotry and heartlessness. See
NOTE 5.
"Anything Goes". Link is now down. Paul
Fayerabend and his friends complain about scientific theories being
counter-intuitive, people who ask for "clarity, precision, objectivity, and
truth" are "impoverishing [history] in order to please their lower instincts",
"scientific theories are only justified by their own standards and not by some
objective criteria", the impossibility of predicting weather accurately (ever
heard of "chaos theory", Paul?), "let's talk about Galileo's politics again",
etc., etc.
Michel
Foucault For me, the best of the postmodernists. A likable man who writes
primarily about sub-science (lots of GOOD examples from old-fashioned
psychiatry) being misrepresented as knowledge by cliques seeking political
advantage. Unfortunately, Foucault and his followers have generalized this to
genuine (empirical, experimental) science. His prescription is radical
skepticism. Mine is free and honest inquiry.
Contemporary
Philosophy, Critical Thought, and Postmodern Thought. Philosophy links from
U. of Colorado.
Postmodern Nausea. "In time's absence what
is new renews nothing; what is present is not contemporary; what is present
presents nothing, but represents itself and belongs henceforth and always to
return. It isn't, but comes back again." -- Derrida. The background of this site
is a sketch of the large intestine, perhaps for the obvious reason. Link is now
down
Radical Afrocentrism: "Socrates and Cleopatra were black". "The ancient
Egyptians were black like Malcolm X, flew in gliders and had psychic powers".
"Melanin is a superconductor", etc., etc.). You'll find this stuff persuasive if
and only if "truth is whatever your grievance-group says it is." This is typical
of "postmodernist" changing the ground-rules of rational inquiry. David
Muhammad's speech at Harvard. "A Brief History of
Afrocentric Scholarship": "As can be discerned from this brief paper,
Afrocentrism is not a new movement promoted by egomaniacal pseudoscientists."
Lavishes praise on Yosef ben-Jochannan, whose made the famous claim that
Aristotle stole his works from the black people's library at Alexandria, which
was not even built until after Aristotle's death. Asked by Mary Lefkowitz about
this, "Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he
resented the tone of the inquiry." ("Out of Egypt", cited below). Professor
Lefkowitz's subsequent scholarly examination of the claim that Greek philosophy
came from Egypt has been "deconstructed" to make her a "racist". "Beethoven was
black": The Marxist Review of Books had a discussion of this; the link is now
down.
Postmodernism: The Drinking
Game
Danny
Yee, a real scientist, on postmodernism: "In general, when 'postmodernism'
is restricted to literary criticism and cultural studies, it is a lot more
reasonable."
"How to Deconstruct Almost
Anything" by Chip Morningstar. His joyful hoax, in which he delivered
meaningless gibberish to a "cultural studies" audience and met with approval and
agreement.
"How to Speak and Write
Postmodern". "At some point someone may actually ask you what you're talking
about. This risk faces all those who would speak postmodern and must be
carefully avoided."
L'Isle de Gilligan --
Parody
Random Post-Modernist Essay Generator
Writes postmodernist double-talk using a computer-algorithm. Compare its
productions to the stuff at "Postmodern Culture".
It's a fact. People want to
believe lies that make them feel intellectually and spiritually superior to
others.
At its best, contemporary postmodernism
is a reaction against all the stupid people who pretend to have answers to
everything ("meta-narratives"). Science, rightly used, does the same
thing.
In its more typical forms, contemporary
postmodernism is a sustained attack on the three hopes of the "modern"
era:
· the
"modernist" hope that we could use rigorous and disciplined study to understand
nature, and use the new knowledge for our common
benefit;
· the
"modernist" hope that people from different backgrounds and cultures could live
together in a democratic society, enjoying economic and personal
freedom;
· the
"modernist" hope that people around the world could discover our common ground,
and overcome hatred, prejudice, or misunderstanding; and that sharing our
literature and other works of art would help us do
this.
Science, at it is, or should be, practiced,
is the serious business of looking at the world of nature as it really is,
taking elaborate precautions against self-deception and one's own prejudices. As
such, it has proved its power again and again. Like it or not, we owe our health
and longevity to the public-health initiatives and therapeutic techniques which
scientific knowledge has given us. Like it or not, our planet sustains six
billion people only because of scientific agriculture. Like it or not, the
postmodernists can post their stuff on the "Net" only because of our much-hated
"technology".
Postmodernism grew out of literary criticism
and the focus on the ambiguities of language. I understand how this applies to
the language of literature, advertising, and propaganda. I understand all too
well how this applies to the "knowledge" of sub-sciences like sociology,
psychology (outside some narrow lab applications), and education, where real
experiments are (regrettably) almost impossible, successful theories are
(regrettably) few or nonexistent, and where ideology and politics dominate in
the public arena and do tremendous harm. (I'll stand by this controversial
statement, and believe that most readers who bring their own real-life
experience will agree. In fact, I've received appreciative notes from academic
psychologists and students of culture who deplore the misapplication of their
subjects by ideologues. Here, I'm with Michel Foucault completely, and my own
god-awful experiences with "expert" after "expert" underlies much of my
appreciation for this great thinker.) And works of literature are not produced
or read in a social or cultural vacuum. The latter is the focus of today's
literary criticism at its most intriguing.
But I am at a loss to understand how the
language of science ("centimeter", "oxygen", "hemoglobin", "six") and
fundamental human experience ("This is blue", "I itch", "I feel cold") shares
this indeterminacy.
Postmodernists complain that science is a
cultural prejudice, and/or a tool invented by the current elite to maintain
power, and/or only one "way of knowing" among many, with no special privilege.
For postmodernists, science is "discourse", one system among many, maintained by
a closed community as a means of holding onto power, and ultimately referential
only to itself.
No reasonable person would deny that
politics and the profit-motive do influence what science studies, and who gets
to use the laboratories. But it seems to me that the feature of real-world
science which distinguishes it from other forms of description is rigorous
measurement and the experimental method, which we can apply to atoms, to the
galactic radiation, to our bodies, and to the medical techniques of indigenous
peoples. All scientific knowledge is tentative, and scientific statements are
judged by their predictive value. (Postmodernists themselves sometimes say,
"What's true is what works.") As scientists look at nature, science corrects
itself over time, and all scientists thrive on finding flaws in one another's
works. Like it or not, science works. Superstition
doesn't.
More seriously, postmodernists blame science
for Hitler's atrocities and the other evils perpetrated against humankind. This
is noxious falsehood. Every tyrant uses the language of science (who doesn't,
nowadays?) But oppression happens and continues because people choose to believe
(or pretend to believe) ugly lies. If anything will free us from this, it's
knowledge of the world as it really is. And if my own experience has taught me
anything, it's that reason, not make-believe, is the best way of dealing with
the real evils of our world. After all, it was superior science and
understanding, translated into superior military power, that gave the free world
the victory over Hitler.
We still hear a great deal today about
"multiculturalism" and "relative values". But everybody that I know, regardless
of race, gender, sexuality, or religion, seems to want the same basic things.
This begins with health, reasonable personal liberty and security, and a
reasonable chance to have one's initiative rewarded. Postmodernists talk about
being "dehumanized" by science and technology. If they really believed this,
they would trade their academic positions for the lives of subsistence farmers
in the world's poor nations, or (if they could) the short, sickly, miserable
lives of chattel-serfs in the ages "before technocracy". There they will
discover that what people want isn't "cultural integrity" or "multicultural
sensitivity", but health, food, safety, and a reasonable opportunity to choose
one's own course through life. Those who would deny them these basic human needs
aren't the scientists. It is the tyrants and ideologues of the right and the
left.
Of course, it's silly to believe that
science gives ultimate answers about our place in the cosmos, or what things
mean, or what's right and wrong. But as far as I can tell, the best way to make
a good decision is to understand a situation as it really is, and the best way
to do mischief is to choose make-believe instead.
I believe the material to which I've linked
this page speaks for itself, even though it is written in a peculiar doublespeak
that is hard for the uninitiated to understand. Postmodernist writings consist
largely of effusive praise for each other's works, and obvious appeals to the
prejudices of their liberal audience. Since the constituency is liberals, there
is a preoccupation with how wealth and opportunities are to be redistributed by
the government, and the question of how wealth and opportunities are produced
and defended gets ignored. A satirical website [now down] about the
postmodernist work ethic is a blank page.
The more recent writings are less hostile to
science itself. There are even writers at the "Postmodern Culture" site who look
to popular science writers to buttress postmodernism's attack on the supposed
monolithic ideology of classical science. Harvard's paleontologist, Dr. Gould,
is a favorite; unlike the creationists of the 1980's, the postmodernists who
take Dr. Gould as an authority seem to really want to understand him. Alongside
this are the totally-discredited Duesberg claims about the cause of AIDS. In
between are various environmentalist and social-science polemics papers. You'll
need to decide on their merit; it's interesting to see postmodernists using the
evidence of empirical science after all, when it suits them.
As a visitor to "Postmodern Culture" who
worked hard at literary criticism as a college undergraduate, I'm struck by the
lack of internal self-criticism at the site. In college, I examined empirical
evidence to decide whether Milton really drew on particular neoplatonists in
creating his "Chaos" scene, whether John the Baptist was a conscious forerunner
of Jesus, whether the Wellhausen hypothesis of the origin of Deuteronomy was
true, and what Shakespeare was trying to tell us in "Antony and Cleopatra". I
examined the ideas of others, compared them with the facts of the real world,
and had the same done to me. As a scientist-physician, I have thrived on finding
the errors in others' work. By contrast, the world of postmodernism shows the
same lack of internal criticism that I've come to expect from pseudoscientists
and charlatans of all stripes.
Somebody has to say "No!" to all this. So
far as I can tell, I'm the first person on the "Net" to do so in an accessible
way.
If you are a postmodernist, I'm fully in
support of your appreciation for your neighbor's culture, your concern about the
future of our planet, and your care for people who are genuinely oppressed. I
enjoy the great diversity of humankind, in our food, our dress, our music, our
literature, our sexuality, and our forms of spiritual
expression.
I am only asking you to reconsider (1)
whether empirical science should have a privileged place in your thinking about
how the world of nature really is, and (2) whether western-style democracy isn't
the best way of getting what you and your neighbors really want. And if you love books as I do, ask yourself (3)
whether some passage in literature has touched you in a special way, reaching
something in you that is universal to humankind, something "beyond the text",
beyond all cultural prejudice.
Especially, look at the world around you.
Most scientists, most white people, most men, and most European-Americans, are
good, sensible people who care about the world in which we live. Science isn't a
conspiracy of power-hungry monsters against the human race. The real enemy is
superstition, ignorance, and silly lies. And if you live in America, Canada,
Australia/New Zealand, or Western Europe, most people in the world would gladly
trade places with you.
Learn about the world as it really is.
Health and friendship!
NOTE 1. Postmodernists typically cite Hitler's atrocities
and the evil A-bombing of Japan as the prototypical outcomes of science and
technology. ("Genocide! Mass murder! Let's talk about the death camps again!") I
used the search engine to find the references to Stalin. Peter Baker
[another Postmodern Culture link now down], who is against "liberal democracy",
speaks admiringly of an old French "analysis that seriously attempts to
contextualize Stalin's violence by comparison to the violence present in liberal
democracies", and explains that this "shows a need to understand the argument
for liberal democracy within a specifically postwar historical context." Neil
Larsen [another Postmodern Culture link now down], notes that "postmodern
philosophy normally refrains from open anti-communism, preferring to pay lip
service to 'socialism' even while making the necessary obeisances to the
demonologies of 'Stalin' may make it appear as some sort of a 'left' option." No
kidding, Neil. Noam Chomsky [another Postmodern Culture link now down], (no
postmodernist, but at this site) mentions Stalin and his "bureaucracy" as bad
Marxists, not left-wing enough. Eric
Petersen presents a history of dialectical materialism. Marxism is "a guide
to human liberation by social revolution.... (d) Stalinism turned dialectical
materialism into an authoritarian state religion. (e) Mao used dialectical
materialism to justify Stalinist politics in China. (f) Trotsky used dialectical
materialism to misunderstand Stalin's counter-revolution." And so forth.
PMC-Talk [another Postmodern Culture link now down], archives contain a single
flame, from a Professor Kessler, about folks such as Sartre who fell for
Stalinism; he also has the insight to call Lysenkoism "nonsense". Continuing,
Kessler [another Postmodern Culture link now down], mentions Stalin's paranoia
and his one-time sparring partner Norman Miller asks for "some pm words on such
matters as Stalin's murders and even more the bloody complicity of most of the
left in these events." The only contributor to take up the challenge said he
didn't know which was worse, right-wing tyrants or left-wing tyrants, and was
too preoccupied with his own liberal agenda to care. Marjorie Perloff wonders
whether Stalin's rejection of "modern art" influenced Tom Wolfe. The bottom line
is, despite all the postmodern rhetoric about "genocide", and "mass murder" in
modern times, one could read the entire contents of the principal postmodernist
site and never learn that Stalin the Communist killed a single
person.
The word gratitude appears only a few
times at the Postmodern Culture site, and never with respect to science,
medicine, or democracy. First, a reviewer of "Schindler's List" [another
Postmodern Culture link now down], talks about how appropriate the gratitude
shown to Oscar Schindler was. Nearby, you can find "The Fairy Tale of The Just
War" [another Postmodern Culture link now down], ("The hero receives acclaim,
along with the gratitude of the victim and the community.") So how do you think
the free world finally overcame Hitler? Apparently, gratitude is a virtue or a
fairy-tale, depending on whether the postmodernists like (Schindler) or dislike
(the free world) the recipient.
NOTE 2. It is obvious to me that people who are willfully
deceiving the public stay off the Internet. Pseudoscience targeted to exploit
blacks ("melanin science", "the Portland Baseline Essays") has almost completely
disappeared from the 'net. (See Gross & Levitt "Higher Superstition", Johns
Hopkins 1994 for a review of the "Baseline Essays" author's falsified
credentials; despite his claim to be a distinguished research scientist, he
reportedly has no education past high school, and no record of scientific
publication.) American Federation of Teachers
president Albert Shanker says "It uses pseudoscience to promote a political
agenda. At the same time, it cheats students of a chance to find out what real
science is like, and it deprives them of a foundation on which to build future
learning. This would be bad news for any of our youngsters; it is criminal for
poor, minority students." Revisionist
Discoveries by Anti-Racist Historians quotes the Baseline Essays: "Afrika
was the epitome of civilizations in times when western Europe lived in a state
of savagery and barbarity featuring filth, sexual disease, incest,
homosexuality, bestiality, and anarchy."
NOTE 3. These are the folks who spent a million dollars of
tax money to generate learning objectives for American History. The resulting
document did not mention George Washington as our first president, mentioned
Abraham Lincoln only as a speechmaker, and was utterly silent on America's
contribution to science (no mention of Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Alexander
Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers, or what they did). Yet there were nineteen
separate references to McCarthyism, and reverse racial, class, and gender
prejudices permeate the work. Check out the main site and its links yourself.
The influence of postmodernist pseudo-epistemology is obvious. In a site from CT
state which is now down. a participant cites thermodynamics against
"individualism", and quantum theory "indeterminacy" to explain why it's not
worthwhile mentioning the individual heroes and achievements for which most of
us are proud and grateful.
NOTE 4. There was one essay here (now down) on the
relationship between the Chilean astronomers and Pinochet's brutal repression of
the people who brought about Chile's catastrophic experiment with Marxism, many
of whom sought a Castro-style communist state in Chile. The author considers
Chile's observatories to be collaborators in Pinochet's human-rights violations
merely for remaining open ("the ideological indifference of scientific
value-neutrality"), and frames an analogy between astronomy and torture:
"Astrophysics, which itself is a will to pure fatuity, compels the universe to
confess its secrets." (NOTE: I'll stand by my assessment
of Allende as a well-intentioned man. After his disastrous seizure of the assets
of the American corporations and his defiance of his own Congress and the
subsequent constitutional crisis, he lost control of his own Left. A civil war
and possible left-wing tyranny were averted at an awful human cost. This is a
tragedy which needs to be retold. Like me, Allende was a pathologist with a
social conscience.)
NOTE 5. Typical is the incident reviewed by Mark Turner
[link is down]. When cognitive scientists discover, based on their experiments,
that human beings everywhere agree on the meaning of "This is blue", the
postmodernist reply is that "human beings are a recent invention, a wrinkle in
our knowledge that will inevitably be displaced as new wrinkles arise." (Mark
Turner's written me, 1/1/97 to point out that he's describing the
postmodernists, and is himself a cognitive scientist. Shoulda been obvious...
Sorry, Mark! Thanks for speaking out for understanding and reason.) Also typical
is Suvir Kaul [link down], apparently thinks that the purpose of literary
criticism is to promote partisan positions in the struggle for world ideological
domination, and thereby solve "the problems of racism, sexism, economic
inequality, and lack of equal opportunity."
NOTE 6: "Whether you're talking about the manifestations of
universal reason in the final solution of the Holocaust or you're talking about
the manifestation of universal reason in nuclear arms, there seems to be
something inherently violent here." The authors are not the first members of the
religious right to: (1) assert that Hitler's atrocities are the logical outcome
of the Enlightenment and the triumph of science; (2) claim to champion the poor
and oppressed against evil, secular science and technology; (3) claim that
science etc. pretends to have answers to everything ("...the assumption by means
of universal reason that Western culture has the truth, and that necessarily
marginalizes..."). But these two are apparently the first to identify as
"Postmodern" their familiar right-wing overstatement of the limits of rational
inquiry. And while I appreciate your Christian zeal, gentlemen, your statements
are on a level with the creationist ("neck of the giraffe") material elsewhere
on your server. The root of tyranny, lawlessness, over-population, racial
hatreds, world hunger, avoidable disease, and rank stupidity isn't "universal
reason" or "meta-narratives" or "modernism". It's something inherent in human
nature. Mainstream Christians like myself still talk about
sin.
Click here for my reply to the
first postmodernist posting I found on the "Net".
E-Mail to: scalpel_blade@yahoo.com
To date (12-20-97), I have received over 170
expressions of strong support and encouragement from academicians and students,
one polite reminder from a real philosopher that "postmodernism" is also the
name of one of the two major schools of contemporary epistemology (this
correspondent regrets the use of the word by "English departments" to express
"angst-laden Marxism"), one obscenity-laced personal characterization (too much
truth here, Karen?), a very long attack on my character from two graduate
students in philosophy (I have a "boring personality" and am "enslaved to
modernist thinking"), one complaint from a research scientist that he did not
understand what I was saying about Stalin, a remark from a Finnish sociologist
that my page was "highly offensive" without further explanation, a reminder from
a professor in Germany that Stalin joined the free world in overcoming Hitler, a
few angry folks who accused me of being stupid and pretending to have answers to
everything, one ideologue who insisted vehemently there was no basis whatever
for preferring one "way of knowing" over another (he did not answer my inquiry
about whether he'd go to a dentist or a Christian Science practitioner if he got
a toothache), two correspondents who (as it turned out) agreed both with my
appreciation of "postmodernism at its best" and rejected its imbecilities, two
notes from Bill Clearlake ("Beethoven was black. There, I've said it."), and no
attempt at any other kind of reply from any postmodernist. If postmodernism
were true, I would think that somebody would (by now) have told me how to
deconstruct "six", "hemoglobin", and "I itch".
The most interesting anecdote so far came
from a doctoral student in the humanities, who asked to remain anonymous: "I
have just gone through a huge battle in my 'supposed' doctoral seminar [at a
major university], where I pointed out some of the fallacious logic in
Postmodernist rhetoric. The professor, ___ ___, a PM author, could only respond
with 'F--- you.' A very literate thing to say... ". Joshua Hersh, one of the
students, described his own course at Ohio State University. "This one is called
'Values, Science and Technology in a Global Perspective.' We learn about things
like the particle physicist's subculture in which their particle beams represent
a phallic symbol. We also learn about how all science is socially influenced and
knowledge does not really exist (epistemological relativism). Finally, we learn
that the people in the class that have bad vision are cyborgs because they
augment their vision with eyeglasses."
I also ran (Jan. 15, 1996) a MEDLINE
literature search for "feminist theory". I found 52 references. Of these, 50
were postmodern-style rhetoric, ranging from common-sense-common decency stuff
to the familiar we-hate-men stuff. There was a large representation from the
nursing literature, including an exhortation to "include feminist theory as a
major component of the nursing curriculum." Only two were empirical studies,
both of sexual violence. In each case, the predictions of "feminist theory"
turned out to be totally wrong. Try it yourself; there's MEDLINE links nearby.
In science, any "theory" which has, even once, failed to show predictive value
must be modified or discarded. That's the key difference between science and
politics.
The conservative anti-science,
anti-empirical, anti-common-sense movement is every bit as vigorous and nasty as
its liberal counterpart. These people have not (yet?) discovered postmodernism
as a rhetorical device. I'd welcome your suggested titles for a essay to stand
as a counterpart this one.
Other people who are happy
not to be postmodernists, either:
· Alan D.
Sokal, a physicist at NYU, perpetrated the now-famous hoax on "Social Text",
which published his nonsense article ("quantum gravity has implications for
'political goals and strategies'"). Read about it in Newsweek, June 3, 1996. Dr.
Sokal explains, "The editors were oblivious to the articles illogic. [Their]
acceptance of [it] exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory --
postmodern literary theory." A Norman Levitt (math, Rutgers) is also quoted:
"The left has lost itself in a lot of crummy theory and bad philosophy. Science
studies is not the only realm where this occurs, but it's the one in which
people's predilection to make asses of themselves is easily exposed." Dr. Sokal
continues, "I could throw their language around even though I didn't know what
it means. Which suggests to me that maybe it doesn't mean anything." Welcome to
the club, Alan!
·
Postmodernism Disrobed: E=mc2 is sexist because it gives
"privilege" to the speed of light. Link is now down.
· The Nation ran "Pomolotov Cocktail", a
comment on Dr. Sokal's hoax from "The Nation". Even genuine liberals are
disgusted by postmodernism. Welcome to the club, Katha!
· "Transgressing the
Transgressors: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Total Bullshit"
Welcome to the club, Gary!
· Professor Sheaffer, fellow
CSICOP-member
· A workbook for
Evangelicals, including a section on "Assessing Postmodernism" which one
does not have to be Christian to appreciate. It is VERY refreshing to hear an
Evangelical say of postmodernists, "They exaggerate the difficulties involved in
scientific objectivity and neutrality." Highly
recommended.
· Camille
Paglia. LesBiGay activist. "Culture is an achievement made more in
opposition to nature than in concert with it. Nature is not the pretty innocence
of Greenpeace agitprop or Bambi... Culture requires overcoming nature, creating
a human realm apart from the natural, that provides a context and the hubris to
paint, write novels or songs, fall in love, die for one's beliefs.... If we are
whatever we say we are..., if our freedom consists in constructing an identity
all our own, if there is no larger historical continuity, then it is tempting to
define ourselves to serve only our immediate interests." Nicely
put.
· Postmodernism in Daily
Life Christian (Evangelical Protestant) site summarizes postmodernism as
pseudoscience and goofball left-wing politics justifying itself by a radical
skepticism. It's pleasant to see these people (apparently soft-creationists)
with a generally good overall understanding and appreciation for "western
science".
·
Postmodernity [was at Brown U., link is now down]: "Whereas modernity was
characterized by creativity and production, energy and meaning, the postmodern
world signals the death of these values." From liberal Brown,
even!
· Barbara
Ehrenreich in "The Nation", not noted for being conservative. "No sooner had
the word 'experiment' passed her lips than the hands shot up. Audience members
pointed out that the experimental method is the brainchild of white Victorian
males. Ellsworth agreed that white Victorian males had done their share of
damage in the world but noted that, nonetheless, their efforts had led to the
discovery of DNA. This short-lived dialogue between paradigms ground to a halt
with the retort: 'You believe in DNA?'... This climate of intolerance, often
imposed by scholars associated with the left, ill suits an academic tradition
rhetorically committed to human freedom. What's worse, it provides intellectual
backdrop for a political outlook that sees no real basis for common ground among
humans of different sexes, races and cultures."
· Lee
Campbell, Ph.D. on the postmodernist hostility to science. Quotes
anti-science postmodernist Paul Feyerabend's complaint that "he is still not
permitted to demand that his children learn magic rather than science in
school."
· Ohio
Board of Regents [link is now down]: "There is one component of today's
university life (by no means the major component) that springs from campus
thought and behavior, and not from the larger external marketplace. In this
component there are extremes of political correctness and ideological
faddishness such as relativism or deconstructionism, espousing the belief that
no such thing as truth exists -- only how you perceive it. Try setting up a
system of fiscal support for universities under that
ideology."
· Mary
Lefkowitz on Afrocentrism [link is now down]. "Bernal argues that Greek
philosophy was "massively borrowed" form Egypt, others have alleged that
Aristotle stole his philosophy form the library in Alexandria (even though the
library was only built after his death), and that Socrates and Cleopatra were
black. These contentions, and others like them, are apparently being taught as
truth in a course on 'Africans in Antiquity' at Wellesley College. When I
mentioned to the then-dean of Wellesley that there was no evidence to back these
claims, she assured me that the instructor of the Africans in Antiquity course
had his view of ancient history and I had mine. Another colleague insisted that
the issue was unimportant."
· Radical
Afrocentrism. Ibrahim
Sundiata, an Afrocentrist who tries to regain credibility by urging his
colleagues to be truthful; Camille Paglia (no
conservative); The "Beethoven was black" sites have mostly disappeared from the
'web (there was this incident at Stanford...); I'll let you find the remaining
few yourself.
· Jonn J. Reilly -- Review
of "The Higher Superstition"
· Lynn Cheney --
the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities (!) -- on why
"culture" no longer makes sense. Lots on the National History
Standards.
· The "R" Word (Reality) David
Pocock
· Eric
Walker -- see his page on R A
Lafferty
· Frank Kermode was among my favorites when
I was at Brown
· Bad
writing contest (link is now down) -- journal Philosophy and
Literature
· Vaclev Havel,
president of the Czech republic and hero of the liberation from Soviet
domination, on "The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World". Urges
people to set aside both cultural differences and the reliance on "modern"
institutions. "The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man
the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not
forget the One who endowed him with it."
The Sisters of
Mercy. "Postmodernism finds itself in a vicious circle of cynicism and
disappointment. It has no hope to break the circle; it doesn't admit to knowing
what's beyond the circle. If that's a 'reasonable' acceptance of the fact that
so many citizens are ignorant of the past and have no immediate prospect of a
better future, then the Sisters reserve the right to be unreasonable. And angry.
Anyway, postmodernism doesn't offer you the kind of fun which satisfies. The
Sisters just might."
Michael Brannigan, from the Center for the
Study of Ethics, La Roche College, Pittsburgh PA, writes (Health Care Analysis
8: 321, 2000): "If postmodernism is losing its grip, it may well be due
to its cognitive nihilism, that is, its thesis regarding the corruptibility of
objective standards. This thesis cannot be either verified or non-verified. It
cannot be refuted on its own terms. In this way, postmodernism self-destructs
since it forecloses dialogue and debate in incessant swirls of question-begging.
Moreover, the consequences of applying this postmodernist thesis to ethics in
healthcare are especially pernicious when it precludes the ability to make
legitimate cross-cultural moral judgments about the plight of Hindu widows, or
of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban movement, of or young girls and women
subjected to female circumcision."
Mike Adams: "Someone once told me that an idea that fails
repeatedly might just be wrong. Why can't seemingly educated people abandon such
obviously wrong ideas?"
Michael Foucault -- later in life. Ultimately, he denied love
and kindness both in society and in individual relationships.
On May 23, 2005, I received
an e-mail which I very much appreciated.
Hi Dr. Friedlander. My name is ____
____. I'm a second year medical student at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic
Medicine. I found your website while searching for some pathology info for the
upcoming COMLEX. While looking around I found your article regarding
postmodernism. My undergraduate majors were English and Philosophy, with my
senior honors thesis dealing with postmodern literary theory (specifically with
revisionist history in literature).
Anyway, since leaving undergrad I
have often thought of my education in postmodernism (and relativism by default)
and wondered, honestly, how I could have been so involved in that idea. As you
bring up, it is now hard for me to rationalize the ideas of linguistic
relativism prevalent throughout the philosophy. I wish I could remember the
specific piece, but I remember an article by Derrida or maybe Robert Detweiler(I
believe that's his name... He was at Emory for years) about the lack of
certainty in language. The whole point (and I think this gets to the belief that
science is based on ambiguities) was that when I say "tree" you might picture a
fir or a beech or an oak, while I might picture a pine or cedar. So when you say
"anemia" you might mean a specific range of values, while others might just
imagine someone with a Hgb of 7. The point of all of this is to say that as I've
moved from my philosophical background to one of science, I have come to realize
that the postmodern argument is really just an intellectual exercise. It's not
applicable or relevant because if it was, communication would fail.
Communication might be relative in symbol, but only in things that lack strict
definitions like the word "tree" or "air". Things like "oxygen" have specific
definitions that eliminate the possibility of interpretation... You either know
what an oxygen molecule is with its attributes or you don't. Science (medicine
specifically) is not relative. When you say "liver" I picture a normal liver.
When you say "cirrhotic liver" I have a good idea of what you mean. Medicine, in
my limited experience so far, is about learning the definitions so that
relativism in symbol is minimized and ideally eliminated. The point of looking
at a thousand normal eardrums first is so that you know that a diseased one is
different when you see it.
Mark McIntyre, philosophy
professor
I operate the world's
largest free personalized medical
information service. It's an outgrowth of my modernist vision of a world
made healthier by science, communication, mutual understanding, and common
kindness.
Thanks for visiting!
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