Steve Fuller, the smug sociologist who testified for the creationists in the Dover trial, has a new book out. Who cares about the book, though? You want to read Norman Levitt’s review, “The Painful Elaboration of the Fatuous”. Wow. Fuller gets deconstructed.
Here’s a small taste.
A similar farce plays out when Fuller tries to address the larger question of the supposedly contentious nature of evolutionary theory within the scientific community itself. In the World According to Fuller, evolutionary theory never really got past the stage of being a “well evidenced ideology” rather than a “properly testable science” (p. 123). What he is saying, in effect, is that the claims from all branches of biology and related science that they have contributed to a vast stream of convergent evidence verifying the essential precepts of evolution are in great measure delusional. He seems to think that biology, as a constellation of disciplines, is some kind of socially-constructed freemasonry in which assent to basic Darwinian principles constitutes a ritual formula necessary to make one part of the brotherhood rather than a cognitively-justified inference from hard evidence. More, he seems to think that evolutionary thought is mere ideological window-dressing, contributing nothing to the “hard science” behind molecular biology and the like.
None of this is backed up by serious analysis of the working methods and logical structure of biology itself. Fuller complacently views the ascendancy of evolutionary thought as a “rhetorical” rather than a “scientific” development. His principal evidence? The paucity of Nobel Prizes awarded for work on evolution! Of course, he never pauses to consider that under the idiosyncratic organization of the Nobel awards, there is no prize for biology as such. Biologists are smuggled in under the “Medicine and Physiology” category, which is just expansive enough to accommodate ethologists like Lorenz or Tinbergen, but not hard-core evolutionary theorists. In all of these pronouncements, Fuller is hard-pressed to hide his scorn for actual scientists who, it is obvious to him, know much less about what they think and how and why than a social theorist like himself who is enormously content to cite his own work endlessly.
…and that’s one of the kinder bits. Enjoy it all!
Ha, I just came over here after not being able to check out WingNutDaily’s evolution book section. As idiotic as this book looks, their stuff is even worse. Good news for the deniers though, it’s all on sale just in time for the holidays, er, Christmas.
I saw this yesterday. I should have noted it for you….
I think that is the most beautifully succint description of how creos (at least, the ones who believe their own tripe) picture evolutionists–sorry, ‘Darwinists’.
They think we’re the cult members. Hilarious!
But how do we convince them (or, more importantly, the majority of the population who are capable of reason, whether they’re currently practicing it or not) of the reality behind the theory if they think we’re deluded?
That’s about as stupid a juxtaposition of ideas as I’ve ever seen. What is primarily a social construct, the Nobel prize, is utilized as the criterion for determining whether or not evolutionary science is simply a social construct, rather than a social construct highly informed by observation of the natural world as any successful science is.
The guy’s a bozo.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
They think we’re the cult members. Hilarious!
not really hilarious, but entirely predictable, given the amount of projection they utilize to stabilize their horrid level of cognitive dissonance.
it’s also why irony and satire are mostly just lost on them.
they are the very definition of irony.
I wouldn’t call it projection. Of course they think we’re cult members. That’s their definition of society, and that’s all they know. In that bizarre world, people around them, their neighbors, their friends, etc., are defined and judged by the congregations to which they belong. They simply can not fathom someone operating in society as a free-thinking individual with no need to belong to a group.
I suppose it’s the typical pack mentality behind most religions.
Levitt vs. Fuller is an interesting connection from the 90s Science Wars – (postmodernists, critical theorists) to the 00s Science Wars – (reactionaries: Intelligent Design, anti-global warming).
Norman Levitt and Paul Gross are authors of Higher Superstition (1994). Subtitle: (“The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science”), which helped initiate the backlash against pomo / critical theory / studies programs attacks on science.
A postmodernist critic of science’s lamentation of unintended consequences of his program, namely the politicized appropriation of the academic critique of science:
Bruno Latour, Critical Inquiry, Winter 2003
http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html
“…I did not exactly aim at fooling the public by obscuring the certainty of a closed argument-or did I? … Still, I’d like to believe that, on the contrary, I intended to emancipate the public from a prematurely naturalized objectified fact. Was I foolishly mistaken? Have things changed so fast?
In which case the danger would no longer be coming from an excessive confidence in ideological arguments posturing as matters of fact-as we have learned to combat so efficiently in the past-but from an excessive distrust of good matters of fact disguised as bad ideological biases! While we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements, do we have now to reveal the real objective and incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? And yet entire Ph.D programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always the prisoner of language, that we always speak from one standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we meant? Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact whether you like it or not? Why can’t I simply say that the argument is closed for good?
Should I reassure myself by simply saying that bad guys can use any weapon at hand, naturalized facts when it suits them and social construction when it suits them? Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?”
What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?
As one who enjoys Latour’s work (particularly Laboratory Life) I have to say that there is no one answer to this question. There are as many answers as there are analysts. I, for one, like to study the construction of scientific knowledge because i’m interested in the social processes at work. I also come at it from having been an engineering major and worked in both industrial (petroleum processing) and research (chemical engineering and neurology) labs.
Blowhards abound everywhere. It amazes me how folks can just make stuff up and decide they are right the whole rest of the us are all just wrong, regardless of how often our science is repeated and tested, they just ignore it.
Was anyone else completely blown away by the first sentence? I think all reviews of intelligent design nonsense should begin with:
But how do we convince them (or, more importantly, the majority of the population who are capable of reason, whether they’re currently practicing it or not) of the reality behind the theory if they think we’re deluded?
Honestly, you can’t. The problem is, as pointed out in Colugo’s post, that philosophy has been coopted to support a reactionary view point. The people who have to deal with this are philosophers. I’m a philosopher, in training at least, and I find that people who rely on these linguistic/social/whatever arguments against science understand them only a little bit, if at all. I’m interested in social ontology and what that entails insofar as science is concerned.
Really, what is going on is that people are using all these argument s in a superficial manner and applying them only to science and not to other fields, which they would tear apart even more than they are claimed to do with science.
Coluga,
I believe Latour used up his quota of “?”‘s and “!”‘s.
Rather than resorting to rhetorical vagueness and melodramaticly prosaic handwringing, perhaps he should have answered those questions he was posing so someone, anyone, can determine just WTF he was getting at, besides his obvious need to exculpate himself from controversy.
Perhaps, “I had no idea they were going to use my invention for destructive purposes, I am not the one to blame.” Clear, concise and done.
And then there is the oddly ambiguous question:
“Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact whether you like it or not? ”
Why, indeed? Sirocco? Acid rain? Dyspepsia? Overwrought simile? And just WHO are the bad guys being referred to here? Damn, I’ve used my quota of “?”‘s!
The ivory-tower postmodernist philosophy fits rather nicely into populist conservative apologetics. They both boil everything down to being matters of choice. The major difference seems to be where they go from there — and that’s only a matter of convention.
Postmodernism has been defined as “A philosophy which holds that there is no such thing as objective truth, that there are many ways of knowing, and that what is accepted as true is really the social constructions of symbol and meaning, particularly by the dominant class, gender, and culture.” This is the namby-pamby relativism you’d think the Creationists would normally hold in distain.
But even conservative religionists have to make some sort of room for “other ways of knowing” when it comes to knowing that their religion is true, and there is a God. Argue against a fundamentalist and sooner or later their evidence disappears into “well, science is a religion, too. Atheism is a religion. We have to have faith in things. Creationism is faith. Evolution is faith. Your belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is faith. Your belief that you’re not a brain in a vat is faith. Reason is faith. All beliefs are a matter of faith!”
Welcome to the world of the postmodern relativist. Fuller is content to play games, backing whatever group appears to be the marginalized Other of the moment. The creationist rescues everyone from the game by invoking the Certainty and Security of — what else — “Goddidit.”
Fuller fully deserves to get reamed. It felt goooood.
Nice essay. I was pretty much with the author up to about the last 5 paragraphs where, in my opinion, he loses it. His net seems to be that there should be no room in academia for any inquiries not explicitly recognized and bounded by his beloved mathematics, science, and engineering. Further that all of those who study human culture, whether as anthropology, literature, or otherwise are some sort of intellectual children to be humored at best and properly ignored when serious issues are at hand. It seems to me that we have some dandy and ongoing examples of the “screw culture and all its ilk, we just need more F=ma or its equivalent in bombs” philosophy at work. Can we all say “IRAQ”?
Science is a religion. Everything about it is dogmatic. Evolution is based on delusional beliefs. God is real. I’m not going to be specific or challenge any particular claim…because they are all false…clearly. As long as I can rant and rave while making some sort of pseudo-sense, I can disarm all of the claims of science. The millions of man-hours of thoughtful, deliberate, effort in discovery, can all be swiped away with my inane proclamations of intellectual superiority. God rules, science is mislead. Religion is great and the dogma of Darwin is a delusion. Did I ever mention that I too encountered a waterfall out camping one day? Wow. I mean, wow. For sure a positive sign of the insignificance of humans and the greatness of God. I mean if there ever was empirical evidence then that was it. I mean, Wow. So once all the evilutionists fail at indoctrinating our childrens and ‘dem atheist debils wurkin’ to take this GREAT NATION AWAY FROM GOD! The GOD FEARING FOLK of AMERICA need to RECLAIM this WORLD for the ONE AND ONLY CHRISTIAN GOD (and probilly Mars too). On this wundrus time of the burth of our LORD, the fight against those who declare WAR on CHRISTIANS MUST BE COUNTERED with constant reminding of the POWER OF GOD and the futility of their EVIL efforts to take GOD away from humanity.
Merry Chrisman. Godd Bles.
lol@#14
Postmodernism has been defined as “A philosophy which holds that there is no such thing as objective truth, that there are many ways of knowing, and that what is accepted as true is really the social constructions of symbol and meaning, particularly by the dominant class, gender, and culture.” This is the namby-pamby relativism you’d think the Creationists would normally hold in distain.
You know, it gets rather frustrating to hear the constant refrain of the evils of Post-modernism from the posters on this blog when you all turn so often to its methods. Every single time a theist says that there can be no meaning in your life without a God someone, and often many people, say that they create their own meaning, which is a starkly postmodern philosophy.
The ivory-tower postmodernist philosophy fits rather nicely into populist conservative apologetics. They both boil everything down to being matters of choice. The major difference seems to be where they go from there — and that’s only a matter of convention.
And which version of postmodern philosophy are you talking about? Do you even know? There are a huge number of strains of postmodern philosophy, some of which support science. Nietzsche is postmodern, Thoreau is postmodern. It is really easy to condemn “postmodern philosophy” as a bunch of nonsense, but to do so speaks volumes about the knowledge the speaker has of postmodern philosophy. Most of the time said philosophers are not postmodern. Fuller is a social constructionist, which grew out of a lot of critiques of the postmodernists but is not the same thing.
I realize that postmodern has been turned into a nice label with which to tar people whom make arguments with which you disagree, but that doesn’t make this use of the term accurate.
Can you identify who made these statements? (Sure, Google and all that.)
“Science is the ultimate legitimator of bourgeois ideology.”
“Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism.”
“It is by no means coincidental that the economic theory currently
dominating the world is rooted in the same laissez-faire capitalist
ideology that gave rise to Darwinism.”
“it gets rather frustrating”
Your frustration is lamented by all those here who were able to put plain meaning to your complaints about the postmodern labels bantered about. But, not really. You spent a bit of effort replying without producing a meaningful response. Twiddle-twaddle. Try not dressing your thoughts with so many words and they won’t seem as big to you, and instead will seem just as they do your readers.
Perhaps we could not quote mine like the ID folks. That last quote is taken out of context[1].
1.http://books.google.com/books?id=Qob8owzCp-QC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=%22it+is+by+no+means+coincidental+that+the+economic+theory+currently%22&source=web&ots=bZtY4x1Zd1&sig=cyVE0ntlmtxY_0gN4_ibdBCmYl4
Nietzsche and Thoreau are postmodern? Not by any definition I’ve ever heard. It’s true that “postmodern” has many different meanings, and that the word is used in different disciplines to describe things that have very little in common (I don’t think there’s any important similarity between postmodern novels, postmodern literary theory, and postmodern architecture), but there’s one thing that holds true of every definition of postmodernism I’ve heard of: it comes after modernism. It’s a bunch of different responses to modernism. That’s what the “post” means.
And I’ve never heard of anyone saying that modernism predated Nietzsche or Thoreau. Come on, we’re talking mid 19th century. Usually when people talk about modernism they’re talking early 20th century, or late 19th century at the earliest. I would call Nietzsche one of the important precursors of modernism, not one of the successors. (Yes, it’s common to talk about the late 18th or early 19th century as “early modern”, but there’s a reason that nobody talks about a “post-early-modernism” intellectual movement.)
You spent a bit of effort replying without producing a meaningful response.
Your inability to understand something does not make it not meaningful.
“Your inability to understand something does not make it not meaningful.”
Nor does your ability to express it’s meaning.
A bit sloppy there. Apologies. Should have been – Nor does your inability to express its meaning (make it meaningless).
I was only trying to have you look at refining your superior communication skills. Truly.
Nietzsche and Thoreau are postmodern?
They are the beginning of postmodern thought.
but there’s one thing that holds true of every definition of postmodernism I’ve heard of: it comes after modernism.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
“The philosophical modernism at issue in postmodernism begins with Kant’s “Copernican revolution,” that is, his assumption that we cannot know things in themselves and that objects of knowledge must conform to our faculties of representation.”
Modern means something different in philosophy.
Was my set of quotations quote mining, coathangrrr? I don’t think so. As we all know, quote mining is not the mere act of quoting.
Wikipedia: “Quote mining is the practice of compiling frequently misleading quotes from large volumes of literature or speech.”
Are you familiar with Mae-Wan Ho’s writings on biology and medicine?
Perhaps it is a misleading quote for those who misinterpret its meaning.
“Modern means something different in philosophy”
Why fixate on subjective labels? I mean fine, let’s all get within the ballpark, but why not get to the ideas in conflict – those don’t care what they are called. Bickering over such things while leaving the core issues waiting seems a bit derelict and masturbatory, perhaps even inept. At worst it’s obfuscation of knowledge, or lack thereof.
coathangrrr: What you’re describing is existentialism, if anything. The postmodernists took some existentialism and mixed it in Marxism, lit crit, structural anthropology and some other things for flavor. Mixing up existentialism and postmodernism is … not correct. They’re part of the same tradition, broadly speaking, but they’re not the same thing.
Calling Nietzsche and, in fact, any existentialist author postmodern is kind of like calling Aristotle a Christian since early Christianity assimilated much of his thought. Not only did the label not exist at the time, it’s simply a mischaracterization.
Alex:I can guarantee that were I to mistakenly classify the study of the behavior of animals as physics I would hear no end of it.
As for the ideas: Fuller is an idiot and doesn’t understand the argument for evolution. I imagine he is philosophically one of those misguided souls who supposes that the problems we have with language translate into problems in the real world, as opposed to merely problems in our communications about and understanding of the real world.
Colugo:Are you familiar with Mae-Wan Ho’s writings on biology and medicine?
I’ll be honest, I am not familiar. I went off of the few pages around the quote that I got from Google books. From that it seemed far less inflammatory than it appears out of context.
Given some of the things that some (a small number, in my experience) faculty in the humanities tell students about science and scientists, it’s no wonder that creo/IDists have gained a foothold on college campuses. I know students who have been told the kind of drivel that Fuller espouses, and I know science faculty who have participated in workshops in which scientists were portrayed as the enemy.
It’s a real pain in academia when you have to deal with attacks by individuals on both the left and the right of the political/philosophical spectrum.
It’s certainly true that you can find some elements of what we now call postmodernism in modernism and even in pre-modern writing. But if you say (as I have heard people say) that Tristram Shandy is a postmodernist novel, or (as a character in a comic novel about academia says) that you’re writing about the influence of T.S. Eliot on Shakespeare, you’re not making a straightforward factual statement; you’re being deliberately provocative.
The French literary theorists who call themselves postmodernist are also just as likely to call themselves poststructuralists. And again, it’s for precisely the same reason: they follow, and are responding to, modernism and structuralism.
“I can guarantee that were I to mistakenly classify the study of the behavior of animals as physics I would hear no end of it.”
I did not read of anyone classifying anything. There seemed to be points of clarification being discussed. I think your quote above is a bit hyperbole of what I was attempting to point out.
Your other point is, again, full of words expressing ideas that would be better appreciated with only modest verbal adornments. For example:
“Fuller is an idiot. He doesn’t get the difference between ideas, language, and reality.” (and I personally would add “wishes” in there somewhere)
Crafting text requires eliminating the cruft…however attached to it one may be.
Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh, ‘The New Creationism,’ 1997:
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/Ehrenreich.html
“It was only with the arrival of the intellectual movements lumped under the term “postmodernism” that academic antibiologism began to sound perilously like religious creationism. Postmodernist perspectives go beyond a critique of the misuses of biology to offer a critique of biology itself, extending to all of science and often to the very notion of rational thought. In the simplified form it often takes in casual academic talk, postmodernism can be summed up as a series of tenets that include a wariness of meta-narratives (meaning grand explanatory theories), a horror of essentialism (extending to the idea of any innate human traits) and a fixation on “power” as the only force limiting human freedom — which at maximum strength precludes claims about any universal human traits while casting doubt on the use of science to study our species or anything at all. Glibly applied, postmodernism portrays evolutionary theory as nothing more than a sexist and racist storyline created by Western white men.”
That was wordy Colugo. Necessarily wordy, and concise. Although I would add “anti-xtian” (at least anti-superstitionist) to your glibly applied conclusion.
Cheers.
So perhaps I lost track of the quotes. Trifles.
They let sociologists speak in court?
Every single time a theist says that there can be no meaning in your life without a God someone, and often many people, say that they create their own meaning, which is a starkly postmodern philosophy.
I usually respect what you write, but this is intellectually dishonest twaddle — no, actually, it’s flat-out dishonest. What people have said here is that they create their own purposes. If anyone has ever said this in regard to “meaning”, it’s only because they are echoing the faith-heads’ use of the term, but they actually mean something like “interpretation of events”. No one here ever says that they create their own meaning in the semantic sense. There is nothing “postmodern” about what people have written here in response to the faith-heads talking about “the meaning of life”; people here reject that as nonsense. Choosing what life “means” to you is choosing what you value, it’s not choosing a personal interpretation of public language. Your charge is false and ludicrous.
And speaking of intellectually dishonest … in response to
which is a starkly postmodern philosophy
someone might ask
And which version of postmodern philosophy are you talking about? Do you even know? There are a huge number of strains of postmodern philosophy
if they weren’t too busy being a hypocrite.
Thanks, PZ for highlighting this review. As a subsciber to Skeptic I saw the review and scanned several paragraphs but didn’t really read it. Because you posted, I did read it.
Scathing would be an understatement. What a work of art: The sheer poetry of the language (thank M-W for an on-line dictionary) and brutal dissection of Dembski mathematics of stochastic processes is …well..really grokkable.
Newton’s greatest blunder was really sad to read. What a waste of a great mind….I didn’t know it was that bad and will have to read more about this.
The politics of the situation: Well Duh! And nicely done.
As for the Postmodern stuff. I got into an extended discussion with someone on one of the the RDF forums awhile back about this. I’m still clueless about how it is defined since there seems to be a multitude of opinions on the subject. With all due respect to Kurt Cobain, it smells like bullshit to me. No offense intended to any particular postmodernist defender in this thread.
Thanks again, PZ for redirecting my interest in the Levitt review.
One more point: Colugo wrote “Postmodernism has been defined as …” Why then ask “And which version of postmodern philosophy are you talking about?”? Never mind, I know. Now kindly remove that bee from your bonnet and return to being the sensible version of coathangrrr.
Colugo wrote
Sorry, that was Sastra.
I especially like Levitt’s neologism, ‘churlishnish’: petulant disdain for math and science, and for scientists motives.
Steve Fuller defends Intelligent Design, 10/28/07.
If this is the best intellectual ammunition that the forces of ID are able to summon, they’re hosed.
Wow, that guy can really write!
e.g.,
I found this bit amusing:
“As Fuller would have it, “Just as the ACLU helped to drive a wedge between the teaching of science and theology, the Discovery Institute would now drive a wedge between the teaching of science and the anti-theology prejudice euphemistically called ‘methodological naturalism.'””
So does Fuller believe that science and tehology were happily married before the ACLU came along? That is the impression from that quote. That Fuller thinks that methodological naturalism is anti-theological prejudice, suggests that he is a moron. Its how science is done. I’d love to drag Fuller away for a week’s re-enacting and if he gets itll treat him according to the four humours rather than using modern medicine. To be intellectually consistent he would have to use all the modern wooooo type medicines, but does he?
PZ lifted this straight from Ed Brayton’s blog.
No attribution, of course.
Well, that’s PZ for ya.
Ed Brayton Fanboy, more like.
what are you babbling about, now?
PZ linked to where he got it from, right in the first paragraph.
or didn’t you notice?
… he linked it immediately afterwards, too.
Are you familiar with Mae-Wan Ho’s writings on biology and medicine?
Perhaps it is a misleading quote for those who misinterpret its meaning.
Posted by: Colugo
Shush! Half this discussion is making me want to read beatnik poetry.
Can you identify who made these statements? (Sure, Google and all that.)
Well, I guess it was Lenin, but I do not give a shite.
I like this, however: In all of these pronouncements, Fuller is hard-pressed to hide his scorn for actual scientists who, it is obvious to him, know much less about what they think and how and why than a social theorist like himself who is enormously content to cite his own work endlessly.
Funny, how many people like nothing better than the sound of their own voice.
My favourite quote: “I refute it thus.”
Do you know who said that, ssnnnniiiiFFFFFFFFFFFF!!
“Science is the ultimate legitimator of bourgeois ideology.”
Damn, I knew it was used for something.
“Darwin offered the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism.”
Really? I thought it was a compelling argument for sex!
“It is by no means coincidental that the economic theory currently dominating the world is rooted in the same laissez-faire capitalist ideology that gave rise to Darwinism.”
I know! groucho marx!! He must have been hungry when he said it. Is it right to eat when others starve? (pg 88)
Gee, it’s not like PZ Myers would be on the eSkeptic mailing list, just like I am, and could get this essay directly, just like I did. . . .
For me, the best line was:
“Fuller has perpetrated a dreadful book, but as a tantrum, it is exemplary.”
LMAO.
Coasth writes:
“You spent a bit of effort replying without producing a meaningful response.
Your inability to understand something does not make it not meaningful.”
Now that is a classic post-modern response.
It’s not even called “medicine and physiology”. It’s called “medicine or physiology”. That makes squeezing biology in even more difficult, I think.
It’s not even called “medicine and physiology”. It’s called “medicine or physiology”. That makes squeezing biology in even more difficult, I think.
Steve Fuller: He’s fuller of @#$% than the average Steve!
I actually debated Steve Fuller “in person” as it were, on the TPM blog:
http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=50#comments
He’s just as stupid in person as he is in print.
I’m actually on several mailing lists, and I will typically get several personal email notifications of material like this. I didn’t attribute this to a blog I don’t read because, well, I don’t read it, so obviously it wasn’t my source.
coathangrrr #16 wrote:
Probably not. As others have pointed out — and as you say yourself — there are a lot of variations and varieties of philosophical theories and approaches which go under the rather fuzzy label of “postmodernism.” I was using the term casually, per Levitt, since I’ll happily admit I don’t have anywhere near the background or expertise for pinpoint accuracy.
If it makes you feel better, I’ll say I was referring here to the form of postmodern philosophy which I will technically call “fullerism.” Which is actually pretty darn pinpoint accurate, when I think about it. I’m so pleased, and feel better myself now.
Guess I will have to tell him he got no cerebellum
The French literary theorists who call themselves postmodernist are also just as likely to call themselves poststructuralists.
People rarely refer to themselves as postmodern.
steve fuller along with timothy garton ash are a type of
liberal that need a good bitch slap.
Some of you might find the interchange between Fuller and Levitt in the comments on Levitt’s Amazon.com review of Fuller’s book, interesting (amusing):
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3RPG5KJPWPW6O/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?%5Fencoding=UTF8&ASIN=0745641229#wasThisHelpful
Why hasn’t Intelligent Design explain anything? This is Christmas time, maybe they could explain the mechanism of IMMACULATE COPULATION? Surely Dembski says that the Intelligent Designer is the Christian God…
If it makes you feel better, I’ll say I was referring here to the form of postmodern philosophy which I will technically call “fullerism.” Which is actually pretty darn pinpoint accurate, when I think about it. I’m so pleased, and feel better myself now.
pwned!
Levitt himself is guilty of no small measure of broad-brush painting:
Beyond doubt, silliness by the tankcar-load can be easily found under all of those labels, but there are babies in that bathwater as well. Consider the advances in, say, neurology, resulting from improved conditions for lab animals; or the potential devastation of handing the basics of our physical being over to (ahem) “market forces”; or the need for including biological understandings such as common descent and symbiosis into ethical and practical considerations.
He attributes to Dembski a maxim to the effect that it is “impossible” to design a true random-number generator because it is ultimately possible to “infer” the algorithm that lies behind it
This “maxim” is beyond ludicrous but Levitt’s treatment of it is poor and misses the most important point: it is trivial to design a true random-number generator, by sampling a physical process … say, a cosmic ray detector.
It seems to me that we have some dandy and ongoing examples of the “screw culture and all its ilk, we just need more F=ma or its equivalent in bombs” philosophy at work. Can we all say “IRAQ”?
No. Not even close. All right, this has a grain of truth given that the author mentions women’s studies and the like (as I see Pierce just pointed out). Studies have found that education tends to decrease what we call “right-wing authoritarian” scores, probably because it introduces us to strange and Leader-unapproved people (who curiously fail to kill us and eat our babies). But the RWA attitude that put us in Iraq and kept us there has nothing to do with F=ma. It entails disagreeing strongly with statements like “Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly,” (so much for Galileo-worship) and agreeing strongly with statements like, “God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished.” The authorities who benefit from this attitude in times of crisis are priests and politicians, not biologists. Authoritarian leaders themselves may combine high RWA scores with high Social Dominance Orientation, and the latter at least lends itself to claims of hard-headed fact. But when it comes to Dubya, these “facts” apparently include the superiority of people who talk about Jesus.
We wouldn’t expect people like this to pay reverent attention to scientists. To the contrary, the combined RWA-SDO attitude seems to make people think they can create their own reality if they just speak dishonestly and carry a big stick.
it need not be created by a pseudo-random number generator built into the program, but can be taken from unconnected external phenomena, e.g., radioactive decay or the total take at a Las Vegas casino
Ah, ok, I should read the whole thing before commenting.
Forgot to spell out that any crisis situation except an ‘oppressive’ government attacking non-violent protesters tends to increase “right-wing authoritarian” scores across the board. It doesn’t just apply to a crazy minority. Not when we see idiots fly planes into buildings, anyway.
This soil put forth a host of noxious weeds, quite varied, and sometimes taxonomically linked only by the common bitterness they exuded. Each in its own way — literary theory, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, women’s studies, ethnic studies, and a long-standing Marxisant approach to sociology — joined the tacit alliance of antiscientific intellectuals whose imprecations grew all the louder even as their influence over the practice of science and public science policy shrank to imperceptibility.
Levitt here commits the same sort of error he is criticizing — conflating science and politics. While some of the people in some of these fields are in part motivated by antiscientific sentiments, that is far from the whole story, and Levitt comes off here as quite an anti-intellectual reactionary himself. It’s illuminating — but not surprising — to find in his Wikipedia entry that He refers to his opponents collectively as the “academic left”.
I agree with the last comment by truth machine. It’s a brutally entertaining review, but Levitt is painting with much too broad a brush here. As in the book he wrote with Gross, he shows here an undiscriminating contempt for humanities folks.
The thesis, roughly is this: the practitioners of “literary theory, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, women’s studies, ethnic studies, and a long-standing Marxisant approach to sociology” hate science and mathematics, and they hate them b/c they’re unable to understand them. It’s a thesis long on sneering, shorter on evidence.
A corrollary is that all these terrible anti-scientific lefty types with their trendy lit crit enthusiasms are brothers under the skin with creationists. Maybe it’s true of Fuller and a few others, but I have yet to see anything from Levitt that warrants making it a generalization.
Anyone who conflates postmodernism and post-structuralism doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about. “Postmodern” has actually been used as a positive label by only a few people — Fred Jameson, Richard Rorty, Donna Haraway — none of them French and all of them doing different things from each other. But experience teaches that most folks who use this term negatively haven’t done the reading and aren’t about to and want a big word to wrap up all the stuff they’re never gonna read into one great anathema.
Fuller’s an idiot and you can take him apart easily — see for example the discussions last year on Michael Berube’s blog, a pretty poststructurally-informed space which managed to get considerably farther into the reactionary core of Fuller than Levitt does.
Ah, but c, if we were to look at the discussions on Bérubé’s blog, we’d see Levitt being such an anti-intellectual thug (“No, I don’t have to read your books to denounce them”) that he got banned. Same side of him comes out in the end of the Fuller review, although I like the rest of it as much as anyone.
Postmodern theory is a specific position associated with Baudrillard, Rorty, Lyotard, and Fish, only one of whom is still alive –the one who best conforms to NL’s caricature of the Academic Left. I tend to think Fuller does indeed fit into that philosophical camp; but it’s not really a big one.
I’m always amazed at how quickly folks ’round here abandon their hardheaded devotion to evidence when someone says the word “postmodern.” As soon as Levitt or someone else claims that the postmodern hordes are threatening Science, y’all join in the sneering at the stupid humanists. Of course, no one including Levitt have a scrap of proof that “postmodernism” threatens science in any way, or even who the “postmodernists” are or what their tools of destruction are. Unless folks can document how the literary theorists are dictating the chemistry curriculum?
Fuller is a very idiosyncratic scholar. He is not a postmodernist. He is not a sociologist, his PhD is in philosophy although his appointment is currently in a sociology department. He is hardly the leader of a broad-based movement of postmodernist attack on science as most people in philosophy, history, and sociology in science recognize him as speaking only for himself. If you could see him at a professional conference on a panel with other philosophers you would well understand that his views are not widely shared in that professional community.
Fuller, to my knowledge, is the only philosopher of science who has ever testified at a court trial in behalf of ID or creationism. Philosophers, for example, Michael Ruse, have much more often testified against ID and creationism. People with degrees in science and engineering, however, often make up the backbone of the ID and YEC movements. So, if we want to play “guilt by association” (as Levitt is so fond of doing) I think the sciences would lose that particular mudfest.
Even in the simple-minded way people here throw around “postmodernism” (“postmodernism = relativism”) I find it hard to understand how it could possibly be blamed for ID/YEC since their ploy is to constantly proclaim the “creationism is the TRUTH as proven by SCIENCE!!” rather than “there is no truth.” They speak in the language of “reality” and “facts” NOT in the language of “The social construction of facts.”
Levitt, while acid-penned, is a slipshod scholar who is all too eager to condemn all of the humanities with the epithet “postmodern.” It saddens me that folks around here cheer lead his efforts.
Science is a supposedly cabal that does not award itself Nobel Prizes ?
fardels, you’re right about Levitt, but I think I for one am willing (at this point) to let “postmodernism” mean “careless politically motivated relativism,” and simply deny that philosopher X or sociologist Y is a “postmodernist”. As has already been mentioned, very few people refer to themselves as “postmodernists,” so this is no semantic loss. After all, a lot of criticism of the Enlightenment traces back to the Enlightenment itself in self-critical mode (think Kant here), so I tend to think of all that as the rocky road into modernity rather than leaving it behind for something else. But then again here I go again thinking of serious criticism rather than “anything goes”.
And right again that the, um, cdesignproponentsists’ “ploy is to constantly proclaim [that] “creationism is the TRUTH as proven by SCIENCE!!” rather than “there is no truth.”” But that’s only half the time. The other half of the time they’re saying something like “nobody has PROOF that evolution is true, so nobody really knows anything – it’s all a matter of FAITH [or sometimes BELIEF].” I think that’s what people mean when they accuse them of “postmodernism.” (I don’t get that from Fuller though.)
Dave M: Fair enough. I think, however, that the YEC/ID declarations that “no one has proof” and it is a matter of “Faith” is indicative of religious PREmodern thinking, rather than postmodern.
As soon as Levitt or someone else claims that the postmodern hordes are threatening Science, y’all join in the sneering at the stupid humanists.
Uh, this would be more convincing if it didn’t immediately follow comments by myself and several other people criticizing Levitt’s sweeping anti-intellectualism.
I find it interesting to see all the worry over labels, rather than over substantive issues. Does Fuller understand science? No. Does Fuller attempt to use his understanding, such as it is, to advance, paradoxically (if you believe his political pronouncements), a reactionary agenda? Yes. Thus we should be worried. Levitt’s review, and his work elsewhere in the “science war” is exactly this. His use of “academic left” is not meant to mean everyone on the left and in academia, which includes himself and his good buddy Alan Sokal (and my own former teacher, Mario Bunge, I might add).
(Disclosure: I’m on a philosophy of sciencish mailing list where NL routinely posts.)