Occasionally I get hints of effects of the messianic work of Sokal et al, largely
on American intellectuals - the impact in europe having been solely in newspapers
- starting of course from the quite reasonable joke, but jokes have absolutely no
intellectual credibility - like comparing a Gilbert and Sullivan opera with
Mozart.
But for once - as a report is issued which mildly attempts to whitewash the
status of scientists as bearers of truth - after all Althusser's greatest error
was to equate science with truth, rather than probability.... Enough is available
on the net for you to draw you own conclusions but here I'd like to throw my own
intemperate brick into the glass house.
I'd like to construct a small list of things which scientists have lied about and
helped bring about - including - the turning of cattle into cannibals (cows
normally eat grass when left to there own devices), they lied to protect there
jobs, power bases, reputations, the discourses of science. They lied about
thalidomide, global warming, the effects of radiation, the testing of nuclear
weapons (on humans and nature in the 1950s), the safety of windscalle. They are
lying about the safety of GM foods. Mostly all we can do is listen to the
scientists voices and remember that for science truth does not and cannot exist.
All we can do is listen for the still quiet voices which try to warn us of the
inherent dangers that scientists (as jurist/priests) and the state
(magician/king) continually place us in. The still voices of course include such
luminaries as Deleuze, Dumezil and Virillo but not Sokal - physics having been a
royal science throughout its usually dubious existence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk
sdv
"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote:
> sdv wrote:
> >
> > Terry
> > There are endless attempts by human beings of diverse areas of expertise to
> > place 'man' back at the centre of things - it remains one of the supreme
> > failures of what can be regarded, at least here, as failing discourses.
> > Just because physics, that extraordinarily political science attempts to
> > maintain and resurrect a religious, neo-spiritual element, does not mean
> > that it succeeds.
>
> As someone else has recently posted (on this list?), physics has
> at least in the 20th century begun to understand that all measurement
> requires a *measurer*. The dignity of man (woman, child...) is
> not ontical [i.e., something belonging to the domain of things that
> can be measured]. It should be fairly obvious that even John Henry
> was smaller than even a little mountain.
>
> Man's dignity is twofold: (1) ethical [a la Levinas...], and
> (2) ontological: Man as *measurer* is the condition-sine-qua-non
> for anything to be measured, e.g., for there to *be* a
> "physical universe".
>
> > The sciences of evolution, psychoanalysis, astronomy and
> > physics vehemently deny this. To suggest that humans are significant in the
> > face of the universe is to invite the 'nach drach tory' of supremicism.
>
> "Drang nach tory"? I don't get it -- can you explain?
>
> But the case with psychoanalysis, even more so than with
> physics, is a "mixed bag". Freud was both a psycho-physics naif
> and also a hermeneuticist. Talk about "splitting" and
> "dissociation"!
>
> I would suggest Donald Winnicott's _Playing and Reality_ as a
> start at addressing the part of psychoanalysis that I find
> constructive here.
>
> >
> > Curiously i think that Levinas, that most religious of contemporary
> > philosophers, put it quite well '... the finite being that we are cannot
> > in the final account complete the task of knowledge...' In his modesty he
> > places the desire for 'knowing' as a relationship with the other... Always
> > a recognition of not knowing and an awareness of lack.
>
> Levinas is a difficult "case". I cannot go "with him" so far as
> to abase the self to elevate the other (for, in that case,
> it seems to me that the ultimate way of honoring the
> other would be to abase *him* so he can have
> The Good, too...). But I think Levinas has a
> lot of value to say (as does his ethical antipode, Heidegger).
>
> Concerning "a recognition of not knowing and an awareness of lack",
> etc., I think Husserl is not stating something so different
> from what at least some scientists feel: that knowledge is
> an *infinite task*. ("The way is everything; the end is nothing"
> --Willa Cather)
>
> > To suggest that
> > science is detsined to place humans at the centre of things is to remind us
> > that sciences destiny is to resurrect god after neitsche and modernity
> > killed it. Personally I believe it is well dead.
>
> To be "in the center" is not necessarily anything to be
> happy about. Job and Abraham and the Babel-onian master
> craftspersons would have been a lot better off had their
> "place in the cosmos" been more *peripheral*!
>
> But, seriously, I completely agree that man is *ontically*
> indifferent -- Heidegger has the lovely phrase: "Es gibt",
> to describe all-that-which-is: it all "just is, without
> reason" (and I feel that anyone who really appreciates
> that idea will wish to vomit in consequence...). This
> occurs at many levels, including that "the universe" can't
> care about anything, and most of societies for the most part
> don't really care about most of the persons in them ("Food for
> powder!", as Shakespeare's Falstaff said in contradistinction
> to: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!").
>
> Reflective self-consciousness is the "transcendental
> condition" for there being any opinion about anything (including
> opinions like: "Consciousness is just a secondary
> quality of molecules in motion").
>
> I think there is a divide which runs through consciousness in
> our society, perhaps similar to what Julian Jaynes
> talked about in 1000BC Greece: There is the form of consciousness
> which is naively immersed in experience (what I, for one,
> was childreared into...), and there is the form of
> consciousness which has taken "the transcendental turn"
> (Kant, Husserl, et al.). The latter is not
> comprehensible by the former. Perhaps Aristotle's
> statement also applies here:
>
> That condition the god is in always, but man only sometimes.
>
> >
> > However I know that I am a trivial insiginificant creature in the face of
> > the universe who is just trying to do the best it can...
>
> Both/and -- utterly insignificant to in-significance,
> but very important to importance (which latter itself, of course,
> is, in its turn, of no consequence to that which
> is inconsequential, i.e., to the "Es gibt"....
>
> "Yours in discourse [which is, among other things,
> where alone the universe has a place to be]...."
>
> +\brad mccormick
>
> --
> Let your light so shine before men,
> that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
>
> Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
>
> <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [log in to unmask]
> 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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