Thursday, May 22, 2003
FIGHTING FASHIONABLE NONSENSE
Of Butterflies and Wheels
Having just (at this late hour) settled a case that was set for trial next week, I was cruising Arts and Letters Daily and came across this site: "Butterflies and Wheels." What a wonderful resource! Here's how its authors describe its purpose:
Butterflies and Wheels has been established in order to oppose a number of related phenomena. These include:
1. Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.
2. Epistemic relativism in the humanities (for example, the idea that statements are only true or false relative to particular cultures, discourses or language-games).
3. Those disciplines or schools of thought whose truth claims are prompted by the political, ideological and moral commitments of their adherents, and the general tendency to judge the veracity of claims about the world in terms of such commitments.
I've been preoccupied these last few months with more concrete matters of world affairs, so my interest in the "culture wars," most specifically the utter degradation of liberal arts education by postmodernist claptrap, had somewhat lapsed. Perusing this wonderful site caused me to recall just how important opposing the pomo corrosion of our intellectual life is. For instance, check out the authors' collection of quotes, from both pomo academics, and those from realms more grounded in reality.
What's refreshing is the authors' explicit statement that they are coming from "the left." They say that their aim is to attack
the tendency of the political Left (which both editors of this site consider themselves to be part of) to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks. We believe this tendency to be a mistake on practical as well as epistemological and ethical grounds. Alan Sokal expressed this concern well, when talking about his motivation for the Sokal Hoax: ‘My goal isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you), but to defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself. Like innumerable others from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, I call for the Left to reclaim its Enlightenment roots.’ (Reply to Social Text Editorial)
Maybe there's hope for a rational political dialogue yet. But it will take a generation, at least, to repair the damage that the pomos have done to our culture.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:11 PM
