"It may be asked why it is even worth spending time on these remnants of the utterly discredited postmodernist movement."
This is just so ignorant and backward that I have a hard time taking the author of this article seriously. There is no "postmodernist movement". The term refers to a hopelessly large field of practices. Most great so-called "postmodernist" theorists typically have not referred to themselves as such.
If you want to discredit theorists who have been critical of scientific practices, you need to put down the Sokal and actually engage with specific works. You might be surprised to find that many of these "postmodernists" are either trained scientists or actually know what they're talking about. Just a few suggestions if you want to dip your toes in the water:
– Gilles Deleuze wrote powerfully on metaphysics, integrating many incites from mathematics in the 60's and 70's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleuze#Metaphysics Check out "Difference and Repetition".
– Bruno Latour in a the domain of Science and Technology Studies has written voluminously about scientific and technological practices from a more anthropological point of view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Biography
– Isabelle Stengers has written something more along the lines of what's critiqued in this article, a critique of the authority of science in society: http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitics-I-Posthumanities-Isabell... – works like this question whether the privileging of science over all other forms of knowledge is good for society. This particular work argues that it is not.
A general note about so-called "postmodernism". The Wikipedia definition includes the following:
"Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective efforts to explain reality. In essence, it is based on the position that reality is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality."
It's important to understand that "postmodernism" isn't critiquing the effectiveness of science. It is merely claiming that, as it says, reality is not mirrored in human understanding. The models we create to explain observed phenomena are not direct reflections of reality, they are simply characteristically human, linguistic models that correspond to our observations. As Niels Bohr wrote:
"There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature..."
The question is whether our habit of elevating scientific explanation to the 'one true truth' is (1) right and (2) a good thing. Most "postmodernists" argue that other forms of knowledge are perfectly legitimate (for instance, indigenous people who still live tribally lead perfectly happy lives without science) and that the privileging of science over other forms of knowledge is not a unilaterally good thing (for instance, it is reasonable to say there's a decent change that we will extinguish ourselves as a species in the next hundred years thanks to the exploits of scientifically advanced societies).
You may notice that both of those examples are anthropological. This hints at something very important about "postmodernism". When people talk about "postmodernism", they're often talking about "post-structuralism", which is another hopelessly broad category referring to theory that in some way extends "structuralism", which is in turn closely connected to the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the "father of modern anthropology". "Postmodernism" can be seen in this sense to be a kind of anthropologically informed philosophy. Rather than creating theoretically sound abstract models, they look at how those models actually play out "in the field" and draw conclusions. Hence the critique of science: despite the power of scientific explanation, it may not necessarily result in a better society and indeed the evidence shows that it does not.
And one final point, the author is totally wrong to claim that scientists have not been concerned with the philosophy of science. Many early twentieth century scientists – the ones who create the theory of relatively and quantum physics especially – even wrote books on the philosophy of science as well as its role in society. Some examples:
– Herman Weyl ("His overall approach in physics was based on the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl, specifically Husserl's 1913 Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl
Thanks for your defence of recent works around the philosophy of science, I am genuinely surprised to find one on HN. One small book I liked that I would add is "predire n'est pas expliquer" from Rene Thom.
I don't get the mistrust of philosophy from many scientifically-inclined people. I find it especially sad that most people stopped at the falsifiability concept and don't go beyond.
Oh, I forgot to add that probably my favorite "post-structuralist" author is Manuel DeLanda, who actually quit his job as a hacker to become a philosopher. He does a great job of making Deleuze's work more clear and his own work is fascinating: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3D...
"A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" looks at the past thousand years in terms of the kinds of material processes that occurred (at all levels from geological to political) with reference to theories from dynamics. DeLanda generally continues the project that Deleuze started of taking insight from modern science and applying it to philosophical problems.
If you want to discredit theorists who have been critical of scientific practices, you need to put down the Sokal and actually engage with specific works.
NB: I'm completely ignorant in this realm.
I thought one of the key points of "Impostures Intellectuelles" was that it defined the group of criticized "postmodernists" and referenced specific essays and papers?
I've read at least an article that they wrote and all they did was take some quotes out of context and show how they were scientifically inaccurate when they seemed to me to be metaphorical from the start. I can't speak for the book, however.
Exactly. If scientist were not concerned with the philosophy of science, they would not come up with different interpretations of quantum mechanics. There would just be quantum mechanics, and there wouldn't be the Copenhagen Interpretation, many worlds, pilot waves, etc.
The Niels Bohr quote drives this point home. Physics (and science in general) concerns itself with descriptions of nature. When scientists start to ask why, start to make interpretations of quantum mechanics, start to ask what came before the big bang, start to ask why there is something rather than nothing, that is when philosophy becomes central.
Multiple interpretations can also be useful purely as a pedagogical tool though. Using a range of metaphors to tell stories around some formal concept can make it easier to communicate and understand.
That's not to say you should assume every mathematician who communicates their ideas as though the objects 'exist' in some objective sense is a platonist, or that any scientist who talks implicitly about truth when communicating about their work, is committed to a strong philosophical stance on the matter. It can be just a habit one gets into when trying to communicate.
No doubt some philosophical remarks could be made about this too, not that I'm qualified...
> The question is whether our habit of elevating scientific explanation to the 'one true truth'
This is a complete strawman and nobody who understands science could take this idea seriously. In fact, I dare you to ask a working scientist whether they're after 'Truth'.
If you think there are no scientists who believe they are getting closer and closer to outlining what nature fundamentally, truly looks like, then you are sadly mistaking. Philosophy-savvy scientists may even deny doing so, but their day-to-day conversation and casual remarks tell another story. Most scientists definitely believe there is a single absolute unshifting reality below it all and they are outlining it.
Edit: and I should add that most non-scientists also believe the same thing. In fact, I often catch myself depending on that hypothesis, even though I thoroughly believe it is wrong.
> Philosophy-savvy scientists may even deny doing so, but their day-to-day conversation and casual remarks tell another story. Most scientists definitely believe there is a single absolute unshifting reality below it all and they are outlining it.
> It is then unnecessary to investigate whether there be beyond the heaven Space, Void or Time. For there is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call Void; in it are innumerable globes like this one on which we live and grow. This space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, possibility, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit. In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own.
I think we can easily extrapolate an "infinity of worlds" to an "infinity of Universes/realities", or at least we can think about extrapolating, that's what philosophy was the first to do. Actually, I think Giordano Bruno would be seen as a lunatic by most of today's scientists, which I find it even more sad.
It's not a straw man, it's hyperbole. What I mean to suggest is not that people actually believe that any other form of knowledge is completely untrue. It's a matter of the relative importance of science compared to other ways of knowing. Scientific medicine vs. other traditions is a great example. Many people seem to have that attitude that if something has not be scientifically shown to be effective, then it cannot be effective, thus implying that scientific medicine is "the one truth" about healing.
A strawman of who exactly? Of the Christian scientists that believe in one true world as created by God? Of the Platonist scientists that believe in the one true essence of things? Of the reductionist scientists, that believe everything is reducible to the fundamental properties of the fundamental particles? Or of the small minority of scientists that do without a belief in one true underlying reality?
Do you actually know any scientists, as you so pointedly asked someone else?
This is just so ignorant and backward that I have a hard time taking the author of this article seriously. There is no "postmodernist movement". The term refers to a hopelessly large field of practices. Most great so-called "postmodernist" theorists typically have not referred to themselves as such.
If you want to discredit theorists who have been critical of scientific practices, you need to put down the Sokal and actually engage with specific works. You might be surprised to find that many of these "postmodernists" are either trained scientists or actually know what they're talking about. Just a few suggestions if you want to dip your toes in the water:
– Gilles Deleuze wrote powerfully on metaphysics, integrating many incites from mathematics in the 60's and 70's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleuze#Metaphysics Check out "Difference and Repetition".
– Alain Badiou uses set theory in his ontology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou#Mathematics_as_ont... – I find his ontology lacking though; he should learn something from the failings of set theory in the early 20th century.
– Bruno Latour in a the domain of Science and Technology Studies has written voluminously about scientific and technological practices from a more anthropological point of view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Biography
– Isabelle Stengers has written something more along the lines of what's critiqued in this article, a critique of the authority of science in society: http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitics-I-Posthumanities-Isabell... – works like this question whether the privileging of science over all other forms of knowledge is good for society. This particular work argues that it is not.
– Mike Cooley argues powerfully that the deskilling of the engineering industry caused by computer-aided design and manufacturing is a travesty: http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Bee-Human-Technology-Relatio...
A general note about so-called "postmodernism". The Wikipedia definition includes the following:
"Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective efforts to explain reality. In essence, it is based on the position that reality is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality."
It's important to understand that "postmodernism" isn't critiquing the effectiveness of science. It is merely claiming that, as it says, reality is not mirrored in human understanding. The models we create to explain observed phenomena are not direct reflections of reality, they are simply characteristically human, linguistic models that correspond to our observations. As Niels Bohr wrote:
"There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature..."
The question is whether our habit of elevating scientific explanation to the 'one true truth' is (1) right and (2) a good thing. Most "postmodernists" argue that other forms of knowledge are perfectly legitimate (for instance, indigenous people who still live tribally lead perfectly happy lives without science) and that the privileging of science over other forms of knowledge is not a unilaterally good thing (for instance, it is reasonable to say there's a decent change that we will extinguish ourselves as a species in the next hundred years thanks to the exploits of scientifically advanced societies).
You may notice that both of those examples are anthropological. This hints at something very important about "postmodernism". When people talk about "postmodernism", they're often talking about "post-structuralism", which is another hopelessly broad category referring to theory that in some way extends "structuralism", which is in turn closely connected to the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the "father of modern anthropology". "Postmodernism" can be seen in this sense to be a kind of anthropologically informed philosophy. Rather than creating theoretically sound abstract models, they look at how those models actually play out "in the field" and draw conclusions. Hence the critique of science: despite the power of scientific explanation, it may not necessarily result in a better society and indeed the evidence shows that it does not.
And one final point, the author is totally wrong to claim that scientists have not been concerned with the philosophy of science. Many early twentieth century scientists – the ones who create the theory of relatively and quantum physics especially – even wrote books on the philosophy of science as well as its role in society. Some examples:
– Schrödinger - "What is Life": http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Life-Autobiographical-Sketches...
– Herman Weyl ("His overall approach in physics was based on the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl, specifically Husserl's 1913 Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl
– Heisenberg - "Physics and Philosophy": http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Philosophy-Revolution-Modern-S...
– David Bohm - "Wholeness and the Implicate Order": http://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Implicate-Order-David-Bohm/d...
Here's a more modern book from an economist that references Deleuze and other "post-structuralists":
– "The Blank Swan": http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Swan-End-Probability/dp/0470...