On Oct 7, 2009, at 1:56 AM, Kevin Cowtan wrote:

> William G. Scott wrote:
>> On Oct 6, 2009, at 1:32 AM, Morten Kjeldgaard wrote:
>>> teleports the students across the hermeneutic circle ;-)
>> (As a consequence, I recommended the postmodernism generator  
>> website to the students:  http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/  )
>
> It is easy to mock postmodernism,

Well, there is a reason for that ...

> but it needs to be treated seriously.

Why?  Do historians likewise need to take Holocaust deniers seriously?

> It is based on a valid set of critiques of the modern paradigm,

That is highly debatable.  Even the idea that there is such thing as a  
"paradigm" (modern, post-modern, or otherwise) is only an assertion  
(The idea originates from Thomas Kuhn, who started as a PhD physics  
student, presumably doing "normal science" and generalized when he  
defected to the sociology department. Social sciences slavishly aping  
what they wrongly perceived to be the aims and the methods of the  
physical sciences immediately latched on to the idea of "paradigms,"  
but that hardly translates into universal acceptance of the idea,  
especially amongst scientists.)

> some of which have arisen from within science (notably the cognitive  
> sciences, complex systems and QM).

I don't know much about the cognitive sciences beyond what Chomsky  
did, and I know nothing about complex systems.  I do know a little bit  
about QM, however, and it appears to me that the supposed need to  
revise our ideas about reality are based on a confusion about what  
probability is, along with an implicit rejection of indeterminism.  
Many of the classic problems don't arise if you don't posit a wave- 
particle "duality", but instead ascribe primary reality to particles.   
(Chemists, not just physicists, deal with these supposed "riddles" all  
the time -- how can an unoccupied molecular orbital determine the  
stereochemistry of a reaction product if there are no electrons in it?  
-- but their world view isn't exactly placed in mortal danger of  
collapsing as a consequence).

> While pomo reacts against the problems in the modern worldview, and  
> in doing so overreacts going off into fantasy land, any useful 21st  
> century philosophy of science needs to take the critiques of the  
> modern worldview - which itself has been significantly shaped by the  
> scientific revolution - very seriously indeed, otherwise it will end  
> up being irrelevant. If scientists remain entrenched in the broken  
> modern paradigm,

Again, I have yet to see any compelling evidence that it is at all  
"broken". (The neo-liberal economic system that claims to be informed  
by this stuff and produces the likes of Tony Blair is another story,  
however.)

> they will be increasingly unable to communicate with the outside  
> world, and the pomo paradigm shift may become more deeply anti- 
> science.
>
> The failure of many scientists and scientific communicators to take  
> an interest in philosophy of science and sociology

In my case at least, it isn't a question of failing to take an  
interest, but rather a complete sense of frustration when trying to  
communicate with people who insist on speaking utter jibberish.  The  
point of the "postmodernism generator" website is to show just how  
mechanical, arbitrary, and ultimately how vacuous this stuff really  
can be.

On a more serious level, we have the case of Sokal's "Social Text  
Affair".  Sokal is a physicist who published a paper in the  
prestigious journal Social Text entitled "Transgressing the  
Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity".

The paper was a total spoof, but the editors and reviewers (none of  
which were qualified to pass judgement on quantum gravity) decided it  
was a great achievement and worthy of publication.  Then when he  
admitted the hoax, all hell broke loose.  cf:   http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/

> have been a significant handicap in the countering of arguments from  
> the creationists, IDers, and climate change deniers, who have  
> (ironically and unwittingly in some cases) tapped into pomo rather  
> more successfully. The pomo suspicion of arguments-from-authority  
> threatens scientific funding and evidence-based policy making at a  
> more general level.
>
> However, the modern worldview is broken,

only if we start to accept this kind of proof by assertion ...

> and the pomo paradigm shift may well be a juggernaught. We cannot  
> stop it, we need to both understand it and respond constructively if  
> we are going to advocate and communicate science.
>
> The hermenutic circle is one starting point in understanding where  
> pomo comes from. The idea that a text has a meaning is highly  
> problematic and may well be dualistic.

Those last two sentences I have to confess kind of frighten and  
confuse me.

I think as scientists, the best we can rationally hope do is to engage  
the world using simple, straightforward terminology and explicit  
logical argumentation, both of which should be informed and grounded  
by empirical experimental tests of scientific hypotheses.  We, as  
scientists, should be able to explain, in a simple and straightforward  
manner that any sentient individual can understand, what a testable  
hypothesis is, and why it is that scientists ultimately strive for  
testable (and refutable) hypotheses, verses subjective appeals to  
gobbledigook and religious authority (be the religion Christianity,  
Postmodernism, or whatever other -ism is currently in fashion).

I guess if that means more time at the synchrotron collecting data and  
less time smoking unfiltered cigarettes and drinking nanomolar coffee  
while debating the rantings of Diderot and Focault at the  
Structuralist French Cafe, I'll somehow manage to cope.

All the best,


Bill