Jim Heartfield writes a series of replies to Frances McDormand which I want to draw attention to.
First of all Jim like many people in this culture which includes English speaking peoples obviously refers in this way to Sokal & Bricmonts targets, Post Modernists;
Jim Heartfield Monday Nov 16,98,
..."at odds with the demonstrable idiocy of Baudrillard and Lacan"...
..."philosophical investigations with a mock profundity by blinding the reader with ill-understood science."...
..."The somewhat hysterical reaction to Intellectual Impostures"...
.." I have not seen such an irrational hostility to criticism since Ronald Reagan re-started the Cold War."...
Doyle I have brought this up with Max Sawicky in the past. When someone starts talking about marginalization of some position which is what Jim Heartfield is trying to do with Post Modernists, they use language replete with anti-disabled metaphors of the margin. Pomos are "blinding", causing "idiocy", "hysterical", and finally "irrational". As before such terms are acceptable in polite company because they "aren't really" about disabled folks as the person who uses these terms practices using them, the terms don't really mean the person who says them is anti-disabled, they are just trying to find metaphors that adequately express their ideas.
Doyle Let me say this again (as I have in the past to Max Sawicky) to Jim, what has any of these rather trite but anti-disabled descriptions have to do with errors in a material fashion in Pomo theory? All you are doing is saying Pomo are deserving of being marginalized for x reasons. Disabled folks don't deserve to be marginalized period. Can we be aware a little bit of the civil rights issues that are involved?
Doyle Secondly the review that Jim forwards remarks toward the end that science as is usually thought of has some severe problems with how it understands itself. And the writer cites Hilary Putnam, and W. Quine as philosophers who have raised serious questions about scientific cultural understandings. There are a number of problematic issues involved in these discussions. For example, Goedal's (sp?) theorem represents a kind of philosophical idealism at odds with a materialist point of view concerning science. Mathematics as a profession is so vast that most mathematicians can't keep up. In fact it is not that someone put their time in a science, but whether or not something stands up to critical debate in the journals which is important. In fact it happens so frequently that experts pronounce non-sense with respect to some theory outside their usual model and are wrong that a certain amount of public awareness of "Cold Fusion" disasters permeates our culture.
Jim As far as I can see, it's simply introduced to add a veneer of apparent respectibility and rigor to the ideas (Lacan's topology, for instance).
Doyle I don't think this adequately understands how human beings think about science itself. Every scientist does exactly the same thing which is adapt the current fashionable terminology. Rigor of terms undergoes plastic deformation in useage, and great scientist such as Newton (see Carl Boyer's history of the Calculus) have numerous examples of fuzzily grasping and using their own ideas. In fact what is hard to grasp is if someone is contaminated with anti-scientific thought such as Christian fundamentalism how such persons produce Engineering, or science at all, but it still happens.
Doyle I really don't think this sort of attitude toward Post Modernist explains anything. In substance I agree with the criticism of Post Modernism I have seen in other contexts, and from what little I have read of their theories, but I have serious reservations concerning these attacks against Post Modernist. I don't see their threat as being any different than any other systemic or system like ideas. But the attacks upon Post Modernist have a quality of extremely strongly felt discounting and disrespect illustrated by the kind of characterization that Jim gives above, and I think this thinking is deeply in error itself. It lacks at the very least a grasp of why the larger community takes certain views irrespective of the deep loathing it induces in people who seem committed to a scientific point of view.
Doyle Frances is right to make the point that most critical people don't read these Post Modernist writers. This indicates that the persons who rely upon finding nuggets of confusion in their rejection are absolutely certain of their own righteousness. And that is troubling to me. Mostly the reason is that the person feels Post Modernism is rubbish and not worthy of their time. But I suggest this isn't the problem, rather these are the issues;
It isn't possible to read everything, and there is a deep problem in the sciences about this issue, and relying upon expertise and committment in the physicist is not acceptable science. These are for debate not hero worship.
No one can explain in how the brain works why paradigms like Post Modernism take root in the culture and yet are so obviously at odds with conventional wisdom.
There is precious little willingness on the part of such defenders of science to admit they are able to be just as confused in a sense that Newton was in his own theorems, as the Post Modernist. Therefore there is a form of idealism at work about science that is unaccaptable in science. The reviewer makes this point in his review of the book.
Doyle Finally I would point at the prevailing brain theory concerning neural networks as relativistic. What do you suppose that means? regards, Doyle Saylor