yes, it's a con game. this is true for both phys and social science and thus for the humanities. Nonetheless, I would like to know the dynamics of an epistemology that does not also at least imply and thus require an ontology. -----------
Kelley (?)
It's just money. Keep it simple and stupid. Stardom, professionalism, experts, blah, blah, blah. It's only about money, first last and always. No ontology or epistemology required. All this nonsense inside the academic world is driven by the cash flows that construct and define it.
Physics is screaming about its purity, because it has lost its pre-eminence (i.e. money)--a pre-eminence given it by its usefulness to the raw power of the military industrial complex and mass consumer culture of gadgets. Bio-science is now king (more money) because of its usefulness to the same power complex re-configured around the industries of food, medicine, health, and reproduction. The trailer trash sciences (soc sci, psych, anthro--i.e. less money) all derive from their usefulness to the mass propaganda machine of popular culture and public policy. The Humanities and Arts ebb and flow (prostitute whenever necessary) as a sort of counterpoint in tandem with these same trash sciences to give some aesthetics, style, and 'meaning' to the machinations of power in mass culture and public policy.
Art departments give them the pretty colors, fancy letters, nice backdrops, cool camera angles, while the English departments give them the words, the carefully constructed dodges to say nothing at all while talking endlessly. Meanwhile the stat groupies hand the talking heads the read-outs to cite.
I mean what's the mystery here?
Chuck Grimes