foucault? relativist? ROTFL!

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Fri Oct 29 17:46:57 PDT 1999


On Fri, 29 Oct 1999 16:11:23 -0400 "Charles Brown" <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes:
>
>>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> 10/29/99 03:48PM >>>
>>
>>this reminds me quite a bit of sahlins's critique of foucault,
>which--
>>i quote from memory, but i'm not tinkering--casts him as hobbesian
>and
>>says that 'they were both bald, except for one of them.'
>
>That was good for at least a couple of laughs.
>
>(((((((((
>
>Charles: Sahlins was always a card in class. Wonder where that
>critique of Foucault is .
>
>
>>
>>the foucault you summarize doesn't sound much like any foucault i
>ever
>>read, which is a lot; rather, it does sound quite a bit like a
>cliff's
>>notes premasticated and precritiqued version.
>
>Jim
>Do you think that I can get a gig with the people who put out
>Cliff Notes, or perhaps I can do a "Pomo for Dummies"
>book?
>
>Charles: That's Pomo for Beginners , Jim.

I was thinking of the "Dummies" series. They started out doing just computer books like "Windows 98 for Dummies" or "Java Programming for Dummies" then they started to spread out into lots of non-computer topics so that you started seeing books like "Golf for Dummies" and "Gardening for Dummies". Why not "Pomo for Dummies"?

I am quite familiar with the "Beginners" series which has been around for quite a long time. I think one of their first books was "Marx for Beginners" by Rius. I know that they have had a "Foucault for Beginners" out for quite some time. They may well have something like a "Pomo for Beginners" out already.


>((((((((((((((
>
>Charles: What I am not quite clear on is whether Einstein had a
>relativist epistemology underlying his Relativity. Did General
>Relativity derelativise things ?

No, Einstein did not have a relativistic epistemology, quite the contrary. His theory of special relativity was intended to provide a way for formulating laws of physics that would be valid for and take on the same form in all inertial reference systems. The general theory of relativity extended this principle to encompass non-inertial reference systems (by adding on the equivalence principle which states that the inertial masses and the gravitational masses of bodies are always the same so that all bodies fall the same way in a gravitational field).

Jim F.


>
>CB
>

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