litcritter bashing...)

[Vikash Yadav]

Dear Jim,
A few quick points...
Not just Foucault but virtually all pomos attempt to do away
with the distinctions between ideology and truth, ideology
and science.
1. Why do you believe that ideology and truth are always mutually exclusive
categories?  I don't think that 'virtually all' post-modernists deny the
existence of scientific truth.  From what I can tell post modernists see
scientific technologies as real, social and narrative all at once (see for
example, Law and Hassard, Actor Network Theory and After, 1999, p. 22).
That is why they cannot account for the efficacy
of science in the prediction, control , and the understanding
of natural phenomena.
2. I think you do a disservice to the scientific process to portray it as so
efficient and rational.  Science can only be considered rational and
efficient through a process of narrative re-construction.  There seems to be
a belief that through 'falsification' science  achieves efficiency and
rationality.  However, it is neither wise nor logical for a scientist to
discard  a theory because of empirical falsification.  There is always the
possibility that the empirical evidence was incorrect or that the technology
to measure an empirical phenomenon was not accurate enough to conform to the
theory.  Progress in science does not occur through falsification, but by
the development of progressive research programs that continue to ask and
answer interesting questions.  I do not want to belabor old debates in the
philosophy of science, which have been dealt with elsewhere please see Imre
Lakatos, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge.
This is also why a pomo Marxism
is untenable (Doug take note).
3. There have been very few radical, original, and influential Marxists
thinkers since Marx and Engels.  Only Georges Sorel comes to mind.  Perhaps
it is not such a bad idea if Marxists were a bit more eclectic?
Vikash Yadav
St. Antony's College, Oxford

On the whole, I find that discussions and debates with pomos
tend to less rewarding than the debates that I sometimes have
with religious believers in the atheist newsgroups on Usenet.
The pomos are confident that there is no such thing as truth
but that they possess it anyway.  Generally, I find pomos to be far
more dogmatic and less openminded than  religionists.  Most
curious I should say.

Jim F.