[lbo-talk] The postmodern prince

Michael Dawson -PSU mdawson at pdx.edu
Wed Dec 3 09:46:25 PST 2003



> I mean, even the positivist Carl Hempel wrote a short concession speech
(in
> what? the 50s), admitting that yes, indeed, the human sciences were
> sciences and the objections Chomsky raises have been soundly refuted. For
> decades.

This is not evidence in your favor. Positivists are co-conspirators in the game Chomsky is criticizing -- the idea that human science should look like physical science. The whole trick rests on a fetishism of research methods. Science is simply the disciplined, unbiased testing of hypotheses about reality. It can be conducted with plain English in some areas, and requires super-conducting super-colliders in others. The post-WWII social sciences have been peopled mostly with people who miss this point, and flatter themselves for it. Some are "quantitative" fetishists. Others are Theorists.

Why is it that Noam Chomsky, a linguist, has produced more good social science findings outside linguistics than the most professionally renowned social scientists of the last 40 years put together? It's because he refuses to waste his time with pseudo-scientific tomfoolery.



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