[lbo-talk] The postmodern prince

[Michael Dawson -PSU]

> 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.