Pomo = LaRouchian wingnuttery?

X-posted from foucaultblog

One of the things one occasionally has to deal with are people's prejudices and misperceptions, bordering on hatred, of anything that seems to threaten the scientific method.

Now personally I'm all in favor of the scientific method in its place, but for many people an interest in say Rorty, Latour, Foucault etc. bespeaks an anti-scientific mind on a par with the outer reaches of weirdness. Or, of Lyndon LaRouch, who is apparently making a comeback on campuses and who attracted the ire of this science-based blog for his interest in physics.

LaRouche is quoted as writing:

Once we recognize that scientific knowledge is obtained, not by contemplating the universe, but by studying how we may generate those thoughts which enable us to efficiently act to change the universe, then the principles of cognition underlying the discovery of lawful physical principles, are the epistemological basis for defining the underlying determination of validatable physical laws.

Now that might not make a whole lot of sense but it seems hamless enough.

Not so! To the rescue rides this commentator:

I hate to break it to you, but your local departments of english literature/women’s studies etc etc etc are almost certainly propagating equally nonsensical propaganda to your students, and doing far more harm than these guys. Officially sanctioned crackpottery is far worse than this kind of random lunacy.

The ramparts are under attack. Hold the line!

Despite a few attempts to keep things civil, a poster named "caveman" replies:

Don’t be disingenuous. You know perfectly well that a straw-man caricature of post-modernism is exactly the same thing as post-modernism.

It's not inevitable that these discussions degenerate into caricature, and debate is good, it's just surprising to see these old warmed over relic opinions from the culture wars.

Comments

[john c. halasz]

Yes, it's always the boundless evils of relativism that are invoked with such horror. Because everyone knows that if you attack relativism, you have shown yourself to be clean, and kept yourself safe and secure, and have thereby demonstrated your position, whatever it is. Of course, there is never any analysis or differentiation of just what this boundless relativism beast might be, what different kinds and sources of relativism there might be, and on what bases they might be sustained or what problems they might be referent to. Because, though confusions and errors abound, virtually no one actually holds to the sort of relativism that is so all-pervasive and evil as to require ritual denounciation at every step along the way, since it would be so incoherent as to be scarcely articulable. But everyone knows that science supplies reliable and certain answers to questions, since the value of science is static and absolute, and questions that don't lead to such reliable and certain answers grounded in a universal consensus about reality are patent nonsense. Of course, no one bothers to observe that one of the main sources of the relativisms that afflict modern societies is the overburdening produced by the proliferation of ever more specialized and recondite scientific discourses. And certainly markets are not a source of relativism, since they gifted you with your computer, you ingrate!

[sdv]

A brief moment of research identifes a book review of "In the name of science Lyndon LaRouche and The New American Fascism by Dennis King..." from the rather horrifying date of 1990...

The New Scientist archives will produce a further mass of interesting material.

[Perezoso]

There are fairly sound reasons for criticizing the academic science business, if not techno-structure as a whole. Those critiques are not limited to or defined by PostMods (Toastmods?), however. Popper and his school (including Feyerabend, Popper's former student and later foe) were interested in the politics of science (and of scientific Truth, in a sense), as was Russell, at an early stage.

There seems to be this impulse among some literary leftists to view any intellectuals not "down with the postmod school" as complicit in capitalism if not fascism. Jean Bricmont for example has been identified as serving the interests of western imperialism or something, and so few gauchistes bother to read him--tho' he's really quite left and secular.

[Jared]

I'd like to know who/what/why propagates the opinion that post-modern discussions are threatening, and to what? The debate (again: who's debating and why?) really saps creativity from all fields.

If reading books critically is propaganda (again: for what?) then I'm all for it.

[sdv]

Was this meant ironically "...But everyone knows that science supplies reliable and certain answers to questions, since the value of science is static and absolute..." ? or as a reference towards an understanding of science ?

just wondered

[john c. halasz]

Ya, that was an intended half-parody of "Enlightenment fundamentalist" stances commonly out and about nowadays, St. Popper and all that jazz. I don't see how one could read that statement as a "serious" explanation of science.

If anyone needs an example, one can check out "Butterflies and Wheels", a site devoted to endless, tedious denunciations of the evils of "epistemological relativism" in the guise of garbled accounts of "post-modernism", which are self-evidently allied with the forces of obscurantist, reactionary oppression. It's the only website from which I have had the honor of being banned, since there must be no tolerance for the enemies of "tolerance".

[Matt]

That's an apt summation of BAW, john, one that also works for–lest it be forgotten–Farts and Fetters Daily (recalling this first post of John's.) How times change, while some people stay the same..