There was a time when people were openly grateful to scientists and physicians who dedicated their lives to making us healthier and happier. There was a time when it was fashionable to express appreciation for the system of government and the practice of dispassionate inquiry which have brought us the unparalleled health, freedom, and prosperity which we enjoy today.
There was a time when people enjoyed discovering how much we all have in common, and how most of us wanted the same things despite the superficial differences. There was even a time when we thought the best way to overcome misunderstanding, prejudice, and hate was by means of reason, common sense, and good-will.
I am concerned here only with the use of the word "postmodernism" as
it usually gets used in rhetoric, not with its use in real epistemology.
Real postmodernism is a thoughtful study of the limits of scientific
inquiry, the origins and perpetuation of unreasonable prejudices,
and the ambiguities of language. Even though I am not a philosopher,
I appreciate real postmodernism as far as I'm able to understand it.
By contrast...
Here is my collection of "postmodernism" links from the "Net."
Postmodern Culture The principal site, and a good place to start. There is even a search engine. See NOTE 1.
Brent Wilson rejects science because he thinks it caused the Holocaust.
Postmodernist site at Simon Fraser. This site speaks for itself. An Alta Vista search (7-3-96) indicates that it was once linked to here.
Technocult ure Joseph Dumit's review of another writer's essay. "The Actors are Cyborgs, Nature is Coyote, and the Geography is Elsewhere." This is the only site I could find which mentioned Sandra Harding, whose book "The Science Question in Feminism" accused Einstein's relativity of being gender-biased, and called Newton's "Principia" a "rape manual."
Postmodernism and Health : "The body of the patient is inscribed by discourses of professional 'care' as well as by pain and suffering." The author takes psychiatry at its most unscientific as the prototype for scientific medicine.
Black-and-White The one undeleted reference I could find on the 'net to the Portland Baseline Essays. See NOTE 2.
Chantal Mouffe and why she is against democracy. This postmodernist envisions a future dominated by minority group identities and minority group grievances. "The book represents not just a discussion of the concept of democratic citizenship, but the epitaph for it."
National Center for History in the Schools. See NOTE 3.
The Panic Encyclopedia -- The Definitive Guide to the Postmodern Scene A collection of postmodernist essays. See NOTE 4.
Stanford Humanities Review 4(1): Nobel laureate Herbert Simon thinks that great literature is about the common experiences and concerns of all human beings. Professor Simon also cites scientific work that he thinks shows that humans do, indeed, all have certain understandings in common. Here are the postmodernists' outraged responses, accusing Professor Simon of massive ignorance, bigotry and heartlessness. See NOTE 5.
Michel Foucault For me, the best of the postmodernists. A likable man who writes primarily about sub-science (lots of GOOD examples from old-fashioned psychiatry) being misrepresented as knowledge by cliques seeking political advantage. Unfortunately, Foucault and his followers have generalized this to genuine (empirical, experimental) science. His prescription is radical skepticism. Mine is free and honest inquiry.
Michel Foucault Trading card. Nice.
Religious-Right Postmodernism Two Evangelicals adopt postmodern terminology to claim "universal reason" led logically to Hitler's atrocities. See NOTE 6.
Postmodernism: The Drinking Game: "Rule one: If anyone, at any time, for any reason, believes in, supports, or likes a person, place, or idea, it's only because they haven't uncovered the fundamental contradictions underlying it and you are allowed to laugh at them because they are Less Jaded than you."
Postmodernism: The Drinking Game
Danny Yee, a real scientist, on postmodernism: "In general, when 'postmodernism' is restricted to literary criticism and cultural studies, it is a lot more reasonable."
L'Isle de Gilligan -- Parody
Random Post-Modernist Essay Generator Writes postmodernist double-talk using a computer-algorithm. Compare its productions to the stuff at "Postmodern Culture".
It's a fact. People want to believe lies that make them feel intellectually and spiritually superior to others.
At its best, contemporary postmodernism is a reaction against all the stupid people who pretend to have answers to everything. (Science, rightly used, does the same thing.)
In its more typical forms, contemporary postmodernism is an attack on reason, science, and empiricism.
Science, at it is, or should be, practiced, is the serious business of looking at the world of nature as it really is, taking elaborate precautions against self-deception and one's own prejudices. As such, it has proved its power again and again. Like it or not, we owe our health and longevity to the public-health initiatives and therapeutic techniques which scientific knowledge has given us. Like it or not, our planet sustains six billion people only because of scientific agriculture. Like it or not, the postmodernists can post their stuff on the "Net" only because of our much-hated "technology".
Postmodernism grew out of literary criticism and the focus on the ambiguities of language. I understand how this applies to the language of literature, advertising, and propaganda. I understand all too well how this applies to the "knowledge" of sub-sciences like sociology, psychology (outside some narrow lab applications), and education, where real experiments are (regrettably) almost impossible, successful theories are (regrettably) few or nonexistent, and where ideology and politics dominate in the public arena and do tremendous harm. (I'll stand by this controversial statement, and believe that most readers who bring their own real-life experience will agree. In fact, I've received appreciative notes from academic psychologists and students of culture who deplore the misapplication of their subjects by ideologues. Here, I'm with Michel Foucault completely, and my own godawful experiences with "expert" after "expert" underlies much of my appreciation for this great thinker.) And works of literature are not produced or read in a social or cultural vacuum. The latter is the focus of today's literary criticism at its most intriguing.
But I am at a loss to understand how the language of science ("centimeter", "oxygen", "hemoglobin", "six") and fundamental human experience ("This is blue", "I itch", "I feel cold") shares this indeterminacy.
Postmodernists complain that science is a cultural prejudice, and/or a tool invented by the current elite to maintain power, and/or only one "way of knowing" among many, with no special privilege. For postmodernists, science is "discourse", one system among many, maintained by a closed community as a means of holding onto power, and ultimately referential only to itself.
No reasonable person would deny that politics and the profit-motive do influence what science studies, and who gets to use the laboratories. But it seems to me that the feature of real-world science which distinguishes it from other forms of description is rigorous measurement and the experimental method, which we can apply to atoms, to the galactic radiation, to our bodies, and to the medical techniques of indigenous peoples. All scientific knowledge is tentative, and scientific statements are judged by their predictive value. (Postmodernists themselves sometimes say, "What's true is what works.") As scientists look at nature, science corrects itself over time, and all scientists thrive on finding flaws in one another's works. Like it or not, science works. Superstition doesn't.
More seriously, postmodernists blame science for Hitler's atrocities and the other evils perpetrated against humankind. This is noxious falsehood. Every tyrant uses the language of science (who doesn't, nowadays?) But oppression happens and continues because people choose to believe (or pretend to believe) ugly lies. If anything will free us from this, it's knowledge of the world as it really is. And if my own experience has taught me anything, it's that reason, not make-believe, is the best way of dealing with the real evils of our world. After all, it was superior science and understanding, translated into superior military power, that gave the free world the victory over Hitler.
We still hear a great deal today about "multiculturalism" and "relative values". But everybody that I know, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or religion, seems to want the same basic things. This begins with health, reasonable personal liberty and security, and a reasonable chance to have one's initiative rewarded. Postmodernists talk about being "dehumanized" by science and technology. If they really believed this, they would trade their academic positions for the lives of subsistence farmers in the world's poor nations, or (if they could) the short, sickly, miserable lives of chattel-serfs in the ages "before technocracy". There they will discover that what people want isn't "cultural integrity" or "multicultural sensitivity", but health, food, safety, and a reasonable opportunity to choose one's own course through life. Those who would deny them these basic human needs aren't the scientists. It is the tyrants and ideologues of the right and the left.
Of course, it's silly to believe that science gives ultimate answers about our place in the cosmos, or what things mean, or what's right and wrong. But as far as I can tell, the best way to make a good decision is to understand a situation as it really is, and the best way to do mischief is to choose make-believe instead.
I believe the material to which I've linked this page speaks for itself, even though it is written in a peculiar doublespeak that is hard for the uninitiated to understand. Postmodernist writings consist largely of effusive praise for each other's works, and obvious appeals to the prejudices of their liberal audience. Since the constituency is liberals, there is a preoccupation with how wealth and opportunities are to be redistributed by the government, and the question of how wealth and opportunities are produced and defended gets ignored.
The more recent writings are less hostile to science itself. There are even writers at the "Postmodern Culture" site who look to popular science writers to buttress postmodernism's attack on the supposed monolithic ideology of classical science. Harvard's paleontologist, Dr. Gould, is a favorite; unlike the creationists of the 1980's, the postmodernists who take Dr. Gould as an authority seem to really want to understand him. Alongside this are the totally-discredited Duesberg claims about the cause of AIDS. In between are various environmentalist and social-science polemics papers. You'll need to decide on their merit; it's interesting to see postmodernists using the evidence of empirical science after all, when it suits them.
As a visitor to "Postmodern Culture" who worked hard at literary criticism as a college undergraduate, I'm struck by the lack of internal self-criticism at the site. In college, I examined empirical evidence to decide whether Milton really drew on particular neoplatonists in creating his "Chaos" scene, whether John the Baptist was a conscious forerunner of Jesus, whether the Wellhausen hypothesis of the origin of Deuteronomy was true, and what Shakespeare was trying to tell us in "Antony and Cleopatra". I examined the ideas of others, compared them with the facts of the real world, and had the same done to me. As a scientist-physician, I have thrived on finding the errors in others' work. By contrast, the world of postmodernism shows the same lack of internal criticism that I've come to expect from pseudoscientists and charlatans of all stripes.
Somebody has to say "No!" to all this. So far as I can tell, I'm the first person on the "Net" to do so in an accessible way.
If you are a postmodernist, I'm fully in support of your appreciation for your neighbor's culture, your concern about the future of our planet, and your care for people who are genuinely oppressed. I enjoy the great diversity of humankind, in our food, our dress, our music, our literature, our sexuality, and our forms of spiritual expression.
I am only asking you to reconsider (1) whether empirical science should have a privileged place in your thinking about how the world of nature really is, and (2) whether western-style democracy isn't the best way of getting what you and your neighbors really want. And if you love books as I do, ask yourself (3) whether some passage in literature has touched you in a special way, reaching something in you that is universal to humankind, something "beyond the text", beyond all cultural prejudice.
Especially, look at the world around you. Most scientists, most white people, most men, and most European-Americans, are good, sensible people who care about the world in which we live. Science isn't a conspiracy of power-hungry monsters against the human race. The real enemy is superstition, ignorance, and silly lies. And if you live in America, Canada, or Western Europe, most people in the world would gladly trade places with you.
Learn about the world as it really is. Health and friendship!
The word gratitude appears only a few times at the Postmodern Culture site, and never with respect to science, medicine, or democracy. First, a reviewer of "Schindler's List" talks about how appropriate the gratitude shown to Oscar Schindler was. Nearby, you can find "The Fairy Tale of The Just War" ("The hero receives acclaim, along with the gratitude of the victim and the community.") So how do you think the free world finally overcame Hitler? Apparently, gratitude is a virtue or a fairy-tale, depending on whether the postmodernists like (Schindler) or dislike (the free world) the recipient.
NOTE 2. It is obvious to me that people who are wilfully deceiving the public stay off the Internet. For example, you will not find the communists, the major creationist organizations, or the big-money cults. Pseudoscience targeted to exploit blacks ("melanin science", "the Portland Baseline Essays") has almost completely disappeared from the 'net. (See Gross & Levitt "Higher Superstition", Johns Hopkins 1994 for a review of the "Baseline Essays" author's falsified credentials; despite his claim to be a distinguished research scientist, he reportedly has no education past high school, and no record of scientific publication.) There are a few radical animal rights people (liberal), and a few holocaust deniers (conservative) on the 'net. I think these people are at least sincere, if misguided.
NOTE 3. These are the folks who spent a million dollars of tax money to generate learning objectives for American History. The resulting document did not mention George Washington as our first president, mentioned Abraham Lincoln only as a speechmaker, and was utterly silent on America's contribution to science (no mention of Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers, or what they did). Yet there were nineteen separate references to McCarthyism, and reverse racial, class, and gender prejudices permeate the work. Check out the main site and its links yourself. The influence of postmodernist pseudo-epistemology is obvious. Click here to see how a participant cites thermodynamics against "individualism", and quantum theory "indeterminacy" to explain why it's not worthwhile mentioning the individual heroes and achievements for which most of us are proud and grateful.
NOTE 4. There is one es say here on the relationship between the Chilean astronomers and Pinochet's brutal repression of the people who almost succeeded in setting up a Castro-style communist state in Chile. The author considers Chile's observatories to be collaborators in Pinochet's human-rights violations merely for remaining open ("the ideological indifference of scientific value-neutrality"), and frames an analogy between astronomy and torture: "Astrophysics, which itself is a will to pure factuity, compels the universe to confess its secrets."
NOTE 5. Typical is the incident reviewed by Mark Turner. When cognitive scientists discover, based on their experiments, that human beings everywhere agree on the meaning of "This is blue", the postmodernist reply is that "human beings are a recent invention, a wrinkle in our knowledge that will inevitably be displaced as new wrinkles arise." (Mark Turner's written me, 1/1/97 to point out that he's describing the postmodernists, and is himself a cognitive scientist. Shoulda been obvious... Sorry, Mark! Thanks for speaking out for understanding and reason.) Also typical is Suvir Kaul, apparently thinks that the purpose of literary criticism is to promote partisan positions in the struggle for world ideological domination, and thereby solve "the problems of racism, sexism, economic inequality, and lack of equal opportunity."
NOTE 6: "Whether you're talking about the manifestations of universal reason in the final solution of the Holocaust or you're talking about the manifestation of universal reason in nuclear arms, there seems to be something inherently violent here." The authors are not the first members of the religious right to: (1) assert that Hitler's atrocities are the logical outcome of the Enlightenment and the triumph of science; (2) claim to champion the poor and oppressed against evil, secular science and technology; (3) claim that science etc. pretends to have answers to everything ("...the assumption by means of universal reason that Western culture has the truth, and that necessarily marginalizes..."). But these two are apparently the first to identify as "Postmodern" their familiar right-wing overstatement of the limits of rational inquiry. And while I appreciate your Christian zeal, gentlemen, your statements are on a level with the creationist ("neck of the giraffe") material elsewhere on your server. The root of tyranny, lawlessness, over-population, racial hatreds, world hunger, avoidable disease, and rank stupidity isn't "universal reason" or "meta-narratives" or "modernism". It's something inherent in human nature. Mainstream Christians like myself still talk about sin.
Click here for my reply to the first postmodernist posting I found on the "Net".
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The most interesting anecdote so far came from a doctoral student in the humanities, who asked to remain anonymous: "I have just gone through a huge battle in my 'supposed' doctoral seminar [at a major university], where I pointed out some of the fallacious logic in Postmodernist rhetoric. The professor, ___ ___, a PM author, could only respond with 'F--- you.' A very literate thing to say... ". Joshua Hersh, one of the students, described his own course at Ohio State University. "This one is called 'Values, Science and Technology in a Global Perspective.' We learn about things like the particle physicist's subculture in which their particle beams represent a phallic symbol. We also learn about how all science is socially influenced and knowledge does not really exist (epistemological relativism). Finally, we learn that the people in the class that have bad vision are cyborgs because they augment their vision with eyeglasses."
I also ran (Jan. 15, 1996) a MEDLINE literature search for "feminist theory". I found 52 references. Of these, 50 were postmodern-style rhetoric, ranging from common-sense-common decency stuff to the familiar we-hate-men stuff. There was a large representation from the nursing literature, including an exhortation to "include feminist theory as a major component of the nursing curriculum." Only two were empirical studies, both of sexual violence. In each case, the predictions of "feminist theory" turned out to be totally wrong. Try it yourself; there's MEDLINE links nearby. In science, any "theory" which has, even once, failed to show predictive value must be modified or discarded. That's the key difference between science and politics.
The conservative anti-science, anti-empirical, anti-common-sense movement is every bit as vigorous and nasty as its liberal counterpart. These people have not (yet?) discovered postmodernism as a rhetorical device. I'd welcome your suggested titles for a essay to stand as a counterpart this one.
Thanks for visiting!
Page Accesses Since Nov. 5, 1996