Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 11:35:17 -0600
Subject: the rest of the story .... -Reply


>>> <glevy-AT-acnet.pratt.edu>  5/19/96, 02:52pm >>>
NEW YORK (AP) -- Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University,
conducted a little experiment recently. [snip]

Ross said Sokal's prank reflects the arrogance of scientists who
resent anyone outside their field attempting to critique it. That, he
said, was the basic point of Social Text's special issue. So in a
sense, the Sokal hoax fit right in.
[snip]
---------

I read this in the paper the other day and had a good chuckle.  The
"basic point" of Social Text was that scientists resent "critique" of
science??  And the idea that reality doesn't exist is "a scientist's
point of view" ??

Pretty funny.  What this scientist resents is vulgar anti-science
gibberish being presented as "critique", and the repeated attack upon
"science" as misunderstood/misrepresented by straw figures built by
anti-scientists who don't seem to know what they are talking about!

It's like somebody "critiquing" Marx when all they know is the
anti-communist propaganda taught in high school in USA.  Useless.

I just read some Marvin Harris written in the 70's.  He really rips
on mystifying nonsense such as Carlos Castaneda and some other
self-proclaimed "counter-culture" gurus of that time, which appears
to me to be very much the same as what we now see as the worst aspect
of vulgar pomo anti-science.  In fact Castaneda just put out another
book and is now hailed on its back cover as a "father" of the New Age
movement.  Same old crap is new again.

Harris' point is that such idealism [as opposed to materialism] in
understanding how things work, has the effect of eviscerating the
potential for _accurate_ understanding and liberatory _activity_.  An
extreme example is the notion that if enough people just meditate and
think good thoughts that the world will somehow just change.  [Like
Ilyenkov's dream that people's thoughts could affect interstellar
events someday ?]

Harris says such mystification actually serves the status quo.  I
think he's got a good point there.  

One of the best stories he tells in Cows,Pigs,Wars and Witches is
about medieval witch-hunting.  It may have served to distract people
>from their recognition of the _real_ causes of their poverty and
misery, which was the exploitative rule of the churches-state.  In
fact, there were major up-risings and _socialist_ peasant wars
against aristocracy going on for centuries under feudalism in Europe,
before and during the witch "craze".

During the escalation of the "war on witches", the Papacy approved
the use of torture at some point, and then witches really multiplied.
This was because torture was not used only to obtain "confessions",
but it continued until the poor unfortunates gave _other_ names.  So
each witch case _created_ more witch cases, in an ever escalating
scale.  Thus the effect of witch-hunting was the opposite of
extermination, in a way.  This is one of Harris' examples of
"mystification" of understanding, which obscured the true source of
people's problems.

Of course, a lot of people accused of witchcraft [not by the tortured
ones, but by neighbors] were independent, outspoken, non-christian
peasant leaders, especially without big money or much family, such as
single women land-holders and midwives.  Funny thing is, sometimes
the tortured ones did name rich people, aristocrats and
church-university educated [always male] doctors, but in that case
the witch was generally thought to be lying and charges were nearly
never brought against doctors.

The accusers and local church-state authorities generally got to
split up the dead witch's property among themselves.  Class
differences increased, peasants lost the peasant wars, and within a
couple centuries came the dawn of Capitalism.

Isn't this great stuff?  This is mostly Harris' story, though it's
not his original historical research, and some of the more
fem-oriented bits I got elsewhere.

[I still disagree with Harris about "primitive" infanticide, but he
has an interesting rant against "dialectics", and sees his "cultural
materialism" as a still _marxian_ materialist approach to studying
society, but much better than "dialectical materialism".]

Lisa


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