Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 17:04:21 -0500
Subject: Re: marxism2-digest V1 #111


Leo:

>I have no truck with _Social Text_ which has forsaken politics for cultural
>theory. But the smug and self-righteous tone of  the comments following the
>escapade don't make my spine tingle either. That the cultural studies types
>on _Social Text_ know little or nothing about hard science is no revelation;
>the same can be said of how most hard scientists view philosophy and
>discourse theory. The mutual unintelligibility, and the refusal to engage
>each other, is no cause for celebration.

Leo, you seem to have a unique talent for missing the point. All of these
non-scientist intellectuals keep on writing about things they have no
understanding of. Very few scientists do this, and never in scholarly
journals. Besides, it's perfectly possible to understand philosophy,
"discourse theory" and various other "theoretical" studies without having
either gone through the guild system or having read various obscure and
nonsensical authors (although one must at least have read some obscure and
nonsensical authors, natch), whereas the same is not true of science. The
reason is that before something is added to the body of science, it is
tested, and as a result, a large body of nonsuperficial knowledge has been
created. The same is not true outside of science, although I wish it was.

Rahul




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