{"id":2826,"date":"2012-04-11T19:56:15","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T18:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=2826"},"modified":"2012-04-12T17:23:37","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T16:23:37","slug":"more-on-pomo-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2012\/04\/more-on-pomo-nonsense\/","title":{"rendered":"More on pomo nonsense"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.fudco.com\/chip\/deconstr.html<\/a><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Higher-Superstition-Academic-Quarrels-Science\/dp\/0801857074 <\/a>
\nI cudnt find it online due to the dam copyright trolls.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Intellectual-Impostures-Alan-Sokal\/dp\/1861976313?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175453315&sr=8-2<\/a>
\nSame with this one.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

http:\/\/cscs.umich.edu\/~crshalizi\/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html<\/a>
\nNoam Chomsky on nonsense pomo.<\/p>\n

Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I’m missing, we’re left with the second option: I’m just incapable of understanding. I’m certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I’m afraid I’ll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don’t understand — say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat’s last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I’m interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. — even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest — write things that I also don’t understand, but (1) and (2) don’t hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven’t a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of “theory” that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) … I won’t spell it out.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

ETA:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/el-prod.baylor.edu\/certain_doubts\/?p=453<\/a>
\nWhich is a rather long essay on pomo. The author is not critical enough in my view, perhaps becus he is an epistemologician who focuses on skepticism?<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.physics.nyu.edu\/faculty\/sokal\/nagel.html<\/a>
\nThomas Nagel, the filosofer, reviews Sokal et al’s book. He is generally positive about the book and hostile to pomo nonsense.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.fudco.com\/chip\/deconstr.html – http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Higher-Superstition-Academic-Quarrels-Science\/dp\/0801857074 I cudnt find it online due to the dam copyright trolls. – http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Intellectual-Impostures-Alan-Sokal\/dp\/1861976313?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175453315&sr=8-2 Same with this one. – http:\/\/cscs.umich.edu\/~crshalizi\/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html Noam Chomsky on nonsense pomo. Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I’m missing, we’re left with the second option: I’m just incapable of understanding. I’m certainly willing to grant that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1836],"class_list":["post-2826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-philosophy","tag-pomo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2826"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2828,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions\/2828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}