Listics

A celebration of, and hermeneutic inquiry into, the NeoPoMo philosophy of the corporate hegelian interpretive community.

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I was reading an Edge interview with Dr. Helena Cronin of the London School of Economics and I ran across the following passage. It so eloquently spoke my own mind, that I had to capture it here. The more often that rationalists and humanists have the courage to speak these truths, the sooner we will return to a middle path of open inquiry:

EDGE: Obviously you’re controversial?

CRONIN: Yes. But I shouldn’t be. I’m just doing standard science.

In fact, it should be the other way round. It’s people who are prepared to talk about policy and society without knowing the first thing about human nature that should be considered controversial.

EDGE: How do you deal with relativism?

CRONIN: Post-modernism and its stable-mates — they’re obviously all complete balderdash, not to be taken seriously intellectually. But as a social scourge they have to be taken very seriously. Apart from the sciences, which have built-in immunity, they’ve taken a frightening hold on academia — on people who are influential and who are teaching future generations of influential people. It’s the resulting attitudes to science that I most deplore — the view that there are no universal standards by which to judge truth or falsity or even logical validity; that science doesn’t make progress; that there’s nothing distinctive about scientific knowledge; and so on. One of the reasons why so much logic-free, fact-free, statistics-free criticism of Darwinism has been able to find an audience is this attitude that science is just another view so I’m free to adopt my view, any view.

EDGE: There’s a lot of scientists and science writers out there communicating with the public and there’s no central canon of science. When you use the word science in public discourse aren’t you trying to beat somebody over the head?

CRONIN: No, absolutely not. First, there is a central canon — a very robust one. The disagreements — especially those that attract public attention — are rarely to do with core theories. They’re usually about the elaboration of those theories — healthy disagreements about a core that’s fundamentally agreed on. But second, and more important, the canon of science, what gives it authority, is above all its method. So, when scientists have those disagreements, there are objective ways of deciding between them. Theories must be testable and then must pass the tests. On a day-to-day basis things won’t always be clear-cut; it’s not an instant process. Neither, of course, is it infallible. But it’s by far the best we’ve got and it’s done a breath-takingly impressive job so far. As for “trying to beat somebody over the head” … It’s not individual scientists being authoritarian. It’s science being an authority — and rightly so because it is indeed authoritative. So, once people understand that there’s a vast distinction between science and non-science, and the distinction lies in scientific method, they’ll understand the status of current disagreements and how to assess them.

“Post-modernism” obviously has a place in the critical disciplines surrounding arts and literature. It exists as a break-point to help describe technical and creative shifts in western arts and letters occurring since the mid-twentieth century, following the period conbveniently called “modernism,” which was preceded by a “romantic” period and so forth. By the seventies it had bled over into philosophy and the social sciences, influencing all of those “soft ” areas where rigorous applications of scientific method had not proven productive in advancing knowledge and understanding. Over the last ten years or more a movement has been building to reclaim academia as the seat of serious inquiry from the post-modern punsters averring “differances,” the epistemological relativists, and the metaphysicians who somehow found a foothold there and poisoned the well with their loquacity, their lack of rigor, and their self-serving assertions regarding truth and knowledge and language.

I could be wrong, but I doubt Dr. Cronin is in error.

On Friday, according to Newser, Pope Benedict issued a strong condemnation of atheism and warned that advances in technology must be met with similar advancements in ethics. This from a man whose business is selling eternal life, whose greatest marketing tool is the fear of death, who underscores the fear by promising torture and damnation unless you buy his product.

In his “encyclical letter,” Benedict, a former Hitler youth member so grounded in the ways of dominance and subjugation that he seems unable to risk a rational perspective lest the fragile construct of his fantastic universe shatter, asserts that only “god” can create justice (par. 44). The whole thing deserves a good fisking, starting with the premise that the christian church has a monopoly on truth, and owns the key “eternal life.”

As the christian Advent season gets underway, I pray that this year we can put the X back in Xmas, and return to the modest beginnings of the 19th and 20th century to nullify the power and redistribute the wealth of the fetishistic cult that puts “salvation,” the collection of human souls in anticipation of some final horror movie judgment day, ahead of life on earth.

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Teh Cat Macro Becamded Flesh

1 In teh beginz is teh cat macro, and teh cat macro sez “Oh hai Ceiling Cat” and teh cat macro iz teh Ceiling Cat.2 Teh cat macro an teh Ceiling Cat iz teh bests frenz in teh begins.

3 Him maeks alls teh cookies; no cookies iz maed wifout him.4 Him haz teh liefs, an becuz ov teh liefs teh doodz sez “Oh hay lite.”5 Teh lite iz pwns teh darks, but teh darks iz liek “Wtf.”

6 And teh Ceiling Cat haz dis otehr man; his naem iz John.7 He tellz teh ppl dat teh lites is tehre, so dat teh doodz sez “OMG.” or mai b taht shud b “OMCC.”8 Him wuz not teh lite; he jsut sez teh lites is tehre.9 Teh tru lite–iz lotz of lite–iz comes, k?

And today I was studying the lolcatbible and it occurred to me to start at the beginning becuz that’s how Ceiling Cat did it, and I ran across this passage in Genesis, Chapter 2, wherein we get a hint that maybe at one time before the fall, there was indeed a cookie tree, but unlike teh tree of knowledge and teh tree of life it was so tempting that Ceiling Cat himself ate it, for it had flavr:

8 An Ceiling Cat plantd garden eastwad, in eden; An ther he put teh man he madez. (i dono how he figurd out it wuz east, cuz ther wuznt any cumpasez yet.)9 An Ceiling Cat madez evry tree dat iz prity, An gud 4 fud; teh tree ov life wuz in teh garden 2, An teh tree ov teh knowledge ov gud An evil. man asked Ceiling Cat 2 makez a cookie tree, An Ceiling Cat made it. but he eated it. (no 1 had thot of cheezburger tree yet.)

And I thought perhaps that a hermeneutical perspective wuz called for, not hermes like the guy with the wings on his shoes, and certainly not hermes like the scarf maker that pronounces his name all “air-mezz” and stuff, but simple old hermeneutics like the ones about whether or not we can segregate our own world view from our interpretation of the meaning of special texts in order to understand them from somebody else’s point of view, like teh kittiez.

And I thought of Georg Gadamer and I thought with a name like Georg (pron. “Gay-org”) he probably had a hard time on the playground, but hell — Georg Jensen had the same handicap and he did okay, but he wasn’t hanging with Heidegger which not everybody considers a handicap, but then the same people who get huffy about Heidegger’s flirtation with German fascism, are ready to let Paul De Man’s dirty secret slide… which brings us to a discussion of the author of the Clint Eastwood epic masterpiece, “Outlaw Josey Wales,” unless you’d rather not go there.

Aww heck, let’s go there…  Asa Earl Carter has been called “the redneck Paul De Man.“  Carter’s writing career began in the white supremacist movement.  He wrote speeches for Governor George Wallace.  Later, writing as Forrest Carter, he wrote “The Education of Little Tree,” a book much beloved by the counter-culture in the seventies.  Notice the link provided is to an access restricted electronic journal.  Luckily for me, I was touristing in the Library of Congress today and so able to email myself a copy of the pdf.  Why can’t I, as an American citizen with a Library Card that gives me permission to read the holdings of the Library of Congress, use the library remotely and have access to all its electronic holdings?  It’s a private publishing industry corporate thing.  They won’t sell the Library of Congress a license to permit card holders electronic access.

So once again, I find my blog posting spiraling downward into subject matter that is derivative at best and discussed better by others who have more credibility in these areas than me.  For bible stuff, go here.  For electronic serials stuff, go here.  In fact, read Tom and AKMA together as they interact with each other around the bible stuff.  Me, I’m turning on the hotel wide-screen and looking for a copy of “Outlaw Josey Wales.”  I like the part where he spits tobacco juice on the dog’s head.

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(In other news, Beth reports that Molly was checking my side of the bed this morning, to all appearances wondering where I am.  Good dog.)