Help for PM Newbie
TL
philosopher but a practising Engineer with a strong interest is PhiSci, of
which I do a lot of reading.
I have read the "Idiot's Guide" to Foucalt, Dirrida as well as some Sokal's
letters, as well as have started reading Rorty. But if I had to formulate a
working definition of post-modernism at the point of a gun, I couldn't. Part
of the problem, I find, is the habit of professional philosopher's to refer
to other philosophers names rather than (risk) making definitions of what
their talking about.
If this group has previously posted a FAQ, I'd be much obliged if someone
could repost it, please.
To give you an idea of how bad my understanding of Pm is, i'd have to say
that PM is characterized by the following:
a. rejection of science and "scientism"
b. rejection of any non-sociological notions of "truth"
c. rejection of empiricism, objectivity and "realism"
I see PM much as I see Unitarian-Universalism. I find Unitarian-Universalism
to be operationally defined by a very strong anti-christianity, which is
rallying banner for UU's. It is very dificult to actually get a bunch of
UU'er to be FOR anything other then that. (I'm not making a value judgement
here - only the observation of the nature of their "program".)
Similarly I see the PM "program" as being operationally against science and
"scientism", without really having any positive program other then
eliminating any notion of "truth", "objectivity", "empiricism" and
"realism". I've heard some express the program of "PM" as being that of
reversing the "Scientific revolution" and returning to "Scholasticism"
(Neo-Scholasticism?). In the new brave new world of Neo-Scholasticism, the
center of learning and authority turns away from science and "realism" and
returns to "The University" and the present PM equivalents of Artistotelean
Theologians who debate amongst themselves and reject looking through
telescopes as "False Representationalism" or "religious vestiges realism".
Now, I hope that I'm wrong. So you see, a good definition or FAQ of
"PostModernism" will surely help me out here.
Thanks
TL
MrGoodSalt
The following books may be of interest:
1) "A Primer on Post Modernism" (1996) by Stanley J. Grenz ISBM # 0-8028-0864-6
"The postmodern worldview operates with a comunity-based understanding of
truth. It affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision
truth are dependent on the community in which we participate. Further, and far
more radically, the postmodern worldview affirms that this relativity extends
beyond our perceptions of truth to its essence: there is no absolute truth;
rather, truth is relative to the community in which we participate." p.8
2) "Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture" by
Gene Edward Veith, Jr. ISBN # 0-89107-768-5
"The intellect is replaced by the will. Reason is replaced by emotion. Morality
is replaced by relativism. Reality itself becomes a social construct." p28-29.
3) "The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog" 3rd Ed. (1997) James W.
Sire. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. ISBN: 0-8308-1899-5
Preface to the Third Edition.
1. A World of Difference.
2. A Universe Charged with the Grandeur of God: Christian Theism.
3. The Clockwork Universe: Deism.
4. The Silence of Finite Space: Naturalism.
5. Zero Point: Nihilism.
6. Beyond Nihilism: Existentialism.
7. Journey to the East: Eastern Pantheistic Monism.
8. A Separate Universe: The New Age.
9. The Vanished Horizon: Post Modernism.
10. The Examined Life.
Notes.
Index.
This is a fascinating book which claims all world views can be assessed based
on how they answer 7 basic questions:
1) What is prime reality - the really real?
2) What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?
3) What is a human being?
4) What happens to a person at death?
5) Why is it possible to know anything at all?
6) How do we know what is right and wrong?
7) What is the meaning of human history?
The world views examined are:
a) Christian theism
b) Deism
c) Naturalism
d) Nihlism
e) Existentialism
f) Eastern pantheistic monism
g) New age
h) postmodernism
A particularly interesting aspect of this book is that Sire describes these
different world views a progressive disintegrations from an original ideal.
"In short, Lyotard defined postmodernism as 'incredulity toward metanaratives.'
No longer is there a single story, a metanarrative (in our terms a worldview),
that holds Western culture together. It is not just that there have long been
many stories, each of which gives its binding power to the social group that
takes it as its own. The naturalists have their story, the panteists theirs,
the Christian theirs, ad infinitum. With postmodernism no story can have any
more credibility than any other. All stories are equally valid." p.174
Note: I am not a postmodernist, nor to I believe in postmodernism.
Hope this helps. :)
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." JOHN 8:32
Good Christian books listed and described at:
http://www.hometown.aol.com/mrgoodsalt/index.htm
James Whitehead
"TL" <lec...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:Qt6ca.533$z_3.2...@news1.news.adelphia.net...
Could you qualify "understanding" - is this the idea that you can
*correctly* represent something by a smaller more compact expressions. So in
effect understand the universe and your position in it? Couldnt such an
idea be questionable in its ability to claim both objectivity and truth as
it ignores the specificity and individuality which typifies existence - as
far as i experience it.
I don't see PM as rejecting modernity at all - just extending it to offer
more choice, i'm aware of a circle of wagons of some believers in a kind of
victorian determinism- but within the creative areas of *even* physics we
have appeals to "elegance!"
G*rd*n
| ...
| could repost it, please.
Here's some faqqish material:
From: mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots)
Subject: An alt.pomo FAQ (part 1)
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 22:44:50 -0500
Message-ID: <moggin-ya02408000...@news.mindspring.com>
Summary: FAQ for alt.postmodern
{1.0}
Permission to copy and share this file without monetary profit is
granted provided this statement and the author's name appear in the
file. NONE OF THE PUBLISHED SOURCES QUOTED HERE UNDER FAIR USE HAVE
GIVEN THEIR WRITTEN PERMISSION TO BE QUOTED IN A FAQ FILE APPEARING ON
THE NET. Please distribute and expand on this file with due recognition
of copyright laws and original authors' and publishers' rights and
credits. The purpose of this file is purely educational and is not
meant for anyone's financial gain.
Van Piercy
English Dept., Indiana University
Copyr. 1996. An alt.postmodern FAQ file, Version 1.05
Last Revised April 1996.
{1.01}
LATEST VERSION CHANGES
In versions 1.01 through 1.05 most of the changes are cosmetic. More
typos have been corrected, elements of format have been made more
consistent, the digest streamlined and supplemented, and a few additions
made to the bibliography sections.
{1.02}
FUTURE INTENDED CHANGES
Some suggestions for changes to this FAQ include: expanding the digest
section to include different threads and voices on the group; a resource
guide for items on the internet that discuss the postmodern; and more
bibliographic sections and short introductory essays on topics closely
associated with ideas about the postmodern, e.g., semiotics,
architecture, fiction, fine arts, etc.
My gratitude to everyone who has been in e-mail contact with me
discussing this FAQ, its plusses and minuses. If you'd like to author a
section in this FAQ or have ideas about it contact VPI...@INDIANA.EDU.
WHAT THIS FILE CONTAINS:
*****
1.0 Statement of limited copyright and notice of fair use.
1.01 Latest version changes.
1.02 Future intended changes to this FAQ.
1.1 A discussion of what this FAQ is trying to do and its philosophy for
doing it.
2.0 How to find out more about what "postmodern" means.
2.1 Two basic issues central to many discussions of the postmodern.
2.2 A very short bibliographic essay on Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida and
Deleuze.
3.0 Three reference work definitions of the postmodern.
4.0 Twenty statements about postmodernism by published authors.
5.0 A short bibliography and note on other bibliographies.
5.1 Some principal or primary sources.
5.2 General works, anthologies, and secondary sources.
5.3 A list of works on modernity, modernism and the avant-garde.
5.4 A minimal list of writings on postmodernism and its relation to
religion, Japan and cyberpunk.
6.0 A digest of an alt.postmodern newsgroup thread on aestheticism,
fascism, futurism, Benjamin, and landscape design.
6.1 Final word.
*****
{1.1}
This is a "FAQ" (Frequently Asked Questions) file that has few of
the questions in it but tries to enlist many of the various answers.
It is not exhaustive.
A number of users cruising this newsgroup before have asked for a
FAQ file, and while this particular FAQ file cannot hope to be
definitive, it does try to meet that basic, initial need for information
to the most common questions, "What is postmodernism?" "How do I find
out more about it?"
This FAQ should be of use for research into the question of the
postmodern, and I hope that even experienced students of postmodernism
will find it a serviceable source of reference. I have tried to include
detailed and accurate information on the bibliographic entries.
This file is not meant to be monolithically definitive or singularly
authoritative, nor is it meant to supplant the knowledge or opinions
of others on this group, many of whom might have serious questions or
reservations about elements or assumptions of this file. This FAQ is
only one person's take on a very broad and evolving field of cultural
dispute, and is offered in a spirit of collegiality and general
education.
This FAQ can be read at least on three distinct levels each
corresponding to one of its major sections: 1) as a relatively quick
overview of the term "postmodern" as it is found in some standard
reference works; 2) as a bibliography and research aid for the student
of postmodernism, and 3) as an examination of what published and
varyingly "recognized" authorities have to say about the subject in
their own words. Reading these crystallized statements of what
postmodernism is taken to be by accomplished writers in the field should
introduce a sense of the thematics and semantics, the "language games"
and politics, at play in even attempting to define what the postmodern
is. For my part, in organizing and selecting the quotations I have
tried to present conservative positions, traditionalist, humanist and
reactionary positions, as well as Nietzschean, progressive, socialist,
feminist and Marxian and neo-Marxian positions on the postmodern. To my
mind, it is easier for a document of this type to err on the side of
exclusivity and ideological purity than it is to err on the side of
pluralism and report of the variety of serious opinion on the topic.
Ideally, there will be future additions to this file, and perhaps
even other FAQ files will be made that compete with this file and
construct the field in different ways. Imagine a newsgroup with four or
five different, partly overlapping, lengthy FAQ files all ostensibly
covering the same topic (and not just well established or recognized
sub-topics or specialist fields)! I submit that that is a reasonable
possibility in an alt.postmodern newsgroup.
{2.0}
HOW DO I FIND OUT MORE ABOUT POSTMODERNISM?
(Or, "What should I know about this stuff?")
Either of these is a daunting question. My tentative answer would
be for you to read this FAQ file, read some of the books listed in this
FAQ file, follow the exchanges on this newsgroup, put questions to the
newsgroup's posters, and, as a productive exercise, find out what
modernism is or is supposed to have been, and what values and
assumptions it championed. To that end, I've included a bibliographic
section on modernity and the avant-garde to offer some assistance. Some
especially serious critics of postmodern thought can be found there
(Habermas, Giddens, Taylor, Williams). These writers in particular
insist on the complex and on-going nature of the modernist enterprise
and reject the notion that postmodernism represents any sustained and
substantial break from it. Readers can further enact for themselves a
similar political and ideological confrontation that can be said to have
occurred in the American context between modernist and postmodernist in
the conjuncture between Lionel Trilling's _The Liberal Imagination_
(Viking 1950) and Susan Sontag's _Against Interpretation_ (Laurel 1969).
{2.1}
The opportunity to generate polemic in any discussion of the
postmodern is prodigious. Keeping an eye on the two following basic
issues can often help orient one to the various politics and agendas
that tend to cloud or obscure different discussions of the postmodern.
One is the problem of critical distance and the other is a problem of
nomenclature.
1) What is the author's take on the idea that critical distance and
the potential for real objectivity are unattainable? This question can
be seen at work in both Haraway's comments (see below) about what she
sees as Jameson's main thesis on postmodernism, and in Laclau's mapping
of an "analytic terrain" where the "given" is no longer a viable myth.
Pejoratively put, this collapse of critical distance is decried as
"aestheticist" or as aestheticizing ideology in many discussions
(Norris). The usual implication is that the culprits are decadent,
apolitical and dangerously irrational. The historical antecedents
referred to are often Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde's "dandyism" and the
"Art for Art's sake" movement. Whereas for many differently oriented
commentators those same decriers of aestheticism are often themselves
denounced as totalitarian rationalists, modernists, "mere" moralizers,
reactionaries and unsophisticated know-nothings (Haraway; Giroux).
2) The terms postmodern, postmodernity and postmodernism can be seen
to associate or conjure different meanings: the term postmodern is
inclusively ambiguous of what people mean when they talk about issues
that come up in discussions of postmodernity and postmodernism.
Postmodernity is a sign for contemporary society, for the stage of
technological and economic organization which our society has reached.
Postmodernism then can be, as Eco says, a "spiritual" category rather
than a discrete period in history; a "style" in the arts and in culture
indebted to ironic and parodic pastiche as well as to a sense of history
now seen less as a story of lineal progression and triumph than as a
story of recurring cycles.
Analogously, and only for purposes of illustration, the condition
of modernity is often spoken of as the rapid pace and texture of life
in a society experienced as the result of the industrial revolution
(Berman). However, modern_ism_ is a movement in culture and the arts
usually identified as a period and style beginning with impressionism as
a break with Realism in the fine arts and in literature. Prior to
modernism one finds periods and styles associated with other distinct
aesthetic movements, e.g., Romanticism and Realism. For instance, both
Blake and Balzac, Romantic and Realist representatives respectively,
could be said to have had some experience of modernity, to have lived
during the early stages of the expansion of bourgeois or industrial
capitalism and technology and science, whereas no one thinks of their
respective arts or modes of expression as obviously "modernist."
{2.2}
Finally, I must emphasize that certain influential figures who
converge in discussions of the postmodern, themselves surprisingly
rarely use the word "postmodern" and do not describe their theories or
discourses in that way. Their theories can't be simply reduced to
"postmodernism" without controversy, and yet their arguments are drawn
on and criticized very often in the name of what goes by the
"postmodern." The works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Michel
Foucault and Gilles Deleuze are prevalent in discussions on the
postmodern (and this insistent close association probably explains the
oft-remarked failure to distinguish between post-structuralism and post-
modernism).
I'd suggest that it is important for following discussions of
postmodern theory to study and know Nietzsche's philosophy and espe-
cially his short essay on history, _On the Advantage and Disadvantage
of History for Life_ (transl. Peter Preuss. Indianapolis: Hackett,
1980). An acquaintance with the writings of Foucault, Derrida and
Deleuze can be useful. They have all been profound students or readers
of Nietzsche, part of a "return to Nietzsche" or the "New Nietzsche"
movement in France in the 1960s. There's a nice collection of
Foucault's writings edited by Paul Rabinow titled _The Foucault Reader_
published by Pantheon Books, 1984. For Derrida, to pick a citation for
him almost at random, see the essay "Differance" in _Margins of
Philosophy_ (transl. Alan Bass. Chicago UP, 1982). On Deleuze, the best
way into his ideas is to dive into one of his texts and keep going. The
most rewarding introduction to his work that I've seen is by Brian
Massumi, who translated _Milles Plateaux_, titled _A User's Guide to
Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari_
(MIT Press, 1992). By no means is this group of suggested readings
intended to be limiting or exhaustive. I am only pointing out what seem
particularly plausible or telling routes of entry into these writers'
ideas.
{3.0}
WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?
Here are three published definitions from "standard" reference
works (cross-references are cited below in the FAQ bibliography section):
(A) "Post-modernism[:] The break away from 19th-century values is often
classified as modernism and carries the connotations of transgression
and rebellion. However, the last twenty years has seen a change in this
attitude towards focussing upon a series of unresolvable philosophical
and social debates, such as race, gender and class. Rather than
challenging and destroying cultural definitions, as does modernism,
post-modernism resists the very idea of boundaries. It regards
distinctions as undesirable and even impossible, so that an almost
Utopian world, free from all constraints, becomes possible.
"It must be realized though, that post-modernism has many
interpretations and that no single definition is adequate. Different
disciplines have participated in the post-modernist movement in
varying ways, for example, in architecture traditional limits have
become indistinguishable, so that what is commonly on the outside of a
building is placed within, and vice versa. In literature, writers adopt
a self-conscious intertextuality sometimes verging on pastiche, which
denies the formal propriety of authorship and genre. In commercial
terms post-modernism may be seen as part of the growth of consumer
capitalism into multinational and technological identity.
"Its all-embracing nature thus makes post-modernism as relevant to
street events as to the *avant garde*, and as such is one of the major
focal points in the emergence of interdisciplinary and cultural
studies." (THE PRENTICE HALL GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITERATURE, Ed.
Marion Wynne-Davies. First Prentice Hall edition, copyright 1990 by
Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd. 812-13)
(B) "Postmodernism and postmodernity[,] a cultural and ideological
configuration variously defined, with different aspects of the general
phenomenon emphasized by different theorists, postmodernity is seen as
involving an end of the dominance of an overarching belief in scientific
rationality and a unitary theory of PROGRESS, the replacement of
empiricist theories of representation and TRUTH, and increased
emphasis on the importance of the unconscious, on free-floating signs
and images, and a plurality of viewpoints. Associated also with the
idea of a postindustrial age (compare POSTINDUSTRIAL SOCIETY [Daniel
Bell]), theorists such as BAUDRILLARD (1983) and Lyotard (1984) make
central to postmodernity a shift from a `productive' to a `reproductive'
social order, in which simulations and models--and more generally,
signs--increasingly constitute the world, so that any distinction
between the appearance and the `real' is lost. Lyotard, for example,
speaks especially of the replacement of any *grand narrative* [les
grands recits] by more local `accounts' of reality as distinctive of
postmodernism and postmodernity. Baudrillard talks of the `triumph of
signifying culture.' Capturing the new orientation characteristic of
postmodernism, compared with portrayals of modernity as an era or a
definite period, the advent of postmodernity is often presented as a
`mood' or `state of mind' (see Featherstone, 1988). If modernism as a
movement in literature and the arts is also distinguished by its
rejection of an emphasis on representation, postmodernism carries this
movement a stage further. Another feature of postmodernism seen by
some theorists is that the boundaries between `high' and `low' culture
tend to be broken down, for example, motion pictures, jazz, and rock
music (see Lash, 1990). According to many theorists, postmodernist
cultural movements, which often overlap with new political tendencies
and social movements in contemporary society, are particularly
associated with the increasing importance of new class fractions, for
example, `expressive professions' within the service class (see Lash and
Urry, 1987)." (David Jary and Julia Jary. eds. THE HARPER COLLINS
DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 375-6)
(C) "Postmodernism[:] A portmanteau term encompassing a variety of
developments in intellectual culture, the arts and the fashion industry
in the 1970s and 1980s. Among the characteristic gestures of
postmodernist thinking is a refusal of the `totalizing' or
`essentialist' tendencies of earlier theoretical systems, especially
classic Marxism, with their claims to referential truth, scientificity,
and belief in progress. Postmodernism, on the contrary, is committed to
modes of thinking and representation which emphasize fragmentations,
discontinuities and incommensurable aspects of a given object, from
intellectual systems to architecture.
"Postmodernist analysis is often marked by forms of writing that are
more literary, certainly more self-reflexive, than is common in critical
writing - the critic as self-conscious creator of new meanings upon the
ground of the object of study, showing that object no special respect.
It prefers montage to perspective, intertextuality to referentiality,
`bits-as-bits' to unified totalities. It delights in excess, play,
carnival, asymmetry, even mess, and in the emancipation of meanings
from their bondage to mere lumpenreality.
Theorists of postmodernism include Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari, Fredric Jameson, Paul Virilio, Dick Hebdige,
Jean-Francois Lyotard, among others; a list whose maleness has not
gone unnoticed (see Propyn 1987), but which may immediately be countered
by reading the exemplary essay by Meaghan Morris (1988) which moves
easily among postmodernism's sense of multiple mobilities, bodily,
temporal and textual, without ever claiming postmodernist status for
itself." (Tim O'Sullivan, John Hartley, Danny Saunders, Martin
Montgomery and John Fisk. eds. KEY CONCEPTS IN COMMUNICATION AND
CULTURAL STUDIES. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994. 234-4)
{5.0}
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Note: There is a huge and growing literature on postmodernism. This
bibliography is selective and reflects the author's own interests and
background. It is more devoted to cultural theory and philosophy than
to fiction and the arts generally, though see Ferguson and Gablik for
extended interviews and discussions on the fine arts and performance
arts, and see Venturi and Portoghesi on architecture. For the relations
between postmodernism and science, I suggest that there are worse places
to start than the works of Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Bruno Latour,
Michel Serres, Katherine Hayles, Gregory Bateson and Donna Haraway. For
a good review of Latour see especially an essay by Robert Koch, "The
Case of Latour" in _Configurations_ V. 3 No. 3, Fall 1995.
One of the most extensive bibliographies on postmodernism
available, though only for material published prior to 1989, is in
Connor (cited below). Other useful bibliographies are in Hutcheon
(1989; see especially the "Concluding Note: Some Directed Reading,"
169-70) and Docherty, which offers more recent information (1993).
Some people have asked for a section on performance theory and
I'd be glad to oblige anyone who wants to put one together and have it
attributed to them in this FAQ. If you're waiting for me to do it, it
will be some time. It will require coverage of popular culture studies,
media studies, video art, drama and music--you get the picture.
{5.1}
SOME PRINCIPAL THEORISTS
Baudrillard, Jean. _Simulations_. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.
Debord, Guy. _Society of the Spectacle_. English Transl. 1970.
Rev. Transl. Detroit: Black & Red, 1977. Rpt. 1983. Transl. of
_La societe du spectacle_. 1967.
---. _Comments on the Society of the Spectacle_. Transl. Malcolm
Imrie. London: Verso, 1990. Transl. of _La Societe du spec-
tacle_. 1988.
Jameson, Fredric. _Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism_. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. _The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge_. Transl. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Foreword
by Fredric Jameson. Minneapolis: U of Minn. Press, 1984. Transl.
of _La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir_. 1979.
---. _The Postmodern Explained: Correspondence 1982-1985_. Ed.
Julian Pefanis and Morgan Thomas. Transls. by Don Barry,
Bernadette Maher, Julian Pefanis, Virginia Spate, and Morgan
Thomas. Afterword by Wlad Gozich. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota
Press, 1993. Transl. of _Le Postmoderne explique aux enfants_.
1988.
Portoghesi, Pier Paolo. _Aftern Modern Architecture_. New York:
Rizzoli, 1982.
Vattimo, Gianni. _The Transparent Society_. Transl. David Webb.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992. Transl. of _La societa
trasparente_. 1989.
Venturi, Robert, and Denise Scott and Steven Izenor. _Learning
from Las Vegas_. 1972. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.
{5.2}
GENERAL WORKS, ANTHOLOGIES, INTERVENTIONS
Appignanesi, Lisa, ed. _Postmodernism: ICA documents_. London:
Free Association Books, 1989.
Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. _Postmodern Theory: Critical
Interrogations_. New York: Guilford Press, 1991.
Connor, Steven. _Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to
Theories of the Contemporary_. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Docherty, Thomas. ed. _Postmodernism: a reader_. New York: Colum-
bia UP, 1993.
Elam, Diane. _Romancing the Postmodern_. New York: Routledge,
1992.
Featherston, M., ed. _Postmodernism_ London: SAGE, 1988.
Ferguson, Russell, et al., eds. _Discourses: Conversations in
Postmodern Art and Culture_. Cambridge: MIT Press; New York: The
New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990.
Foster, Hal, ed. _The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern
Culture_. Seatle, WA: Bay Press, 1985.
Foster, Hal. _Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics_.
Seatle, WA: Bay Press, 1985.
Foster, Stephen William. "Symbolism and the Problematics of Postmodern
Representation," _Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural
Criticism_. Ed. Kathleen M. Ashley. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.
117-37.
Giroux, Henry A. "Slacking Off: Border Youth and Postmodern
Education." JAC ISSUE 14.2 FALL 1994.
http://nsferau.cas.usf.edu/JAC/archive/dir142.html
Harvey, David. _The Condition of Postmodernity_. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1989.
Hoesterey, Ingeborg, ed. _Zeitgeist in Babel: The Postmodernist
Controversy_. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.
Hutcheon, Linda. _The Politics of Postmodernism_. New York: Rout-
ledge, 1989.
---. _A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction_.
New York: Routledge, 1988.
Huyssen, Andreas. _After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Cul-
ture, Postmodernism_. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1986.
Jencks, Charles. "The Postmodern Agenda," in _The Postmodern
Reader_. Ed. Charles Jencks. New York: St. Martin's, 1992. 10-
39.
Lash, Scott. _The Sociology of Postmodernism._ New York: Rout-
ledge, 1990.
McGowan, John. _Postmodernism and Its Critics_. Ithaca: Cornell
UP, 1991.
Morris, Meaghan. "At Henry Parkes Motel," _Cultural Studies_
(1988) 2:1-47
Norris, Christopher. _What's Wrong with Postmodernism?_.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.
---. _The Truth about Postmodernism_. London: Blackwell, 1993.
Palmer, Richard. "The Postmodernity of Heidegger," _Martin Heidegger and
the Question of Literature: Toward a Postmodern Literary Hermeneutics_.
Ed. William V. Spanos. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979. 71-92.
Probyn, E. "Bodies and anti-bodies: feminism and postmodernism,"
_Cultural Studies_ (1987) 1:3, 349-60.
Rowe, John Carlos. "Postmodernist Studies," _Redrawing the Boundaries_.
Eds. Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn. New York: Modern Language
Association, 1992. 179-208. Contains a short annotated bibliography.
Squires, Judith. _Principled Positions: Postmodernism and the
Rediscovery of Value_. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1993.
Zavarzadeh, Mas'ud and Donald Morton. _Theory, (Post)Modernity,
Opposition: An "Other" Introduction to Literary and Cultural
Theory_. Washington, D.C.: Masionneuve Press, 1991.
{5.3}
ON MODERNITY, MODERNISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE
Berman, Marshall. _All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experi-
ence of Modernity_. NY: Viking-Penguin, 1982. New Pref. 1988.
Bradbury, Malcolm, and James McFarlane, eds. _Modernism: A Guide
to European Literature, 1890-1930_. 1976. New Preface. New
York: Penguin Books, 1991.
Burger, Peter. _The Theory of the Avant-Garde_. Transl. Michael
Shaw. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1984. Transl. of
_Theorie der Avantgarde_. 1974.
Calinescu, Matei. _Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-
Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism_. 1977. Rev. ed. Durham,
NC: Duke UP, 1987.
Eysteinsson, Astradur. _The Concept of Modernism_. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.
Faulkner, Peter. _Modernism_. London: Methuen, 1977.
Gablik, Susan. _Has Modernism Failed?_. London: Thames and Hudson,
1984.
Giddens, Anthony. _Modernity and Self Identity_. Oxford: Polity Press,
1991.
Habermas, Jurgen. _The Philosphical Discourse of Modernity:
Twelve Lectures_. Transl. Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1987. Transl. of _Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne:
Zwolf Vorlesungen_. 1985.
Naremore, James, and Patrick Brantlinger. _Modernity and Mass
Culture_. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.
Perloff, Margorie. "Modernist Studies," _Redrawing the Boundaries_.
Eds. Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn. New York: Modern Language
Association, 1992. 154-78. Contains a short annotated bibliography.
Taylor, Charles. _Sources of the Self_. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1989.
Williams, Raymond. _The Politics of Modernism: Against the New
Conformists_. London: Verso, 1989.
{5.4}
POSTMODERNISM AND RELIGION
Smith, Huston. _Beyond the Post-Modern Mind_. 1982. New York:
Crossroad Publishing; Wheaton, IL: Quest-Theosophical Publishing
House, 1984.
POSTMODERNISM AND JAPAN
Miyoshi, Masao and H. D. Harootunian, eds. _Postmodernism and
Japan_. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1989.
POSTMODERNISM AND CYBERPUNK
Olsen, Lance. "Cyberpunk and the Crisis of Postmodernity," in
_Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative_. Eds.
George Slusser and Tom Shippey. Athens, GA: U of Georgia Press,
1992. 142-152.
{6.0}
******
DIGEST OF TWO EXCHANGES ON AN ALT.POSTMODERN
(Contributors: Omar Haneef, Mark Weinles, Gordon Fitch, David F. Black,
Michael McGee, N.S. "Cris" Brown, PR...@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU, Andy Perry,
Allan Liska and Gene Angelcyk)
******
alt.postmodern
From: han...@engin.swarthmore.edu (Omar Haneef
Re: aesthetics and contemporary culture
Date: Thu Feb 09 01:02:31 EST 1995
david black f (dbl...@mach1.wlu.ca) wrote:
> An unfortunate condition of contemporary culture is the general
> aestheticization of experience--where images and aesthetic criteria for
> interpreting those images come to dominate public life. This phenomenon
> has a history.
Unfortunate? What you proncounce the "aestheticization of
experience" is really the end of logocentricism. The word is
dead, long live the image. The reasons probably have a lot to do
with saturation of information and the way pictures carry more
information than words. The written word became very important
when the printing press was estabilished because monks carried
around the medieval equivelant of powerbooks with more informa-
tion then anyone could carry in their heads and the elite proba-
bly enjoyed their exclusive ability to read. Now everybody reads,
there is more information "in the ether" then we can handle and
images are cheaply and easily recreated just like words. Welcome
to the era of the image. Why is this unfortunate? This might be
slightly more democratic since we all decode images at roughly
the same rate and the word is so huge and pretentious that it,
perhaps, deserves to die. The "kill your TV" anxiety that you
seemed to be faced with is a hiccup of Leavisism and his mass
cultural fear which probably dates back to the French Revolu-
tion's fear of the masses. You are not alone, there are proabably
plenty of others who agree with you "Amusing Ourselves to Death"
- Neil Postman is a recent example of this line of thinking.
> If modernity meant that the aesthetic category was separated from
> moral (ethics) and practical (logic) reason (the breakdown of the unified
> sensibility that T.S. Eliot mourned), the postmodern has seen the revenge
> of the aesthetic, as a culture of images, spectacle and simulation has
> subsumed the other two fundamental elements in human sensibility. The
> aesthetic has become the dominant element in contemporary culture, and the
> difficult business of making value choices reduced to who or what looks
> good.
But postmodernity called me up yesterday and explained to
me that it has collapsed these distinctions. The moral, the
aesthetic and the practical are ONE. Pomo does not revel in the
aesthetic, it revels in all three.
> The revenge of the aesthetic can be dated at least to some
> of the early 20th century artistic modernisms. The example of the
> Futurists--under their leader and muse, Marinetti--is instructive. In
> offering this example, of course, I am indebted to Walter Benjamin's
> famous analysis of fascist aesthetics in his essay "Art in the Age of
> Mechanical Reproduction." Susan Sontag has also written on the
> topic--with reference to Hitler's filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl-- in her
> Under the Sign of Saturn, an essay entitled "Fascinating Fascism."
> Not for nothing did Futurism enjoy special patronage in Benito
> Mussolini's fascism regime. For although direct collaboration between
> Futurism and Fascism was limited, Futurism offered an ideology of use to
> Fascism. Notably, it allowed politics--normally the place where ethics
> and logic are brought to bear on human reality--to be aestheticized. In
> celebrating speed, machines, the annihilation of history, danger and
> energy, the group of Italian artists, writers, and thespians identifying
> as "Futurists" offered myths, images, slogans and other ideological props
> for a fledgling Italian Fascist system.
> The Futurists' oft-quoted slogan from Marinetti's 1909 "Foundation
> Manifesto of Futurism"--"We will glorify war--the world's only
> hygiene--militarism, patriotism, the destructive gestures of freedom
> bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for women"--could
> have been written by any one of the contemporary New Right. Neo-conservative
> politicians today have been especially adept at taking advantage of po-mo
> aestheticization; witness Reagan's mastery of the TV medium, Newt
> Gingrich's information society utopianism (with debts to fellow neo-cons
> Daniel Bell and Alvin Toffler).
Whoah! Postmodernism is aesthetic and relies on images. The
fascists relied on images. Pomos are fascists? Uh-uh. This is a
huge stretch. Everyone has always employed images: the com-
munists, the american, the christians, the muslims, the hindus,
the nazis, the lesbians, the jews, the academics, the media, the
law. Notice how an image may pop into your head when I mention
these "movements" : hammer and sickle, apple pie, the cross, the
crescent, that swastika looking symbol, the swastika, the pink
triangle (or more specificall, black), star of david, pen and
book?, the camera, the balance etc. This hardly means they are
all postmodern.
On the contrary, postmodernity is concerned with a
PROLIFERATION of images so that no one image stands out. It is
concerned with the multiplicity of images, a mass of images. It
is anti-fascist in that sense.
(When one talks of the postmodern aesthetic, I can only think of
MTV)
> I find in Cultural Studies a means to engage and decode the
> aestheticization of experience, and a way to talk about values while
> admitting that such discussion has now to take place with reference to a
> world we know largely in picture form.
The world has ALWAYS been "largely in picture form". With
postmodernity DISCOURSE ITSELF is "largely in picture form."
Cultural studies is concerned, partly, with looking at this pic-
toral DISCOURSE while the rest of Lit Crit remains logocentric
examining the written word (even after Derrida pretty much killed
it).
> But a clinical separation of
> moral, practical and aesthetic reason I find impractical.
Then why do you do it?
-Omar Haneef
#2709
From: <PR...@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Re: aesthetics and contemporary culture
Date: Sun Feb 12 09:20:27 EST 1995
In article <3hcb5n$n...@larch.cc.swarthmore.edu>,
han...@engin.swarthmore.edu (Omar Haneef '96) says:
>david black f (dbl...@mach1.wlu.ca) wrote:
>> The Futurists' oft-quoted slogan from Marinetti's 1909
"Foundation
>> Manifesto of Futurism"--"We will glorify war--the world's only
>> hygiene--militarism, patriotism, the destructive gestures of
freedom
>> bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for
women"--could
>> have been written by any one of the contemporary New Right.
[...]
>>
The futurists glorified war because they thought it would gener-
ate class struggle which would lead to revolution. (see Perloff's
The Futurist Moment.) Perhaps their mistake was being naive
enough to assume they could somehow use the fascists to their own
ends... but then again, who could have anticipated the
holocaust....? Especially if you were a futurist with positivist
leanings and associated technical progress with civilized behav-
ior?
I think it is the luxury of your position, looking backwards
at the futurists through the holocaust, that enables you to
accuse them of supporting crimes they didn't even believe were
possible. There were many circumstances in which the Futurists
DIRECTLY confronted fascist policy. See Robert Motherwell's
anthology Dada. An excerpt from the diary of Mohol-Nagy's wife
(whose name I can't remember) describes a Nazi dinner party in
which Manaretti made a mockery of the occasion by reading
phonetic poetry and tipping the contents of the entire banquet
table onto the laps of the Nazi brass... including Goering him-
self.
I'm not sure what this anecdote really demonstrates besides
an equally valid reading of Futurism as a form of proto-
deconstruction perhaps. I would avoid statements such as
futurism=fascism. Everything the Nazi's touched didn't turn into
fascism... that is giving them far too much credit.
> On the contrary, postmodernity is concerned with a
PROLIFERATION of
>images so that no one image stands out. It is concerned with the
>multiplicity of images, a mass of images. It is anti-fascist in
that sense.
>
On the other hand, Adorno describes fascism (In Freudian Theory
and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda) as relying on the
proliferation of images. It is the tactic of fascism to repeat an
image endlessly and everywhere in order to generate an atmosphere
which will not only make it seem true, but restrict the range of
possible readings.
MTV, it might be added, is radically different than fascism
because it depends on the ability to posture as anti-
establishment. MTV is more concerned with encapsulating rebel-
lion. It is liberal. Fascist propaganda overtly rationalized mass
movements as normative...which means different things if you
really think about it.
#2716
From: g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Date: Sun Feb 12 18:51:17 EST 1995
<PR...@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>:
| ...
| On the other hand, Adorno describes fascism (In Freudian Theory and the
| Pattern of Fascist Propaganda) as relying on the proliferation of images.
I think this is a tactic of all forms of totalitarianism,
including, of course, our own, as a glance at a newsstand or
the supermarket shelves will tell you. The industrialism of
Authority, I suppose. What i[s] the cyberneticization of
Authority?
-- >< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><
#2741
From: <PR...@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
[1] Re: aesthetics and contemporary culture
Date: Tue Feb 14 08:37:24 EST 1995
g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) says:
>| > I think this is a tactic of all forms of totalitarianism,
>| > including, of course, our own, as a glance at a newsstand or
>| > the supermarket shelves will tell you. The industrialism of
>| > Authority, I suppose. What it the cyberneticization of
>| > Authority?
In terms of aesthetic, I imagine it is much "faster" than facsist
propaganda. Jameson, in Late Capitalism, says something about how
the postmodern aesthetic can only be flawed by an interuption of
its ceaseless transformations... this makes me think of a liq-
uid... perhaps able to flow around everything. Fascist
propaganda, which I've seen, was rarely aqueous however.
>Andrew...@Brown.edu (Andy Perry):
>| I
>| would assume that the proliferation of images would expand, rather than
>| restrict, the range of possible readings, since each image would be
>| disseminated through more disparate interpretive contexts...
The spewing of propaganda excites and directs... and generates a
sort of backdrop for the leader which not only reinforces
validity, but encourages individualism and narcissism through
identification, which, in turn, limits interpretation. The group,
then, becomes a fragmented collection of little dictators
undermining any kind of interaction which might lead to critical
thinking. The presence of the dictator is a bit like the author
function for all propaganda as well as an author/model for ones
own behavior...which, of course, comes into play when interpret-
ing the propaganda. Advertising functions in a similar way by
making commodities for "you alone" and by appealing to standards
of normalcy... but it is not quite as centralized... I don't
think.
#2662
From: Mark.W...@launchpad.unc.edu (Mark Weinles)
Re: aesthetics and contemporary culture
Date: Thu Feb 09 05:24:22 EST 1995
In article <D3n8y...@info.uucp> dbl...@mach1.wlu.ca (david
black f) writes:
"An unfortunate condition of contemporary culture is the
general aestheticization of experience--where images and
aesthetic criteria for interpreting those images come to dominate
public life. This phenomenon has a history. [...] The aesthetic
has become the dominant element in contemporary culture, and the
difficult business of making value choices reduced to who or what
looks good. [...]"
Much as I admire Benjamin, I find his suggestion that
fascism is "the aestheticization of politics" to be one of the
least illuminating ideas that he ever set down. It may offer a
handy way to analyze Futurism, but I'd like to know why you
believe that it has a larger value, or, to put it another way,
why you consider that "the aesthetizing of experience" is neces-
sarily a misfortune. What about the other possibility that
"existence and the world are justified _only_ as an aesthetic
phenomenon"? (Emphasis mine.) And what do you think of the
criticism that your position derives from an animosity to
_style_?
-- Mark Weinles
#2703
From: nsb...@news.IntNet.net (NS Brown)
Re: aesthetics and contemporary culture
Date: Sat Feb 11 18:38:40 EST 1995
Cris here. :)
[In response to David Black's post on the aestheticization of
politics and Futurism (essentially bemoaning the rise of style
over substance), Mark Weinless wrote:]
: Much as I admire Benjamin, I find his suggestion that fascism
: is "the aestheticization of politics" to be one of the least illuminat-
: ing ideas that he ever set down. It may offer a handy way to analyze
: Futurism, but I'd like to know why you believe that it has a larger
: value, or, to put it another way, why you consider that "the aesthetiz-
: ing of experience" is necessarily a misfortune.
[...]
Mark, I don't know what David will have to say to your assertion
that "existence and the world are justified _only_ as an
aesthetic phenomenon," but I concur wholeheartedly. I even end
up arguing that we've constructed the "laws of science" the way
we have more because of *us* and our need for order, rather than
because of anything "writ large on the cosmos." The Universe, if
it can be said to exist as an "it," is a canvas upon which we
paint our experience.
Cris
From: nsb...@news.IntNet.net (NS Brown)
Date: Mon Feb 13 08:29:21 EST 1995
Cris here. :)
[I wrote to Mark Weinles:]
: > Mark, I don't know what David will have to say to your assertion
: > that "existence and the world are justified _only_ as an aesthetic
: > phenomenon," but I concur wholeheartedly. I even end up arguing
: > that we've constructed the "laws of science" the way we have more
: > because of *us* and our need for order, rather than because of
: > anything "writ large on the cosmos." The Universe, if it can be
: > said to exist as an "it," is a canvas upon which we paint our
: > experience.
[Andy Perry replies:]
: Note, however, that order does not equal beauty. There are many theories
: of perception, truth, etc. which argue that the "laws of science" are
: constructed based upon human needs for order or prediction, which have
: nothing to do with aesthetics. Of course, since I've already shown my
: Nietzschean colors around here on numerous occasions, you may have
: gathered that I too have an occasional sympathy for the aestheticization
: of life...
I would agree that "order does not equal beauty," if by that
you mean that the two are not equivalent terms. They're not,
by any means. I think "beauty" is a superset, and "order"
one of its subsets. That is to say, I think we find beauty
in order, but we can also find beauty in not-order.
When we pass a carefully manicured lawn, freshly mowed and
edged, many are likely to say "What a beautiful lawn!" And
they're using the word "beautiful" correctly; for many see
that kind of order as beauty. (C.f.: an unkempt lawn with
shin-high grass, garbage lying around and a rusty old car
up on cinderblocks.)
Yet, most of us would find a perfectly conical mountain
"unnatural" and "ugly" compared to the rugged peaks of the
Rockies, and urban planners learned decades ago that
meandering streets have more "charm" than perfect grid-
work designs. Curiously, the field of fractal geometry
has shown that these seeming non-orders have an order of
their own, but you have to leave integer-dimensionality
to see that order. Fractal-generated music seems to be
aesthetically pleasing to many listeners; it's modelled
in 1.5 dimensions and if given a bit *more* order in terms
of repeating passages and movements, it's difficult to
distinguish from human-generated music. (See Peitgen &
Saupe, Eds., _The Science of Fractal Images_, (1988)
at 42-44.)
We rarely find *utter* randomness to be "beautiful."
Cris
From: mcm...@isocrates.win.net (michael calvin mcgee)
Date: Tue Feb 14 02:24:11 EST 1995
Re: aesthetics and contemporary culture
In article <3hjhq0$l...@xcalibur.IntNet.net>, NS Brown
(nsb...@news.IntNet.net) writes:
>[In response to David Black's post on the aestheticization of
>politics and Futurism (essentially bemoaning the rise of style
>over substance), Mark Weinless wrote:]
>
>: Much as I admire Benjamin, I find his suggestion that fascism
>: is "the aestheticization of politics" to be one of the least illuminat-
>: ing ideas that he ever set down.
[...]
>Mark, I don't know what David will have to say to your assertion
>that "existence and the world are justified _only_ as an
>aesthetic phenomenon," but I concur wholeheartedly.
Lest we forget, gentlemen, the association of fascism with this
thread of argument is not simply flaming. Mussolini especially,
and also Hitler, theorized "cultural politics" as the way both
to excite and to control the "experience of the masses." Insofar
as fascism is characterized by +any+ ideological uniformity, it
would be the firm commitment that politics (and even science) had
to be "aestheticized." When "existence and the world" are argued
for solely on a construction that they are "aesthetic phenomena,"
nothing is left to give the "artist" pause. Not only can this be
dangerous politically, but it is also a questionable stance from
an aesthetic viewpoint, because +negation is a necessary posture+
for all artists. "Pure creativity" cannot be "art," for it has
no means to reject its "false starts." Without such terms as
"grace," "eloquence," "style," etc. +you can't have an
aesthetic,+ and without an aesthetic, you have no justification
for your experientialism.
michael
#2776
From: nsb...@news.IntNet.net (NS Brown)
Re: aesthetics and contemporary culture
Date: Wed Feb 15 20:51:52 EST 1995
[Michael Calvin McGee replies:]
: Lest we forget, gentlemen, the association of fascism with this
: thread of argument is not simply flaming. Mussolini especially,
: and also Hitler, theorized "cultural politics" as the way both
: to excite and to control the "experience of the masses."
Viewing life as an aesthetic (experiential) phenomena is not
at the root of facism. Indeed, experientialism notes that we
each construct our *own* experiences, and that there is no
Absolute Truth by which we can determine whose experiences are
true or false. This would *not* fit well in a facist state,
because they *do* believe there is Absolute Truth ... and
they've found it!
Facism is a distinctly *modern* political scheme. It takes the
notion of a mechanistic universe and applies it to the body
politic. It claims to have Absolute Truth, and demands that
every aspect of society be subservient to and directed toward
that Absolute Truth. Art becomes propaganda (rhetoric), yet
another cog in the wheels of politics. Minorities and unde-
sirables are systematically "Othered" to provide a scapegoat
for the ills that remain.
Notions of certainty are crucial to the formation of facism.
Notions of certainty are notably lacking in the idea that we
construct our own experiences.
: Not only can this be
: dangerous politically, but it is also a questionable stance from
: an aesthetic viewpoint, because +negation is a necessary posture
: for all artists. "Pure creativity" cannot be "art," for it has
: no means to reject its "false starts." Without such terms as
: "grace," "eloquence," "style," etc. +you can't have an aesthetic,
: and without an aesthetic, you have no justification for your
: experientialism.
Interesting statement, though it has little to do with exper-
ientialism. That is, you're arguing against positions that
I don't hold ... swinging at straw men of your own creation.
Cris
#2691
From: nsb...@news.IntNet.net (NS Brown)
Date: Fri Feb 10 22:12:08 EST 1995
Cris here. :)
[David Black wrote:]
: [...] Neo-conservative
: politicians today have been especially adept at taking advantage of po-mo
: aestheticization; witness Reagan's mastery of the TV medium, Newt
: Gingrich's information society utopianism (with debts to fellow neo-cons
: Daniel Bell and Alvin Toffler).
Sloganeering and image-over-substance are hardly new phenomena.
They are the traditional tools of political minorities, who are
in the fortunate position of being able to make a lot of noise
without having to *do* anything. Now that the rad-cons are at
the helm, they'll be backing down from their tall talk in short
order. It's already happening, as clause after clause of the
Contract With (On!) America is being quietly shuffled off to the
shredder.
It's easy to quote Shakespeare's "Power corrupts; absolute power
corrupts absolutely" when one is one step removed from the
throne. Once one takes the throne, the truth of the statement
becomes apparent (at least to everyone else).
Just an opinion, worth what you paid for it. :)
Cris
From: g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Date: 26 Feb 1996 18:32:13 -0500
gene angelcyk wrote:
>For those who subscribe to the notion that we are living in the postmodern
>age ... wake up! The word "post" means after and the word "modern" means
>in the present; thus, the term is an oxymoron.
all...@genie.com (Allan Liska):
|not in this case. in this case, "modern" refers to an idea that there
|is some sort of grand narrative which is overarching and guiding human
|development along some preset path.
|very loosely, the post-modern age signals the end of the grand
|narrative, or the realization that there never was a grand
|narrative..but to try and define postmodernity is difficult, because
|each theorist, and each person has a different perspective.
In my view, the term _postmodern_ came into use because the dominant
school of the plastic arts, and of architecture, in the first half of
the 20th century was called "Modernism." People needed a different
category to put, say, Andy Warhol or Nikki de Saint-Phalle in. They
might have been called _paramodern_ because, actually, there was a lot
of non-Modernist stuff going on beside Modernism, but since it _seemed_
as if it came after, _post_ was pegged for the prefix. The other
_modern_ of which something might be post- is modern in the sense of
"from around the Enlightenment on until around the present". This sense
of postmodern was apparently first used in 1945 (by Lewis Mumford?) and
seems to apply more to lit, lit crit, cult crit, and philosophy, than to
the plastic arts.
I thought we were going to have a FAQ to answer questions like these,
sparing me from this sort of recitation.
--
}"{ Gordon Fitch }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
*****************************************************************
******
##END## ##OF## ##DIGEST##
******
******************************************************************
{6.1}
A FINAL WORD
That concludes this FAQ file. Send comments, complaints, additions,
suggestions, recommendations, ideas to "vpi...@indiana.edu".
9/30/95
--
"The scientist has no unique right to ignore the likely consequences of
what he does." --Noam Chomsky. _The Chomsky Reader_. Ed. James Peck. New
York: Pantheon, 1987. 201.
From: mog...@mindspring.com (Puss in Boots)
Subject: Another alt.pomo FAQ
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 22:47:32 -0500
alt.pomo FAQ
So You Want To Know About Post-Modernism?
Alright then, here are the ABC's: in specific, an assembly, a
bibliography, and a conversation. Comments, questions, requests,
criticism to mog...@mindspring.com -- or better yet, post them on alt.
pomo.
"Don't start me talking'
I'll tell everything I know
Gonna break up this signifyin'
Everything's got to go!"
(Sonny Boy Williamson)
Part One: An Assembly
As they step into the same rivers, other and still other
waters flow upon them.
The problem of the value of truth came before us -- or was it
we who came before the problem? Which of us is Oedipus here, and
which the Sphinx? We are at a rendezvous, it seems, of questions and
of question marks.
And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The Sunne is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him, where to looke for it.
And freely men confesse, that this world's spent,
When in the Planets, and the Firmament
They seeke so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out againe to his Atomis.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all Relation:
Prince, subject, Father, Sonne, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a Phoenix, and that there can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.
How many stars have our telescopes revealed to us which did
not exist for our philosophers of old! ... The final judgement of
reason is to admit that there is an infinity of things which are
beyond it. Reason is but feeble if it cannot see this far.
A star is gone! A star is gone!
There is a blank is heaven.
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
Propositions can represent the whole reality, but they cannot
represent what they must have in common with reality in order to be
able to represent it -- the logical form. To be able to represent
logical form, we should have to be able to put ourselves with the
propositions outside logic, that is outside the world.
Il n'y a pas de hors texte.
Whither is God?" the madman cried; "I will tell you. We have
killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we
do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to
wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained
the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we
moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward,
sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any way up or
down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not
feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not the
night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns
in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the
gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the
divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains
dead. And we have killed him.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly
revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the
relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on
the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier
industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production,
uninterrrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting
uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of
ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all
new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is
solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last
compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and
his relations with his kind.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are filled with a passionate intensity.
...twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rought beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Perhaps patient meditation and painstaking investigation on
and around what it still provisionally called writing, far from
falling short of a science of writing or of hastily dismissing it by
some obscurantist reaction, letting it rather develop its own
positivity as far as possible, are the wanderings of a way of thinking
that is faithful and attentive to the ineluctable world of the future
which proclaims itself at present, beyond the closure of knowledge.
The future can only be anticipated in the form of an absolute danger.
It is that which breaks absolutely with constituted normality and can
only be proclaimed, _presented_, as sort of monstrosity.
Let us hope the time will come, thank God that in certain
circles it already has come, when language is most efficiently used
where it is being most efficiently misused. As we cannot eliminate
language all at once, we should at least leave nothing beind that
would contribute to its falling into disprepute. To bore one hole
after another in it, until what lurks behind it -- be it something or
nothing -- begins to seep through; I cannot imagine a higher goal for
a writer today.
A thinking man's answer to the question whether he is a
nihilist would probably be, 'Not enough.'
One must even go further: in a sense, the mythologist is
excluded from the history in the name of which he professes to act.
The havoc he wreaks in the name of the community is absolute for him,
it fills his assignment to the brim; he must live this assignment
without any hope of going back or any assumption of payment. It is
forbidden for him to imagine what the world will concretely be like,
when the immediate object of his criticism has disppeared. Utopia is
an impossible luxury for him: he greatly doubts that tomorrow's truths
will be the exact reverse of today's lies. History never insures the
triumph pure and simple of something over its opposite: it unveils,
while making itself, unimaginable solutions, unforseeable syntheses.
The mythologist is not even in a Moses-like situation: he cannot see
the Promised Land. For him, tomorrow's positivity is entirely hidden
by today's negativity. All the values of his undertaking appear to
him as acts of destruction: the latter accurately cover the former,
nothing protrudes. The subjective grasp of history in which the
potent seed of the future _is nothing but_ the most profound
apocalypse of the past has been expressed by Saint-Just in a strange
saying: '_What constitutes the Republic is the total destruction of
what is opposed to it_.' This must not, I think, be understood in the
trivial sense of 'One has to clear the way before reconstructing.'
The copula has an exhaustive meaning: there is for some men a
subjective dark night of history where the future becomes an essense,
the essential destruction of the past.
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as
they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by
themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and
transmitted from the past. The tradition of the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
What is now happening to Marx's doctrine has, in the course
of history, often happened to the doctrines of other revolutionary
thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for emancipation.
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes
have visited relentlesss persecution on them and received their
teaching with the most savage hostility, the most furious hatred, the
most ruthless campaign of lies and slanders. After their death,
attempts are made to turn them into harmless icons, canonise them, and
surround their names with a certain halo for the 'consolation' of the
oppressed classes and with the object of duping them, while at the
same time emasculating and vulgarising the real essence of their
revolutionary theories and blunting their revolutionary edge. At the
present time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labour
movement are co-operating in this work of adulterating Marxism. They
omit, obliterate, and distort the revolutionary side of its teaching,
its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what
is, or seems, acceptable to the bourgeoisie.
It is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the
work of a great mind than to give a distinct and full exposition of
its value. For the faults are particular and finite, and can
therefore be fully comprehended; while, on the contrary, the very
stamp which genius impresses upon its works is that their excellence
is unfathomable and inexhaustible.
As the water that is displaced by a ship immediately flows in
again behind it, so when great minds have driven error aside and made
room for themselves, it very quickly closes in behind them.
Pas d'au-dela
Part Two: Bibliography
This is a highly selective reading-list. It's designed to
spotlight some of the works associated with post-modernism and to
offer a way in. Qualifications: it includes only works of theory,
criticism, and philosophy, and makes no effort to be comprehensive,
even there. I haven't even tried to address post-modernism in
literature, not to speak about painting and architecture, feminism,
sociology, anthropology, etc., etc.
One other note: "Post-modernism" is a misnomer insofar as it
implies that modernism and post-modernism are diametrically opposed.
(My view is that "late modernism" would have been a much better choice
of words, if there had been moment of choosing.) Since the two are
part of the same continuum (Lyotard speaks of post-modernism as the
"acceleration of modernism"), I've happily included both modernist and
post-modernist items, along with certain works that don't fall into
category, but contribute to the discussion.
Blake, William:
_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_
Marx, Karl:
"The Communist Manifesto"
_The German Ideology_
_Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844_
_The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonoparte_
Kierkegaard, Soren:
_The Concept of Dread_
_The Sickness Unto Death_
_Fear and Trembling_
_Philosophical Fragments_
_Concluding Unscientific Postscript_
Nietzsche, Friederich:
_The Gay Science_
_Thus Spake Zarathustra_
_Beyond Good and Evil_
_The Will to Power_
"On Truth and Falsity"
Freud, Sigmund:
_The Interpretation of Dreams_
"Civilization and its Discontents"
"Beyond the Pleasure Principle"
"A History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement"
Heidegger, Martin:
_Being and Time_, Introduction
"What is Metaphysics?"
_Introduction to Metaphysics_.
_Basic Writings_, ed. David Farrell Krell
Wittgenstein, Ludwig:
_Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_
_Philosophical Investigations_
_On Culture and Value_
"Lecture on Ethics"
Kafka, Franz:
"Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope, and the True Way"
_Parables and Paradoxes_
Beckett, Samuel:
_Disjecta_
Woolf, Virginia:
"Modern Fiction"
Eliot. T.S:
"Tradition and the Individual Talent"
"The Metaphysical Poets"
"Baudelaire"
"Hamlet"
"_Ulysses_, Order, and Myth"
Pound, Ezra:
_ABC of Reading_
_Guide to Kulchur_
Lawrence, D.H.:
"Surgery for the Novel -- or a Bomb"
"Art and Morality"
"Morality and the Novel"
"Why the Novel Matters"
"Benjamin Franklin"
Lenin, V.I.:
_State and Revolution_
Luxemburg, Rosa:
"The Russian Revolution"
"Leninism or Marxism?"
Benjamin, Walter:
_Illuminations_ (ed. Hannah Arendt)
_Reflections_ (ed. Peter Demetz)
_One-Way Street_
Adorno, Theodor:
_Prisms_
_Aesthetic Theory_
_Negative Dialectics_
_Minima Moralia_
Marcuse, Herbert:
"Repressive Tolerance"
_The Aesthetic Dimension_
_An Essay on Liberation_
Arendt, Hannah:
_Men in Dark Times_
Steiner, George:
_In Bluebeard's Castle_
_After Babel_
_On Difficulty_
_Language and Silence_
Althusser, Louis:
_Lenin and Philosophy_
Lacan, Jacques:
_Ecrits_
Derrida, Jacques:
_Writing and Difference_
_Margins of Philosophy_
_Spurs_
_Positions_
de Man, Paul:
_Allegories of Reading_
_The Rhetoric of Romanticism_
_Blindness and Insight_
Barthes, Roland:
_Image-Music-Text_
_Mythologies_
_Barthes by Barthes_
_Empire of Signs_
_A Barthes Reader_ (ed. Susan Sontag)
Foucault, Michel:
_Madness and Civilization_
_The Order of Things_
_Discipline and Punish_
_Power/Knowledge
_The History of Sexuality, Vol. One_
_The Foucault Reader_ (ed. Paul Rabinow)
Deleuze, Giles:
"Nomad Thought" (in _The New Nietzsche_,
ed. David B. Allison.)
w/ Felix Guattari:
_Anti-Oedipus_
_A Thousand Plateaus_
Borges, Jorge Luis:
"Kafka and his Precursors"
"A New Refutation of Time"
"Avatars of the Tortoise"
"Pierre Menard, Author of the _Quixote_"
"Partial Magic in the _Quixote_"
"Parable of Cervantes and of the _Quixote_"
"The Mirror of Enigmas"
"A Problem"
"The Library of Babel"
"Borges and I"
Fielder, Leslie:
"No, In Thunder!"
Barth, John:
"The Literature of Exhaustion"
Cioran, E.M.:
_The Temptation to Exist_
_A Short History of Decay_
_The New Gods_
_Drawn and Quartered_
Sontag, Susan:
_Against Interpretation_
_Under the Sign of Saturn_
_Styles of Radical Will_
Percy, Walker:
_Message in a Bottle_
_Lost in the Cosmos_
Summaries, Overviews, Idiot's Guides, etc.:
Generally speaking, these things are worse than useless, and
practically none are worth the time it takes to read them. However,
there are a handful of exceptions. Here are three of the better ones:
Hugh Kenner:
_The Pound Era_ (High Modernism)
Vincent Descombes:
_Modern French Philosophy_ (Structuralism, Semiology,
Post-Structuralism, etc.)
Greil Marcus:
_Lipstick Traces_ (Dada and the Situationists, both
of which are inexcusably missing from the list above.)
Part Three: A Conversation
(Alt.pomo, early 1995.)
Phil0123:
To my mind, postmodernism is the banishment of anysort of underlying
premise. No matter the topic discussed, postmodernism will only
entertain a premise as a tentative assertion so as an edifice can be
constructed (a message conveyed). But no premise is accepted as an
axiom.
Jim Elson:
I think this is a good functional definition which arises from
post-modern critiques of the Western tradition. The only problem is
that it may leave some wondering why post-modern thought refuses to
accept any premise as "given"/"self-evident".
Mark:
But this line of criticism _is_ part of "the Western tradition," and
has been part of it for quite some time -- there's nothing especially
"post-modern" about it, except in the sense that postmodernism is the
latest effort to make it look new. Seems to be working pretty well.
(I used to think there was something called "postmodernism" that _did_
"critique the Western tradition," as well a closely related movement
known as "modernism" which delivered some blows of its own; but I must
have been imagining them both.)
Michael Calvin McGee:
Two comments on terms, <premise> and <integrity>.
<premise> au contraire, Mark: pm is the elevation and celebration of
premises. It is, at least in part, the claim that all of the alleged
"facts" from which reasoned opinions are supposed to flow are in fact
:):) only <premises> from which power claims (you should, must,
believe/act such-and-such way) arise. The result, as you rightly
observe, is a kind of re-worked relativism.
Mark:
I don't see where you're contradicting me. As far as I can tell, we
agree that what's called "postmodern" is often merely the repetition
of a familiar theme -- a business of putting old wine in new bottles.
However, I also noted that the term "postmodernism" has another sense,
in which it refers to the analysis of that rather shady practice.
(This confusion of meanings isn't an accident or a simple mistake.)
Your example (basically a paraphrase of Nietzsche's observation that
"There are no facts; only interpretations") goes considerably further
than what I described before as "garden-variety relativism." It bears
genuinely vertiginous implications. Even though Nietzsche is sometimes
cubby-holed as a perspectivist, comments like this show why he doesn't
fit into the box. And as far as postmodernism follows him, it can't be
be filed away, either (at least not without filing off its rough edges).
Michael:
Consider that any attempt to explain the Simpson trial would have to
result in "relativist" thinking, but surely you would not hold that
traditional philosophical critiques of "relativism" would refute +any+
of the interpretive strands?
Mark:
Surely not -- I hold no brief for "traditional philosophical
critiques." I just don't see any reason to call platitudes like
"everyone has their own perspective" and "there are no absolutes"
"postmodern." Unfortunately, that's just what a good deal of so-called
"postmodernism" boils down to.
Michael:
The point of seeking <integrity> is not to reaffirm existing
institutions, nor even to endorse a wholly mechanistic view of social
organization. "Humpty Dumpty had a great fall." Disgruntled
modernists such as Don Hirsch (cultural illiteracy) want to put Humpty
together again. Many postmodernists, such as Jean Baudrillard, try to
make a living out of telling the world that Humpty has indeed fallen
(a bit of journalism in their tone, but mostly whining about having to
endure exposure to Humpty's gooey innards). Those who aspire to
<integrity> are asking What can we make of egg shells?
Mark:
Then you need a better word -- to have integrity means (among other
things) to be whole and complete. (Thus the arguments in favor of
montage, parataxis, bricolage, etc.) But whatever term you choose,
you're doing the work of the King's horses and the King's men: you're
putting Humpty Dumpty together again, even if you decide to glue his
pieces into a different shape.
Which is the point I was making to start with: replacing "axioms" with
"tentative assertions" is a way of "constructing an edifice" when the
old foundations are cracked. "The King is dead; long live the King!"
is the motto for all projects of this kind. Foucault said that we need
to decapitate the King, but as he knew, power is infinitely capable of
recapitulating itself.
P.S. Hirsch a modernist? Come, now.
Omar Haneef:
I allign the Enlightenment with modernism and postmodernism
becomes what comes after them. Modernism is an extension of the
enlightenment in my mind. Postmodernism reacts against the
canonization of the subversive project of modernism which is why the
author had to die.
Mark:
Then you've erased postmodernism from the map: there isn't
even a place for it in your schema.
Omar:
Au contraire (that was tongue in cheek). I can't possibly see where
YOU situate post-modernism. In "our" model, we see enlightenment/
modernism = belief in reality -> postmodernism = Reality in flux. IF
your model is enlightenment = belief in reality -> modernism = reality
in flux -> postmodernism = ?. My question is: Where is postmodernism
on YOUR map?
Mark:
I would say that modernism questions truth on truth on behalf
of truth, while postmodernism deepens that questioning when it calls
the concept and value of truth into doubt. Where modernism depicts a
world in flux, contrasting it with the idea that the basic features of
existence are set in concrete, postmodernism suggests that reality has
always been plastic and malleable. Similarly, where modernism employs
fragmentation as a strategy against "the rule and power of the whole,"
(Marcuse), postmodernism offers its suspicion that fragmentation has
itself taken on the role of an ordering principle. Post-modernism
both criticizes and intensifies the questioning begun by modernism,
per se. Thus modernism says, "Question authority!" and postmodernism
adds, "But don't listen to the answer." Modernism observes that "all
that is solid melts into air;" postmodernism replies, "And then it
starts raining."
What do you see as subversive about "the project of modernism,"
and what do you think it subverts? (I'm not suggesting that the
answer is nothing, whatsoever -- just asking for more details about
your view.)
Omar:
When I said that, I was thinking primarily of modernist texts
(Joyce, Faulkner) who employ narrative strategies to obscure
authority, betray reader-author contracts, ignore conventions of time
and/or space and are generally unapologetic about their subjective
choices.
Mark:
That makes perfect sense to me, but I don't see how it jibes
with what you said about modernism before, when you wrote that you
align modernism with the Enlightenment. While I think of both Joyce
and Faulkner as exemplary modernists, neither one of them has very
close ties with the Enlightenment: they're separated by centuries in
time and an equal distance in sensibility. The same goes for your
description of their writing -- it applies to Joyce and Faulkner, but
clearly it doesn't fit the Enlightenment very well. Are you using the
word "modern" in two different ways? (That's one of the main sources
of confusion about the relationship between modernism and p-modernism.)
Omar:
What is the difference between calling truth into question and
questioning the concept and value of truth? I understand, I think,
what you are describing as the pomo stance, that is "Why bother about
the truth? What can truth even mean?" But what is it that the
modernists did not see (in your model)? How could they be questioning
truth and still looking for it?
Mark:
That's not what I was getting at, so let me try again. Purely
as an analogy, consider Prof. Kant. (Using Kant as an example risks
the confusion between modernism and the Enlightenment we were stuck in
above. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that Kant's philosophy was a
sample of modernism -- I'm only using it as a way illustrating my
point.) The _Critique of Pure Reason_ questions reason on behalf of
reason, without ever calling reason, per se, into question. (That
would have been the opposite of Kant's purpose.) By comparison, the
modernist critique of truth goes considerably further, since it
questions truth as conceived by philosophy, science, and religion.
But that questioning is carried out in the name of truth, while post-
modernism addresses the value of truth, itself. That's a deepening of
the questions asked by modernism, not a turning away of the kind in
your two examples. Asking "why do we want truth?" or "what then is
truth?" is different than saying "why bother with truth?" or "what can
truth even mean?" Those aren't questions -- they're just shrugs.
Omar:
Plastic and malleable IS flux. What is the difference?
Mark:
If plastic was flux, Mattel would be out of business -- but
that's not exactly the point. Put it this way: modernism advocates
Becoming over and against the rule of Being. The theory is that Being
is a static entity which imposes itself on the world and prohibits the
possibility of change. Postmodernism replies that Being is both
produced and maintained through the process of Becoming, and that
"change" is merely a nickname for the status quo. Or take the Mattel
example seriously. Modernism wants to remold the world and begins by
emphasizing that reality is malleable, contrary to both government
propaganda and popular belief; post-modernism says yes, that's true
enough, but the world is being continuously remolded, with observably
poor results: in fact, that's how it got this way, in the first place.
[End of FAQ]
--
(<><>) /*/
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 1/19/03 <-adv't
TL
"MrGoodSalt" <mrgoo...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030314033347...@mb-fg.aol.com...
> The following books may be of interest:
>
> 1) "A Primer on Post Modernism" (1996) by Stanley J. Grenz ISBM #
0-8028-0864-6
>
> "The postmodern worldview operates with a comunity-based understanding of
> truth. It affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we
envision
> truth are dependent on the community in which we participate. Further, and
far
> more radically, the postmodern worldview affirms that this relativity
extends
> beyond our perceptions of truth to its essence: there is no absolute
truth;
> rather, truth is relative to the community in which we participate." p.8
>
> 2) "Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and
Culture" by
> Gene Edward Veith, Jr. ISBN # 0-89107-768-5
>
> "The intellect is replaced by the will. Reason is replaced by emotion.
Morality
> is replaced by relativism. Reality itself becomes a social construct."
p28-29.
>
> 3) "The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog" 3rd Ed. (1997)
James W.
> Sire. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. ISBN: 0-8308-1899-5
>
> ....
>
> A particularly interesting aspect of this book is that Sire describes
these
> different world views a progressive disintegrations from an original
ideal.
>
> "In short, Lyotard defined postmodernism as 'incredulity toward
metanaratives.'
> No longer is there a single story, a metanarrative (in our terms a
worldview),
> that holds Western culture together. It is not just that there have long
been
> many stories, each of which gives its binding power to the social group
that
> takes it as its own. The naturalists have their story, the panteists
theirs,
> the Christian theirs, ad infinitum. With postmodernism no story can have
any
> more credibility than any other. All stories are equally valid." p.174
>
> Note: I am not a postmodernist, nor to I believe in postmodernism.
>
> Hope this helps. :)
>
Thanks for the references. I take it that you're comming from a Christian
(Evangelical/non-Catholic) backround. I have some knowledge of
Catholic theology, such as the encyclical "Veritatis Splendor" as well as
other much older sources. In that enclyclical, truth is defended as
follows:
"there can be no freedom, no authentic life apart from a commitment to
truth" (From J.A.H.Futterman's site
http://www.dogchurch.org/indexfrm.html?http://www.dogchurch.org/tract/splend
or.html).
That is my position as well. Social groups (individual "stories" if you
will) have always been around as has the oppression of the individual
by the group - that is, the leaders of the group. Religion, and Christianity
in particular, has allways been accused of being a religion for
the weak. In fact, it is Truth and Objectivity which is used by the
individual to defend himself from the tyranny of the group (i.e. its
leaders).
From the play and movie- "A Man For All Seasons" we read what is means to be
a true man - "a man through thick and thin, a man with a sure
purpose, not a 'hail fellow well met friend'; a man of principle; not going
with the flow, not a jellyfish floating with the fashion; not a
narky conscientious objector either, but a man of his own destiny, a man
with a true sense of his worth before the might of God."
The "group" has always exisited to control its individual members, using
various irrational stories (almost all of them patently and
obviously false, upon brief consideration). This goes for all religions as
well. However from every historical context, arise people who cast
off the shackels of parochialism, the tyranny of custom and dogma and the
seduction of charlatans - and instead turn to reason and
objectivity. The world, even relatively "free" societies and vulnerable to
charlatans who seduce individuals to cast aside their reason and
objectivity and bind themselves irrationally to the leader or guiding dogma
of that particular group. The current fashionable charlatan is
the "raelians" who claim to be in special contact with the "elohim". These
people need more encouragement to seek objective and scientific
truth, not less.
I don't like to use religiously loaded terminology such as "natural Law" or
other metaphysical terms such as "god". I prefer to follow the
positivists and stick to observables (synthetic) and to logical/mathemetical
(analytical) contructs.
Thanks for the references
TL
James Whitehead
>
[...]
>
> That is my position as well. Social groups (individual "stories" if you
> will) have always been around as has the oppression of the individual
> by the group - that is, the leaders of the group. Religion, and
Christianity
> in particular, has allways been accused of being a religion for
> the weak. In fact, it is Truth and Objectivity which is used by the
> individual to defend himself from the tyranny of the group (i.e. its
> leaders).
This just doesn't make sense to me - you define *objectivity* and *truth* as
the mental set of the individual when it differs from that of the group.
From my experience its from the outside i'm proved wrong?
The truth as the church has it rests on how convincing the founders were in
persuading us to believe what was in essence a subjective world view. (So
also science and mathematics) I suspect in the matter of the value of Pi for
instance you bow to the groups approximation and not to your own......
TL
I opologize for the delay in my response. I through my back out and have
been hopped up on
painkillers and muscle relaxants forthe last few days.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com> wrote in message
news:b4s4gi$cnr$3...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
>
> "TL" <lec...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
> news:Qt6ca.533$z_3.2...@news1.news.adelphia.net...
> > I desperately need a concise definition of PostModernism. I am not a
> > philosopher but a practising Engineer with a strong interest is PhiSci,
of
> > which I do a lot of reading.
> > I have read ....
....
> >
> > If this group has previously posted a FAQ, I'd be much obliged if
someone
> > could repost it, please.
> >
> > To give you an idea of how bad my understanding of Pm is, i'd have to
say
> > that PM is characterized by the following:
> > a. rejection of science and "scientism"
> > b. rejection of any non-sociological notions of "truth"
> > c. rejection of empiricism, objectivity and "realism"
....
> > Now, I hope that I'm wrong. So you see, a good definition or FAQ of
> > "PostModernism" will surely help me out here.
>
> Could you qualify "understanding" - is this the idea that you can
> *correctly* represent something by a smaller more compact expressions. So
in
> effect understand the universe and your position in it?
> Couldnt such an
> idea be questionable in its ability to claim both objectivity and truth as
> it ignores the specificity and individuality which typifies existence - as
> far as i experience it.
You make two points here: first you ask me to explain my notion of
"understanding",
and in your second point, you presume that any notion of "understanding" I
might
have will be questionable because it will "...ignore(s) the specificity and
individuality which typifies existence.."
Back to the first point - qualifying "understanding"
I have found that the logical positivists (here I'm including Hume, Russell,
Popper,
the Vienna Circle and the Krakow-Lvov School) had the best understanding of
"Understanding" and "truth". understanding consists of constructing a model
of what it is you are trying to understand. This model must be synthetic
(that is, be formulated in terms of measurable observables), analytic
(that is mathematically/logically self consistent), and empirical (that is
must make predictions about
the world in terms of measurables and observables that are testable (for
example, refutable as per K. Popper).
I shall discuss example of meaning to two humans fields that have benefited
by objectivity and "truth"
1. Engineering
I'm an electrical/electronics engineer, versed in physics, math and
engineering principals and
practice. I'm as familiar with electro-magnetic theory as a carpenter is of
wood or a potter is of clay.
As an engineer, I "understand" the physical world in the following manner:
you tell me you need a device
that behaves in a specified manner - I know enough physics and mathematics
to create a model and computer
simulation of the deice, and then proceed to build one to the exact
specifications that you gave me. It is objective because
the device exisits inthe real world and can be exactly replicated by
following the instruction I can give any assembler.
In many ways, engineering best illustrated the "objectivity" of science.
My understanding consists of being able to model the device or phenomena in
terms of methametical equations,
formulated in terms of observable amd measurables (distance, time, relative
velocity, acceleation, etc) and using the
language of mathematics (using provable theorums). In Engineering, as
mentioned above, empiricism is particularly strong in that
I know that my understanding is faulty because my device doesn't work. If my
prototype doesn't work as specified, then I
need to adjust my "understanding" by improving my model until the prototype
"works". Note the strong correlation between the word
"understanding", the word "Model" and the word "works".
as an aside:
I don't agree with people that state that Einsteinian Physics Proved
Newtonian Physics to be wrong, or that
Quantum mechanics is a better theory than Maxwell's Equations. They are
different models of the world that they try to describe.
Take magnetism, for example. Magnetism can be completely described using
special relativity. However,
no engineer (or physicist or mathematician) would use special relativity to
design a 60 Hz power transformer;
it would be much too cumbersome, and therefore the inappropriate model.
There are many instanstances where the modern models
of quantum mechanics and general relativity are the inappropriate model to
use. There are also may instances where they ARE
the appropirate model to use, and in those spheres, the models are
advancing.
2. Politics
In large groups, such as companies or governmental departments, individuals
try to to the best they can based on the best
information that they have. Sometimes, the only information they have is
that information that the leadership or management thinks
is in their own interest for the reast of the group to have. In other
circumstances, there are other sources of information,
independant of the leaders/managers self interest. The more information a
member of a group or organization has, the better the understanding
that individual has and the more "objective" and True the information is.
Groups and individuals cann't make any "progress" without objective
information. It is well known that in making commercial
or financial transactions, the person with more and better information will
end up better off.
It is also known that groups cann't make social progress without more and
objective information. Let me take as an example the UK.
I have just finised reading the book: "The Decline of the British
Aristocracy" by David Cannadine. In the book he describes how the UK changed
from
a Landed Aristocracy in the 1840's to a more equitable and democratic
society that it is today (much more so, by any measure).
In this process, the key moment was in 1871 when (p.54) "detailed
information became publicly available about the inequitable distribution of
property
and the remarkable extent of patrician wealth. In early 1871, Lord Derby
moved for an official inquiry into the pattern of landownership throught the
British Isles, and during the next four years, the data was collected by
local government officals on a parish-by parish basis. It was then reworked
into an alphabetical list of owners for each county, and the results were
duly published as the RETURN of the OWNERS of LAND, in 1876.... The result
was the first comprehensive account of landholding in Britain in nearly a
millenium.
...
In short, tehse figures revealed a pattern of lanowndership throughout the
British Isles widely believed to be more concentrated and
monopolistic then in almost any other European country."
All subsequent social and land reform in teh UK followed followed from such
"Objective" exposure and subsequent "understanding" of the socail and
financial conditions in the UK.
The US, with its vast disparity in incomes between blue-collar employees and
upper management could also greatly benefit from the "objective"
publication of the salaries of all employees and managers of corporations.
In other words, in social group contexts, increasing "objective" "knowledge"
always leads to betterment of the group and its individuals,
whereas preventing group members from getting "objective" information about
the group ALWAYS leads to the benefit of managers and administrators
at the expense of not just the other group members but the group itself -
the collapse of the CCCP and Enron were both due to the plundering of
their respective organizations, which was make possible by the tight control
over internal "objective" information.
Let me address your second point - "...ignore(s) the specificity and
individuality which typifies existence.." together with your point -
> I don't see PM as rejecting modernity at all - just extending it to offer
> more choice,
together.
My, perhaps inaccurate, picture of postmodernism is that of the collapse of
the tower of babel (representing
the canonical "western" Enlightenment Program) into a vast multitude of
separate reference "frames", each frame
enlivened by its own history, "truth" and Stories. Each such millieu defines
its own "truth" and in fact there is
no way to compare "truths' from different frames because each frame has its
own definition of truth, and therefore,
there is no sense of truth without a defining "frame".
Therefor the notion of "truth", objectivity and reason is anathema to PM
because Objectivity implies that
truths from various Frames not only can be somehow compared rationally
amoungst each other, but more importantly,
the truth becomes more important than the frame itself, rather then
completely subservient and dependent upon the frame.
Now I (and you) are born into a particular set of circumstances, - a
"frame". Most of these frames are entities
such as religions, nationalities, and linguistic groups. Recently there have
emerged gender-based quasi
religious/nationalistic frames such as "feminist" frames and "gay/lesbian"
frames as well older tried-and-true
frames such as racial frames and tribal frames.
now, each of these frames have a "big lie" at the heart of their story,
which is used by the leaders at the
top pinnacle of the frame to emotionally control the rest of the members of
the frame. Reason is almost never
effective is mobilizing people into large groups but emotional appeals to
traditional rallying banners are. Lets look
at some examples.
Christianity - Jesus was born os a virgin, rose from the dead, performed
miracles, and isboth man and god. You will
go to heaven only if you believe this without doubt and follow the rules of
the various denominations leaders.
Judaism - Adan and Eve, the historical accuracy of the Torah, the Rabbis,
Holy Land of Israel, antisemitism everywhere.
Islam - Even though Mohammed was completely illiterate, he wrotethe Koran by
being dictated by Allah - i.e.
Allah actually caused his fingers to move to write the Koran - therefore the
Koran is written by god himself and is completely
inerrant. Unbelievers must submit or die. (shared also by Judaism and
Christianity).
Tribalism - your tribe is sacred blood and your tribal rulers represent the
wishes of your dead ancestors.
Linguistic tribalism - your language is the language of your ancestors and
therefore holy -
taking on another language is the desecration and rape of your holy tongue
by barbarians.
In general, each "frame" has common features:
- the STORY: tradition, ancestors, hallowed by time or devine origin, blood
and soil, history. This is the "Story" part of the Frame. It generalises
the traditional family bond beyond the immediate family to the more abstract
"frame".
- the THREAT - the invading barbarians. Islam has the infidels, Judaism has
antisemites, Bolshevism had
Captolists, the bourgeois, counter-revolutionaries, etc. Feminists has
Patriarchalism, sexism and mysogeny. Gay/lesbians have homophobia, etc.
This "TREAT" is necessary to energize the frame and force action to occur -
i.e. to take up arms and kill the opposing "threat".
- the DOGMA. Similar to the "THREAT", but used to control members internal
to the frame - used for initiation of
new members and the means to distinguish members from non-members (ASh
Wednesday ashes, Yarmulkas, etc).
- the HIGH PRIESTS and Beneficionaries. Those who benefit from the dues and
manpower of the ordinary members.
Now it may be true that traditional forms of Western Frames are lossing
popularity, however non-western traditionals frames (such as Islam)
new pseudoreligiuos frames are increasing in the west (such as UFO Cults,
Scientology, fundamentalist Christianity, etc.). They are not better then
the older western traditional frames, and in most (actually all, to my
knowledge) cases actually worse because they concentrate exclusively
and proselytism and don't waste time trying to compromise with reason or
tradition.
PM gives cults and religions justification that they don;t deserve.
> i'm aware of a circle of wagons of some believers in a kind of
> victorian determinism-
The "Program" or "Tradition" that I find myself defending here is that of
the ancient Greeks, as rediscovered by the Renaissance Humanists, and as put
into practice
during the "Enlightenment". This "Program" has its greatest successes in the
Fields of
Science and Engineering, and politics - the founding of the United States
(I'm a US citizen) was part of the Enlightenment Program, as are all modern
Democracies and representative Republics up to the present United Nations
(so much under siege unfortunately by my own government! (as a matter of
fact I'm
thinking of writting an essay titled - "W. Bush and the End of the
Enlightenment")).
Science and Engineering isn't under threat by PostModernism. Popular
representative
governments arn't under threat by Postmodernism. The only people circling
the wagons
are postmodernist philosophers themselves who are violating the John
Searle's
Third Law of Philosophy - "Don't make statements that are obviously false"
(see http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Searle/searle-con3.html)
and writing shoddy and sloppy works while hiding in the battlements of their
tenured university ivory towers. (P.S. - i'm not opposed to tenure or other
forms
of job security. I'm just opposed to the intellectual lazyness of some
tenured professors
(for example, Rorty's lack of any reference citations anymore)).
> but within the creative areas of *even* physics we
> have appeals to "elegance!"
The "elegance" of physics (and Mathematics - arguably even more so) consists
not
in some kind of trendy cuteness but a profound simplicity coupled with
profound
and universal power.
An early example of an elegant mathematical concept was the Pythagorean
Theorum (that
for a right triangle, the sum of the squares of the opposite and adjacent
sides
equals the square of the hypotenous). This ancient theorum enables us to
measure(!!!!)
no small accomplishment!. The Cartesian coordinate system and all subsequent
physics
and technology rests squarely upon the shoulders of the Pythegorean theorum.
A second example is the extension of the usual notion of spacial dimension
by Mandelbrot/Hausdorff to fractional dimensions - fractals - thereby
giving us a tremendous tool for understanding (and creating) "realistic"
complex and highly non-linear systems.
Another example of elegance in physics is Alan Sokal's paper "Transgressing
the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" in
http://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/#papers
In this paper Dr. Sokal intentionally writes a paper containing
physics gobledy-gook but conforming to the "Style" of post-modernism -
a very elegant philosophical trojan horse exposing the anti-scientific,
superficial and ideological heart of the PM program.
Now, I hope I'm not giving a false impression here. I love philosophy. In
fact I
consider philosophy my homeland - my true nation, with past philosophers -
great
and small alike, as much my ancestors as a devote jew considers Abraham,
Issac and Jacob his ancestors. This is not about science and technology
versus the
humanities. Its about defending my home (philosophy) against charlatans and
forces
that would take away the last (and only) defence an individual has against
the oppression of hucksters (social solypcism) and their hangers on.
Theodore W. Lechman of Utica, NY
TL
I opologize for the delay in my response. I through my back out and have
been hopped up on
painkillers and muscle relaxants forthe last few days.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com> wrote in message
news:b4s4gi$cnr$3...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
>
> "TL" <lec...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
> news:Qt6ca.533$z_3.2...@news1.news.adelphia.net...
> > I desperately need a concise definition of PostModernism. I am not a
> > philosopher but a practising Engineer with a strong interest is PhiSci,
of
> > which I do a lot of reading.
> > I have read ....
....
> >
> > If this group has previously posted a FAQ, I'd be much obliged if
someone
> > could repost it, please.
> >
> > To give you an idea of how bad my understanding of Pm is, i'd have to
say
> > that PM is characterized by the following:
> > a. rejection of science and "scientism"
> > b. rejection of any non-sociological notions of "truth"
> > c. rejection of empiricism, objectivity and "realism"
....
> > Now, I hope that I'm wrong. So you see, a good definition or FAQ of
> > "PostModernism" will surely help me out here.
>
> Could you qualify "understanding" - is this the idea that you can
> *correctly* represent something by a smaller more compact expressions. So
in
> effect understand the universe and your position in it?
> Couldnt such an
> idea be questionable in its ability to claim both objectivity and truth as
> it ignores the specificity and individuality which typifies existence - as
> far as i experience it.
You make two points here: first you ask me to explain my notion of
2. Politics
> I don't see PM as rejecting modernity at all - just extending it to offer
> more choice,
together.
> i'm aware of a circle of wagons of some believers in a kind of
> victorian determinism-
The "Program" or "Tradition" that I find myself defending here is that of
> but within the creative areas of *even* physics we
> have appeals to "elegance!"
The "elegance" of physics (and Mathematics - arguably even more so) consists
TL
I opologize for the delay in my response. I through my back out and have
been hopped up on
painkillers and muscle relaxants forthe last few days.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com> wrote in message
news:b4s4gi$cnr$3...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
>
> "TL" <lec...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
> news:Qt6ca.533$z_3.2...@news1.news.adelphia.net...
> > I desperately need a concise definition of PostModernism. I am not a
> > philosopher but a practising Engineer with a strong interest is PhiSci,
of
> > which I do a lot of reading.
> > I have read ....
....
> >
> > If this group has previously posted a FAQ, I'd be much obliged if
someone
> > could repost it, please.
> >
> > To give you an idea of how bad my understanding of Pm is, i'd have to
say
> > that PM is characterized by the following:
> > a. rejection of science and "scientism"
> > b. rejection of any non-sociological notions of "truth"
> > c. rejection of empiricism, objectivity and "realism"
....
> > Now, I hope that I'm wrong. So you see, a good definition or FAQ of
> > "PostModernism" will surely help me out here.
>
> Could you qualify "understanding" - is this the idea that you can
TL
I opologize for the delay in my response. I through my back out and have
been hopped up on
painkillers and muscle relaxants forthe last few days.
"James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com> wrote in message
news:b4s4gi$cnr$3...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
>
> "TL" <lec...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
> news:Qt6ca.533$z_3.2...@news1.news.adelphia.net...
> > I desperately need a concise definition of PostModernism. I am not a
> > philosopher but a practising Engineer with a strong interest is PhiSci,
of
> > which I do a lot of reading.
> > I have read ....
....
> >
> > If this group has previously posted a FAQ, I'd be much obliged if
someone
> > could repost it, please.
> >
> > To give you an idea of how bad my understanding of Pm is, i'd have to
say
> > that PM is characterized by the following:
> > a. rejection of science and "scientism"
> > b. rejection of any non-sociological notions of "truth"
> > c. rejection of empiricism, objectivity and "realism"
....
> > Now, I hope that I'm wrong. So you see, a good definition or FAQ of
> > "PostModernism" will surely help me out here.
>
> Could you qualify "understanding" - is this the idea that you can
> *correctly* represent something by a smaller more compact expressions. So
in
> effect understand the universe and your position in it?
> Couldnt such an
> idea be questionable in its ability to claim both objectivity and truth as
> it ignores the specificity and individuality which typifies existence - as
> far as i experience it.
You make two points here: first you ask me to explain my notion of
-Continued Next Posting due to size---
TL
2. Politics
> I don't see PM as rejecting modernity at all - just extending it to offer
> more choice,
together.
- Continued next posting due to size
TL
2. Politics
> I don't see PM as rejecting modernity at all - just extending it to offer
> more choice,
TL
2. Politics
--continued on next posting due to size--
TL
individuality which typifies existence.." together with your point -
> more choice,
TL
PM gives cults and religions justification that they don;t deserve.
> i'm aware of a circle of wagons of some believers in a kind of
> victorian determinism-
The "Program" or "Tradition" that I find myself defending here is that of
> but within the creative areas of *even* physics we
> have appeals to "elegance!"
The "elegance" of physics (and Mathematics - arguably even more so) consists
TL
>
> "TL" <lec...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
> news:DVuca.1677$z_3.7...@news1.news.adelphia.net...
> >
> [...]
> >
> > That is my position as well. Social groups (individual "stories" if you
> > will) have always been around as has the oppression of the individual
> > by the group - that is, the leaders of the group. Religion, and
> Christianity
> > in particular, has allways been accused of being a religion for
> > the weak. In fact, it is Truth and Objectivity which is used by the
> > individual to defend himself from the tyranny of the group (i.e. its
> > leaders).
>
> This just doesn't make sense to me - you define *objectivity* and *truth*
as
> the mental set of the individual when it differs from that of the group.
No. I don't define objectivity simply as views different from that of the
group.
Objectivity is based on observation and measurement, together with
logic/mathematics. It is testable and predictive (and thereby refutable).
The classical example is Galileo and his battle with the Church over whether
other planets have moons or not. Over whether the moon orbited the earth or
visa-vera. His views were objective, not because they were different from
Church Orthodoxy, but because they were based on observation (looking
through a telescope, laws of motion, etc) as well as mathematics.
He made the prediction that if viewed far enough way from the earth, the
moon will be seen to orbit the earth in the same way as the Galilean moons
are seen to orbut Jupiter.
Thomas Kuhn's problem is that he attributes everything to the group. Its
this group versus that group. etc. Much like Freud and his thinking that
EVERYTHING can be attributed to sexual development issues. Since by
definition everything is psychosexual, by definition there is no way to
prove that anything is NOT psychosexual. Therefore the theory is irrefutable
and isn't scientific and therefore metaphysical. Not by its effects but by
its very nature.
> From my experience its from the outside i'm proved wrong?
>
> The truth as the church has it rests on how convincing the founders were
in
> persuading us to believe what was in essence a subjective world view.
Only if you cann't reason on your own. It is in fact very common for various
groups (lets take religions, just for example) to FORBID its members from
speculating or reasoning about its "sacrd truths".
> (So also science and mathematics)
NO, not true. All science and mathematics is based on mathematical theorums
and observable measurements. You must prove your theorums in mathematics and
in science the same is true with the addition of needing make relavent
observations.
It has been said that although science and math is based on logic and
observation, the GROUP dictates trends and what the priorities.
I would say that the opposite is more the rule then the exception. Many
examples abond.
- The observation that the universe is isotropically everywhere 3 degrees
kelvin directly lead to certain trends in Cosmology (the big bang)
- Feigenbaum's number and Medelbrot's fractals lead to the current
popularity of non-linear "chaos" and not visa versa.
- The invension of the semiconductor transistor lead to the popularity of
semiconductor integration, not visa versa.
- lets look at the present and future. We are presently faintly aware that
there will be progress in the future in genetic engineering because of the
discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick. But at some time in the future,
someone will come up with a new discovery which will make a whole field of
genetic technology cheaply available. It will then become the trend and
priority. We know that this will happen because this is the usual sequence
of events in technological/scientific progress.
> I suspect in the matter of the value of Pi for
> instance you bow to the groups approximation and not to your own......
This is a REAL bad example to use.
The old testament states that PI is 3 (I Kings vii.23 and 2 Chronicals
iv.2). Also in the Talmud. If you believe in the inerrancy of the bible,
then pi= 3. (the integer '3').
In 1898, the Posey County, Indiana legislature passed a law stating that PI
= 16 divided by (the square root of 3). By Law!
However the greeks were able TO PROVE that PI is an irrational number. Later
during the enlightenment (Legendre) it was proved that PI is transcendental.
All this is OBJECTIVELY TRUE. There are a number of different algorithms
used to estimate PI to as many digits of precision as desired. There is
Newtons methods, Laplaces method, Monte Carlo Methods, etc.
Although the algorithms are different and take different aporaches to the
problem, they can all be proven to converge to the same limit - PI. There
will no doubt be discovered/invented new methods of computing the digits of
PI. That does not make the exisitence, uniqueness, irrationality or
transcendance of PI dependant on any social context. In fact it is
guaranteed that any social "solidarity" getting involved with the value of
PI will get it OBJECTIVELY WRONG.
An excellent general reference about the social and mathametical history of
PI is "A History of PI" by Petr Beckmann, ST. Martin's Press, NY 1971.
Ted Lechman
James Whitehead
> No. I don't define objectivity simply as views different from that of the
> group.
>
> Objectivity is based on observation and measurement, together with
> logic/mathematics. It is testable and predictive (and thereby refutable).
>
empirical data - yet surely its "objective". Simply put its a shared belief-
and nothing more.
> The classical example is Galileo and his battle with the Church over
whether
> other planets have moons or not. Over whether the moon orbited the earth
or
> visa-vera. His views were objective, not because they were different from
> Church Orthodoxy, but because they were based on observation (looking
> through a telescope, laws of motion, etc) as well as mathematics.
> He made the prediction that if viewed far enough way from the earth, the
> moon will be seen to orbit the earth in the same way as the Galilean moons
> are seen to orbut Jupiter.
He also from his observations inferred "seas" on the moon, and others if not
himself creatures inhabiting these- and canals on Mars. St Paul became a
Christian after an "observation" on the road to Damascus. Ones views which
are subjective regarding a painting seem to be based on observation, whilst
one can never "observe" a straight line or mathematical point.
>
> Thomas Kuhn's problem is that he attributes everything to the group. Its
> this group versus that group. etc. Much like Freud and his thinking that
> EVERYTHING can be attributed to sexual development issues. Since by
> definition everything is psychosexual, by definition there is no way to
> prove that anything is NOT psychosexual. Therefore the theory is
irrefutable
> and isn't scientific and therefore metaphysical. Not by its effects but by
> its very nature.
And i questioned your writings along the same lines - your buck shot posts
makes trying to find if you replied difficult - but its a good po-mo trick.
>
>
> > From my experience its from the outside i'm proved wrong?
> >
>
> > The truth as the church has it rests on how convincing the founders were
> in
> > persuading us to believe what was in essence a subjective world view.
>
> Only if you cann't reason on your own. It is in fact very common for
various
> groups (lets take religions, just for example) to FORBID its members from
> speculating or reasoning about its "sacrd truths".
This goes for science also. Yet more than science religion usually can be
traced to one mans perspective.
>
> > (So also science and mathematics)
> NO, not true. All science and mathematics is based on mathematical
theorums
> and observable measurements. You must prove your theorums in mathematics
and
> in science the same is true with the addition of needing make relavent
> observations.
So sociology and psychology arnt science? Engineers!
You still cant see how shooting "objective" is all you are doing. The set of
criteria on which any proof in mathematics is based - is - arbitrary -
shooting about it makes no difference- or holding your breath until you go
blue!
G*rd*n
| Mathematics need not be based on observation or on measurement of any
| empirical data - yet surely its "objective". Simply put its a shared belief-
| and nothing more.
Unless you have achieved some kind of higher consciousness
unknown to mere humans, you can never say "nothing more".
I think.
James Whitehead
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:b5f635$ioo$1...@panix3.panix.com...
> "James Whitehead" <Abx4...@jjh76g7856gh.com>:
> | Mathematics need not be based on observation or on measurement of any
> | empirical data - yet surely its "objective". Simply put its a shared
belief-
> | and nothing more.
> | ...
>
> Unless you have achieved some kind of higher consciousness
> unknown to mere humans, you can never say "nothing more".
>
> I think.
>
evidence for it - more than just a group of guys making the same claims -
as difficult as this might be. Its not me who has the higher consciousness -
but its me who is asking for evidence that the tablets were really written
by something higher - than moses et al. Or than E=MC2 isn't just an
opinion - or why i need to take your caution about never being able to say
"nothing more" - why not - what do you mean by saying i can never say
"nothing more" - and can i achieve something more than what i believe? - now
that requires some higher consciousness on your part - i think??