Agree. I do think a new law should be passed, along the lines of the one which requires British Library depositing, that all publishers must either bring out eBooks in the UK, or consent to the BL publishing their copy as a free-to-view eBook.
That is a somewhat more liberal version of my view that publishers' lists should be subject to something similar to Belgian employment law on redundancies - ie that in all but the most extreme circumstances, you're not allowed to take a book out of print, unless you have engaged in thorough consultation with anyone who has ever potentially thought they might want to buy it (specifically, me), and that if this makes you think twice about the books you're publishing in the first place, so much the better. I don't know why I have such an irrational hatred of the practice, particularly since I am totally familiar with the underlying economics, but really - what kind of a bastard takes "Tik-Tok" by John Sladek out of print? I bloody loved that book when I got it out of the library in the 1980s, then I grew up and was prepared to part with cold hard cash for it, and what is this shit, Beavis? Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Ah, I was going to remark that if there was any SF writer on the list who you might like, John Sladek would be the man. Gollancz reissued Tik-Tok in the US about six or seven years ago, in a facsimile of the old yellow cover. It has aged remarkably well - his stuff on the Church of Reformed Darwinism is still bang on the mark. His "The New Apocrypha" is an excellent trawling through of the oozy sediment of pseudoscience, in large part because he has a sense of humor (he tried at one point to write his own pseudonymous pop-astrology book, claiming to have discovered a thirteenth sign of the Zodiac).
It's sweet that they don't seem to think that anyone interested in having ebook versions of old scifi novels would have got them from the internet -gratis- years ago.
A cursory search shows that so many are available as PDF/EPubs that torrents of them are subdivided alphabetically.
Well they're probably hoping to make some money from people wanting to download them legally.
If they price them right (about 2nd hand book shop prices), and don't encumber them with DRM, they'll probably do pretty well. Otherwise most people will probably hit the pirate sites.
You'd think that SF publishers would probably be savvy to that by now. Well you'd like to.
I am interested in having ebook versions of (a small number of) old scifi novels and I don't really care much about DRM either. We old crusty folk don't like illegal downloads because we once got one of those virus thingies, and we're probably the target market here.
A cursory search shows that so many are available as PDF/EPubs that torrents of them are subdivided alphabetically.
And a cursory look at the contents of those torrents shows that most of them are raw OCR scans, filled with major typos and broken formatting. Not much John Sladek in there either - although if Forgotten Realms novels are your thing...
(Incidentally, if anyone knows of a reliable way to strip line breaks out of a PDF without losing paragraph breaks then I have a... er... friend who would be very grateful for the information.)
This is completely off topic, but I hope you will reply, d^2.
I noticed that one of the bugbears of this Breivik guy is what he calls "relativism".
Now obviously I know that the right has attacked "relativism" in a dog-whistley kind of way for a long time now, but I've never really thought about how dangerous this particular dog whistle could be, until now.
I mean it's received wisdom this Continental philosophical stuff generated in particular in post-war France (which gets lumped in under this term and "postmodernism" etc) is rubbish at best and mumbo-jumbo at worst. Up until recently, I've sort of assumed this was true (hey, we can't read everything), though been slightly skeptical of the official story.
But then recently I came across an old post of yours on CT:
where you assert that "Jacques Derrida deserves his high reputation".
Now Derrida was only one man, so clearly if true that doesn't mean all the other academics weren't talking bollocks.
But it seems to me that if what you say is true, then this is a bad situation for us to be in. It's one thing to have conservatives railing against postmodernism/relativism, another to have them backed up by scientists and others like them (e.g. Sokal). That is a powerful unintentional coalition.
So as well as just being intellectually curious, it may be a good bit of armory to have some sort of reasonable understanding of Derrida and others like him.
In other words - do you have any article/book recommendations for a n00b so such as myself?
mobileread is the place to look for ebook tools. There's a reasonable pdf to html converter there.
I have some tools that do a very good job on most PDFs, but they're not really in a releasable state at the moment.
Tik Tok you say... Um, yeah totally unavailable... Torrents aren't really where people look these days. Ask a friendly grad student. They seem to know all the dodgy places.
The short guide to Continental Philosophy isn't bad. I've not read the book on Derrida (I'm more of a Merleau-Ponty/Husserl and Heidegger man myself).
Sokal's book is not good. At least two of the people he was criticising he didn't understand, and the basis of his critique is a dismally naive theory of science/knowledge.
If you haven't read Bruno Latour incidentally, he's well worth it. The guy's a genius. An annoying one, but one nonetheless.
The wider context for this is the science wars - which I tend to read as Physicists trying to maintain their reputation as the hardest of the hard men of academia. How dare these girly sociologists suggest that they're not 100% logical, rigorous and empirical.
I will reinstate the Latour recommendation; although actually "The Golem" by Harry Webb and Trevor Pinch is also good for a more British version of sociology of scientific knowledge.
For Derrida, all I ever read was the extracts in the Oxford Reader (or whatever it's called, the one edited by David Lodge) in literary theory. You have to approach it like a mountain though, or like catching a cricket ball - it's much better not to try than to do so half-heartedly. It *is* difficult to understand and the sentences are long and convoluted, so you have to do the mental equivalent of gritting your teeth and promising yourself that you've got what it takes to beat it.
It's perhaps worth noting that Sokal and Bricmont didn't criticize Derrida. (In the original hoax article, Sokal quoted one sentence of his which looks like nonsense, but in the book they wrote, "since there is no systematic misuse of (or indeed attention to) science in Derrida's work, there is no chapter on Derrida in this book".)
They did criticize Latour for massively overstating the case for epistemological relativism—and Latour eventually admitted that they got him bang to rights.
That's not exactly what he's doing in that article, Gareth. The point he's making is a subtler one: Let me be mean for a second: what's the real difference between conspiracists and a popularized, that is a teachable, version of social critique inspired for instance by a too-quick reading of, let's say, a sociologist as eminent as Pierre Bourdieu–to be polite I will stick with the French field commanders?
Their critique, from memory (I do not own the book), quoted a section of a book which was discussing methodological approaches to science studies. It wasn't making the argument that they attributed to it, though you'd need to read it in context and be familiar with the wider field to maybe realise that. Its been many years since I've read it though.
By the way, I think Latour is utterly wrong in the main thesis of that article:
Maybe I am taking conspiracy theories too seriously, but I am worried to detect, in those mad mixtures of knee-jerk disbelief, punctilious demands for proofs, and free use of powerful explanation from the social neverland, many of the weapons of social critique. Of course conspiracy theories are an absurd deformation of our own arguments, but, like weapons smuggled through a fuzzy border to the wrong party, these are our weapons nonetheless. In spite of all the deformations, it is easy to recognize, still burnt in the steel, our trade mark: MADE IN CRITICALLAND.
This just isn't right (and David Aaronovitch, who agrees with latour on this point, is wrong too). Conspiracy theorists, pretty much by definition and to the endless frustration of proper researchers like Peter Dale Scott, are obsessively anti-relativist. Their defining characteristic is that when faced with a complicated and many-faceted social reality, in which all the key concepts are contested (how do you define who is "a CIA asset" if it overlaps with "an organised criminal"?), they continue to demand a single, clear and definitive istorical narrative with responsibility for all important actions clearly defined. As Scott says, the assassinologists have spent forty years unearthing a treasure trove of historical and political connections and facts, and they think they've failed because they can't solve a whodunnit.
(and the reason why conspiracy theorists reject official narratives is nothing to do with them challenging concepts of objectivity - it is simply and specifically because they believe that the official sources are lying)
Well when you boil the article down to its fundamentals, all he's really saying is that poorly understood academic theories can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Which could be made about any theory at all. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, particularly if you mistake it for a lot of knowledge.
Foucault is probably a better place to start with the mid-century continentals than Derrida.
Discipline & Punish; A History of Sexuality (vol. 1 ); I, Pierre Riviere and Madness and Civilization are all eminently readable & among the best academic works of the 20th century.
Some of them may even be available in Kindle-ready format somewhere in the dark recesses of the internet :)
No, I'm not the Yorksranter. But I guess one of the advantages of sharing a name with many others is getting their recommendations.
"poorly understood academic theories can be dangerous in the wrong hands"
Well, as I said, Breivik has amply demonstrated this.
"which I tend to read as Physicists trying to maintain their reputation as the hardest of the hard men of academia"
I don't know that this is fair. Again, I haven't read this stuff (I have a bunch of pdfs by Gabriel Stolzenberg to read at some pt), but the standard interpretation is that "Physicists pwned French Hippies", but if there is something to this work, then I would've thought the interpretation would be "Physicists too lazy to read literary theory they criticise". I don't know that one can say they necessarily had negative motives - if it's true there's something "there", then they seem to have just bought into the idea that it's all meaningless twaddle, therefore this should be like crushing a narcoleptic fly.
But whatever the truth, this is another reason why I feel I ought to look at this stuff - I'm studying physics!
"It *is* difficult to understand and the sentences are long and convoluted, so you have to do the mental equivalent of gritting your teeth and promising yourself that you've got what it takes to beat it"
This is as I suspected.
"Oh and Michael Berube's book is well recommended too"
Did you have a particular candidate in mind? Seems like a number of his books could fit the mould, going by titles.
BenC:
"Foucault is probably a better place to start with the mid-century continentals than Derrida."
In all of the philosophers and critics who get lumped in under the heading of "postmodernism", there seems to be a spectrum. At the end of that spectrum is Derrida (but not Foucault). Derrida is the archetype "postmodernist" in our culture. He stands for abstruse gobbledygook. If even Derrida is meaningful and somewhat reasonable, then that's all I needed. Plus I have d^2 recommendation from CT.
Perhaps you meant that for a beginner, it's easier to get Derrida once you read Foucault? if so, thanks (I had wondered about looking at D&P before) - though I do wonder how far back I need to go e.g. should I read someone like Hegel beforehand?
Actually, Richard Rorty's "Contingency, Irony and Solidarity" is probably the best way to understand what the hell Derrida is up to, come to think of it, and also gives you a bonus of a very sensible view of Wittgenstein which can reliably be used to drive professional philosophers up the creek. (Actually reading a couple of John Searle's books can also serve the same purpose).
I also (heart) Latour, though I have more time for S&B than some here.
Oddly enough, the other week, whie working on a side-project about forgiveness (largely with reference to Yom Kippur) I found a book by Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, which incorporated a lot of praise for Derrida's work on foregiveness.
Very different kettle of fish. I would endorse all the Rorty recommendations, although note that (inevitably) you are getting one major interpretation of Derrida rather than the whole.
I recommended Foucault because of all the major figures lumped into the "obscurantist phony"/"relativist antichrist" category you mentioned (nb. that it is hardly just physicists getting in on this - Dawkins & his epigones are entirely like-minded) he is probably the most readable & also the one whose work is most recognisable as genuine scholarship in the Anglo humanities/social sciences model. de Certeau fits a similar description, although not much of his work is available in English.
Though if it's the hard-core philosophy you are after... I don't think that Sokol would dispute that Wittgenstein was the real deal & yet he can be absurdly difficult to understand. Professional philosophy is -hard- and uses difficult language. All Sokol proved was that the peer-review system is imperfect.
& also the one whose work is most recognisable as genuine scholarship in the Anglo humanities/social sciences model
although it has to be said, recognisable as somewhat bad scholarship in that model - Foucault did tend to have a few dodgy facts in there. I don't think this invalidates him at all - the thing is he's doing philosophical work of the kind that AngloAmericans would do using nothing but made-up examples and calling them "thought experiments", but when you get a historical event that's been shifted around and reinterpreted for the purpose of the theoretical argument it's disorienting, irritating to a reader that's not used for it and potentially really embarrassing if you get into the habit of relying on Foucault as a source.
when you get a historical event that's been shifted around and reinterpreted for the purpose of the theoretical argument it's disorienting
See also Zizek on the Russian civil war. Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
Or Bernard Williams. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no evidence that Jim even met those Indians on his one NGO trip during the Guatemalan civil war.
And Christ, you have one minor safety incident on a trolleycar system, and you should see the elaborate fantasia of conflicting versions that these so-called philosophers spin it into. Don't get me started on the treatment of the unpleasant and humiliating experience of Geoff "Fatty" Bovis on his charity caving trip.
Their critique quoted a section of a book which was discussing methodological approaches to science studies. It wasn't making the argument that they attributed to it, though you'd need to read it in context and be familiar with the wider field to maybe realise that.
The book in question was Latour's Science in Action, and Sokal and Bricmont criticized the section on the "Third Rule of Method", around pages 95–100. Here Latour is discussing the difficult and interesting problem of how a sociologist of science can gets to grips with a controversy that's ongoing, in which there's no reliable consensus which the sociologist can use to evaluate the claims made by the scientists under study. (An example he gives is the solar neutrino problem, which was still unresolved in 1987.) The scientists all say that they are sincere seekers after truth, but of course sociologists shouldn't take such rhetoric at face value.
In such a delicate investigation, it would seem to be vital to keep careful track of the distinctions between the different layers of scientific knowledge: between nature (inaccessible), experimental evidence (partial and theory-laden), published reports of experiments (biased, selective, rhetorical), descriptions or theories of nature, and scientific consensus (institutional, self-interested). But, as Sokal and Bricmont point out, Latour is quite cavalier, eliding or ignoring the difference between these layers in the argument leading up to his "Rule 3" ("Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature's representation, not its consequence, we can never use this consequence, Nature, to explain how and why a controversy has been settled").
Latour presents this argument in the form of a dilemma: either, he says, the scientists are right that Nature "the only possible adjudicator of a dispute", or else, "by analysing the allies and resources that settle a controversy we understand everything that there is to understand in technoscience." Sokal and Bricmont point out that this is obviously a false dilemma and that Latour has overreached himself.
Cian, I understand you to be making the argument that Latour didn't really mean what he plainly wrote in this section of the book, that it should be understood as some kind of conventional hyperbole that was intended for consumption only by other sociologists who were "in the know". Well, maybe that's so, but I think that Latour's mea culpa suggests otherwise (he writes, "What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?"), and, in the phrase our host is currently deployment elsewhere, I think that Latour should own his own bullshit. (And his sarcastic remarks about the solar neutrino problem now look particularly foolish.)
Also, even if Latour didn't believe what he wrote, there were historians of science who (apparently) did. I remember a conversation in the late 1990s with one of the graduate students working on the Darwin Correspondence Project. I said that I was a bit disappointed that editions of Darwin's works didn't come with footnotes explaining the modern understanding of the topics: for example, when Darwin poses a question like, "What can be more singular than the relation in cats between complete whiteness and blue eyes with deafness, or between the tortoise-shell colour and the female sex?" it would be nice to have a footnote explaining the embryological basis of the former and the genetic basis of the latter. The student patiently explained to me that I was making an elementary category error: that since scientific facts are socially constructed, Darwin's questions can only be understood within the historical social context that he asked them, and it makes no sense to impose a modern interpretation.
the one whose work is most recognisable as genuine scholarship in the Anglo humanities/social sciences model
THIS. To the extent that I can only assume the people who throw Foucault in with Derrida and Latour (who are interesting and worthwhile, but also annoying and difficult) have read none of the above.
Fair enough. It's just I read somewhere that you needed to understand Hegel (and Husserl and Heidegger) before being able to follow (at least one era of) Derrida's writing.
Professional philosophy is -hard- and uses difficult language.
I agree, but I think (part of) the debate is about whether it should be that way. The objection of Sokal to the difficult language would presumably be the same as Chomsky's.
All Sokol proved was that the peer-review system is imperfect.
Social Text didn't have peer review at the time. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what the problem here was supposed to be. I could understand if academics were finding it hard to get serious research noticed because it was being suffocated under a tidal wave of nonsense due to the vast majority of journals being completely open. But that's not the case. There are many many peer reviewed journals. I see having a few open publications as a good thing. Sure, you get many cranks, but you also get many of the usual benefits of freedom of speech.
Foucault did tend to have a few dodgy facts in there. I don't think this invalidates him at all
Well, he should have labelled what he was doing.
he's doing philosophical work of the kind that AngloAmericans would do using nothing but made-up examples and calling them "thought experiments"
Maybe using the German would get the point across to more people.
ajay:
See also Zizek on the Russian civil war.
Anything like Zizek on Robespierre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orv1kmkiEpk
? Some individual statements there may make some sense on their own merits, but I can't help questioning the moral judgement of someone who thinks that what Europe needs now is a vigorous defence of the French Terror. Hyperbolic criticism of state-sanctioned mass murder is not something to be too worried about IMO. I mean, watch what he says after 5:30 or so. He sounds like a gaoler at Guantanamo bay.
[Professional philosophy is -hard- and uses difficult language]
I agree, but I think (part of) the debate is about whether it should be that way.
It depends what one means by difficult language. Poor writing is indefensible (but often Continental philosophy is 'difficult' because its been translated; far easier in the original). Plenty of continental philosophy reads as difficult just because they are built upon ideas (ideas that you, the reader, are assumed to be familiar with. Just as the reader of Molecular Genetics is assumed to be familiar with the field, because life is too bloody short to write professional articles in the language of an amateur) that are complex, and counter-intuitive in daily terms.
Husserl's language is fiendish, but then so are the ideas and analytical framework.
Gareth, given my copy of Science in Action is currently in a box being prepared to be shipped off, and I don't have a copy of Sokal's book, I can't really take part in a conversation that requires a close reading of both books. I do remember a piece of quite careful analysis by Latour on science (possibly in Laboratory Life; but I think it was in a collection on Conversation Analysis, or Distributed Cognition), where he paid very careful (tediously so some might argue, though its the kind of stuff I get off on) to precisely these types of scientific argument, material, rhetoric and tools. Its good research, the scientists who were studied (particle physicists) were fine with it (ie. they didn't think they were stitched up, or misrepresented). The analysis was very rigorous (using the hardcorest of empirical anthropoly - ethnomethodology. Probably some Conversation Analysis as well, if memory serves. Not for wimps, boys and girls).
Latour, for all his faults, does actually do empirical work. In fact in recent works he's been attacking "critical theorists" who don't start off from empirical work.
Cian, I understand you to be making the argument that Latour didn't really mean what he plainly wrote in this section of the book, that it should be understood as some kind of conventional hyperbole that was intended for consumption only by other sociologists who were "in the know".
Not really. I just think (based upon a memory of a book I read rather a long time ago, and I might be confusing with one of the several other things I've read by him), he's writing for people at the time who'd been engaged in the debates on sociology of science methodological approaches (which were extremely lively at the time, for various reasons Sokal was probably unaware of), and he's also assuming various perspectives that are tediously common if you're familiar with cultural anthropology (the fact that wicca is, or isn't real, really isn't going to help you understand Wiccans), or ethnomethodology, but perhaps unfamiliar if you're a computer scientist, or physicist. Basically Ethnomethodological indifference applied to the study of scientific practices rather than cultural ones (or treating scientific practices as cultural practices, sort of).
The student patiently explained to me that I was making an elementary category error: that since scientific facts are socially constructed, Darwin's questions can only be understood within the historical social context that he asked them, and it makes no sense to impose a modern interpretation.
Well from one perspective he's right and you're wrong. If you're a historian interested in how Darwin developed his ideas and where they came from, you have indeed made a pretty basic category error. If on the other hand you're interested in the science of evolution, why are you reading Darwin? If on the other hand you're editing a book for a popular audience, you might throw it in as an interesting foot note.
When I was doing my MA I read Bhaskar and Schutz, and became convinced that a fusion of critical realism and social phenomenology was desirable and possible. Wish I'd stuck with it really - it'd make the Darwin story a lot easier to talk about.
Darwin was making a statement about what we can loosely call the Real World (the world understood as existing prior to discourse, knowledge of which can be constructed with a reliable degree of replicability through a particular set of methods), and as such he was speaking the language in which statements about the Real World were made in his place and time. We don't speak that language any more, so the student was right. We do still go around making statements about the Real World, or rather about the construction of the Real World which we can call our Known Real World. Moreover, our KRW has a lot of phenomena capable of explanation in common with Darwin's, including deafness in white cats (but not, for example, physiological similarity between long-married couples). More fundamentally, both our KRW and Darwin's are characterised by phenomena which can be explained more or less correctly, so a footnote about 'gemmules' would have some explanatory value. On that basis, the student was wrong - unless [s]he could make the case that no layperson is going to look to Darwin for answers. But, short of the most scholarly publication (the earthworm study?) that seems a bit unlikely.
This relates to my worry about Foucault and people who emulate him (e.g. Ulrich Beck and David Garland): genealogies of the present may be interesting & useful façons de parler about the present, but they're also statements about the past. And as such they're unreliable, in more ways than one. John Braithwaite on Foucault:
Foucault is not interested in those branches of his genealogy that die out before the present. An example in his penal history is transportation of convicts. ... Foucault actually says that England abandoned transportation ‘at the beginning of the nineteenth century’ (1977: 272). Transportation to Australia was not abandoned until 1868 and continued to Gibraltar (where 9000 were shipped) until 1875. There was more transportation to Australia in the second third of the 19th century than in the first. Worse, Foucault was an appalling historian of the past of his own country in this regard. Tocqueville after returning from the USA failed to persuade his countrymen of the virtues of American penitentiaries and French transportation continued to 1938, albeit at lower volume and with less colonial success than English transportation. Foucault gets the history of the past so badly wrong because he wants to write it to lead to his big fact about the history of the present — the ascendancy of the prison. ... So my first problem with the history of the present is that myopic interest in the present induces the error of getting the past wrong. This matters because criminologists actually go to scholars like Michel Foucault and David Garland in search of an understanding of the past.
Also:
A second problem is that the history of the present conduces to getting the present wrong. We do not understand the present as well when we saw off those parts of the genealogy that in the past branched off from the phenomenon we study in the present.
No rescuing from the enormous condescension of posterity for these guys.
On that basis, the student was wrong - unless [s]he could make the case that no layperson is going to look to Darwin for answers.
But this is the point in these discussions where I think that all you really need to do is return to the pragmatists. The student is wrong, and Gareth is wrong; because neither of them are asking the right question. What are we going to do with this information. If you're studying the history of Darwin's thought, modern evolution is not relevant. Just as, if you're constructing a car Newtonian mechanics is true. And actually Gareth's approach is wrong on all scores, but because casual readers aren't going to read the footnotes. He's so hung up on "what is truth", that he's lost sight of the target. A pragmatist would ask, how can we teach people who insist upon reading Darwin about modern evolution (or at least prevent them from learning something outdated) and start from there (inserts in the text I'm guessing. Plus pictures).
Phil, I think you'd have struggled with that project. I've always seen Critical Realism as a baby step towards what Husserl was getting at, and I think the phenomenological attitude is so heavily embedded in Schutz's work, that the only way they could be fused (imho) is by basically making CR phenomenological in approach.
Apologies for any confusion - "The Golem" was by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch. Cliff Richard, as far as I'm aware, has never entered into the sociology of scientific knowledge debate.
Cian - never got to Husserl, so not sure about that. But it would basically have been about saturating CR with Schutz and seeing if the world looked any different - "When I say that I know that this method produces true knowledge, I mean that I am satisfied that this method (as I have learnt it) produces knowledge which satisfies the relevant tests for what I consider truth, in my situation as a member of the setting in which I find myself. On the other hand, as a member of the setting in which I find myself, I am satisfied with all the above and hence can state without qualification that I know this method produces true knowledge".
Power would have been the interesting part; a hermeneutics of power would have been involved. Schutz -> Dewey -> Merleau-Ponty -> Bourdieu -> profit! or rather -> Bhaskar. I would have challenged Foucault along the way, too, which would have been fun. I think it would have involved reading far too much Bhaskar, though - I only really enjoyed his take-down of Rorty (who really wasn't a Pragmatist, if Dewey was one).
Cian: I'm not saying that the rhetorical flights of fancy in this part of Science in Action invalidate the rest of Latour's work, just that on this particular point he was over-reaching, and Sokal and Bricmont were entirely fair to criticize him for it.
Well from one perspective he's right and you're wrong. If you're a historian interested in how Darwin developed his ideas and where they came from, you have indeed made a pretty basic category error.
If the historical context were the only thing one could legitimately be interested in, then it would indeed be anachronistic to bring in modern discoveries. But I don't see why it's illegitimate to be interested in both the historical and the scientific content of The Origin of Species.
I'm not suggesting that anyone should read The Origin of Species to learn about modern evolution (that would be absurd) but rather that linking Darwin's questions and speculation with the modern evidence is just as a legitimate a scholarly project as the examination of the historical context of the discovery.
Gareth's approach is wrong on all scores. He's so hung up on "what is truth", that he's lost sight of the target.
Cian, I'd appreciate it if you could lay off this kind of rhetoric. It's possible to think that Latour was wrong on this particular point without being some kind of idiotic scientific triumphalist.
I'm sorry my rhetoric offended you Gareth. I didn't mean it that way, its just a common problem I find in communicating with Computer Scientists (trained as one, moved into HCI) is that they have a tendency to think in terms of objective truth (or at least to think such a thing is a useful thing to aspire to). Which is actually pretty unhelpful when you're trying to design systems usable by human beings. Relativism is a far more useful starting point. If my user thinks that a heating system is run by little elves who have to appeased by little sacrifices - really, who am I to argue.
Gareth, when I read Sokal's book I went and checked the offending passage and I my interpretation of it was completely different to theirs. I didn't think their criticism was fair, as just completely misplaced. They had misunderstood the point that he was making. Not having the book to hand, I can't easily go back and check the passage. So I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point.
But I don't see why it's illegitimate to be interested in both the historical and the scientific content of The Origin of Species.
It isn't necessarily. But if you want to understand the trajectory of Darwin's thought at best its unhelpful, at worst its going to mislead you. It all really comes down to what you're trying to achieve. if on the other hand you're not a professional historian, but just an interested layman, other approaches might be far more appropriate.
I think that the trouble with putting modern scientific footnotes into TOoS would be that modern scientists would not be able to resist retrospectively recruiting Darwin for their side in modern controversies. The Gould/Dawkins wars were absolutely rife with this.
There might be any number of good reasons for not putting such footnotes into an edition. It might be too difficult, or too expensive, or the target readership mostly consists of historians. Those would all be fine reasons for not doing it. What I object to is simply the idea that it's a category error.
I also find something a bit unsatisfactory about the idea that the trajectory of Darwin's thought can be an unproblematic subject, whereas the cause of deafness in white cats is something that can only be considered relative to a historical context.
But really my anecdote about the Darwin Correspondence Project was only meant to back up my suggestion that Latour may well have meant what he said in Science in Action.
(The student was also rather condescending about my being a computer programmer—he said that it was only natural that I should believe in objective facts, because my salary depended on it.)
Yeah but you were asking a PhD student about his area of research. You're complaining that you didn't get a nuanced response that considered all perspectives, but instead was focused on his narrow research perspective. From his narrow perspective its a category error.
I also find something a bit unsatisfactory about the idea that the trajectory of Darwin's thought can be an unproblematic subject, whereas the cause of deafness in white cats is something that can only be considered relative to a historical context.
Sorry you've lost me. Who is arguing this?
Latour probably did mean what he said in Science in Action. I don't think he meant what you think he meant.
You're complaining that you didn't get a nuanced response that considered all perspectives, but instead was focused on his narrow research perspective.
If that was all he meant, then that would be fine, but you will have to trust me that that's not a plausible interpretation. We did go into some detail about the subject, and discussed whether methodological relativism or epistemological relativism was an appropriate position to take vis-a-vis Darwin. He was very clear that his position was one of strong epistemological relativism.
Now of course it's just an anecdote, and at fifteen years' distance it's not going to stand up to cross-examination. After all, maybe he was just bullshitting me and didn't really mean what he said.
Well it could be lots of things, that's the trouble with anecdotes. I mean I'm open to the possibility he was an idiot; its just the way you presented it, it was actually a pretty reasonable methodological stance for doing historical enquiry. In a way though, the test is whether he was any good as a historian of science. I'm kind of relaxed about people thinking silly things about things they have little influence over, if only because in my experience most academics are alarmingly likely to believe silly things once they move outside their area of expertise.
Incidentally, I'm reminded of a misunderstanding I had years ago. Some guy (forget who, but not one of the STS guys. Possibly Edinburg school - this was long before I knew about such things) said there was no such thing as gravity, that it was just a theory, at a talk.
Cue consternation, bad tempered argument. Then someone asked him why he didn't just throw himself out of a window. He looked at them perplexed. Turned out he meant the theory of gravitation, and the whole analytical framework. He wasn't disputing the observations; just that the theory was an objectively real thing. They thought he meant, objects falling to the ground, etc, etc. There was a long pause.
Many years later I reckon most of the science wars can be explained by misunderstandings of this type (much of the rest due to the fact that it turned really nasty, and that a couple of people, Latour included, experienced scientists do their best to sabotage their careers).
Does anyone think that the theory of gravitation is anything but a theory? Does the fact that it's a theory in some way undermine the fact that it's the theory with the best fit to observations, or vice versa?
Well no that was the point. he wasn't arguing anything other than that, he just said it in such a way that the scientists, or positivists, or whatever they were in the room (I was about 16/17. It was some kind of public science thing done by the local uni) figured he meant gravity wasn't real (can't remember the exact phrase he used).
A lot of the Science Wars were kind of like that. The problem was that they used different jargon, and had different perspectives on stuff.
And yeah, I've never quite seen the point of Foucault either. I'm not sure DSquared's defence really works for me either, as I despise thought experiments. Empiricism people - get out of the bloody Ivory tower.
Agree. I do think a new law should be passed, along the lines of the one which requires British Library depositing, that all publishers must either bring out eBooks in the UK, or consent to the BL publishing their copy as a free-to-view eBook.
ReplyDeleteThat is a somewhat more liberal version of my view that publishers' lists should be subject to something similar to Belgian employment law on redundancies - ie that in all but the most extreme circumstances, you're not allowed to take a book out of print, unless you have engaged in thorough consultation with anyone who has ever potentially thought they might want to buy it (specifically, me), and that if this makes you think twice about the books you're publishing in the first place, so much the better. I don't know why I have such an irrational hatred of the practice, particularly since I am totally familiar with the underlying economics, but really - what kind of a bastard takes "Tik-Tok" by John Sladek out of print? I bloody loved that book when I got it out of the library in the 1980s, then I grew up and was prepared to part with cold hard cash for it, and what is this shit, Beavis? Grrrrrrrrrrr.
ReplyDeleteAh, I was going to remark that if there was any SF writer on the list who you might like, John Sladek would be the man. Gollancz reissued Tik-Tok in the US about six or seven years ago, in a facsimile of the old yellow cover. It has aged remarkably well - his stuff on the Church of Reformed Darwinism is still bang on the mark. His "The New Apocrypha" is an excellent trawling through of the oozy sediment of pseudoscience, in large part because he has a sense of humor (he tried at one point to write his own pseudonymous pop-astrology book, claiming to have discovered a thirteenth sign of the Zodiac).
ReplyDeleteIt's sweet that they don't seem to think that anyone interested in having ebook versions of old scifi novels would have got them from the internet -gratis- years ago.
ReplyDeleteA cursory search shows that so many are available as PDF/EPubs that torrents of them are subdivided alphabetically.
Well they're probably hoping to make some money from people wanting to download them legally.
ReplyDeleteIf they price them right (about 2nd hand book shop prices), and don't encumber them with DRM, they'll probably do pretty well. Otherwise most people will probably hit the pirate sites.
You'd think that SF publishers would probably be savvy to that by now. Well you'd like to.
I am interested in having ebook versions of (a small number of) old scifi novels and I don't really care much about DRM either. We old crusty folk don't like illegal downloads because we once got one of those virus thingies, and we're probably the target market here.
ReplyDeleteSo a really tiny market then.
ReplyDeleteA cursory search shows that so many are available as PDF/EPubs that torrents of them are subdivided alphabetically.
ReplyDeleteAnd a cursory look at the contents of those torrents shows that most of them are raw OCR scans, filled with major typos and broken formatting. Not much John Sladek in there either - although if Forgotten Realms novels are your thing...
(Incidentally, if anyone knows of a reliable way to strip line breaks out of a PDF without losing paragraph breaks then I have a... er... friend who would be very grateful for the information.)
all publishers must either bring out eBooks in the UK, or consent to the BL publishing their copy as a free-to-view eBook.
ReplyDeleteThis would be a fairly massive undertaking for the BL; publishing an ebook isn't a trivial task.
This is completely off topic, but I hope you will reply, d^2.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that one of the bugbears of this Breivik guy is what he calls "relativism".
Now obviously I know that the right has attacked "relativism" in a dog-whistley kind of way for a long time now, but I've never really thought about how dangerous this particular dog whistle could be, until now.
I mean it's received wisdom this Continental philosophical stuff generated in particular in post-war France (which gets lumped in under this term and "postmodernism" etc) is rubbish at best and mumbo-jumbo at worst. Up until recently, I've sort of assumed this was true (hey, we can't read everything), though been slightly skeptical of the official story.
But then recently I came across an old post of yours on CT:
http://crookedtimber.org/2007/05/10/in-praise-of-budweiser-contains-extended-footnotes/
where you assert that "Jacques Derrida deserves his high reputation".
Now Derrida was only one man, so clearly if true that doesn't mean all the other academics weren't talking bollocks.
But it seems to me that if what you say is true, then this is a bad situation for us to be in. It's one thing to have conservatives railing against postmodernism/relativism, another to have them backed up by scientists and others like them (e.g. Sokal). That is a powerful unintentional coalition.
So as well as just being intellectually curious, it may be a good bit of armory to have some sort of reasonable understanding of Derrida and others like him.
In other words - do you have any article/book recommendations for a n00b so such as myself?
Line breaks: this appears to work
ReplyDeletemobileread is the place to look for ebook tools. There's a reasonable pdf to html converter there.
ReplyDeleteI have some tools that do a very good job on most PDFs, but they're not really in a releasable state at the moment.
Tik Tok you say... Um, yeah totally unavailable... Torrents aren't really where people look these days. Ask a friendly grad student. They seem to know all the dodgy places.
The short guide to Continental Philosophy isn't bad. I've not read the book on Derrida (I'm more of a Merleau-Ponty/Husserl and Heidegger man myself).
ReplyDeleteSokal's book is not good. At least two of the people he was criticising he didn't understand, and the basis of his critique is a dismally naive theory of science/knowledge.
If you haven't read Bruno Latour incidentally, he's well worth it. The guy's a genius. An annoying one, but one nonetheless.
The wider context for this is the science wars - which I tend to read as Physicists trying to maintain their reputation as the hardest of the hard men of academia. How dare these girly sociologists suggest that they're not 100% logical, rigorous and empirical.
It just occurs to me that Alex might not be the Yorksranter, in which case scratch the Latour recommendation which was aimed at that Alex.
ReplyDeleteI will reinstate the Latour recommendation; although actually "The Golem" by Harry Webb and Trevor Pinch is also good for a more British version of sociology of scientific knowledge.
ReplyDeleteFor Derrida, all I ever read was the extracts in the Oxford Reader (or whatever it's called, the one edited by David Lodge) in literary theory. You have to approach it like a mountain though, or like catching a cricket ball - it's much better not to try than to do so half-heartedly. It *is* difficult to understand and the sentences are long and convoluted, so you have to do the mental equivalent of gritting your teeth and promising yourself that you've got what it takes to beat it.
Oh and Michael Berube's book is well recommended too, although I haven't actually read it myself
ReplyDeleteIt's perhaps worth noting that Sokal and Bricmont didn't criticize Derrida. (In the original hoax article, Sokal quoted one sentence of his which looks like nonsense, but in the book they wrote, "since there is no systematic misuse of (or indeed attention to) science in Derrida's work, there is no chapter on Derrida in this book".)
ReplyDeleteThey did criticize Latour for massively overstating the case for epistemological relativism—and Latour eventually admitted that they got him bang to rights.
That's not exactly what he's doing in that article, Gareth. The point he's making is a subtler one:
ReplyDeleteLet me be mean for a second: what's the real difference between conspiracists and a popularized, that is a teachable, version of social critique inspired for instance by a too-quick reading of, let's say, a sociologist as eminent as Pierre Bourdieu–to be polite I will stick with the French field commanders?
Their critique, from memory (I do not own the book), quoted a section of a book which was discussing methodological approaches to science studies. It wasn't making the argument that they attributed to it, though you'd need to read it in context and be familiar with the wider field to maybe realise that. Its been many years since I've read it though.
By the way, I think Latour is utterly wrong in the main thesis of that article:
ReplyDeleteMaybe I am taking conspiracy theories too seriously, but I am worried to detect, in those mad mixtures of knee-jerk disbelief, punctilious demands for proofs, and free use of powerful explanation from the social neverland, many of the weapons of social critique. Of course conspiracy theories are an absurd deformation of our own arguments, but, like weapons smuggled through a fuzzy border to the wrong party, these are our weapons nonetheless. In spite of all the deformations, it is easy to recognize, still burnt in the steel, our trade mark: MADE IN CRITICALLAND.
This just isn't right (and David Aaronovitch, who agrees with latour on this point, is wrong too). Conspiracy theorists, pretty much by definition and to the endless frustration of proper researchers like Peter Dale Scott, are obsessively anti-relativist. Their defining characteristic is that when faced with a complicated and many-faceted social reality, in which all the key concepts are contested (how do you define who is "a CIA asset" if it overlaps with "an organised criminal"?), they continue to demand a single, clear and definitive istorical narrative with responsibility for all important actions clearly defined. As Scott says, the assassinologists have spent forty years unearthing a treasure trove of historical and political connections and facts, and they think they've failed because they can't solve a whodunnit.
(and the reason why conspiracy theorists reject official narratives is nothing to do with them challenging concepts of objectivity - it is simply and specifically because they believe that the official sources are lying)
ReplyDeleteWell when you boil the article down to its fundamentals, all he's really saying is that poorly understood academic theories can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Which could be made about any theory at all. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, particularly if you mistake it for a lot of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteFoucault is probably a better place to start with the mid-century continentals than Derrida.
ReplyDeleteDiscipline & Punish; A History of Sexuality (vol. 1 ); I, Pierre Riviere and Madness and Civilization are all eminently readable & among the best academic works of the 20th century.
Some of them may even be available in Kindle-ready format somewhere in the dark recesses of the internet :)
Okay thanks for everyone's recommendations.
ReplyDeleteCian:
No, I'm not the Yorksranter. But I guess one of the advantages of sharing a name with many others is getting their recommendations.
"poorly understood academic theories can be dangerous in the wrong hands"
Well, as I said, Breivik has amply demonstrated this.
"which I tend to read as Physicists trying to maintain their reputation as the hardest of the hard men of academia"
I don't know that this is fair. Again, I haven't read this stuff (I have a bunch of pdfs by Gabriel Stolzenberg to read at some pt), but the standard interpretation is that "Physicists pwned French Hippies", but if there is something to this work, then I would've thought the interpretation would be "Physicists too lazy to read literary theory they criticise". I don't know that one can say they necessarily had negative motives - if it's true there's something "there", then they seem to have just bought into the idea that it's all meaningless twaddle, therefore this should be like crushing a narcoleptic fly.
But whatever the truth, this is another reason why I feel I ought to look at this stuff - I'm studying physics!
More to follow...
d^2:
ReplyDelete"It *is* difficult to understand and the sentences are long and convoluted, so you have to do the mental equivalent of gritting your teeth and promising yourself that you've got what it takes to beat it"
This is as I suspected.
"Oh and Michael Berube's book is well recommended too"
Did you have a particular candidate in mind? Seems like a number of his books could fit the mould, going by titles.
BenC:
"Foucault is probably a better place to start with the mid-century continentals than Derrida."
In all of the philosophers and critics who get lumped in under the heading of "postmodernism", there seems to be a spectrum. At the end of that spectrum is Derrida (but not Foucault). Derrida is the archetype "postmodernist" in our culture. He stands for abstruse gobbledygook. If even Derrida is meaningful and somewhat reasonable, then that's all I needed. Plus I have d^2 recommendation from CT.
Perhaps you meant that for a beginner, it's easier to get Derrida once you read Foucault? if so, thanks (I had wondered about looking at D&P before) - though I do wonder how far back I need to go e.g. should I read someone like Hegel beforehand?
Actually, Richard Rorty's "Contingency, Irony and Solidarity" is probably the best way to understand what the hell Derrida is up to, come to think of it, and also gives you a bonus of a very sensible view of Wittgenstein which can reliably be used to drive professional philosophers up the creek. (Actually reading a couple of John Searle's books can also serve the same purpose).
ReplyDeleteI also (heart) Latour, though I have more time for S&B than some here.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, the other week, whie working on a side-project about forgiveness (largely with reference to Yom Kippur) I found a book by Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, which incorporated a lot of praise for Derrida's work on foregiveness.
Chris Wiliams
e.g. should I read someone like Hegel beforehand?
ReplyDeleteVery different kettle of fish. I would endorse all the Rorty recommendations, although note that (inevitably) you are getting one major interpretation of Derrida rather than the whole.
I recommended Foucault because of all the major figures lumped into the "obscurantist phony"/"relativist antichrist" category you mentioned (nb. that it is hardly just physicists getting in on this - Dawkins & his epigones are entirely like-minded) he is probably the most readable & also the one whose work is most recognisable as genuine scholarship in the Anglo humanities/social sciences model. de Certeau fits a similar description, although not much of his work is available in English.
Though if it's the hard-core philosophy you are after... I don't think that Sokol would dispute that Wittgenstein was the real deal & yet he can be absurdly difficult to understand. Professional philosophy is -hard- and uses difficult language. All Sokol proved was that the peer-review system is imperfect.
& also the one whose work is most recognisable as genuine scholarship in the Anglo humanities/social sciences model
ReplyDeletealthough it has to be said, recognisable as somewhat bad scholarship in that model - Foucault did tend to have a few dodgy facts in there. I don't think this invalidates him at all - the thing is he's doing philosophical work of the kind that AngloAmericans would do using nothing but made-up examples and calling them "thought experiments", but when you get a historical event that's been shifted around and reinterpreted for the purpose of the theoretical argument it's disorienting, irritating to a reader that's not used for it and potentially really embarrassing if you get into the habit of relying on Foucault as a source.
when you get a historical event that's been shifted around and reinterpreted for the purpose of the theoretical argument it's disorienting
ReplyDeleteSee also Zizek on the Russian civil war. Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
Or Bernard Williams. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no evidence that Jim even met those Indians on his one NGO trip during the Guatemalan civil war.
ReplyDeleteAnd Christ, you have one minor safety incident on a trolleycar system, and you should see the elaborate fantasia of conflicting versions that these so-called philosophers spin it into. Don't get me started on the treatment of the unpleasant and humiliating experience of Geoff "Fatty" Bovis on his charity caving trip.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTheir critique quoted a section of a book which was discussing methodological approaches to science studies. It wasn't making the argument that they attributed to it, though you'd need to read it in context and be familiar with the wider field to maybe realise that.
ReplyDeleteThe book in question was Latour's Science in Action, and Sokal and Bricmont criticized the section on the "Third Rule of Method", around pages 95–100. Here Latour is discussing the difficult and interesting problem of how a sociologist of science can gets to grips with a controversy that's ongoing, in which there's no reliable consensus which the sociologist can use to evaluate the claims made by the scientists under study. (An example he gives is the solar neutrino problem, which was still unresolved in 1987.) The scientists all say that they are sincere seekers after truth, but of course sociologists shouldn't take such rhetoric at face value.
In such a delicate investigation, it would seem to be vital to keep careful track of the distinctions between the different layers of scientific knowledge: between nature (inaccessible), experimental evidence (partial and theory-laden), published reports of experiments (biased, selective, rhetorical), descriptions or theories of nature, and scientific consensus (institutional, self-interested). But, as Sokal and Bricmont point out, Latour is quite cavalier, eliding or ignoring the difference between these layers in the argument leading up to his "Rule 3" ("Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature's representation, not its consequence, we can never use this consequence, Nature, to explain how and why a controversy has been settled").
Latour presents this argument in the form of a dilemma: either, he says, the scientists are right that Nature "the only possible adjudicator of a dispute", or else, "by analysing the allies and resources that settle a controversy we understand everything that there is to understand in technoscience." Sokal and Bricmont point out that this is obviously a false dilemma and that Latour has overreached himself.
Cian, I understand you to be making the argument that Latour didn't really mean what he plainly wrote in this section of the book, that it should be understood as some kind of conventional hyperbole that was intended for consumption only by other sociologists who were "in the know". Well, maybe that's so, but I think that Latour's mea culpa suggests otherwise (he writes, "What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?"), and, in the phrase our host is currently deployment elsewhere, I think that Latour should own his own bullshit. (And his sarcastic remarks about the solar neutrino problem now look particularly foolish.)
Also, even if Latour didn't believe what he wrote, there were historians of science who (apparently) did. I remember a conversation in the late 1990s with one of the graduate students working on the Darwin Correspondence Project. I said that I was a bit disappointed that editions of Darwin's works didn't come with footnotes explaining the modern understanding of the topics: for example, when Darwin poses a question like, "What can be more singular than the relation in cats between complete whiteness and blue eyes with deafness, or between the tortoise-shell colour and the female sex?" it would be nice to have a footnote explaining the embryological basis of the former and the genetic basis of the latter. The student patiently explained to me that I was making an elementary category error: that since scientific facts are socially constructed, Darwin's questions can only be understood within the historical social context that he asked them, and it makes no sense to impose a modern interpretation.
the one whose work is most recognisable as genuine scholarship in the Anglo humanities/social sciences model
ReplyDeleteTHIS. To the extent that I can only assume the people who throw Foucault in with Derrida and Latour (who are interesting and worthwhile, but also annoying and difficult) have read none of the above.
Sorry for not replying sooner.
ReplyDeleteBenC:
Very different kettle of fish
Fair enough. It's just I read somewhere that you needed to understand Hegel (and Husserl and Heidegger) before being able to follow (at least one era of) Derrida's writing.
Professional philosophy is -hard- and uses difficult language.
I agree, but I think (part of) the debate is about whether it should be that way. The objection of Sokal to the difficult language would presumably be the same as Chomsky's.
All Sokol proved was that the peer-review system is imperfect.
Social Text didn't have peer review at the time. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what the problem here was supposed to be. I could understand if academics were finding it hard to get serious research noticed because it was being suffocated under a tidal wave of nonsense due to the vast majority of journals being completely open. But that's not the case. There are many many peer reviewed journals. I see having a few open publications as a good thing. Sure, you get many cranks, but you also get many of the usual benefits of freedom of speech.
d^2:
ReplyDeleteCheers for the Rorty.
Foucault did tend to have a few dodgy facts in there. I don't think this invalidates him at all
Well, he should have labelled what he was doing.
he's doing philosophical work of the kind that AngloAmericans would do using nothing but made-up examples and calling them "thought experiments"
Maybe using the German would get the point across to more people.
ajay:
See also Zizek on the Russian civil war.
Anything like Zizek on Robespierre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orv1kmkiEpk
? Some individual statements there may make some sense on their own merits, but I can't help questioning the moral judgement of someone who thinks that what Europe needs now is a vigorous defence of the French Terror. Hyperbolic criticism of state-sanctioned mass murder is not something to be too worried about IMO. I mean, watch what he says after 5:30 or so. He sounds like a gaoler at Guantanamo bay.
[Professional philosophy is -hard- and uses difficult language]
ReplyDeleteI agree, but I think (part of) the debate is about whether it should be that way.
It depends what one means by difficult language. Poor writing is indefensible (but often Continental philosophy is 'difficult' because its been translated; far easier in the original). Plenty of continental philosophy reads as difficult just because they are built upon ideas (ideas that you, the reader, are assumed to be familiar with. Just as the reader of Molecular Genetics is assumed to be familiar with the field, because life is too bloody short to write professional articles in the language of an amateur) that are complex, and counter-intuitive in daily terms.
Husserl's language is fiendish, but then so are the ideas and analytical framework.
Gareth,
ReplyDeletegiven my copy of Science in Action is currently in a box being prepared to be shipped off, and I don't have a copy of Sokal's book, I can't really take part in a conversation that requires a close reading of both books. I do remember a piece of quite careful analysis by Latour on science (possibly in Laboratory Life; but I think it was in a collection on Conversation Analysis, or Distributed Cognition), where he paid very careful (tediously so some might argue, though its the kind of stuff I get off on) to precisely these types of scientific argument, material, rhetoric and tools. Its good research, the scientists who were studied (particle physicists) were fine with it (ie. they didn't think they were stitched up, or misrepresented). The analysis was very rigorous (using the hardcorest of empirical anthropoly - ethnomethodology. Probably some Conversation Analysis as well, if memory serves. Not for wimps, boys and girls).
Latour, for all his faults, does actually do empirical work. In fact in recent works he's been attacking "critical theorists" who don't start off from empirical work.
Cian, I understand you to be making the argument that Latour didn't really mean what he plainly wrote in this section of the book, that it should be understood as some kind of conventional hyperbole that was intended for consumption only by other sociologists who were "in the know".
Not really. I just think (based upon a memory of a book I read rather a long time ago, and I might be confusing with one of the several other things I've read by him), he's writing for people at the time who'd been engaged in the debates on sociology of science methodological approaches (which were extremely lively at the time, for various reasons Sokal was probably unaware of), and he's also assuming various perspectives that are tediously common if you're familiar with cultural anthropology (the fact that wicca is, or isn't real, really isn't going to help you understand Wiccans), or ethnomethodology, but perhaps unfamiliar if you're a computer scientist, or physicist. Basically Ethnomethodological indifference applied to the study of scientific practices rather than cultural ones (or treating scientific practices as cultural practices, sort of).
The student patiently explained to me that I was making an elementary category error: that since scientific facts are socially constructed, Darwin's questions can only be understood within the historical social context that he asked them, and it makes no sense to impose a modern interpretation.
Well from one perspective he's right and you're wrong. If you're a historian interested in how Darwin developed his ideas and where they came from, you have indeed made a pretty basic category error. If on the other hand you're interested in the science of evolution, why are you reading Darwin? If on the other hand you're editing a book for a popular audience, you might throw it in as an interesting foot note.
When I was doing my MA I read Bhaskar and Schutz, and became convinced that a fusion of critical realism and social phenomenology was desirable and possible. Wish I'd stuck with it really - it'd make the Darwin story a lot easier to talk about.
ReplyDeleteDarwin was making a statement about what we can loosely call the Real World (the world understood as existing prior to discourse, knowledge of which can be constructed with a reliable degree of replicability through a particular set of methods), and as such he was speaking the language in which statements about the Real World were made in his place and time. We don't speak that language any more, so the student was right. We do still go around making statements about the Real World, or rather about the construction of the Real World which we can call our Known Real World. Moreover, our KRW has a lot of phenomena capable of explanation in common with Darwin's, including deafness in white cats (but not, for example, physiological similarity between long-married couples). More fundamentally, both our KRW and Darwin's are characterised by phenomena which can be explained more or less correctly, so a footnote about 'gemmules' would have some explanatory value. On that basis, the student was wrong - unless [s]he could make the case that no layperson is going to look to Darwin for answers. But, short of the most scholarly publication (the earthworm study?) that seems a bit unlikely.
This relates to my worry about Foucault and people who emulate him (e.g. Ulrich Beck and David Garland): genealogies of the present may be interesting & useful façons de parler about the present, but they're also statements about the past. And as such they're unreliable, in more ways than one. John Braithwaite on Foucault:
Foucault is not interested in those branches of his genealogy that die out before the present. An example in his penal history is transportation of convicts. ... Foucault actually says that England abandoned transportation ‘at the beginning of the nineteenth century’ (1977: 272). Transportation to Australia was not abandoned until 1868 and continued to Gibraltar (where 9000 were shipped) until 1875. There was more transportation to Australia in the second third of the 19th century than in the first. Worse, Foucault was an appalling historian of the past of his own country in this regard. Tocqueville after returning from the USA failed to persuade his countrymen of the virtues of American penitentiaries and French transportation continued to 1938, albeit at lower volume and with less colonial success than English transportation. Foucault gets the history of the past so badly wrong because he wants to write it to lead to his big fact about the history of the present — the ascendancy of the prison.
...
So my first problem with the history of the present is that myopic interest in the present induces the error of getting the past wrong. This matters because criminologists actually go to scholars like Michel Foucault and David Garland in search of an understanding of the past.
Also:
A second problem is that the history of the present conduces to getting the present wrong. We do not understand the present as well when we saw off those parts of the genealogy that in the past branched off from the phenomenon we study in the present.
No rescuing from the enormous condescension of posterity for these guys.
On that basis, the student was wrong - unless [s]he could make the case that no layperson is going to look to Darwin for answers.
ReplyDeleteBut this is the point in these discussions where I think that all you really need to do is return to the pragmatists. The student is wrong, and Gareth is wrong; because neither of them are asking the right question. What are we going to do with this information. If you're studying the history of Darwin's thought, modern evolution is not relevant. Just as, if you're constructing a car Newtonian mechanics is true. And actually Gareth's approach is wrong on all scores, but because casual readers aren't going to read the footnotes. He's so hung up on "what is truth", that he's lost sight of the target. A pragmatist would ask, how can we teach people who insist upon reading Darwin about modern evolution (or at least prevent them from learning something outdated) and start from there (inserts in the text I'm guessing. Plus pictures).
Phil,
ReplyDeleteI think you'd have struggled with that project. I've always seen Critical Realism as a baby step towards what Husserl was getting at, and I think the phenomenological attitude is so heavily embedded in Schutz's work, that the only way they could be fused (imho) is by basically making CR phenomenological in approach.
Apologies for any confusion - "The Golem" was by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch. Cliff Richard, as far as I'm aware, has never entered into the sociology of scientific knowledge debate.
ReplyDeleteCian - never got to Husserl, so not sure about that. But it would basically have been about saturating CR with Schutz and seeing if the world looked any different - "When I say that I know that this method produces true knowledge, I mean that I am satisfied that this method (as I have learnt it) produces knowledge which satisfies the relevant tests for what I consider truth, in my situation as a member of the setting in which I find myself. On the other hand, as a member of the setting in which I find myself, I am satisfied with all the above and hence can state without qualification that I know this method produces true knowledge".
ReplyDeletePower would have been the interesting part; a hermeneutics of power would have been involved. Schutz -> Dewey -> Merleau-Ponty -> Bourdieu -> profit! or rather -> Bhaskar. I would have challenged Foucault along the way, too, which would have been fun. I think it would have involved reading far too much Bhaskar, though - I only really enjoyed his take-down of Rorty (who really wasn't a Pragmatist, if Dewey was one).
Cian: I'm not saying that the rhetorical flights of fancy in this part of Science in Action invalidate the rest of Latour's work, just that on this particular point he was over-reaching, and Sokal and Bricmont were entirely fair to criticize him for it.
ReplyDeleteWell from one perspective he's right and you're wrong. If you're a historian interested in how Darwin developed his ideas and where they came from, you have indeed made a pretty basic category error.
If the historical context were the only thing one could legitimately be interested in, then it would indeed be anachronistic to bring in modern discoveries. But I don't see why it's illegitimate to be interested in both the historical and the scientific content of The Origin of Species.
I'm not suggesting that anyone should read The Origin of Species to learn about modern evolution (that would be absurd) but rather that linking Darwin's questions and speculation with the modern evidence is just as a legitimate a scholarly project as the examination of the historical context of the discovery.
Gareth's approach is wrong on all scores. He's so hung up on "what is truth", that he's lost sight of the target.
Cian, I'd appreciate it if you could lay off this kind of rhetoric. It's possible to think that Latour was wrong on this particular point without being some kind of idiotic scientific triumphalist.
I'm sorry my rhetoric offended you Gareth. I didn't mean it that way, its just a common problem I find in communicating with Computer Scientists (trained as one, moved into HCI) is that they have a tendency to think in terms of objective truth (or at least to think such a thing is a useful thing to aspire to). Which is actually pretty unhelpful when you're trying to design systems usable by human beings. Relativism is a far more useful starting point. If my user thinks that a heating system is run by little elves who have to appeased by little sacrifices - really, who am I to argue.
ReplyDeleteGareth, when I read Sokal's book I went and checked the offending passage and I my interpretation of it was completely different to theirs. I didn't think their criticism was fair, as just completely misplaced. They had misunderstood the point that he was making. Not having the book to hand, I can't easily go back and check the passage. So I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this point.
But I don't see why it's illegitimate to be interested in both the historical and the scientific content of The Origin of Species.
It isn't necessarily. But if you want to understand the trajectory of Darwin's thought at best its unhelpful, at worst its going to mislead you. It all really comes down to what you're trying to achieve. if on the other hand you're not a professional historian, but just an interested layman, other approaches might be far more appropriate.
I think that the trouble with putting modern scientific footnotes into TOoS would be that modern scientists would not be able to resist retrospectively recruiting Darwin for their side in modern controversies. The Gould/Dawkins wars were absolutely rife with this.
ReplyDeleteThere might be any number of good reasons for not putting such footnotes into an edition. It might be too difficult, or too expensive, or the target readership mostly consists of historians. Those would all be fine reasons for not doing it. What I object to is simply the idea that it's a category error.
ReplyDeleteI also find something a bit unsatisfactory about the idea that the trajectory of Darwin's thought can be an unproblematic subject, whereas the cause of deafness in white cats is something that can only be considered relative to a historical context.
But really my anecdote about the Darwin Correspondence Project was only meant to back up my suggestion that Latour may well have meant what he said in Science in Action.
(The student was also rather condescending about my being a computer programmer—he said that it was only natural that I should believe in objective facts, because my salary depended on it.)
Yeah but you were asking a PhD student about his area of research. You're complaining that you didn't get a nuanced response that considered all perspectives, but instead was focused on his narrow research perspective. From his narrow perspective its a category error.
ReplyDeleteI also find something a bit unsatisfactory about the idea that the trajectory of Darwin's thought can be an unproblematic subject, whereas the cause of deafness in white cats is something that can only be considered relative to a historical context.
Sorry you've lost me. Who is arguing this?
Latour probably did mean what he said in Science in Action. I don't think he meant what you think he meant.
You're complaining that you didn't get a nuanced response that considered all perspectives, but instead was focused on his narrow research perspective.
ReplyDeleteIf that was all he meant, then that would be fine, but you will have to trust me that that's not a plausible interpretation. We did go into some detail about the subject, and discussed whether methodological relativism or epistemological relativism was an appropriate position to take vis-a-vis Darwin. He was very clear that his position was one of strong epistemological relativism.
Now of course it's just an anecdote, and at fifteen years' distance it's not going to stand up to cross-examination. After all, maybe he was just bullshitting me and didn't really mean what he said.
Well it could be lots of things, that's the trouble with anecdotes. I mean I'm open to the possibility he was an idiot; its just the way you presented it, it was actually a pretty reasonable methodological stance for doing historical enquiry. In a way though, the test is whether he was any good as a historian of science. I'm kind of relaxed about people thinking silly things about things they have little influence over, if only because in my experience most academics are alarmingly likely to believe silly things once they move outside their area of expertise.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I'm reminded of a misunderstanding I had years ago. Some guy (forget who, but not one of the STS guys. Possibly Edinburg school - this was long before I knew about such things) said there was no such thing as gravity, that it was just a theory, at a talk.
Cue consternation, bad tempered argument. Then someone asked him why he didn't just throw himself out of a window. He looked at them perplexed. Turned out he meant the theory of gravitation, and the whole analytical framework. He wasn't disputing the observations; just that the theory was an objectively real thing. They thought he meant, objects falling to the ground, etc, etc. There was a long pause.
Many years later I reckon most of the science wars can be explained by misunderstandings of this type (much of the rest due to the fact that it turned really nasty, and that a couple of people, Latour included, experienced scientists do their best to sabotage their careers).
Does anyone think that the theory of gravitation is anything but a theory? Does the fact that it's a theory in some way undermine the fact that it's the theory with the best fit to observations, or vice versa?
ReplyDeleteWell no that was the point. he wasn't arguing anything other than that, he just said it in such a way that the scientists, or positivists, or whatever they were in the room (I was about 16/17. It was some kind of public science thing done by the local uni) figured he meant gravity wasn't real (can't remember the exact phrase he used).
ReplyDeleteA lot of the Science Wars were kind of like that. The problem was that they used different jargon, and had different perspectives on stuff.
And yeah, I've never quite seen the point of Foucault either. I'm not sure DSquared's defence really works for me either, as I despise thought experiments. Empiricism people - get out of the bloody Ivory tower.
Arggh. I mean meant that the phenomenon so described wasn't real.
ReplyDelete