postmodern methods

[gepr]

Because I failed to precisely satisfy what I inferred from EricS's post [†], I've engaged in a little self-criticism regarding what I thought when Dave wrote the phrase "postmodern methods". My intro to postmodernism was from Umberto Eco, who circumscribed postmodernism nicely in the following 2 links:

  https://alittlefish.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/umberto-ecos-definition-of-postmodernism/
  https://artsfuse.org/141261/fuse-interview-a-talk-about-postmodernism-with-umberto-eco/

Then Feyerabend's Against Method convinced me that any claims to Truth are suspicious at best. Further, any claims to any kind of One True Method are similarly suspicious. (We all know there is no The Scientific Method... but we can't help our tendency to Grand Unified Models and even the best of us slip and refer to science as if it has a singular method.)

In any case, I came across this document (preserved by our friend Cosma [‡]):

  http://bactra.org/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

And I find myself in complete agreement with Chomsky's distrust ... but not his dismissive stance, assuming it really is written by him. It seems like much of his complaint could be mitigated if we think of post[modern|structural] hooha as "method" instead of "theory" or "philosophy". *That's* what was triggered in my head when Dave wrote "postmodern methods". I then traded "method" for "analytics" in classifying world-interaction as power vs. truth analytics. Subconsciously, I think I can't/shouldn't call what little I know of post[modern|structural] ways of cutting up the world as "method" at all. (Though this book <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14618961-the-transformative-humanities> challenges that conclusion to an extent, in spite of Epstein's apparent disappointment with postmodernism.)

So, y'all have, again, helped me be a little more judicious with my language. Thanks very much! And Happy New Year!



[†] A plea for (some, any hint of a) constructive/generative and scalably testable framework for interacting with the world, put forth by a *postmodernist* pragmatist. If it wasn't clear, Rescher's *not* a postmodernist.

[‡] Cosma's got a *lot* of content related to postmodernism. I'm not smart enough to parse out just *how* disapproving he is of it all, though. 8^) Maybe he's mostly rubber-necking. It's difficult to pull your eyes off horrible catastrophe.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

For what it's worth, Cosma Shalizi once wrote in a paper, "Wimberly et al. raise an important issue...", which had to do with lack of sychronization of cells in a sample when trying to apply algorithms to infer genetic regulatory net works.

As for whether science offers a monolithic royal road to the truth:  I earned an MS in psychology during  the confusion of my youth and I've studied enough physics (e.g. Symon) to realize that those two disciplines share very little methodologically.

Frank

On Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 11:36 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

Because I failed to precisely satisfy what I inferred from EricS's post [†], I've engaged in a little self-criticism regarding what I thought when Dave wrote the phrase "postmodern methods". My intro to postmodernism was from Umberto Eco, who circumscribed postmodernism nicely in the following 2 links:

  https://alittlefish.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/umberto-ecos-definition-of-postmodernism/
  https://artsfuse.org/141261/fuse-interview-a-talk-about-postmodernism-with-umberto-eco/

Then Feyerabend's Against Method convinced me that any claims to Truth are suspicious at best. Further, any claims to any kind of One True Method are similarly suspicious. (We all know there is no The Scientific Method... but we can't help our tendency to Grand Unified Models and even the best of us slip and refer to science as if it has a singular method.)

In any case, I came across this document (preserved by our friend Cosma [‡]):

  http://bactra.org/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

And I find myself in complete agreement with Chomsky's distrust ... but not his dismissive stance, assuming it really is written by him. It seems like much of his complaint could be mitigated if we think of post[modern|structural] hooha as "method" instead of "theory" or "philosophy". *That's* what was triggered in my head when Dave wrote "postmodern methods". I then traded "method" for "analytics" in classifying world-interaction as power vs. truth analytics. Subconsciously, I think I can't/shouldn't call what little I know of post[modern|structural] ways of cutting up the world as "method" at all. (Though this book <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14618961-the-transformative-humanities> challenges that conclusion to an extent, in spite of Epstein's apparent disappointment with postmodernism.)

So, y'all have, again, helped me be a little more judicious with my language. Thanks very much! And Happy New Year!



[†] A plea for (some, any hint of a) constructive/generative and scalably testable framework for interacting with the world, put forth by a *postmodernist* pragmatist. If it wasn't clear, Rescher's *not* a postmodernist.

[‡] Cosma's got a *lot* of content related to postmodernism. I'm not smart enough to parse out just *how* disapproving he is of it all, though. 8^) Maybe he's mostly rubber-necking. It's difficult to pull your eyes off horrible catastrophe.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove