Balkinization  

Monday, August 15, 2005

Don't Dis the Enlightenment

JB

Chris Mooney notes that the Bush Administration's tendency to play fast and loose with science is a far greater threat to science than fashionable academic arguments about social construction. If anything, the recent political attacks on science have been a wakeup call for the humanities, far more important, I would argue, that Alan Sokal's famous practical joke at the expense of Social Text. The humanities, Mooney argues, have come to understand that they and the sciences are engaged in a common pursuit of reason. It's about time.

When I was writing about postmodernism in law early in my career, it always struck me as somewhat ridiculous that one would oppose either postmodernism or deconstruction to reason and reasoned argument. What in the world was one doing as an academic, I thought, if not trying to promote enlightenment and understanding through the best available arguments? The academy is a learned profession, after all. If academics aren't interested in the pursuit of truth, in the increase of knowledge, and in the development of expertise, they are in the wrong profession. And despite the bad press that academics regularly receive in the popular press, most academics I know understand themselves to be devoted to truth, enlightenment and the spread of knowledge. That's why they got into this business in the first place. They disagree heatedly about what the truth is; they also disagree about the effects the truth has; but that's not the same thing as being opposed to it.


Comments:

I'd have to second parts of that first comment by ecs. But the part of JB's essay that I must vehemently disagree with is the implicit identification of intelligent design / creationism with the humanities or that the humanities are where one engages in such fuzzy thinking. No, intelligent design is taking place in the sciences and in politics. Philosophy -- as a member of the humanities and mother of the sciences -- dispelled of the medieval creationist argument long ago, prior to the existence of Newton and modern science. Intelligent design today is a political matter, which shows science to be politically fragile. There is good reason to fret.

There are indeed poor thinkers in the humanities just as there are in the sciences. But there are also often far better thinkers in the humanities in the name of experimentalist science than there are among scientists who go dogmatic on us. Please don't make the scientistic error.

TH, Phronesisaical http://phronesisaical.blogspot.com/
 

I really want to see what I like to refer to as "the new enligthenment". One where art, music, politics, expression, philosophy, and love for knowledge and thought is everywhere.

Creating new think tanks is a great first step. And getting young people involved is a must too.
 

There must be thousands of ways to judge a person but only reason not, to know him better.
Agen Judi Online Terpercaya
 

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