Don't Dis the Enlightenment

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.