This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Science is Wrong: From YKTTW
Okay, this is the first trope I've launched. And the page is probably brutal. Hopefully some of you can assist me in this. Thanks!
Jethro Q Walrustitty: Can someone tell me why exactly Judith Butler is listed? Also, post-modernists?
- Rejecting all meta-narratives (like science) as subjective/relative and political is a popular trope amongst the academic variety of post-modernists - a critical distinction to make from the general creative populace of the post-modern era. If you've never seen this, well, I have nothing to say. Look for Derrida's writing on the subject, or Baudrillard's dismissal of ecological/environmental sciences. Butler believes everything is an arbitrary function of language. See Gender Trouble. There is no gonad.
- [Raskolnikov]The above claim seems flawed, along with the wider inclusion of Butler and post-modernists on this list. It seems to heavily misinterpret their claims to read "deconstruct" as "reject" with regards to science, modernity, etc. For a direct case, from Judith Butler's Excitable Speech, pages 162-3. "To question a term, a term like 'the subject' or 'universality' is to ask how it plays, what investments it bears, what aims it achieves, what alterations it undergoes. The changeable life of that term does not preclude the possibility of its use. If a term becomes questionable, does that mean it cannot be used any longer, and that we can only use terms that we already know how to master?"
C Trombley: Cut Kuhn out of the list of philosophers who are anti-science. Though two different paradigms are incommensurable, this has nothing to do with one being right or wrong. It is impossible to build relativity out of an Aristotlean physics, and realativity is right and Aristotle is wrong. This is a common mistake about Kuhn's philosophy.
UT: I just cut the beginnings of a mainpage conversation on H.P. Lovecraft. I'm leaning to cutting the Lovecraft example all-together, as well. This debate was played out in the original YKTTW by the looks of it, and to be honest, I'm not really convinced by the not anti-science side's arguments. Most of them rely on his extra-canon comments and suspiciously avoid talking about the utter failings of rationality in possibly everything he's ever written. Ever.
Goliathus:... And I just cut v2.0 of the above. No mainpage conversations! Please debate the examples in the discussion and not with faintly-covered justifying edits on the main. Starting an edit with "Although..." is pretty much exactly the same as saying "Actually...", which is forbidden, especially since both begin justifying convo's. No. Just... No. Here's what I cut:
- Although in Lovecraft's case, it's not so much that science is wrong as there are things out there beyond the scope of human understanding.
Also, last time I checked, science was part of "human understanding"...
Pastafarian: What is "DWEM"? Please don't use unexplained acronyms like that.
- Apologies. DWEM = Dead White European Men
Caswin: "J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis would be more straight examples of the trope. Considering that they saw some of the worst that science is to offer, their views were somewhat understandable." I'm... thoroughly confused. What is this entry talking about?
Caswin: Based on my experience with these two authors, I don't remember a thing about not trusting science. Deleted.
Myrmidon: This article seems kind of preachy with all the links and whatnot. Shouldn't we just let the examples speak for themselves?
