Date: 12 Apr 2000 08:45:24 -0000
From: "Ben Blumson" <tweque-AT-chek.com>
Subject: Re:  Re: Re: Re: Chomsky on A16 Anarchists...


>Sorry Steven, I don't know what your major is (I'm guessing that's why 
>you're defending jargon), but most of the time, PARTICULARLY in the 
>pseudo-sciences (politics, history, sociology, and more than the rest of 
>them combined - philosophy),

pseudo-sciences? This is an interesting bit of jargon to use (hard to avoid aren't they) for the humanities. Just wondering if your using it to mean that humanities are like imitation science - trying to imitate the success of the physical sciences, or something else? Confused and needing clarity :)

>jargon is really there to cover up the fact 
>that the writer is talking out of his ass and would rather not let the 
>audience in on that fact (if he realizes it himself). 

Sometimes so but Jargon does have a purpose - to get across the precise meaning of something without ambiguity. The general guideline in philosophy (my major) is to avoid using jargon when one can use an 'ordinary' word but to be more specific when the ordinary words have become ambigous.

Of course this is all ignored in my logic subject - which is full of modus ponens, sufficient and nescesary conditions, negative & positive evaluative terms, explicit performatives and so on - this seems largely an attempt to make the subject seem more profound.

>Real scientists who 
>have also mastered the surrounding dialect (say English) have little 
>trouble explaining even the most complicated ideas to lay people (here I'm 
>thinking Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, James Gleick, etc.).   I think it 
>was Kurt Vonnegut who anyone who can't explain what they do to a seven year 
>old doesn't understand it themselves, and I'd say that goes for what they 
>believe as well.
>
>don't get me wrong, the world is a complicated place, but where it can be 
>described at all, it can be described using a minimum of bullshit words.

Science seems to me notoriusly unclear no matter what language is used to describe it - it seems to be full of a different method for every different operation or sub topic with lots of unclarity and confusion inbetween. I guess i'm thinking of physics here which i learnt at school - of course this impression may just be from my teacher and every text book i've ever read.
cheers,
Ben


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