File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2000/anarchy-list.0004, message 416


Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 04:26:29 -0500
From: Sandi & Scott Spaeth <vespass-AT-toast.net>
Subject: Re: Chomsky on A16 Anarchists...


At 08:45 AM 4/12/00 +0000, Ben Blumson wrote:

>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 :)

I think the word pseudo is common enough, certainly concise enough.  and 
yeah, it was a dig at how the humanities (where the majority of my 
interests lie) are often passed off as the real deal.



>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.
>

Oh yeah?  Defend the words post-modernism and deconstructionism. ;)  I see 
what you're saying, but the gripe isn't against words I don't already know, 
but rather words that are likely unknown AND which are not more precise 
than words the intended audience is familiar with; words that are 
frequently used to make the user seem smarter and better informed than the 
audience - William F. Buckley (that piece of shit) comes to mind here.


>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.

I think pseudo-profundity is more common than intellectual workers would 
care to admit.  Perhaps they should eschew obfuscation and elucidate.


>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.

Must have been the teacher.  I understand what you're getting at though, 
models which were originally created to simplify reality so it could be 
understood get weirder and weirder as reality gets better understood, and 
you end up with colored quarks and particles with spins of one half, and 
the closer you try to get the language to the math, the worse it gets, BUT 
when you back up to describe the system of quarks making up other 
particles, it can be stated in simple concrete terms (with the 
understanding that those terms are a model and not the thing-in-itself - 
ack, now I'm doing it too).

Have I gone far enough off topic yet?  All this from old Noam's habit of 
not making strong personal statements and his writing often being 
emotionally detached.

cheers,
scott
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