File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9811, message 8


Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 07:56:59 -0500
From: "Smith, Donald S" <Donald.S.Smith-AT-usa.xerox.com>
Subject: RE: PMC: What is Postmodernism? A Demand


> Sadeq,
> you asked,
> >
> >       I have questions regarding the idea that  "[science] produces a
> >discourse of legitimation with respect to its own status, a discourse
> >called philosophy" (p. xxiii).

I think Lyotard meant that when science attempts to use observation to
"prove" truth rather than just to provide utilitarian guidelines (or in
Lyotard's words, "useful regularities"), it necessarily employs metaphysics,
a branch of philosophy, to legitimate its claims. Of course it does not do
so overtly as that would undermine its claims as truth based. This
"legitimation" of science as truth is so pervasive that it has entered the
realm of common sense for the average person. Through a metanarrative of its
own called positivism, science claims that "positive knowledge is based on
natural phenomenon... as verified by observation" - Webster) and further
that this positive knowledge is absolute truth.

Events over the last decade in the scientific world such as the shift from
Newtonian physics to quantum physics have shown that what was once thought
to be absolute knowledge is only transitory. This has undermined scientific
truth claims and shown science to be just another, if very useful,
metaphysics.

The poststructuralist Challenge of the metanarrative of science as truth and
its resultant role in determining modern culture has been one of the most
important postmodern shifts. I think that's why Lyotard mentioned it so
early in his introduction.

Don

   

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