[FRIAM] "Saving Social Constructionism

[Nick Thompson]

David Sloan Wilson's evolution institute has weighed in on the implications
of those phony papers that were published in social science journals.

 

https://evolution-institute.org/saving-social-constructivism/

 

Here, FWIW, was my contribution:

 

The problem we are having in academia relates to a schism that occurred in
American Pragmatism between that based on the ordinary language use of the
word, pragmatic, and that based on the rigorous scientific PRACTICE of 19th
Century chemists sponsored by Charles Peirce, which Peirce himself
ultimately called PRAGMATICISM. In the 1950's, in the Eisenhower years, we
shared a Deweyan consensus about Truth and Democracy which the last 60 years
has served to tear down. That consensus, regrettably, arose in part because
of the powerful negative examples of the Nazi's and the Soviets. Absent
these totalitarian examples to oppose, we are becoming them. Society cannot
precede without some common faith in rules of engagement, both intellectual
and governmental, that lead to the truth. Over my lifetime, we have seen the
erosion of institutions (eg,the Departmental Colloquium, the real oral
defense? The dreaded Outside Member?) designed to check faddism in
scientific research. For those among you who think that the history of
scientific thought has something to do with its present problems, I strongly
recommend reading some of Peirce's work. It's not easy going, and it is
given, unfortunately, to the very vicissitudes of interpretation that Peirce
would have deplored. But in this day when we have lost faith that there is a
truth of any matter, or if there is, that we will ever share it, Peirce's
faith in the convergence of opinion through rigorous research by community
of inquiry is wonderfully bracing.

 

 

Is it possible that in FRIAM we have the model of the New Academia?  

 

N

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

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