[FRIAM] postmodern methods
Frank Wimberly
wimberly3 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 30 14:02:05 EST 2019
For what it's worth, Cosma Shalizi once wrote in a paper, "Wimberly et al.
raise an important issue...", which had to do with lack of sychronization
of cells in a sample when trying to apply algorithms to infer genetic
regulatory net works.
As for whether science offers a monolithic royal road to the truth: I
earned an MS in psychology during the confusion of my youth and I've
studied enough physics (e.g. Symon) to realize that those two disciplines
share very little methodologically.
Frank
-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly
My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly
My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
Phone (505) 670-9918
On Mon, Dec 30, 2019, 11:36 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
> Because I failed to precisely satisfy what I inferred from EricS's post
> [†], I've engaged in a little self-criticism regarding what I thought when
> Dave wrote the phrase "postmodern methods". My intro to postmodernism was
> from Umberto Eco, who circumscribed postmodernism nicely in the following 2
> links:
>
>
> https://alittlefish.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/umberto-ecos-definition-of-postmodernism/
>
> https://artsfuse.org/141261/fuse-interview-a-talk-about-postmodernism-with-umberto-eco/
>
> Then Feyerabend's Against Method convinced me that any claims to Truth are
> suspicious at best. Further, any claims to any kind of One True Method are
> similarly suspicious. (We all know there is no The Scientific Method... but
> we can't help our tendency to Grand Unified Models and even the best of us
> slip and refer to science as if it has a singular method.)
>
> In any case, I came across this document (preserved by our friend Cosma
> [‡]):
>
> http://bactra.org/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html
>
> And I find myself in complete agreement with Chomsky's distrust ... but
> not his dismissive stance, assuming it really is written by him. It seems
> like much of his complaint could be mitigated if we think of
> post[modern|structural] hooha as "method" instead of "theory" or
> "philosophy". *That's* what was triggered in my head when Dave wrote
> "postmodern methods". I then traded "method" for "analytics" in classifying
> world-interaction as power vs. truth analytics. Subconsciously, I think I
> can't/shouldn't call what little I know of post[modern|structural] ways of
> cutting up the world as "method" at all. (Though this book <
> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14618961-the-transformative-humanities>
> challenges that conclusion to an extent, in spite of Epstein's apparent
> disappointment with postmodernism.)
>
> So, y'all have, again, helped me be a little more judicious with my
> language. Thanks very much! And Happy New Year!
>
>
>
> [†] A plea for (some, any hint of a) constructive/generative and scalably
> testable framework for interacting with the world, put forth by a
> *postmodernist* pragmatist. If it wasn't clear, Rescher's *not* a
> postmodernist.
>
> [‡] Cosma's got a *lot* of content related to postmodernism. I'm not smart
> enough to parse out just *how* disapproving he is of it all, though. 8^)
> Maybe he's mostly rubber-necking. It's difficult to pull your eyes off
> horrible catastrophe.
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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