Richard Dawkins and Postmodernism

"There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out"
http://richarddawkins.net/


Read further criticism here:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html

...also from Noam Chomsky:
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Opinion_on_cultural_criticism_of_sc...

...Dan Dennett:
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/postmod.tru.htm

...Steven Weinberg:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/weinberg.html

...Victor J Stenger:
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/reality.html

...PZ Myers (sweeping remarks):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1Rzd3r3Mvc

...Michael Baum (6 videos, sweeping remarks):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grWfxsFWOFI&feature=PlayList&p=13C076E...

...and Steven Pinker (sweeping remarks):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQHSKLXu2c&feature=channel_page

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The most damning criticism has come from Alan Sokal:
http://www.amazon.com/Fashionable-Nonsense-Postmodern-Intellectuals-Science/d...
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Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology#Criticisms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism

"Gravity's not a version of the truth, it IS the truth - anybody who doubts it is invited to jump out of a tenth floor window"

This is a sample from an excellent series filmed for British TV called "The Genius of Charles Darwin", which can be seen in its entirety here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YzS32RfHMY&feature=PlayList&p=77F8CE2...

The philosophy of science (or epistemology - how we 'know' what we know) expounded beautifully by AronRa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80nhqGfN6t8

Category:

Education

Tags:

• richard
• dawkins
• postmodernism
• relativism
• atheism
• hitchens
• sokal

[HappyWithWhatsThere]

"Science works....the evidence supports it" This is Rorty's point. I wonder if Dawkins knows anything about [neo] pragmatism (Harris obviously doesn't).

[AdmiralPrice]

woah, woah, woah. He's tracing Postmodernism to the CHURCH OF ENGLAND?! Does this guy even do research for his stuff?

[cikuuzis]

Science is great as long as it is used as a tool to cure diseases, to ease daily tasks, to create platforms of information exchange - no sociologist or postmodern critic can do it. But when science is trying to mess with ontology and turning its positivistic method in to the worldview, then there can be ethical problems. So basically we are talking about two different domains - one is for scientists (material phenomena) and other for philosophers, sociologists, historians etc (culture).

[datasoluble]

I think it's just disappointment with the products of reason and science.

[cikuuzis]

@KrugmanTheKing On more thing - so you are saying that sociology, history, political sciences are legitimate sources of knowledge, right? But it is clear that they are not scientific in the sense like physics, or chemistry is. These disciplines are having different approaches (interpretative, semiological, historical) to their subjects than that of scientific method - so it seems that you admit that scientific knowledge is not the only form - is that so?

[cikuuzis]

@KrugmanTheKing I absolutely agree that people should look for an answers in those fields you named. But religion in a way is a symbolic generalization of the most common human themes - "do not kill", "love thy neighbor", "frogive etc." - it is a simplified manual how to be a human - an important one for sustaining social coherence as there is a lot of simple minded people who can not grasp rational moral philosophies and similar abstract things so this is a good way how to socialize them.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@cikuuzis

The point is that you could in term use something else to play the same role and it would at least have the virtue of not being presumptuous and fallacious.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@cikuuzis

They're basically wasting energy, hope, efforts and thoughts into reasoning a problem in a utterly inefficient way that won't grant any result -- and if and when it does, it won't be for that means they used at all... but they could so easily solve these if they'd understand psychology a tad, or sociology, or history, or political science, etc.

Religions and the likes are systems based on determined answers: they don't allow revision, nor doubt.

[KrugmanTheKing]

@cikuuzis

Finally, those dumb beliefs all make claims about factual, empirical, reality. When you tell people to resort to prayer when they have issues or, going into other beliefs, get them to suppose that astrological signs have an impact in their lives... what are you essentially doing? You're essentially telling them that there is a causal relation between two things and that if they use this one means, they will meet their end. But we know after inquiry that the relation is flawed...

[KrugmanTheKing]

@cikuuzis

Religion is a thoughtless arbitrary answer... Science isn't an answer: it's a method. When we're wrong, we stop making dumb claims about human nature or the physical world. How can you not see that there can be absolutely no exception to rational inquiry, that at the very second you make the exception, you introduce a double standard, you stop doubting and you become an intellectual slave? Faith is to surrender your judgement: that's not knowledge.