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How To Deconstruct Almost Anything (1993)

220 points by didgeoridoo 13y ago

anaphor 13y ago
Related: http://stfucontinentals.tumblr.com/ http://stfucontinentals.tumblr.com/
- bcoates 13y ago
  If the question of what it's like to be a plant is the most egregiously pointless thing a school of philosophy has ever considered, I'd say they're doing pretty good. Apparently the book being reviewed isn't terribly good -- maybe it needs to be approached from the direction of fiction, like Watership Down but with plants.
  - derleth 13y ago
    I'm a p-zombie. When is anyone going to write a book about what it's like to be me?
zwischenzug 13y ago
Anyone interested in the arts vs sciences debate should read this fantastic book as well as that fantastic article: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intellectual-Impostures-Jean-Bricmont/dp/1861976313 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intellectual-Impostures-Jean-Bricmon... I've studied history, art history and computing science at graduate level, and have to say I agree 100% with this engineer's statement: "The quality of the actual analysis of various literary works varies tremendously and must be judged on a case-by-case basis, but I find most of it highly questionable. Buried in the muck, however, are a set of important and interesting ideas [...]" As a trolling aside, I found the computing science degree far easier than the arts ones...
- vixen99 13y ago
  Sorry about a'me too' but I'd like to second that suggestion because it is indeed a shocking revelation of the nonsense some people have peddled.
- dvanduzer 13y ago
  Difficulty in earning a degree is usually a function of program, and not necessarily institution.
- voyou 13y ago
  I'm not convinced a book in which two scientists attempt to polemicise against humanities academics not understanding science, and end up demonstrating that they don't understand a number of authors in the humanities, is a particularly useful contribution to a discussion of the relationship between the arts and the sciences.
  - zwischenzug 13y ago
    Any evidence for your statement? This seems to be the opposite of the book's spirit. What's interesting is the authors they leave alone...
- anaphor 13y ago
  This one is pretty good too: http://www.amazon.ca/The-Social-Construction-What-Hacking/dp/0674004124 http://www.amazon.ca/The-Social-Construction-What-Hacking/dp... Ian Hacking has some engineering cred too given that he's written several great books about statistics that don't skimp on the math too much.
- slurry 13y ago
  That book is essentially worthless. Its methodology is to read through philosophers and literary critics, find places where they talk about science, evaluate whether they talk about science accurately, and when they do not, to dismiss their work. Picking out bad analogies and inapposite asides is not a good use of anyone's time.
  - zwischenzug 13y ago
    You're wrong. Again, the book deals with this point directly. - "Their talk" of science is not merely inaccurate, it is _disingenuous_ - This disingenuousness raises questions about the authors' sincerity (which the authors of Intellectual Impostures are at pains to limit to the scientific areas, but could well be extended) - They do not "dismiss the work" of the authors - They are at pains to try and work out what the authors might have meant (including unpicking "bad analogies" or "inappropriate asides". Once again I'm required to ask for evidence of this from someone likely not to have actually read the book closely.
    - slurry 13y ago
      I'd be happy to amend "inaccurate" to "disingenuous" and "dismiss the work" to "try and work out what the authors might have meant [and then dismiss]". I don't at all mind making those semantic adjustments. But the point still stands, as you put it, that "the authors of Intellectual Impostures are at pains to limit [their inquiry] to the scientific areas." What is the use of that? I mean, sure, it's fine for the Bruno Latour chapter, because Latour's work is actually on science. But what's the point of demonstrating that Irigaray mangles fluid mechanics and Lacan mangles topology, in books that aren't about fluid mechanics or topology? Who cares? Pointing it out isn't wrong per se. But it also, despite Bricmont's extensive handwaving, doesn't prove anything worthwhile.
      - zwischenzug 13y ago
        Because they use their supposed knowledge of maths (in Lacan's case) to intimidate the reader into thinking they're saying something profound, and that it's based on an understanding of mathematics. This is not my supposition. I had these very arguments with literary theorists at university. They preferred to believe Lacan's mathematical credentials over mine.
dvanduzer 13y ago
"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." -- Donald Norman """ Engineers get paid for not being wrong.
rmk2 13y ago
Using deconstruction as a method is stupid, and misses the point entirely. At the same time, this article makes me simultaneously mad and sad, though I am sure it will serve to reinforce preexisting biases just fine, especially here. Using deconstruction as a method, independent and decoupled of its own genesis, does not make sense and will yield little of use. The whole point of deconstruction is to oppose another strand of Western philosophy that, depending on country, has reigned for centuries: idealism. Now, I realise it's cool to "show" how much superior and empirical engineering is, but idealism is a root of many causes. It has fundamentally shaped our ideas of the University, of statehood, nation, authorship, race and the sciences. Many of the subsequent movements, starting with Marxism, followed by Nietzsche, the New Left, and deconstruction (which, really, is called poststructuralism) are an undertaking to undo some of the damage idealist reign has caused during its reign. Deconstruction aims to undermine the very hierarchies idealist thought has errected: the nation as the culture of a given, demarkated and distinct people, university as a structure of educating state servants, authorship as the translation of Geist into matter, science as the study of matter, leading to the ultimate victory of ratio and empiricism. If people talk about advanced programming techniques without knowing anything about underlying compiler design, algorithms etc, they are ridiculed and set in their place. If people talk about history of thought without having any idea what they are talking about, they are applauded while people cheer for their (and their own) ignorance. Why is that? Deconstruction without its history is worthless. That, however, also suggests that for a history of thought, for an understanding of our present, deconstruction is indeed relevant.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- SimHacker 13y ago
  Maybe Chip's colleague Doug should write a book called: "Deconstruction: The Good Parts".
- ajani 13y ago
  There is some weight in looking at the article as being about deconstruction, what with the title saying so. However, the most important take away, I think, is the effects of isolation on any field of study: "It is a cautionary lesson about the consequences of allowing a branch of academia that has been entrusted with the study of important problems to become isolated and inbred."
pfortuny 13y ago
Interesting issue: the Sokal affair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair How to publish a lot of gibberish in one of the "important" philosophical journal. Not that this means deconstruction is 'stupid'. Only that one has to take it with a grain of salt. At least one.
- dvanduzer 13y ago
  Deconstruction is a critical technique. Your sentence "Not that this means deconstruction is 'stupid'." could be interpreted: "One has to take at least one grain of salt when certain critical techniques are used." Depending on how one reads this entire post, that may or may not be considered a charitable interpretation.
  - pfortuny 13y ago
    You got it. However, as a mere technique it may be valid. The problem is it is also used as a way to discard metaphysics as a true language.
    - dvanduzer 13y ago
      I was posting about Wittgenstein over there. "Metaphysics as a true language" does not compute. When Wittgenstein finished deconstructing the entirety of existence in his Tractatus, he reserved the last sentence to tell himself to shut up.
- Homunculiheaded 13y ago
  The Sokal affair is a lot less shocking when you realize Social Text was not peer-reviewed at the time and the article was for a special science issue of the journal. If you've ever had misfortune of having to review submission for non-major CS conferences you would know that there is an amazing amount of bullshit even in technical fields. The only thing I've found shocking about the Sokal affair, or this article (and the many others like it) is the obsession with 'proving' the humanities to be bullshit. It is an incredible and intellectually lazy pursuit of the idea that: If I don't know it, it's not worth knowing.
forkandwait 13y ago
Here is my take on deconstruction, based on an MA in anthropology from a good university and some further interest and reading: First of all, Deconstruction should be credited to Heidegger, not the French. The French of the 50s and 60s read Heidegger, stole and (further) obfuscated some good ideas, then wrote books without citing him for political reasons (he was member of the Nazi party throughout the war, in good standing at the beginning and bad standing at the end, but he never rebelled or retracted publicly -- complicated person...) Then the students and readers of these French guys think the (derivative) French guys invented the idea. There are two ideas of deconstruction I find useful. The first is basically Nietzsche, and I paraphrase it thus: Every metaphysics hides an implicit morality of the universe, and every morality hides an implicit and very down-to-earth will to power, and this will to power is a good thing and the drive of Life itself manifesting in human ideas. N's big example is Judeo-Christianity, and how by inventing a selfless morality a bunch of folks took over Western Civilization in very concrete ways. So when the Libertarians have an "objective" system that shows that markets are best in an objective way, or the counselors/ psyches have an "objective" system that shows that depth psychology is best, they are all just protecting their jobs. I extend this to our modern science loving era as: any supposedly scientific system that explains things but can't be rigorously tested just becomes wishful thinking to support the vested interests of a social group. This is basically all the social sciences, from econ to psych to anthro, and in all cases I think you can point directly to the group whose jobs or power the supposed "science" supports. (Owners in the first case, counselors who want more billable hours, locals fighting off outsider meddling, etc). And, yes I know about multivariate regression and survey data, and all I can say is what a joke. Now that I have rambled too long, idea 2: I think one of the best things about Heidegger (who is fucking brilliant if you can get through his ridiculous prose) is that he asks us to question not whether something is an X or a Y, but rather to get "meta" and start examining what makes it possible for us to go through life assigning things too ontological categories (X or Y) in the first place. Because the mechanism of ontology -- that everything has a "being", that it "is" something -- is not a given, even though it comes so naturally linguistically. Anyway, I should get on with my life now....
- gruseom 13y ago
  That's interesting, but you lost me on the connection to Heidegger and I would like to hear more specifically about what he took from Nietzsche.
JonnieCache 13y ago
The comparison to Godel is absolutely priceless. Describing the incompleteness theorem as "a cheap trick to frighten mathematicians" is hilarious as well.
networked 13y ago
Note that Chip Morningstar, the author of this essay, was a key person behind the first graphical MMO -- in 1986! The "graphical MUD" in question was called Habitat and ran on Commodore 64 computers. Access to it was provided as a pay-per-minute service by Quantum Link, which later became AOL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_%28video_game%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_%28video_game%29 Be sure also to read his and F. Randall Farmer's paper on the subject [1] and related collections of anecdotes [2][3] if you're at all interested in the history of virtual worlds. [1] http://www.crockford.com/ec/lessons.html http://www.crockford.com/ec/lessons.html [2] http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html [3] http://www.crockford.com/ec/layza.html http://www.crockford.com/ec/layza.html
jgg 13y ago
Every time an engineer writes a screed against the humanities, I feel like I'm going to break out in hives. Engineering and the sciences have, to a greater degree, been spared this isolation and genetic drift because of crass commercial necessity. Unsubstantiated bullshit. Most theoretical backbones of math and science were discovered/formalized for anything but commercial reasons. It is clear to me that the humanities are not going to emerge from the jungle on their own. I think that the task of outreach is left to those of us who retain some connection, however tenuous, to what we laughingly call reality. You could start with your own field(s), which are full of mediocre paper-pushers milling around other people's theory, publishing uninteresting observations which, as long as they are "logical" and "correct", are shit into a godawful paper that no one will ever care about or read. "A Novel Method for Applying a Trivial Modification of an Already-Known Algorithm to Some Type of Specific Data" could be the title of about 35% of the CS papers in existence.
- anaphor 13y ago
  Even if you're publishing nothing really new, you can publish something that looks at something in a slightly different way and it can be useful to some people. I agree that a lot of these papers are poorly written, but there's nothing wrong with being unoriginal, not everything has to be groundbreaking. I recommend watching Simon Peyton Jones' talk on how to write a great research paper: http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1464870 http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1464870
- icebraining 13y ago
  Unsubstantiated bullshit. Most theoretical backbones of math and science were discovered/formalized for anything but commercial reasons. How does that contradict what the author said? His argument is that any field closed over itself, over time, will tend to distance themselves from reality - obviously, the initial impetus of a field happens far too early to experience such effects.
  - jgg 13y ago
    His argument is that science and engineering haven't drifted from reality due to commercial interest. I am saying that whether or not science and engineering are tied to reality has little to do with being relevant to the commercial world.
daviddaviddavid 13y ago
Several random points (from a dev with a background in philosophy and linguistics). First, from the standpoint of intellectual history, it's probably most useful to cast conversations like this in terms of the split between analytic and continental philosophy (esp. postwar developments). The fact that he doesn't really mention the split and only talks of literary criticism is a very odd omission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy Second, I applaud the author for taking the tradition that he's poking fun at as seriously as he does. There are scads of philosophy professors who simply sneer at those from the opposing tradition. This is a shame. Third, and related to the point above, it's a breath of fresh air to read someone who can genuinely straddle the two traditions. Richard Rorty is probably the best known philosopher that this can be said for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty Fourth, anyone interested in the ideas that underpin deconstruction should take a look at Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics". It's an utterly fascinating read that forms the basis for a huge amount of work in both contemporary linguistics and postwar French Continental philosophy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics Fifth, anyone who dismisses the techniques one of the world's greatest mathematician/logicians as a "cheap trick" without so much as a winking emoticon is immediately suspect in my book. ;)
- reggieband 13y ago
  I get that the original article was a joke - a sort of academic discipline ad hominem. But in case anyone actually wants to understand why literary criticism is seen as valid, they should read Rorty as you mentioned. Here is an paper that is worth the time: http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/pdf/rorty.pdf http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/pdf/rorty.pdf It isn't on deconstruction specifically but on why literary criticism has become so important in general.
  - pdonis 13y ago
    I've read Rorty on this subject before, and the paper you linked to gives a good illustration of why, although I understand where he's coming from, I don't agree with him. He says: "Redemptive truth would not consist in theories about how things interact causally, but instead would fulfill the need that religion and philosophy have attempted to satisfy. This is the need to fit everything--every thing, person, event, idea and poem--into a single context, a context which will somehow reveal itself as natural, destined, and unique. It would be the only context that would matter for purposes of shaping our lives, because it would be the only one in which those lives appear as they truly are." He appears to think this is possible; I think it's a dangerous illusion. I don't think there is any one, single context in which our lives "appear as they truly are". Our lives are too complex for that. In fact, physics is too, although Rorty doesn't seem to realize that. He says that scientific inquiry could conceivably terminate; apparently he thinks that physicists who talk about a "theory of everything" mean that once we've found it, we won't need to do science any more. That's a dangerous illusion too. No matter how much we discover about the universe, there will always be more to discover, and that's what scientific inquiry is. Furthermore, even with the stuff we do know in science, there is always the possibility of finding new ways to look at it. Feynman once said that every theoretical physicist who is any good knows multiple theoretical representations for exactly the same physics. Each representation is useful in its own way, and no one of them reflects "the way things really are". Even putting them all together doesn't necessarily reflect "the way things really are". All of our knowledge is incomplete, even in physics. And if that's the case for physics, it's the case even more so for ourselves and our societies. We should not expect to ever be able to understand ourselves using one single context, any more than we can understand physics using one single context. And as Rorty describes it, the search for this one single context by intellectuals (which he defines, reading between the lines, as people who can afford to waste time in such pursuits because they don't have to do any productive work to make a living) is, in my opinion, a sad waste of human talents that could be put to better uses.
lbarrow 13y ago
The article totally lost me when the author called Godel's incompleteness theorem a "cheap trick" used to "frighten mathematicians". That comment makes it clear that despite his claims to the contrary, the author is very comfortable dismissing ideas that he does not understand. For this reason, I can't really trust the rest of the article.
- candeira 13y ago
  I'm fairly sure that was a joke.
  - sramsay 13y ago
    I'm not convinced of that at all. "One or two volumes is all it takes, since it's all pretty much the same." Ah, so much time wasted on my English Ph.D. (studying under Richard Rorty, at one point, starting the year before this was written). Could have just read Culler (which, actually, I did), instead of the entire tradition of continental philosophy going back to Kant. I've also read Gödel, by the way. But really, that was all I had to do -- mathematics is all the same shit anyway. I'm an English professor who occasionally teaches in the CS department. I am fully capable of detailing the absurdities in computer science (as well as great virtues). Forgive the vent (which isn't directed at you); the article irritated the hell out of me. I have to say I expected a lot of "Yeah, literary study is garbage" in this thread. I was pleasantly surprised to see so much thoughtful engagement.
    - igravious 13y ago
      Studied under Rorty? Ooh, do tell. Funny thing, there is no way an average English Lit. major could tell if your average research-level maths paper is nonsense or not because it would take, you know, six years or more to get up to speed. Why it is that science and engineering types think that all they need to do is read a couple of primers and they're good to go is beyond me. I think it speaks to the arrogance and elitism of the scientific method as The One True Path To Truth. I'll tell you the truth about truth. How long you got? Vent more I say, this crap has real-world consequences -- humanities budgets are under fire. Whole flippin philosophy departments are being closed down because, you know, who needs philosophy anyway. Grumble grumble.
conatus 13y ago
Some of the posts here do fairly decent justice to Derrida's concept of deconstruction, but I always find it funny that that its still brought up as being the cutting edge of continental philosophy. In the UK at least Derrida couldn't be more unfashionable, pure toxic waste if you want to publish and/or have a career as a philosopher of this school.
- dcre 13y ago
  Very funny. I'd say this is he generally true in the US as well, at least in philosophy departments. In English departments a little less so.
  - conatus 13y ago
    In the UK at least youthful continental philosophy could not be more interested in the hard sciences. Even take someone like Badiou - probably the "Derrida" of our age - who could not be more interested in getting the mathematics that form the core of his thought right.
kghose 13y ago
I'm surprised no one in this crowd has yet drawn the parallel to Feynman's adventures in philosophy class (as set down in Surely You are Joking)
badman_ting 13y ago
A good way to make another person seem stupid or crazy is to just repeatedly declaim how you can't understand them. Because it's not your fault you can't understand them, it's theirs.
igravious 13y ago
I grew up on a diet of science and spent 10 years in the IT industry. I'm an auto-didact, I taught myself C for example. I went back to university and studied math and philosophy. I mainly studied analytic philosophy which is basically western philosophy from ancient to scholastic to modern up until Hegel and then follows the Anglo/American tradition. Continental philosophy follows the same path up until Hegel and then takes a Franco/German tack. I say all this because the writer fails to mention that the tradition he is having a go at is essentially continental philosophy. Contrary to forkandwait's assertion in this comments page deconstruction is attributed to Derrida, not to Heidegger. Derrida was influenced by Heidegger (and says as much himself I believe) but Derrida is credited for this whole deconstruction lark. Literary critics working in the continental philosophical tradition will employ stuff like this. Others won't, it is worth pointing this out. Now then. Analytic philosophers have a hard time decoding continental philosophers. So it is no surprise that people coming from even further afield have difficulty. I had a hard time initially, it took me a couple of years. My take on deconstruction is that it is the technique of finding an internal contradiction in the text you want to refute and basically letting the text undermine itself. If it is anything more than this I'd like to know. I generally would never use the word deconstruct as it is too trendy and has become too intellectually charged for my liking. I prefer plain language. But I will use words like ontological when they need to be used but only then, if you see what I mean. Finally, onto the claim of bogosity. I think maybe yes at times by certain windbags and lesser practitioners but mostly I think that no. In Derrida's case I would say no. I say this is the back of having read "Plato's Pharmacy" by Derrida and let me tell you it blows a lot of other philosophy out of the water. It is telling our man read a secondary source on Derrida, and did not drink straight from the fountain. It irritates me immensely that someone believes they can read a couple of secondary texts and then claim to know enough to rubbish an entire swath of thinkers in the history of ideas. Continental philosophy gets most of the brunt of this because of the prolixity and verbosity of their texts. But I ask you, why has our chap not read Derrida for himself? Hmm? Because then he would have to read all of Derrida's influences. And be aware of the currents of thought in which Derrida was swimming. And so on, back and back until you reach the ancient Greek thinkers. I mean analytic philosophers (less now than before) have reacted in very adverse ways to philosophical texts from continental philosophers so Chip has company. But you know, try harder I say. One little final point. I think the reason the word "problematic" is used as a noun is because it is used as a noun in French. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm actually getting pretty tired of the condescending attitude from the science/engineering crowd. Some bits of philosophy are formal in the way that logic or maths is so it will never be empirical. And. So. What? Big deal that natural language is ambiguous but that's part of its beauty as well. I say if you approach what I do in such bad faith so frequently then it is your fields that are suspect, not mine.
samatman 13y ago
Worth mentioning for HN: There is a field of critical studies devoted to code, called critical code studies. A friend of the author directed me to this paper, which, somewhat unexpectedly, I found excellent: http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/367.php http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/367.php Here's the abstract: "This is an investigation into some aspects of the way the C programming language creates meaning. In any formalized language, meaning is created by a tension between a community of speakers and the language's formal definition. In the case of C, this community preceded and presided over the formal definition in such a way that the formal definition itself embodies this tension. Because of this, C has a relatively unique view on how programming languages work, and how language in general should work. Specifically, I will argue that the 1989 ANSI C standard introduces the concept of abstraction by ambiguity into formal language specifications. Paradoxically, this ambiguity allows the knowledgeable programmer to be more specific than would otherwise be possible, while retaining the extensional benefits of abstraction. This has implications for philosophy of language in general, which I will briefly address. "This work is situated in the emerging field of critical code studies (Marino). Although there has been related work dating all the way back into the 80s and 90s (Knuth; Winograd; Landow; Kittler), most studies that self-consciously look at code itself from a perspective that goes beyond computer science are a very recent phenomenon (Fuller; Chun). If much of my investigation seems overly broad, then, that's to be expected: just as a Polaroid photograph develops with broad splotches of color, only acquiring precision at the end of the process, likewise a new investigation must be satisfied with the faith that its clumsiness will be turned into precision with time. Many things herein are assertions with little corresponding argument, yet assertions which nevertheless to me seemed interesting enough to present for consideration in the hope that they might function as depth-soundings for future navigation."
- anaphor 13y ago
  Sounds like the application of sociolinguistics and pragmatics to programming languages, not an unreasonable thing to explore I guess.
- smsm42 13y ago
  >>> Many things herein are assertions with little corresponding argument, yet assertions which nevertheless to me seemed interesting enough to present for consideration in the hope that they might function as depth-soundings for future navigation Doesn't it just say "I am going to fire off some claims without any evidence supporting it, but since the claims sound good somebody should go and check if they're true just in case"?
nickthemagicman 13y ago
This article is really hilarilous and so so true. I changed from English to Biology when I took a Lit Theory class and they were talking about Freud's theories like they were fact and I was like this is literally one of the most rediculous things I've ever heard. It's like the guy was high on cocaine or something.
spikels 13y ago
My definition of Deconstructionism: you can misunderstand anything if you try hard enough!
tammer 13y ago
Some perspective for those outside the Humanities: A great article, but the basic ideas have been reiterated many times within academia itself. The date is important - its currently almost impossible to find an institution with a viable postmodern/deconstruction focus (outside of individual courses framed as a historical perspective and some oddball schools that aren't taken seriously in the field). We've effectively 'moved on,' in many cases along with the critiques found in the article, although we've ignored some. New tools have been developed, yielding sometimes greater and sometimes lesser successes.
olalonde 13y ago
Related: this video of Derrida is simply absurd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI

220 points by didgeoridoo 13y ago

anaphor 13y ago

Related: http://stfucontinentals.tumblr.com/ http://stfucontinentals.tumblr.com/

bcoates 13y ago
If the question of what it's like to be a plant is the most egregiously pointless thing a school of philosophy has ever considered, I'd say they're doing pretty good. Apparently the book being reviewed isn't terribly good -- maybe it needs to be approached from the direction of fiction, like Watership Down but with plants.
- derleth 13y ago
  I'm a p-zombie. When is anyone going to write a book about what it's like to be me?

zwischenzug 13y ago

Anyone interested in the arts vs sciences debate should read this fantastic book as well as that fantastic article: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intellectual-Impostures-Jean-Bricmont/dp/1861976313 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intellectual-Impostures-Jean-Bricmon... I've studied history, art history and computing science at graduate level, and have to say I agree 100% with this engineer's statement: "The quality of the actual analysis of various literary works varies tremendously and must be judged on a case-by-case basis, but I find most of it highly questionable. Buried in the muck, however, are a set of important and interesting ideas [...]" As a trolling aside, I found the computing science degree far easier than the arts ones...

vixen99 13y ago
Sorry about a'me too' but I'd like to second that suggestion because it is indeed a shocking revelation of the nonsense some people have peddled.
dvanduzer 13y ago
Difficulty in earning a degree is usually a function of program, and not necessarily institution.
voyou 13y ago
I'm not convinced a book in which two scientists attempt to polemicise against humanities academics not understanding science, and end up demonstrating that they don't understand a number of authors in the humanities, is a particularly useful contribution to a discussion of the relationship between the arts and the sciences.
- zwischenzug 13y ago
  Any evidence for your statement? This seems to be the opposite of the book's spirit. What's interesting is the authors they leave alone...
anaphor 13y ago
This one is pretty good too: http://www.amazon.ca/The-Social-Construction-What-Hacking/dp/0674004124 http://www.amazon.ca/The-Social-Construction-What-Hacking/dp... Ian Hacking has some engineering cred too given that he's written several great books about statistics that don't skimp on the math too much.
slurry 13y ago
That book is essentially worthless. Its methodology is to read through philosophers and literary critics, find places where they talk about science, evaluate whether they talk about science accurately, and when they do not, to dismiss their work. Picking out bad analogies and inapposite asides is not a good use of anyone's time.
- zwischenzug 13y ago
  You're wrong. Again, the book deals with this point directly. - "Their talk" of science is not merely inaccurate, it is _disingenuous_ - This disingenuousness raises questions about the authors' sincerity (which the authors of Intellectual Impostures are at pains to limit to the scientific areas, but could well be extended) - They do not "dismiss the work" of the authors - They are at pains to try and work out what the authors might have meant (including unpicking "bad analogies" or "inappropriate asides". Once again I'm required to ask for evidence of this from someone likely not to have actually read the book closely.
  - slurry 13y ago
    I'd be happy to amend "inaccurate" to "disingenuous" and "dismiss the work" to "try and work out what the authors might have meant [and then dismiss]". I don't at all mind making those semantic adjustments. But the point still stands, as you put it, that "the authors of Intellectual Impostures are at pains to limit [their inquiry] to the scientific areas." What is the use of that? I mean, sure, it's fine for the Bruno Latour chapter, because Latour's work is actually on science. But what's the point of demonstrating that Irigaray mangles fluid mechanics and Lacan mangles topology, in books that aren't about fluid mechanics or topology? Who cares? Pointing it out isn't wrong per se. But it also, despite Bricmont's extensive handwaving, doesn't prove anything worthwhile.
    - zwischenzug 13y ago
      Because they use their supposed knowledge of maths (in Lacan's case) to intimidate the reader into thinking they're saying something profound, and that it's based on an understanding of mathematics. This is not my supposition. I had these very arguments with literary theorists at university. They preferred to believe Lacan's mathematical credentials over mine.

dvanduzer 13y ago

"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." -- Donald Norman """ Engineers get paid for not being wrong.

rmk2 13y ago

Using deconstruction as a method is stupid, and misses the point entirely. At the same time, this article makes me simultaneously mad and sad, though I am sure it will serve to reinforce preexisting biases just fine, especially here. Using deconstruction as a method, independent and decoupled of its own genesis, does not make sense and will yield little of use. The whole point of deconstruction is to oppose another strand of Western philosophy that, depending on country, has reigned for centuries: idealism. Now, I realise it's cool to "show" how much superior and empirical engineering is, but idealism is a root of many causes. It has fundamentally shaped our ideas of the University, of statehood, nation, authorship, race and the sciences. Many of the subsequent movements, starting with Marxism, followed by Nietzsche, the New Left, and deconstruction (which, really, is called poststructuralism) are an undertaking to undo some of the damage idealist reign has caused during its reign. Deconstruction aims to undermine the very hierarchies idealist thought has errected: the nation as the culture of a given, demarkated and distinct people, university as a structure of educating state servants, authorship as the translation of Geist into matter, science as the study of matter, leading to the ultimate victory of ratio and empiricism. If people talk about advanced programming techniques without knowing anything about underlying compiler design, algorithms etc, they are ridiculed and set in their place. If people talk about history of thought without having any idea what they are talking about, they are applauded while people cheer for their (and their own) ignorance. Why is that? Deconstruction without its history is worthless. That, however, also suggests that for a history of thought, for an understanding of our present, deconstruction is indeed relevant.

deleted 13y ago
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SimHacker 13y ago
Maybe Chip's colleague Doug should write a book called: "Deconstruction: The Good Parts".
ajani 13y ago
There is some weight in looking at the article as being about deconstruction, what with the title saying so. However, the most important take away, I think, is the effects of isolation on any field of study: "It is a cautionary lesson about the consequences of allowing a branch of academia that has been entrusted with the study of important problems to become isolated and inbred."

pfortuny 13y ago

Interesting issue: the Sokal affair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair How to publish a lot of gibberish in one of the "important" philosophical journal. Not that this means deconstruction is 'stupid'. Only that one has to take it with a grain of salt. At least one.

dvanduzer 13y ago
Deconstruction is a critical technique. Your sentence "Not that this means deconstruction is 'stupid'." could be interpreted: "One has to take at least one grain of salt when certain critical techniques are used." Depending on how one reads this entire post, that may or may not be considered a charitable interpretation.
- pfortuny 13y ago
  You got it. However, as a mere technique it may be valid. The problem is it is also used as a way to discard metaphysics as a true language.
  - dvanduzer 13y ago
    I was posting about Wittgenstein over there. "Metaphysics as a true language" does not compute. When Wittgenstein finished deconstructing the entirety of existence in his Tractatus, he reserved the last sentence to tell himself to shut up.
Homunculiheaded 13y ago
The Sokal affair is a lot less shocking when you realize Social Text was not peer-reviewed at the time and the article was for a special science issue of the journal. If you've ever had misfortune of having to review submission for non-major CS conferences you would know that there is an amazing amount of bullshit even in technical fields. The only thing I've found shocking about the Sokal affair, or this article (and the many others like it) is the obsession with 'proving' the humanities to be bullshit. It is an incredible and intellectually lazy pursuit of the idea that: If I don't know it, it's not worth knowing.

forkandwait 13y ago

Here is my take on deconstruction, based on an MA in anthropology from a good university and some further interest and reading: First of all, Deconstruction should be credited to Heidegger, not the French. The French of the 50s and 60s read Heidegger, stole and (further) obfuscated some good ideas, then wrote books without citing him for political reasons (he was member of the Nazi party throughout the war, in good standing at the beginning and bad standing at the end, but he never rebelled or retracted publicly -- complicated person...) Then the students and readers of these French guys think the (derivative) French guys invented the idea. There are two ideas of deconstruction I find useful. The first is basically Nietzsche, and I paraphrase it thus: Every metaphysics hides an implicit morality of the universe, and every morality hides an implicit and very down-to-earth will to power, and this will to power is a good thing and the drive of Life itself manifesting in human ideas. N's big example is Judeo-Christianity, and how by inventing a selfless morality a bunch of folks took over Western Civilization in very concrete ways. So when the Libertarians have an "objective" system that shows that markets are best in an objective way, or the counselors/ psyches have an "objective" system that shows that depth psychology is best, they are all just protecting their jobs. I extend this to our modern science loving era as: any supposedly scientific system that explains things but can't be rigorously tested just becomes wishful thinking to support the vested interests of a social group. This is basically all the social sciences, from econ to psych to anthro, and in all cases I think you can point directly to the group whose jobs or power the supposed "science" supports. (Owners in the first case, counselors who want more billable hours, locals fighting off outsider meddling, etc). And, yes I know about multivariate regression and survey data, and all I can say is what a joke. Now that I have rambled too long, idea 2: I think one of the best things about Heidegger (who is fucking brilliant if you can get through his ridiculous prose) is that he asks us to question not whether something is an X or a Y, but rather to get "meta" and start examining what makes it possible for us to go through life assigning things too ontological categories (X or Y) in the first place. Because the mechanism of ontology -- that everything has a "being", that it "is" something -- is not a given, even though it comes so naturally linguistically. Anyway, I should get on with my life now....

gruseom 13y ago
That's interesting, but you lost me on the connection to Heidegger and I would like to hear more specifically about what he took from Nietzsche.

JonnieCache 13y ago

The comparison to Godel is absolutely priceless. Describing the incompleteness theorem as "a cheap trick to frighten mathematicians" is hilarious as well.

networked 13y ago

Note that Chip Morningstar, the author of this essay, was a key person behind the first graphical MMO -- in 1986! The "graphical MUD" in question was called Habitat and ran on Commodore 64 computers. Access to it was provided as a pay-per-minute service by Quantum Link, which later became AOL. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_%28video_game%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_%28video_game%29 Be sure also to read his and F. Randall Farmer's paper on the subject [1] and related collections of anecdotes [2][3] if you're at all interested in the history of virtual worlds. [1] http://www.crockford.com/ec/lessons.html http://www.crockford.com/ec/lessons.html [2] http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html [3] http://www.crockford.com/ec/layza.html http://www.crockford.com/ec/layza.html

jgg 13y ago

Every time an engineer writes a screed against the humanities, I feel like I'm going to break out in hives. Engineering and the sciences have, to a greater degree, been spared this isolation and genetic drift because of crass commercial necessity. Unsubstantiated bullshit. Most theoretical backbones of math and science were discovered/formalized for anything but commercial reasons. It is clear to me that the humanities are not going to emerge from the jungle on their own. I think that the task of outreach is left to those of us who retain some connection, however tenuous, to what we laughingly call reality. You could start with your own field(s), which are full of mediocre paper-pushers milling around other people's theory, publishing uninteresting observations which, as long as they are "logical" and "correct", are shit into a godawful paper that no one will ever care about or read. "A Novel Method for Applying a Trivial Modification of an Already-Known Algorithm to Some Type of Specific Data" could be the title of about 35% of the CS papers in existence.

anaphor 13y ago
Even if you're publishing nothing really new, you can publish something that looks at something in a slightly different way and it can be useful to some people. I agree that a lot of these papers are poorly written, but there's nothing wrong with being unoriginal, not everything has to be groundbreaking. I recommend watching Simon Peyton Jones' talk on how to write a great research paper: http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1464870 http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1464870
icebraining 13y ago
Unsubstantiated bullshit. Most theoretical backbones of math and science were discovered/formalized for anything but commercial reasons. How does that contradict what the author said? His argument is that any field closed over itself, over time, will tend to distance themselves from reality - obviously, the initial impetus of a field happens far too early to experience such effects.
- jgg 13y ago
  His argument is that science and engineering haven't drifted from reality due to commercial interest. I am saying that whether or not science and engineering are tied to reality has little to do with being relevant to the commercial world.

daviddaviddavid 13y ago

Several random points (from a dev with a background in philosophy and linguistics). First, from the standpoint of intellectual history, it's probably most useful to cast conversations like this in terms of the split between analytic and continental philosophy (esp. postwar developments). The fact that he doesn't really mention the split and only talks of literary criticism is a very odd omission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy Second, I applaud the author for taking the tradition that he's poking fun at as seriously as he does. There are scads of philosophy professors who simply sneer at those from the opposing tradition. This is a shame. Third, and related to the point above, it's a breath of fresh air to read someone who can genuinely straddle the two traditions. Richard Rorty is probably the best known philosopher that this can be said for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty Fourth, anyone interested in the ideas that underpin deconstruction should take a look at Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics". It's an utterly fascinating read that forms the basis for a huge amount of work in both contemporary linguistics and postwar French Continental philosophy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_in_General_Linguistics Fifth, anyone who dismisses the techniques one of the world's greatest mathematician/logicians as a "cheap trick" without so much as a winking emoticon is immediately suspect in my book. ;)

reggieband 13y ago
I get that the original article was a joke - a sort of academic discipline ad hominem. But in case anyone actually wants to understand why literary criticism is seen as valid, they should read Rorty as you mentioned. Here is an paper that is worth the time: http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/pdf/rorty.pdf http://olincenter.uchicago.edu/pdf/rorty.pdf It isn't on deconstruction specifically but on why literary criticism has become so important in general.
- pdonis 13y ago
  I've read Rorty on this subject before, and the paper you linked to gives a good illustration of why, although I understand where he's coming from, I don't agree with him. He says: "Redemptive truth would not consist in theories about how things interact causally, but instead would fulfill the need that religion and philosophy have attempted to satisfy. This is the need to fit everything--every thing, person, event, idea and poem--into a single context, a context which will somehow reveal itself as natural, destined, and unique. It would be the only context that would matter for purposes of shaping our lives, because it would be the only one in which those lives appear as they truly are." He appears to think this is possible; I think it's a dangerous illusion. I don't think there is any one, single context in which our lives "appear as they truly are". Our lives are too complex for that. In fact, physics is too, although Rorty doesn't seem to realize that. He says that scientific inquiry could conceivably terminate; apparently he thinks that physicists who talk about a "theory of everything" mean that once we've found it, we won't need to do science any more. That's a dangerous illusion too. No matter how much we discover about the universe, there will always be more to discover, and that's what scientific inquiry is. Furthermore, even with the stuff we do know in science, there is always the possibility of finding new ways to look at it. Feynman once said that every theoretical physicist who is any good knows multiple theoretical representations for exactly the same physics. Each representation is useful in its own way, and no one of them reflects "the way things really are". Even putting them all together doesn't necessarily reflect "the way things really are". All of our knowledge is incomplete, even in physics. And if that's the case for physics, it's the case even more so for ourselves and our societies. We should not expect to ever be able to understand ourselves using one single context, any more than we can understand physics using one single context. And as Rorty describes it, the search for this one single context by intellectuals (which he defines, reading between the lines, as people who can afford to waste time in such pursuits because they don't have to do any productive work to make a living) is, in my opinion, a sad waste of human talents that could be put to better uses.

lbarrow 13y ago

The article totally lost me when the author called Godel's incompleteness theorem a "cheap trick" used to "frighten mathematicians". That comment makes it clear that despite his claims to the contrary, the author is very comfortable dismissing ideas that he does not understand. For this reason, I can't really trust the rest of the article.

candeira 13y ago
I'm fairly sure that was a joke.
- sramsay 13y ago
  I'm not convinced of that at all. "One or two volumes is all it takes, since it's all pretty much the same." Ah, so much time wasted on my English Ph.D. (studying under Richard Rorty, at one point, starting the year before this was written). Could have just read Culler (which, actually, I did), instead of the entire tradition of continental philosophy going back to Kant. I've also read Gödel, by the way. But really, that was all I had to do -- mathematics is all the same shit anyway. I'm an English professor who occasionally teaches in the CS department. I am fully capable of detailing the absurdities in computer science (as well as great virtues). Forgive the vent (which isn't directed at you); the article irritated the hell out of me. I have to say I expected a lot of "Yeah, literary study is garbage" in this thread. I was pleasantly surprised to see so much thoughtful engagement.
  - igravious 13y ago
    Studied under Rorty? Ooh, do tell. Funny thing, there is no way an average English Lit. major could tell if your average research-level maths paper is nonsense or not because it would take, you know, six years or more to get up to speed. Why it is that science and engineering types think that all they need to do is read a couple of primers and they're good to go is beyond me. I think it speaks to the arrogance and elitism of the scientific method as The One True Path To Truth. I'll tell you the truth about truth. How long you got? Vent more I say, this crap has real-world consequences -- humanities budgets are under fire. Whole flippin philosophy departments are being closed down because, you know, who needs philosophy anyway. Grumble grumble.

conatus 13y ago

Some of the posts here do fairly decent justice to Derrida's concept of deconstruction, but I always find it funny that that its still brought up as being the cutting edge of continental philosophy. In the UK at least Derrida couldn't be more unfashionable, pure toxic waste if you want to publish and/or have a career as a philosopher of this school.

dcre 13y ago
Very funny. I'd say this is he generally true in the US as well, at least in philosophy departments. In English departments a little less so.
- conatus 13y ago
  In the UK at least youthful continental philosophy could not be more interested in the hard sciences. Even take someone like Badiou - probably the "Derrida" of our age - who could not be more interested in getting the mathematics that form the core of his thought right.

kghose 13y ago

I'm surprised no one in this crowd has yet drawn the parallel to Feynman's adventures in philosophy class (as set down in Surely You are Joking)

badman_ting 13y ago

A good way to make another person seem stupid or crazy is to just repeatedly declaim how you can't understand them. Because it's not your fault you can't understand them, it's theirs.

igravious 13y ago

I grew up on a diet of science and spent 10 years in the IT industry. I'm an auto-didact, I taught myself C for example. I went back to university and studied math and philosophy. I mainly studied analytic philosophy which is basically western philosophy from ancient to scholastic to modern up until Hegel and then follows the Anglo/American tradition. Continental philosophy follows the same path up until Hegel and then takes a Franco/German tack. I say all this because the writer fails to mention that the tradition he is having a go at is essentially continental philosophy. Contrary to forkandwait's assertion in this comments page deconstruction is attributed to Derrida, not to Heidegger. Derrida was influenced by Heidegger (and says as much himself I believe) but Derrida is credited for this whole deconstruction lark. Literary critics working in the continental philosophical tradition will employ stuff like this. Others won't, it is worth pointing this out. Now then. Analytic philosophers have a hard time decoding continental philosophers. So it is no surprise that people coming from even further afield have difficulty. I had a hard time initially, it took me a couple of years. My take on deconstruction is that it is the technique of finding an internal contradiction in the text you want to refute and basically letting the text undermine itself. If it is anything more than this I'd like to know. I generally would never use the word deconstruct as it is too trendy and has become too intellectually charged for my liking. I prefer plain language. But I will use words like ontological when they need to be used but only then, if you see what I mean. Finally, onto the claim of bogosity. I think maybe yes at times by certain windbags and lesser practitioners but mostly I think that no. In Derrida's case I would say no. I say this is the back of having read "Plato's Pharmacy" by Derrida and let me tell you it blows a lot of other philosophy out of the water. It is telling our man read a secondary source on Derrida, and did not drink straight from the fountain. It irritates me immensely that someone believes they can read a couple of secondary texts and then claim to know enough to rubbish an entire swath of thinkers in the history of ideas. Continental philosophy gets most of the brunt of this because of the prolixity and verbosity of their texts. But I ask you, why has our chap not read Derrida for himself? Hmm? Because then he would have to read all of Derrida's influences. And be aware of the currents of thought in which Derrida was swimming. And so on, back and back until you reach the ancient Greek thinkers. I mean analytic philosophers (less now than before) have reacted in very adverse ways to philosophical texts from continental philosophers so Chip has company. But you know, try harder I say. One little final point. I think the reason the word "problematic" is used as a noun is because it is used as a noun in French. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm actually getting pretty tired of the condescending attitude from the science/engineering crowd. Some bits of philosophy are formal in the way that logic or maths is so it will never be empirical. And. So. What? Big deal that natural language is ambiguous but that's part of its beauty as well. I say if you approach what I do in such bad faith so frequently then it is your fields that are suspect, not mine.

samatman 13y ago

Worth mentioning for HN: There is a field of critical studies devoted to code, called critical code studies. A friend of the author directed me to this paper, which, somewhat unexpectedly, I found excellent: http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/367.php http://thoughtmesh.net/publish/367.php Here's the abstract: "This is an investigation into some aspects of the way the C programming language creates meaning. In any formalized language, meaning is created by a tension between a community of speakers and the language's formal definition. In the case of C, this community preceded and presided over the formal definition in such a way that the formal definition itself embodies this tension. Because of this, C has a relatively unique view on how programming languages work, and how language in general should work. Specifically, I will argue that the 1989 ANSI C standard introduces the concept of abstraction by ambiguity into formal language specifications. Paradoxically, this ambiguity allows the knowledgeable programmer to be more specific than would otherwise be possible, while retaining the extensional benefits of abstraction. This has implications for philosophy of language in general, which I will briefly address. "This work is situated in the emerging field of critical code studies (Marino). Although there has been related work dating all the way back into the 80s and 90s (Knuth; Winograd; Landow; Kittler), most studies that self-consciously look at code itself from a perspective that goes beyond computer science are a very recent phenomenon (Fuller; Chun). If much of my investigation seems overly broad, then, that's to be expected: just as a Polaroid photograph develops with broad splotches of color, only acquiring precision at the end of the process, likewise a new investigation must be satisfied with the faith that its clumsiness will be turned into precision with time. Many things herein are assertions with little corresponding argument, yet assertions which nevertheless to me seemed interesting enough to present for consideration in the hope that they might function as depth-soundings for future navigation."

anaphor 13y ago
Sounds like the application of sociolinguistics and pragmatics to programming languages, not an unreasonable thing to explore I guess.
smsm42 13y ago
>>> Many things herein are assertions with little corresponding argument, yet assertions which nevertheless to me seemed interesting enough to present for consideration in the hope that they might function as depth-soundings for future navigation Doesn't it just say "I am going to fire off some claims without any evidence supporting it, but since the claims sound good somebody should go and check if they're true just in case"?

nickthemagicman 13y ago

This article is really hilarilous and so so true. I changed from English to Biology when I took a Lit Theory class and they were talking about Freud's theories like they were fact and I was like this is literally one of the most rediculous things I've ever heard. It's like the guy was high on cocaine or something.

spikels 13y ago

My definition of Deconstructionism: you can misunderstand anything if you try hard enough!

tammer 13y ago

Some perspective for those outside the Humanities: A great article, but the basic ideas have been reiterated many times within academia itself. The date is important - its currently almost impossible to find an institution with a viable postmodern/deconstruction focus (outside of individual courses framed as a historical perspective and some oddball schools that aren't taken seriously in the field). We've effectively 'moved on,' in many cases along with the critiques found in the article, although we've ignored some. New tools have been developed, yielding sometimes greater and sometimes lesser successes.

olalonde 13y ago

Related: this video of Derrida is simply absurd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nmu3uwqzbI