Thanks for the 2 excellent articles on the pressure put on women to breed. They cleared up some points I could not quite articulate.
What always bugged me was the sentimental hooey about the “miracle of birth”–the miracle is if anyone can watch without losing their lunch. Just because we don’t fully understand something yet, that makes it a miracle? It’s a body function. There’s no more intellect involved, after the decision to stop the pill, than in digestion or decay. You don’t do it, it happens to you–we’re supposed to be proud of this? Sounds like a sour-grapes dodge from confronting millenia of denied opportunities. I don’t mean just to pick on women–those men who strut around handing out cigars after doing what any tomcat can do better, tick me off just as much. As for its being a unique experience–so is hitting a slug with a Weedeater. Any intense experience is, in a way, indescribable. And if the urge is that primal, as some claim, then we should be born knowing all about it anyway…
Some say that there are hormones activated in the mother that entirely transform her being when the kid hits the air, but I find the thought of anything that can so take over a brain, rather scary.In a badly overpopulated world, we need that sort of romantic drivel like a submarine needs a screen door. When I care about someone, it is because of who they are, not whose belly they came out of. Raising kids right, turning them into decent human beings…now THAT is an accomplishment.Thanks again for the fresh air.
As many surveys have shown, \”Bright\” isn\’t a term liked even by those it is aimed at. Great idea, bad label.
I\’m not happy with \”Bright\” as a name, either, but being \”interested in convincing people of the merits of a naturalistic worldview,\” while being of obvious concern and relevance to criticism on the choice of name, is distantly peripheral to the purpose of establishing such a group, which this essay doesn\’t seem to capture. The purpose is to gather together those who reject magical thinking (the supernatural and mystical) as a cohesive political force. A bad label can hinder recruiting even among the people this group is meant for.
Indeed, \”bright\” is an unfortunate and dull misnomer. The idea of a word or name to draw together the disparate factions of skepticism and the irreligious seems fine on the face of it, but the problem of the incoherence of these factions won\’t be overcome even if a good word emerges. Good grief, for an example of the futility of this look no further than the \”christians\”.
Alas, I\’m doomed to self-describe as \”agnostic re the reality of a god or gods and resting on an atheist viewpoint until convincing evidence arises otherwise, while leaning toward a reality that is nihilistic, but nonetheless feeling that there\’s no point in being in a bad mood about it\”. In short I feel that I\’m a \”good-natured nihilist\”, which probably sounds ironic and foreboding to the standard religionist, but I prefer that to \”bright\”.
Thanks to Phil Mole for the succinct and absolutely sensible \”not all religions are equal\” essay.
I\’m saving it (and many others from this site) so that when my teenagers are attempting to write assignments for their school SOSE (studies in society and environment) subject, they have the benefit of some well-argued and non-partisan adult input to counter the overwhelming slant that comes with their school-provided subject materials.
It is a huge uphill battle for a 14 year old to express a counter view when even the assignment topics presented for choice are phrased to prevent disagreement. My university years are too far behind me to be able to pull together a cogent defence ready to be quoted, at the same time as cooking dinner.
Tim Stephenson seems to think that the presence of Dennett and Dawkins in the \”bright\” camp somehow grants it some conclusive credibility. If forced to choose between that side and one including James Clerk Maxwell, Freeman Dyson, E.O. Wilson and Srinivasa Ramanujan where does he think he might find the brightest(most intelligent) conversation?
As a practising atheist ( and getting better the more I practice ) I have no qualms about having a Christmas tree. Although Christians have tried to hijack the evergreen tree for their own purposes, its roots (so to speak) surely go back further:
Malik\’s defense of humanism against Stangroom\’s criticisms is far from convincing, relying perhaps too much on simple assertion and containing too many, at least debatable arguments.
We have, for instance, Malik stating that:
\”…to suggest that the self is simply a brain process is a bit like Margaret Thatcher’s infamous argument that ‘there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families’. Individuals and families constitute society.\”
\”But\”, writes Malik, \”society has an existence beyond those individuals and families.\”
But, says I, Malik is simply asserting that society has such an existence. And an assertion makes a poor argument.
Earlier there is the conclusion that merely \”mechanical\ views cannot be right because \”Drawinian processes are driven, not by the need to ascertain the truth, but to
survive and reproduce. Accordingly, ‘the human mind serves
evolutionary success, not truth.’ Indeed, ‘in the struggle for life, a taste for truth is a luxury’, even a ‘disability’.\”
Is truth really a \’disability\’ in a Darwinian world where processes are driven to \’survive and reproduce\’? Hardly. One can easily argue that a more accurate picture of the
truth — that is, the way things are and behave — would enhance survival and reproduction. After all, that\’s
The irony of such a poorly written piece decrying bad writing cannot be an accident. The first line alone gives it all away. And when the article closes by mentioning writing poorly on purpose, you have to be seriously dense not to get the joke at that point.
As one who has dabbled in technical writing, I hold to the academically heretical view that anything (yes, anything!) that is worth saying, can be said in a way that is understandable. An example: Paul Samuelson was one of the most brilliant economists of the 20th century. His doctoral dissertation was the beginning of mathematical economics – taking economic theory and expressing it in mathematical terms. Yet throughout his prolific career as a writer of books and articles, his prose clearly explained and elaborated on the mathematical models, so that even a non-mathematical person like me could understand it. Why can\’t everyone else do this? One is led to suspect that in many cases the writer does not fully udnerstand the theory he is expounding.
The same is true of legalese. The first clause of many legal contracts consists of definitions. In \”plain English law\”, one can define abstruse terms in plain English, then use the simpler terms throughout. Why can\’t academics do the same? This exercise would force one into the discipline of understanding what is being expounded, while making the reading much easier, for peers as well as for the non-technical public.
I waded through this in college. Then I switched and became a scientist. Thank god. I would rather be at the beck and call of the real world than the arbitrary whims of a theory queen like Butler.
Science has fashions too, of course, and powerful factions. Good work can get buried for years. Researchers a bit out of the mainstream are scorned and hussled into the outposts. But in the end, good work that\’s buried gets uncovered because nature demands it.
It is only in the lit theory community, however, that every particle of one\’s career depends on the whims of the kings and queens. They are the ones who bestow (generally via coauthoring or citation or just party chatter) the mantle of next-generation genius on one of the waiting grad student masses.
There are definitely exceptions. Some critics with excellent things to say, seem to have done it without that kind of help. And perhaps some of my distaste for the community can be put down to the fact that, in the end, I wasn\’t so good at it.
But my experiences in college bear out that this kind of unchallenged mediocrity hiding as pure genius is celebrated and rewarded in the crony system. Part Emperor\’s New Clothes, part Halliburton.
Nussbaum made the excellent point that a lot of it is previously said, and simply repackaged. Wittgenstein is a common victim: theorists will skim the Investigations and come out the other end with a garbled version where \”what is correct is not original and what is original is not correct.\”
My one objection is that ridicule and outright mockery is a dangerous game to play in intellectual matters. It\’s fun — and important — to laugh sometimes, but I\’m glad the bad writing contest is over. Getting too much in the practice of ridicule can make you afraid to put yourself out there, and it can harden your mind to new ideas.
The jargon is stupid intellectually and pernicious morally but it has been going on forlonger than cultural studies. Freudians long ago introduced the notion that understanding literary works required a whole system and its jargon. Harold Bloom, among others, followed the same line with fancy Greek terms. The canon was shaped with an educated public in mind, not experts, but, as people pointed out early on in when modern literature was introduced to universities, what is the deep problem that requires research? This is a perpetual embarrassment in the modern research university. The best and longest lived answer is literary history of one sort or another, and the best work in cultural studies continues that. Just as historians keep re-telling the past for today so do literary historians. The question ishow appreciation can maintain its place, and I suspect that most profs still keep this alive one way or another with undergraduates. Not the most visible ones perhaps, but most.
This awful article trots out very familiar objections to \”theory\” in a way which only provides ammunition for those who think such objections are always merely anti-intellectual.
Benson argues that the questions theory raises are dealt with in other disciplines, without bothering to explore those questions, or even hint at what they might be. She makes no effort to enter into any complexities of the debate over who is to judge what is \”bad writing,\” how, and why (is she by any chance dismissing feminism and Marxism without the need to actually acknowledge their existence, let alone attempt to engage with their critiques? Who knows). Benson also does not actually consider any specific terms/jargon (depending on your view) theory uses, in order to investigate whether they really can be substituted for satisfactorily by the language of \”common sense.\”
What a load of tedious crap this is. Editors, please only let people write on this topic when they\’ve done a little homework and have something new to say.
Postmodernism, Science and Religious Fundamentalism:
By Meera Nanda
Outstanding and insightful article. Just one problem, though. All three of Nanda\’s definitions of naturalism are too \”hard\”, i.e. themselves not proveable by empirical means. He thus perpetuates the myth that science is the implacable foe of any religion that actually attempts to say anything meaningful.
There are in fact any number of practicing scientists who more or less devoutly believe in one religion or another, or are at least deists to some extent. And historically some of the Hall of Famers were more or less devout believers–Boyle, Galileo, and even Newton come to mind.
Regarding ontological and methodological naturalism (to use Nanda\’s labels), one can easily demonstrate empirically that miracles, if they occur, are rare, but surely no one would seriously argue otherwise anyway (rarity, after all, is what makes miracles miraculous). On that basis one is surely justified in skepticism about this week\’s tabloid claims (even the Vatican would agree with that). But one cannot empirically demonstrate that no miracle ever has or ever will occur, anymore than one can empirically disprove the existence of God and the soul. One can say that \”I have never encountered a phenomenom that did not have a natural explanation,\” or \”I have never encountered any physical evidence of the soul,\” i.e. the null hypothesis has not been disproven. But there are many things we do not yet understand, and while no doubt most will prove to have natural explanations, it seems empirically premature to state that we are certain all will.
The universe itself may be the best example. Indeed, the more stridently atheistic members of the physics community have been trying to find some alternative to the Big Bang ever since it was first proposed, precisely for this reason; because everything natural came into existence with the Big Bang, the Big Bang cannot have had a \”natural cause\” as that term is normally used–which is more or less the definition of a miracle.
Ontologically and methodologically, therefore, it is more accurate to state that naturalism is a working assumption. That is to say, miracles, even if they occur, are not amenable to the scientific method of inquiry; empirical methods are only capable of uncovering natural causes. Thus, there is simply no point in subjecting a given phenomenon to the scientific method unless one adopts the working assumption that the phenomenon at hand has a natural explanation– just as there is no point in fishing unless one assumes there are fish in the body of water in question.
Nanda also asserts that \”naturalism is humanistic in its ethical dimension. It simply rejects the idea that you have to believe in God in order to live an ethical life.\” The second sentence is empirically accessible, although I am not sure how much research has been done, or how carefully designed it has been. For example, I do seem to recall that the divorce rate among those who profess to be Christians is about the same as among those who do not, but I also seem to recall that the divorce rate among couples who regularly pray together is well below 5%.
The first sentence, though, is what truly intrigues me. I have never been able to understand how a strictly humanist and naturalistic perspective can lead to any sort of ethical imperative. Indeed, humanism is itself not naturalistic, because the scientific method is descriptive, not prescriptive.
For instance, I can readily demonstrate empirically that stealing will cause various sorts of harmf to the victim, and if pracaticed on a widespread basis will have a detrimental impact on society. But is this a basis for an ethical imperative against stealing? Certainly not. At best, it creates a \”commons problem\” in ethics. But more fundamentally, what do I say to the person who says, \”I don\’t care about the harm to the victim, or the long term effects on society. I only care about me and what I want–and I want that stereo!\” What experiment can I possibly design to demonstrate that such a thief \”ought\” to care about the victim and the rest of humanity? If anything, naturalism (in the form of Darwinian psychology) tells us that our genes are selfish and that we have a natural inclination to steal (which, of course, does not mean that we \”ought\” to steal).
As a criminal defense lawyer, I admit my experience may warp my perspective. But I see the above problem all the time in my clients. More generally, it seems to me that many non-devout people who behave ethically do so primarily out of habit and indoctrination, and have little means to impart such habits and indoctrination to their offspring. In other words, my observation is that we are living off of the ethical capital of our forbears. But I digress.
Why is it that every article bashing \”theory\” comes from someone who doesn\’t know what they are talking about? There are many theorists who are/were excellent writers — think of Blanchot, for example, or Barthes, or Simone Weil. Just because Lacan wasn\’t E.B. White doesn\’t mean that what Lacan writes is automatically wrong. Objecting to critical theory on stylistic grounds allows people to dismiss it without actually reading it — and this is the very kernel of ignorance.
What\’s interesting to me is that is we substitute \”philosophy\” for \”theory,\” suddenly it\’s acceptable to be turgid and dense with respect to your prose. On the unfortunate day when similar articles appear attacking the late Donald Davidson\’s brilliant but daunting essays on cognition, we will know the playing field is finally level.
Brilliant article, but misses the point that intelligent people make about \’perfecting\’ crops as opposed to the warm and touchy feely new age nuts: there are many objective factors for fearing too much manipulation of the way and the type of crops grown, many dealing with the interests of those promoting the change as opposed to the interests of those it affects. I don\’t feel that crops are somehow better if they are \’natural\’ or scarce. What I\’m afraid of is basic things like reducing genetic variety of crops in third world countries that cannot afford follow-up pesticides. In America, we have insurance for farmers who use a single genetically modified crop all other farmers use. A new plague hits and destroys the whole crop, insurance premiums go up the next year. In Africa, should a crop be wiped out, thousands starve. that is just one objective reason, not to mention being ignorant of local conditions and still promoting universal solutions, a problem aid agencies are just starting to address, or the validity of changing crops to adjust them to consumer tastes like perfection or color in apples, without worrying about the loss of nutritional value. These must be addressed, and are not simply new age or folksy reservations.
Funny, fighting fashionable nonsense seems as fashionable lately as anything else. This article on bad writing was so superficial it was barely readable. The examples of the so-called defenders of bad writing were so clear they could be called good writing. There are terrible writers of theory, in part because so many people get higher degrees because they have nothing better to do. There is also a lot of good theory out there also. The author would do good to actually address the issues of trying to articulate what hasn’t been articulated before rather than simply trashing everyone who tries to write on difficult issues. Of course, in the land of internet, people just read about stuff they like and agree with anyway, or simply swear at stuff they dislike without thinking. I guess my comments here are therefore out of place.
Unfortunately \”fighting fashionable nonsense\” seems to have turned into \”reinforcing popular cant.\” Yes there is a large amount of very poor academic writing. And there are huge mounds of garbage journalism, vast piles of terrible prose fiction, and untold heaps of lousy poetry. Perhaps academics should know better, but so should journalists and authors of all stripes. You\’ll pardon me if this seems to be (warning, potential academic term coming up) ideologically driven. Allan Bloom\’s prose was often turgid, and such cultural \”critics\” as Bill Bennett fill their work with cliches and non sequiturs, yet somehow or other they never make the lists in these parlour games. Feminists and post-colonialists, however–well, it\’s open season. Must just be a coincidence.
Letters, recently posted in response to Benson\’s article on bad academic writing, remind me of the noises made by barnyard chickens newly grazed by a projectile. In fact, academic theory with regard to any of the arts, including writing, is an absolute empire of emptiness. This drivel has produced nothing of note beyond job security and a way to vent pretense for mediocrities who are incapable of adding anything to those crafts in which they\’ve set themselves up as authorities and arbiters. Their verbal fixations elucidate nothing more than the peculiar, vapid decay which is their collective invention.
I was surprised to see my name in this article, especially amongst those classified as believing in Vedic Science. As a physicist by training, I am well aware that there is ONE universal set of scientific laws. I don’t believe in postmodernism or any form of cultural relativism when it is applied to the natural sciences. There is neither any Vedic Science nor any Hindu science, just as Newtonian Laws are not Christian, and nor are Einstein’s theories Jewish laws.
At the same time, I do believe that there have been considerable Indian contributions to science that have gone unacknowledged. Therefore, The Infinity Foundation has launched a 10-year project to publish a 20-volume series similar to the seminal work by Joseph Needham on China, except that our series will be on Indian science. What makes it Indian is not a unique epistemology but that it was Indians who did it. For details on this project and its current status, please visit: http://www.indianscience.org/scope.shtml
A policy that was explicit clarified right up-front was that Indian science for our project does not include claims based on textual reference that “might” be interpreted as science. The acid test is physical empirical evidence. For instance, the focus of the books so far has included: steel and metallurgy; ship-building; agriculture; medicine; water harvesting; textiles; civil engineering; etc.
We have distanced ourselves from claims of space travel in Mahabharata, atomic weapons and other exotic and far fetched ideas that require extrapolating the Sanskrit texts with speculation. At the same time, we are not denouncing such claims that others make, the reality being that they cannot be proven or disproven as of now. So we simply exclude them, rather going out of our way to denounce them as many writers have made a career doing. We simply wish to focus on the monumental task we have set out to do.
Therefore, it was disheartening that Meera Nanda, with no empirical evidence or homework, made outlandish claims about my position on these matters. It goes to show the sloppy and over-politicized state of Indian scholarship. It is the blind leading the blind, since the colonial masters seem to have built a whole generation of English language based babus and brahmins, who can simply mug up and copy the standard line, even without verifying the facts. They will, undoubtedly, be able to market their services and accents to call centers profitably.
Finally, I have no relationship with Frawley, Elst and the whole “Hindutva scholar” lot, and nor do I share in Hindutva political ideology.
Hopefully, Nanda in future will bother to establish contact with third parties and ask them for their positions directly, along with backup data, rather than insinuating based on her own wild extrapolations or fourth-hand information to brand people simplistically. It is dangerous to place everyone in a few fixed boxes, and Nanda seems too good at doing that. There is a whole cottage industry of brown sahibs good with the English language feeding whatever the dominant culture rewards them to dish out. Their criticism is so predictable and now overdone. It’s time for their sponsors to send them new scripts. Why don’t they want to have open dialogs with opponents, in forums where both sides get equal and fair time to respond? I would be happy to accept such an invitation. Why is Demonology the accepted methodology to avoid the real issues at hand?
Before I say anything else, I\’d like to say that I love love LOVE Butterflies and Wheels. A few months ago I ended up here after Googling \”Richard Dawkins and Mary Midgley\” (I was interested in reading her \”Gene Juggling\” foolishness) and it\’s been my no.1 You-Must-See-This-Site site ever since.
It was Ophelia\’s post on the Istanbul atrocity that moved me to write a comment.
What else can you say? What a world we live in: to quote Mr. Dawkins in his essay, \”Time to Stand Up\”, \”To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.\”
The weary, devastated tone of OB\’s piece in Notes and Comments summed up my own feelings so well no further comment is needed, but still:
I have to say I found the ‘Bad Writing’ article extremely dissapointing. Like, unfortunately, too much criticism of theory it was utterly, utterly trivial. I mean, was this what the ‘theory wars’ were all about, that some people dislike Judith Butler’s use of subordinate clauses? Some theory is hard to read (though no harder to read than some analytic philosophy, – Gender Trouble is not appreciably harder to read than Word and Object, although the two books are difficult in different ways). Some theory is probably unnecessarily hard to read, but surely that cannot be decided without paying attention to what theorists are trying to say.
Indeed, that leads me to the crux of my objection to much of the material on this site: it seems to be obsessed with attacking chimerical targets. If postmodernists are wrong, critique their arguments. If they are trivial, show them up by contrasting them with those working in similar areas who show real depth. The best critiques of postmodernism do just that; witness the gulf separating the ‘Bad writing’ article on this site from the excellent article by Martha Naussbaum which it linked to, which engaged with the actual substance of Judith Butler’s views, rather than raising a fuss about her style. Is sniggering at examples of ‘bad writing’, apparently as a substitute for providing genuine argument, really the best the self-desribed defenders of the Elightenment can come up with?
Thanks for the 2 excellent articles on the pressure put on women to breed. They cleared up some points I could not quite articulate.
What always bugged me was the sentimental hooey about the “miracle of birth”–the miracle is if anyone can watch without losing their lunch. Just because we don’t fully understand something yet, that makes it a miracle? It’s a body function. There’s no more intellect involved, after the decision to stop the pill, than in digestion or decay. You don’t do it, it happens to you–we’re supposed to be proud of this? Sounds like a sour-grapes dodge from confronting millenia of denied opportunities. I don’t mean just to pick on women–those men who strut around handing out cigars after doing what any tomcat can do better, tick me off just as much. As for its being a unique experience–so is hitting a slug with a Weedeater. Any intense experience is, in a way, indescribable. And if the urge is that primal, as some claim, then we should be born knowing all about it anyway…
Some say that there are hormones activated in the mother that entirely transform her being when the kid hits the air, but I find the thought of anything that can so take over a brain, rather scary.In a badly overpopulated world, we need that sort of romantic drivel like a submarine needs a screen door. When I care about someone, it is because of who they are, not whose belly they came out of. Raising kids right, turning them into decent human beings…now THAT is an accomplishment.Thanks again for the fresh air.
As many surveys have shown, \”Bright\” isn\’t a term liked even by those it is aimed at. Great idea, bad label.
I\’m not happy with \”Bright\” as a name, either, but being \”interested in convincing people of the merits of a naturalistic worldview,\” while being of obvious concern and relevance to criticism on the choice of name, is distantly peripheral to the purpose of establishing such a group, which this essay doesn\’t seem to capture. The purpose is to gather together those who reject magical thinking (the supernatural and mystical) as a cohesive political force. A bad label can hinder recruiting even among the people this group is meant for.
Indeed, \”bright\” is an unfortunate and dull misnomer. The idea of a word or name to draw together the disparate factions of skepticism and the irreligious seems fine on the face of it, but the problem of the incoherence of these factions won\’t be overcome even if a good word emerges. Good grief, for an example of the futility of this look no further than the \”christians\”.
Alas, I\’m doomed to self-describe as \”agnostic re the reality of a god or gods and resting on an atheist viewpoint until convincing evidence arises otherwise, while leaning toward a reality that is nihilistic, but nonetheless feeling that there\’s no point in being in a bad mood about it\”. In short I feel that I\’m a \”good-natured nihilist\”, which probably sounds ironic and foreboding to the standard religionist, but I prefer that to \”bright\”.
Thanks to Phil Mole for the succinct and absolutely sensible \”not all religions are equal\” essay.
I\’m saving it (and many others from this site) so that when my teenagers are attempting to write assignments for their school SOSE (studies in society and environment) subject, they have the benefit of some well-argued and non-partisan adult input to counter the overwhelming slant that comes with their school-provided subject materials.
It is a huge uphill battle for a 14 year old to express a counter view when even the assignment topics presented for choice are phrased to prevent disagreement. My university years are too far behind me to be able to pull together a cogent defence ready to be quoted, at the same time as cooking dinner.
Thanks Phil
Tim Stephenson seems to think that the presence of Dennett and Dawkins in the \”bright\” camp somehow grants it some conclusive credibility. If forced to choose between that side and one including James Clerk Maxwell, Freeman Dyson, E.O. Wilson and Srinivasa Ramanujan where does he think he might find the brightest(most intelligent) conversation?
I am an atheist, not a bright.
Referring to my religious beliefs in any other way is disingenuous.
It boggles and bores me to consider the babble we must use to get religious types to treat atheists with the respect we deserve.
Meanwhile we may fear (depending on one\’s geographical location) letting non-atheists know we don\’t have a Christmas tree at our house.
When you all come up with a way to deal with this, let me know. I\’m back to reading Henry James and the WSJ
Wishing you a \’Bright\’ Christmas?
As a practising atheist ( and getting better the more I practice ) I have no qualms about having a Christmas tree. Although Christians have tried to hijack the evergreen tree for their own purposes, its roots (so to speak) surely go back further:
http://www.christmas-tree.com/where.html
and to miss out on the tree is to miss out on the true spirit of Christmas:
http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/xmas.htm
There is still time to obtain Christmas cards which are less embarrassing to atheists.
https://secure2.subscribeonline.co.uk/PEYE/product.cfm?cmp=XMASCARDSWEB&CFID=747241&CFTOKEN=50402186
(click on each one to see details)
and when I wake up on the morning after the seasonal celebrations, I shall not feel very Bright, but I will still feel very atheist
Roger
Malik\’s defense of humanism against Stangroom\’s criticisms is far from convincing, relying perhaps too much on simple assertion and containing too many, at least debatable arguments.
We have, for instance, Malik stating that:
\”…to suggest that the self is simply a brain process is a bit like Margaret Thatcher’s infamous argument that ‘there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families’. Individuals and families constitute society.\”
\”But\”, writes Malik, \”society has an existence beyond those individuals and families.\”
But, says I, Malik is simply asserting that society has such an existence. And an assertion makes a poor argument.
Earlier there is the conclusion that merely \”mechanical\ views cannot be right because \”Drawinian processes are driven, not by the need to ascertain the truth, but to
survive and reproduce. Accordingly, ‘the human mind serves
evolutionary success, not truth.’ Indeed, ‘in the struggle for life, a taste for truth is a luxury’, even a ‘disability’.\”
Is truth really a \’disability\’ in a Darwinian world where processes are driven to \’survive and reproduce\’? Hardly. One can easily argue that a more accurate picture of the
truth — that is, the way things are and behave — would enhance survival and reproduction. After all, that\’s
what seems to have happened with humans.
Preach it, sister!
The irony of such a poorly written piece decrying bad writing cannot be an accident. The first line alone gives it all away. And when the article closes by mentioning writing poorly on purpose, you have to be seriously dense not to get the joke at that point.
As one who has dabbled in technical writing, I hold to the academically heretical view that anything (yes, anything!) that is worth saying, can be said in a way that is understandable. An example: Paul Samuelson was one of the most brilliant economists of the 20th century. His doctoral dissertation was the beginning of mathematical economics – taking economic theory and expressing it in mathematical terms. Yet throughout his prolific career as a writer of books and articles, his prose clearly explained and elaborated on the mathematical models, so that even a non-mathematical person like me could understand it. Why can\’t everyone else do this? One is led to suspect that in many cases the writer does not fully udnerstand the theory he is expounding.
The same is true of legalese. The first clause of many legal contracts consists of definitions. In \”plain English law\”, one can define abstruse terms in plain English, then use the simpler terms throughout. Why can\’t academics do the same? This exercise would force one into the discipline of understanding what is being expounded, while making the reading much easier, for peers as well as for the non-technical public.
Ken Emmond
On \”bad writing\”, the bad writing contest, &c.
I waded through this in college. Then I switched and became a scientist. Thank god. I would rather be at the beck and call of the real world than the arbitrary whims of a theory queen like Butler.
Science has fashions too, of course, and powerful factions. Good work can get buried for years. Researchers a bit out of the mainstream are scorned and hussled into the outposts. But in the end, good work that\’s buried gets uncovered because nature demands it.
It is only in the lit theory community, however, that every particle of one\’s career depends on the whims of the kings and queens. They are the ones who bestow (generally via coauthoring or citation or just party chatter) the mantle of next-generation genius on one of the waiting grad student masses.
There are definitely exceptions. Some critics with excellent things to say, seem to have done it without that kind of help. And perhaps some of my distaste for the community can be put down to the fact that, in the end, I wasn\’t so good at it.
But my experiences in college bear out that this kind of unchallenged mediocrity hiding as pure genius is celebrated and rewarded in the crony system. Part Emperor\’s New Clothes, part Halliburton.
Nussbaum made the excellent point that a lot of it is previously said, and simply repackaged. Wittgenstein is a common victim: theorists will skim the Investigations and come out the other end with a garbled version where \”what is correct is not original and what is original is not correct.\”
My one objection is that ridicule and outright mockery is a dangerous game to play in intellectual matters. It\’s fun — and important — to laugh sometimes, but I\’m glad the bad writing contest is over. Getting too much in the practice of ridicule can make you afraid to put yourself out there, and it can harden your mind to new ideas.
The jargon is stupid intellectually and pernicious morally but it has been going on forlonger than cultural studies. Freudians long ago introduced the notion that understanding literary works required a whole system and its jargon. Harold Bloom, among others, followed the same line with fancy Greek terms. The canon was shaped with an educated public in mind, not experts, but, as people pointed out early on in when modern literature was introduced to universities, what is the deep problem that requires research? This is a perpetual embarrassment in the modern research university. The best and longest lived answer is literary history of one sort or another, and the best work in cultural studies continues that. Just as historians keep re-telling the past for today so do literary historians. The question ishow appreciation can maintain its place, and I suspect that most profs still keep this alive one way or another with undergraduates. Not the most visible ones perhaps, but most.
This awful article trots out very familiar objections to \”theory\” in a way which only provides ammunition for those who think such objections are always merely anti-intellectual.
Benson argues that the questions theory raises are dealt with in other disciplines, without bothering to explore those questions, or even hint at what they might be. She makes no effort to enter into any complexities of the debate over who is to judge what is \”bad writing,\” how, and why (is she by any chance dismissing feminism and Marxism without the need to actually acknowledge their existence, let alone attempt to engage with their critiques? Who knows). Benson also does not actually consider any specific terms/jargon (depending on your view) theory uses, in order to investigate whether they really can be substituted for satisfactorily by the language of \”common sense.\”
What a load of tedious crap this is. Editors, please only let people write on this topic when they\’ve done a little homework and have something new to say.
\”Carlin Romano remarks on the familiar alibi in his review of a new anthology of essays on the….\”
I\’m no scholar but I do know the difference between an \”alibi\” and an \”excuse\”. Perhaps, before writing such articles, you should look it up.
Postmodernism, Science and Religious Fundamentalism:
By Meera Nanda
Outstanding and insightful article. Just one problem, though. All three of Nanda\’s definitions of naturalism are too \”hard\”, i.e. themselves not proveable by empirical means. He thus perpetuates the myth that science is the implacable foe of any religion that actually attempts to say anything meaningful.
There are in fact any number of practicing scientists who more or less devoutly believe in one religion or another, or are at least deists to some extent. And historically some of the Hall of Famers were more or less devout believers–Boyle, Galileo, and even Newton come to mind.
Regarding ontological and methodological naturalism (to use Nanda\’s labels), one can easily demonstrate empirically that miracles, if they occur, are rare, but surely no one would seriously argue otherwise anyway (rarity, after all, is what makes miracles miraculous). On that basis one is surely justified in skepticism about this week\’s tabloid claims (even the Vatican would agree with that). But one cannot empirically demonstrate that no miracle ever has or ever will occur, anymore than one can empirically disprove the existence of God and the soul. One can say that \”I have never encountered a phenomenom that did not have a natural explanation,\” or \”I have never encountered any physical evidence of the soul,\” i.e. the null hypothesis has not been disproven. But there are many things we do not yet understand, and while no doubt most will prove to have natural explanations, it seems empirically premature to state that we are certain all will.
The universe itself may be the best example. Indeed, the more stridently atheistic members of the physics community have been trying to find some alternative to the Big Bang ever since it was first proposed, precisely for this reason; because everything natural came into existence with the Big Bang, the Big Bang cannot have had a \”natural cause\” as that term is normally used–which is more or less the definition of a miracle.
Ontologically and methodologically, therefore, it is more accurate to state that naturalism is a working assumption. That is to say, miracles, even if they occur, are not amenable to the scientific method of inquiry; empirical methods are only capable of uncovering natural causes. Thus, there is simply no point in subjecting a given phenomenon to the scientific method unless one adopts the working assumption that the phenomenon at hand has a natural explanation– just as there is no point in fishing unless one assumes there are fish in the body of water in question.
Nanda also asserts that \”naturalism is humanistic in its ethical dimension. It simply rejects the idea that you have to believe in God in order to live an ethical life.\” The second sentence is empirically accessible, although I am not sure how much research has been done, or how carefully designed it has been. For example, I do seem to recall that the divorce rate among those who profess to be Christians is about the same as among those who do not, but I also seem to recall that the divorce rate among couples who regularly pray together is well below 5%.
The first sentence, though, is what truly intrigues me. I have never been able to understand how a strictly humanist and naturalistic perspective can lead to any sort of ethical imperative. Indeed, humanism is itself not naturalistic, because the scientific method is descriptive, not prescriptive.
For instance, I can readily demonstrate empirically that stealing will cause various sorts of harmf to the victim, and if pracaticed on a widespread basis will have a detrimental impact on society. But is this a basis for an ethical imperative against stealing? Certainly not. At best, it creates a \”commons problem\” in ethics. But more fundamentally, what do I say to the person who says, \”I don\’t care about the harm to the victim, or the long term effects on society. I only care about me and what I want–and I want that stereo!\” What experiment can I possibly design to demonstrate that such a thief \”ought\” to care about the victim and the rest of humanity? If anything, naturalism (in the form of Darwinian psychology) tells us that our genes are selfish and that we have a natural inclination to steal (which, of course, does not mean that we \”ought\” to steal).
As a criminal defense lawyer, I admit my experience may warp my perspective. But I see the above problem all the time in my clients. More generally, it seems to me that many non-devout people who behave ethically do so primarily out of habit and indoctrination, and have little means to impart such habits and indoctrination to their offspring. In other words, my observation is that we are living off of the ethical capital of our forbears. But I digress.
Why is it that every article bashing \”theory\” comes from someone who doesn\’t know what they are talking about? There are many theorists who are/were excellent writers — think of Blanchot, for example, or Barthes, or Simone Weil. Just because Lacan wasn\’t E.B. White doesn\’t mean that what Lacan writes is automatically wrong. Objecting to critical theory on stylistic grounds allows people to dismiss it without actually reading it — and this is the very kernel of ignorance.
What\’s interesting to me is that is we substitute \”philosophy\” for \”theory,\” suddenly it\’s acceptable to be turgid and dense with respect to your prose. On the unfortunate day when similar articles appear attacking the late Donald Davidson\’s brilliant but daunting essays on cognition, we will know the playing field is finally level.
Brilliant article, but misses the point that intelligent people make about \’perfecting\’ crops as opposed to the warm and touchy feely new age nuts: there are many objective factors for fearing too much manipulation of the way and the type of crops grown, many dealing with the interests of those promoting the change as opposed to the interests of those it affects. I don\’t feel that crops are somehow better if they are \’natural\’ or scarce. What I\’m afraid of is basic things like reducing genetic variety of crops in third world countries that cannot afford follow-up pesticides. In America, we have insurance for farmers who use a single genetically modified crop all other farmers use. A new plague hits and destroys the whole crop, insurance premiums go up the next year. In Africa, should a crop be wiped out, thousands starve. that is just one objective reason, not to mention being ignorant of local conditions and still promoting universal solutions, a problem aid agencies are just starting to address, or the validity of changing crops to adjust them to consumer tastes like perfection or color in apples, without worrying about the loss of nutritional value. These must be addressed, and are not simply new age or folksy reservations.
Funny, fighting fashionable nonsense seems as fashionable lately as anything else. This article on bad writing was so superficial it was barely readable. The examples of the so-called defenders of bad writing were so clear they could be called good writing. There are terrible writers of theory, in part because so many people get higher degrees because they have nothing better to do. There is also a lot of good theory out there also. The author would do good to actually address the issues of trying to articulate what hasn’t been articulated before rather than simply trashing everyone who tries to write on difficult issues. Of course, in the land of internet, people just read about stuff they like and agree with anyway, or simply swear at stuff they dislike without thinking. I guess my comments here are therefore out of place.
Unfortunately \”fighting fashionable nonsense\” seems to have turned into \”reinforcing popular cant.\” Yes there is a large amount of very poor academic writing. And there are huge mounds of garbage journalism, vast piles of terrible prose fiction, and untold heaps of lousy poetry. Perhaps academics should know better, but so should journalists and authors of all stripes. You\’ll pardon me if this seems to be (warning, potential academic term coming up) ideologically driven. Allan Bloom\’s prose was often turgid, and such cultural \”critics\” as Bill Bennett fill their work with cliches and non sequiturs, yet somehow or other they never make the lists in these parlour games. Feminists and post-colonialists, however–well, it\’s open season. Must just be a coincidence.
Letters, recently posted in response to Benson\’s article on bad academic writing, remind me of the noises made by barnyard chickens newly grazed by a projectile. In fact, academic theory with regard to any of the arts, including writing, is an absolute empire of emptiness. This drivel has produced nothing of note beyond job security and a way to vent pretense for mediocrities who are incapable of adding anything to those crafts in which they\’ve set themselves up as authorities and arbiters. Their verbal fixations elucidate nothing more than the peculiar, vapid decay which is their collective invention.
I was surprised to see my name in this article, especially amongst those classified as believing in Vedic Science. As a physicist by training, I am well aware that there is ONE universal set of scientific laws. I don’t believe in postmodernism or any form of cultural relativism when it is applied to the natural sciences. There is neither any Vedic Science nor any Hindu science, just as Newtonian Laws are not Christian, and nor are Einstein’s theories Jewish laws.
At the same time, I do believe that there have been considerable Indian contributions to science that have gone unacknowledged. Therefore, The Infinity Foundation has launched a 10-year project to publish a 20-volume series similar to the seminal work by Joseph Needham on China, except that our series will be on Indian science. What makes it Indian is not a unique epistemology but that it was Indians who did it. For details on this project and its current status, please visit: http://www.indianscience.org/scope.shtml
A policy that was explicit clarified right up-front was that Indian science for our project does not include claims based on textual reference that “might” be interpreted as science. The acid test is physical empirical evidence. For instance, the focus of the books so far has included: steel and metallurgy; ship-building; agriculture; medicine; water harvesting; textiles; civil engineering; etc.
We have distanced ourselves from claims of space travel in Mahabharata, atomic weapons and other exotic and far fetched ideas that require extrapolating the Sanskrit texts with speculation. At the same time, we are not denouncing such claims that others make, the reality being that they cannot be proven or disproven as of now. So we simply exclude them, rather going out of our way to denounce them as many writers have made a career doing. We simply wish to focus on the monumental task we have set out to do.
Therefore, it was disheartening that Meera Nanda, with no empirical evidence or homework, made outlandish claims about my position on these matters. It goes to show the sloppy and over-politicized state of Indian scholarship. It is the blind leading the blind, since the colonial masters seem to have built a whole generation of English language based babus and brahmins, who can simply mug up and copy the standard line, even without verifying the facts. They will, undoubtedly, be able to market their services and accents to call centers profitably.
Finally, I have no relationship with Frawley, Elst and the whole “Hindutva scholar” lot, and nor do I share in Hindutva political ideology.
Hopefully, Nanda in future will bother to establish contact with third parties and ask them for their positions directly, along with backup data, rather than insinuating based on her own wild extrapolations or fourth-hand information to brand people simplistically. It is dangerous to place everyone in a few fixed boxes, and Nanda seems too good at doing that. There is a whole cottage industry of brown sahibs good with the English language feeding whatever the dominant culture rewards them to dish out. Their criticism is so predictable and now overdone. It’s time for their sponsors to send them new scripts. Why don’t they want to have open dialogs with opponents, in forums where both sides get equal and fair time to respond? I would be happy to accept such an invitation. Why is Demonology the accepted methodology to avoid the real issues at hand?
For any further details on my work please contact directly at: Rajiv.malhotra@att.net
Before I say anything else, I\’d like to say that I love love LOVE Butterflies and Wheels. A few months ago I ended up here after Googling \”Richard Dawkins and Mary Midgley\” (I was interested in reading her \”Gene Juggling\” foolishness) and it\’s been my no.1 You-Must-See-This-Site site ever since.
It was Ophelia\’s post on the Istanbul atrocity that moved me to write a comment.
What else can you say? What a world we live in: to quote Mr. Dawkins in his essay, \”Time to Stand Up\”, \”To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.\”
The weary, devastated tone of OB\’s piece in Notes and Comments summed up my own feelings so well no further comment is needed, but still:
Ah, hell – without doubt.
I have to say I found the ‘Bad Writing’ article extremely dissapointing. Like, unfortunately, too much criticism of theory it was utterly, utterly trivial. I mean, was this what the ‘theory wars’ were all about, that some people dislike Judith Butler’s use of subordinate clauses? Some theory is hard to read (though no harder to read than some analytic philosophy, – Gender Trouble is not appreciably harder to read than Word and Object, although the two books are difficult in different ways). Some theory is probably unnecessarily hard to read, but surely that cannot be decided without paying attention to what theorists are trying to say.
Indeed, that leads me to the crux of my objection to much of the material on this site: it seems to be obsessed with attacking chimerical targets. If postmodernists are wrong, critique their arguments. If they are trivial, show them up by contrasting them with those working in similar areas who show real depth. The best critiques of postmodernism do just that; witness the gulf separating the ‘Bad writing’ article on this site from the excellent article by Martha Naussbaum which it linked to, which engaged with the actual substance of Judith Butler’s views, rather than raising a fuss about her style. Is sniggering at examples of ‘bad writing’, apparently as a substitute for providing genuine argument, really the best the self-desribed defenders of the Elightenment can come up with?