A recent Start the Week on Radio 4 discussed not one but two issues that we’ve been talking about here on Butterflies and Wheels. Nancy Cartwright, a philosopher of science, here asserts the trendy notion that the discoveries of science are a product of negotiation and agreement among scientists, and that the idea of universality (of science as well as of any other kind of knowledge) is one we should all be very suspicious of. Fortunately, there is also a working scientist on the premises, who disputes her views. Also present is Germaine Greer, who voices one of my favourite exasperations, with the fashion for gossippy biographies of poets and writers that give short shrift to the mental life of … Read the rest

Oh honestly. Does nonsense never go away? Well I shouldn’t complain, it certainly keeps us busy and entertained here at B and W. But it would be nice to think humans could pay attention once in awhile. Take
this article about Freud in Time magazine, for instance.

At the same time, post-Freudian psychotherapists are figuring out that the old master still has something to offer the science of mental health: an understanding of the human mind and its many malfunctions that’s richer, fuller and more exciting than anything invented since.

Really? Well I suppose it depends how you define ‘richer’ or ‘more exciting’. It would be rich and exciting to be told our brains were full of gremlins and … Read the rest

A few days ago I took issue with a column John Sutherland wrote in the Guardian about the wonderful benefits of US university athletic programmes. Here is a delightful little story about some of the drawbacks of the US approach. College basketball fans harass and make death threats against an English teacher who has the unmitigated temerity to criticise a coach. Clearly, the basketball coach is important and the pesky teacher is just a thing that causes trouble. Could such an attitude possibly be harmful to actual, you know, education?… Read the rest

Sorry, but I do think this is pretty funny. It’s the bit about cognitive skills classes.

The cognitive courses all prisoners have to attend – usually Enhanced Thinking Skills – were deemed effective when they first started, but recent studies have shown that prisoners can emerge from these even more likely to reoffend than they were without them…Or it could be that they imbibe the skills without accepting the moral message, so they just come out with an enhanced ability to think crimes through and avoid mistakes like leaving their dog at the scene of the crime or ordering a pizza with a thieved credit card (both real occasions of burglar ineptitude in the past fortnight; the beauty of

I sort of hate to agree with The National Review about anything, but then it’s not my fault: if the left will insist on being so silly all the time, they have only themselves to blame. Anyway this is a very funny piece about Jacques Derrida and his inexplicable hold over the minds of far too many literary critics and other “theorists”.

Indeed, the critical point to be borne in mind with regards to Derrida…is that he is not now, nor has he ever been, a philosopher in any recognizable sense of the word, nor even a trafficker in significant ideas; he is rather a intellectual con artist, a polysyllabic grifter who has duped roughly half the humanities professors in