Old Email Archive

digest 1998-11-01 #001.txt


Saturday
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
-> Evolution email discussion forum
by Robert Maxwell Young 
-> Re: the truth in plain language, epistemological confidence
by Wayne Miller 
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Date: 31 Oct 1998 10:46:25 -0800
From: Robert Maxwell Young 
Subject: Evolution email discussion forum
Please redistribute where appropriate:
NEW Discussion Forum
Evolution [evolution@human-nature.net]
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A moderated forum for the scholarly debate of evolutionary theory
with an emphasis on evolutionary psychology, evolutionary
psychopathology, Darwinian medicine, behaviour genetics, evolutionary
epistemology, and evolutionary ethics. Some of the discussion will
focus on particular published and unpublished target papers.
http://www.human-nature.com/darwin/index.html
__________________________________________
In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob
Young
Robert Maxwell Young:  robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or
r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk
26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306; fax.+44 171
609
4837.
Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for
Psychotherapeutic
Studies, University of  Sheffield. http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/
Home page and writings: http://www.human-nature.com
'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus
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Date: 31 Oct 1998 23:23:10 -0800
From: Wayne Miller 
Subject: Re: the truth in plain language, epistemological confidence
At 1:11 AM -0500 10/31/98, Everdell@aol.com wrote:
> But I suppose I should say that the hope that _The
>Sciences_ will reach the "general public" is now very
faint since although
>it's well written, it's a hard read for most math-phobic humanists,
and quite
>impossible for a general public, of which possibly half is
functionally
>illiterate.  In any case, to attack the ignorant squarely in their
>epistemological confidence seems to me to be a recipe for disaster.
Hi,
Is it possible that the notion of ignorance itself is so laden with
implications of worth and non-worth, with unwritten scripts that float
among "the educated" about how the public is, among scientists
about how
humanists are, and among humanists about how scientists in their bland
confidence are, that
** what makes communication across disciplines and across education
classes
impossible is not the subject matter itself, but the interest of each
class
in itself? **
More generally, I would venture to say that
1) the recent short list about the principles of science and its lack
of
equivalence among humanists is hardly to the point, and that it elides
large differences among scientific branches in notions of
"adequacy" of
method and proof; indeed, that if one were in fact to chart a trajectory
of
"adequacy" from, say, math to physics to chemistry to
microbiology to
evolutionary biology to psychology to social sciences to, say,
humanities,
one would have to agree that the subject matter of the humanities may
be
wronged by a cheatsheet of idealized rules?
2) humanists hide behind their overly elaborate rhetorics in an effort
not
to admit their own sense of inadequacy over against the scientific
juggernaut -- without really internalizing the fact that human insight
is
necessary to correct the blindness (in opposition to ignorance!)
exhibited
by all classes of people, when confronted with self-interest on the one
hand, and the unknown on the other.
My two cents, as always happily shared. I hope that some others will
also
feel free to do so, if only to discourage me from stepping in first!
Wayne
/-------------------------------------------------------/
Wayne Miller                   
Manager, HCF Academic Services   /   Asst Adj Professor
Humanities Computing Facility      343 Kinsey Hall UCLA
Germanic Languages                2326 Murphy Hall UCLA
(310) 206-2004                      Fax: (310) 825-7428
/-------------------------------------------------------/