NP no facts only interpretations

[jbor]

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>From: "Otto" <o.sell at telda.net>

> It took me a while to get through the article because I didn't get his point
> at first reading. Now it appears to me to be a covered attack on
> postmodernism (and more), and the assumption that this rose out of laziness
> is indeed ridiculous. This is Bauerlein's definition:
>
> "(...) social constructionism.

Hi Otto

In devising this term as a derogatory label to condemn scholars Bauerlein is
referring to the idea that language, and thus "knowledge", is a "social
construct". This is a recognition which underpins academic endeavour in all
fields of the humanities nowadays: philosophy, sociology, anthropology,
linguistics, history, psychology, literature etc etc.

As well as all the nonsense about professors in these fields no longer
reading anything, it's absolutely hypocritical of him to accuse academics of
ad hominem argument when it's exactly what he's doing by calling them
"social constructionists". He doesn't offer any refutation of the conception
of languages & cultural systems as socially-constructed -- which of course
they are -- merely attacks and ridicules anyone who dares to think that
there is some "truth value" in it. As you've twigged to, the alternative
viewpoint, which remains unstated in the article because it's just so dumb,
is that language and knowledge are down to some miracle of divine
intervention. It's easy to figure where Pynchon stands on that particular
"debate"!

Both "travelling" and "traveling" are OK according to my OED. The latter is
preferred in the US, however.

best