Fiction vs. History

[jolly]

> No matter how many times you
> say it you cannot reduce the cosmos to text.

"That is precisely what all those positivist historians in Europe said 
they
were doing back in the nineteenth century ("simply to show how it 
really
was" was their mantra).

The cosmos is indeed a text which we read. Different people read it
differently."

Another example of jbor' s post-modernist sentimentality  and reductionism....and though the po-mo posse continually asserts or assumes that positivism has somehow been conclusively overthrown, they seem to be the only ones who believe that; for historians, biologists, economists, etc. are, except for those few tainted by continental theorizing, working with data, and samples, making inferences (truth statements really) which may or may not be  refuted. 
 
 SJ Gould's distinction (following Popper I think)   between dogma and scientific knowledge is relevant here: for in many ways the non-refutable, (e.g non-empirical)  nature of both continental philosophy and of literature would seem to place it more in the dogma category. The critic making an assessment of literature does not use the same criteria as does a historian,economist, biologist, etc. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar contains quite a few historical glitches (i.e., Brutus did not kill Caesar on the Ides of March, but in December, I believe); yet this glitch does not cause the critic much discomfort, though it may to the historian. Similiarly, Pynchon's use of IG Farben as well as the villainous Pointsman,  based on British behaviorist Sargeant,  departs from or at least substantially elaborates upon the accepted historical facts.   

		
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