sadness of america/bad postmodernism

[John Doe]

I read it cover to cover; I pick on Derrida because
he's is the major Guru of the really hipster
post-modernist trendoids...Fashionable Nonsense, if
you read it cover to cover, reveals SO many
misapprehensions, so many ignorant utilizations of
scientific terms, that I feel embarrassed for the
scrutinized writers...the book is valuable because it
shows how people with supple minds and a talent for
-acrostics, essentially - and sematic acrobatics will
let there egos distort the meanings of terms and
concepts in disciplines they have little if ANY skill
or learning in...what do you think the purpose was of
Sokal's Hoax?...but you rarely if ever see a serious
physicist cavalierly using terms from , say Lacanian
psychoanalysis so he can show what an expert and
authority he is in that domain of investigation of the
World...if that doesn't tell you something, perhaps
your time would be better spent finding out why that
is the case....Capra and Zukav are the main
promulgators, or were, originally, of this whole " oo!
look how much particle physics is LIKE a bunch of
notions in Zen and other cool-ass Eastern
religions!"...trouble is, neither one is a good
physicist; they each know just enough to be able to
excrete these facile analogies between eastern notions
and certain phenomena in physics; but very loosely
done!...people eat up this shit, because it makes a
very tough and technical field seem..oh so much more
cuddly and DEEP..OOOooooo!...hey honey! guess what I
found out today from Capra? Physics is REALLY just
another kind of Zen!..it really is! Isn't that
cool?...uh..sorry to burst your bubble Mr. Nelson, but
no, it really isn't....so, I don't find them to be
,much better..except in this way;books like the
Dancing Wu Li Masters don't really say anything that
can be construed as absurd or downright incorrect;
what they do is have fun playing with making sexy-cool
farout analogies that hope, I guess, are really
revelations of some deeper connection between certain
kinds of "thought" and certain kinds of
phenomena...that's fine with me..so long as they don't
start making claims it's more than that...

--- Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Actually, I spent about as more time in physics than
> I
> did in English and Comp Lit, but ... but I'm not
> arguing about Derrida here, I'm suggesting that your
> recommendation of the Sokal and Bricmont book as a
> corrective or whatever for "Derrida-heads" might
> indicate you didn't much read the book in the first
> place, as there's not only scant mention of Derrida,
> but the authors specifically spare him their scorn
> ...
> 
> Maybe yr energies'd be better spent working on
> Fritjof
> Capra or Gary Zukav or somesuch ...
> 
> --- John Doe <tristero69 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> >  If you use a term like "Einsteinian Constant" ,
> > clearly not knowing that no such thing exists, in
> a
> > context where it doesn't apply even if it did,
> > that's showing gross intellectual
> irresponsibility,
> > not an - oops! - "slip"...physicists don't go
> > around - except perhaps sarcastically - bandying
> > terms from Hegelian dialectic and take themselves
> > seriously as philososphers for doing so...you
> don't
> > know many real scientists, do you? So what's
> > Derrida's excuse? His ego?
> 
> 
> 	
> 		
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