The story around sokal is more complicated than you make it seem. For example, social text is not a scientific journal and they did not even accept his piece immediately. There is a great video on this by dr. Fatima.
Modern western science was established by monks in medieval universities. The goal was to describe reality with "laws of nature", based on a belief that there is a covenant between man and God in which God, even though being almighty, limits its power and allows things to happen by laws and not by divine action. This means that, from the start, science was defined as "that which doesn't include divine action". This is why western science fails on the question of morality but excels in questions on motion of physical objects. It is because it originated and inherited axioms from a tradition which bases its morality and theology on a divine revelation. So science wouldn't even exist in the from it does without the theology it came from. So it cannot go back to explain that which it is nested in. Also. It is a bit anachronistic to go around and say there is science in Arabic, Chinese, indian or ancient greek traditions. There are a different, and based on different assumptions then the western one. At least they were. This is my humble opinion. Let me know where I'm wrong.
You are broadly correct. I don't think intellectual historians, even postmodernists dispute that history. That's really the consensus in Ideensgeschichte.
@@erlinacobrado7947 is it really? I feel like most people believe that there was this pure rational ancient Greek science that was corrupted and banned by superstitious medieval theology and then rediscovered in the Renaissance. An that all cultures have this and that is what unites us all in search for truth. Which is completely different than what I claimed.
@@antun88 The problem is that "Most people" aren't most "historians". Clearly that is a myth perpetrated since Petrarch and the Renaissance, as most educated scholars of history know. That's not to say the misperception still has the inertia in popular consciousness. Most classicists however (see Arnaldo Momigliano, David Green, Seth Benardete) agree that ancient Greek society was far from a scientific one, except for a very small minority of leisurely aristocrats - most ancient Greeks were clannish and very religious. While I'm not familiar with the history of monasticism, it's not a secret in history departments that monks either kept, rediscovered, expostulated and interpreted, Greco-Roman texts (mostly post-classical Platonists) from antiquity. The theologian William of Ockam's nominalism in particular is recognized by German scholars such as Chladenius since the 17th century to be the forerunners for the appreciation of the dignity of contingent created beings (not the universal Being of neoplatonism), making empiricism possible. German historicists have recognized the contribution of religion to science, from Chladenius, Vico, Meinecke and Burckhardt. That is not new. That's the consensus for a long time, in German historians at least.
@@erlinacobrado7947 I think you might be misinterpreting what I wrote above. I am claiming something even more radical. The monks in christian universities didn't just rediscovered or kept ancient science, they invited it! Western science was a product of judeo-christian theology based on the idea that there are natural unchanging laws that govern the universe. Which is a radical idea if you really think about it. The idea that mathematical predictions on motion of objects are not just simple predictions, but the actual fabric of the universe which are result of a covenant between man and God. This is how specifically Western science emerges from christian theology. It is anachronistic to claim that all other "sciences" of other cultures are based on the same assumptions. I think the Indian "science" (we need a different word there) is more based on "habits" that may or may not be the result of divine action, and not on laws that are not result of divine action. So these "sciences" are like apples and oranges. This is evident when Jesuits were at the court of Chinese emperor. They demonstrated that Christian science was far superior to Chinese science in predicting the solar eclipse. To learn this science, Chinese court scientists essentially needed to become Christian in some sense, to understand how it works. To accept the idea of unchanging laws of nature and the covenant between God and man. It was not like just learning new formulas, but it was a more fundamental way of thinking, which includes theological assumptions, completely alien to them. But I see you are more familiar with way more sources so I suppose you know what I'm talking about XD.
@@antun88 I frankly think you are overstating the case, although you are in broad terms correct. But the formation of science as product of Christian theology is highly contingent on the debates of the 12-13th century inside the monasteries and burgeoning university seminarians, the "universalist versus nominalism debate". Look it up. While it seems in hindsight that nominalists were going to win, closer inspection would indicate that it was highly dependent on the rather late introduction and translation of Aristotelian texts from Toledo Spain, itself primarily dependent on Islamic scholars of Greek in Syria. Before that, the ideal of Platonist universalism predominated in Christian theology, particularly Origen, Tertullian and Augustine. Had theologians become more doctrinaire in adhering to neoplatonized Christianity which it was during its first 1100 years at least, and fought against Aristotelianism and its nominalist offspring tooth and nail (which some did, Duns Scotus, a predecessor of Occam in critiquing universalism and having a proto-nominalist metaphysics was widely despised and dismissed as stupid, leading to us having "dunce" to calling someone dumb. Nominalism only gained acceptance after Occam modified Duns Scotus), Christianity would have led nowhere to science. If Occam did not write to prove persuasively about haecceity, Francis Bacon could not have inferred the scientific method, and science would not have been developed in the first place. Christianity may have been vital, but it is nowhere a guarantee of the development of science. In the final analysis, since science in true empirical and experimental sense only appeared in the Western tradition, in a certain time, historians really have nothing to compare it with other cultures, so the essentiality of what factors or elements of Christianity is really difficult if not impossible to infer. Overall however, I do think it's overstretching the case to say that the whole of Christian doctrinal edifice, from the doctrine of grace or Eucharist was essential to the development of the arguments for empirical science; it's rather clear that metaphysical debates of what even a "thing" is (ens; res) occupied the conversation and are the immediate cause. However, the overarching technological interest already clearly articulated in early scientific manifestos of science is clearly missing in Christian doctrine. But that's another long topic.
Good video, but I think this points more to a problem with peer review than anything else. I've been thinking about how we can improve this, and I think something, which I'll call "crowd review" would be better. There's no reason why we would need to use physical journals and papers anymore, and transitioning to virtual papers brings with it some advantages. Online, anyone in the world can see them and suggest an edit, which other people could then rate. I might not be an expert on a paper I'm reading, but if I spot a typo, ambiguous sentence or missing citation, I could still point that out, and it can be corrected immediately. This would also allow more interdisciplinary research. Now, without journal gatekeepers we could no longer have the number of publications/citations be the metric for academic excellence, but I think we need to get rid of that anyway. So who gets funding? For the humanities, some formal sciences, most social sciences, and a minority of natural sciences, we can solve this by introducing a citizen's-dividend or other basic income scheme. If you don't need something like a particle accelerator, then the biggest cost of most research is the salary. With a basic income, most researchers would have the option of leaving the warped incentive system of academia and focusing on long term, non-trendy research. Then academic excellence is informed by our actual complex value system, not an arbitrary institutional proxy that gets goodharted immediately. (But again, this wouldn't work for large, expensive research like particle accelerators, so we would still need to design better centralized institutions on top of having decentralized 'crowd' research)
@@MrLcowles Well most papers are only read by people dedicated to that specific research niche anyway, the rest can be ignored. In practice when you look at the comment section of research communities, like e.g. math overflow, they aren't anything like a youtube comment section.
I'm not sure, I think that the problem was more involved than just peer review. But certainly it would be nice to make peer review better, of course the problem with changing a system is that you can't be sure that the new system you devised wont work even worse than the original one. A proposal (I think I read in some paper) and found -prima facie- interesting was to make peer review a market. You pay to get peer reviewed and you make money by peer reviewing, the academic reputation you build up will determine how much you get payed. I think this could make the top academics rich which I see as a huge win for society (we should be incentivizing people to be a brilliant scientist way more). But of course there are tons of potential problems with such a system, I would have to study the matter in depth to even begin to understand what system I would favor.
The general Postmodern ideology is one that eludes critique and actively works against it. One can only parody and humorize it show it's faults, as Sokol did. That does not mean it does not have value in itself, but the academics who spur it on are people of supreme anger and resentment that they will not genuinely engage with any opposition to their ideas, that is why they must use the most heinous and pretentious language. At some point it gets so convoluted and at the limit as to where it cannot be critiqued in good faith, and that is the goal.
I thought asking questions was supposed to be a good thing. Or are things black and white? And if so what are people up to really when asking questions? This is just standard messy human relations. After all, science, life, you name it, are all human endeavors. Trust the ones making the loudest noises to take the most extreme positions and to lack nuance altogether.
Nothing wrong with asking questions. But postmodernists do it wrong. They don't ask if a field is wrong or right ("Is geography broadly true?"). They also don't ask if a field is useful to society ("Are people with geography degrees helpful in their jobs?"). Rather, they ask questions as a way to say that field is prejudiced and co-opted by power ("Is mainstream positivist geography racist/classist/sexist/homophobe?"). They want everyone to feel guilty.
@@opinion3742 Admittedly, the myriad of nuances between Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze are beyond me (my field is synthesizers, not philosophy). And maybe the moralizing and misplaced politics is 1% of Postmodernism. But it's that specific 1% that's doing a ton of damage to the reputation of academia, and demagogues merely have to point to stuff like that infamous feminist glaciology paper to make all of us look like lunatics.
@@boptillyouflop The "damage" is political propaganda. There is something deeply suspicious about people wanting to shut down certain academic studies. It is all too conspiratorial.
As far as I can tell: The postmodernists largely lost the debate. So they just took over the university administration instead, and came back with a vengeance around 2010.
@@Flumpadorus Nope. I got it from the fact that admin departments have ballooned (sometimes becoming larger than the faculty) and explicitly write policies using the language and ideas from these fields.
@@Nai-qk4vp Evidence? Bro you did not just ask for evidence like this is some science experiment XDD And btw, the science-tards are the ones arguing against straw men, since they don't even UNDERSTAND what the "pomos" were saying.
I find tribalism is easy and nuance to be hard work. I wouldn't have put Chomsky alongside Dawkins as Dawkins is so dogmatic. (Although Chomsky has fought tooth and nail against challenges to his linguistic theories). I find it ironic that many Postmodernists pride themselves as some kind of trickster class then moan about a prank pulled on them. If any good has come of this it has ressurected hoax as a respectful rhetorical move.
Postmodernism do not see themselves as tricksters. They just account for more than analytical philosophy. Consider that philosophers like Richard Rorty saw himself as a post modernist
@@ZacharyBittner maybe that was an unthought comment thrown out on my part. I have to admit I haven't read hardly any Post Modernists (self declared or other) at source but there is or was a fan base who gleefully saw them as disruptors - maybe a distant cousin of trickster. I do consider them a necessary part of the philosophical eco-system even if I think some of their ideas not especially helpful. Rorty was steeped in analytical method so when his interests broadened he, to my mind, retained a certain clarity. But I'm probably biased not being accclimatised to other styles.
I thought it was a finish accent at first but leaning more towards Italian now. Difficult to place tho, to me sounds like a mix of Italian, Icelandic and something Eastern European 🧐
A theory must be falsifiable, assertions require evidence, history requires documents. Propositions that contradict these requirements are baloney and can be safely ignored. Metaphysics is rubbish so lets get on with empirical reality.
The idea that universe is governed by unchanging natural laws is pure metaphysics. Wild assumption if you really think about it. Universe is not a government office.
@@ZacharyBittner I would say yes, if there is an empirical way to show empiricism to be false then yes. It is difficult to critique empiricism from another foundationally different perspective and for the critiques to make sense under both paradigms
The story around sokal is more complicated than you make it seem. For example, social text is not a scientific journal and they did not even accept his piece immediately. There is a great video on this by dr. Fatima.
knowledge is power, france is bacon
Idiotic.
Canada is bacon.
Idiotic.
Canada is bacon.
Are you trying to say the French are pigs?
@@antediluvianatheist5262No. Canada is maple syrup
Russia is Vodka
Italy is pizza
China is noodles
America is a cheese burger
Mexico is Taco
Scotland is haggis
Modern western science was established by monks in medieval universities. The goal was to describe reality with "laws of nature", based on a belief that there is a covenant between man and God in which God, even though being almighty, limits its power and allows things to happen by laws and not by divine action. This means that, from the start, science was defined as "that which doesn't include divine action". This is why western science fails on the question of morality but excels in questions on motion of physical objects. It is because it originated and inherited axioms from a tradition which bases its morality and theology on a divine revelation. So science wouldn't even exist in the from it does without the theology it came from. So it cannot go back to explain that which it is nested in. Also. It is a bit anachronistic to go around and say there is science in Arabic, Chinese, indian or ancient greek traditions. There are a different, and based on different assumptions then the western one. At least they were.
This is my humble opinion. Let me know where I'm wrong.
You are broadly correct. I don't think intellectual historians, even postmodernists dispute that history. That's really the consensus in Ideensgeschichte.
@@erlinacobrado7947 is it really? I feel like most people believe that there was this pure rational ancient Greek science that was corrupted and banned by superstitious medieval theology and then rediscovered in the Renaissance. An that all cultures have this and that is what unites us all in search for truth. Which is completely different than what I claimed.
@@antun88 The problem is that "Most people" aren't most "historians". Clearly that is a myth perpetrated since Petrarch and the Renaissance, as most educated scholars of history know. That's not to say the misperception still has the inertia in popular consciousness. Most classicists however (see Arnaldo Momigliano, David Green, Seth Benardete) agree that ancient Greek society was far from a scientific one, except for a very small minority of leisurely aristocrats - most ancient Greeks were clannish and very religious. While I'm not familiar with the history of monasticism, it's not a secret in history departments that monks either kept, rediscovered, expostulated and interpreted, Greco-Roman texts (mostly post-classical Platonists) from antiquity. The theologian William of Ockam's nominalism in particular is recognized by German scholars such as Chladenius since the 17th century to be the forerunners for the appreciation of the dignity of contingent created beings (not the universal Being of neoplatonism), making empiricism possible. German historicists have recognized the contribution of religion to science, from Chladenius, Vico, Meinecke and Burckhardt. That is not new. That's the consensus for a long time, in German historians at least.
@@erlinacobrado7947 I think you might be misinterpreting what I wrote above. I am claiming something even more radical. The monks in christian universities didn't just rediscovered or kept ancient science, they invited it! Western science was a product of judeo-christian theology based on the idea that there are natural unchanging laws that govern the universe. Which is a radical idea if you really think about it. The idea that mathematical predictions on motion of objects are not just simple predictions, but the actual fabric of the universe which are result of a covenant between man and God. This is how specifically Western science emerges from christian theology. It is anachronistic to claim that all other "sciences" of other cultures are based on the same assumptions. I think the Indian "science" (we need a different word there) is more based on "habits" that may or may not be the result of divine action, and not on laws that are not result of divine action. So these "sciences" are like apples and oranges.
This is evident when Jesuits were at the court of Chinese emperor. They demonstrated that Christian science was far superior to Chinese science in predicting the solar eclipse. To learn this science, Chinese court scientists essentially needed to become Christian in some sense, to understand how it works. To accept the idea of unchanging laws of nature and the covenant between God and man. It was not like just learning new formulas, but it was a more fundamental way of thinking, which includes theological assumptions, completely alien to them.
But I see you are more familiar with way more sources so I suppose you know what I'm talking about XD.
@@antun88 I frankly think you are overstating the case, although you are in broad terms correct. But the formation of science as product of Christian theology is highly contingent on the debates of the 12-13th century inside the monasteries and burgeoning university seminarians, the "universalist versus nominalism debate". Look it up. While it seems in hindsight that nominalists were going to win, closer inspection would indicate that it was highly dependent on the rather late introduction and translation of Aristotelian texts from Toledo Spain, itself primarily dependent on Islamic scholars of Greek in Syria. Before that, the ideal of Platonist universalism predominated in Christian theology, particularly Origen, Tertullian and Augustine. Had theologians become more doctrinaire in adhering to neoplatonized Christianity which it was during its first 1100 years at least, and fought against Aristotelianism and its nominalist offspring tooth and nail (which some did, Duns Scotus, a predecessor of Occam in critiquing universalism and having a proto-nominalist metaphysics was widely despised and dismissed as stupid, leading to us having "dunce" to calling someone dumb. Nominalism only gained acceptance after Occam modified Duns Scotus), Christianity would have led nowhere to science. If Occam did not write to prove persuasively about haecceity, Francis Bacon could not have inferred the scientific method, and science would not have been developed in the first place. Christianity may have been vital, but it is nowhere a guarantee of the development of science. In the final analysis, since science in true empirical and experimental sense only appeared in the Western tradition, in a certain time, historians really have nothing to compare it with other cultures, so the essentiality of what factors or elements of Christianity is really difficult if not impossible to infer. Overall however, I do think it's overstretching the case to say that the whole of Christian doctrinal edifice, from the doctrine of grace or Eucharist was essential to the development of the arguments for empirical science; it's rather clear that metaphysical debates of what even a "thing" is (ens; res) occupied the conversation and are the immediate cause. However, the overarching technological interest already clearly articulated in early scientific manifestos of science is clearly missing in Christian doctrine. But that's another long topic.
Good video, but I think this points more to a problem with peer review than anything else. I've been thinking about how we can improve this, and I think something, which I'll call "crowd review" would be better.
There's no reason why we would need to use physical journals and papers anymore, and transitioning to virtual papers brings with it some advantages. Online, anyone in the world can see them and suggest an edit, which other people could then rate. I might not be an expert on a paper I'm reading, but if I spot a typo, ambiguous sentence or missing citation, I could still point that out, and it can be corrected immediately. This would also allow more interdisciplinary research.
Now, without journal gatekeepers we could no longer have the number of publications/citations be the metric for academic excellence, but I think we need to get rid of that anyway. So who gets funding? For the humanities, some formal sciences, most social sciences, and a minority of natural sciences, we can solve this by introducing a citizen's-dividend or other basic income scheme. If you don't need something like a particle accelerator, then the biggest cost of most research is the salary. With a basic income, most researchers would have the option of leaving the warped incentive system of academia and focusing on long term, non-trendy research. Then academic excellence is informed by our actual complex value system, not an arbitrary institutional proxy that gets goodharted immediately. (But again, this wouldn't work for large, expensive research like particle accelerators, so we would still need to design better centralized institutions on top of having decentralized 'crowd' research)
@@MrLcowles Well most papers are only read by people dedicated to that specific research niche anyway, the rest can be ignored. In practice when you look at the comment section of research communities, like e.g. math overflow, they aren't anything like a youtube comment section.
@@MrLcowles How so?
@@MrLcowles I don't see how they're contradictory
@@Xob_Driesestig Well I guess you're an idiot. Good luck.
I'm not sure, I think that the problem was more involved than just peer review. But certainly it would be nice to make peer review better, of course the problem with changing a system is that you can't be sure that the new system you devised wont work even worse than the original one. A proposal (I think I read in some paper) and found -prima facie- interesting was to make peer review a market. You pay to get peer reviewed and you make money by peer reviewing, the academic reputation you build up will determine how much you get payed. I think this could make the top academics rich which I see as a huge win for society (we should be incentivizing people to be a brilliant scientist way more). But of course there are tons of potential problems with such a system, I would have to study the matter in depth to even begin to understand what system I would favor.
Great video. New subscriber ✌🏻
The general Postmodern ideology is one that eludes critique and actively works against it. One can only parody and humorize it show it's faults, as Sokol did. That does not mean it does not have value in itself, but the academics who spur it on are people of supreme anger and resentment that they will not genuinely engage with any opposition to their ideas, that is why they must use the most heinous and pretentious language. At some point it gets so convoluted and at the limit as to where it cannot be critiqued in good faith, and that is the goal.
Yes, "...eludes critique and actively works against it." The tactic is common to all ideology.
I thought asking questions was supposed to be a good thing. Or are things black and white? And if so what are people up to really when asking questions? This is just standard messy human relations. After all, science, life, you name it, are all human endeavors. Trust the ones making the loudest noises to take the most extreme positions and to lack nuance altogether.
Nothing wrong with asking questions. But postmodernists do it wrong. They don't ask if a field is wrong or right ("Is geography broadly true?"). They also don't ask if a field is useful to society ("Are people with geography degrees helpful in their jobs?"). Rather, they ask questions as a way to say that field is prejudiced and co-opted by power ("Is mainstream positivist geography racist/classist/sexist/homophobe?"). They want everyone to feel guilty.
@@boptillyouflop Just a ridiculous caricature - as if treating post modernism as a poorly imagined monolith gives any credit to the person doing it!
@@opinion3742 Admittedly, the myriad of nuances between Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze are beyond me (my field is synthesizers, not philosophy). And maybe the moralizing and misplaced politics is 1% of Postmodernism. But it's that specific 1% that's doing a ton of damage to the reputation of academia, and demagogues merely have to point to stuff like that infamous feminist glaciology paper to make all of us look like lunatics.
@@boptillyouflop The "damage" is political propaganda. There is something deeply suspicious about people wanting to shut down certain academic studies. It is all too conspiratorial.
Very nice. I highly recommend the lectures and book "Science Wars" by Steven L. Goldman.
If ideology makes you refute evidence you don't like, then it's just faith and god squadding for your belief system.
As far as I can tell: The postmodernists largely lost the debate. So they just took over the university administration instead, and came back with a vengeance around 2010.
Did you get that from Fox news?
@@Flumpadorus Nope. I got it from the fact that admin departments have ballooned (sometimes becoming larger than the faculty) and explicitly write policies using the language and ideas from these fields.
Postmodernists won the debate. Also admin is bloated with "science" bros *using* the language of Pomo theorists.
@@galek75How about you and the chump above provide some real EVIDENCE supporting what you say instead of just " LALALA I WON I CAN'T HEAR YOU"?
@@Nai-qk4vp Evidence? Bro you did not just ask for evidence like this is some science experiment XDD
And btw, the science-tards are the ones arguing against straw men, since they don't even UNDERSTAND what the "pomos" were saying.
0:14 Kid Named Finger:
I find tribalism is easy and nuance to be hard work. I wouldn't have put Chomsky alongside Dawkins as Dawkins is so dogmatic. (Although Chomsky has fought tooth and nail against challenges to his linguistic theories). I find it ironic that many Postmodernists pride themselves as some kind of trickster class then moan about a prank pulled on them. If any good has come of this it has ressurected hoax as a respectful rhetorical move.
Postmodernism do not see themselves as tricksters. They just account for more than analytical philosophy. Consider that philosophers like Richard Rorty saw himself as a post modernist
@@ZacharyBittner maybe that was an unthought comment thrown out on my part. I have to admit I haven't read hardly any Post Modernists (self declared or other) at source but there is or was a fan base who gleefully saw them as disruptors - maybe a distant cousin of trickster. I do consider them a necessary part of the philosophical eco-system even if I think some of their ideas not especially helpful. Rorty was steeped in analytical method so when his interests broadened he, to my mind, retained a certain clarity. But I'm probably biased not being accclimatised to other styles.
Are you Italian?
No. I am gay tho...
I thought it was a finish accent at first but leaning more towards Italian now. Difficult to place tho, to me sounds like a mix of Italian, Icelandic and something Eastern European 🧐
@@jonirischx8925 are you?
@@jonirischx8925 same thing
@@Frownbrows Eeeeyyyyyyyyy
A theory must be falsifiable, assertions require evidence, history requires documents. Propositions that contradict these requirements are baloney and can be safely ignored. Metaphysics is rubbish so lets get on with empirical reality.
Is falsification falsifiable?
The idea that universe is governed by unchanging natural laws is pure metaphysics. Wild assumption if you really think about it. Universe is not a government office.
@@ZacharyBittner is water wet
@@ZacharyBittner I would say yes, if there is an empirical way to show empiricism to be false then yes. It is difficult to critique empiricism from another foundationally different perspective and for the critiques to make sense under both paradigms
but there is no empirical way to show empiricism to be false, since it's a metaphysics@@ye_zus
The idea that they allow a phd thesis about astrology to be published with high honours is silly and bad for intellectual development