Via this post on a translating (or transliterating, I guess) the GNOME desktop to Shavian, I’ve been reading this interesting article on spelling reform, and thinking some more about the subject. It’s good to see an article address the most obvious problem with phonetic spelling, the fact that there’s no one mapping from words to pronunciations, because there’s no one accent. Still, I’m not convinced by the argument here. Read more↴
There’s been an absolutely absurd response to Michael Reiss’s eminently sensible suggestion that science teachers could use discussions of creationism to talk about the difference between science and non-science. Reiss said:
If questions or issues about creationism and intelligent design arise during science lessons they can be used to illustrate a number of aspects of how science works.
In response to which the New Scientist compared him to Sarah Palin, and a couple of Nobel laureates are calling for him to be sacked from his position as education director of the Royal Society. And of course Dawkins got involved.
I initially posted this just because I thought it was amusingly stupid. But now I think there may be something a bit more pernicious going on. A number of people objecting to Reiss have said things like “teach creation in religious studies,” or “keep it in philosophy class” (see e.g. the comments on that New Scientist blog post). What’s wrong about this is the suggestion that philosophy of science, or the question of the nature and bounds of science, is irrelevant to science itself. This is a problem because it implies a belief that a scientific worldview is somehow obvious, rather than a particular way of thinking that took a long time and a lot of trouble to develop.
If one takes leave of the book with a cautious reserve about everything that has so far attained honor and even worship under the name of morality, this in no way contradicts the fact that the whole book contains no negative word, no attack, no spite—that it lies in the sun, round, happy, like some sea animal basking among rocks. (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, III IV, §1)
Infinite Thought has demanded, according to the rules of her new Dogmeme, that I write a post containing no criticism of anything; conveniently, today I have been behaving very much like a Nietzschean sea animal, sitting out on my deck (which is like a balcony but, being American, bigger) on a perfect Berkeley day, reading Etienne Balibar and listening to bassline records. Read more↴
A wholly splendid article by Raymond Geuss on Richard Rorty, including a defense of internationalism which culminates in:
The reason [for the fact that the Pope always turned out to be Italian] most commonly cited by these nuns was that, as Bishop of Rome, the Pope had to live in the “Eternal City,” but only an Italian could stand to live in Rome: it was hot, noisy, and overcrowded, and the people there ate spaghetti for dinner everyday rather than proper food, i.e., potatoes, so it would be too great a sacrifice to expect someone who had not grown up in Italy to tolerate life there. I clearly remember being unconvinced by this argument, thinking it set inappropriately low standards of self-sacrifice for the higher clergy; a genuinely saintly character should be able to put up even with pasta for lunch and dinner every day. I have since myself adopted this diet for long periods of time without thinking it gave me any claim on the Papacy (via).
I have very fond memories of Geuss’s lectures at Cambridge, particularly (and I think I’ve told this story to more-or-less everyone I’ve ever met), Read more↴
Maybe I subsconsciously believe the analytic misrepresentations of Derrida. At least, I wouldn’t have expected that in a debate between Derrida and Habermas, it would be Derrida who provides the lucid, rigorous arguments. But what else are we to make of passages like this:
The specialized languages of science and technology, law and morality, economics, political science, etc. … live off the illuminating power of metaphorical tropes; but the rhetorical elements, which are by no means expunged, are tamed, as it were, and enlisted for special purposes of problem-solving.
— Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 209
Is Habermas taking the piss? Read more↴
