X-Message-Number: 19187 From: "mike99" <> Subject: RE: science studies and social constructivism Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 13:50:11 -0600 At 9:00 AM +0000 2002-05-31, CryoNet wrote: >Message #19176 >From: "mike99" <> >I disagree about the foundation of social constructivism. Any reading of the >texts in this field quickly reveals that almost every one comes from the >Left, not the Right. They are not fascist, but rather Politically Correct >neo-Marxist. David Stodolsky <> wrote: You can find the article in the European J. of Social Psychology (don't have the ref handy. but it's probably over ten years back). The point was that an ethnomethodologist standing at the entrance to the gas ovens would be occupied with taking notes, rather than taking action. Mike99: "Would be"? Does this mean that they were, or that some theorist claims retroactively that a personality type he has defined afterwards is the same as the ones who were actually there? I am guessing that this is pretty metaphorical. Ethnomethodology is the area of social science which theoretically underpins social constructivism. For a description of its development, see Mullins, NG. (1973). The development of specialties in social science: The case of Ethnomethodology, Science Studies, 3, 245-273. I was at the Univ. of Cal., Irvine at the time (early 70's) that Harvey Sacks, the patron saint of the movement, was professor there, so I know this area quite well. Sacks promoted "Conversation Analysis", the precursor to the attempt to apply text analysis to all things. Mike99: Thanks for the references, but I don't find this convincing evidence to prove that social constructivists are fascistic. The various "science studies" groups at Harvard are centered around Lewontin, who is avowedly Marxist. By the way, you did not respond to my point about the Sokal Hoax, which clearly showed that at least the "science studies" social constructivists were politically on the Left. >Traditionalist religions don't waste their time writing social >constructivist critiques of science; they waste their time writing >creationist nonsense that mimics science. Calling these creationists intellectuals is giving them a bit too much credit. And they certainly don't rise to the level of academics. Their stuff doesn't make it into peer reviewed journals. Mike99: Who called them intellectuals? Despite the fact that quite a few have doctorates in geology and other physical sciences, I never called them intellectuals. They have their own journals and "peer-review" one another, all within one ideological family. Mainstream science papers would be peer-review rejected by the creationists, of course. >As for opposition to nuclear power, isn't this mostly a Green political >cause? I don't recall seeing the Greens ever listed as traditionalists, >conservatives or fascists. Greens tend toward conservatism.... Mike99: Only if you re-define conservatism so that it has no connection with any political parties that call themselves conservative. ...opposing genetically modified crops, etc. There was a book in Danish on Eco-facism a few years back. Probably similar work is available in English. I recently spoke with one of these Green extremists, he felt that one billion was the maximum population that the Earth could support, and that the rest should be exterminated. Mike99: Extermination of human beings is a particular form of evil that knows no political boundaries, having cropped up on both the extreme Right (Nazism) and the extreme Left (Communism). Hitler killed more rapidly, but as _The Black Book of Communism_ documented so thoroughly, the Communists are history's most prodigious butchers, having exterminated as many as 100,000,000 civilians during the 20th century. Among the Greens the same baleful phenomenon has been raising its ugly head. As depicted in the sci-fi movie "Twelve Monkeys" there are some Green scientists who have the knowledge and may soon have the will to create a bio-weapon that "purifies" the Earth of homo sapiens. A couple of years back Greg Benford also had an experience like yours of talking to a Green who wants to reduce human population numbers, and he specified that he was a biologist who could actually do it through genetically engineering disease organisms. Such talk makes it even clearer to me why we life extentionists are such a small minority! Michael LaTorra Member: Extropy Institute: www.extropy.org World Transhumanist Association: www.transhumanism.org Alcor Life Extension Foundation: www.alcor.org Society for Technical Communication: www.stc.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19187