[PEN-L:2250] Fwd: Re: : Alan Sokal boundary="part0_916676004_boundary"

[Nativejmc@xxxxxxx]

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Just a few months ago, there was a TV interview with some famed geologist who
claimed that they had found whole new evidence of the Columbia River having
once been a subterranean passage (a river underground) as told in the lodge
tales of the Yakima, Umatilla and Nez Perce until massive tectonic shifts
opened the earth to create the present Columbia Gorge.

Then a few weeks ago, a renowned biologist noted that the lodge tales of
Yakima and other Nations that posited conditions for maintaining delicate
balances between the bears, salmon and forests were dead on. The bears
consuming an average 73 lbs of salmon per day would migrate and leave
extrement highly concentrated in phospohorus, nitrogen and sulphur necessary
for the exact types of natural fertilizers necessary for certain types of
forests and trees.

These tales were allegories meant to describe and pass on complex processes of
creation in easy-to-remember and entertaining forms. Vine Deloria in his Red
Earth, White Lies takes on some of the assertions about the Siberian land
bridge thesis not so much as to challenge the fundamental thesis but to
challenge some of the dating. Further, there is concrete evidence that the
migratory routes were as much south to north as north to south--and east to
west and vice versa--with extensive trading networks and highly evolved
settlements, architecture, herbal medicines, techniques of surgery,
sustainable harvesting practices, democratic institutions and ideals, social
safety nets for those unable to take care of themselves, systemks for
education and training of the youth etc. The most reliable and accurate
calendar ever invented still remains the 3-intermeshing-wheels Mayan Calendar
invented at an estimated 3700 BC which could not have been invented without
the rountines, methodologies and pratices that we generally called "scientific
method" albeit at a level of development higher than for non-Mayans and lower
than methods employed today--perhaps.

You can find hard-core "scientist" who are religious and who profess to
believe all sorts of stories, myths, allegories etc that defy the logic and
methodis they employ in their research and/or are metaphysical and beyond
"proof" through the means these scientists revere and employ in their
professional work. The same can be said of many of the Indian
creationists--they are not of one homogeneous camp.

I would urge all who are interested in this subject to read Vine Deloria's Red
Earth, White Lies and other works on this subject. I do agree that one or two
or even five sel-professed "Indian creationists" do not speak for all Indians
or indeed for all who find some allegorical wisdom in the creation stories.
When either the Indian creationists or the crude mechanical epistemologists
get carried away, either way, what we get is dogma that rests ultimately on
blind acceptance of certain cornerstone principles accepted as faith for
whatever reason. Of course we still have the tests of praxis, prediction and
transformation for any purported scientific-based theory however it
originates.

Jim


In a message dated 1/18/99 6:30:30 AM Pacific Standard Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx
writes:

<< Subj:	 [PEN-L:2243] Re: : Alan Sokal
 Date:	1/18/99 6:30:30 AM Pacific Standard Time
 From:	lnp3@xxxxxxxxx (Louis Proyect)
 Sender:	owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 Reply-to:	pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 To:	pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 >      The stuff ridiculed by Sokal and Bricmont is not just
 >silliness. It is the basis of a good deal of fashionable mysticism
 >and nonsense.  It seems to me that the fact that  "Social
 >Text" could publish the Sokal spoof is not an accident, but a
 >practical result of thsi journal's "critique of science".
 >
 >--Joseph Green

 I mentioned that I got together with Alan to talk about my concerns with
 his defense of "science" against American Indian "creationists". Maybe it
 would help if I quoted Alan:

 "I'm sorry to say it, but under the influence of postmodernism some very
 smart people can fall into some incredibly sloppy thinking, and I want to
 give two examples. The first comes from a front-page article in last
 Tuesday's New York Times (10/22/96) about the conflict between
 archaeologists and some Native American creationists. I don't want to
 address here the ethical and legal aspects of this controversy -- who
 should control the use of 10,000-year-old human remains -- but only the
 epistemic issue. There are at least two competing views on where Native
 American populations come from. The scientific consensus, based on
 extensive archaeological evidence, is that humans first entered the
 Americas from Asia about 10-20,000 years ago, crossing the Bering Strait.
 Many Native American creation accounts hold, on the other hand, that native
 peoples have always lived in the Americas, ever since their ancestors
 emerged onto the surface of the earth from a subterranean world of spirits.
 And the Times article observed that many archaeologists, "pulled between
 their scientific temperaments and their appreciation for native culture,
 ... have been driven close to a postmodern relativism in which science is
 just one more belief system." For example, Roger Anyon, a British
 archaeologist who has worked for the Zuni people, was quoted as saying that
 "Science is just one of many ways of knowing the world. ... [The Zunis'
 world view is] just as valid as the archeological viewpoint of what
 prehistory is about."

 "Now, perhaps Dr. Anyon was misquoted, but we all have repeatedly heard
 assertions of this kind, and I'd like to ask what such assertions could
 possibly mean. We have here two mutually incompatible theories. They can't
 both be right; they can't both even be approximately right. They could, of
 course, both be wrong, but I don't imagine that that's what Dr. Anyon means
 by "just as valid". It seems to me that Anyon has quite simply allowed his
 political and cultural sympathies to cloud his reasoning. And there's no
 justification for that: We can perfectly well remember the victims of a
 horrible genocide, and support their descendants' valid political goals,
 without endorsing uncritically (or hypocritically) their societies'
 traditional creation myths. Moreover, the relativists' stance is extremely
 condescending: it treats a complex society as a monolith, obscures the
 conflicts within it, and takes its most obscurantist factions as
 spokespeople for the whole."

 This is just Wall Street Journal crap. >>


--part0_916676004_boundary

Return-Path: <owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
	  by rly-yc05.mail.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0)
	  Mon, 18 Jan 1999 09:30:26 -0500 (EST)
	Mon, 18 Jan 1999 06:25:56 -0800 (PST)
	[128.59.35.130])
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 09:16:55 -0500
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [PEN-L:2243] Re: : Alan Sokal
In-Reply-To: <199901180736.BAA05096@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sender: owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>      The stuff ridiculed by Sokal and Bricmont is not just
>silliness. It is the basis of a good deal of fashionable mysticism
>and nonsense.  It seems to me that the fact that  "Social
>Text" could publish the Sokal spoof is not an accident, but a
>practical result of thsi journal's "critique of science".
>
>--Joseph Green

I mentioned that I got together with Alan to talk about my concerns with
his defense of "science" against American Indian "creationists". Maybe it
would help if I quoted Alan:

"I'm sorry to say it, but under the influence of postmodernism some very
smart people can fall into some incredibly sloppy thinking, and I want to
give two examples. The first comes from a front-page article in last
Tuesday's New York Times (10/22/96) about the conflict between
archaeologists and some Native American creationists. I don't want to
address here the ethical and legal aspects of this controversy -- who
should control the use of 10,000-year-old human remains -- but only the
epistemic issue. There are at least two competing views on where Native
American populations come from. The scientific consensus, based on
extensive archaeological evidence, is that humans first entered the
Americas from Asia about 10-20,000 years ago, crossing the Bering Strait.
Many Native American creation accounts hold, on the other hand, that native
peoples have always lived in the Americas, ever since their ancestors
emerged onto the surface of the earth from a subterranean world of spirits.
And the Times article observed that many archaeologists, "pulled between
their scientific temperaments and their appreciation for native culture,
.... have been driven close to a postmodern relativism in which science is
just one more belief system." For example, Roger Anyon, a British
archaeologist who has worked for the Zuni people, was quoted as saying that
"Science is just one of many ways of knowing the world. ... [The Zunis'
world view is] just as valid as the archeological viewpoint of what
prehistory is about."

"Now, perhaps Dr. Anyon was misquoted, but we all have repeatedly heard
assertions of this kind, and I'd like to ask what such assertions could
possibly mean. We have here two mutually incompatible theories. They can't
both be right; they can't both even be approximately right. They could, of
course, both be wrong, but I don't imagine that that's what Dr. Anyon means
by "just as valid". It seems to me that Anyon has quite simply allowed his
political and cultural sympathies to cloud his reasoning. And there's no
justification for that: We can perfectly well remember the victims of a
horrible genocide, and support their descendants' valid political goals,
without endorsing uncritically (or hypocritically) their societies'
traditional creation myths. Moreover, the relativists' stance is extremely
condescending: it treats a complex society as a monolith, obscures the
conflicts within it, and takes its most obscurantist factions as
spokespeople for the whole."

This is just Wall Street Journal crap.


Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)


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