{"id":705,"date":"2018-12-31T23:48:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T23:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=705"},"modified":"2018-12-31T23:48:13","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T23:48:13","slug":"an-exchange-of-superficial-stereotypes-wieseltier-vs-pinker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/31\/an-exchange-of-superficial-stereotypes-wieseltier-vs-pinker\/","title":{"rendered":"An Exchange of Superficial Stereotypes: Wieseltier vs Pinker"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Both Pinker’s dreary scientism<\/a> and Wieseltier’s spirited critique<\/a> are stunningly superficial, and the reason is simple: <\/p>\n

“Science” is just systematic common sense<\/a>: thinking that is constrained by reason and by fidelity to tested and testable facts. These are not the monopoly of disciplines that call themselves “sciences.” (They are not even always faithfully practiced by them!) <\/p>\n

The English word “science” is an empty scientistic label that attempts to confer a crisp authority where boundaries are fuzzy: “science has found<\/i>“; “scientists say<\/i>.” Other languages partition knowledge as consisting of the physical sciences and the human sciences rather than the sciences and the humanities — and by the “human sciences” they don’t just mean “evolutionary psychology” or “cognitive neuroscience.”<\/p>\n

There is, however, a much simpler distinction that does capture a difference worth noting (though on this both Pinker and Wieseltier are in agreement in their distaste for “postmodernism”): the difference between conclusions based on evidence and reason and conclusions based on interpretation and opinion. <\/p>\n

Roughly speaking this is the difference between empiricism and hermeneutics<\/a>. But there is a component of the latter in just about all knowledge, except possibly mathematics. So that’s no basis for mapping out two distinct territories either; it’s just a difference in degree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both Pinker’s dreary scientism and Wieseltier’s spirited critique are stunningly superficial, and the reason is simple: “Science” is just systematic common sense: thinking that is constrained by reason and by fidelity to tested and testable facts. These are not the monopoly of disciplines that call themselves “sciences.” (They are not even always faithfully practiced by … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “An Exchange of Superficial Stereotypes: Wieseltier vs Pinker”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}