Man's Machinations

In our first two episodes, Living in a Mythopoeia Part I and II, we discuss foundational principles: how can we understand the world, and where has modern philosophy gone wrong? What is the relationship between culture, including a set of shared myths, and a healthy society? How has science changed the way we see the world? In this first episode we focus on the French philosopher, Chantal Delsol; please see the Episode Notes and Transcript for more information as well as definitions of terms. Here I will simply define the term in the episode’s title, the word Mythopoeia, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the creation of a myth or myths,” and has been used in particular to describe the prophetic books of William Blake, as well as J. R. R. Tolkien’s invented mythology – in other words, an individual’s own private religion. In what sense do we need myths, and what are the myths of our time? 

This episode was pre-recorded on May 15, 2020. We began our discussion by describing our research backgrounds.

Biologist Edward O. Wilson’s book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, written in 1998, provides the background to this episode, which considers the differences between the Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Hard Sciences, and whether they can all be seen as connected. We discuss how much of human behaviour can be explained by culture versus biology. In categorical terms, social constructionism emphasizes culture and scientific realism emphasizes biology. The “Search for a Meta-Narrative” occurs in the hard sciences, with the ideal goal of an ultimate physical theory that explains all phenomena in the universe; in the humanities it may be a full historical account of the origin, migration, and evolution of all cultures (including languages, worldviews, symbols, myths, religions, etc.), and in the social sciences it may be a complete model of human nature and how societies form, persist, and disintegrate. A Consilient view would be what falls under the humanities and social sciences are subcategories of the ultimate physical theory. We also discuss possible abuses of scientific knowledge which could occur under scenarios such as genetic engineering, as well as how social constructionist arguments provide their own meta-narrative, a religious story which interprets all of human history and culture as a series of oppressions, and which thus justifies taking over all institutions and fields of culture in order to “correct” humanity. Similar to the first two episodes, this episode is based on a conversation Dustin and Ryan had on June 19th, 2020. 

Anthropologist Bruno Latour’s article “Why Has Critique Run Out Of Steam?” (originally published in Critical Inquiry, 2004), is the focus of this episode, and its background is the “Science Wars” which began when scientists criticized the work of certain “Postmodernist” philosophers. Prominent examples of such philosophers include Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), and Jean François Lyotard (1924-1988). Significant context is provided in the Episode itself, but one example is mentioned which is documented more fully here. In 1985, French feminist philosopher Luce Irigary (born 1930) published Speculum of the Other Woman, which commented on scientific research in a way some scientists found objectionable. Alan Sokal (American physicist, born 1955) and Jean Bricmont (Belgian physicist, born 1952), in Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science(English version 1998; published in French in 1997), quoted the following comment on physics from Chapter 6, “The Mechanics of Fluids,” in this book:

Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids... These idealizations are reinscribed in mathematics... In the same way that women are erased within masculinist theories and language… so fluids have been erased from science.

A number of scientists argued that passages like this placed empirical sciences like physics on the same epistemological level as Freudian psychological speculations, thus demonstrating a failed understanding of the scientific method. Biologist Richard Dawkins read Irigaray’s passage in a talk “On Postmodernism Invading Science,” (2013) adopted from “Postmodernism Disrobed: A Review of FashionableNonsense, by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont” (first published in Nature, 1998). Although we do not actually discuss the famous “Sokal Hoax,” it was arguably the central event in the “Science Wars,” and occurred when Alan Sokal, perhaps the most important voice on the “Science” side of the “Science Wars,” published a hoax paper (see entries listed under Alan Sokal in the show notes). 

Near the end of the podcast, the tragic case of French instructor and scholar Margaret Mary Vojtko is mentioned. See Lindsay Ellis’s “An Adjunct’s Death Becomes a Rallying Cry for Many in Academe” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 19, 2013).

In our first two episodes, Living in a Mythopoeia Part I and II, we discuss foundational principles: how can we understand the world, and where has modern philosophy gone wrong? What is the relationship between culture, including a set of shared myths, and a healthy society? How has science changed the way we see the world? In this first episode we focus on the French philosopher, Chantal Delsol; please see the Episode Notes and Transcript for more information as well as definitions of terms. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Mythopoeia as “the creation of a myth or myths,” and has been used in particular to describe the prophetic books of William Blake, as well as J. R. R. Tolkien’s invented mythology – in other words, an individual’s own private religion. In what sense do we need myths, and what are the myths of our time?