Postmodernism disrobed by Richard Dawkins

I don't believe I could say without either more context, or without just making up one of my own.

I was simply pointing out that to try and take the quote literally would be absurd.

> No, just that her quote isn't saying anything worthwhile about gender and culture in science.

I myself am not convinced that it does (note my use of "might" in the first reply here!) -- again, it was a completely context-free excerpt. But as a whole, it (or other writing of a similar nature), certainly could be saying something interesting, yet you deny the very possibility.

I'm not interested in inventing meaning from a short quote and putting my words into the author's mouth, and I do not have the time to go read the originals. So: you will get no satisfaction from me when it comes to a summary of the original unexcerpted work.

Suffice to say that I believe there are many interesting things to be said about gender and science, from the obvious statistics, anecdotes and trends, to the less obvious -- such as the historical, cultural, and linguistic parallels between science and authoritarian patriarchy, for example.

A side note: I myself have never claimed to be speaking metaphorically, nor used an obvious metaphor, so your sarcastic exchange (haven't I asked you to spare me it?) is rather off the mark.

I try not to reply to these types of arguments, but two days in a row of dissing postmoderism is a bit much, and so I'll try to defend postmodernism, cause I do think it's worth defending.

The first problem with postmoderism is it exists across fields. There was a movement in architecture. There was a movement in theatre. If you listed all the fields, you'd notice that they're all creative. That's the other problem, and the one that creates so much confusion for non-creative people. I wouldn't say all scientifically minded (digital thinking) people are not creative, but I'd guess a majority probably aren't. It's those that have problems with it, and this is why people 'that get it' call them 'stupid'. I don't agree that they're stupid, but I do think it's to do with the lack of natural creativity.

From my interpretation, the thing about postmoderism is that it measures the field using what makes that field unique as the variable. Postmodern designers feared that 'creativity' in design was disappearing, as it was the 'creativity' that designers valued, so without it - there was no more design. The postmodern philosophers, who are mostly concerned with humans, came to the same conclusion - humans were disappearing. Without humans, there was no more philosophy.

You also have to remember that these are creative people asking the questions, and creative people cannot be tamed. They love a prank, and if they choose to write, their styles become poetic and humourous. They redefine words as that is what philosophy has been doing since the origins of it. A bunch of drunk greeks sitting around defining concepts like love. Hegel re-defined practically every stylistic word he could find - to be poetic. Philosophy may have branched out into fields like science, but its origins are in human creativity, and that can't be measured by rigorous scientific method. It's art for thinkers. It explores a world that 'does' exist, but science choses to ignore as it has no other option but to. Some people can't accept that, and in this modern culture with modern people on a postmodern trajectory, they lash out, which results in some ridiculous polemics against it.

The big point of postmodernism that needs to be understood is that it is the 'end' of something. The 'end' of design. The 'end' of humans. It doesn't mean those things will cease to exist, but that what made them worthy of our attention was going to 'end'. Tech fields haven't yet hit a point where new ideas stop coming, but there will come a time where the only things coming out are rehashes of twitter or myspace. That's when a genuine postmodernism movement will rise within technology.

The ultimate test of postmoderism is to hand a naturally creative human a book by Baudrillard, and see if they get it. I would guess at least half could interpret a bulk of it.