There is an interesting post and discussion on Crooked Timber today, on the tension between trying to work out a reasoned position on issues like global warming, and the political commitments of some (or all?) of the sources one relies on to make such judgements. It grabbed my attention because of course that tension is what B and W is all about. Also because I bump against it (can one bump against a tension? never mind, two idioms collide) all the time in going about my daily task of finding news and other links. ‘Hmm, interesting article, makes some good points, but do I really want to link to the Washington Times/Reason/the Telegraph?’ Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Well…actually … Read the rest
All entries by this author
Putting the Boot In
Sep 8th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonClive James ponders Twain on Cooper, Macdonald on Cozzens, and finds it good.… Read the rest
Susan Greenfield Interview
Sep 8th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIs there a tension between popularisation (and celebrity) and serious research?… Read the rest
Radical Islam is Not Modern but Modernist
Sep 8th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPostmodernists despise facts as ‘positivist’ but they are a vital weapon, Terry Eagleton says.… Read the rest
Postmodernists in the Bush Administration
Sep 8th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTruth is a construct, therefore who knows, maybe tax cuts for the rich will create jobs.… Read the rest
A Scientist in Arts Faculty Territory
Sep 8th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhere opinion is sacred while facts have a long leash.… Read the rest
Orthorexia Nervosa?
Sep 8th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Cooking food is not natural.’ Neither is living in a house or reading books. So?… Read the rest
Psychiatry No Better Than Astrology?
Sep 8th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRichard Bentall differs from Laing because he is a scientist.… Read the rest
Doubt is Possible
Sep 7th, 2003 8:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is an interesting little case study in the use and abuse of evidence, investigative techniques, language and rhetoric, inference and conclusion. One of those (all too familiar) occasions when attention-seeking and self-aggrandizement dress themselves up in scientific (or pseudo-scientific) vocabulary and give the whole enterprise a bad name.
… Read the restDominique Labbé, a specialist in what is known as lexical statistics, claims that he has solved a “fascinating scientific enigma” by determining that all of Molière’s masterpieces…were in fact the work of Pierre Corneille…”There is such a powerful convergence of clues that no doubt is possible,” Mr. Labbé said. The centerpiece of his supposed discovery is that the vocabularies used in the greatest plays of Molière and two comedies of Corneille
The Quiche Party
Sep 7th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhen political commitments get confused with consumer choices, rhetoric is in play.… Read the rest
Molière was Really Corneille?
Sep 6th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStatistics prove it! No they don’t, say scholars, and the argument is on.… Read the rest
Non sequiturs
Sep 6th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Science can’t provide all the answers.’ Oh and religion can?… Read the rest
Our Banner: No Consensus for Loonies
Sep 5th, 2003 5:15 pm | By Ophelia BensonHere’s an item for all you students of artful rhetoric: an article about pagans, Wiccans and other ‘alternative’ groups and the use they make of Stonehenge and similar sites. Pure wool from beginning to end – enough wool there to make jumpers for the entire Butterflies and Wheels staff.
Spiritual site-users, specifically Pagans and Travellers, have traditionally been negatively represented by the media…However, this report outlines the growing need for recognition of the rights of Pagans, who come from all walks of life…Pagan and other spiritual site-users believe that the spirits and energies of the land can be most strongly felt at sacred sites enabling connections to be made with our ancestors.
Yes, and? So what? What if I believe … Read the rest
Calls to Make Hard Choices
Sep 5th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey may be a mask for strategies no one wishes to acknowledge.… Read the rest
How Embarrassing
Sep 5th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonArchaeologist’s worst nightmare – that 2000-year-old carving was done by one Barry Luxton in 1995… Read the rest
The Myth of Repressed Memory
Sep 5th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWendy Grossman interviews Elizabeth Loftus.… Read the rest
Psychology and Psychiatry
Sep 4th, 2003 9:29 pm | By Ophelia BensonWe had a discussion/disagreement recently about the validity or otherwise of psychiatric diagnoses or labels, designer drugs, and the DSM [see Comments on the N&C ‘Opinion’ on 26 August if you’re interested]. I was browsing my disorderly collection of printed-out articles this morning and so re-read this article by Carol Tavris that I posted in News last March. What she says is highly pertinent to the discussion/disagreement. In fact, it raises a whole set of questions that are very much B and W territory: what is science and what isn’t, what is pseudoscience, what kind of evidence is reliable and what isn’t and why, what kind of harm can be done by taking shaky evidence as more reliable than it … Read the rest
Reading
Sep 4th, 2003 8:23 pm | By Ophelia BensonErin O’Connor says some very interesting things in this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. They’re things I’ve been thinking for some time myself.
… Read the restBut almost everyone agrees with the astounding premise that it’s reasonable to use the freshman reading program to stage a political debate…On both sides of the debate, a book’s politics are assumed to matter more than its scholarly merit or literary quality…The tacit assumption by both liberals and conservatives that Chapel Hill’s summer reading program is more about politics than about reading should give us pause. We ought to be asking what it means to read opinionated works as either a confirmation or negation of identity — but instead we are fighting endlessly about whose
Erin O’Connor on Creeping Illiteracy
Sep 4th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘There is no book worth reading that is not somehow partial to something.’… Read the rest
Ishtiaq Ahmed on Human Rights
Sep 4th, 2003 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDoes the adoption of the human rights programme means Westernisation?… Read the rest