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Steve Fuller and the Hidden Agenda of Social Constructivism
Talk Reason ^ | 2/19/2006 | Norman Levitt

Posted on 02/20/2006 5:54:51 PM PST by jennyp

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When the IDers put postmodernist professor Steven Fuller on the stand in their defense in Dover, it seemed almost as incongruous as when the creationists on the Kansas Board of Education had their "hearings" over the summer and they invited the Turkish Muslim activist Mustafa Akyol to speak on ID's behalf.

But as many of us FREvos have argued, it really makes perfect sense when you look at creationism vs. evolution on a deeper level. This math professor, who doesn't sound like a conservative but certainly is anti-postmodernism, gets it too.

1 posted on 02/20/2006 5:54:54 PM PST by jennyp
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To: PatrickHenry

PING to all opponents of post-modernism, deconstructionism, and epistemological nihilism...


2 posted on 02/20/2006 5:56:39 PM PST by jennyp (WHAT I'M READING NOW: The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed.)
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To: jennyp
Evo/crevo fatigue. I'm sitting this one out.:
3 posted on 02/20/2006 5:59:02 PM PST by mlc9852
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To: VadeRetro; Junior; longshadow; RadioAstronomer; Doctor Stochastic; js1138; Shryke; RightWhale; ...
Evolution Ping

The List-O-Links
A conservative, pro-evolution science list, now with over 350 names.
See the list's explanation, then FReepmail to be added or dropped.
To assist beginners: But it's "just a theory", Evo-Troll's Toolkit,
and How to argue against a scientific theory.

4 posted on 02/20/2006 6:01:52 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: jennyp

Postmodernists, creationists, and militant Islamists - an odd combination if I have ever seen one.


5 posted on 02/20/2006 6:02:00 PM PST by indcons
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To: indcons

This is what is so weird...people allying with people who will end the end eat them.


6 posted on 02/20/2006 6:08:35 PM PST by Knitting A Conundrum (Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly With God Micah 6:8)
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To: jennyp
Image hosting by Photobucket
7 posted on 02/20/2006 6:09:31 PM PST by satchmodog9 (Most people stand on the tracks and never even hear the train coming)
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To: PatrickHenry
"If a theory 'forced' one to assent to politically distasteful, depressing, and counterintuitive claims, then one could regard those consequences as in themselves good reasons to find the theory implausible," says feminist philosopher Sandra Harding; Fuller would doubtless agree, as evidenced by his sympathy for the War Against Darwin.

Having this conversation with another crap-for-brains right now on another thread. Science, when done right, is a systematic investigation of nature. Nature is out there and it isn't anything old silly you want it to be based on your convenience of the moment.

8 posted on 02/20/2006 6:09:39 PM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: VadeRetro
another crap-for-brains

LOL!!

Science, when done right, is a systematic investigation of nature.

Absolutely!

9 posted on 02/20/2006 6:19:42 PM PST by phantomworker ("Few is the number who think with their own minds and feel with their own hearts." -Albert Einstein)
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To: jennyp

So what is "Social Constructivism" in real world terms again?


10 posted on 02/20/2006 6:20:51 PM PST by phantomworker ("Few is the number who think with their own minds and feel with their own hearts." -Albert Einstein)
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To: jennyp

Something like this, I submit, lurks beneath the pompous and scatterbrained epistemological latitudinarianism that Steve Fuller offers in defense of Intelligent Design Theory. That in itself won't save him, I believe, from the disdain of most social constructivist colleagues. He is giving aid and comfort to too dire an enemy. His career is probably headed for some fairly rocky shoals. Nonetheless, he is merely extending to a nasty gang of right-wing religious nuts the logic that has led the science studies community and its hangers-on to speak up for tribal shamans, UFO cultists, and homeopathists.

Fuller doesn't have a clue, does he? The schmuck has no idea what would happen to him if his buddies achieved their ambitions.

11 posted on 02/20/2006 6:29:20 PM PST by ml1954 (NOT the disruptive troll seen frequently on CREVO threads)
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To: jennyp

This thread isn't getting the attention it deserves. But it's good that this article is posted.


12 posted on 02/20/2006 6:48:16 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: phantomworker
So what is "Social Constructivism" in real world terms again?

It's the notion that knowledge is "constructed" in the context of the society in which people live. Commonly used to denigrate scientists as people who construct knowledge to advance the agenda of the white male power structure. Or to put it another way, science does not objectively define reality; rather, scientists fudge the answers to serve the existing political and social institutions (yeah right).

Social constructivism is also used to justify the idiotic idea that there is no such thing as a right answer; children smply construct their own knowledge based on their own experiences. Silly stuff but a lot of NEA types love it.

I think this goofiness caught on because it facilitates the giving of degrees to people who cannot master statistics or logic. Keeps the money coming into the university coffers.

13 posted on 02/20/2006 7:15:28 PM PST by freespirited
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To: jennyp
from the article:

"This bizarre project is propped up by Fuller's dogma that one need not actually understand standard science to criticize it or to pose profoundly different alternatives." [emphasis added]

No wonder the anti-Evo truffle-heads embraced him!

14 posted on 02/20/2006 7:16:05 PM PST by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: freespirited
science does not objectively define reality; rather, scientists fudge the answers to serve the existing political and social institutions (yeah right).

Global warming fits the above fine.

15 posted on 02/20/2006 7:20:53 PM PST by razorback-bert
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To: PatrickHenry
This thread isn't getting the attention it deserves. But it's good that this article is posted.

Yes, I see it as a good reference, especially whenever a FreCreo starts complaining about "all those know-it-all high-priest scientist in their ivory temples who are forcing their silly ideas on all us normal folk."

16 posted on 02/20/2006 7:32:58 PM PST by jennyp (WHAT I'M READING NOW: The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed.)
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To: ml1954
...the pompous and scatterbrained epistemological latitudinarianism...

Reminds me of William F. Buckley

17 posted on 02/20/2006 7:34:59 PM PST by Virginia-American
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To: satchmodog9

He looked better in a BEARS uniform...


18 posted on 02/20/2006 7:35:02 PM PST by Captainpaintball (All it takes for evil to triumph is for good muslims to do nothing)
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To: razorback-bert
Global warming fits the above fine.

I would have thought it the use of science to *assault* existing political and social institutions.

The point is not that there is no one in science with an agenda. It's the idea that everyone gets together in support of some vast conspiracy to support the existing power structure that is so goofy.

19 posted on 02/20/2006 7:35:48 PM PST by freespirited
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To: Virginia-American

Reminds me of William F. Buckley.

I can almost hear him spitting that out on Firing Line.

20 posted on 02/20/2006 7:39:05 PM PST by ml1954 (NOT the disruptive troll seen frequently on CREVO threads)
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