postmodernism

"Wittgenstein, a modern precursor to many postmodern philosophers, is creating a space for incredulity, not of Napoleon, but of the very existence of the earth. In mathematical terms (set theory), Wittgenstein in suggesting that in order to call into question one member of a set (Napoleon), one must question the entire set (the earth itself or history). According to this, for Lyotard to maintain his incredulity of science, he would have to be incredulous, not just of such notions as Grand Unifying Theories, but also of such basics as Isaac Newton's Law of Gravity and Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. So, either Lyotard's postmodern exists as incredulous of all science, or it posits science above the level of master narrative, as a kind of ueber-narrative, towards which one does not have to maintain the same kind of incredulity."

"this overriding of our first impulses -- the visual, in Plato's example -- that is necessary for science to maintain some degree of objectivity. "

"language/theory precedes "reality" (discovery)....having the theory precede the discovery is not truly postmodern, considering that Neptune was first "discovered" mathematically in 1845"

"It appears that the "belief" in quantum mechanics requires the suspension of "common sense." We postmodernists are placed in a paradoxical position over this; in order to validate Feynman's postulation, we must acknowledge that it represents the absurd over common sense in order to maintain the integrity of the master narrative -- quantum theory. To paraphrase: incredulity of the narrative (observations of light) is required to maintain the credulity of the metanarrative (quantum mechanics). "

"if we are to insist on locating incredulity, it would not be at the metanarrative level, but would have to be at the narrative level. Incompleteness is an important idea in postmodern thought because it suggests a lack of totality, but G–del's theory is more concerned with reflexivity, and thus its importance is in the need for meta-languages. "

"In order to understand the underlying differences between the humanities and the sciences, we must again investigate the differences in meaning in another key term: theory. In the humanities, one uses the term "theory" to designate any idea that circulates, regardless whether it has been subject to systematic experimentation. In the sciences, there is a hierarchy of hypothesis (idea), theory (hypothesis that has been supported repeatedly but not disproved), and law (a theory that has undergone extensive testing and has been shown accurate every time)."

"Physics equations replace god in the sciences, while in the humanities, god is replaced by humans: it seems quite clear why one group insists on the rejection of master narratives while the other assumes they underlie our universe's evolution."

" One of the leading chaos theorists, John L. Casti, explains chaos in his book, Complexification: Explaining a Paradoxical World Through the Science of Surprises: "Basically, a chaotic system generates behavior giving the appearance of complete randomness by means of a purely deterministic rule. . . . Scientifically speaking, chaos is only the appearance of randomness, not the real thing" [32]. This understanding of "chaos" is integral to Sokal and Bricmont's definition of postmodern science as well: "One characteristic of postmodern science is the stress on nonlinearity and discontinuity" and "the new sciences stress the dynamic web of relationships between the whole and the part" [33]. "Chaos" is not disorder, but is not linear either; similarly, complexity focuses on the relationships between parts and the whole in a manner far more involved that simple cause and effect."

"Shortly into Gut Symmetries, Winterson explains the difference between contemporary science and the humanities: "As a scientist I try to work towards certainties. As a human being I seem to be moving away from them" [48]. This is the crux of the postmodern problem: how does one reconcile one approach that is incredulous of all masternarratives with another that assumes a universal coherence?"

"As humans, other humans surround us: the variables in any interpersonal equation are profound, so that we cannot be certain about much. However, our universe has evolved as it has and continues to function as it does precisely because there are certain laws govern it. We live our lives as we do because we do believe that the earth will keep spinning around the sun. Contemporary science and the humanities have different subjects, and thus we should not assume that theories in one field will automatically translate into another. It seems more prudent to examine the uses of scientific theory by contemporary writers than trying to contort scientific theories to explain contemporary texts. A novel is not a photon."