Is it true?

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

WHAT'S NEW by Robert L. Park   Friday, 2 June 95   Washington,DC


1. WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT "THE FLIGHT FROM SCIENCE AND REASON"?
The embrace of irrationalism in academic disciplines ranging from
literature and history to anthropology has been explored for the
past three days at a conference sponsored by the New York Academy
of Sciences.  The postmodern view is that there is no such thing
as objective truth: Science is a product of the power structure
it serves, and scientific "laws" would come out differently in a
different culture.  A platoon of distinguished academics lamented
the spread of this corrosive notion and recounted examples of the
foolishness it engenders, but there were few proposals for how to
deal with the problem.  How can you debate someone who denies the
existence of objective reality?  In contrast to the gray-haired
speakers, there was a significant representation of under-thirty
social scientists in the audience.  It seemed clear that not one
of them believed a single word of what was being said.