The Book's Thesis
Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics:
- the allegedly incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals;
- the problems of cognitive relativism, the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others" as seen in the Strong Programme in the sociology of science.
Read more about this topic: Fashionable Nonsense/Archive 1
Famous quotes containing the words book and/or thesis:
“All is changed. All looks strange to me and gives me a feeling which I would rather get away from, although I know it to be the carrying out of natural laws. And I am not complaining. I am doing the same as many old people have done, I suppose, who have led an active life and suddenly find themselves living without a purpose. Oh, my heart is so full. I could write a big book on the subject of going out of this world gracefully.”
—Maria D. Brown (18271927)
“Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio ad absurdum of my behaviorism. I disagree with this second point, but I agree with the first. I hold further that the behaviorism approach is mandatory. In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)