24 January 2002
Meandering
Chris Mooney has written a short piece for the American Prospect, part of which is entitled "Abusing Literature." Mr. Mooney, it seems, objects to the fact that Leon Kass has assigned Hawthorne's The Birthright to members of the presidential bioethics commission. Or rather, he objects that "complicated bioethical issues" are being reduced to "pat literary interpretations." This paragraph is key:
He then goes on to cite a previous Glenn Reynolds post approvingly (blogspot is down right now, so I can't link to it), leading Reynolds to cite Mooney's piece approvingly (while recommending contemporary science fiction authors as a substitute for Hawthorne).
I don't really know where to begin with Mooney's piece, or even the paragraph I've cited. In his first sentence, Mooney contends he's not opposed to extracting "lessons" from great books. But his third sentence contradicts that, since he implies that because the books were written in another time, they can't speak to our "current" political and ethical dilemmas. So let's see -- Mooney's not opposed to drawing lessons from great books, it's just not really possible to do so! Okay.
The reason we read great books is because they raise (and sometimes answer) questions that transcend their own time. It is the same principle that Lincoln invoked when he spoke of truths applicable to all men and all times. Mooney reveals an historicist mindset by suggesting otherwise. But if the historicists are correct -- if all those great books are nothing more than historical ramblings of a bunch of dead guys with no relevance to contemporary issues -- then all we'd need to be reading would be new books, newspapers, maybe a few magazines and journals, and weblogs. And yes, science fiction -- wouldn't want to leave that out. Everything else would be hopelessly out of date, after all, and couldn't possibly raise any interesting questions.
All such nonsense aside, would I have chosen this particular Hawthorne book? Probably not -- I probably would have chosen Heidegger's essay, "The Question Concerning Technology" as a good starting point. Similar questions are raised there. But if Kass intends to use great literature to raise old questions in a contemporary context, great! I share the concerns of some that he intends to promote a certain view, but I have no evidence to that effect. That Kass has chosen a short work by a classic author is not, in itself, evidence. Nor is it evidence that the commission's work will be anything less than serious (though Mooney intimates otherwise, worrying that great texts will be "used as a substitute for serious philosophical debate and inquiry"). We're just going to have to wait and see on that.
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Den Beste has written a sharp critique of social science based somewhat on the separate failings of Bellesiles, Ruggiero, and Ambrose. I'm not so sure an entire field of related disciplines can be condemned on the basis of these three cases, especially when two of the three academics in question are historians, generally housed in colleges of humanities, not social sciences. In any case, I think it's safe to say that economics is the "hardest" of the social sciences, and I don't think many people suggest it is not "scientific" these days. And because of the requirements of experimental design and falsifiable results, psychology is probably the second "hardest" social science -- Ruggiero's "problems" notwithstanding. Even my field, political science, has a serious quantitative component that is fairly rigorous, as those of us who have spent lots of time with extensive datasets and SPSS and the literature in the field know all too well.
Indeed, my field may be a really good example of the discipline working much like the harder sciences. A quantitative aspect of a seminar I took ages ago required that students select a published article from a fairly large set selected by the instructor, reconstruct the methodology, obtain the dataset (many of which our department had -- some of which were proprietary, and required correspondence with the researchers), and test the results. For the most part, we were able to do so. The instances where we were not had more to do with time issues, or quantitative methods that were beyond our knowledge, not falsified data. I came away with a much greater appreciation of the discipline, and of social science, than I had before (especially being one of those Straussian political philosophy types who is, by training, skeptical of quantitative social science).
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Okay, I can understand this guy's argument that conservatives have tried to use support for the war on terror to promote other issues. I don't agree with him, but I can understand the argument. But like James Taranto in Best of the Web today, I don't really understand how taking down all of his patriotic displays somehow teaches those evil conservatives a lesson. It just makes the guy look unpatriotic -- which is what some conservatives have long said about some on the Left.
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I was doing some research on Hungary today, and came up with this item quite by accident. I wonder if they have found the hair yet?
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Je$$e Jack$on is coming to Houston to lead a "rally for Enron workers." Wouldn't it be a shame if he (and the mayor, while I'm wishing) fell in a pothole and were never heard from again?
Oh my, Al Sharpton was in Houston today! Even better than the pothole scenario, I'm imagining Sharpton and Jack$on squaring off like Tyson the Barbarian and Lennox Lewis. Indeed, that's one rally I would attend.
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Mayor Pothole did fire the public works director this week, although the guy should have been fired a year ago, if not before that. It seems a history of falsifying repairs has followed this guy around various departments he's managed. He nearly cost the incumbent Mayor Pothole his job. The replacement can't help but be better. Even leaving the post vacant would have been an improvement.
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Congressman Wiener (what an appropriate name) is upset that federal money paid to families of WTC victims will be reduced by the amounts of their life insurance and other emergency benefits, and wants to change the law. I'm not so sure I agree with this. For those who didn't have life insurance or other means of dealing with the loss, I can see an argument for the taxpayers helping them (though I have life insurance and certainly don't expect such help, and as someone who leans libertarian, I wonder about this use of taxpayer money), but I certainly don't see why taxpayers need also to support those who do have means of support.
I also found the liberal Wiener's argument for not having a maximum cap unusual: "Capping economic benefits so a person earning $800,000 is considered to have the same lost wages as a worker making $230,000 makes little sense." Well, maybe not, but it makes about as much sense as progressively higher tax rates based on income, something Wiener does support.
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Not to be outdone by the New York Times yesterday, the Washington Post had to chime in on their favorite political issue (or maybe second favorite, after promoting tax increases): campaign finance reform. Or more appropriately, restrictions on political speech.
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Ken Layne is correct to point out that the internet existed before 11 September. In particular, Suck.com, a fine site, existed. It was never one of my "must" reads, but I always found good stuff there when I did visit. The snide comments I've seen from people who obviously never even saw the site bothered me as well. I'm glad Layne wrote about it.
[Posted @ 01:07 AM CST]
