… drawing a parallel between science and nonscientific (narrative) knowledge helps us understand, or at least sense, that the former’s existence is no more—and no less—necessary than the latter’s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
These sorts of statements are where things get tricky for me. I buy the argument that narrative knowledge is important. One can read James Baldwin and gain knowledge and empathy of a gay black man’s perspective that changes your life and the way you see the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or maybe you read Butler’s performative theory of gender and suddenly understand your own gender expression in a new way. Both of these types of narrative knowledge could even be argued to be a “necessary” and vital part of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also agree science is a separate type of knowledge, but I also see science as clearly more necessary than narrative knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we lost all of James Baldwin’s writings tomorrow, it would be a tragedy. If we lost the polio vaccine tomorrow, it would be potentially catastrophic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Importance of Scientific Knowledge<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
It’s too easy to philosophize science into this abstract pursuit and forget just how many aspects of your life it touches (your computer, the electricity in your house, the way you cook, the way you get your food, the way you clean yourself). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Probably 80% of the developed world would literally die off in a few months if scientific knowledge disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ll reiterate that Lyotard thinks science is vastly important. He is in no way saying the problems of science are crippling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The above quote is more in raising narrative knowledge to the same importance of science than the devaluing of science (Lyotard might point to the disastrous consequences that happened as a result of convincing a nation of the narrative that the Aryan race is superior). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, he says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today the problem of legitimation is no longer considered a failing of the language game of science. It would be more accurate to say that it has itself been legitimated as a problem, that is, as a heuristic driving force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, getting back to the main point. Lyotard points out that problems of legitimating knowledge are essentially modern, and though we should be aware of the difficulties, we shouldn’t be too<\/em> concerned with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe postmodern problem is the grand delegitimation<\/em> of various narratives (and one can’t help but hear Trump yell “Fake News” while reading this section of Lyotard).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerformativity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Lyotard spends several sections developing a theory of how humans do science, and he develops the language of “performativity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It all seems pretty accurate to me, and not really worth commenting on (i.e. it’s just a description). He goes into the issues Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem caused for positivists. He talks about the Bourbaki group. He talks about the seeming paradox of having to look for counterexamples while simultaneously trying to prove the statement to be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d say the most surprising thing is that he gets this stuff right. You often hear about postmodernists hijacking math\/science to make their mumbo-jumbo sound more rigorous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He brings up Brownian motion and modeling discontinuous phenomena with differentiable functions to ease analysis and how the Koch curve has a non-whole number dimension. These were all explained without error and without claiming they imply things they don’t imply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lyotard wants to call these unintuitive and bizarre narratives about the world that come from weird scientific and mathematical facts “postmodern science.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe it’s because we’ve had over forty more years to digest this, but I say: why bother? To me, this is the power of science. The best summary I can come up with is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Narrative knowledge must be convincing as a narrative; science <\/strong>is <\/strong><\/em>convincing despite the unconvincing narrative it suggests <\/strong>(think of the EPR paradox in quantum mechanics or even the germ theory of disease when it was first suggested).<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinal Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I know I riffed a bit harder on the science stuff than a graduate seminar on the book would. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, I thought this was an excellent read. It seems more relevant now than when it was written because it cautions about the dangers of powerful organizations buying a bunch of data and using that to craft narratives we want to hear while delegitimating narratives that hurt them (but which might be true).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We know now that this shouldn’t be a futuristic, dystopian fear (as it was in Lyotard’s time). It’s really happening with targeted advertising and the rise of government propaganda and illegitimate news sources propagating our social media feeds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We believe what the people with money want us to believe, and it’s impossible to free ourselves from it until we understand the situation with the same level of clarity that Lyotard did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n