kitchen table math, the sequel: book club - fear of knowledge

Friday, February 9, 2007

book club - fear of knowledge










subtitle:
Against Relativism and Constructivism
Posted by at

6 comments:

LynnG said...

Who is the author? It's hard to read on the picture.

Is this the book you were reading on stickiness? I might need to buy that one too.

February 10, 2007 at 4:35 AM
Instructivist said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
February 10, 2007 at 8:05 AM
Instructivist said...

The book is by Paul Boghossian, a professor of philosophy at New York University, and is a critique and refutation of the blatant lunacy and obscurantism of postmodernism (social construction of reality and its concomitant denial of objective reality). I had hoped this dragon would have been slain by Sokal and the invaluable book Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science by biologist Paul R. Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt. But this nonsense on stilts like educational constructivism is a Hydra-headed monster and slaying it is a Herculean task.

Boghossian had written earlier on Sokal's hoax. See What the Sokal Hoax Ought to Teach Us -- The pernicious consequences and internal contradictions of "postmodernist" relativism

February 10, 2007 at 8:08 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

The Stickiness book is a bestseller I think.

I'll get it posted.

It's quite valuable.

February 10, 2007 at 9:08 AM
Instructivist said...

Social constructivism and educational constructivism drink from the same well but I suspect Boghossian's book focuses more on the former.

I once wrote a piece specifically on educational constructivism I called Arrested development in which I tried to find an empirical basis for this creed but couldn't find it.

I was hoping to provoke defenders of the creed with limited success. I would seriously like to hear from defenders because this creed truly mystifies me.

February 10, 2007 at 9:17 AM
Instructivist said...

Social constructivism and educational constructivism drink from the same well but I suspect Boghossian's book focuses more on the former.

I once wrote a piece specifically on educational constructivism I called Arrested development http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2005/10/arrested-development.html in which I tried to find an empirical basis for this creed but couldn't find it.

I was hoping to provoke defenders of the creed with limited success. I would seriously like to hear from defenders because this creed truly mystifies me.

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For some reason, linking didn't work in this post. I am proud of my a href= skill and get mad when it is for nought.

On a housekeeping note, is there some way to delete posts without leaving a trace, i.e. permanently. My blogger lets me do it. Is it a question of turning on that feature?

Also, can the number of recent comments displayed be increased? Techies?

February 10, 2007 at 12:03 PM

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