April 5, 2010
- Nicholas Royle’s definition of Deconstruction -
“deconstruction n. not what you think: the experience of the impossible: what remains to be thought: a logic of destabilization always already on the move in ‘things themselves’: what makes every identity at once itself and different from itself: a logic of spectrality: a theoretical and practical parasitism or virology: what is happening today in what is called society, politics, diplomacy, economics, historical reality, and so on: the opening of the future itself.”
Hm. Interesting. I have BIG problems with most postmodernism…
Comment by speedbird — April 5, 2010 @ 1:20 pm
Yeah, me too, but I liked this one. Its destruction for creations sake, not destruction as a form of masturbatory entertainment. A forest fire for the sake of new growth, not for the sake of constantly burning everything down…
Comment by Ian — April 5, 2010 @ 2:30 pm
Yes… ‘Deconstruction’ is always a digging down to the roots of an idea, USUALLY to show that it has no foundation, and that all ideas are baloney.
Comment by speedbird — April 6, 2010 @ 2:04 am
Wah! Wah! My perfect little story doesn’t make sense any more! My ideas won’t stay in these nice little boxes! They keep growing and changing and they won’t stop!
But, but, but I really really want to figure these things out! But screw it, if I can’t figure them out, then nobody gets to! And I’ll prove that instead!
Comment by Ian — April 6, 2010 @ 8:32 am
There is some type of fallacy inherent in a lot of it, though. Like “the carrot spot on the brain” you alluded to earlier
Comment by Ted — April 6, 2010 @ 11:32 am
Yeah. Just because something is or isn’t provable in the normal way, it doesn’t mean that there’s not another way to look at it.
The fallacy I most often notice is one of assuming that once we have a plausible explanation for something, we can stop looking at it. That God spot/carrot spot (not my idea originally, but a good one) you mention is a good example. Just because a part of the brain lights up during religious experiences, it doesn’t follow that there’s no meaning behind those experiences.
We’re all guilty of this, but science seems a field where this is rather rampant (based on some of the articles I read on physorg, futurity, and other sites). Just because an experiment, designed to prove some conclusion, is successful, it doesn’t necessarily follow that your hypothesis was correct. Maybe there’s some other reason. An open mind is key, and it seems that a mind that appreciates the value of slowness would be helpful as well.
Of course, if you’re only doing experiments for the sake getting published, then you’re not to concerned about other possible scenarios. But still…
Comment by Ian — April 6, 2010 @ 12:03 pm
>> Wah!
I wouldn’t put it /quite/ as strongly, but, yeah… :)
>> once we have a plausible explanation for something, we can stop looking at it
I have a lot of half-formed thoughts along these lines right now. I once had a boss who kept telling me ‘not to keep reinventing the wheel’. And the more I think about it, the more I begin to see that we /have/ to keep reinventing the wheel or we’ll forget how. (And what if the wheel is squeaky? ;D )
Comment by speedbird — April 6, 2010 @ 3:54 pm
Yeah, I do get a little carried away some times. :)
EXACTLY! If we think of it as being done, we lose it. Once we see something as incapable of change, it’s dead/dying. There’s no real middle ground there.
Of course, often times, if we have a working wheel, its probably good enough. But if it starts squeaking, maybe considering whether it could be upgraded a bit wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Comment by Ian — April 6, 2010 @ 4:08 pm
Ok, here is an example: Saying Love is MERELY biology. My hand is MERELY a bunch of atoms. Everything is MERELY a bunch of atoms, stuff like that. That’s annoying.
Comment by Ted — April 7, 2010 @ 6:36 am
Seems like there are all these nested hierarchies of explanations for things and There is this idea that the most reductionistic is the most important and trumps everything else but actually its the reverse. The most important explanation for what my hand is is not that its a bunch of atoms.
Comment by Ted — April 7, 2010 @ 6:39 am
Rupert Shelldrake talking about morphogenesis reveals how lacking reductionism is as the be all end all of scientific explanation. A live parakeet tweeting in my living room, and my parakeet after its died and say, for some reason I ran it through the blender. Its the same thing according to reductionism.
Comment by Ted — April 7, 2010 @ 6:44 am
>> upgraded
Not the word I’d choose. I think we have to stop and ‘think’ (for want of a better word) very carefully when presented with squeaky wheels in this world.
Comment by speedbird — April 7, 2010 @ 7:04 am
@ Ted:
Totally. That word “merely” really pisses me off. Its so dismissive.
@ speedbird:
Good point. That process of “think” is a really interesting one. What is it exactly, that we’re doing when we examine those squeaky wheels?
Comment by Ian — April 7, 2010 @ 8:29 am
>> What is it exactly, that we’re doing when we examine those squeaky wheels?
Excellent question.
I have strong feelings about this sort of thing, having worked at any number of places for whom, literally and metaphorically, the solution for a squeaky wheel is always an ‘anti-squeak system’ of some kind. And that’s worse, for then you’ve got a squeaky wheel /and you can’t tell any more/. (And then you find a squeak in the anti-squeak system.)
Comment by speedbird — April 7, 2010 @ 8:34 am
Ha! That’s getting posted, that is. Wonderful way of phrasing it.
Comment by Ian — April 7, 2010 @ 10:25 am
Wow, a great honour…
Comment by speedbird — April 8, 2010 @ 5:57 am
The Great Souled man is concerned mainly with Honor and disgrace.When he recieves great honor from good men, he is moderately pleased, since he will be getting his due, or even somewhat less.
-Aristotle
Comment by Ted — April 8, 2010 @ 7:31 am
Hope you like the picture I chose… :)
Comment by Ian — April 8, 2010 @ 8:09 am
I guess no one liked my joke…
Comment by Ted — April 11, 2010 @ 8:11 am
Ah man, Ted. I thought you were serious. ;)
Comment by Ian — April 12, 2010 @ 9:54 am
My sense of humor doesn’t seem to come across on teh internets.
Comment by Ted — April 12, 2010 @ 6:26 pm
No, I think its just subtle. Once I figured out it was a joke, its actually really funny.
Comment by Ian — April 12, 2010 @ 9:16 pm
oh, good.
Comment by Ted — April 13, 2010 @ 6:54 am
Yeah. It’s the “moderately” that really cracks me up…
Comment by Ian — April 14, 2010 @ 1:30 pm
Can I just point out that your picture is of the wrong Nick Royle. The two are constantly mistaken for one another.
Comment by Cheelah — September 11, 2011 @ 10:25 am
Thanks Cheelah! I think I found this quote through tumblr and didn’t know who to attribute it to. This was just the picture I chose off google image search. Any chance you could point me to an accurate picture? I assume this is the correct Nicholas?
Comment by Ian — September 13, 2011 @ 5:10 pm