"For our part, we will start as articulated in the letter S (Ø), which is primarily a signifier. (...) And since the battery of signifiers, as such, is for that very complete, this signifier can not be more than a stroke that is drawn from his circle without being able to count as part of it. Can be symbolized by the omnipresence of a (-1) in the total set of signifiers. As such, it is unpronounceable, but not its operation, as this is what happens every time it is pronounced a proper name. His statement is equal to its meaning. So, figuring that meaning as the algebraic method we use, we have: S (signifier) \u200b\u200b/ s (set) = s (meaning), where S = (-1), gives: s = √-l "
Where is reasonable doubt whether the preceding text was written by an intellectual, or, conversely, produced randomly by a baboon chained to a typewriter, we must recognize that there is a problem in this world (the intellectual). The issue is not trivial, and was raised recently in the Blog Horrocks. In everyday life it is legitimate to suspect, when someone can not produce a sufficiently clear text, which the author does not understand the issue clearly. But obviously, this approach is not immediately transferable to specialized fields such as philosophy, where the lack of matter, and even the language used, the message can not be immediately understandable to the layman.
But if this is undeniable, and we should not rule out in advance the validity of any text that is incomprehensible, it is equally true that the use of language cryptic, not accessible to the public, can be very tempting for unscrupulous intellectual. The abstruse can impersonate deep, and fearing to look like an ignoramus, who does not understand it shall not confess. You can reach this way to a surprising situation in which the "scientific" look no shine the light of knowledge, but, in fact, rely on their darkness. The researcher thus aimed not pretend to discover the workings of things, but narrow a field of pseudo-knowledge in which he governs as High Priest.
Fortunately there are defenses against it. For starters, the philosopher-witch can be unmasked by others of their own specialty. Thus Schopenhauer and Popper, as philosophers, are qualified to say that the philosopher Hegel is a chatterbox. Maybe so, because the witches were not safe in their own jungle along the twentieth century, many among them decided to seek coverage elsewhere, and was chosen mathematics. Thus, these intellectuals turned to catch here and there complicated theories and formulas, and camouflaged with them (just as the command is put in the old leaves to go unnoticed among the vegetation) were released to the scientific world to articulate their own, and often picturesque view. But, alas, the incursions of witches in the jungles others, while waging criticism from colleagues, put a shot of the dwellers of these new jungles. That's what he did in 1996 the physicist Alan Sokal , noting the joy with which some thinkers have been involved in math to defend his approach. A citation from these authors developed a crazy Sokal article titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", which sent a journal. The magazine published the article without blinking. Moreover, not only found that it was a parody, but then what argument in a debate in which some Scientists criticized the post-modern relativism.
From this joke a few years later Alain Sokal and Jean Bricmont published the book "Fashionable Nonsense" , which respectfully grind to a number of intellectuals, particularly French postmodernists. In the book we see how Lacan (it is the paragraph that begins with this post) use mathematics to conclude that sexual pleasure is compact, the penis is equal to the square root of minus one, and neurotic individual is comparable to the geometric shape of bull (and this is not an analogy, Lacan says emphatically: the neurotic individual is a bull)
is no less interesting to see how the philosopher Luce Irigaray uses math to defend their positions and feminist:
"The equation E = mc ² a sexed equation? Maybe. Let the hypothesis to the extent affirmative that privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vital to us. What makes me think of the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly, its use in nuclear weapons, but the fact of having privileged what goes quicker. "
Irigaray also argues that, if known less than the fluid dynamics of solids, is pure machismo. That puts it, in all seriousness, Katherine Hayles,
"(Irigaray) attributed the association of fluidity with femininity the privilege granted to the mechanics of solids on the fluid and the inability of science to address turbulent flows in general. While the man has a protruding sexual organs and rigid, women have them open and they leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. Although men sometimes also stream, for example when the semen ejaculates, this aspect of their sexuality is not taken into account. What counts is the rigidity of the bodies male, not its complicity in the fluid flow. These idealizations are reinscribed in mathematics, who see the fluids as laminated planes and other modified solid forms. Just as women are erased in the theories and language are male and not men only, the fluids have also been erased from science and exist only as non-solid. From this perspective it is not surprising that science has been unable to trace a valid model of turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow can not be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and women) have been made to stop waste necessarily inarticulate (Hayles, 1992, pg. 17) ".
Hayle exegesis serves to alert one of the dangers of pseudoscientific verbiage, is extremely contagious.
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