Pieceful, very well said. This is precisely why I love science so much - because it proves that not everything is constructed or relative, that certain things truly are always as they are, regardless of what language you speak or what frame of reference you use to think about it. There’s no room for cultural interpretation when, say, reporting the measurement of a constant whose value reproduces to within one part in a billion regardless of where and when you measure it (assuming your measurement apparatus and technique are good enough).

The deepest irony of postmodernism is this: the essence of the idea is that all thought systems are only valid within certain contexts. The postmodernist - deconstructionist approach is in itself a system of thought; but somehow its strongest adherents never notice that, by their own logic, there must be a limit beyond which their system is invalid. Science - or perhaps more accurately, mathematics - clearly defines that limit.

On a related note, one might say that effective field theory is the ultimate postmodern scientific theory since it explicitly defines the energy scales over which it is valid. As a pomo might say, effective field theory is the opposite of a hegemonic, totalizing discourse.

So no, we have absolutely nothing to learn from the wacky postmodernists about such things, b/c ultimately physics is supposed to be ‘language’ invariant (hence the strong reliance on mathematics and the drive to remove all human ‘presence’ or residuals from the laws that govern the world).

On a related note, I find it sad that intellectuals can’t simply call a spade for what it is. The entire postmodernist, constructionist endeavour has been perhaps one of the greatest embarrasments in the history of philosophy, and it would be nice if it would just go away.

Sean is sympathetic to the pomos in the same way that some liberals say nice things about Islam: they don’t really believe this crap but they want to distinguish themselves from horrible right-wing people who are so mean and nasty to people who basically hate everything they believe in. Let somebody else do the dirty work.