Comments on: Who Knew "Anti-Reflexivity" Could be, Uh, Interesting?

By: Susan Anderson

Susan Anderson — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 02:07:33 +0000

I’ll stick with the facts, as represented in the video. The fan club for obscurantism is full of words but they are not truthful. Actions have consequences. Whitewash is whitewash. Lies have been told, and people misled. It’s hardly worth the trouble but I hope anyone who still hasn’t bought this carefully slanted response will respect themselves by taking a good hard look at the real world, not a plausible sounding apologia for buying (and paying for) the power and influence of our influence peddlers for a sadly dangerous status quo. Anyone, for example, who buys Monckton’s nastiness is not listening properly.

Of course, they will use this as a springboard to continue to multiply these misleading arguments. Luckily it seems nobody is paying much attention.

By: TerryEmberson

TerryEmberson — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:10:45 +0000

Nullius in Verba, thank you for that summation. I haven’t been able to get into the paper yet and with an essay due this week on a completely unrelated topic, I think I’ll wait until later.

As modernization has been the single greatest force in broadening human rights and human quality of life, including the ever-important ‘freedom from fear’ that drives the modern progressive movement, you’d think that there would be greater strife between the anti-modernization crowd on the left and the progressives.

By: Nullius in Verba

Nullius in Verba — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 11:47:15 +0000

This seems to be one of those cases where technical terminology is being used to obscure rather than clarify what it going on.

Reflexivity in science is the property of being related to oneself, and in social sciences it is used for circular causal relations where each factor causes the other in a feedback loop. This can lead to self-sustaining phenomena, self-fulfilling prophecies, cascades, and multi-stable states.

However, this article isn’t talking about reflexivity, it’s talking about reflexive modernisation. It’s called “reflexive” supposedly because it opposes the previous modernisation, (which suggests that the authors didn’t know what the word actually meant). It is used to describe what might more properly be called demodernisation – the movement for blocking, dismantling, and reversing the science and technology of industrialisation.

It includes the anti-pesticide, anti-GMO, anti-nuclear, anti-chemical, anti-radiation, anti-exploitation, anti-urbanisation, anti-population, anti-industry movements of the protestors. It’s all that stuff about organic vegetables and sustainability.

I think the expression “war on science” is quite apt for that, don’t you?