Reply to Lit programs that have not succumbed to postmodernism/cultural studies

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Lit programs that have not succumbed to postmodernism/cultural studies"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sure. And physics departments shouldn't discuss any theories developed after Newton's Opticks!

[/quote]

They shouldn’t discuss Newton.  He’s just another dead white guy, after all.[/quote]

And this is where you fail.  Of course they should discuss Newton.  [b]But not be afraid of relooking at his contributions in light of Einstein.  [/b]And understanding him differently than on would in the 1800’s.  That  is both fine and necessary for us to keep moving.  [/quote]

Do tell!  I can just feel that whatever you say is going to be non-sensical and yet highly entertaining.[/quote]

I thought this was well known. Newton’s theory of gravity assumed an intertial frame.  Which means his laws of motion are accurate at low velocities (which is most of stuff on earth).  But relativity introduces a cosmic speed limit and Newtonian mechanics go out of whack close to the speed of light since the relativistic frames matter.  So did Einstein reject Newton?   No of course not.  But his theories reshaped how we under Newtonian mechanics.  And Einstein never took to quantum mechanics because he was never happy with its statistical nature.  Theorists who are trying to reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity are looking at - wait for it - different frames to study the problem.  It’s what scholarship is all about.  [/quote]

This is not “relooking at” Newton’s contributions.  His contributions remain his contributions, Einstein and others who followed built upon his contributions.  I think you clearly understand that, but your attempt to paint this as analogous to what is being discussed in this thread (basically rejecting classical literature because modern society declares the contributors to be racist or sexist or transphobic, etc.) is where YOU fail.

In other words, no one is trying to teach Newtonian mechanics as the end-all be-all of physics, but on the other hand no one is pretending that his contributions to science weren’t brilliant and significant and hugely influential because he… was a product of his time and did the best with what he had, so to speak.[/quote]

Nobody but nobody is rejecting classical literature. It is foundational, respected, and worthy of intense scrutiny. Why be offended by deep analysis and/or the prospect of different conclusions? So what? Where is the issue? So long as new generations continue reading the classics where's the actual worry? [/quote]

Plenty of people reject it as being written by dead white men [/quote]

So that is the marketplace of ideas.  Some will want to reject it.  But that doesn’t mean that the discipline as a whole will decide to listen to them.  Unless of course the work is simply not relevant to today in which case, people will stop reading it.

And the best way to keep these classics relevant is to look through today’s “lenses”.  People find new meaning and new ways of thinking and it’s great.

A little different (social science rather than lit), my kid is reading Plato.  She does not have to pretend she is living in Ancient Greece to understand the relevance of that work any more than she needs to experience not being able to get her own bank account to read de Beauvoir.  Both are still applicable to helping a 20 year old American kid living in 2024 to process her world.  If they weren’t, we would simply stop teaching them. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics