Notes on Post-modernism. What is meant by the term? Different things to all people. But the common thread is this rejection of millenial self-satisfaction, against the notion that we are somehow now at the end of history and our dominant culture is ultimately validated.

What is Wilson's quarrel? Well,Two things: (1) cultural relativism (at least by implication (more or less what was wrong with Boaz and followers) and (2) more important, the role of culture as artificer of the mind, especially treating the brain as largely devoid of specific content. Remember Wilson follows those who find specific mechanisms circuitry for substantive content (epigenetic rules yield parental devotion, incest taboo, etc.; these are not arbitrary artifice of culture). Fair enough.

But to be fair, consider for a moment one of the most productive and provocative of thinkers generally regarded as 'post-modern': Michel Foucault, valuable as historian of ideas and social realities. Notable for his idea of intellectual 'archaeology', uncovering systems of knowledge [epistemes], each constructing reality by its own paradigms.

Just to give an idea: in 'Madness and Civilization Foucault traces the evolution of modern ideas about insanity.

a) Remember the 'Ship of Fools'? Late medieval practice disposing of 'madmen' and other outcasts by driving them out, gave way with the end of leprosy. As Europe's sanitoriums emptied of their lepers, 'madmen' were sentenced to confinement in their place.

b) madness becomes a pathology (like leprosy), a contagion

c) by 17th century--ironically continuing into the Enlightenment, prevailing understanding of madness based on ancient/medieval notion of humors: melancholia and mania linked in precocious diagnosis (=bipolar disorder) by 18th c. The idea being largely hydraulic: There is a dominant image or metaphor: humors impregnated with black bile become stagnant, clogs and compresses the vital organs; then upon release of the blockage, mania ensues with the wild flow of fluids. Conversely incipient melancholy is seen as a waning mania, a vital juice subsiding (apparently influenced by new notions of electricity)

Even more striking is 'hysteria'. Enlightenment theory scornfully casts the ancient notion of a 'wandering womb' (that the uterus acutally moves around within a woman's body). But Enlightened thinkers replace that with another version of the 'hydraulic' or corpuscular theory; the cause seen as collection of warm fluids or humors (at the base of the skull? 144).

And here's the really interesting part, for it takes on a moral dimension: these physical causes of mental disease arise from a lack of fitness, a moral vulnerability that seldom afflicts the fit and virtuous. (155)

 

In each period Foucault sees the otherwise bizarre ideas as product of current social causes.

 

Now for (Post) Structuralism:

The clearest distinction I've come across is Jonathon Culler's (On Deconstruction, 1982) 22:

"In simplest terms, structuralists take linguistics as a model and attempt to develop 'grammars'--systematic inventories of elements and their possibilities of combination--that would account for the form and meaning of literary works; post-structuralists investigate the way in which this project [i.e. the structuralist grammar] is subverted by the workings of the texts themselves. Structuralists are convinced that systematic knowledge is possible; post-structuralists claim to know only the impossiblity of this knowledge."

Now for a famous example, from Jacques Derrida's essay 'Plato's Pharmacy' (1968), treating Plato's discussion of writing as pharmakon (drug or magic spell).

"In order for writing to produce ...the 'opposite' effect from what one might expect, in order for this pharmakon to show itself ...its [power] must be ambiguous...It is precisely this ambiguity that Plato...attempts to master, to dominate by inserting its definition into simple, clear cut oppositions: good and evil; inside and outside, true and false; essence and appearance. ...

"It is not enough to say that writing is conceived out of this or that series of oppositions. Plato thinks of writing and tries to comprehend it, to dominate it, on the basis of opposition as such. In order for these contrary values (good/evil, true/false, essence/appearance, inside/outside, etc) to be in opposition, each of the terms must be simply external to the other, which means that ...the opposition between inside and outside must already be accredited as the matrix of all possible opposition..."

And so it goes. One can see the sense of Wilson's characterization: 'Gallic obscurantism'.

But to be fair, reserve judgement for full discussion with Brown's book Science Wars.