The Humanities Are Ruining Neuroscience

Photo illustration by Andrea Levy for The Chronicle ReviewInflammatory title, isn't it. Puzzled by how it could possibly happen? Then read on!A few days ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece called Neuroscience Is Ruining the Humanities. You can find it in a Google search and at reddit, among other places. The url is http://chronicle.com/article/Neuroscience-Is-Ruining-the/150141/ {notice the “Neuroscience-Is-Ruining” part.}Oh wait. Here's a tweet.Neuroscience Is Ruining the Humanities http://t.co/OtimMp7rHI— Chronicle (@chronicle) November 21, 2014At some point along the way, without explanation, the title of the article was changed to the more mundane The Shrinking World of Ideas. The current take-home bullet points are:We have shifted our focus from the meaning of ideas to the means by which they’re produced. When professors began using critical theory to teach literature they were, in effect, committing suicide by theory.The author is essayist Arthur Krystal, whose 4,000+ word piece can be summarized as “postmodernism ruined everything.” In the olden days of the 19th century, ideas mattered. Then along came the language philosophers and some French historians in the 1920s/30s, who opened the door for Andy Warhol and Jacques Derrida and what do you know, ideas didn't matter any more. That's fine, he can express that opinion, and normally I wouldn't care. I'm not going to debate the cultural harms or merits of postmodernism today.What did catc...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs