Incredulity towards Lyotard: a critique of a postmodernist account of science and knowledge

Lyotard, Postmodernism and Science Education: A Rejoinder To Zembylas

“…134–146). The most comprehensive and devastating critique offered to date of Lyotard's theses as advanced in PC, especially his views on science, but including his overall philosophy, has come from two philosophers of science (Nola & Irzik, 2002). There he is accused, among other things, of throwing together knowledge with information , and employing a too narrow and positivistic conception of science.…”

“…Paralogy , a neologism coined by Lyotard, has the features alluded to by Zembylas, but it also means many more things 8 (some of which are obscure). Worse, it may equally be interpreted as bordering on irrationality (Nola & Irzik, 2003, p. 419). Certainly no teacher would object to a learning environment that contributes to accepting students’ diversity, or a rich curriculum that allows for the engagement of student's imagination or sense of wonder.…”

“…Lyotard muddles the epistemological legitimacy of science (which goes on internally and according to tight rules of experimentation and confirmation in the scientific community) with both ontological legitimacy (beliefs about nature and theory in terms of a commitment to varying degrees of realism or anti‐realism) and socio‐political legitimacy (which goes on externally, and involves arguments why scientific knowledge and theories are accepted in society, including their technological application) 16 . That science requires no outside narrative for legitimacy (let alone a ‘metanarrative’) is an elemental misunderstanding of Lyotard, and undermines the central thesis of PC that postmodernity is marked by a fundamental shift in the ‘notion of reason’ (PC, p. 43) concurrent with a shift in the status or nature of knowledge, 17 which has certainly not occurred (Nola & Irzik, 2003, pp. 402–4, 415) 18 .…”

“…As such he is merely commenting on how science actually behaves. It is to imply that a linguistic model is adequate as a complete description of science, which is incorrect (Mason, 2003; Nola & Irzik, 2003). it involves an epistemological claim in that he asserts that no ‘game’ is fully translatable into another, in other words, they are incommensurate .…”

Rescuing Reason

“…For a critique of Lyotard's brand of postmodernism, seeNola and Irzik (2003). For a broader purview of the many French connections the reader should consult Sokal's and…”