The Political and Ethical Stakes of Radical Realism

One of my favorite bookstores I’ve ever come across also hosts a number of virtual events. I just caught up with the book talk below, and completely loved it.

William Gillis talks about his book “Did the Science Wars Take Place?“. He’s joined in the video by Matilde Marcoolli, who wrote the forward for the book. At its most basic, the talk (and the book) is about the conflict between scientists and postmodernist that took place in academia in the 80s and 90s. But the story reaches forward and backwards in time, and lead to a very tangled crisscross of affinities across the political spectrum. Gillis and Marcoolli do a wonderful job untangling this web, and tell a very engaging intellectual history in the process.

Some of the ideas I came away with: Anti-realist philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend died from trying to treat himself with faith healing; it is useful to distinguish fascism as an ideology from the structure of totalitarianism; Jordan Peterson is essentially a postmodernist; proud pedophile defender Peter Lamborn Wilson (who I’ve written about previously) was instrumental in making postmodernism an intellectual fad; many philosophers who call themselves anarchists are nothing of the sort; and contrary to what some academics say, it is not colonialist to promote scientific explanations of the world¹.

The talk also covers a bit of continental philosophy, a subject that generally causes an allergic reaction in me. But Gillis’s gossipy approach to that subject kept me engaged.

I plan to read the book (free at the link above). In the meantime, I searched for other writings by William Gillis and came across this great piece he wrote for the zine Anarcho-Transhuman.

1. While true, this point requires a little unpacking. Obviously you can do colonialism and science at the same time. Watch the video for a decent treatment of the idea, but to oversimplify, science is a tendency in human thought, not a unique product of European culture. I previously came across a very similar idea in Afrofuturism, by Ytasha Womack. ↩︎