The humanities are defenceless in Canada

Many of the 20-some-odd papers received critical acclaim by reviewers, some praised for highest quality scholarship possible despite the authors having conducted their elaborate project in just over a year?—?unheard of in most disciplines. The Varsity article is an exercise in audacity?—?who would dare to speak for the totality of minds comprising the humanities, each a molecule to the organism? Hopefully, it reflects only a shred of the Arts in aggregate?—?but deserves a polemic, just in case. Let’s take a deep dive into each of the claims made and see if they stand even a ginger battering.

The article betrays itself at the onset as no mere smear-piece, but one using smear-pieces for references?—?this tactic alone should disqualify it from serious consideration when deferring to reason or one’s moral compass, which are supposed to orient the humanities; guilt by association and elision of context are classic affronts?—?a lapse of due diligence.

The fabricated term “scientific-right” is ensconced in pixelated scare-quotes because Foster leaves it barely qualified?—?his definition assumes that a “scientific-right” exists the way he imagines it, that the Sokal Squared authors necessarily undervalue non-scientific fields, and that valuing science somehow constitutes a political position.

The rest is a parade of straw men, immediately noticeable upon any cursory inspection of the #GrievanceStudies authors’ written and public statements —they have expressed clear intent on exposing questionable pedagogical and discursive practices within specific humanities sub-disciplines, which they believe threaten to bleed out into academia broadly.

Lending credence to the assumption that humanities majors spend the vast majority of their time stoned out of their minds while deeply researching late-night comfort food home delivery, this humanities neophyte has apparently become acutely amnesiac of the field’s touchstones developed over the past century or so. Most terms mentioned in the excerpt above are part of the technical verbiage of various sub-fields, such as political science, anthropology, and philosophy?—? their “constant employment” has been at the behest of pioneers long before Dr. Jordan Peterson’s YouTube channel ever went live.

If by “eradicate” Foster means “subject certain methodologies to review for quality control,” then this statement would begin to approach accuracy. The whole point of questioning the validity of “alternative approaches to understanding the world” comes from the fact that they are alternatives to tried and tested methods used in other fields of study. Here is a relevant counter-quote, dredged up not from dusty tomes on critical theory but plucked from the mouth of comedian Tim Minchin: “You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work??—?Medicine.”

I have stated elsewhere that fields aiming to make categorical factual claims about the world and its denizens must at least employ competitive methods to those that have historically yielded results— and in order for that, those methods must be subject to scrutiny and comparison?—?Foster’s defensive posturing in view of that prospect is telling. Why not point to the Grievance Studies authors’ mission statement, so readers can decide for themselves what their objective was, rather than invent a fictional political label to be applied forcibly onto them, packaged with imputed goals based on pure speculation?

It shouldn’t take a third-year education at Trinity College’s humanities department to diagnose this passage as terminally confused. The foundational theories alluded to?—?but not specifically addressed?—?are not “plagued by the replicability crisis,” which resulted from reneging on scientific theory by way of deliberate malpractice or incompetence. It is not scientific theory under assault by the replication crisis: it is the individuals and other entities involved in the fraud.

By contrast, the Sokal Squared papers were accepted due to humanities peer-review processes working perfectly, which indicates there might indeed be a systemic bias or ideological bent afoot within certain sub-fields. Foster states that neither the sciences nor humanities should be discounted wholesale?—?a sentiment shared by the Sokal Squared team, whose core contention is that the subject matter being handled by Grievance Studies deserves rigorous treatment not currently on offer— if anything, Foster should be joining the team in their concern for the integrity of fields adjacent to his own.

Why should disciplines be respected on the sole basis of their intellectual objectives? Would Anti-humanities, or Anti-science be respectable fields if their expressed purpose was to dump on respective nemeses? How about Anti-Vax-ology and Anti-climatology in that same vein? Here, and for the remainder of the piece, Foster invites readers to disregard his deflection of Sokal Squared’s challenge: whether respect for disciplines should hinge on representative scholarship and methods used to yield it, rather than mere stated objectives.

Foster also tries to circumvent the fact that humanity and culture are features of the natural world, and thus could theoretically be approached scientifically?—?the ascendant field of evolutionary psychology is an example of rapid encroachment on those topics. If Foster wishes to invoke Stephen J. Gould’s idea of non-overlapping magisteria by replacing “religion” with “humanities”, then he has a Sisyphean task?—?and a potential turf war?—?ahead of him.

It is not just the fictitious “scientific-right” who has reservations about the scholastic environment of the humanities?—?there are plenty within the field who are uneasy with on-goings?—?such as two thirds of Sokal Squared. Further, the territoriality put on display here is disconcerting; an immediately intuitive riposte to Foster’s bald assertion is whether anyone or anything can have a monopoly on development of such a gargantuan, elusive concept as “truth”?—?no aspect of the humanities makes them uniquely qualified to handle that tall order. The pursuit of truth doesn’t belong to any one field, and dismissing science as incapable of making contributions to defining it conceptually is hearsay.

Take the case of neuroscience casting shadows on the notion that we truly have free will; if your brain sends a signal for you to take an action before you are consciously aware of your “decision”, are you a freely acting agent, or are you more beholden to neuroanatomy than most humans are comfortable admitting? is beside the point?—?the fact that neuroscience data and analysis can bear on the question is an indication that Foster has not considered his position as skeptically or as deeply as is required of humanities scholars.

Science is more than data collection; interpretation and discussion of said data, accurate or not, is part of the scientific enterprise?—?after all, before “science” was a coined term, the practice was referred to as natural philosophy?—?how this fact escaped a third-year History and Philosophy of Science student raises the brow. In that sense, what is science other than a humanities discipline dealing primarily with describing tangible reality? How does it differ from other humanities disciplines attempting the same, other than use of data and stringent methodology? The conclusion Foster doesn’t want to come to is that interpretive work in science is virtually identical to that done in the humanities?—?with the added constraint of using supplementary data to vindicate claims, permitting far less of the free-wheeling easily observed in humanities work.

It takes inordinate zeal to hold faith that science, or any other intellectual undertaking, can ever be divorced from socioeconomics or culture; science is a product of culture, and enjoys perpetuity in certain cultures because they continue to value the pursuit. Science also never makes claims to being value-free?—?it holds accuracy, falsifiability, and elegance paramount?—?how would one be able to criticize scientific work without criteria? Science leaves less room for external influence than other disciplines by way of its methodology, in which opining takes place only after extensive data analysis?—?by contrast, humanities work is almost exclusively opinion-based throughout, some fields endorsing work that is wholly solipsistic or based on a priori hypotheses with cherry-picked “supporting” data.

Additionally, the ‘grievance studies’ are critical for providing inquiries into the normative questions that plague the sciences. An example of such a question is whether we ought to pursue lines of inquiry and regard them as ‘truth,’ when the consequences of such a discovery could lead to widespread human suffering.