Have people seen the science debate?

[Kephart, Ronald]

On 12/10/10 9:53 PM, "Leila Monaghan" <leila.monaghan at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> Hi, have you seen the NYT piece on anthropology and science, reflecting a
> debate you probably read about from Virginia Dominguez?  Any one have any
> comments on it?
>

We've been hashing over this on the Anthro-L list.  If you look in the
archives you can find at least two threads on it:

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/archives/anthro-l.html

My own position is that I am not entirely surprised, but definitely
disappointed. First of all, I feel that their new "mission" leaves me out,
as I consider myself a scientific anthropologist and I obstinately continue
to believe that science is our best way of obtaining propositional knowledge
about the world.  But in my opinion this was also a self-defeating move for
the AAA given the prevalence of anti-science rhetoric out there in the
country. I wrote a not very self-censored blog post on it (it will probably
offend some):

http://crankylinguist.blogspot.com/2010/12/hurricane-anti-science-hits-news.
html

At this point, I feel more at home with the folks (including some of you) in
the Society for Caribbean Linguistics and the Society for Pidgin and Creole
Linguistics.  I doubt I'll be renewing my AAA membership.

Ron
(Hitting "send" with some trepidation)