Comments on: 09-10-26

By: BDL

BDL — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:47:44 +0000

Fara should certainly be allowed to spend her money getting a vanity press to publish her work, but no one enjoys a categorical right to be published by the OUP! Are you suggesting that – in the name of freedom of speech – a respected academic press should not be allowed to reject manuscripts that are judged to lack scholarly merit?

By: Ed Beaugard

Ed Beaugard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:19:51 +0000

Thanks for publishing this review, I liked it a great deal. I really can’t believe that a couple of people complained about Dr. Levitt’s prose. Like everything I’ve read of his, this review was very well written.
It was interesting to see that he considers Marshall McLuhan a quasi-charlatan, something I’ve always suspected myself. And I also enjoyed Dr. Levitt’s scolding of Cambridge University and OUP very much. OUP certainly deserved it for publishing such an awful book as does Cambridge U. for allowing a fraud like Fara to teach there.

By: Brad

Brad — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:08:28 +0000

Guess what? Levitt showed up in my apt in the middle of the night last night, and says he got it all wrong!!! Not only is there a God (actually many!!) but when he asked about what was really true about all that social constructivist stuff, it was all true! But not really ‘true,’ because Truth IS relative! When he asked who came to getting it right, turns out it was DERRIDA! They told him that truth is not just stranger than fiction, it IS fiction!!

Why was he in my apartment? Turns out he was trying to find Alan Sokal’s house, but Heaven gives terrible directions! He says Google was much better.

Go figure.

Seriously, so long, Norm.

Brad

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:02:50 +0000

This review is the first of 3 as of this date on Amazon, but has few favorable votes. Get on Amazon and vote for the review as helpful to you. This may keep a few folks from a horrible waste of money.

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:37:56 +0000

Thanks for raising the issue of a necessary critique of science that does not debunk. I find the dismissal of both post-modernism and religion a little too hasty. I wonder what some of the posters would make of a thought by a post-modern theologian that I recently read: “Great fiction can open possibilities for being-in-the-world that science cannot.” (It’s not just about feeling or even just about morality.) The same goes for a number of ways of thinking other than scientific.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:28:49 +0000

Such a loss. I have to say that Higher Superstition was one of the first books that I read that opened my eyes to how rational inquiry was being undermined by lit crit run amuck. I sincerely appreciated that book and all his contributions to defending science and skepticism.

By: Jim Veihdeffer

Jim Veihdeffer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:59:40 +0000

I found myself amazed and delighted by the erudite and unflinching use of appropriate, if somewhat specialized language in the service of Levitt’s masterful review. As a teacher, technical writer and would-be stylist myself, I am always wary of writing that seems to be more intent on calling attention to its own erudition than on getting to the point.

I’m not sure what my Saudi English-learning students would do with a sentence like: “The fulminant ichor of that resentment is the life’s-blood of this book” — in fact this particular mot sent me racing to my online resources. But, as with Thomas Mann, who wrote with the tacit understanding that readers would rise to his level, I credit Levitt with getting his points across in both an understandable and entertaining way.

Like at least one other commenter, I found the McLuhan snipe possibly misdirected. It took me many years to realize the validity of the Nabokov quote about Freud, which I recall reading with consternation back in the day. However, I think McLuhan’s creative vision still holds up.

By: Mong H Tan, PhD

Mong H Tan, PhD — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:22:10 +0000

RE: My condolences to all those who read/knew Norman Levitt!

Although I didn’t know him personally, I had referenced his nice 1994 co-authored book Higher Superstition, when arguing against the hypes of postmodernism, in my book Gods, Genes, Conscience (URL links below).

Best wishes, Mong 10/28/9usct4:22p; practical science-philosophy critic; author “Decoding Scientism” and “Consciousness & the Subconscious” (works in progress since July 2007), “Gods, Genes, Conscience” (2006: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0595379907 ) and “Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now” (blogging avidly since 2006: http://www2.blogger.com/profile/18303146609950569778 ).

By: ianna Toutoudaki

ianna Toutoudaki — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:29:49 +0000

This is a Greek name. You’ve just killed me. Is this simple enough?

By: ianna Toutoudaki

ianna Toutoudaki — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:21:23 +0000

Hey, was just browsing this only yesterday. Good job I decided against buying. Shouldn’t think it strange OUP would publish this, sounds right up their street, Layman’s Chance to Get Even. And they think science Odd. Subtle, aren’t they? Railing against Hegemony and the exploitation of the simple folk. Yet striving to keep them simple. Can’t be so they’d be exploited the more easily, can it?