Archive for 22nd of May, 2005

I became quite depressed while taking my MPhil in Archaeology. I was being taught philosophy. By archaeologists. I’m not an expert on Philosophy but I’m willing to bet that with three years for a BA, and another 3+1 for the MA and PhD, there’s a bit more to Philosophy than using long words. Sorry, deploying extensive lexical structures within a textual context. I also suspect that a background in Philosophy would help in teaching it, but I’m open to being corrected by those who know better. So I was taught about Foucault and Latour etc and I thought there was something wrong. Reading Sokal and Bricmont’s Intellectual Impostures and Levitt and Gross’s Higher Superstition didn’t help, because it became evident that at least some of the Faculty were living their lives in a special place.

The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom would probably have caused me pack it all in and become a monk. If I could find an atheist monastery. (more…)