After seeing today’s XKCD (above) I sort of wish I had written all of my digital dualism posts as an easy-to-read table. I generally agree with everything on there (more on that later), but I’m also pretty confused as to how Randall Munroe got to those conclusions given some of his past comics. I can’t square the message of this table with the rest of Monroe’s work that has maligned the social sciences as having no access to The Way Things Are. The table is funny specifically because the social scientists he pokes fun of, did a lot of work to make those answers plainly (painfully?) obvious. How does someone with an obvious resentment for the social sciences, also make a joke about how we were always already alienated?
I don’t expect an artist to never contradict herself or himself, nor am I expecting some kind of universal and all-encompassing Theory of XKCD that would put each comic in relationship to the other. But, to my mind, I have a hard time believing that someone can believe all of the following to be true (in no particular order):
It doesn’t seem as though Munroe is a reader of social theory or cultural criticism. If anything, he seems to be an ardent critic of the “soft sciences.” Lots of his comics (especially those last three) imply that while scientist are quirky, sometimes to an obnoxious fault, social scientists and humanities scholars are consistently bullshitting their way through the profession. And yet, Munroe seems to value the observations of, and even engage in popular sociology of technology. I’ll admit I’m not an avid reader of his blag, but my keyword searches haven’t come up with something approaching an answer. I’m certainly not looking to dedicate an entire blog to critiquing XKCD I have secretly always resented physicist for making a community around, among other things, poking fun at my chosen profession.
Given his seemingly contradictory work, I (and many STS scholars) would be really interested to know Munroe’s thoughts on The Science Wars. Were you unaware of an entire shadow war that took place across multiple disciplines’ journals for several years in the mid 90s? Well that’s disappointing, it was really exciting. Thankfully, Wikipedia has a really excellent summary of the whole war, but here’s the really short version: As soon as sociologists and philosophers began to suggest that objectivity is a social construction, scientists began to push back claiming that postmodern theory was useless to society. The war hit its peak in 1996 when Alan D Sokal and Jean Bricmont wrote some nonsense under a pseudonym and got it published in Social Texts. On the day of publication they also released a public letter exposing their work as a hoax. Derrida got really angry and said some mean things in his book Paper Machines.
Randall Munroe’s work seems to both represent the most hardline Sokal supporter, while also making the social critiques of a postmodernist. The carefully cultivated “view from nowhere” of the scientist certainly supports the notion that mathematics are “pure” and sociology is superstructure, but where does the critique of alienation come from? Is it through sheer force of intuition and observation? Or has Munroe slipped into the same kind of privileged and myopic vision of society that N+1 editors periodically fall into? A perspective that projects one’s own wit and cutting criticism onto the world writ large; thereby simultaneously demanding that those witticisms go away while also demonstrating that they are more necessary than ever. In other words, Munroe utilizes critical sociology to make the point that critical sociology is useless.
It would be silly to demand that someone who draws comics should start reading social theory to do their job better. But we’re not talking about Garfield here, we’re talking about a comic that sits at the overlapping center of nerd culture, big science venn diagram. XKCD is just as much a part of young engineers’ and scientists’ training as Calculus 101. The comic needs to take social science seriously not for the sake of social scientists, but for the mutual advancement of all professional fields.
Also, it would just make for a better comic. Like I already said, I generally agree with the sentiment of today’s comic, technology does not unilaterally “make us” anything, but that’s a rather prosaic observation. It says more about the the sorry state of technology writing to think that this table is witty. Sometimes teens won’t have sex with a technology. Sometimes they will. The point of smart critical theory about technology is seeking out causal factors, making observations about the mutually shaping relationship of the social and the technical, and sometimes providing prescriptions for a better sociotechnical world. Munroe is having it both ways: laughing at the people that deconstruct science and technology while doing it himself and claiming its nothing more than common sense. The problem being, common sense is constructed, and its heavily influenced by the critics of culture, society, and technology. If Munroe wants to make these jokes, he should at least pay a little gratitude to the profession that works to make those jokes possible. Or, at the very least, stop pretending that we’re all just making this stuff up.
David is on Twitter and Tumblr
EDIT: This post originally said Sokal and Bricmont published under a pseudonym. They actually used their real names and their status as prominent scientists to get it published.
Comments 30
Muscat — November 11, 2013
I dunno, I guess I have a different reaction to the examples you cite as evidence of "obvious resentment for the social sciences."
The first comic is about the lack of science knowledge (social or physical) of members of the press - it isn't about the social sciences at all.
The butt of the second joke is really the humanities, not the social sciences, although they get a glancing shot. It is playing on common perceptions of things such as relative use of jargon across fields, but I'm not sure "resentment" is the right word for that.
Similarly, the butt of the third joke is arguably physics. And again it is playing on common perceptions of the relative "purity" of different fields and how that relates to their relative usefulness/prestige - but I'm not sure we should take this as evidence Munroe entirely supports this view. The underlying point is arguably that mathematics - often viewed as impractical/irrelevant - is more pure than physics which often views itself as the usefulness/prestige pinnacle because it views itself as the purity pinnacle. Certainly, again, it doesn't seem to me very good evidence of "resentment."
Finally, the butt of the final joke is, again, arguably physics. The point of this comic, as I take it, is that the physics person is _wrong_ because they don't understand the complexity inherent in the subject they're oversimplifying.
Lars — November 11, 2013
This article is super validating. I've been waiting for somebody to sketch out the petty slights XKCD makes in context of the science wars. Thanks!
SAA — November 11, 2013
Thoughtful piece, David.
I see the table offered in XKCD as representing a technologist's point of view in that they are portraying something as being different, attaching the usual concerns to the difference and proclaiming that well, "We were already alienated" as thought it can easily justify the introduction of the technology, and the next, and the next, without concern for its impact on people, culture, society, humanity, animals, planet, etc...
The list reflects the classic Marking Theory argument in that whatever is the "new" technology is marked to the group that already existed without it. The various layers that the XKCD author lists are the usual concern one group lists to question what is different or new to their way of life in such a situation. Yet, if we plug "mathematics" into the table above, it works as well as any other technology.
Where this falls apart is the "joke" of stating that "we were already alienated," as if this somehow makes it permissible, nay, accepted for that perceived condition to propagate.
Somehow the admission that the Marked thing that a group has concerns about is illustrated to be moot because the condition already exists (still likely left over from the last zillion technologies introduced)so thus, we shouldn't have social concerns about that particular technology's introduction.
In my experience, the problem for some people in "hard" sciences with any form of Social Science seems to be the framing. Telling someone that mathematics is a human construct is a really really hard thing for them to grok, not to mention accept because it both challenges a baseline assumption that defines the discipline, and within that messes with a hierarchy that seems to be important.
People don't seem to like being told they cannot do things and questioning whether something is a good idea or not, or how to best work with it isn't what gets many technologist's motors running.
Perhaps we need a Hippocratic Oath for technologists. Maybe that will engage Social Science.
whitneyerinboesel — November 11, 2013
this is a really interesting read, david.
i agree with everything you have to say about why dismissing the social sciences is a bad move, unequivocally. what i find sort of fascinating is that it never occurred to me that today's comic was supposed to be making fun of social scientists—in fact, to me it made fun of the "op-ed writers" that we ourselves sometimes make of (and frequently rant about). i read the press conference comic as making fun of journalists as well (why *don't* they ask the questions we'd like them to ask?), and i like the "fields by purity" comic enough to have a signed print of it (that i keep meaning to get framed). i like it not because it seems to tell me what my field is worth, but because it reflects how some of my other-science-type friends seem to view what i do for a living (and makes them look silly for it).
i mean, i'll admit: i've never seen an xkcd comic that advocated for the legitimacy of the social sciences (you're spot on there, and that never occurred to me). but i'd love to hear more about how/why you read some of these comics as making fun of social scientists—especially because it's sort of rare that i'm the person in a group who *isn't* offended by something. ;P
Stefan — November 12, 2013
Interesting. I make a stark analytic distinction between the social and the physical, which is why the "fields arrangement" comic is so silly (and irritating). I often compare sociology and physics because their theories are so broad and powerful and are the disciplines that are most outwardly/actively engaging in dialectical processes. That is the majority of work being done by all disciplines (enter Sociology of Knowledge). Our subject is as expansive and multiplicative as the universe...
Jen Fuller — November 12, 2013
As a social scientist, I take issue with the notion that all of us seek causal factors. I, for one am more interested in socio-political-cultural context which more or less enable certain imaginations on a topic/concept/profession in this case to come through. I fully support the second part of the sentence in that we "...mak[e] observations about the mutually shaping relationship of the social and the technical..." As an interdisciplinary scholar I make it my job to have meaningful conversations with folks in other fields about our work and how all of it relates to environmental and social issues. Yes it is hard work, yes I feel uncomfortable sometimes, but the mutual understandings that come from reaching out are worth it!
David Banks — November 13, 2013
A couple of general observations from the really excellent conversation that y'all have created:
1. While I'm not completely sure of everyone's background (beyond your twitter bios and whatnot) and we certainly don't have a representative sample, it looks as though people in the hard sciences are very quick to react with a "you're obviously reading this wrong" while most other people range from "that's not exactly how I see it," to "oh finally someone said that."
2. I don't think this trend is because scientists are cultural dupes but I do think its easy to come to a quick and singular reading of the comic if you're immersed in the culture that the comic is critiquing. I'm not even disagreeing necessarily with your reading because the scientists' reading is probably the intended reading. HOWEVER, what I'm trying to draw out is why this process of comic production and joking not only seems anti-intellectual but totally ignores the hard work and activism that went into encouraging strong self-reflection in academic settings.
3. I think XKCD is an excellent example of the incompatibilities of what sociologists call "frontstage" and "backstage" sociality, and the recent internet-afforded phenomena of "context collapse. While scientist can enjoy these comics for what they're intended to do: poke fun at the foibles of scientists, in the backstage I think its also important to constantly recognize that the front stage is still very much about the objective, unreflexive scientist that does actually think everything can be boiled down to an equation.
Friday Roundup: Nov. 15, 2013 » The Editors' Desk — November 15, 2013
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