[ExI] Literary Criticism Technique

[Lee Corbin]

Charles Murray book "Human Achievement" is not only impressive
and amazing for the descriptions of human history and achievement
it discloses, but also for his methodology. But see the reviews at
Amazon or somewhere for that.

What I'm writing about here is something that came as complete
shock to me, namely that he is aware of a technique in 
literary criticism that evidently can sometimes be used
to identify bullshit. Er, rather, I should say, can apparently
be used in some cases to evaluate the propaganda component
in a piece writing.

First he gives an example, and then claims that you can use
this known technique from literary criticism to evaluate passages
(like his examples) by subjecting them to a certain kind of
textual analysis. Murray writes (pp. 253-255)

    In science as in the arts, I write at a moment in history when
    readers come to this text exposed to claims that the European
    contribution is overrated. Here is the essence of the new historical
    perspective, led by historian Nathan Sivin:

        The historical discoveries of the last generation have left no
        basis for the old myths that the ancestry of modern science is
        exclusively European and that before modern times no other
        civilization was able to do science except under European
        influence. We have gradually come to understand that scientific
        traditions differing from the European tradition in fundamental
        respects---from techniques, to institutional settings, to views
        of nature and man's relation to it---existed in the Islamic
        world, India, and China, and in smaller civilizations as well.
        It has become clear that these traditions and the the tradition
        of the Occident, far from being separate streams, have
        interacted more or less continuously from their beginnings until
        they were replaced by local versions of the modern science that
        they have all helped to form.

    And here is the essence of the countervailing view as stated by
    David Landes in response to the passage from Sivin:

        This is the new myth, put forward as a given. Like other myths,
        it aims to shape the truth to higher ends, to form opinion in
        some other cause. In this instance, the myth is true in pointing
        out that modern science, in the course of its development, took
        up knowledge discovered by other civilizations; and that it
        absorbed and combined such knowledge and know-how with European
        findings. The myth is wrong, however, in implying a continuing
        symmetrical interaction among diverse civilizations.

        In the beginning, when China and others were ahead, almost all
        the transmission went one way, from the outside to Europe. That
        was Europe's great virtue: unlike China, Europe was a learner.
        ... Later on, of course, the story story was different. Once
        Europe had invented modern science, the current flowed back,
        though not without resistance. Here too, the myth misleads by
        implying a kind of equal, undifferentiated contribution to the
        common treasure. The vast bulk of modern science was of Europe's
        making .... Not only did non-Western science contribute just
        about nothing (though there was more there than Europeans knew)
        but at that point it was incapable of participating, so far had
        it fallen behind or taken the wrong turning. This was no common
        stream.

    Rhetoric Versus Reality

    This may seem to be one of those conflicts between experts that a
    layman cannot assess independently, but it's not. On the contrary,
    it can be easy to reach an independent judgment about allegations of
    Eurocentrism if one borrows a technique from literary criticism and
    subjects the allegation to close textual scrutiny. Sivin's language
    evokes the image of an exaggerated European contribution without
    ever specifying that it is exaggerated. It is standard practice. Let
    me give you other two examples where we have the opportunity to
    compare the evocation with the evidence actually presented.

Wow. So I wonder how many times I---or you---have been "evoking"
rather than coming right out and baldly stating something, simply
to avoid constructive criticism. (I apologize to my fellow PCR
enthusiasts for adding the unnecessary "constructive" since nobody
but us seems to understand that criticism is a good thing.)

What are the limits of this approach? Has anyone here any familiarity
with it? Could an expert system be written that can condemn one's
written passage by evaluating the extent to which it is guilty
of mere evocation? (Naturally, I totally understand that to evoke
certain feelings and to convey certain impressions has many 
wonderful uses, no doubt, in fiction and literature in general---
but NOT in factual analysis, honest debate, and a search for truth.)

Murray goes on with more examples (all relating to the theme
of this chapter of his book dealing with the measured result that
most scientific and artistic accomplishment has been Western).

    Exhibit A is the publicity copy on the back cover of the softcover
    Arnold Pacey's Technology in World Civilization (1991):

        Most general histories of technology are Eurocentrist, focusing on a
        main line of Western technology that stretches from the Greeks
        through the computer. In this very different book, Arnold Pacey
        takes a global view... portray[ing] the process as a complex
        dialectic by which inventions borrowed from one culture are adopted
        to suit another.

    Exhibit B is the publicity copy on the back cover of the edition of
    Science and Technology in World History (1999) by James McClellan and
    Harold Dorn:

        Without neglecting important figures of Western science such as
        Newton and Einstein, the authors demonstrate the great achievements
        of non-Western cultures. They remind us that scientific traditions
        took root in China, India, and Central and South America, as well as
        in a series of Near Eastern empires.

    Lest we fail to get the point, the publishers add a blurb from a
    professor at Stanford, who tells us that "Professors McClellan and
    Dorn have survey that does not present the historical development of
    science simply as a Western phenomenon but as the result of
    wide-ranging human curiosity about nature and attempts to harness
    its powers in order to serve human needs."

    Shall we expect that these two books challenge my assertion pages
    ago that 97 percent of accomplishment in the scientific in occurred
    in Europe and North America? No---not if you ignore the tone of the
    quotations and instead focus on what they do not say. No one is
    saying that the books reveal a new distribution of scientific
    accomplishment. All that the book jackets claim as a statement of
    fact (and all that Sivin claimed as a statement of fact) is that
    scientific and technological activity has occurred outside Europe.
    Which of course it has.

    If you then turn to the text between the covers, you will discover
    that Pacey's Technology in World Civilization is a fascinating,
    wide-ranging account of the dialog through which the recipients of
    new technology do not apply it passively, but adapt it to their
    particular situation. Gunpowder is the most famous example, invented
    in China but inspiring a radically different set of "responsive
    inventions" (Pacey's phrase) when Europe got hold of it. With this
    interaction between technology and culture as his topic, Pacey does
    indeed spend more time on non-European civilizations than would a
    historian of who invented what, where, when. For example, he has a
    chapter on railroad empires, with 18 pages of material on how
    railroads developed in Russia, Japan, China, and India. But who
    invented the railroad engine? Tracks? Trains? The infrastructure of
    complex railroads? All this occurred in in England.

    Similarly, McClellan and Dorn's Science and Technology in World
    History presents material on non-European societies. But McClellan
    and Dorn are also trying to present the substance of what crucial
    things happened where, done by whom. The 10 people with the most
    index entries are, in order, Aristotle, Newton, Copernicus, Galileo,
    Darwin, Ptolemy, Kepler, Descartes, Euclid and Archimedes--- a
    wholly conventional roster of stars. Of the scientific figures
    mentioned in McClellan and Dorn's index, 97 percent come from Europe
    and the United States---precisely the same percentage as yielded by
    the Human Accomplishment inventory.

    There is nothing wrong with McClellan and Dorn's ordering of the top
    10 or with their percentage of European and American scientists,
    just as there nothing wrong with the historiography of either
    Science and Technology in World History or of Technology in World
    Civilization. On the contrary, both books are consistent with the
    sources used to compile the inventories for Human Accomplishment.
    The contrast between the packaging for the books and their actual
    texts is emblematic of our times. The packaging evokes the way
    intellectual fashion says things should be. The facts reflect the
    way things really are.

End Charles Murray quote.

Lee