Notes[N1] Post-Mod (Post Modernization). Postmodernists complain that science is a cultural prejudice, and/or a tool invented by the current elite to maintain power, and/or only one "way of knowing" among many, with no special privilege. For postmodernists, science is "discourse", one system among many, maintained by a closed community as a means of holding onto power, and ultimately referential only to itself.

When cognitive scientists discover, based on their experiments, that human beings everywhere agree on the meaning of "This is blue", the postmodernist reply is that "human beings are a recent invention, a wrinkle in our knowledge that will inevitably be displaced as new wrinkles arise." If postmodernism were true, I would think that somebody would (by now) have told me how to deconstruct "six", "hemoglobin", and "I itch".

Joshua Hersh, a student in a post-mod class, described his own course at Ohio State University. "This one is called Values, Science and Technology in a Global Perspective. We learn about things like the particle physicist's subculture in which their particle beams represent a phallic symbol. We also learn about how all science is socially influenced and knowledge does not really exist (epistemological relativism). Finally, we learn that the people in the class that have bad vision are cyborgs because they augment their vision with eyeglasses."

- from Edward R. Friedlander, M.D., Why I am Not a Postmodernist

Or as Camille Paglia wrote: Culture is an achievement made more in opposition to nature than in concert with it. Nature is not the pretty innocence of Greenpeace agitprop or Bambi... Culture requires overcoming nature, creating a human realm apart from the natural, that provides a context and the hubris to paint, write novels or songs, fall in love, die for one's beliefs.... If we are whatever we say we are..., if our freedom consists in constructing an identity all our own, if there is no larger historical continuity, then it is tempting to define ourselves to serve only our immediate interests.

From a post-grad med student: Anyway, since leaving undergrad I have often thought of my education in postmodernism (and relativism by default) and wondered, honestly, how I could have been so involved in that idea. As you bring up, it is now hard for me to rationalize the ideas of linguistic relativism prevalent throughout the philosophy.

I wish I could remember the specific piece, but I remember an article by Derrida or maybe Robert Detweiler (I believe that's his name... He was at Emory for years) about the lack of certainty in language. The whole point (and I think this gets to the belief that science is based on ambiguities) was that when I say "tree" you might picture a fir or a beech or an oak, while I might picture a pine or cedar. So when you say "anemia" you might mean a specific range of values, while others might just imagine someone with a Hgb of 7.

The point of all of this is to say that as I've moved from my philosophical background to one of science, I have come to realize that the postmodern argument is really just an intellectual exercise. It's not applicable or relevant because if it was, communication would fail. Communication might be relative in symbol, but only in things that lack strict definitions like the word "tree" or "air". Things like "oxygen" have specific definitions that eliminate the possibility of interpretation... You either know what an oxygen molecule is with its attributes or you don't. Science (medicine specifically) is not relative.

When you say "liver" I picture a normal liver. When you say "cirrhotic liver" I have a good idea of what you mean. Medicine, in my limited experience so far, is about learning the definitions so that relativism in symbol is minimized and ideally eliminated. The point of looking at a thousand normal eardrums first is so that you know that a diseased one is different when you see it.

[N2] There are always questionable therapists and surgeons available who will waive the protocols if you have the money to pay them.

[N3] Estradiol produced by human ovaries is identical to synthetic estradiol 17ß. It is the same isomer of exactly the same substance with exactly the same effects as estradiol produced in the human ovary.

[N4] P. T. Barnum.