Re: Cliometrics

Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Sun, 13 Apr 1997 18:05:26 -0400


Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> At 10:34 AM 4/12/97 -0700, Robin wrote:
>
> >Cliometrics is not trendy!? What evidence is there for this. Can
> >either of you name any person with such a specialty who was hired at a
> >major university history dept lately?
>
> I was in dictionary mode - nothing so vulgar as *data* or *facts*.
>
> I would guess that the impact of poststructuralism does still shape
> humanities' depts. One of the routine put-downs I repeatedly heard around
> the literature end of the academy, blood-curdling and chilling, was:`mere
> empiricism'. Yeah, right, I'd say, I'm troubling your doctrine with facts
> (yetch)... so sorry. But `facts' are just culturally-bound
> interpretations, I'd be told. In such a climate, I don't imagine
> cliometrics would do very well. On the other hand, poststruck doctrine
> seems to be increasingly on the nose, so the tide might be about to turn.
> (And the new models emerging from complexity theory are likely to attract
> interest back to *measurement*, aren't they? Or will that be just a new
> scholasticism as well?)
>

Such softies mock empirical methods cause they are too lazy to do the
math themselves.

"Yo man, your laws of physics are merely empirically derived costructs
defining the narrow limits of the european male mind."

-- 
TANSTAAFL!!!
			Michael Lorrey
------------------------------------------------------------
mailto:retroman@tpk.net		Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com
Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com	http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/

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