Butterflies and Wheels

Not Alexander Pope, not the Rolling Stones, but another online magazine that I thought might be of interest.

It's called butterfliesandwheels.com and is dedicated to 'fighting fashionable nonsense'. The site's creators are also the authors of the anti-relativist work 'Why Truth Matters'. (Incidentally they've taken their name from a disparaging remark made about Dawkins.)

Here's what they say about themselves:

Butterflies and Wheels has been established in order to oppose a number of related phenomena. These include:

1. Pseudoscience that is ideologically and politically motivated.
2. Epistemic relativism in the humanities (for example, the idea that statements are only true or false relative to particular cultures, discourses or language-games).
3. Those disciplines or schools of thought whose truth claims are prompted by the political, ideological and moral commitments of their adherents, and the general tendency to judge the veracity of claims about the world in terms of such commitments.

There are two motivations for setting up the web site. The first is the common one having to do with the thought that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour.

The second has to do with the tendency of the political Left (which both editors of this site consider themselves to be part of) to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks. We believe this tendency to be a mistake on practical as well as epistemological and ethical grounds. Alan Sokal expressed this concern well, when talking about his motivation for the Sokal Hoax: ‘My goal isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you), but to defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself. Like innumerable others from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, I call for the Left to reclaim its Enlightenment roots.’ (Reply to Social Text Editorial)

They look like a fun bunch. Julian Baggini (author of The Pig That Wants to be Eaten) writes a "fortnightly column on bad argumentative moves."

Sort out your ad hominems from your abductions. An essential resource for detecting woolly arguments in all their guises!

What larks! But I like it, anyway. Elsewhere you'll find articles on the veil (natch), cultural relativism, and links to pieces that they find of interest, such as the phenomenology of smell (!)

Enjoy. Or not.