[wruza]

Which particular book do you recommend, regarding my quote?

I also read what another commenter linked below, but cannot say what all that really means. To formulate clearly, I understand what the text says piece by piece, but fail to get the “correct” sense it was supposed to deliver. Maybe I need some decomposition (sorry if it turns to be a silly joke, couldn’t resist ;)

[smogcutter]

Sorry, just saw this. The Open Society and its Enemies is the big winner for Popper imo.

Short answer: it’s impossible.

Medium answer: the attempt itself is counterproductive and misunderstands how we use language.

Long answer: aside from being impossible, the impulse is related to Platonic essentialism, which is the philosophical spawning ground of authoritarianism and has stifled honest inquiry for circa 2k years.

[FabHK]

FWIW, I don't think very formal methods are the crux of the matter (at least for the incipient stages of a scientific field).

Having said that, postmodernism is (in my view) totally misguided. The obfuscated language is intentional, as among its epistemological assumptions is that reason is not only limited, but has only limited access to reality (well, or creates reality), and at any rate is insufficient.

Recommended readings:

* The Sokal Hoax [1]

* Intellectual Impostors by Bricmont and Sokal (Fashionable Nonsense in the US) [2] for an expansion on the Sokal Hoax, and many examples on pretentious and preposterous abuse of scientific terminology by postmodern philosophers

* Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism From Rousseau to Foucault by Hicks [3] on the history of postmodernism, arising from counter-enlightenment philosophy all the way from Rousseau via the insufferable German idealists, including Hegel with his dialectical reasoning, which supported both fascism and Marxism.

Postmodernists often take specific reasonable criticism of or problems with science or realism, and then blow them up and generalise them unjustifiably. It is worth taking some of the criticism to heart, but the postmodernists aren't even the ones formulating those problems in the most cogent way. So, my advice would be to waste some, but not too much time on postmodernism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-098325...