Document Type
Editorial
Abstract
[First paragraph]
What we call "postmodernism," whether we refer to the sciences or the humanities, is a certain preoccupation with the role of the human observer in the composition and perception -- perhaps even construction -- of reality. The postmodern condition, so to speak, is the moment in history when the "hard" sciences and the sciences of man seem to be suffering from the same anxieties about the relevance of the self-reflexive interaction between the observer and the subject to the fabric of existence and the web of knowledge. In simplest terms, we would define the postmodern question as this: "How much do I affect that which I observe?" More broadly the question becomes "What role, if any, does observation itself play in the universe?"
Repository Citation
Smith, C. J., and Robert Froemke. "To See More Clearly and Broadly: Science and the Postmodern Sentiment." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 4, no. 4, 2004, pp. 1–4. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol4/iss4/1
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Metaphysics Commons, Theory, Knowledge and Science Commons