Leftists have a disquieting tendency to assert the importance of their untested (and sometimes even disproven) ideas. No body of knowledge avoids being sucked into this vortex.
Rocks and Gender Theory?
A shocking example is the book Geologic Life: Inhuman Intimacies and the Geophysics of Race. The author, Kathryn Yusoff, is a Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University of London. Her University website profile concludes, “Specifically, I am interested in the role of inhuman epistemologies in race, gender, and subjectivity for more equitable environmental world-building.’ In the United States, Duke University Press published her book.
The following paragraph is an excerpt from the Introduction.
“Colonial earth is the product of white geology: a historical regime of material power that used geologic minerals, metals, and fuels, combined with the epistemic violence of the category of the inhuman to shape regimes of value and forms of subjective life…. I investigate how we might understand geology as an ideological and material infrastructure of matter and materialism that shapes subjective and planetary states. And how calculative regimes of geology organized both the temporal and political surfaces of power, and its radicalized undergrounds.”
The Importance of the “Hard Sciences”
What does Dr. Yusoff mean by the phrase “white geology?” For most people, geology is the study of rocks. The Merriam-Webster definition says it is “a science that deals with the history of the earth and its life especially as recorded in rocks.” For some, though, geology is endlessly fascinating. Where the uninformed see a common rock, a trained geologist can see a microcosm of the world’s history.
There are, of course, many good reasons to study rocks. Many are the essence of stability and are used to build structures ranging from humble cottages to mighty cathedrals. Sculptures in granite or marble delight the modern imagination in precisely the same way that they did in the ancient or medieval worlds. Some rocks are flammable and can be used to produce heat. Others dazzle the eye and are labeled “precious.” Still others can be ground to powder, becoming ingredients in other useful substances. In the right setting, as in a range of mountains or the sides of a canyon, they evoke a sense of majesty, awe, and wonder at the immensity of God’s creation and its varieties.
Help Remove Jesus Bath Mat on Amazon
Geology shares an importance with all of the other “hard sciences.” The truths they reveal are essential to curing disease, increasing the food supply, predicting weather patterns, and so much more. Unless these disciplines are searches for objective truth, they are of little or no use.
The Postmodern (Mis)Understanding
As a hard science, geology defines, classifies and explains the physical properties of rocks and the earth. The discipline should not be mixed with social sciences, which must deal with the fickleness of human nature and society.
Unfortunately, Dr. Yusoff and many of her colleagues insist upon imposing social categories upon the hard sciences. She tries to fit rocks into places where they do not belong. One cannot attribute human qualities and prejudices to insensate beings.
Thus, these scholars deny the very concept of universal truth and replace it with postmodern fluidity. Everything, even rocks, can be forced into a narrative.
Satanic Christ Porn-blasphemy at Walmart — Sign Petition
One way this is done is through the postmodern academic concepts of deconstruction.
As the name implies, deconstruction is a kind of ideological tearing apart of universally accepted narratives that help explain reality. Its practitioners endlessly examine every word, belief or idea in search of hidden meanings that may or may not exist. Derived from the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), it deliberately dismantles traditional modes of thought and logical expression—even in geology.
Truth is the Only Escape
The only escape from this mental tangle is to plant oneself firmly on the side of objective truth. Since the days of Moses, humanity has spent centuries sifting and refining the mass of human ideas and Divine inspirations to arrive at the good, true and beautiful. The process to find Truth reached its apex in the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Unfortunately, too many radical intellectuals, in their pride, seek to destroy true inquiry and knowledge. In a spirit of revolution, such scholars want to abolish the restraint of the most revered traditions. To recall the declaration of Marx: “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away…All that is solid melts into air; all that is holy is profaned.”
Photo Credit: © blueiz60 – stock.adobe.com