Re:<nettime> personal life, impersonal writing (was: The banality of blogging)

[Michael H Goldhaber <mgoldh@well.com>]

All right, a personal anecdote. While I was working towards my  
doctorate in theoretical physics, many years ago, I wrote a draft of  
an article on some work I had done with two colleagues. The next-most  
junior of them read the draft, and pointed out that in discussing   
something that had not worked, I had used the word "unfortunately."  
He said, "Don't be so emotional."

I am pretty sure that still today, in the natural sciences, no paper  
would be published that included even a hint of personal views or  
experiences. The supposed reason is that for work to be considered  
scientific it should be reproducible by very different people,  
working  or inspired by possibly very different feelings. According  
to Ockham's razor, feelings, etc., are extraneous. In academic  
publishing outside science, I think the attempt is to use scientific  
writing as a model if possible, because science has more prestige.   
Even in supposedly scientific fields such as psychology, that is very  
problematic.

But we don't have to repeat it here.

Best,
Michael

On Aug 16, 2007, at 3:59 AM, Benjamin Geer wrote:

> On 15/08/07, Kimberly De Vries <cuuixsilver@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think that the way personal matters are completely excluded here also
>> precludes the development of critical ideas from personal experience on the
>> list, which is our loss.
>
> I'd say they've been mostly though not completely excluded, and I agree that
> it's our loss; I wonder if others feel the same way, too.
 <...>

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