Spot the Difference

Anyone care to tell me what sets this apart from this? Apart from the references to physics in the latter, of course.

NB: If you think I'm being facetious, read this article, and then tell me that the methods of argumentation described therein aren't utilized in both of the essays referred to above.

Comments

[Julian Elson]

I love it when people compare social perspectives/attitudes to Newtonian physics, and then present themselves as relativity/quantum mechanics or whatever, but it's especially funny here: "This was set against all previous understandings of liberalism, of “classical liberalism” specifically, which saw individualism in simplistic, atomistic terms more akin to Newtonian physics than to the complex realities of modern life."

And I thought that Newton was one of the early people to develop the concept of action-at-a-distance, which shows that things really ARE all interconnected, and nothing is fully autonomous from the rest of the universe!

I can't tell what he wants. He seems to be saying "there are relationships besides economic relationships, damnit!" So, if this is about politics, not just a platitudinous and universally-accepted fact of human nature, what do you want the state to do?

[Julian Elson]

I love it when people compare social perspectives/attitudes to Newtonian physics, and then present themselves as relativity/quantum mechanics or whatever, but it's especially funny here: "This was set against all previous understandings of liberalism, of “classical liberalism” specifically, which saw individualism in simplistic, atomistic terms more akin to Newtonian physics than to the complex realities of modern life."

And I thought that Newton was one of the early people to develop the concept of action-at-a-distance, which shows that things really ARE all interconnected, and nothing is fully autonomous from the rest of the universe!

I can't tell what he wants. He seems to be saying "there are relationships besides economic relationships, damnit!" So, if this is about politics, not just a platitudinous and universally-accepted fact of human nature, what do you want the state to do?

[Shai]

yeah, I saw that on arts and letters daily and thought "what the fuck"? There is a point hiding in there somewhere, but I suspect it could be compressed into one or two paragraphs. Unfortunately it suffers from aimless essay direction and piling on of unargued (historical, philosophical, causal) claims in addition to English department style jabberwocky, so it's probably not worth decoding.

But it is intelligible. I'd put it in the (unfortunately very big) "badly written, badly argued" bin instead.

[Shai]

"I love it when people compare social perspectives/attitudes to Newtonian physics, and then present themselves as relativity/quantum mechanics or whatever"

hah, yeah I missed that. the myth about how Einstein was persecuted by the scientific community is also often invoked to add effect to that analogy. which made me remember the crackpot index