The map and the territory …

… A Therapeutic Cartography — The Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Harrison regularly points out that “science” is not a natural kind. Similarly, he emphasizes that “science” is not a thing. Our use of the word “science” — as in “science clearly shows us” — is predicated on its own myth, a little noble lie, a wink and a nod by which we agree to group an array of disparate human practices as if they constituted one thing. And what defines that “thing”? What are the parameters of “science”? Well, that it’s not “religion.” This fulfills one of the primal functions of myth: validating a view of reality and a community of practice by “othering” an enemy and threat. Yet this mythically constructed “science” lives off of the borrowed capital of the “religion” it displaced.