The website of Associate Professor of Philosophy M R. X. Dentith
Well, the galleys have arrived for my forthcoming Skeptic article and it’s a mighty four pages of the magazine (although half of one of those pages seems to have space set aside for an ad; I wonder what I shall be unwittingly endorsing?). I also have an illustration, apparently. Gods know what that will end up being. Hopefully something nice, like a pony, or a flower.
I’m one step closer to publication proper and, I must admit, it feels a bit weird.
That is now the title of my paper forthcoming in ‘The Skeptic’ (Volume 14, Number 2, I believe). It is not a title I chose, but I suspect Dr. Michael Shermer (who does ‘works’ now) felt that ‘Saving the Paranormal from the Laws of Science’ was a bit wanky. Which, admittedly, it is, but philosophers love those titles. Big, swanky and filled with hubris.
I found out about the new moniker on Wednesday, when Shermer sent through his edit upon the paper. Originally I wrote a three and an half thousand word monstrocity; he wanted it edited down to three thousand. When I committed the third edit in September I got it down to a paltry two thousand eight hundred. Shermer’s latest edit gets it down to two and an half thousand words, with fifty on the side. It’s actually quite pacey now (almost hip). However (and there is always one of those) he achieved this with some slight rewording, some of which actually introduce new and exciting issues (not of my making) into the paper. I’ve advised him of these irksome sentences and so, hopefully, they will be fixed. Then I have to await the galleys (nautical jokes on standby).
Publication imminent. It’s only been three years…
The Skeptic article might not be off the cards after all; Michael Shermer has suggested that I update it to reflect some recent comments made by Freeman Dyson (most notably from his book ‘The Scientist as Rebel’ and from an article he wrote on Climate Change for ‘The Edge’).
My latest pass at the piece has ‘streamlined’ it by 200 words and made it less jargony. Which is good, because as I’m now forced to put in a new introduction it gives me more room to play around with the central conceit of the piece, that fundamentalist scepticism is bad, but so is Dyson’s worldview.
If my rewrite works out (I’ve yet to look at ‘The Scientist as Rebel’ as my interloan request has not come through yet) then I’ve been given an assurance that this time round I will be given a definite date of publication and the piece won’t be left to stagnant and go out of date.
In other news: Here is my new Lord and Master on the subject of critical thinking and atheism.
Michael Shermer, editor of ‘The Skeptic’ wrote the other day to tell me that he shan’t be publishing the article he accepted for publication back in 2005. The magazine is backlogged with material and whilst he likes the piece he doesn’t know when it would go into print, so he’s ‘released’ it.
A shame really, since I did all that work on the extensive rewrite he asked for[1].
Still, now it means I can either seek a new home for the article or sling it online here. It also gives me a chance to do another rewrite; I’m fairly sure I can make the article slightly breezier.
The piece is a defense of a certain account of the Paranormal. I suppose it would be better to describe it as a critique of a certain fundamentalist strain of scepticism, the kind that denies that we could ever have evidence of paranormal phenomena. As we know, even idiots and idealogues can be sceptics (as I’ve said in the past, some of the most irrational people I have ever met were atheists and rationalists (the two don’t have to go together, but they often do…)). I run through three reasons why we should be open to the possibility that paranormal phenomena does occur, based upon what we can plausibly say about the methodology of Western Scientific practice.
In other news, someone wants to interview me in re getting the JREF Scholarship.
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1. This will also come as a bit of a blow to all those people I used as editors whilst writing the first few drafts. Sorry guys.