Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

film, sociology, geography, literary criticism, development studies, and international relationsall display postmodern intrusions 13 .In cultural life it has come to indicate, for instance in architecture and art, a revaluationof classical art and architecture resulting in a novel incorporation of classicalelements in contemporary art, as a counterpoint to modern, sterile functionalist andminimalist art and architecture 14 . In the social and ethical dimension one can discern also anihilist or extreme relativist position, that claims that either anything goes in terms of truthand values, that there is no progress, and that certainly the modern western society is not theexponent of progress. This interpretation considers the modern ideals of westernconsumerism lying at the heart of a wealth of world problems such as poverty, pollution,north-south inequalities, and in general a failing of the “Enlightenment project”. Such postmodernismin the extreme – or subversive post-modernism – means an absolute relativismtowards claims or paradigms for understanding reality. Anyone’s truth is as valid as anotherman’s 15 . Somewhat less dismissive is the description that ‘knowledge is located in the fact ofdiscourse and dialogism’ 16 .This brings it sometimes close to a more moderate view so called ‘affirmative’ postmodernists17 , or critical post-modernists 18 , who consider the positivistic method with itsclaims of objectivity or limited subjectivity as invalid. They do not deny the existence of aphenomenal world, external to thought. They do oppose however that phenomena canconstitute themselves as objects of knowledge independently of discursive practices. Itchallenges language independent observation. What counts as a socially meaningful object orevent is always the result of an interpretive construction of the world out there. Ourinterpretations are based on a shared system of codes and symbols, of languages, life worldsand social practices. The knowledge of reality is socially constructed. Concepts of rationalargumentation, and especially the rational or scientific validation of hypotheses, are seen asfundamentally flawed. Reality and knowledge about it, are subjective and contextual 19 . Butnot all views are equal, some are more privileged by offering a better, more plausible, moreexplanatory narrative.Another and related interpretation – technological post-modernism - is moderate inthat it sees post-modernism as an awareness of the aspects that define ‘modern’ life, anawareness that allows to reflect on the modern institutions and alter them if needed, creatingthe post-modern condition 20 . In this sense it is a “periodizing” category in which the premodernleads via the modern to the late- or post-modern era 21 . With this position can alsobe associated the economic view that the modern condition is associated with industrialsociety, or Second Wave economy, while the current post-modern condition is symbolizedby the “information society”. Castell observed the organizational transition fromindustrialism to informationalism and the Tofflers have coined the term “Third Wave”13 Jarvis, p.98.14 See for instance Charles Jencks, Post-Modernism, the New Classicism in Art and Architecture, AcademyEditions, London, 1987.15 Jarvis, p.126.16 Ibid, p.107.17 Pauline Rosenau, p.15.18 Jarvis, pp.108, 114-115.19 See for instance Jean-Paul Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, (Manchester,1984), K.R. Dark, The Waves of Time, (London, 1998) and Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism,(London, 1998) for similar observations.20 Jarvis, pp.108 and 127.21 Ibid, p.101.288