DECONSTRUCTION

Deconstructionism may frighten Jack Smith (Feb. 11) when it attempts to invalidate literature by asserting that words are meaningless. But it gets even more bizarre and scary when it is applied to the physical and social sciences, where a similar intellectual “new age” type of elite has emerged.

Scientists have never been so pretentious as to lay claim to “the truth.” They admit that they work with only approximations to it. We may be dealing with shadows, but what is gleaned from them may be powerful. The equations that describe gravity do not “breathe life” into gravity. Although the equations are different from gravity itself--the equations are useful reflections of “truth,” if only as evidenced by their demonstrable utility in making predictions.

What the deconstructionist has difficulty understanding is that truth and falsehood are not dichotomous--partial knowledge is possible. Words may be incapable of accurately mapping reality one-on-one, but so what? Partial knowledge, evidenced in science by replicability, has potential pragmatic utility--which is valuable in itself.

By devaluing words and/or science, deconstructionists allow themselves to indulge in the arrogant fantasy that they are on the same intellectual plane as Shakespeare, Darwin and Einstein and the other giants of art and science. But occasionally the hypocritical stripes of deconstructionists become all too conspicuous. To whom do deconstructionists run when they are in need of help--to set a broken arm, fix a broken carburetor--in a world devoid of knowledge? Do they turn to their fellow deconstructionists to discuss the meaninglessness of words?

No, like you and me, even a deconstructionist will run for help to the very applied scientists who, they claim, know nothing. Not only do the deconstructionists’ arguments self-destruct, their actions betray their words.

MICHAEL E. MILLS

LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

Los Angeles