The Paranoid Style in American History of Science

Reisch, George A.

doi:10.1387/theoria.6273

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Paranoid style analysis has been conducted on scholarly discourse in domains as diverse as legal scholarship (see, for example, Mootz, 1994; Schneiderman, 2016; Short, 2012), history of science (see, for example, Reisch, 2012; Williams, 2019), literary-critical theory (see, for example, Beckman, 2020; Bywater, 1990) and political science (see, for example, Moss and Oey, 2010). The circumstances in which academic discourse is constructed are generally very different to those associated with the paranoid style in the political arena.…”

Section: Paranoid Style Analysis Of Scholarly Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

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The paranoid style in the sociology of financial reporting principles

Rutherford

2023

MEDAR

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Purpose This paper aims to analyse the character and strength of the claims made in an emerging literature offering a sociology of financial reporting principles. Design/methodology/approach The analysis evaluates exemplary works in the literature against the characteristics of the paranoid style first identified by Richard Hofstadter: overheated claims of a far-reaching, malign and collusive machinery of influence; a reductive, rationalistic and dualistic reading of events; weak empirics; and weak theorisation. Findings A significant stream within the literature is coming to be constructed in the paranoid style. Paranoid stylistics, used as a diagnostic tool, alerts us here to distorted judgement. Research limitations/implications Alternative ways of avoiding the dangers of paranoid-style readings are suggested, ranging from resisting the temptations towards such readings to a radical re-working of the epistemics of “socio-accounting”. Practical implications The danger of allowing the conclusions advanced in the literature to go unchallenged is that they may influence society’s attitude to accounting, public policy-making and scholars’ willingness to contribute to the crafting of reporting principles and standards. Originality/value Although paranoid style analysis has been widely used to examine narratives in other academic fields, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to apply it to scholarly accounting.

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Section: Paranoid Style Analysis Of Scholarly Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The scope and menace of the actions are significant for the discipline though perhaps not from a wider perspective. Reisch (2012) finds a narrative damaging perceptions of science as generally progressive and relatively stable, with potentially quite serious consequences.…”

Section: Paranoid Style Analysis Of Scholarly Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

The paranoid style in the sociology of financial reporting principles

Rutherford

2023

MEDAR

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“…26 Reisch also argues that Cold War discourse influenced the subsequent development of philosophy of science in North America in other ways. For example, in more recent work, Reisch argues that the central motif of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, namely the concept of a "paradigm" and its centrality to what Kuhn describes as "normal science" was drawn from the discourse around "captive minds" during the Cold War (Reisch 2012;2016a).Reisch argues that in developing the concept of a paradigm Kuhn was influenced by his mentor, James B. Conant, who had analyzed Soviet-Western interactions and misunderstandings as interactions between disconnected "universes of discourse" (Reisch 2016b, 46). Thus, in order to understand the development of philosophy 23 In this regard, it is interesting to note that Kuhn's philosophy of science re-emphasizes the significance of individual geniuses.…”

Section: Did Hegel Take the Empirical Sciences Seriously?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hegel’s proto-modernist conception of Philosophy as Science

Nabolsy

2020

Problemata: Rev. int. filos.

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I argue that the reception of Hegel in the sub-field of history and philosophy of science has been in part impeded by a misunderstanding of his mature metaphilosophical views. I take Alan Richardson’s influential account of the rise of scientific philosophy as an illustration of such misunderstanding, I argue that the mature Hegel’s metaphilosophical views place him much closer to the philosophers who are commonly taken as paradigms of scientific philosophy than it is commonly thought. Hegel is commonly presented as someone who conceived of philosophy as a science that relied on the solitary genius of the individual thinker, and as a science whose propositions could not and should not be made accessible to “the common people”. Against this view, I argue that Hegel in fact thought that philosophy was a thoroughly anti-individualistic activity, and that he emphasized the importance of the intersubjective accessibility of philosophical discourse. I argue that when we carefully reconstruct Hegel’s reasons for his break with Schelling, and if we pay close attention to his explicit metaphilosophical pronouncements, we can see that he in fact adhered to what I call a “proto-modernist” conception of philosophy as a science. I conclude by pointing out how the mischaracterization of Hegel has served to obscure the existence of a strand of scientific philosophy that emerged by way of an immanent critique of Hegel, namely Marxist philosophy.

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“…Scholarship on this period has described the ‘Cold War brainwashing scare’, the ‘brainwashing idea’, and the ‘spectre of brainwashing’, as a central motif in postwar film and literature upon which myriad concerns about agency and influence were projected (for use of these phrases see, respectively, Carruthers, 1998; Reisch, 2012; Taylor, 2004). Whilst such scholarship has often described brainwashing as a ‘cultural fantasy’, the idea of brainwashing nonetheless had real effects, not least within the human sciences.…”

Section: The ‘Cold War Brainwashing Scare’mentioning

confidence: 99%

On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience

Williams

2019

History of the Human Sciences

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The personal papers of the neurophysiologist John C. Lilly at Stanford University hold a classified paper he wrote in the late 1950s on the behavioural modification and control of ‘human agents’. The paper provides an unnerving prognosis of the future application of Lilly’s research, then being carried out at the National Institute of Mental Health. Lilly claimed that the use of sensory isolation, electrostimulation of the brain, and the recording and mapping of brain activity could be used to gain ‘push-button’ control over motivation and behaviour. This research, wrote Lilly, could eventually lead to ‘master-slave controls directly of one brain over another’. The paper is an explicit example of Lilly’s preparedness to align his research towards Cold War military aims. It is not, however, the research for which Lilly is best known. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lilly developed cult status as a far-out guru of consciousness exploration, promoting the use of psychedelics and sensory isolation tanks. Lilly argued that, rather than being used as tools of brainwashing, these techniques could be employed by the individual to regain control of their own mind and retain a sense of agency over their thoughts and actions. This article examines the scientific, intellectual, and cultural relationship between the sciences of brainwashing and psychedelic mind alteration. Through an analysis of Lilly’s autobiographical writings, I also show how paranoid ideas about brainwashing and mind control provide an important lens for understanding the trajectory of Lilly’s research.

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The Paranoid Style in American History of Science

Cited by 5 publications

References 18 publications

The paranoid style in the sociology of financial reporting principles

The paranoid style in the sociology of financial reporting principles

Hegel’s proto-modernist conception of Philosophy as Science

On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience

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