Gobbledygook

It is of the essence of the modern to invent specialty languages for an academic discipline. This is traceable, I think, to the collapse of the sacred as a source of authority in contemporary times. Without God, beings like we are need to create our own sphere of authority, something that is unassailable by any outside the chosen few, and that is in turn held sacrosanct by that same chosen. What better way to safeguard the inner sanctum than inventing a private language that only the elect can understand?

But science and academic endeavors in general are a public enterprise, by definition. So, this tendency of the academy to obscure themselves behind a vale of technical terms should be resisted. I think the most straightforward way to do it is to insist that any discipline, no matter how technical its orientation, ought to be able to - and shall - explain its tenets, hypothesis, and conclusions in non-technical terms. If it can't - or won't - then it is bogus, and should be summarily dismissed from the academy.

I note here that this is a significant movement within the science of economics at the moment. For too long, economics has gravitated into a mathematical world of abstraction, and many are calling for economics to return to the more prose-based approach of Adam Smith. Similar concerns are also being raised in physics.

Herewith an example from architecture in a discussion about Italian stones:

 … there remains the large group of stones and that of granites (characterised by varied typologies and geographic distributions) for possible stereotomic uses … 

'Stereotomic?' Now there's a technical term I defy anyone to grasp from the context. Do architects really speak this way? Or more to the point, do they actually think in these terms? Well, yes they do, because this is actually a legitimate term. We know this because the author quickly moves to explain it:

 …  i.e. for structural purposes or at least strongly contributing to the formation of architectural envelopes.

Oh, it is the use of stone as a structural element, as opposed to its use as a façade or for other decorative purposes. This is quite clear and straightforward, so we can, I think, permit the architects their own verbiage.

Now, here is an example regarding the science of Sociology, from an oral argument last year in the Supreme Court, the gerrymandering case of Gill v. Whitford. Via Ed Whelan in The Corner of National Review Online, Justice Roberts:

Mr. Smith, I’m going … to lay out for you … what is the main problem for me and give you an opportunity to address it….

[I]f you’re the intelligent man on the street and the Court issues a decision, and let’s say, okay, the Democrats win, and that person will say: “Well, why did the Democrats win?” And the answer is going to be because EG was greater than 7 percent, where EG is the sigma of party X wasted votes minus the sigma of party Y wasted votes over the sigma of party X votes plus party Y votes. And the intelligent man on the street is going to say that’s a bunch of baloney. It must be because the Supreme Court preferred the Democrats over the Republicans.

Justice Roberts goes on to call this Sociological gobbledygook. And for a very good reason: it is a veritable gaggle of private Sociological speak. But what does it mean? Tellingly, as Ed Whelan notes, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, the president of the American Sociological Association, in his letter to the Chief Justice complaining about the Justice's take on Sociology, did not even consider explaining in ordinary language what the terms meant. Instead, he read Justice Robert's comments as a condemnation of Sociology as a science, and proceeded to deliver several layers of snark.

The key point here is not that Eduardo cannot explain his terminology in normal language, it is that he refuses to do so. It's like the way the Catholic Church resisted the translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible into the common languages of the people. They had many reasons for this, but surely one concern was that once common translations are allowed, people would not need a Priest to interpret the Bible. Some do, but many don't, or so says the Protestant Reformation, and so says I vis a vis our own secular priests in the academy.

My case is made. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and the other priests of sacrosanct private languages need to be summarily dismissed from the academy. Get them to a Nunnery - or a Monastery, as the case may be - where they may collectively worship their mysterious gods in the privacy they desire.