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alexander0's review
3.0
At times, this book will lose you. This book performs a lot of mystery at the level of modeling and textual goals. The end game, it seems is to destroy the notion of story in favor of the idea of a more modular or systemic way of thinking about stories which includes both the qualitative performances and the quantitative simplicities that this book offers us as a way to frame the many stories of aircrafts developed by British engineers of the 1950s.
By way of doing this, it offers us a suggestion of humble thought. A way of disorienting our ideas of what the "central" object of study is. Law offers a way in which even the pilot is involved in the decision processes of considering objects of interest such as "wind gust". Such a variable is a constant of engineering consideration. But in this context, he deconstructs it to be what he deems an "oscillation" between the constant state and the dynamics of one's idea of a pilot.
That being said, this book at times is not clear at all. There are times when conclusions are more obvious than the author presumes, he abuses mathematical language for rhetorical interests, and creates linguistic distinctions which are not so nuanced as he might presume the reader will believe. Although a very interesting read on a methodology of deconstructing documents and the interpretations possible, there are many questions here that are not quite so answerable or useful to further study. This doesn't really pave a way for more useful empirical study. In some ways this was an exercise in academic methods enabled by a continental tradition that the author was privileged to be trained in. However, his prior credibility in such a method does not mean that my reading it will change how I understand future methods. In fact, it largely is a piecemeal effort. One can only digest parts of this in practical methods. One can't pedagogically consider this book as a whole and still write articles. These articles are destined to fail. The stability this book suggests hides things will continue to exist in practice. The dynamics suggested by postmodern methodologies will continue to be incommensurable to the modern paradigm. In the end, it's questionable that this book offers a solution to the dualism of these methodologies. What it does, instead, is suggest that we don't understand the stories we study because of absence. It just breeds a real confusion for the trained academic. It isn't that one understood, and now one doesn't. It just shows that we never really understood, and creates ground to be humble in the methods that already were being used.
The pedagogy must be changed, but the methods and theory will not be changed.
By way of doing this, it offers us a suggestion of humble thought. A way of disorienting our ideas of what the "central" object of study is. Law offers a way in which even the pilot is involved in the decision processes of considering objects of interest such as "wind gust". Such a variable is a constant of engineering consideration. But in this context, he deconstructs it to be what he deems an "oscillation" between the constant state and the dynamics of one's idea of a pilot.
That being said, this book at times is not clear at all. There are times when conclusions are more obvious than the author presumes, he abuses mathematical language for rhetorical interests, and creates linguistic distinctions which are not so nuanced as he might presume the reader will believe. Although a very interesting read on a methodology of deconstructing documents and the interpretations possible, there are many questions here that are not quite so answerable or useful to further study. This doesn't really pave a way for more useful empirical study. In some ways this was an exercise in academic methods enabled by a continental tradition that the author was privileged to be trained in. However, his prior credibility in such a method does not mean that my reading it will change how I understand future methods. In fact, it largely is a piecemeal effort. One can only digest parts of this in practical methods. One can't pedagogically consider this book as a whole and still write articles. These articles are destined to fail. The stability this book suggests hides things will continue to exist in practice. The dynamics suggested by postmodern methodologies will continue to be incommensurable to the modern paradigm. In the end, it's questionable that this book offers a solution to the dualism of these methodologies. What it does, instead, is suggest that we don't understand the stories we study because of absence. It just breeds a real confusion for the trained academic. It isn't that one understood, and now one doesn't. It just shows that we never really understood, and creates ground to be humble in the methods that already were being used.
The pedagogy must be changed, but the methods and theory will not be changed.
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