Wojtek argues that irreducibility "would only hold if the universe we study was neatly divided into compartments corresponding to the respective disciplines." Of course at the molecular level the universe is continuous and not compartmentalized. At the level of explanation, phenomena do operate according to different principles. How are we to reconcile these apparently contradictory observations. Wojtek denies the contradiction, seeing the different explanatory principles as ultimately unnecessary or illusory. Another strategy might be to employ the notion of emergent behaviour. Biology emerges from chemistry. In this sense, biology can be described as a series of chemical interactions, but it cannot be _explained_ as a series of chemical interactions. To explain biology, we need specifically biological concepts like natural selection. By analogy, history emerges from biology (humans are after all animals). Human history can be described as a complex series of animal behaviors. But it cannot be explained in this way. To explain history we need specifically historical concepts like class. In another missive, Wojtek describes pomo and identity politics as "a bullshit intellectual exercise marketed for college educated yuppies..." Would that it were so. Eagleton describes pomo as the left in defeat,or more specifically in a kind of stunned retreat. If this is the case, as members of the left, we are all implicated in it. If one were to survey non-college educated yuppie left individuals one would find pomo has a lot more currency than Marxism. This would be even more true at the organizational level though the college educated yuppie factor looms larger here. That said, maybe denouncing pomo in these terms is a sound rhetorical strategy given the proneness of the left to what we used to call white liberal guilt. Terry McDonough
