Brian Gill: A science career in three shocks

Initial delight and optimism with a science vocation hit turbulence as the decades unfolded.

The first shock was pleasant.  In the 1970s, after finishing secondary school in a small country town, I moved to Palmerston North to start a science degree.  Massey University's huge science blocks were monumental.  I was awe-struck by the number and size of the lecture halls and laboratories.  The dozens of white-coated science lecturers, so knowledgeable in their specialised fields, were inspiring.  It seemed a cutting edge where sceptical enquiry, evidence and objectivity were providing new scientific understanding.  I wanted to join in.

Karl du Fresne: Bob Brockie on matauranga and the postmodernism fraud

Today I'm honoured to publish a guest post by the redoubtable Dr Bob Brockie - scientist, sceptic and long-time cartoonist for The National Business Review (in its pre-woke era).

In the 1960s, French intellectuals Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and others dreamt up a new philosophy that came to be known as Postmodernism.

Dissatisfied with modernity, they sought to overthrow its thinking . They asserted that men, women, black, white, strait, gay, powerful or powerless read words differently, that truth, reason, justice, social progress, and natural reality mean different things to different people and are really code words for the establishment. They think the Enlightenment is a fraud perpetrated by white males to consolidate their own power. They want to empower the marginalised.