{"id":5019,"date":"2014-09-25T21:42:35","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T20:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/?p=5019"},"modified":"2018-03-04T13:59:36","modified_gmt":"2018-03-04T13:59:36","slug":"obscurantism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/obscurantism\/","title":{"rendered":"Obscurantism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The subject of obscure writing <a href=\"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/?p=4988&amp;cpage=6#comment-53967\">came up on another thread<\/a>, and with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sense-Style-Thinking-Person%C2%92s-Writing\/dp\/0670025852\">Steven Pinker&#8217;s new book on writing<\/a> coming out next week, now is a good time for a thread on the topic.<\/p>\n<p>Obscure writing has its place (<i>Finnegan&#8217;s Wake<\/i> and <i>The Sound and the Fury<\/i>, for example), but it is usually annoying and often completely unnecessary. Here&#8217;s a funny clip in which John Searle laments the prevalence of obscurantism among continental philosophers:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yvwhEIhv3N0\">John Searle \u2013 Foucault and Bourdieu on continental obscurantism<\/a><\/p>\n<p>When is obscure prose appropriate or useful? When is it annoying or harmful? Who are the worst offenders? Feel free to share examples of annoyingly obscure prose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The subject of obscure writing came up on another thread, and with Steven Pinker&#8217;s new book on writing coming out next week, now is a good time for a thread on the topic. Obscure writing has its place (Finnegan&#8217;s Wake &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/obscurantism\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-and-communication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}