Postmodern science legitimates itself through difference, not maximized performance

Evidence

The conclusion we can draw from this research (and much more not mentioned here) is that the continuous differentiable function is losing its preeminence as a paradigm of knowledge and prediction. Postmodern science—by concerning itself with such things as undecidables, the limits of precise control, conflicts characterized by incomplete information, “fracta” catastrophes, and pragmatic paradoxes—is theorizing its own evolution as discontinuous, catastrophic, nonrectifiable, and paradoxical. It is changing the meaning of the word knowledge, while expressing how such a change can take place. It is producing not the known, but the unknown. And it suggests a model of legitimation that has nothing to do with maximized performance, but has as its basis difference understood as paralogy. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 423

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is Lyotard’s core definitional move — postmodern science opposes performance-based legitimation with legitimation by paralogy.
• XREF: Directly answers to the reader’s purpose: this is the precise concept of paralogy that Jameson reads against. — connects to: Postmodern science fiction implodes inward to revitalize fragments of simulation — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 406; Technical performativity now shapes what counts as scientific truth. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 344; Science’s paralogy is the antimodel to the totalizing performativity system — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 444 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodern texts relate through difference rather than organic unity #corroborates (0.90) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 120