Notes to Will the most reflexive relativist please stand up: Hypertext, argument and relativism Jane Yellowlees Douglas in Page to Screen, edited by Illana Snyder
Summary: Largely given over to commentary on Socrates in the Labrynth and Kolb's discussion of the types of argument hypertext makes possible.
p.145 "ironically, the exposure hypertext has received through the World Wide Web has obscured its more radical and far-reaching possibilities..."
p.146 Reflexivity: "the practice of examining the way one's own argument is constituted..." {reflexivity in print is embedded in the text.Although it can be tagged using parentheses, italics, etc.,it must always interject. In hypertext it can be given its own layer, appearing to comment on the action only when asked to.}
Constructivism:"real" objects are the product of complex social, political and economic relationships.
Relativism: Interpretations of constructs are themselves constructs
Representing this web of factors in linear prose is difficult
p.147 example:Do artefacts have politics?by Langdon Winner (1986), and Steve Woolgar's critique of Winner.
The main problem with reflexivity in linear text is that linear text drives toward a singular conclusion, a "satisfying bottom line".
pp.151-152 Latour: the argument which most economically explains the greatest number of things is deemed the "best". Constructivism and relativism especially posit a "dense web" of explanations proliferating from a single phenomenon.
p.153 Comment on Socrates in the Labrynthby David Kolb. Although traditonal philosophy is built on the premise of a rigorously linear chain of premises and conclusions, "what has kept the works of philosophy's pantheon alive is...the continuing and often heated debate over just what the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel were claiming".
Cites Hegel and Wittgenstein's dissatisfaction with simplistic relationships between ideas.
p. 155 Hypertext does not obliterate what Coover calls "the line" Refers to Heidegger on "Holzwege" (woodpaths) (as cited by Kolb) p. 156 How to avoid either an implicit favoring of a singular reading, or "saddling your readers with all the cognitive overhead that you have already poured into your research"?
p.157-158 Recaps Kolb's notion of "nesting qualifications within examples within propositions" (the structure of this hypertext, in part).
p. 160 Print can be as flexible as hypertext - but is bound by centuries of literary convention and the politics and economics of publishing.