I have been writing about evidence and transparency and expertise recently, and found a new definition that may help end the week with a laugh.

While in Oxford recently, I went into Blackwell’s and, after browsing for the 15 minutes I had before I leaving to catch my train to London, I bought a copy of The Philosopher’s Magazine (more about this publication coming soon). While looking through it, I came across an ad for an interesting-sounding book written by two of the editors, Ophelia
Benson and Jeremy Stangroom. The book, The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense: A Guide for Edgy People, is a work of comic relief that plays with various terms from a postmodern (or cultivated?) perspective. As many aspects of my life in the last year can be labeled as nonsense, I thought perhaps this may be the book for me.

As a converted postmodernist, this book made me laugh out loud, especially from the first word that I opened to when I flipped through it: Evidence. They portrayed “evidence” as (p 38):

1. Something that can be tailored to the requirements of my arguments.
2. A tiresome thing that may conflict with something that I believe.

How clever. I recently worked on an academic editorial of the concept of “evidence” from the perspectives of various disciplines, and while most sources want to use evidence, there is not exactly consistency of what this may encompass or how it may be clearly and universally defined. Rather, we have a shifting perspective of what may or may not constitute evidence from this or that source, time, experience, context, belief, and framework. With all that, voilà–I am right back to Benson
and Stangroom’s definition. Interesting how things work like that at times. 

Now, before this goes to far, a quick look at the Merriam-Webster definition reveals that evidence is “an outward sign.” Upon second-glance, is that “official” definition any clearer, more definitive, or better?

I think their little book can offer many profound (or overly-simplified and common-sensical) twists on terms encountered by the modern academic or cultural traveler. For the rest of us, it is simply funny.

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