“you can’t generalize”

I was just reading something very frustrating, in the field of history. I’ll change the subject matter, even though I don’t know the authors and probably none of you do either, but this sort of thing frustrates me very much. It goes something like this…

“Some scholars have rushed to conclude that all grass is green. Recent work has shown that this is a value-laden conclusion. But equally rash would be the inference that not all grass is green. In fact, the scholar must carefully weigh the evidence on this question. This may require lengthy library research, as well as the mastery of numerous empirical techniques to filter out the bias of our perceptions whenever we describe something like ‘grass,’ a concept that itself does not have the firm boundaries our past training might suggest, but is more like a family term for several closely related species, which are distinct without being ‘essentially’ differentiated from one another in some ‘natural’ way free of cultural presuppositions. Much training is required to avoid such generalizations. But neither should we go to the extreme of saying that all truth is culturally constructed, since this itself betrays a sort of essentializing gaze.”

Just read 5-7 pages along those very lines, and I’m going to need a couple of aspirins.