ABSTRACT
Just as Evans turned the words of bioethicists upside down, so did he mine. Compare:
My words: “Of course this critique of ritual circuits may lead some to recall older sloganeering about qualitative versus quantitative method. Through Clifford Geertz’s lens, must I stand for ‘local interpretation’ against ‘causal laws’? Or, with a hermeneutic optic, do I insist the makeup of textual objects forbids any repackaging of their meanings in quantitative format? Casting the issue as a quest for an ethic, I have suggested it is all a bit more solemn than the epistemological ranking of scientific games” (184).
Evans’s categorizing: “As Biernacki notes, this perspective recalls ‘older sloganeering about qualitative versus quantitative method,’ and he, invoking Geertz, stands for ‘local interpretation’ against ‘causal laws’” (209–210; Evans construes me as a promoter of Geertz again on p. 244). 1
