Help with comprehension

[Hesamodin Mohtashami]

Hi.
I am translating a chapter of a non-fiction book as an assignment, but a number of sentences from it don't make much sense to me. I searched the internet for any forum or website where I could ask for an explanation for such comprehension issues, but there seemed to be none. Maybe I didn't use the right keywords. There are websites where you can ask for a suitable translation and/or explanation for a particular phrase (you have to provide some sort of context, of course), but I have trouble understanding a whole sentence.
Does anyone here know any way to get help for such issues on the internet? Thanks in advance.

 

[Conscious Bob]

Give us an example.

 

[Hesamodin Mohtashami]

OK, Conscious Bob. But first to give you some context for the text, let me tell you that the book is about the literary genre, realism.

Here are two of those sentences:

1. Taken in one direction, the empirical project leads to logical positivism, a development of the mathematical philosophy of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and expounded in the Vienna Circle during the 1920s and 1930s.

2. The claims of disinterested objectivity and generality put forward in many fields of scientific and cultural knowledge have been shown to be the relative and self-interested constructions of western masculine forms of understanding.

 

[Conscious Bob]

As sentences they make sense, it's not a question of knowing instantly what 'logical positivism' and 'disinterested objectivity' is or who Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein were. The point is to understand these sentences contain reference points.

 

[Hesamodin Mohtashami]

Doesn't the first sentence seem syntactically faulty, perhaps? Why is 'expunded' in simple past tense?

 

[Conscious Bob]

Doesn't the first sentence seem syntactically faulty, perhaps? Why is 'expunded' in simple past tense?

It's not faulty it's fine, without knowing what the empirical project is in this context the function of the first part of your sentence is to provide a conclusion.

The verb 'expounded' is in past tense because it's used in reference to two past time periods - 1920s and 1930s.

 

[Hesamodin Mohtashami]

By "the empirical project", the writer means empiricism, particularly seventeenth- and eighteenth-century empiricism, as elaborated by John Locke and David Hume.
Logical positivism is a philosophy saying truth is what is verifiable. What can't be verified shouldn't be considered true.

In the first sentence, I feel as if a 'was' proceeding 'expounded' is missing, and that 'and' is redundent. And I wouldn't be able to figure out what it was that was expounded in the Vienna Circle from the sentence alone without doing an internet search. And, what does "taken in one direction" mean?

 

[Conscious Bob]

In the first sentence, I feel as if a 'was' proceeding 'expounded' is missing, and that 'and' is redundent. And I wouldn't be able to figure out what it was that was expounded in the Vienna Circle from the sentence alone without doing an internet search. And, what does "taken in one direction" mean?

I would leave it as it is, the sentence is quite truncated and the inclusion of 'was' makes it rather clumsy. If you must include this unnecessary verb give it its own sentence - Logical Positivism was expounded in the Vienna Circle in the 1920s and 1930s.

You wouldn't know what any reference point was without doing research...

The implied meaning by 'taken in one direction' is that there is more than one conclusion or if you will more than one destination.

By "the empirical project", the writer means empiricism, particularly seventeenth- and eighteenth-century empiricism, as elaborated by John Locke and David Hume.
Logical positivism is a philosophy saying truth is what is verifiable. What can't be verified shouldn't be considered true.

If that is the case then the word 'Empiricism' should be used not the phrase 'empirical project' by definition a project based on Empiricism. University students undertake many different empirical projects.

 

[Hesamodin Mohtashami]

Thanks for moving the posts.

Do you have any idea what the writer means by "western masculine forms of understanding" in the second sentence?

 

[Conscious Bob]

Do you have any idea what the writer means by "western masculine forms of understanding" in the second sentence?

Western philosophy started in ancient Greece which was a male dominated society. I'm presuming this is what the writer is alluding to.