[LBird]

ALB wrote:

It's just that you keeping on bringing up your "Mengele Commission" jibe (at least twice now, the last in the post to which I was replying).

Well, it was supposed to be a joke.If you haven't taken it as so, I can only apologise profusely. I'm sorry, comrade.By way of explanation, I was trying to throw into sharp relief the fact that, if one agrees with 'social control of science' (as we both do), but doesn't agree with that 'control' being democratic, the implication is an undemocratic control by 'experts', like 'scientists'. And as Mengele was a 'scientist' (as were his university professors, for whom he did the research on genetics (twins, vivisection of pregnant mothers, etc.)), then it seems, to me, applicable to name this 'undemocratic control commission' after a Nazi scientist.This makes clear my opinion of the dangers of looking to 'scientists' to police 'science'.Once again, I'm sorry that the 'jibe' fell flat: it wasn't aimed at you personally, but a political position, that of a non-democratic authority for a 'value-free' (sic) science, an 'authority of scientists'.Science, like production, must be a mass activity. No separation of the economy or science from the whole of humanity.'Science', like private productive property, will cease to be in its current form.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I don't know where this idea of an "authority" to control science comes from. It's a figment of your imagination. In fact the nearest person to propose something of this sort has been yourself with your suggestion that it should be overseen by "class-conscious proletarian Communists".

[my bold]So, only I think 'science' is social and thus must, by that nature, be under social control?

ALB, same post, wrote:

All we can do is say that science policy and scientific research will, like everything else, be subject to overall democratic control. We can also assume that research establishments will, like all other workplaces, be run on a democratic basis with an elected works council.

[my bold]Perhaps you have a short memory, ALB. Plus, the tone of your post ('it's a figment of your imagination') is less than comradely.If a 'council' isn't an 'authority', and your 'we' means 'me', then perhaps you're correct that this is all my 'imagination'. Let's hope the other posters can democratically decide between our accounts, eh?

ALB wrote:

That's how 'science' works. Much as happens today.

But that is not 'how science works' – that's what this whole discussion has been about. The bourgeois myth of 'the workings of science'. The myth that, if left to themselves, 'scientists' will just do 'science'.I'm not sure why your attitude to these issues (and me?) has changed – I thought that yesterday we'd all come to some comradely agreement about 'science', especially given the 1975 post by Adam Buick. That's long before I attempted to understand these vital issues for Communists.Can we leave personal considerations out of the discussion, and merely debate the issue of 'the social control of science'? Please, comrade.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

But if 'democratic control' means that all people potentially have a say in the decision making process then there is no conflict. Anyone who had the desire and capacity to fill a particular role would be able to undertake the relevant training required to be able to do it…..So in a society of common ownership those who have an interest and ability for scientific work would be able to freely develop and apply there skills and expertise.

I can go along with this, DJP. It equates to 'democratic control of science', to all intents and purposes.I think what you've said about 'specialists', like pilots, is a red herring, which was addressed earlier in the thread with respect to 'an authority' (ALB or alanjjohnstone?).

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Though to avoid the confusion between 'truth' and 'The Truth', perhaps it would be clearer and better to talk of sceintific 'hypotheses' instead of scientific 'truths'?

No, 'scientific hypotheses' are theories which determine what is acceptable as evidence.'Scientific truths' are partial answers based upon the selected evidence.The reason to distinguish between 'truth' and 'The Truth' is to demarcate 'science' (as we've defined it on this thread, following Marx, Dietzgen, Pannekoek and Buick) from 'bourgeois ideology masquerading as science'.I'd treat any scientist's words as comparable to a police officer giving evidence in court about a strike. It might be considered truthful by the striking workers (some coppers do tell the 'truth', a 'truth' which matches our perspective of events), but our experience means that we know that the police perspective is a bit, err, 'skewed', from our perspective.I regard any comrades who agree with 'the scientific method produces the unvarnished truth' as a bit like saying 'a copper wouldn't lie in court, would they?'. Call me cynical…

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I am sure that all ALBuick meant by "revision" was something we've all already agreed on: that no scientific finding is final and absolute, but only tentative and partial in that, in the light of further evidence, research and theorising, it is liable to be changed ("revised") or even completely abandoned.

Yes, if my earlier summary of this issue is accepted…

LBird wrote:

There seem to be two conceptually separate, but practically related, issues being discussed.First, does science produce ‘The Truth’ by a neutral method (and so can be done by an individual or a small group of experts), or does it produce socially-related and thus biased ‘Truths’ (and as an activity done by a society is controlled by that society)?Secondly, if it is the latter (controlled social truths), then what is the nature of that control: democratic or elite expert?

…we all seemed to have come to an agreement that 'socially-related truths' controlled by society is answer to the first part. If anyone still does not understand (or indeed disagrees with this), they should ask for further explanation/discussion now.But the second part is still outstanding, I think.Should science (in all its manifestations and phases) under Communism be under the control of 'special experts' (ie. 'scientists') or democratic control?

ALB wrote:

That it meant that any scientific finding should have to go before some "revision board" is a mistaken reading of the passage.

Well, this denial of a 'revision board' lends itself to the latter answer of 'democratic control'. But I think clarification of your position is better, rather than me just making a possibly mistaken assumption. Could you spell out your position, if you have come to a final conclusion? If you haven't, we can continue to thrash it out.

ALB wrote:

I think you are becoming a bit hypersensitive

To the setting up of the 'Mengele Commission'? Yeah, I am a bit!

[LBird]

Ed wrote:

…that is what I was saying earlier, or trying to, natural phenomena = evidence.

No. 'Natural phenomena = crime scene'.'Evidence' is a selection from the 'crime scene' of things judged relevant by humans.Crime scene = object;Forensic scientist = subject.Evidence = knowledge;More (and differing) 'evidence' can be generated later by the defence's appointed forensic scientist.'Forensic science' can produce two 'evidential truths', which must be decided on by a 'jury'.The 'jury' must be under our democratic control.Hope this helps, Ed.

[LBird]

From ALB’s link to ‘Joseph Dietzgen’ blog article:

Adam Buick wrote:

But, says Dietzgen, we ought to know that stopping the stream of phenomena and classifying it into separate, fixed objects is only a mental operation, however vital to the survival of the human species….To state that things are mental constructs can give rise to the misunderstanding that you are saying that they are only mental constructs and that you are therefore an idealist who sees the external world as the creation of the mind.

[my bold]Yes, I’ve already been accused of that on this thread!Scientific knowledge is produced by humans and has the status of a ‘truth’. This ‘truth’ is not the same thing as the independently-existing object, of which some ‘knowledge’ has been actively constructed by humans. Thus, humans being fallible, a ‘truth’ (scientific knowledge) might be actually untrue. This can be revealed by other humans interrogating the same independently-existing object and actively constructing another ‘truth’ which is then judged by humans to be a more accurate (but still not final or complete) ‘truth’. Thus, ‘truth’ has a history. It is not ‘The Truth’.Since society creates ‘truths’, they are social truths. It is only a short step to realise that, in a class-divided society, ‘truth’ will have a class component, sometimes great, sometimes small. And judgements between ‘truths’ are social judgements. There is no universal ‘truth’ which a supposedly ‘value-free’ method can produce. Humans are not ‘value-free’.

Adam Buick wrote:

A further aspect of Dietzgen’s [philosophy]… is that knowledge can never be absolute or complete, all knowledge is relative; our classification or description of the world must always be regarded as a tentative approximation liable to revision in the light of further experience.

[my bold]Who is this ‘Adam Buick’, ALB? Did he ever write about the ‘revisers’? Are they an elite, not subject to society’s control, perhaps called ‘scientists’? Or is ‘revision’, like ‘knowledge’, a creative act by society? Is society ‘naturally’ divided into the educators and the educated? ‘Revisers’ and non-revisers? Scientists and non-scientists? Is Sotionov’s position on ‘free access communism’ finally validated? Communist society will be divided between caring workers and naturally lazy freeloaders, and thus 'free access' is impossible?We’ll need these ‘specialist revisers’ if people insist they can’t understand a ‘complex’ tripartite separation of object, subject and knowledge, and prefer a ‘simple’ bipartite model, with its comforting ‘objective truth’, based upon the outdated materialism that Marx, Dietzgen and Pannekoek all rejected.I think Communists must reject ‘bourgeois science’, and in opposition begin the process now of defining a ‘proletarian science’, to lay the basis of the coming ‘humanity’s science’ within the Communist mode of production.

[LBird]

Since I've been compelled to revisit Pannekoek's book, here is another relevant quote:

Pannekoek, L A S, p. 29 wrote:

Hence Historical Materialism looks upon the works of science, the concepts, substances, natural Laws, and forces, although formed out of the stuff of nature, primarily as the creations of the mental Labour of man. Middle-class materialism, on the other hand, from the point of view of the scientific investigator, sees all this as an element of nature itself which has been discovered and brought to light by science. Natural scientists consider the immutable substances, matter, energy, electricity, gravity, the Law of entropy, etc., as the basic elements of the world, as the reality that has to be discovered. From the viewpoint of Historical Materialism they are products which creative mental activity forms out of the substance of natural phenomena.

[my bold]also at:http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/lenin/ch02.htm

[LBird]

I’ll open with a short summary so far. There seem to be two conceptually separate, but practically related, issues being discussed.First, does science produce ‘The Truth’ by a neutral method (and so can be done by an individual or a small group of experts), or does it produce socially-related and thus biased ‘Truths’ (and as an activity done by a society is controlled by that society)?Secondly, if it is the latter (controlled social truths), then what is the nature of that control: democratic or elite expert?I’ve argued that ‘socially-produced truths’ must be ‘democratically-controlled’. The former is a philosophical issue, whilst the latter is a political issue.

ALB wrote:

OK, so in your view, it's going to be put to a show of hands at a mass meeting? Or what exactly do you have in mind? What structure are you proposing for making in communism/socialism a popular democratic decision on whether a scientific finding is "true" or not? …. I'm not too keen on referendums myself, but wouldn't rule them out completely as part of the democratic decision-making structure of socialist society.

I think that, at present, this discussion has to be kept at the level of a philosophical debate. Just as we can’t give detailed blueprints for the workings of communism, in an economic production sense, neither can we give detailed answers as to how humanity will control science. But … given a society in which a scientific education is freely available to all humans, from infant school to post-PhD research, where participation in scientific research is open to all, where all research papers are published openly for all to read, and where, as you said earlier…

ALB wrote:

Of course scientific research will be subject to overall democratic control in a socialist society. I can see the priorities for research and the resources allocated for it being the subject of a democratic social decision. Also decisions such as whether or not to allow vivisection, etc.

…then is seems obvious that science will be under the control of all humans, not just a few, self-selected specialists. If I were compelled to speculate, then I would imagine each commune would elect a delegate committee to keep oversight upon that commune’s scientific work, but that any controversial decisions would be referred to the whole community. I can’t imagine a socialist world where most people haven’t had a pretty high level of education, plus the comrades engaged in science would have a duty to explain their work to the community. Given that scenario, I can’t see any part of science being out of the democratic control of humanity. If, on the contrary, we still presume that science will be the preserve of an intellectual elite, engaged in work that the vast majority can’t comprehend, then I wonder how communism can work. It wouldn’t be long before the ‘science’ experts, working behind closed intellectual doors, would soon become ‘production’ experts, handing out ‘advice’ to the ignorant masses…No, I have to assume that communism would include democratic control of the entire process of human science.As part of this process of an emerging self-confident, class conscious proletariat, we must argue now for this future democratic control of science, both to strengthen our confidence and to undermine exaggerated respect for the bourgeois myth of a value-free scientific method. This notion has been undermined by bourgeois philosophers already, so we should be pushing at an open door, not bolstering outdated ideas of positivist science. While we hold that science produces the Truth, we are under the control of priests.

DJP wrote:

The truth of the matter always exists independently of those that observe it.

This is a positivist statement, as I explained in earlier posts. ‘Truth’ lies in the realm of human ‘knowledge’, not the realm of the ‘object’. Please see my post #76, which briefly describes a tripartite theory of cognition. ‘Truth’ can’t exist outside of its human production. And the ‘object’ must be understood within a framework of observation, so the same independent ‘object’ can be involved in the production of several ‘truths’. Please see my post #57, where I refer to Einstein’s ‘train’ explanation.

DJP wrote:

I don't really think it makes sense to talk about a "communist" science or a "bourgeois" science any more than it makes sense to talk of a "socialist" mathematics or a "capitalist" geology. All that would change with a change in the mode of production would be the direction in which scientific research and the application of technology is applied.

[my bold]I think that this is a very serious underestimation of the changes that will be wrought by the advance to a communist mode of production. If the ‘coming to consciousness’ of humanity results in so little change, it seems hardly worthwhile the struggle. Science, surely, will become a mass activity? As will all aspects of human thought, including the philosophy of science.

DJP wrote:

Does Pannekoek write about this stuff in Lenin as Philosopher?

Anton Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, p. 15, wrote:

The real world, the material, sensual world, where all ideology and consciousness have their origin, is the developing human society – with nature in the background, of course, as the basis on which society rests and of which it is a part transformed by [hu]man[ity].

[my bold]Pannekoek’s ‘Nature, the real, consciousness (transformation)’ is my explanation ‘Object, subject, knowledge (interaction)’. Tripartite, as for Marx, not bipartite, as for positivism and idealism. Please see the Theses on Feuerbach.I hope this helps a bit, comrades.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

It's either me or you're not explaining yourself well.

No, it's not you. I'm clearly not explaining myself well, comrade.My apologies.I'll return to this tomorrow.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Is this from today's papers the sort of scientific finding that you think should be put to a popular vote to decide whether or not it is "true"?

That's the big question conservatives always ask.We're talking about the class conscious Communist proletariat, not the 'mob rule' notion favoured by ruling class ideas.I'm surprised you shoud think we're discussing the 'popular vote' (a conservative ideological construct), rather than workers' democracy.Well, we all live and learn.

[LBird]

My thanks to alanjjohnstone for providing the link. 

SOYMB blog wrote:

An obvious reason is that the researchers were geneticists and therefore blinkered in their understanding of society as a whole.

But these researchers are ‘scientists’. They are not failing to use an ‘objective’ scientific method. Their results are valid scientific results. This is science.‘Science’ and its ‘method’ are human activities. ‘Science’ is not a ‘value-free’ method or socially ‘neutral’. That is a 19th century bourgeois myth, which suits the bourgeoisie to continue to propagate because it allows them an unquestionable authority. For how can we question ‘science’, if we believe it is a special ‘objective’, ‘truth-producing’, eternally valid, ahistoric, method? 

SOYMB blog wrote:

Scientific magazines and their editors and reviewers are clearly complicit in publishing misleading conclusions. Funding agencies are complicit in awarding public funds to speculative gene hunting projects at the expense of pressing public social questions. Science is essentially now a top-down project. There persists a romantic notion that science is a process of free enquiry. In reality, only a tiny proportion of research in biology gets done outside of straight-jackets imposed by funding agencies. Researchers design their projects around funding programs; universities organize their hiring around them. Individual scientists have negligible power within the system. Powerful political or commercial forces can set and direct the science agenda from above. In the case of medical genetics that power has been used to deform our understanding of what it mean to be human. Money has bought not only scientific ‘progress’ but the domination of intellectual enquiry to ensure political paralysis and the consolidation of economic power.

[my bold]‘Now a top-down project’? Science always has been: one of the essential differences between Communist and bourgeois science will be the democratisation of this human activity for the first time.And it’s not merely ‘a romantic notion of free enquiry’, but the myth we are all taught at school and is constantly reiterated in the media and ‘popular’ culture. In short, it’s a ‘ruling class idea’ which dominates our lives and thinking.Science is ideological, not ‘free thinking’.And this is inescapable. For ever. It’s the human condition. The better ‘scientific’ approach is to expose our ‘position’ of observation, our ‘framework of reference’, our ideology, in the same way that Einstein insisted must be done in physics (see my earlier post #57).We can unify natural science and social science into one truly ‘scientific’ method, as Marx insisted was possible.But it will be a human method.

[LBird]

Thanks for the link, pfbcarlisle

SPGB pamphlet wrote:

5 How To Achieve Socialism – No MinoritiesSocialism can only be established when a great majority of workers understand and want it. It would be absurd for a minority of conscious socialists today to try to take over power and impose the new system on an unwilling majority. Such a strategy would certainly fail …It would not be possible to run a society in which everybody contributed co- operatively according their abilities and took freely according to their needs unless the great majority of people understood the arrangement and wanted it. It would not be possible to establish and maintain a society based upon conscious democratic control unless the great majority were prepared to exert that democratic control. If the population did not want to participate in social [and scientific] decision-making and were prepared to leave it to a particular minority, that minority would be forced to become the exclusive decision makers themselves and would eventually become a new ruling class. But in the final analysis, the very fact that a minority wanted it would show that they did not understand the full implications of socialism themselves, and so were not really socialists

[my bold and insertion]Yes, and all of these points also apply to the human activity of 'science'.No minorities, entirely democratic control. To be scientific is to be communist.

[LBird]

Unfortunately, the link you've given is returning a 'Page not found', YMS.Thanks for the attempt to help me, though.

[LBird]

One thing that I have found is:

SPGB Editorial wrote:

But what is the scientific method? It is a method of understanding the world based on first observing and recording experience…

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2012/no-1295-july-2012/editorial-rational-politicsThis is untrue.The first step in the scientific method is to theorise. This theory then determines the selection parameters which are employed when we begin to 'observe and record'.The world cannot be passively 'observed'. Humans actively direct themselves to particular 'objects' based on their existing theoretical presuppositions.

[Author]

Posts