Young Master Smeet
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LBird wrote:To believe the bourgeois myth of a ‘neutral method in physics which gives humans The Eternal Truth’ (and since Einstein we’ve know that it’s a myth, hence the disturbances within 20th century philosophy of science, Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, the most prominent critical thinkers), is to sow the seeds of Leninism within proletarian thought. If there is a ‘neutral method’ in physics, which can be learned by an educated elite, to the omission of the mass, and that this ‘neutral method’ can lay the basis of a ‘neutral method’ in all science (and if it can’t, and social issues are not open to ‘scientific’ approaches, where does that leave us Communists and our analysis of society?), then a small part of our class can claim to be able to employ this ‘neutral method’ which gives The Truth in politics, too.
And herein lies the problem in Lbirds refusal to discuss "Ideology" and it's meanings. If their model of ideology is a totalising one, in which the ideas of the ruling class are (in effect, or at least in the model) the only ideas, and we are all trapped in a prison of ideas (per Althusser) then, yes, science becomes the one way out of ideology, and we become committed to a cadre who can see through the veil. if ideas are contexted, and our model is that the Voloshinov/Bakhtin in which all ideas are contested and polyphonic, t6hen there is a way out. We cease to conflate culture/ creeed, ideas and experience into the Eternal Truth of ideology, and instead have a situation in which we can begin to talk about truth as the coincidence of life as experienced with how it is concieved: an end to ideology. Put another way, the end of ideology is not through superior perception, but through lived experience. The point is to change the world.In socialism, I don't believe that anyone will be allowed to join a deep sea diving team off an oil-rig without training. Likewise, they won't get to run an experiemnt with a radio telescope. We can expect a total lifetime of useful waking hours of about 210 thousand. (in actual fact I'd estimate it at roughly half that, age will tell) 210 thousand hours in which to become experts in maths, physics, chemistry, languages, history, art, music, etc. we'll split those hours differently, and some will choose not to bother with physics, some will love physics, and some will be better musicians than they are physicists.
http://www.icsu.org/science-for-policy/Arguably, a body like the ICSU is an exmple of building the new society within the shell of the old. It is an international body, concerned first and foremost with science and the general well-bing (albeit, some of it's stuff sounds a bit social democrat, as they now list the responsibilities of scientists alongside their rights, but then, a degree of technocracy goes hand in hand with social democrat thinking). Things like this are 'planning' in embryo. We won't need to plan the movement of every last screw and nut, but at a world level, a forum for honest examination of the world will be needed.(Not to cross thread, but we need to remember that politics isn't about what gets decided, but about who decides).Now, interestingly, a book on Ideology and Science Crossed my desk t'other day. There was an interesting chapter about attempts to impose state ideologies on scientists (Under Stalinism, Naziism and McCarthyism). The main contention was, that ultimately this failed, as the state had greater need of the outputs of science than it did of its need to control them. An unhappy comprimise was reached.Just as "in ideology" capitalism appears to be the same as industry and industrial co-operative production, in reality the two are separate and can be separated in the transformation into socialism. Scientists are proletarians these days, workign for a wage or salary (and indcreasingly subject to management control).
The psephelogical record is we do better in Labour heartlands (and under Labour governments). That said, the hidden fact of the plurality electoral system is that Labour chalks up big votes in tory constituencies (I've not looked in detail at the ones in question, but it's a fair bet that you'll find more labour voters there than you would in an equivilant labour seat with a similar majority). We're unlikely to bring round Tories first, and Liberals are Tories in disguise, so of active engaged politically minded people we talk a more language recognisable to labourites, at least. We're a part of the same wider labour movement.
And here is a very useful *cough* scientific analysis of the situation…http://dontpaniccorrectingmythsaboutthecrowd.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/ferguson-riots-militarised-policing-is.html
Quote:'Studies [ ] show that police have the power to either lessen the tensions of an angry group of people or goad them into a riot. This conclusion is based on the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM), which is the leading scientific theory on managing a boisterous horde of people. What the ESIM shows is that an angry crowd can be driven to riot if they believe they are being treated unfairly—for example, by being confronted by cops decked out with military weaponry. When police treat a crowd justly and humanely, the chance of an uproar decreases and participants trust law enforcement more.'Indeed, because we're not abstract propagandists, we should be talking where more effective, and the route to socialism lies through the millions of voters who support labour, not through those who would undermine our class position by campaigning against voting and who support noxious authoritarian views like anarchism. And, yes, I do mean authoritarian. Anarchism is not the opposite of power politics, it's its jealous kid brother, that just wants to spread the lawless anarchism kings and despots have enjoyed throughout the ages to ever smaller kingdoms. Just look at what happened when the anarchist Lenin got somewhere.
Their members are committed to using democratic political action to achieve common ownership (esp. those who still believe in the old clause four). Whilst we disagree with their strategy and how they see their goal, I'd say they are nearer us than the majority of anarchists (excluding maybe a few old Kropotkinites). Certainly, they membership is the one we should be winning over, not those lost to anti-democratic ideologies like anarchism.
We wouldn't book a stall at the Labour Party conference, and we're nearer them than we are the anarchists…And I'd hope we wouldn't book a stall at London Pacifists Fair, which would be different from a peace fair..
LBird wrote:D'y'know, the hired prize-fighters of the bourgeoisie in academia couldn't put up as good a rearguard action, against any radical, critical thought about 'science', as this site has done!I suspect that your ideology leads you to see everything as an attack, vide your mistaking "Th Feng Shueists are coming!" for "The Vandals are coming" despite he empirical evidence.
Ah, turns out I do agree with it, which might be why I didn't pick up on it when you were discussing it elseplace, I just didn't associate the term.btw. Lbird seems to have added yet another meaning of ideology in the above post, now it seems to mean a theory.
Oh, away man, in good faith, I asked you what one of the points on your bullet list means. For all I know I might agree with it under another name) or disagree, but in a way that might be more fruitful for research/discussion. What are Lakatos' "multiple research programmes"?
Quote:c) one doesn't subscribe to Lakatos view of multiple 'research programmes';What does this mean?
But I have read your outline, and reported my impression based on it, and upon what I have read elsewhere. I haven't shouted anything about vandals, but critiqued it based upon the model of ideology it relies on. I've also said, in its similarity to knowledge organisation tools, it could be useful in terms of the processing of data. At the least it could well be a useful refinement on the way of thinking about the scientific procedure, as useful of delineating the difference between grey and off-white.So, it's not so much a fear of vandalism, more that it seems you're just rearranging the furniture.The Feng Shuists are coming! The Feng Shuists are coming!
Quote:Your comment, about 'leaving nothing changed' is unsupported by any evidence. It's an opinion, but it would have to be justified by argument.Yes, that is my opinion, AFAICS CR calls for serial refinement of the theory, supported by experiment. Or, to quote the wikipedia article:
Quote:The implication of this is that science should be understood as an ongoing process in which scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that they study. It should not, in contrast to the claim of empiricists, be about the identification of a coincidence between a postulated independent variable and dependent variable.As I said about the ISCU dfinition of science I posted this morning, this is perfectly compatible, it is only addressing the question of how we organise the systematic investigation and how we select our hypothesese. That is my impression from what I've read and what you've said.Yes, a scientist can continue to do their daily work without consciously applying these principles (but they might be thre) much as a shop keeper who has never read a word of Smith can continue to do their job. the difference is, we talk of abolishing shop keepers, not of abolishing scientists.
