Reason and Science in Danger.
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LBird asked: “It’s odd that ‘materialists’ fear that ‘Reason and Science’ are both ‘in Danger’, but won’t discuss just what ‘Reason and Science’ are, where they came from, who created them, and from who or what they are in danger.”
Thomas More answered: “Here’s how reason and science are in danger.”
This conversation, Thomas, is taking a similar route to any other that I’ve had with ‘materialists’.
I ask a question, and the materialists avoid it.
We can see here, I ask ‘what’, ‘where/when’, ‘who’ (on either side), and you answer ‘how’.
And the ‘how’ of the anti-science people is extremely similar, to ‘how’ the materialists answer questions from Marxists. Both anti-science and materialists denigrate their opponents, with personal attacks. ALB’s use of the term ‘weirdo’ for me is one of the milder disgraceful responses. Even when pretending to answer Marxists, he calls them ‘postmodernists’, even though I have specifically, time and again, over years, attacked postmodernism. It’s not an argument by ALB, but simple slander, to muddy the issues. I might add, also a typical method employed by Lenin.
Regarding your latest post, on ‘Reason is…’, I ask, whose ‘reason’, when did this ‘reason’ appear, in who’s interests does this ‘reason’ work, what does this ‘reason’ consist of?
You’re trying to use a ‘common sense’ approach to political and philosophical questions of great subtlety, whereas we need to define what we mean by ‘science’ and ‘reason’, and place these terms in their socio-economic and historical context.
If you’re not interested in doing this, that’s OK, but I don’t think that you’ll get much further in your enquiries, without doing so first, and will fall into the trap of just calling names against the anti-science people. I share your concerns, and I am pro-science – it’s just that the ‘science’ that I’m ‘pro-‘ is democratic science, which I think is necessary for socialism to work.
Thomas More wrote:
palaeontologists (yes!) of ancient Greece and Rome, who examined dinosaur and other prehistoric fossils and bones.
More astonishing. Hominids (yes!) were also fascinated by fossils — enigmatically put: fossils cared for fossils.
University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology (Accession no. 1916.82/Record 2) was discovered at Tofts, Norfolk, in 1911 (Handaxe knapped around a fossil shell
Cambridge conservatively dates the handaxe to 100,000–10,000 years ago (Homo neanderthalis or sapiens). The Nasher Sculpture Centre, Texas, (First sculpture: Handaxe to figure stone) ambitiously dates it to 500,000–300,000 (Homo heidelbergensis or antecessor).
The Paleolithic brain might be considered to be inferior to our own. Yet it may be salutary to take into account (1) this functional product of the Paleolithic mind — this aesthetically crafted handaxe — strongly appeals to our modern mind and sensibilities, and (2) this careful craftsman/woman may very well have possessed a bigger brain than we do.
* * *
Darwinian selection for smaller individual brains, like our own, is at last understood in evolutionary terms through lessons drawn from the domestication of foxes — the transformation of distrusting selfish hierarchical larger-brained foxes, over tens of generations of breeding for sociability, into trusting friendly smaller-brained grown-up puppies (see “Humankind” by Rutger Bregman, recommended despite his misgivings over socialism and support for capitalism).
The mystery of our sociability, first recognised as a major problem for his theory natural selection by Darwin himself, is now solved. Homo sapiens “domesticated itself” into grown-up hominid children by, in evolutionary terms, trading off gynaecologically-dangerous increasing brain-size (and presumably greater individual brain-power) for gynaecologically-safer smaller brain-size.
The apparent individual disadvantage of smaller brain-size is totally over-compensated for by the advantage of a cultural brain-size that is distributed over the social group, an advantage that, in evolutionary terms, arises from friendliness — member-to-member trust and the certainty of being able to rely upon the help and cooperation of one’s neighbours.
Evolutionarily, Homo sapiens is a trusting cooperative species, distinguished from the rest by being selected for social intelligence, unlike our surviving Ape cousins who were selected — just as we once were prior to our self-domestication — for devious Machiavellian intelligence.
Machiavellian intelligence favors individual cunning over social cooperation, and builds an unbridgeable barrier of distrust that stifles social cooperation. Its supersession is what separates us from the Apes.
Trust is the indispensable foundation for evolving social communication and the concomitant social intelligence we all share and draw upon — these practices are our species’s defining characteristic — confirming what Marx wrote in “Capital” Vol. 1 that “we are above all social animals”.
* * *
Returning to our Paleolithic knapper. It is impossible to believe that he did not knew precisely what he was crafting, in a process that unconsciously passes on to us a glimpse into his Paleolithic mindset.
Because he preserved a Cretaceous fossil in a functional tool — even if his import is not ours and his species is not our own —the social power of both our evolutionarily selected curious minds links us across the eons.
Thomas More wrote “Reason is…”
Thomas, you might be interested to read this article by Loren Goldner:
‘The Renaissance and Rationality: The Status of the Enlightenment Today‘
https://sites.google.com/site/comuneiro/home/the-renaissance-and-rationality
It is not just conspiraloons who are endangering reason and science. There are others:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230870512_The_postmodern_assault_on_science
TWC, thank you, but I disagree. Firstly, we ARE apes. Secondly, the other apes vary in their social relations. Chimpanzees show both gentleness and “machiavellianism” (btw, wasn’t Cesare Borgia a human?), bonobos are totally gentle for the most part and hypersexual, gorillas are far gentler than we are, unless provoked or terrorised.
In fact, we are the most machiavellian and the most belligerent of the apes. The difference between us and them is that we alone have developed the ability and often willingness to destroy both them and us.
L. Bird, very well.
Voltaire said that we should define our terms before entering into debate.
Now, a conspiraloon will retort:“I don’t f****** care what Voltaire said. Voltaire was a f****** illuminati c***!”
You might reply, politely, that Voltaire was bourgeois, which is a similar response, but without the vulgarity.
I, on the other hand, will say that the person, Voltaire, is irrelevant here, and that it is what he is saying that we ought to be deciding upon. So, is it correct that we should define our terms before we enter into debate? I think so, and I think you do too. So, let’s proceed.
So here is an example of a bourgeois thinker saying something a modern socialist can agree upon.
Let’s apply this to other bourgeois, or even slave-owning Roman thinkers.
Do we accept as valid that the Earth is spherical, that it revolves round the sun, even if this is the basis of what you call bourgeois science? I do.
Do I accept, however, that humans are biologically evil and that competition is the only law of nature, as certain bourgeois scientists say, to justify exploitation and colonialism? No, I don’t. I call that bourgeois science. But I call the movement of the Earth scientific fact, never mind that bourgeois persons or aristocrats discovered it. This brings us round in orbit again to my opening: that it is what is said, not who says it, that should matter.You have mentioned Lenin a few times. Now, a Leninist will tend to follow a leader. This means they will wait upon his word and not the content of what he says. Conspiracists do this. You are doing it in reverse: you are concerned with the sayer, not with what he says.
You say, or hint, that today’s science is not “socialist science.” I say most of it will be. Some of it won’t. What will be different in socialism is that we won’t be having to passively watch it on TV on trust, if we want to be involved. Those of us who painstakingly study to be astronomers or physicists or geologists in socialism will be accessible to everyone else, not removed from us, not having lifestyles beyond ours. All will be able, from childhood, to pursue whatever s/he wants. That will be the crucial difference. But scientific facts already proven pre-socialism will still be facts.(To be continued)
Loren Goldner is sometimes good (he’s a Left Communist) but I am not sure about his “cosmobiology”. Sounds a bit mumbo-jumboist to me:
“Our starting-point must be the direct opposition between the body of doctrine which came to be known as ‘Marxism’, codified in the First, Second, Third and Fourth Internationals, and the ideas of Karl Marx. After separating these two, I want look at the relation between ‘Marxism’ and the body of ideas known as the Enlightenment, chiefly those of the French eighteenth century thinkers. Then I should turn to the earlier tradition sometimes called ‘Hermetic’, which includes magic, astrology and alchemy. I want to show how, when modern rational science defeated this outlook, it also lost something of value: its attitudes to humanity and nature.”
http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Cosmobiological_Tradition
Give me Engels any day !
(Continued)
L. Bird,
Hi again. Just had my supper. (Don’t worry, it wasn’t avian).
Human reason and science are as old as humanity. For most of humanity’s existence, human society was also classless too.
Other animals reason too, which I have defined as the ability to discern. Sniff the hole before entering, there might be a predator. My family have found this hole, so it’s unlikely they haven’t checked for predators. Dennis is giving the warning hoot, let’s scatter. Boy has been here; this scat is his, so i’m on the right track.
So with humans. A case of reason serving opposing interests:
Man: Let’s be very quiet. Food nearby.
Deer: Predators! Run for your lives!Science would originally have been inseparable from religion. The rain comes when we perform the rain dance (use of reason). But also: I can smell what I smelt before it rained last time, so let’s perform the rain dance (use of reason).
The rains never come when this magician says they will. Use of reason: kill him and find a better magician.
The scientific thus slowly makes progress as superstition recedes, and, fast-forwarding to Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the language becomes “God helps those who help themselves” – science and religion in alliance. …
Enabling the tremendous architecture of the medieval cathedrals. Science and reason being employed in the service of religion. Far from being stupid, mediaeval people, who may well be persuaded of the dogmas of the Church, used reason and science every day. They were not like those today who reject what is proven, because science had not yet proved it. They would have laughed at flat-earthers, if they were educated Catholics, as we do today, because the Earth’s sphericity had been proven a thousand years before!
Do we put this buttress here, or a bit over here? Use of reason. If we don’t reinforce here, the building could fall. Use of reason. And of science.The architect’s science is the same, regardless of the social system. We don’t need castles, and socialism won’t need cathedrals. But if we want to build them, we can. And we learn by consulting mediaeval methods.
So science, irrespective of class, can be defined as discovery and know-how.
Reason, irrespective of class, and even of species, is the ability to discern.Thomas More wrote: “So science, irrespective of class, can be defined as discovery and know-how.”
So, if Fascists ‘discover’ Jews, and have the ‘know-how’ to kill them… that’s ‘science’?
Thomas More wrote: “Reason, irrespective of class, and even of species, is the ability to discern.”
So, if wealthy people can ‘discern’ the poor (and simply accept it as a ‘fact’ and do nothing)… that’s ‘reason’?
Surely such asocial and ahistorical ‘definitions’, which take no account of who defines and does ‘discovery’, who defines and has ‘know-how’, who determines ‘reason’ (and thus ‘what’s reasonable’), and who determines who are the ‘discerners’, is meaningless?
You seem to have a view that ‘discovery’, ‘know-how’, ‘reason’ and ‘discernment’ are universal properties, given to all biological individuals, simply by virtue of them being alive. And that the ‘science’ based on these is thus timeless – there is no need to address historical specificities, changes in social production, or power relationships between opposed social groups.
I must say, I don’t share these assumptions, if they are yours.
I think that both ‘science’ and ‘reason’ change, and that both are socially produced, and we can historically locate when they emerged, who produced them, and the interests behind their production, and the purposes for which they were employed.
So, I don’t regard ‘reason’ or ‘science’ as universal, or the property of each biological individual, but as socio-historical products.
Thus, to defend ‘reason and science’, we have to know what we think that they are, and we have to identify who’s putting them in danger, and why.
I regard this as a political task, because the issue of ‘power’ is central to this process, which is why I ask who, when, where and most importantly why, long before I ask how.
ALB, quoted Loren Goldner: “Our starting-point must be the direct opposition between the body of doctrine which came to be known as ‘Marxism’, codified in the First, Second, Third and Fourth Internationals, and the ideas of Karl Marx. After separating these two, I want look at the relation between ‘Marxism’ and the body of ideas known as the Enlightenment, chiefly those of the French eighteenth century thinkers. Then I should turn to the earlier tradition sometimes called ‘Hermetic’, which includes magic, astrology and alchemy. I want to show how, when modern rational science defeated this outlook, it also lost something of value: its attitudes to humanity and nature.”
I must say, I totally agree with Goldner, here.
It’s precisely the ‘lost value’ of ‘humanity and nature’ that Marx, too, focussed upon.
ALB wrote: “Sounds a bit mumbo-jumboist to me”
It sounds of inestimable value to democratic socialists, to me.
The bourgeoisie’s separation of ‘society and ‘nature’ was an entirely ideological step. It’s purpose was to keep ‘science’ and ‘nature’ out of the hands of democratic forces, as displayed during the English Revolution of the 1640s.
Only the ruling class benefitted from this separation. To maintain it, is to support the ruling class, and separate society into two: those who know and do ‘science’, an elite minority, and those who can’t know and can’t do ‘science’, the vast majority.
The role of socialists is to challenge the power of the elite, wherever it is manifested – as it is in their current version of ‘science’.
“The role of socialists is to challenge the power of the elite, wherever it is manifested – as it is in their current version of ‘science’.”
Our role is to surpass the scientific community and expose its limitations. We don’t challenge the science of climate change, the coronavirus, of technological change. We say the scientists are being too modest and conservative in their analysis. Our goal is to go beyond the conclusions of scientists, stuck within the restrictive mind-set of capitalist constraints.
We take what science expresses in its findings and demonstrate its liberating potential when freed from the restraints of a capitalist ideology as often reflected by scientists.
This is where i do share LBird’s concerns. Scientists are as equally blinkered by their belief in capitalism as any other group in society that they fail to reach the full relevance of their research. It is for us workers – at least those of us who are materialists who understand that it is not merely ideas that change the world but action to change it – to take control of science and direct it towards the building of socialism.
If you think, L. Bird, that you and all of us, have not benefited from the 18th century’s bourgeois philosophers bringing down the terrifying power of the Tridentine Church and autocratic monarchy, think again.
Without the Enlightenment there wouldn’t be any scientific socialism. Take a lesson from Marx, who knew how to BUILD UPON what predecessors laid, not reject it.
You seem to be, like the deniers, absolutist in your thinking. Either all or nothing.
Do you accept that the Earth revolves round the sun? What makes that fact bourgeois?
Do you accept gravity? Is gravity bourgeois?
Engels confronts the “hermetic” tradition:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch10.htm
It includes his amusing account of his own attendance at a spiritualist meeting in 1844.
Evolution is a case.
It can be interpreted to serve the bourgeoisie and justify exploitation. But this does not change the fact of evolution. It is merely a class interpretation.
Evolutionary scientists differ: there are those who take the bourgeois interpretation, and those who don’t.
The absolutist does not accept that there are scientists who don’t. He says evolution per se is a bourgeois science.
LBird you say:
“The bourgeoisie’s separation of ‘society and ‘nature’ was an entirely ideological step. It’s purpose was to keep ‘science’ and ‘nature’ out of the hands of democratic forces, as displayed during the English Revolution of the 1640s.Only the ruling class benefitted from this separation. To maintain it, is to support the ruling class, and separate society into two: those who know and do ‘science’, an elite minority, and those who can’t know and can’t do ‘science’, the vast majority. The role of socialists is to challenge the power of the elite, wherever it is manifested – as it is in their current version of ‘science’. “
With that in mind I wonder what you would make of Engels’ remarkable piece of environmental prose given your hostility to all things Engels:
“Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature — but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.….in fact, with every day that passes we are learning to understand these laws more correctly and getting to know both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. … But the more this happens, the more will men not only feel, but also know, their unity with nature, and thus the more impossible will become the senseless and antinatural idea of a contradiction between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body. “
(The Dialectics of Nature)
Incidentally , I thought we had come to an agreement many months ago that there is bound be a degree of scientific specialisation even in a socialist society. We can’t all become nuclear physicists or brain surgeons – occupations that require many years of training to become competent in. Moreover it is not advisable that we should all even attempt this for obvious reasons – its would represent a massive waste of society’s resources
Your reference to those who know and do ‘science’, an elite minority, and those who can’t know and can’t do ‘science’, the vast majority seems to imply that we should all strive to become nuclear physicists and brain surgeons in order to avoid an elitist state of affairs where some (the elite) know more than others (the majority) in their particular fields of endeavour.
But that’s not practical is it? I dont see any problem with the idea that some individuals are bound to know much more than others in certain branches of scientific knowledge. You can call these individuals an “elite” if you like but the real issue is whether their superior knowledge will translate into power of others. I would say not at all because the fundamental characterises of a socialist society – free access to goods and services produced by the voluntary efforts of people – is what completely removes the possibility of any one group or individual exerting any leverage over another.
Also, the thing about specialists is that whilst they might be specialists in their own particular field of endeavour they are in the same position as the lay majority with respect to other fields of endeavour which have their own “specialists”. So it is a bit misleading and simplistic to talk of a scientific elite vis a vis a non scientific majority. That apart, I think a socialist society will be much more conducive to people in general taking an interest in science but there will still nevertheless be “specialists”, relatively speaking, in the various branches of scientific knowledge. That’s inevitable and frankly it doesn’t pose any problem that I can see
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