Reason and Science in Danger.
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Thomas More wrote: “I think L. Bird is saying that humanity is God, and nothing exists without us.” [my bold]
Yes, I am saying this, Thomas – with one caveat. It’s better expressed as:
“I think L. Bird is saying that humanity is God, and nothing exists-for-us without us.” [my bold]
The basic concept of ‘materialism’ is ‘exists’; whereas for Marx it is ‘exists-for-us’ – that is, ‘what exists’ is an externalisation of our conscious activity, and so is ‘what exists-for-us’.
This is a commonplace in post-Kantian German Idealism, and was Marx’s starting point. What he introduced was the notion of a ‘social individual’, rather than, for example, Fichte’s ‘biological individual’.
For Marx, the active subject in the process of creation was ‘social’, not ‘individual’, not ‘god’, and not ‘matter’. We create individuals, god and matter. They are all social products, and we can change them. We do not contemplate ‘existence’, but create ‘existence-for-us’. And thus, we can change ‘existence-for-us’.
Bijou Drains wrote: “…we discover as children that things that are hot burn us.”
Yes, so every member of humanity could participate in a vote on this and agree. Hot things burn.
But what has this to do with ‘science’? Almost everything to do with ‘science’ can’t be sensed in such a direct way. Who would have an interest in making others believe that a political and philosophical discussion about the democratic control of science within socialism is about ‘burnt fingers’? Perhaps those who wish to deny democracy within ‘science’.
No-one ever saw, heard, smelt, tasted or touched an atom.
Atoms are social products, produced by an atomised society (initially by wealthy Ancient Greeks, and then again by wealthy Europeans, for similar socio-economic reasons). For generations within bourgeois society, ‘atoms’ (I know it’s unbelievable!) were believed to be real! They simply existed.
We now know much better, though. The ‘uncuttable’ was ‘cut’.
The problem is, who determines whether atoms ‘exist’ of not? They certainly ‘existed-for’ someone, at some period. ‘Atoms’ have a history, and go in and out of ‘existence’, depending upon the society that has an interest in creating them.
But you try telling this to the ‘materialists’!
“Almost everything to do with ‘science’ can’t be sensed in such a direct way.”
Actually, practically everything in science can be sensed in a direct way, Hook’s Law, Boyle’s Law, etc, all the way through are based on sensory perceptions of measurement. When you use a spectrometer to measure the width of a sodium atom you are using your senses, aided by machines, but dependent upon your senses.
So dinosaurs, L. Bird, only exist as the bones we dig up, and never existed before we were here to see them?
So the bones must be human creations?I take it you have no respect for scientists who were not socialists (sorry – I mean who never existed except in our minds): Richard Leakey, Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, Roger Bacon, Archimedes …
Marx had no material existence but is produced in your mind, so you can fashion him and his ideas to suit you.
How did we cut the atom if we didn’t see it to cut it? … Or have you made a faux pas in saying we cut the atom? Isn’t that bourgeois science you’ve accepted? Thought you said atoms don’t exist, save in our minds? There won’t be atoms in socialism? So socialism won’t exist? So what’s the point of us being on this forum? (I’m beginning to have my doubts).
Bijou Drains wrote: “Actually, practically everything in science can be sensed in a direct way…”
We’ll have to agree to disagree, on this one, BD. 🙂
If I were to produce a list of ‘stuff’ from ‘science’, which neither of us, or anyone else, has even touched, etc., I’d be here till xmas!
Is it this one Robin?
L Bird
Touch is not the only sense, observation is through the sense of smell. So if you can list even ten “discoveries of science” that have not been based on things that have been sensed, including by observation I would be amazed. So off you go then, set yourself away.
Bijou – I may be mistaken but weren’t Einstein’s theories of relativity entirely the result of ‘thought experiments’?
There were many peoples before Einstein who were working on the same idea including his wife
The Jehovah Witness have been saying that the Dinosaurs never existed
In order to be free we do not need Marx, Engels, philosophers and philosophy
Is it this one Robin?
Yes that’s one Matt. I wonder what LBird has to say about that one. He might well become and Engels fan
L Bird has an obsession with Frederick Engels, but he was an individual who dedicated his whole entire life to the cause of the working class ( he was a traitor to his own class ) and spent most of his fortune printing books and pamphlets which benefited the political knowledges of the working class. Many young peoples like me came to socialism because of Engels, we had great love and respect for Engels. His contributions surpass his mistakes, in the same way Marx contributions sur pass his mistakes, both were men of their time
Wez “Bijou – I may be mistaken but weren’t Einstein’s theories of relativity entirely the result of ‘thought experiments’?”
the point is that the thought experiments he used were attempts to expain observable evidence that he sought to explain, without the observable phenomena, there was nothing to explain or attempt to understand. I wouldn’t have a reason to find an explanation for the weasel under the cocktail cabinet, if I haven’t observed something that might be a weasel under the cocktail cabinet
Bijou Drains wrote: “…we discover as children that things that are hot burn us.”
Yes, so every member of humanity could participate in a vote on this and agree. Hot things burn.
_________________________Did he really say that? That the proposition that “hot things burn” should be put to a world referendum before it can be accepted as “true”?
Weird, no?
Closing off.
Why creationism and flat-earth appeal to the fearful and the narcissistic: they close off. They limit. Their universes are small. A dome indeed protects them: a wall, a barrier, protecting them from an immensity that terrifies them, that threatens their much needed self and centrality.
They must be the centre. They must be the reason whatever exists exists. There must be protective, limiting, barriers. The outside, the other, must be kept out: other possibilities, other worlds, other universes, other species, threats from knowledge, threats from science. But while protecting the self, the barriers limit, stunt and stifle.
The never closed but forever open nature of enquiry is what they fear most, even as they urge us: “Do research!” (their favourite exhortation). “You will find the dome, you will find the barrier”, and if you don’t, “You are lying! You are brainwashed!”
Because their fear needs the dome, the wall, the barrier. It needs a closed system.
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