Science for Communists?

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

My ideology is strummerdox. If you don't know that ideology you must be a conservaitive and on the wrong forum. All real communists know the strummerdox ideology simply by instinct , I don't have to define it. You really are dumb if you don't know what it isI could explain what I mean by 'ideology' and 'strummerdox' but that wouldn't be much fun and my argument would fall flat on its face. So much better to keep you guessing.It means I can talk a load of crap and look like I know something you don't 

The shakespearean monkey seems to be hitting a few wrong keys this time, Vin.My comradely advice is to ditch the monkey, and engage with the discussion.Mind you, I already know you won't. At least the pretence of YMS and DJP has some illusion of discussion.Your method just seems to be naked ignorance. Why not ask, and I'll try to explain? But it requires a willingness to engage, on your part.

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

The shakespearean monkey seems to be hitting a few wrong keys this time, Vin.My comradely advice is to ditch the monkey, and engage with the discussion.Mind you, I already know you won't. At least the pretence of YMS and DJP has some illusion of discussion.Your method just seems to be naked ignorance. Why not ask, and I'll try to explain? But it requires a willingness to engage, on your part.

 OOhh, you are awful. LBird. Now you have added naked ignorance to your accusations that I am a troll and I can't read and lots of other personal insults.I have not responded up to this point in order to keep the peace but this is a bridge too far, you have gone overboard, you have stretched yourself, you have over indulged your insults.I can only take so much. I have saved up this insult as a last resort, a trump card, a pis allar. It is my piece de resistanceand you have driven me to it MY DAD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR DAD!!   

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

So, are 'the proletariat' engaged, or an 'elite'? Is 'those' a 'class' or a collection of 'special individuals'?

Science, on one meaning of the term, is just and activity anyone can do.Here's a famous bit of science done by a 9 year proletarian girl.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

Every "truth" comes with it's own metric. So the "truth" and reliability of a tide table is determined not by the class background or political ideology of the person that composed the table but by it's reliability on it predicting the tide level into the future.

Yet another attempt to sidetrack from the discussion of the philosophical basis of science, and produce an unhistorical, unsocial, anecdotal account of 'eternal truth'.

Not at all, who's to say that the frequency and level of the tide will not alter in the future.

LBird wrote:

'Over millennia', eh? Sounds like 'Eternal Truth' to me.

In this case it means since at least the time of the ancient greeks…

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

MY DAD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR DAD!!

My dad's been dead decades, but I'd wager that he'd still make a better fist of this discussion than you seem able to do.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Science, on one meaning of the term, is just and activity anyone can do.

Yes, but is this your meaning of the term?

DJP wrote:

Not at all, who's to say that the frequency and level of the tide will not alter in the future.

I think you're missing the point of 'science', DJP.That is, to tell us 'why', not merely 'what'.The listing of 'what' is around us is endless and, essentially, meaningless.

DJP wrote:

In this case it means since at least the time of the ancient greeks…

[my bold]So, by inference, it's possible that during the time of the Sumerians the events were different? What about during the Jurassic Period?Or are you extrapolating without any evidence? Why would you do this? What assumptions are you making? Who told you this was acceptable?This is all before we get to 'why' do the events happen, which is the real meat of science.'Whys' are always human answers.

[SocialistPunk]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

SP,Mathematicians disagree strongly about what cannot be proved, but once something is proven, it stays proven: the proof of an infinite number of primes remains true.  DJP correctly spotted my naughtiness in introducing truth in a deductive sense when what we're talking about natural sciences we're talking about inductive proof, which is prone to Hume's Black Swan.Anyway, back to socialism.  Whilst I think Rovelli's almost Holmesian notion of expanding on what is theoretically established is interesting, he notes otehrs are trying different routes.  This is fine, because there is no one scientific method.  If we get to our materialist roots, we come back to science being reliable organised knowledge.Reliable brings up a number of features.  It means that knowledge is confirmed by the senses and ideas of other people.  Science doesn't lie in the data, but in the discourse between scientists, as they try and extend their sense perceptions (and their understanding of these perceptions).People who talk to each other a lot, and who share a detailed common understanding will naturally develop an efficiency in communication, a jargon, because to not do so would be cumbersome.  Why use three words when a single made up word (neologism) will do the job just as nicely.  Of course, translating between these registers is a skill additional to the basic skill set of a scientific practitioner.

There are differing schools of thought within mathematics and I'm sure that what one school sees as a proven fact the others would probably disagree. That pesky bias again.

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Admittedly, it took Russell & Whitehead over 300 pages to prove thet 1+1=2(Note, though, that they hadn't yet defined what + meant).

No jargon dripping, elitist, self indulgent bullshit, there then.I am very surprised that a socialist is unable to see the inbuilt elitism among the various scientific communities. Many of the words used in science are Latin. The language of elitist authority. Universities were once sanctum's of elitism, some still are. No common folk went to "uni" at one time, you had to have money or status. Then Polytechnics were introduced to train the unclean in subjects that required a level of technical ability beyond that attained in basic schools. The hallowed universities couldn't churn out enough technically trained people to compete with the growth in technology. Then the Poly's became Universities, probably to reduce the appearance of elitism within the education system. Yet the elite universities still exist and are populated with a disproportionate amount of wealthy students.So the use of convoluted words and phrases has it's roots firmly in elitism, not some notion about efficiency of discussion. What's easy about having to learn an outmoded language or a set of made up words to be able to engage in discussion?A socialist revolution would open up this elitist world and demand that experts be able to explain their ideas in less than 300 pages of waffle. Part of the democratisation of knowledge, that would expand learning among a global socialist community.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

So the use of convoluted words and phrases has it's roots firmly in elitism, not some notion about efficiency of discussion. What's easy about having to learn an outmoded language or a set of made up words to be able to engage in discussion?A socialist revolution would open up this elitist world and demand that experts be able to explain their ideas in less than 300 pages of waffle. Part of the democratisation of knowledge, that would expand learning among a global socialist community.

I couldn't agree more with SP, here.Of course, sometimes there is a need for words/terms/phrases which are very specific, but these should still be understandable, once clearly explained.The reason for their introduction must be 'specificity', not 'obfuscation'. In others words, to 'clarify', not to 'hide'.New 'terms' would have to be submitted to the 'New Science Terms' elected sub-committee of the world proletariat, for approval.And I'm afraid I'd vote for Russell to be put in the 'remedial explainers' class. Along with YMS!That's spelt 'schadenfreude', or 'base 0', just for you, YMS.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Yes, but is this your meaning of the term?

It depends in what context the word is being used. I am not humpty dumpty I cannot change the meaning of words at random. They are many things that "science" could mean it depends what aspect one is talking of. That is why it is necesarry to explain what you are talking about..

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

In this case it means since at least the time of the ancient greeks…

[my bold]So, by inference, it's possible that during the time of the Sumerians the events were different? What about during the Jurassic Period?

I don't know what that has to do with the above.I was describing what was in a book that is about the history and development of the concept "truth", it starts from the ancient greeks because they where the first people to write down philosophy…

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

There are differing schools of thought within mathematics and I'm sure that what one school sees as a proven fact the others would probably disagree. That pesky bias again.

I'm not sure that is actually the case with mathematics, would be interesting if someone could find a real life example…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

I think you're missing the point of 'science', DJP.That is, to tell us 'why', not merely 'what'.The listing of 'what' is around us is endless and, essentially, meaningless.

I thought, at this stage, we where talking about truth, and what it is that would show a theory to be true or false..Or have I just accidentally ended up in the argument clinic again!?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

I think you're missing the point of 'science', DJP.That is, to tell us 'why', not merely 'what'.The listing of 'what' is around us is endless and, essentially, meaningless.

I thought, at this stage, we where talking about truth, and what it is that would show a theory to be true or false..Or have I just accidentally ended up in the argument clinic again!?

No, you're just determined to derail a thread named 'Science for Communists' into one concerned with 'Truth for Liberals', along with YMS's concerted attempts to reduce the focus to 'Maths for Conservatives'.

[SocialistPunk]

DJP wrote:

SocialistPunk wrote:

There are differing schools of thought within mathematics and I'm sure that what one school sees as a proven fact the others would probably disagree. That pesky bias again.

I'm not sure that is actually the case with mathematics, would be interesting if someone could find a real life example…

Just going by what I read on a couple of mathematics forums DJP. I got the impression by what they were discussing, it's advanced mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics. I won't be able to provide any examples, as I'm not a mathematician and I'm not interested in maths.   

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

No, you're just determined to derail a thread named 'Science for Communists' into one concerned with 'Truth for Liberals', along with YMS's concerted attempts to reduce the focus to 'Maths for Conservatives'.

Sorry I keep forgetting you're the only communist in the village.No true scotsman would come out with this kind of thing.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[DJP]

Actually Bertrand Russell did also write some really succint and clear introductory books about philosophy, and they're now all in the public domain. I recomend a look, even if our censor of the proletariat disagrees…

LBird wrote:

SocialistPunk wrote:

So the use of convoluted words and phrases has it's roots firmly in elitism, not some notion about efficiency of discussion. What's easy about having to learn an outmoded language or a set of made up words to be able to engage in discussion?A socialist revolution would open up this elitist world and demand that experts be able to explain their ideas in less than 300 pages of waffle. Part of the democratisation of knowledge, that would expand learning among a global socialist community.

I couldn't agree more with SP, here.Of course, sometimes there is a need for words/terms/phrases which are very specific, but these should still be understandable, once clearly explained.The reason for their introduction must be 'specificity', not 'obfuscation'. In others words, to 'clarify', not to 'hide'.New 'terms' would have to be submitted to the 'New Science Terms' elected sub-committee of the world proletariat, for approval.And I'm afraid I'd vote for Russell to be put in the 'remedial explainers' class. Along with YMS!That's spelt 'schadenfreude', or 'base 0', just for you, YMS.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

No, you're just determined to derail a thread named 'Science for Communists' into one concerned with 'Truth for Liberals', along with YMS's concerted attempts to reduce the focus to 'Maths for Conservatives'.

Sorry I keep forgetting you're the only communist in the village.No true scotsman would come out with this kind of thing.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Well, if you're that put out by my 'hijacking' of 'communist', why participate?Why not start a thread of your own, titled 'Science for Socialists', where you can discuss individuals and their truth, and forget all this nonsense I keep blathering on about, regarding classes, social knowledge, social subject, critical realism?Or is this part of a concerted attempt by the SPGB, involving you, YMS, Vin, and others sporadically, to prevent discussion about 'Communism and Science'?I'm beginning to wonder – is it your mission to keep 'Engelsian Positivist' science safe from contamination?Why won't you declare your political position on science?Why not just say 'science is outside of politics', or 'rocks can be understood by individuals without employing an ideology', and we can start to locate your 'true' beliefs?I've been open about my 'beliefs' from the start; indeed, the thread title says it all.You, YMS, Vin, et al, have refused to state your political position on science.What are youse all hiding?I suspect ignorance, rather than anything positive to your mission.

[Author]

Posts