Science for Communists?

[Young Master Smeet]

The material circumstances include the development of socialist consciousness amongst workers, as for the precie circumstances, all we can say is that the class struggle will make the necessity of revolution pretty much inveitable, but that necessity has not yet arisen, there has always been another way out.

[Brian]

LBird wrote:

Brian wrote:

LBird wrote:

So, have we finally come to a point where we all agree that, since science is a social activity in all its aspects, that all aspects of the social activity of science must be under the democratic control of society?

That depends on whether or not you are referring to my post #897?  I think you will find that most posters here are in broad agreement with that for it describes the outline and not the nuances.And as we are finding out its the nuances as described by yourself which is causing the fallout.

It's a simple question.I've argued constantly that science should be subject to our control, in every aspect, including the validation of its 'findings' and the permitting of 'avenues of research'. 

If its a simple question why do you constantly refuse to provide a simple answer?  If you had taken the trouble to digest what I had written in #897 the principles themselves would cover "should be subject to our control, in every aspect, including the validation of its 'findings' and the permitting of 'avenues of research'."

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

LBird wrote:

Brian wrote:

LBird wrote:

So, have we finally come to a point where we all agree that, since science is a social activity in all its aspects, that all aspects of the social activity of science must be under the democratic control of society?

That depends on whether or not you are referring to my post #897?  I think you will find that most posters here are in broad agreement with that for it describes the outline and not the nuances.And as we are finding out its the nuances as described by yourself which is causing the fallout.

It's a simple question.I've argued constantly that science should be subject to our control, in every aspect, including the validation of its 'findings' and the permitting of 'avenues of research'. 

If its a simple question why do you constantly refuse to provide a simple answer?  If you had taken the trouble to digest what I had written in #897 the principles themselves would cover "should be subject to our control, in every aspect, including the validation of its 'findings' and the permitting of 'avenues of research'."

Simple answer, again.Democracy.Your digression into 'principles' and 'nuances' is you introducing complexity.Just give a 'yes' or 'no', answer, forget 'principles' and 'nuances', and simply agree that, since knowledge is a social product, its production  will be under democratic control.Once you answer, 'Yes', you can move onto 'how'. Simple, eh?Democracy, yes or no?

[Brian]

 Having realised the implications of sticking to a set of principles as outlined in #879 you are now seemingly trying to wiggle from their consequences by attempting to disassociate principles from democracy.  Can't be done for they go hand in hand.  Democracy without a set of principles means nothing.The general agreement on the question of democracy controlling science for communists in a socialist society has always been a 'Yes' on this thread.  Which I reiterated and outlined in #879.  And to which you seemingly agreed with.  But now you are saying forget all that and move onto the 'how' when the 'how' has  already been explained in #879.I doubt if you'll get much further with this thread by attempting to sideline democratic principles.  For its socialist principles which will govern – in the last anaysis – the scientific method and the decision making process for scientists to follow in a socialist society.  Like I've mentioned previously its what occurrs after the ballot which will determine the outcome of democracy and without a set of principles drawn up before hand by socialists we will all be fumbling in the dark wondering what comes next!No thanks!  That's not my take on preparing for the future society.

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

The general agreement on the question of democracy controlling science for communists in a socialist society has always been a 'Yes' on this thread.

You must be reading a different thread to me, Brian.I  think that most here still think that they, as an individual, should be the one to decide 'what's in front of their own faces', like a rock, by kicking it.How many will say:'I can't know what that is in front of my face without consulting my comrades'or'My commune (of which I'm a voting member) will tell me what's in front of my face'.This is the philosophical outcome of the rejection of bourgeois individualism and the method of 'biological sensation' and 'empiricism'. We'll know that we must recognise our social theory before we do our social practice. We'll know that the 'individuals' in different societies interpret rocks differently. This scientific method will, of course, be taught from school, and so all members of our society we laugh at the pretensions of the 'individualists' of the bourgeois period of human history. We will be profoundly aware of society and history, how humans understand their world (physical and social) and how that understanding changes. 

Brian wrote:

For its socialist principles which will govern – in the last anaysis – the scientific method and the decision making process for scientists to follow in a socialist society.

[my bold]This is an incorrect formulation.It should read "For it's socialist principles which will govern – in the last anaysis – the scientific method and the decision making process for workers to follow in a socialist society. "You have to get away from this notion of 'scientists' doing science, who, in your formulation, will be the ones to interpret these 'principles'.The principle is workers' democracy.We will build a society in which science is open to all, and all who choose to participate in science, will determine science and its principles.There won't be a set of 'principles' which another section of society then have the power to interpret. This is to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to the other, which Marx warns us against.And your use of the term 'in the last analysis' is redolent of Engels at his worst.If there is a 'last analysis', it's workers' democracy. Not 'principles' which stand outside of democratic control, and are thus available for a minority to interpret.We live in a society now, Brian, which constantly tells us we live in a democracy and have the final say, but we all know in our day-to-day life that there is always a minority outside of our control, whether bosses, teachers, police, politicians…Socialism/Communism will be a society in which we do control everything – there will be no 'minority' throwing our principles back in our faces. If we don't like it, we change the principle – we don't allow a minority to dictate to us. If the minority don't like the way the principle is interpreted for them (ie. for any worker/scientist), then they can attempt to get the principle changed democratically.Any disputes are referred to a democratic body, not a 'set of principles'.FWIW, I still think that your separating of 'workers' from 'scientists' is the root of your problem. During the revolutionary process, most scientists (who are already workers) will have become, like most other workers, Communists.Thus, they will naturally put 'politics' ahead of 'physics' in their considerations, and the problem of a group of 'elite physicists' who don't hold with Communist politics, trying to struggle with 'principles' of which they don't agree with, won't be a problem.Science will be democraticised, unified, and thus humanised.

[Brian]

LBird wrote:

Brian wrote:

The general agreement on the question of democracy controlling science for communists in a socialist society has always been a 'Yes' on this thread.

You must be reading a different thread to me, Brian.

Brian wrote:

For its socialist principles which will govern – in the last anaysis – the scientific method and the decision making process for scientists to follow in a socialist society.

[my bold]This is an incorrect formulation.It should read "For it's socialist principles which will govern – in the last anaysis – the scientific method and the decision making process for workers to follow in a socialist society. "You have to get away from this notion of 'scientists' doing science, who, in your formulation, will be the ones to interpret these 'principles'.The principle is workers' democracy.We will build a society in which science is open to all, and all who choose to participate in science, will determine science and its principles.There won't be a set of 'principles' which another section of society then have the power to interpret. This is to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to the other, which Marx warns us against.Socialism/Communism will be a society in which we do control everything – there will be no 'minority' throwing our principles back in our faces. If we don't like it, we change the principle – we don't allow a minority to dictate to us. If the minority don't like the way the principle is interpreted for them (ie. for any worker/scientist), then they can attempt to get the principle changed democratically.FWIW, I still think that your separating of 'workers' from 'scientists' is the root of your problem. During the revolutionary process, most scientists (who are already workers) will have become, like most other workers, Communists.Thus, they will naturally put 'politics' ahead of 'physics' in their considerations, and the problem of a group of 'elite physicists' who don't hold with Communist politics, trying to struggle with 'principles' of which they don't agree with, won't be a problem.Science will be democraticised, unified, and thus humanised.

FWIW "scientists" is a job/occupation classification whilst "workers" is a classification describing a class in a stratified society.  Need I point out that the use of such a term in a socialist society would cause confusion for it presumes there is a class of non-workers?Other than that its still not safe to assume that along with the majority on this thread you are in agreement with the contents of #879?  One minute you accept the use of a set of principles and the next you reject them, "Any disputes are referred to a democratic body, not a 'set of principles'." which is failing to acknowledge that the democratic body will have no recourse other than to refer to the set of principles.   What is it going to be?

[LBird]

Brian wrote:

What is it going to be?

Whatever you want.I'm interested in why democracy is unavoidable in science, if:a) we're Communists (not individualists); andb) knowledge is socially produced (not a reflection of material/physical/matter).If one is either a non-Communist or believes in 'matter' as the origin of 'truth', then one can be a non-democrat in science, because either an expert elite or 'reality' can determine 'truth'.My purpose on this thread is to insist that all aspects of science must be under our democratic control.This is a political aim, because otherwise a minority can claim to have the power to produce 'truth', with all the authority and legitimacy that would give to the minority.If you've come to the position that all aspects of science must be under our democratic control, I'm happy with that outcome.Which, of course, means the rejection of Engels' positivistic science, dialectical materialism, matter, the ideal supervening upon the physical, the return to pre-Theses 'materialism', inductive 'practice and theory', biological senses, and the acceptance of Marx's 'idealism-materialism' and the method of 'theory and practice'.Is everyone happy with Critical Realism as the best basis to take these positions forward?

[Young Master Smeet]

Shirley, in democracy a minority can produce the truth: since democracy means the right of minorities to strive to become majorities,  a minority position will become a majority position eventually?  And all propositions emanate from a minority, since democracy means anyone can propose a motion?And lets not forget, that critical realism, as a realism still posits an external world which constrains, at the miniumum truth claims and commits us to some element of correpondence theory after all, any truth claim that doesn't correspond (to even a minimal extent) with external reality cannot be legitimate.

[SocialistPunk]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Shirley, in democracy

Could be the title of a bad political romance novel.I'm not taking the piss, it's added a much needed dose of humour to an intense debate.    Humour break over.

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Shirley, in democracy a minority can produce the truth: since democracy means the right of minorities to strive to become majorities, a minority position will become a majority position eventually? And all propositions emanate from a minority, since democracy means anyone can propose a motion?

I've always argued this. You'll find my references to Plan A (the successful majority position), Plan B, Plan C, etc. (the minority positions which must be retained as back up alternatives, if Plan A is revealed to be wrong/weak/tastes change/etc.) But this is part of the discussion about 'how', rather than 'why'.

YMS wrote:

And lets not forget, that critical realism, as a realism still posits an external world which constrains, at the miniumum truth claims and commits us to some element of correpondence theory after all, any truth claim that doesn't correspond (to even a minimal extent) with external reality cannot be legitimate.

No, a correspondence theory of truth can't stand, because what is to be matched? If we know reality doesn't reveal itself to us, how can we correspond our 'knowledge' to 'reality'? We only have our theory, practice and the knowledge produced.Although I'm open to suggestions, I think that only a consensus gentium theory of truth (the 'agreement of the people', which I've mentioned before, which term I like because of its resonance to the political manifesto put forward by the Levellers and Army Agitators during the Putney Debates of 1647 with Cromwell, during the English Revolution) makes sense with a democratic method of science, that we seem to be tentatively agreed upon, at this point.This would require a vote on the 'correspondence' of our theory (hypothesis) upon which our practice is based and which practice produces resulting knowledge.That is, if society agrees that the social knowledge (that emerges as a result of our social practice) matches our social theory, then the 'knowledge' is 'true'.This would still allow us to have a social and historical account of 'truth', and would allow us to date the start and end point of a scientific 'truth', and to alter the 'truth' when new theories and their practice emerge from creative humans.I'm sure that it can be seen that this method would be suitable for any science discipline, from physics to sociology, and so would be suitable for a unified scientific method.

[LBird]

A further point of information for those concerned with the difference between 'what Engels said Marx said', and 'what Marx actually said'.I'll never again use the term 'the materialist conception of history' to characterise Marx's views, because I've just found out that the phrase is from Engels, not Marx.Marx merely referred to 'our conception', in his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htmIt was in Engels' review of this work that the phrase first appeared:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx2.htmAnother nail in the coffin of those who argue for 'materialism', as opposed to Marx's far more subtle views, expressed in the Theses on Feuerbach and the German Ideology, which I characterise polemically as 'idealism-materialism', and which I think form the basis of Critical Realism.

[LBird]

Hopefully, this description of this particular scientific episode will provide us with some insights into the form the 'scientific method' will take under Communism:

Guardian Article wrote:

That has been the standard model of science ever since the media first acknowledged it. A hundred years ago, headlines in the New York Times had all the gravitas of a papal edict: “Men of science convene” and so forth. They were authoritative, decorous and totally contrived.That image started to unravel after James Watson published The Double Helix, his racy behind-the-scenes account of the pursuit of the structure of DNA. But even now, some scientists would prefer the mask to remain, insisting that results are announced only after they have passed peer review, ie been checked by experts and published in a reputable journal.There are many reasons why this will no longer wash. Those days of deference to patrician authority are over, and probably for the better. We no longer take on trust what we are told by politicians, experts and authorities. There are hazards to such scepticism, but good motivations too. Few regret that the old spoonfeeding of facts to the ignorant masses has been replaced with attempts to engage and include the public.But science itself has changed too. Information and communications technologies mean that not only is it all but impossible to keep hot findings under wraps, but few even try. In physics in particular, researchers put their papers on publicly accessible pre-print servers before formal publication so that they can be seen and discussed, while specialist bloggers give new claims an informal but often penetrating analysis. This enriches the scientific process and means that problems that peer reviewers for journals might not notice can be spotted and debated. Peer review is imperfect anyway – a valuable check but far from infallible, and notoriously conservative.Because of these new models of dissemination, we were all able to enjoy the debate in 2011 about particles called neutrinos that were alleged to travel faster than light, in defiance of the theory of special relativity. Those findings were announced, disputed and finally rejected, all without any papers being formally published. The arguments were heated but never bitter, and the public got a glimpse of science at its most vibrant: astonishing claims mixed with careful deliberation, leading ultimately to a clear consensus. How much more informative it was than the tidy fictions that published papers often become.

[my bold]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/26/scientists-gravitational-waves-scienceJust needs an added dose of workers' democracy, eh?

[LBird]

Some more textual support for my argument that Einstein eventually stumbled upon Marx’s method of ‘theory and practice’. That is, one’s ‘theory’ determines the ‘facts’ that one can ‘observe’, rather than the empiricist/positivist/physicalist dogma that ‘facts’ precede ‘theory’, and that ‘theories emerge from empirical research’ by induction (ie. ‘practice and theory’). This also backs up Carr’s famous ‘fish/fisher’ analogy of the necessity for selection, which is a method that emphasises the need for pre-existing ‘selection parameters’ (which emerge from ‘theory’, and not from ‘practice’), to enable humans to understand their real world.

Albert Einstein wrote:

I have learned […] from the theory of gravitation: no collection of empirical facts however comprehensive can ever lead to the formulation of such complicated equations. A theory can be tested by experience, but there is no way from experience to the construction of a theory.

[my bold][quoted in: Jeroen van Dongen (2011) Einstein’s Unification Cambridge University Press, p. 32]http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/physics/history-philosophy-and-foundations-physics/einsteins-unification

[Young Master Smeet]

Indeed, and Einstein couldn't have begun to formulate the theory of relativity without non-Euclidean geometry and the mathematics of Gauss, riemann et al. By the same measure, Paul Dirac deduced the existence of anti-matter purely through mathematics (entirely by theory, without practice.  Oh dear).  That was later confirmed by experiment, as was relativity, else we'd not have mobile phones.Anyway:

Quote:

Abstraction  is mrelty a process of focussing attention upon one or another of th many universals that are around us.  Galileo, for instance, focussed on the speed of a falling object and gave little attention to the endless other properties it might have — who owns it, where it came from, what it snmells like, what colour it is, how old it is, and so on.  This focussing of attention, however, does not create any new thing which was not there before.  It does not generate any mere 'object of thought'.  Rather, it perrmits us to notice one of the many things that are there before us and that would have happened whether we noticed it or not.

Science and necessity / John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter.  CUP 1990.Put another way, if the consensus gentium trolled up to a beach and voted for the tide to halt, would they end up looking like a bunch of Cnuts?

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Put another way, if the consensus gentium trolled up to a beech and voted for the tide to halt, would they end up looking like a bunch of Cnuts?

The main objection I can think of to a Communist democratic scientific method is the ideological argument that 'most workers are too thick'.But anyone who uses this axiom can't be a Communist/Socialist, of the sort that the SPGB claims to be, and who believes in democratic control of production by the proletariat.Of course, those who look to 'reality' to tell us the 'truth' of itself, like those who look to Engels, 'materialism', 'DiaMat', positivism, empiricism, induction or physicalism, or any individualist or elitist who distrusts the abilities of 'the mob', can employ that objection to consensus gentium (the agreement of the people) as a method of determining 'truth' within human knowledge.I'm not sure where you stand, YMS, given some of your earlier posts; perhaps you've thought a bit deeper about the issue?

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