Science for Communists?

[LBird]

Y'know, we're trying to discuss philosophy, and the scientific method that would best suit the democratic proletariat in its attempts to understand the world and thus to build Communism, in the light of the obvious failure of 19th century science, and we're reduced to nuts, widgets and dentists.I sometimes wonder…

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

LBird wrote:

 Vin, mate, try just reading on this thread, and try to think about what's being said, and keep your comments to a minimum, for now.You're out of your depth, comrade. I'm trying to give you good advice.

 When you are unable to give an answer you inevitably become personal. Why not deal with the content of my post. Would you as a 'communist' (Shakespear comes to mind here) allow an 'elite' (your words) make undemocratic decisions about your treatment? 

Sigh.If the 'elitist' brain surgeon was named Dr. Mengele, then, no, I wouldn't.According to YOUR METHOD, Vin, you would allow Dr. Mengele to make decisions about your treatment.We really have to lift this discussion beyond "What if, to me as an individual…".Can't you and YMS address some of Rovelli's concerns?

[Anonymous]

LBird wrote:

Can't you and YMS address some of Rovelli's concerns?

What is his ideological standpoint? Is he a 'communist' like you (that would make two) or do you consider him a bourgeois scientist,'? Do you know any 'communist' scientists? I am not being facetious, LBird, but you have come onto a Marxist forum claiming to be the only 'communist' on here(in fact in the world) and you wish to teach the world socialist movement about real 'communism'.You have admited elswhere that you cannot name another 'communist' like yourself. And then you claim 'communism' will not need elites!! People who know better than the rest!!I fully understood where you were coming from months ago.

[SocialistPunk]

I think we are starting to get somewhere.It is such a refreshing change to here party members give their socialist views about how a socialist society could function instead of just deferring it to the revolution and the future.As a socialist you need to have an idea of how things should work. we have a framework with the aim, definition, bias, ideology of socialism, but we have no flesh on the bones, it's always passed on for future consideration.Are we sure ideology or bias will cease to exist in a socialist society? History will be taught, will it be taught in a sterile objective non human way or will the contadictions, mistakes and horrors of capitalism be discussed?Even if socialisation is the driving influence, as has been mentioned before, it will still have a bias. How could it not? We are not logical based machines, we are thinking, decision making, opinionated, emotional creatures and as such our ideas will always have some sort of bias.I think this area is one where the WSM, SPGB fails. Always deferring socialist construction to the future socialists. Removed from the fact that over the years we are the future socialists, forever deferring to the next generation. 

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

Can't you and YMS address some of Rovelli's concerns?

Well, I don't see anything that exciting in Rovelli.  If we have to redefine truth as 'to the best of our knowledge' we're not really changing much in the way we approach or deal with that knowledge.  It is knowledge we can treat as if true.Back to the Law analogy.  In court, juries are asked to be certain whether a person is guilty or not.  They are not asked to pronounce upon the truth of the charge, and what happened, just guilty or not guilty (or proven & not proven in Scotland (lets ignore the not guilty abberation)).  They are asked to be sure.I am sure that information cannot travel at a speed faster than light.  I am sure that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  I am sure that energy cannot be created or destroyed.  I could be disabused of this certainty, but as a being that must exist within the world — and, more importantly, act within it — I must continue with my certainty until given good reason to change my mind.  I am perfectly satisfied with 'To the best of our knowledge', that is still a high bar.Lets not forget that Real just means 'Royal' and true just means "loyal".  So, I am happy that reality will be defined by collective democratic and free authority as long as they remain loyal.

[ALB]

I know this will risk kicking things off again but as a second-hand bookshop near me was closing down and selling its stock off at half-price i bought for £1.50 a copy of a book entitled A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science to see if it would throw any light on where LBird is coming from. It's not a very interesting book (too technical) but there were some parts that were. As far as I can see, the person who comes nearest to LBird's position is the physicist Ernst Mach (who is attacked by Lenin in his notorious Materialism and Empirio-Criticism) when he wrote:

Quote:

in the investigation of nature, we have to deal only with knowledge of the connexion of apperarances with one another. What we represent to ourselves behind the appearances exists only in our understanding, and has for us only the value of a  memoria technica or formula, whose form, because it is artbitrary and irrelevant, varies very easily with the standpoint of our culture.

Apparently, throughout history, there have been two main schools of thought: the "realists, who according to the book's author John Losee, argue that:

Quote:

scientists ought to seek to formulate true theories that depict the nature of the universe.

and the "instrumentalists" whose position is that

Quote:

scientific theories are calculating devices that facilitate the organization and prediction of statements about observations. It is statements about observations that are true or false. Theories are merely "useful" or "not useful".

My sympathises in this debate would lie with the "instrumentalists" but I wouldn't argue that this is the "communist" position and that "realists" cannot be socialists/communists. After all, we get enough stick for ruling out people with religious views and don't need to also rule out fellow materialists who take a different view of what "science" is trying to do.By the way, the book says that Galileo was a "realist" and Pope Urban VIII an "instrumentalist". I hadn't realised before but it seems that the Church would have been prepared to accept Galileo's argumentation if only he had offered it as one alternative theory to explain why the Sun appeared to go round the Earth rather than as being "true".

[DJP]

I think LBird was claiming to be a realist whilst at the same time also holding to extreme cognitive relativism. The question, for me at least, was if you can actually hold onto both these sets of belief without falling into contradition.Though he would deny it I think there was a strong influence of postmoderism in his thinking…For the time being I'm following Sokal and taking a "modest realist" position…

[Young Master Smeet]

Just a quick Charlie Bomb I was thinking of throwing in :

Quote:

Sense-perception (see Feuerbach) must be the basis of all science. Only when it proceeds from sense-perception in the two-fold form of sensuous consciousness and sensuous need – is it true science. All history is the history of preparing and developing “man” to become the object of sensuous consciousness, and turning the requirements of “man as man” into his needs. History itself is a real part of natural history – of nature developing into man. Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

…to see if it would throw any light on where LBird is coming from… As far as I can see, the person who comes nearest to LBird's position is the physicist Ernst Mach…

It’s  always easier to pidgeonhole someone, rather than actually discuss what’s being said, isn’t it?I’ve stated repeatedly, giving quotes, that I’m ‘coming from’ the likes of Marx and Pannekoek, with influences from Einstein and Lakatos. The suggestion that I’m a ‘Machist’ says more about ALB’s ideology of science than it does about mine.

DJP wrote:

I think LBird was claiming to be a realist whilst at the same time also holding to extreme cognitive relativism… Though he would deny it I think there was a strong influence of postmoderism in his thinking…

Marx was clearly a relativist, too, of the ‘social’ kind (‘modes of production’ – has anyone heard of them?). PostModernism is a relativism of the ‘individualist’ kind, and since I constantly quote Marx’s social ideology, and stress ‘democratic control of knowledge production’, how this can be construed as PM, I don’t know. The accusation says more about DJP’s ideology of science than it does about mine.As for YMS’s quote from Charlie, it just backs up my ‘social’ (and thus agreeing with Marx) position on the nature of ‘science’. However, YMS, employing an individualist ideology of science, wishes to read it as comfort for ‘individualist sense experience’. Marx makes it very clear that ‘sense perception’ is a socially-created experience of nature, and not merely what any person can see, hear, smell, touch or taste. If any individual could be magically transformed to a different society, they would experience nature in a different way. Nature does not tell us what it is; we ask questions, and thus the answers are already pre-loaded. The myth that science produces ‘Eternal Truth’ (which is knowledge that is the same for any observer, at any time, in any society, forever) is a bourgeois myth, tied in with the need for ruling class legitimacy and authority.Finally, in YMS’s quote, Charlie clearly puts humanity at the forefront of science (not simple ‘nature’, as for bourgeois science and a misled Engels), and aims to build ‘one science’ in which ‘physics’ and ‘sociology’ employ the same method. The positivists of the 19th century thought that this meant making ‘sociology’ more like ‘physics’. We now know, since Einstein, that ‘physics’ is more like ‘sociology’, and that this must be the aim of our proletarian ‘science’, to democratise knowledge production, as part of the task by the proletariat to assume control of all production.

Marx wrote:

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

Bourgeois science clearly separates the ‘arts’ (or ‘human sciences’) from ‘science’ (or, at heart, ‘physics’). Marx argues against this, and I follow Marx on this point. If ‘proletarian science’ means anything, it is the methodological unity of all of the ‘sciences’. In a nutshell, physics must become poetical, rather than mathematical. Scientists have a social duty to explain, in a manner understandable to most humans, rather than retreat into a world of mumbo-jumbo, as did priests. Today’s scientists are simply old-fashioned elitists, as we can tell from the horror expressed by those on these threads, who consider themselves ‘scientists’, at the thought of workers voting on the ‘truth’. For them, one professor’s vote is worth a million workers’ votes. We have to undermine this elitism, and start to build for the day when workers will democratically control the means of production, distribution and consumption. And that includes ‘science’.

[Young Master Smeet]

Lird is clearly a mind reader, since he knows what i think without having to wait for me to produce words to state what I think. Apparently.Anyway, a further quote:

Charlie & Fred wrote:

We know only a single science, the science of history.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htmAnd back to the previous section of the economic manuscripts, Marx agrees with what I've been saying here all along (he had time travel and other useful stuff at his disposal):

Quote:

Man is the immediate object of natural science; for immediate, sensuous nature for man is, immediately, human sensuousness (the expressions are identical) – presented immediately in the form of the other man sensuously present for him. Indeed, his own sense-perception first exists as human sensuousness for himself through the other man.

  Remember, I said it first.Science is an organised system of reliable knowledge.Anyway, Lbird, quick Q: are there are infinite number of prime numbers?

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Anyway, Lbird, quick Q: are there are infinite number of prime numbers.

Another helpful contribution to the discussion, YMS.I don't need to be a 'mind reader', in your case, YMS, simply a 'reader'.You continue to avoid Rovelli's concerns, which are no cause for concern at all, according to you.The entirety of 20th century philosophy of science dismissed in a shrug.

[Young Master Smeet]

Lbird,It's a serious question: are there, or are there not, an ifninite number of prime numbers?

[Anonymous]

There is a new hurdle facing the socialist movement:We in the world socialist movement have up until now analysed capitalism through bourgeois scientific spectacles which means we are way off the mark.Furthermore, we have failed to grasp this idea of a ‘proletarian science’ so what hope is there for the working class?The vast majority of workers will have to grapple with the ‘philosophy of science’ understand the past errors of bourgeois and other philosophies and settle on a ‘proletarian science’.A mammoth task indeed 

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Lbird,It's a serious question: are there, or are there not, an ifninite number of prime numbers?

YMS, it's a serious question: is Rovelli talking out of his arse?

[ALB]

I wasn't trying to categorise you as a "Machist". Just pointing out that in the passage quoted in the book he seemed to be saying something similar to what you are. Pannekoek had a much higher regard for Mach than Lenin did and can even be said to have been influenced by him. I wouldn't have thought he would have denied it.Incidentally, DJP, an "instrumentalist" or "phenomenalist" is not committed to the view that there is not a "real" world out there, only to denying that there exists something "more reral" beyond the observable world. So LBird needn't necesarily be holding two positions that contradict each other. His problem, as far as I can see, is that he regards any interpretation of the observable world as entirely subjective, hence opening the door to "extreme relativism". As Mach put in that quote given in the book:

Quote:

in the investigation of nature, we have to deal only with knowledge of the connexion of apperarances with one another. What we represent to ourselves behind the appearances exists only in our understanding, and has for us only the value of a  memoria technica or formula, whose form, because it is artbitrary and irrelevant, varies very easily with the standpoint of our culture.

I think I'm right, aren't I, LBird, that you want  to argue which is the best subjective interpretation from a working class or communist point of view? Most of us here can see that this might make sense with regard to history, society, economics but not to the so-called natural sciences, e.g. there is no "proletarian" or "communist" or "bourgeois" or "capitalist" astronomy or chemistry, just astronomy or chemistry.

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