[DJP]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

How should our magazine, leaflets and blogs be themed to capture the imagination and sympathy of workers who presently reject our ideas but who on the plus side also increasingly reject the status quo and the left's and the right's too and are searching for something that reflects their own outlook more accurately and currently unable to find it

I think we jsut have to go to the mountain a bit more rather than expecting the mountain to come to us.These days that's probably things like Youtube and Twitter..Look how many views this guy gets for example, and it looks like he's just one lad with a camera..https://www.youtube.com/user/ElectricUnicycleCrew/videos

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

They always argue that they have a method which gives them special insight into 'really what reality is'

This is pure strawman repeated for the umpteenth time. Almost no-one would claim this today. (Accept perhaps followers of Ayn Rand) http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Objectivism

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

'Objective Truth' leads to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

Is that really true?If so what makes it true?

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Trouble is, my returned insults are accurate insults, whereas yours just suggest that any worker who dares to argue for democracy is an oddity and alone.

Surely the proletariat have to vote on that to determine if it's an objective fact or not?

[DJP]

So, in other words "I'm the only communist in the village, everybody else are dumb and ignorant Leninists"

[DJP]

I wish I where able to make animations like that.

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

It's also got stuff in other languages than English (which I don't think the /spgb site does, does it?):http://www.worldsocialism.org/othlang.php

Yes, one of the improvments is that the foriegn language section is much more obvious and less buried away. Hopefully it will be up after the weekend. I'm almost done.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Those who think that them touching a rock exhausts our scientific knowledge of rocks are employing an individualist, empirical, method. This was, indeed, thought to be the basis of science, but Einstein's ideas on relativity blew that myth apart.

How does the fact that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacum is independant of the motion of all observers (that is what the theory of general relativity is) prove your point here or even have anything to do with it at all?

[DJP]

Not too bad, but not too great either.Like the graphical idea though.

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

DJP The implication came from your poorly worded statement, asking how capitalist ideology affects the findings of non social sciences. I gave some examples of how capitalism drives science in certain ways.You asked how we sort out the bad science from good science. I provided some examples.Now you bring boiling water into it. If you had asked how ideology affects boiling water, I wouldn't have answered your question in the way I did. I might have said, it would if they used my kettle.My appologies for any confusion. 

Sorry. I think the problem is that 'ideology' and 'science' can mean different things in different contexts and we're getting crossed wires..

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Vin,I know it isn't what LBird is saying, although it does have some bearing.  

To be clear. I don't think *everything* LBird says is wrong. It's just the strong cognitive relativsm that doesn't cut it…

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

DJP, I know you don't deny the affect capitalism has on science, but what you said implies that science is neutral when it comes to research and findings etc.

If I don't deny the first how can the second be implied? It doesn't follow.

SocialistPunk wrote:

Well for starters a socialist society would rule out the bad science that was falsified, deliberately slanted etc because of money. If the article in the Economist is to be accepted at face value, there is a lot of it about.

But what exactly is it that made the science false in the first place?

SocialistPunk wrote:

To say it would be the same whatever the society is wrong.

But what is this "it" you are refering to? I'm refering to the criteria for something to be true. Of course journals can produce articles that are false, no one denies this.

SocialistPunk wrote:

So like it or not"ideology" does affect science and as such is surely impossible to separate. The question to ask would be do scientists know this?So it's either science for communists or science for capitalists. Take you pick.

So presumably a free marketeer and a communist observe water boiling at different temperatures and light travelling at different speeds?What is this "science for communists" and "science for capitalists"?Who's doing either and where are they doing it?Pannekoek was a communist and also an astronomer that worked for the Dutch state, was he doing science for communists and capitalists at the same time?You see, it doesn't appear to be that simple unfortuately. 

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

I posted a link to an article from the Economist earlier on in this thread and it pointed out the problems in science coming from the pressures of capitalism, obviously it didn't lay blame on capitalism. What it highlighted was the distortion of many scientific findings due to economic pressure etc.So in reality the ideology of capitalism does have an effect on many scientific findings. If you "sex up" or fail to rigorously verify your findings because you are hunting for the next bit of funding or pandering to your corporate sponsor, then the ideology of money is playing its part in your scientific research. I expect that is applicable to every area of scientific enquiry in our money orientated society..

Yes I'm not denying that capitalism affects *how* science is carried out but that is not quite what I was trying to get at. How do we go about sorting out the "bad" science from "good"? What kind of methods and questions do we need to use? What is it that makes one thing "true" and another "false"? I think the answer is the same regardless of what type of society we live in.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Have you really nothing better to do? I know I have, and I'm beginning to resent this continued waste of my time, and my wasted efforts to encourage some discussion about science and Communism.

You're welcome to keep posting here but have you had better luck anywhere else? This isn't the only forum for communist types. There's libcom.org for a start…But if you keep getting the same result isn't that telling you something?

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Why won't you reveal your ideology?

Because you're asking an impossible question.I think by "ideology" you mean something like "web of belief"If I where to tell you my ideology was "abracadabra-ism" this wouldn't magically transfer everything I know and think or think I know from my head and into yours. It would still be left to explain everything that we have been here….Yes I think humans are social animals and knowledge and language are social products. But never the less I still don't think the transition from capitalism to socialism will affect how we observe the laws of physics.. Was the transistion from fuedalism accompanied with such changes?

[Author]

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