Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 10:14:47 -0500
Subject: RE: BHA: Social Science, doing science & CR



Hi Mervyn,

The continuity between Ptolemaic, Copernican, and Gallilean astrononies is
just as impressive as was the revolutionary break.  The records of
centuries of observations of the heavens were not overthrown.  The later
theories explained those observations better than did the earlier ones.
They were simpler and more beautiful, without the convoluted elaborations
necessary to fit the earlier system to the observations.

Even though it was a "baptized" Aristotelian world view that was
challenged by Gallileo, we can understand Aristotle as a precursor of
modern science.  He valued observation.  And we can also understand the
reintroduction of Aristotle to European thought via the Arabs and some of
the medieval scholastics as an intellectual revolution that was one of the
factors creating the conditions in which Copernicus nnd Gallileo could
emerge.

Just as the church condemned Gallileo, it also condemned Thomas Aquinas --
after his death he was denounced as a heretic by the Biship of Paris.  It
didn't take the church long to forgive Aquinas and to make him a doctor of
the church and make his teachings the "official" philosophy of the church.
It took the church much longer to admit that it made a mistake with
Gallileo.

My point is simply that "modern" science is not something that was
"invented" by some conspiracy of early modern geniuses in the 15th or 16th
century.  The search for truth has been going on for a long time, and
there really has been progress -- even though that word is currently
politically incorrect.  The "foundation" (to use another politically
incorrect word) of this long quest has been the belief that the world is
at least partially intelligible, and that we can grasp that
intelligibility, however fallibly or imperfectly.

I see no reason to deny that the Hindu notion of Dharma cannot support the
underlying faith of the scientific quest, even though, like similar
western notions, it call also be used ideologically.  What I do deny is
the belief that it is all ideology, and nothing but.

Best regards,

Dick

	-----Original Message-----
	From: Mervyn Hartwig [mailto:mh-AT-jaspere7.demon.co.uk]
	Sent: Mon 1/5/2004 5:56 PM
	To: bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
	Cc:
	Subject: Re: BHA: Social Science, doing science & CR



	>science in the modern sense was invented at the dawnn of modern society

	Well, of course, what is modern about science is a modern invention.
	That's a tautology. By the sane token what is not modern about science
	predated modernity (and postmodernity)! How else do you suppose our
	foraging forebears figured out the importance of world-care 50,000 years
	ago? Or how to make an axe or a fish trap?

	Pomo relativism can't think the universal in the concretely singular.
	It's up it own particularity -- capital's particularity.

	It's a complicit dialectical pair with capitalist triumphalism. When you
	tell the bourgeois that he invented science, is it supposed to bother
	him?

	Mervyn

	In message <3FF29AEE.3020501-AT-krokodile.co.uk>, steve.devos
	<steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk> writes
	>No you are incorrect - science in the modern sense was invented at the
	>dawnn of modern society and did not predate earely capital.
	>
	>I am not avoiding the other issue - i'm simply not interested in the
	>phantasy that postmodernism plays into the hands of hindu and
	>nationalisms.
	>regards
	>steve
	>
	>Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
	>
	>> steve.devos <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk> writes
	>>
	>>> science is the dominant western idea
	>>
	>>
	>> Rubbish. The law of value is (except that neither is just an idea,
	>>and dominant ideas don't dominate just at the level of ideas --
	>>otherwise, e.g., USuk wouldn't have had to go into Iraq in the first
	>>place, nor remain there in force).  Science way predated the rise of
	>>generalized commodity production. Science as you know it is the
	>>systematic application of research to the expansion of capital's
	>>powers. It  wasn't always like that, nor does it have to be.
	>>
	>> And, as usual Steve, you evade the main point: that postmodernist
	>>relativism plays into the hands of Hindu and other nationalisms.
	>>
	>> It's been pretty well argued, in fact, that postmodernism itself is
	>>'the dominant western idea': the cultural logic of disorganized
	>>capitalism (Jameson, Anderson) (almost past its use-by date now though).
	>>
	>> Mervyn

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