File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 402


From: brumback-AT-ncgate.newcollege.edu
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 21:14:53 -0800
Subject: Re: M-I: Ecology and "value free" Marxism


>Nancy:
>
>Now wait a minute, just hold on. 
>
>Science is, always has been, always must be, a search for truth. Opposites
>of "truth" are "falsehoods," "lies." Also "mystical nonsense,"
>"obfuscation," "ignorance." Is that what we socialists want? I hardly think
>so.
>
James, I hope you have (but I guess you haven't) read The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions by T.S. Kuhn. This was a ground-breaking work in the
history of science. Kuhn has greatly influenced many areas of the humanities
and social sciences. He shows that "truth" and "ignorance" are always within
a paradigmatic context. Descartes, who when he was younger thought Aristotle
had discovered "truth," decided later that Aristotle's ideas were
"ignorance." Scientific "truth" depends not on the scientific method, but on
the entire context of research decisions: what scientists will study, how
they will study it, and what answers will be acceptable.

>Do we need to "criticize the 'value-free' stance of modern science?" 
>Yes but also no. When you are embarked on the attempt to solve a scientific
>problem you have to put values aside: otherwise your solution to the
>problem won't work. Your vaccine won't cure the disease. Your bridge will
>fall down.

James, I like your "yes and no" much better than your "yes or no." But many
value-based considerations color even the question of whether "the vaccine
will cure the disease," etc. Take the case of birth-control technology. Who
was it tested on? Poor women in the 3rd World who lacked adequate nutrition
and medical supervision? Did they know that they were being used as test
subjects? And for what purpose is the technology intended? For 3rd World
governments to administer to poor women in order to receive money from the
World Bank for "development," i.e., turning the lands of poor people into
reservoirs, quarries, highways, and manufacturing sites, while at the same
time perpetuating the racist myth that the "overpopulation" of the black and
brown people of the world is responsible for environmental degradation, and
not capitalist exploitation? And who will profit from this technology? Well,
the international pharmaceutical corporations, of course.
>
>A scientist is a member of a society and a class within that society. His
>or her values will usually,  and to some extent, reflect that social and
>class (and gender, and ethnic...) position.  His or her values will
>condition the choice of problem to be studied, the use of his or her work,
>etc. In this way values strongly condition science. 

I echo Mark -- scientists are a class? My brother is a son of the working
class who attended college with the assistance of the GI bill, as did many
children of the US working class. He is now a chemical engineer doing
research for the ruling class, i.e., on chemical methods to clean up
oil-spills, funded by grants from the government. If it were up to me, I
would stop the water transport of oil and put the money into renewable
energy research. But quite a lot of money for research goes through the
government, and how it is used isn't up to me because all of my
representatives in this representative democracy under which we live do not
represent me; they represent the ruling class. Quite a few layers of values
there.

The implication is that
>we have to use science for purposes of liberation: the values of socialism.
>
I agree with that.

>"Marx was an advocate of modern science, but then so was
>everyone in the 19th century"... "the so-called "scientific method" was an
>essential part of the capitalist revolution."  
>
>The scientific method will have to be part of the socialist revolution,
>too. The scientific method is nothing more than the rigorous attempt to
>solve an empirical problem, historical, social-scientific,
>natural-scientific, practical, political, whatever.

What? Help! Problems of history can be solved empirically? How, when all the
available facts have already been subjectively selected as worthy of
recording? As far as the other areas of empirically-solvable problems you
listed, I remember several years ago, there were about 250 monk seals left
in the Mediterrean. Researchers were trying to get money to prove that this
species, once having a very much larger population, was being killed off
because of supposed water pollution. But what did the scientific method
prescribe for proving the supposition? Subjecting a goodly number of the 250
to further pollution to kill them off, so it could be shown that a
unpolluted control group would live. This was a case where scientific dogma
was the primary concern, not saving the species.
>
>"Bacon, Galileo, etc. transformed the medieval view of nature as
>interconnected with man and society into a living organismic whole into the
>modern view of nature as inert, lifeless matter in motion -- this was the
>mechanical philosophy of the philosophers of early modern science, who
>removed all sensual properties from nature and reduced it to something that
>could be known only through quantitative properties. Thus, they felt that
>through observation and experimentation, "value-free" knowledge could be
>obtained."
>
>Do we really want to return to a medieval view of nature? Do we want to
>imbue rocks with "sensual properties?" Do we want to stop counting the
>quantitative properties of the things we study? The answer, I think, is: we
>want to look at the world in a way that recognizes its holistic, systemic
>qualities; we want to treat the world of living things as possessing
>inherent value just as we treat the humasn world that way. But we don't
>want to retire to mysticism and ignorance. 
>
I didn't say I wanted to return to the medieval view of nature. See, that's
how your either-or, true-false thinking leads you into false assumptions!
The medieval view of nature worked for the medieval period, just as the
modern view of nature works for the modern period. If as a species we
survive long enough to create a socialist period, our science will reflect
the interrelatedness of humans with nature. It will see humans as part of
the natural world, supported by it, and not having the right to do whatever
we want with it. It will recognize the inherent bias in all observation, and
work with the human element as part of the scientific process. Plus, its
purpose will be to benefit all of the people of the world, and not just
those few it benefits now, the very small number who have way too many
benefits already. Plus what you said.

"The objectification of nature was also essential to the objectification of
>native peoples, who had their own science, not modern science, and were
>therefore regarded as "less than" and "other": in this way, their lands
>could be appropriated and they could be enslaved and worked to death
>without stirring up any great moral dilemma.  "
>
>In my view, it was the utterly subjective view of native peoples, utterly
>ignorant of their true ("objective") character, which was central to their
>oppression. 

By objectification, I meant the process of turning someone or something into
"other," not-self, not-human. It is impossible for human beings to view
anything in any way other than subjectively. But we don't have to objectify
other people as we view them subjectively.

There could not have been objective, scientific understanding
>of native and all non-Western peoples -- an impossibility in imperialist
>capitalism. 
>
Why not? I don't think it was impossible; I think it was a choice congruent
with certain goals.

>"[Contemporary] biology and genetics....serve the ruling class."  Is the
>answer, then, that we should have no biology and genetics?
>
Again, your either-or thinking. 

>I work in a (sort of) science, geography. I try to use it for purposes of
>liberation from capitalist oppression and exploitation. Am I deluded?

We should all strive to use whatever knowledge or resources we have for the
purpose of liberation from capitalist oppression and exploitation, IMO.
>
>By the way, I treat these matters in my book, *The Colonizer's Model of the
>World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocenrtric History*. I try to show
>(pp. 30-43) that there is a perfectly rational reason why utterly
>irrational ideas about the world have tenaciously retained their hegemony
>over "western" thought. The reason is called "capitalism."
>
The ruling ideas of society are the ideas of the ruling class! Your book
sounds great! Who is the publisher? I'll write and try to get an examination
copy.
>
Yours in the struggle,

Nancy Brumback



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