File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9803, message 2


Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 10:27:50 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: M-TH: relativism


In message <199803010520.VAA11104-AT-ncgate.newcollege.edu>,
brumback-AT-ncgate.newcollege.edu writes
>Dear James,
>
>If science is not an ideology, how can the ideologues "lay claim" to it?

How could they not! Is nature an ideology? The ideologues lay claim to
it - but I still think that there is something there underneath the
overlay of fascist, neo-classical and environmentalist ideologies of
nature.

> To
>admit that nature can be viewed one way from one perspective and another way
>from another perspective does not mean that you have to give in to
>"left-liberal, dreary, post-modernism relativism."

I entirely agree with that statement (making me wonder if there is
something you mean that is not quite explicated). Nature can be the
subject of scientific, poetic or even moral approaches (to name a few) -
and these should be examiend in their own right.


> Dialectical materialism
>teaches that everything in nature has its opposite. For a long time, some
>people thought that light was a wave, and some thought it was a particle.
>Finally, agreement was reached that it was both.
>
>I'm using nature here only as an analogy for discussing dialectical
>materialism, not as a proof for it! And there are many such analogies in the
>philosophy of science. Re: the presence of an objective world, for example,
>there may be the object, but there is also the subject. The observer and the
>observed form a dialectical unity: each is related to the other in some deep
>way.

I share the widespread view that Engels' dialectics of nature is a
crackpot over-extension of the dialectical method (that only usefully
describes the man-nature relationship and the man-man relationship but
not relations within nature, if you'll excuse my gendered terminology).

On the quantum physics conundrum of how to experiment without changing
the object of investigation, I take the view that more has been made of
that problem philosophically than it deserved. Oberver and observed are
in a dialectical unity, for as long as the experiment continues, and no
longer. When it is over nature subsists without man, and moreover,
within the relation of experiment it is the object of investigation that
is logically prior, while the experiment is merely contingent.

>
>If scientists are split on the topic of global warming, that doesn't mean
>that science is not an ideology. It just means that we have to rely on
>something besides science in this matter -- like common sense. If we don't
>know for sure that greenhouse gas emissions are not hurting the earth, then
>why do we continue to do it? 

The precautionary principle is a dog's breakfast of logic. If you do not
know for sure that your life will not set an unforseen chain of events
in motion that will end the world, it is not common sense to commit
suicide. To estimate the parameters of what can rationally be called
dangerous, and what mere speculation does suggest a look at the
scientific evidence. Now you can say the evidence goes one way, but
that's not my reading of it.

>Well, because of capitalism, of course. If
>science has more than one answer to an issue, we need only to go with the
>one that goes with the earth.

I really think you need to unpack that rhetorical device, the Earth. It
pops up with all the force of blind intuition in your argument, as the
unexamined absolute that it is. 'Saving the planet' is a superhero's
cliche: the planet is indifferent to its material form. If 'the earth'
is a stand-in term for human society then we have the possibility of
debate, but not when you invoke a quasi-religious absolute.

>
>And how can you say that science has no position on modern industry? Modern
>science helped to create modernism itself. Modern industry is totally
>supported by modern science, and in return, sustains modern science.

Certainly science is parasitic upon industry, and vice versa, as a
social practice. But science is not obliged to find in favour of
industry, as would be confirmed by the Kyoto summit (were it not for the
fact that the outline treaty were drafted not by scientists but by
bureaucrats).

Sorry to make you sigh
-- 
James Heartfield


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