Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 01:48:06 -0500
From: "Valerie Scatamburlo" <valeries-AT-YorkU.CA>
Subject: Re: one aspect of "modernity"


On Nov 22,  5:56pm, V600A8E6-AT-ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu wrote:
> Subject: Re: one aspect of "modernity"
  
> 
> It is thought that the deployment of terms such as "paradigms," 
> "narratives," "perspectives," "world-views," along with petty-bourgeois 
> idealist trends such as relativism, pluralism, centrisms, etc., deal 
> severe death blows to "scientism."  First of all, most people who launch 
> pseudo-critiques of, say, positivism, don't know the first shit about 
> positivism.  I've asked so many people what it is that they think they 
> are railing against when they think they are demolishing 
> positivism/empiricism and most don't know what the shit they're talking 
> about.  In other words, it's the old strawman bullshit.  These are the 
> same captives of false consciousness who have never read (never mind 
> studied) Marx, Engels and Lenin, but take full liberty to dismiss or 
> demolish what they have said.
> 
	I'm just a bit curious here - among the first to critique positivism
were members of the Frankfurt School (long before the pomo indictments -
which you seem to be referring to).  The Frankfurt School viewed positivsm as
a composite of assorted traditions which supported the development of social
science based on the pattern of inquiry used in the natural sciences and
based ont he methodological tenets of observation and quantification.
Acording to Horkheimer (1972) positivism presented a view of knowledge and
science that stripped both of their critical possibilities.  For Adorno,
Marcuse, Horkheimer and C. Wright Mills (even!) the fetishism of  facts and
the belief in value neutrality represented more than an epistemological error
- such an epistemological framework also served as a form of ideological
hegemony and imbued positivistic rationality with a form of political
conservativism which made it an ideological reinforcement for the status quo.

Am I trying to trash empirical research here - NO - on the contrary - but
perhaps more can be said about this at a later date - my sole intention here
was to point out that all of those who have interrogated positivist
rationality cannot be categorized in a horde of those who don't "know shit"
about positivism, nor can they be mindlessly categorized as suffering from
false consciousness!!!

.  

 
> opposed to "scientism" is confusing THEORY-LADEN investigation with 

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