Date: Fri, 5 Jul 1996 04:32:13 -0600
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-marx.econ.utah.edu>
Subject: Economic field theory




Rahul, I did not say that *science* is merely empirical monism.  I
said that *positivism* is a "mixture of empiricism and monism which
nowadays passes as science".  This was an unfortunate formulation.  I
should perhaps have said, positivism is a "mixture of empiricism and
monism which nowadays passes as the correct interpretation of what
scientists do."  It was not a critique of science but a critique of
positivism.  In the positivist world outlook, which is shared by many
scientists although it is in contradiction to what they do as
scientists, the world lacks "depth" (this is the "empiricist" part of
it), and this "flat" world is governed by just one kind of lawfulness
(this is the "monist" part of it).


I believe you that you wouldn't want to say that reductions of
higher-order to lower-order sciences "are always possible in
principle."  But I disagree with the reasons why you wuld not want to
say it.  You would not want to say it because it is a too sweeping
statement, and because you think one cannot know this kind of thing.
Bhaskar claims that one can infer, from the fact that science is
possible, that the world is stratified, i.e., governed by different
sets of laws that arise on different levels and which are not
reducible to each other.  Of course, some are reducible, chemistry
is reducible to physics, but others are not.  Most importantly,
societies are not reducible to individuals.  The claim that this can
or should be done is pro-capitalist ideology.



     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---