Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 12:57:00 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: RE: reeducation of physicists



Lisa asked, what is a "gherao"? This is an Indian word which I am not 
sure is officially adopted into English (and I am not even sure if this 
is the proper spelling). It means an action of coercive, intimidating 
pressure carried out by a group. It was, according to an old anarchist 
acquaintance of mine, a favored tactic of maoists (Naxalites) in India 
against "class enemies" such as factory foremen--and probably as a 
means of "struggle" against those within their own ranks who exhibited 
revisionist tendencies. Hence the reference to marxism1. So, yes, a 
gherao of scientists would be a means to make them see the light of a 
politically correct DiaMat, or science conforming to "a priori 
philosophy," as you put it.
	In the 19th cent. Marx, Engels (and anarchists too, such as Bakunin) 
tended to see science as a welcome antidote to religious obscurantism. 
Engels's popularizing of the quantity-quality dialectic seemed itself to 
have an almost religious quality, though, as if he believed that the 
triumph of science and materialism in itself would cause capitalism to 
collapse according to a natural law. Some of this tendency was in Marx 
as well. The whole concept of "scientific socialism" was supposed to 
rescue the workers' movement from Fourierist-style utopian daydreaming. 
Yet the 'nonscientific' socialists often had values more genuinely humane 
and creative than that  of the rational and skeptical view of history as 
obeying scientific laws.
	I'm still not sure what meaningful connection exists between 
science and social revolution. Rahul tells us that Kuhn's notions of 
"paradigm" and "revolution" in science are suspect. We have seen the 
horrors of "proletarian science" (Lysenkoism) and of "scientific" racism. 
On the other hand, a gradualist view of Darwinian natural history seems 
to find a political parallel in liberal and social-democratic improvement 
or amelioration of capitalism's (or industrial civilization's) 
shortcomings. To me, a nonscientist, it looks as if more often than not, 
the work that scientists do strengthens the edifice of domination rather 
than undermining it. That's not to say that I think science has to be a bad 
thing. But is it really only a matter of freeing a desirable content, 
whether it be science or productive forces, from an oppressive, 
undesirable form?
	Well, I don't know. In what ways, if any, would science (or the 
organization of knowledge) be carried out differently in a liberated (I 
won't say "socialist") world? Lisa? Rahul? anyone?



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