[Marxism] Wisdom and Society [was: Challenge...]

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Haines Brown 

 

> ^^^^^
> CB: Repeatability of results, is one social requirement of the scientific
> methods. An individual must be checked by others in a social test the
> validity of experimental claims. 

This describes only one method. In "evolutonary sciences" such as
meteorology, cosmology, evolutonary biology, and such social sciencs as
history, one uses the abductive method: start with the observation
of outcomes and use it to generate hypotheses concerning the
potentials in the initial state. In such sciences there is no
laboratory, no experiment, no repeatable results. 

^^^^^^
CB: Yes , also archaeology. However, I disagree that repeatability of
results is not required in the abductive method. Paleontologists have to
have other paleontologists go through an abductive test and see if they get
the same results. 



> For Marxism the scientific test of theory is practice. This implies that
> that science has theory, and that it needs to be tested. Practice is
> experimentation and industry. 

Oh, really? 

^^^^^
CB: Yes really !

^^^^

I hesitate to disagree with an old saw, but if history is
emergent, outcomes are by definition to a degree unpredictable, and so
there is no test of theory with practice.

^^^^^
CB: Surely you know that Engels was fully conscious of history as emergencce
when he developed this. _Dialectics of Nature_ emphasizes emergence,
qualitative change into quantitative change and vica versa. For example,
even the solar system has a history, i.e. had emergence. No contradiction
between practice as a test of theory and change, including emergent
qualities. !

In fact, Engels says we don't understand something if we don't know how to
make it, which is to say cause something new to "emerge".

The thing is change is not such that we never step into the same river
twice. All is not flux. Without formal logic there can be no fixity or
precision of thought.

And in human history , the thing _is_ to change it, to cause a new quality
of human society to emerge. The test of practice in history is whether we
cause a new society to emerge.

With your reference to abduction, we might add "thought experiments" to
experiment ( laboratory) and industry. The abductive sciences you refer to
use the thought experimental mode.

Einstein used thought experiments , too.

Marx used abstraction to substitute for experiment, as he mentions in
_Capital_. "Abstraction" is sort of "thought experiment".

^^^^^^^


Another approach to this
same conclusion is that of Sebastiano Timpanaro, On Materialism
(London, 1970). What, if anything, does test Marxism is a challenging
question. 

^^^^
CB: The emergence of social revolutions , such as Russia 1917, are Marxism
passing what tests it.

^^^^^^

It is my assumption (a point I'd hestitate to try to prove), that
Marxism exposes the inner mechanism of captitalism, which hopefully
provides insight into how the system works - its limits and
potentials. But this is a rather abstract understanding that leaves
out inumerable and very important empirical specifics such as evidence
of the depth of the system's contradiction, the empirical specifics of
its mediating institutions (superstructure and forces of production),
and a lot else. What determines the outcome of a process is both its
inner mechanism of change (mode of production) and its empirical
specifics. I am forced to conclude either that there is no test at
all, or it is a test that is rather vague and difficult to measure
such as human power or human liberation, and what is tested is not
just an abstract theory, but a struggle by specific people in a
specific set of circumstances with certain potentials and
limitations. In biological evolution, the remarkable longevity of the
cockroach or shark is not due to any inherent superiority of their
genes. 

^^^^^^^^^^

CB: Agree. Adaptive fitness is _always_ in terms relative to a specific
environment.  If the environment changes, then a given phenotype ( and
through it a genotype) that is well adapted may become unfit in the new
environment. For example , the dinosaurs species when their environment
drastically changed suddenly. 

As to Marxism, the test passing is the revolutions that have taken place.
Their diminution is dialectical ebb and flow, something Marxism generally
accepts, but it doesn't rebut the occurrence of the Marxist revolutions,
even as they haven't been "textbook". The end of capitalism is a zigzag
process, like all others, but the first revolutions are a first level
test-pass for Marxism.

Also,the difference between human history and natural history is that the
former involves voluntary wills with aims, though they are not ultimately
determinative, they are part of the process not there in natural history.





 Haines Brown
         KB1GRM
         ET1(SS) U.S.S. Irex SS-482       



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