Science from a Marxist POV?

[RadioRaheem84]

I've ordered John Bellamy Foster's book on the environment and Richard Levin's Brilliant article in Monthly Review on why programs fail (it's because they're dictated by corporate capital and the free market paradigm).

I was wondering if there was such a thing as scientists with a Marxist and or class perspective. I know it is ridiculous to assume this but I was wondering if anyone recommended any books that help laymen such as myself understand the basics of science in such a way that Marx and other Marxists helped me untangle and demystify economics and the social sciences.

Is there anything like that in science?

[mikelepore]

A Marxist perspective may help person with social sciences, but I don't think it has any relation to physical science and life sciences.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RR84:


I was wondering if there was such a thing as scientists with a Marxist and or class perspective. I know it is ridiculous to assume this but I was wondering if anyone recommended any books that help laymen such as myself understand the basics of science in such a way that Marx and other Marxists helped me untangle and demystify economics and the social sciences.

Is there anything like that in science?

Unfortunately, most scientists who are Marxists, if they write about science, write utter tripe since their ideas have been compromised by dialectical materialism.

There are, however, good histories of science written by Marxists, or from a Marxist perspective. Check these out:

Conner, C. (2005), A People's History Of Science. Miners, Midwives And "Low Mechanicks" (Nation Books).

Hadden, R. (1994), On The Shoulders Of Merchants (State University of New York Press).

Freudenthal, G. (1986), Atom And Individual In The Age Of Newton. On The Genesis Of The Mechanistic World View (Reidel).

And the classic:

Bernal, J. (1969), Science In History, Four Volumes (Penguin).

The best book on the philosophy of science from a sort of Marxist angle is:

Miller, R. (1987), Fact And Method (Princeton University Press).

But if you are new to Philosophy, you might find it rather difficult.

Other than the work of Steven Jay Gould (who also wrote from a sort of Marxist angle about Biology) there's the following:

Dupré, J. (2001), Human Nature And The Limits Of Science (Oxford University Press).

--------, (2002), Humans And Other Animals (Oxford University Press).

--------, (2003), Darwin's Legacy. What Evolution Means Today (Oxford University Press).

There's also the work of Elliott Sober, who is a Marxist, but this tends not to come across in his writing on science.

Sober, E. (1993a), The Nature Of Selection. Evolutionary Theory In Philosophical Focus (University of Chicago Press).

--------, (1993b), The Philosophy Of Biology (Oxford University Press).

--------, (1994a) (ed.), Conceptual Issues In Evolutionary Biology (MIT Press).

--------, (1994b), From A Biological Point Of View (Cambridge University Press).

Sober, E., and Wilson, D. (1998), Unto Others. The Evolution And Psychology Of Unselfish Behaviour (Harvard University Press).

Some of his work can be accessed at his website:

http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/

Finally, check out Phil Gasper's articles over at the International Socialist Review:

http://www.isreview.org/

Many are about science, and they are very easy to follow. Do a search at that site. Also check this out:

Gasper, P. (1997), 'Bookwatch: Marxism And Science (http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj79/bookwatc.htm)', International Socialism, 79, pp.137-71.

Hope that helps!

[Vanguard1917]

I've ordered John Bellamy Foster's book on the environment and Richard Levin's Brilliant article in Monthly Review on why programs fail (it's because they're dictated by corporate capital and the free market paradigm).

I thought we were talking about Marxists. Foster's/Monthly Review's eco-Malthusian nonsense has nothing in common with Marxism.

[bcbm]

I thought we were talking about Marxists. Foster's/Monthly Review's eco-Malthusian nonsense has nothing in common with Marxism.

and the op didn't say it did, in fact they asked about marxist scientists in the next paragraph, making it clear they don't consider either of those two sources marxist.

but i suppose you would miss an opportunity to whine about "eco-malthusian nonsense" if you practiced basic reading comprehension.

[Vanguard1917]

and the op didn't say it did, in fact they asked about marxist scientists in the next paragraph, making it clear they don't consider either of those two sources marxist.

Actually, Foster and his magazine Monthly Review describe themselves as Marxist. So it would only be natural for the OP to assume that they in fact are Marxist.

[Jolly Red Giant]

I was wondering if there was such a thing as scientists with a Marxist and or class perspective. I know it is ridiculous to assume this but I was wondering if anyone recommended any books that help laymen such as myself understand the basics of science in such a way that Marx and other Marxists helped me untangle and demystify economics and the social sciences.

Is there anything like that in science?
Ignoring Rosa's anti-dialectics rant -

Scientific research can be conducted either consciously or sub-consciously using the Marxist method.

In terms of reading some stuff - to give you an idea of the approach - I would suggest reading the following two books with an open mind. Starting with the book by Alan Woods

http://www.marxist.com/rircontents.htm

And then reading the reply by Peter Mason

http://marxist.net/sciphil/reasoninrevolt/index.html

[Hit The North]

Scientific research can be conducted either consciously or sub-consciously using the Marxist method.

How can one use the Marxist method (or any method, come to that) in an unconscious way?

Also, what is the "Marxist method" of physics, chemistry or biology?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Jolly Red Face:


Ignoring Rosa's anti-dialectics rant -

Ah, yet another mystic who can't defend the faith, but who has to become abusive...


Scientific research can be conducted either consciously or sub-consciously using the Marxist method.

I note you failed to give any examples.

And 'Reason in Revolt' [RIRE] is a joke! I have pulled it apart here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2004.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2007.htm

The other book you link to is far better, but highly repetitive (it keeps making the same point over and over about RIRE). Even so, it commits all of the usual mistakes fans of the 'dialectic' generally make (see the above links).

[ckaihatsu]

A Marxist perspective may help person with social sciences, but I don't think it has any relation to physical science and life sciences.


Marxists (and everyone) should familiarize themselves with *nonlinear* dynamics throughout *any* area of study, because many empirical / natural / societal dynamics take place *among* a collection of *many* similar participants in a larger whole, as with people in a society.

In this way we *can* compare studies in the humanities-oriented fields to those in the more technical-oriented fields, because of this similarity of massive parallelism. (Perhaps we could make comparisons from the trajectory of (social) historical development to that of natural-selection-based *evolutionary* development -- just not social Darwinism, though.)

I even made a continuum not too long ago that shows certain dynamical similarities, according to scale, from the humanities across to the technical -- this dichotomy has for too long been an absolute *schism* in academia.


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

http://i47.tinypic.com/j9269k.jpg





Chaos theory

Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, physics, economics, biology, biochemistry, and philosophy studying the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behaviour is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.[3] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Chaotic behavior can be observed in many natural systems, such as the weather.[4]

[...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory





Complex systems

Complex systems is the subject of a diverse variety of sciences and professional practice methods.

[...]

Such systems are used to model processes in computer science, biology, economics, physics and many other fields. It is also called complex systems theory, complexity science, study of complex systems, sciences of complexity, non-equilibrium physics, and historical physics. A variety of abstract theoretical complex systems is studied as a field of mathematics.

The key problems of complex systems are difficulties with their formal modeling and simulation. From such a perspective, in different research contexts complex systems are defined on the basis of their different attributes. Since all complex systems have many interconnected components, the science of networks and network theory are important aspects of the study of complex systems. A consensus regarding a single universal definition of complex system does not yet exist.

[...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems





Complexity theory and organizations

[...]

Complex adaptive systems (CAS) are contrasted with ordered and chaotic systems by the relationship that exists between the system and the agents which act within it. In an ordered system the level of constraint means that all agent behaviour is limited to the rules of the system. In a chaotic system the agents are unconstrained and susceptible to statistical and other analysis. In a CAS, the system and the agents co-evolve; the system lightly constrains agent behaviour, but the agents modify the system by their interaction with it.

CAS approaches to strategy seek to understand the nature of system constraints and agent interaction and generally takes an evolutionary or naturalistic approach to strategy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_theory_and_organizations





Connectionism

Connectionism is a set of approaches in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, that models mental or behavioral phenomena as the emergent processes of interconnected networks of simple units. There are many forms of connectionism, but the most common forms use neural network models.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionism





Fractal

A fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole,"[1] a property called self-similarity.

[...]

Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms). Natural objects that are approximated by fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, snow flakes, various vegetables (cauliflower and broccoli), and animal coloration patterns.

[...]

Chaotic dynamical systems are sometimes associated with fractals. Objects in the phase space of a dynamical system can be fractals (see attractor). Objects in the parameter space for a family of systems may be fractal as well.

[...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals

[Jolly Red Giant]

Ah, yet another mystic who can't defend the faith, but who has to become abusive...
To be honest Rosa - it has nothing to do with 'defending the faith' and everything to do with not being the slightest bit interested in responding to a wannabe academic with illusions of granduer who thinks that they have dismantled the foremost ideological formulation of marxism. - and getting embroiled in a long-winded and ultimately futile effort to demonstrate the dominance of dialectical materialism to someone who is so convinvced they are right that if you smacked them on the face with an iron bar they would be convinced you were kissing them.



I note you failed to give any examples.
I don't need to - Peter Mason has done so already


And 'Reason in Revolt' [RIRE] is a joke!
Actually it is a quite serious if flawed work.


I have pulled it apart here:
Illusions of granduer again


How can one use the Marxist method (or any method, come to that) in an unconscious way?
People apply dialectics everyday of the week during their lives without ever realising it. It is part of the thought processes that individuals engage in when they are considering many aspects of their lives. The challange is to be able to consciously apply dialectical materialism in a consistant and systematic way. In my experience of over the last 30 years of political activity I have witnessed only one individual that I am aware of that was able to apply dialectical materialism in a conscious, consistant and systematic way.

[Hit The North]

In my experience of over the last 30 years of political activity I have witnessed only one individual that I am aware of that was able to apply dialectical materialism in a conscious, consistant and systematic way.

Who was that?

[ckaihatsu]

Incidentally, speaking of science, I just posted a diagram called 'Consciousness, A Material Definition.' It uses the two dimensions of time and scale to posit consciousness as a socially determined dynamic within a cognitive dissonance framework of three separate axes.

It's at the following thread and also at an external link:


Consciousness, A Material Definition

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1758680&postcount=28

http://i46.tinypic.com/24fwswi.jpgwi.jpg

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JRG:


To be honest Rosa - it has nothing to do with 'defending the faith' and everything to do with not being the slightest bit interested in responding to a wannabe academic with illusions of granduer who thinks that they have dismantled the foremost ideological formulation of marxism. - and getting embroiled in a long-winded and ultimately futile effort to demonstrate the dominance of dialectical materialism to someone who is so convinvced they are right that if you smacked them on the face with an iron bar they would be convinced you were kissing them.

It most certainly has, since you begin by insulting me rather than addressing what I have posted here. And you compound this with the above added insults, like almost every other dialectical mystic I have debated with over the last 25 years, and here at RevLeft.


wannabe academic with illusions of granduer

What is your evidence I want to be an academic?

Oh wait, you don't have any.


dismantled the foremost ideological formulation of marxism

Well, unless you can show otherwise (some hope!), it remains demolished.


effort to demonstrate the dominance of dialectical materialism to someone who is so convinvced they are right that if you smacked them on the face with an iron bar they would be convinced you were kissing them.

In other words, you have chickened out, like the other mystics here (and on other boards) have. No surprise there then.


I don't need to - Peter Mason has done so already

I have read that book, and must have missed them. Remind me what they were.


Actually it is a quite serious if flawed work.

In fact, it's just flawed. Especially the chapter on Formal Logic. [Shall I post several of their serious errors and screw ups for you? Except, if you think that RIRE is 'serious' book, you probably know no logic (other than that which you have picked up from other books on this 'theory').]


Illusions of granduer again

If so, you should find it easy to show where I go wrong.

Oh wait, you can't...


People apply dialectics everyday of the week during their lives without ever realising it. It is part of the thought processes that individuals engage in when they are considering many aspects of their lives. The challenge is to be able to consciously apply dialectical materialism in a consistent and systematic way. In my experience of over the last 30 years of political activity I have witnessed only one individual that I am aware of that was able to apply dialectical materialism in a conscious, consistent and systematic way.

You could also argue they're all 'unconscious Buddhists', or 'unconscious Christians', too; there's about the same amount of evidence in their favour.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Oh wait,

Yawn :closedeyes: :closedeyes:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JRG:


Yawn

Yes that certainly proves you aren't a scaredy cat.:lol:

And we are still waiting for your evidence that I want to be an academic...

[MarxSchmarx]

I've ordered John Bellamy Foster's book on the environment and Richard Levin's Brilliant article in Monthly Review on why programs fail (it's because they're dictated by corporate capital and the free market paradigm).

I was wondering if there was such a thing as scientists with a Marxist and or class perspective. I know it is ridiculous to assume this but I was wondering if anyone recommended any books that help laymen such as myself understand the basics of science in such a way that Marx and other Marxists helped me untangle and demystify economics and the social sciences.

Is there anything like that in science?

Yes. Levins and Lewontin's "Dialectical Biologist". It basically tackles issues in population biology from a self-proclaimed "Marxist" perspective by probably the most influential ecologist (Levins) and empirical geneticist (Lewontin) of the last 50 years. The work is hardly systematic and their argument is not exactly what one would call "cogent", but they sketch a broad program for what a Marxist science should look like. And plenty of great quotes, like "whether the cure for cancer is found in molecular mechanisms or in workers taking control over the factories" etc....

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Even so, their sections of dialectics make all the usual mistakes. Levins is also not too good at logic.

Here is what he posted on the internet in response to my request to be told what a 'dialectical contradiction' is:


The following considerations might be helpful:

1. "contradiction", in its etymology "speaking against" was a process unfolding in time, negating a proposition in order to get beyond it.

2. Formal logic removes the temporal dynamic aspect to make it a formal, structural relation.

3. The formal logical statement "implies" is a static, set-theoretic relation but is a detemporalized equivalent to "leads to" (in time).

4. In real systems, variables change (except at equilibrium, a set of measure 0!). That is, A leads to not-A. If there is an eventual equilibrium, this is equivalent to proof by contradiction. In living systems, social systems, eco-systems etc there is permanent change ( A always leads to (implies!) not-A. These may be periodic or chaotic . The terror of early computer programmers was to get into an endless (and expensive) loop, which was equivalent to contradiction in the program.

In formal logic, you may not (but can) hold to contradictory propositions at the same time . In dialectical logic, two propositions may be separately false but jointly true; health is socially determined, and you are responsible for your health. Either one alone can result in passivity but jointly can result in self-care and collective action...

5. You can create formally disjunct mathematical sets, but with real things no division of a whole world into mutually exclusive categories really holds. Environmental/genetic, physical/psychological, biological/social, etc interpenetrate, and furthermore it is when we recognize their interpenetration that we get the exciting new insights.

All of these and other aspects of contradiction make it an important tool in science.

Here is my reply [FL = Formal Logic; DL = Dialectical Logic.]:


In fact, they are no help at all. Here is why:


1. "contradiction", in its etymology "speaking against" was a process unfolding in time, negating a proposition in order to get beyond it.

2. Formal logic removes the temporal dynamic aspect to make it a formal, structural relation.

Well, this is not true of temporal logic, and it is only true in a limited sense of FL itself. After all, even a formal argument 'unfolds in time'. And as we will see below, the 'temporal dynamic' is in fact something DL itself cannot cope with!


3. The formal logical statement "implies" is a static, set-theoretic relation but is a detemporalized equivalent to "leads to" (in time).

There are in fact many branches of FL that do not rely on set theory.



4. In real systems, variables change (except at equilibrium, a set of measure 0!). That is, A leads to not-A. If there is an eventual equilibrium, this is equivalent to proof by contradiction. In living systems, social systems, eco-systems etc there is permanent change ( A always leads to (implies!) not-A. These may be periodic or chaotic . The terror of early computer programmers was to get into an endless (and expensive) loop, which was equivalent to contradiction in the program.

But, what is this "not-A"? Is this propositional negation, predicate negation, predicate term negation? We are left in the dark. And, of course, this use of the negative particle is metaphorical. More on that below.


If there is an eventual equilibrium, this is equivalent to proof by contradiction.

But this is entirely unclear. Proof by contradiction involves the deliberate assumption of a target proposition, alongside others, and the derivation of a contradiction from them. The conclusion is then the propositional negation of the assumed target proposition. Now, how is this in any way analogous to obscure 'dialectical negation'?


A always leads to (implies!) not-A. These may be periodic or chaotic . The terror of early computer programmers was to get into an endless (and expensive) loop, which was equivalent to contradiction in the program.

This is indeed what the dialectical brochure says, but as we are about to see, it all falls apart on close examination. Here is (an edited version of) what I have argued in Essay Seven Part One (references can be found at the end of that Essay):


Surprisingly, DM-theorists (like Hegel, Plekhanov, Lenin and Engels) are decidedly unclear as to whether objects/processes change because of (1) a contradictory relationship between their internal opposites, or because (2) they change into these opposites, or even whether (3) change itself creates such opposites....

As we are about to see, this idea -- that there are such things as "dialectical contradictions" and "unities of opposites" (etc.), which cause change -- presents DM-theorists with some rather nasty dialectical headaches, if interpreted along the lines expressed in the DM-classics.

To see this, let us suppose that object/process A is comprised of two "internal contradictory opposites" O* and O**, and it thus changes as a result.

[The same problems arise if these are viewed as 'external' contradictions, or whether we consider A and not-A. However, as we will see in Essay Eight Part One, 'external' contradictions attract serious difficulties of their own.]

But, O* cannot itself change into O** since O** already exists! If O** didn't already exist then, according to this theory, O* could not change at all, for there would be no opposite to bring that about, and nothing for it to 'struggle' with....

This does not deny change, only that dialectics cannot account for it.

Levins:


In formal logic, you may not (but can) hold to contradictory propositions at the same time . In dialectical logic, two propositions may be separately false but jointly true; health is socially determined, and you are responsible for your health. Either one alone can result in passivity but jointly can result in self-care and collective action...

In that case, of course, they aren't propositions, since, if it is not clear what is being proposed, nothing has been proposed.

I am not sure, however, how the health example is supposed to help.


5. You can create formally disjunct mathematical sets, but with real things no division of a whole world into mutually exclusive categories really holds. Environmental/genetic, physical/psychological, biological/social, etc interpenetrate, and furthermore it is when we recognize their interpenetration that we get the exciting new insight.

This does not seem to be even remotely true. For example, in the real world we can form two entirely and completely disjoint sets quite easily. Here are a few examples: 1) Objects now on Pluto vs objects now at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean; 2) Human beings over seven feet tall vs mice under 50 ounces in weight; 3) Every car produced in Detroit before 1970 vs every jellyfish that lived in the Cretaceous, and so on.

Of course, this might not be what Richard means, but then it is not too clear what he does mean. Nor is it too clear what the obscure term "interpenetrate" means here. Do these categories/sets have sex?

Exception might be taken to that supercilious remark, but until we are told with greater degree of clarity what dialecticians mean by this rather odd word, that is the only response it merits.

[From the context, though, I rather suspect Richard means "overlap" since he is talking about allegedly mutually exclusive sets/categories. But, in that case, "interpenetrate" is just a pretentious way of saying they overlap! However, I am not sure very much Dialectical Superscience can be milked from this rather mundane observation, no matter how many Hermetically-inspired incantations are said over it.]


All of these and other aspects of contradiction make it an important tool in science.

Well, I know that Richard, and Richard Lewontin, try to argue that these are useful in science, but, as we are still unclear what 'dialectical contradictions' are, it is impossible to agree with him/them. And until he/they succeed in making this clear, it is impossible for either of these two Richards to agree with this too!

From here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/replies_to_two_critics.htm