JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 98-12-31 00:08:53 EST, you write:
>
> << Also, _The Open Philosophy and its Enemies_ by M.Cornforth is a good
> marxist critique of Popper.
> >>
>
> Sam usually talks good sense, but Cornforth is an idiot. --jks
What makes Cornforth an Inspector Clousseau? Being a stalinist does not immediately qualify one as an idiot. Many very intelligent people were stalinists. They had their reasons. I've only read his book on Popper, it seemed to have some useful discussion on the relation between dialectics and formal logic. He also clarifies Popper's arguments and shows that they suffer from the genetic fallacy( Popper was refuting Hegel rather than Marx) and are aimed, at the most part, at a straw man. Serious critics of Marx like John Plamenatz and N.Scott Arnold, from what I've read, do not use Popperian arguments. I learned a lot from Cornforth's collaborator J.D. Bernal. I understand Verso has a collection coming out on Bernal, has anybody read it?
Also, would you throw Kuhn in the social constructivist camp? Seems to me he tried to distance himself from this position in subsequent editions of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and in some of his other writings like the book on Max Planck.
Sam Pawlett.