I have stressed the ontological nature of a given science, that is its explainations (not always evenly developed) belong to single logical system of explaination. It is not as if any explanation of the world will do - far from it.
This view of science abstracts away method, not that this irrelevant but that it is historically contingent and not sufficient to explain why science is special compared to other means of understanding the world.
Afterall the point must be why science gives us such a reliable material conception of the world (despite the bits it gets wrong from time to time). For the purpose of this we also have to abstract away the errors and shortcomings of a given science (products of its state of development but not in essence what it is).
What we are left with is a materialist understanding of the world (that part viewed by a particular science). The next question is whether this stands as just separate parts (ie the world is either flat or round) or that the parts can only be understood ontologically (within the overall logic that defines the science).
My point on this is that the fragment (the world is round) is by itself meaningless and stands just as any other opinion (ie the world is flat - as empirically provable as the contrary opinion, perhaps more so by the common means available to us).
We tend not to see the ontological (the dependcies of one fragment or theory on another, and another until their is a system of such theories) because we are fairly familiar with science and more or less have this ontology in the back of our minds.
Hence we can do an extra-ordinary thing, we can know the earth is round without knowing the full compliment of proofs or even the details of theories, we can even lacking a full scientific background judge with fair accuracy what is and is not a scientific explanation at least in common everyday activities. What is interesting is that this is not an act of faith, or even an ideology as such for such knowledge comes to us within a context that is rational in its existence.
Now in some respects this does not differ that much from normal religious outlooks which can include all soughts of explanations of a great variety of human questions - so how is one different from another? Those acquainted with theology know that at its best it has a ontological structure and often can follow rigorous logic.
The next key which differentiates logical ontologies is what I have called the definition of the subject matter, but may also be called the first premise of the science.
A theological ontology begins with the concept of God (or Godhead or spirit), a part of it could well be the proof that God exists but the reality is that the proof rests on the assumption.
Science appears not very different except in its choice of its premise. All science shares one type of premise - the subject matter begins not with a object-for-us (an object which exists for some human need or desire - an object which exists as an extension of social life) but an object-in-itself (that is an object viewed as a thing-in-itself).
You can play all soughts of word games with this - for instance a religious outlook begins with an object's meaning for us, while a scientific outlook begins with trying to understanding the object's meaning as such. Obviously all is filtered in human terms and the point of the excercise would be useless unless this approach also led us to being able to extend our social control over the natural world.
In terms of human understanding the step from seeing the world as extensions of ourselves to seeing ourselves in a world seems almost a quibble, but it is a pretty big leap and one which I would say is only possible when humans have been alienated to a degree that they are able to glimpse themselves as objects almost devoid of subjective-being, at such a point it becomes relatively easy to see that other things are quite independant of our consciousness, but more to the point we know by our social existence this to be true.
In this sense science becomes a technique of knowing, one which has very special powers and one completely denuded of the religious idealist bent which has for so long supplied human needs in this area.
It then is no suprise that logic and rationality were first perfected within a religious (idealist) framework, yet all they revealed was how things can be logically apprehended, it was up to science working on a different basis to actually comprehend them as knowledge which is rational and ontological (the theories are not bits which are stuck together nor as in the case of religion attempting to covert such ideas, theories merely modified to fit an idealist outlook).
The theory as an ontological system of rational understanding based on a materialist premise is science and uniquely so. Or as Hegel said all that is real is rational and all that is rational is real (fitted to such an onotological system this makes perfect sense for the motion of science as self-development).
The end product (the ontological body of theories in self-development) is the science and within each sphere a particular fragment of theory only really has meaning within the ontology - take it away from this and it is just an opinion, one, which outside the context, can appear very counter-inuitive and easily disproved.
For instance: consider all the explaination required to show someone who lives in some isolated place that the world is actually a sphere and in short you are forced to reproduce almost the whole science just to get this one point accross - that is the recipient does not here just an opinion, but ends up knowing the actual shape of the earth on which s/he stands.
In a nutshell this example makes almost the entire point. Consider what is involved in imparting a knowledge of anyone of the sciences, you may teach it on faith, that is one fragmentary theory followed by another one - but the student has to place all this is some form of related wholes (we are not computer banks good at keeping discreet data). Niether the teacher nor the student need be aware that they are imparting and comphrending an ontology - but the end result is the same, grasping a science (however badly) means creating a singular concept of related parts - we might have great difficulty in expressing it, but we could not hold it in our minds otherwise.
One aspect of how well this can work is that we can use it to conclude 2 and 2 = 4 without ever having come across 4 before, but rely just on the logical relations that are the science. How often have you called up some scientific understanding to solve some practical problem, a problem which is no great mystery but was a mystery to you before its solution - insofar as the solution was consciously derived no-doubt you pulled accross you mind the body of scientific thought connected with the problem, it may seem that you are remembering but in fact you a recreating the science based on a set of relationships which keep some remembered fragments in place (and much to our distress dispense with others from our heads altogether) but follow a logic that allows many not so well remembered ideas to be swiftly blocked in.
What you are in fact pulling past your brain is an abstract aprehension of the objective world and it is this that gives you the power to jump to a conclusion and find an answer - at such a point you are using science but not practicing it (not adding to it or testing it) that is the bit that gets left out of the science as a method approach - its practical application which is so different from its construction but relies heavily on the end product (the ontological understanding).
I must at this point apologise to the list as I really would like to further bash away on this topic until we can come full circle and look at Historical Materialism's place within science - but unfortunately for a week I have to depart.
Suffice it to say that the ontological understanding of what science is has some very interesting things to say about Historical Materialism and some of the errors commonly associated with it.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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--- Message Received --- From: "Scott Martens" <sm at kiera.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 23:04:14 +0100 Subject: Re: Marxism and "Science" (Was: Comic Book Marxism)