----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, December 31, 2001 5:15 PM Subject: Re: Marxism is a science
>
>
> Ian Murray wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >
> >
> > One of the most articulate and 'controversial' physicists in the
world
> > today, David Deutsch, is a staunch defender of Popper's view of
> > science. A visit to his website beats passing the bong or thinking
> > about Hitchens etc.
>
> Sounds interesting, and I suppose now that you've thrown it out I'm
> hornswoggled into having to visit it. :-)
>
> But pending that visit, I have one more observation on the exchanges
> between Yoshie and C that led up to this. That exchange in effect
> queries what is the foundation for falsifiability? What is the
> foundation for the foundation of falsifiability? ....... We are
moving
> back towards another either/or: Either God or history.
==============
It's not quite that precarious. One of the things that I neglected to mention about Russell, Hegel etc. was that with the paradoxes of set theory and attempts to give them a dynamics in the quest for resolution/managability, the issue of viciuos circles with regards to the issue of foundationalism in epitemology and theories of science was transformed by Russell's student G. Spencer Brown. This ran somewhat parallel with the development of cybernetics and then in the '70's Francisco Varela, having fled Chile, started using GSB's models to map the dynamics of the nervous and immune systems. His work really made trouble for the input/output style of AI modeling and was picked up by Fernando Flores and Terry Winograd one of whom -can't remember- was a Heidegger fan. Anyway, the field of biomathematics has exploded and it's impossible to keep up--go figure. However, Varela's work is rather influential in France where he wound up doing Aids-immune system research. The guy was a genius and appreciated dialectics and really helped move some debates in interesting and profound directions for a biological and *ecologically* motivated epistemology which would be of enormous benefit if more people wrestled with the issues as he framed them. His take on the responsibility of scientists and technology designers is etremely challenging. Recursion leads to virtuous circles...robust maps and maps of maps of metabolisms and other manifestations of cellular and organismic and ecological complexity........
> Right now I have to choose _either_ to read the material at the URL
> below _or_ to finish reading an essay in the current _Milton
Quarterly_
> that just arrived today. I think I'll read the essay on Milton right
now
> and get back to Popper & physics some other time.
>
> Carrol
=========== Yeah, reading physics on new year's eve might hurt a bit.....
Ian