I think most engaged in this discussion agree that we are not talking about a science like chemistry. But some of us would not like to limit science to induction and experimentation (and post-Popperian pursuits in published articles and ponderous review processes at universities), since these can not account for the 'progress' of science and most especially technology (urban planning, architecture, public health, buggy software, the Internet) or holistic fields (ecology).
Most structuralist analysis of society, culture, language etc. was not experimental, yet at the time it was being done it was thought of as serious inquiry, and yes, science. This is why Althusser emphasized the later Marx as structuralist. Structuralist meant social or cultural scientist.
Chomsky and Halle set about to revolutionize structural linguistics (though the brand they inherited and reacted to was quite behaviourist), but had no experimental program in mind whatsoever. Pinker claims to have found experimental support for Chomsky's theories in laboratory psycholinguistics, but accepting his claims depend largely on swallowing his extended arguments about the 'nature' of language ability and the 'nature' of mind--many aren't convinced, including Chomsky (besides, which theory did he find support for?).
Scott writes:
>Lacking
>any generally defensible methodological definition of science, we can't
>separate the science from the non-science. It's too easy to find useful
>knowledge that doesn't come from whatever methodological choices you make.
Exactly, like the vulcanization of rubber which owed as much to homecooking and playing with fire as pure chemistry, or Edison's light bulb and all the trial and error and hunches he worked with.
I think this is where post-Kuhnian philosohy of science is at, JKS's protests notwithstanding, but for the most part, philosophy of science is not where most people, including 'scientists', are at. So for most people and their beliefs, it's not really any sort of quandary at all.
Back to Justin:
> A lot of Marxism is like that, >because it knows in advance thae >results
it
>wants, and doesn't really want >testing, just "confirmation."
Hmm...sounds like the pharmaceutial industry and its latest 'cure' for something. And one has to wonder what testing beyond 'goddamn, this one flew higher than the last one did, for sure' applied to early rocketry.
Yet Justin's 'scientists' (he knows them when he sees them because they are so busy doing what they do) do 'hard' science and don't get ridiculed like the hapless editors and EAB readers who fell for the Sokol hoax (most editors at journals go by the decisions of their EAB, do they not? and most scholars are thought to put forth their work in earnest, are they not?).
Next, Greg S.:
>Goulder proposes a split in >Marxism's history between the >"scientific"
structuralist thread >(Althusser) and the Marxism as a >"critique"/
hegealian thread >(Lukas). As far as it goes it seems >fair enough,
but another way of >expression would be between an >orthodox
(Kantian/structuralism) >and a dissident (Hegelian/dialectic) >approach. The
latter very much >within the mainstream (despite the >political theoretical
differences) >and the latter as a cautious >sometimes overly abstract and
>politically tendentious school.
All respects to Goulder, but I suppose Althusser saw this before Goulder. Althusser read the later Marx (the less Hegelian Marx) as being scientific in a structuralist sense--the first structuralist of political economy, if you will (Foucault also gets around to this, too, seeing the emergence of 19th sociology as linked to analysis of political economy).
And Althusser himself was at pains to appear anti-Hegelian (more like anti-Sartre though). The irony is that later Althusser himself comes back to a new appreciation of Hegel, but in the process perhaps ends up 'dematerializing' materialism.
One question to ask is (I think it's been asked already in the thread): is Marx's materialism like the materialism of Justin's sciences (like chemistry).
Both Marx and Althusser flounder with a religious materialism, not a scientific one (or at least as some social thinkers who do not wish to change the world but rather ascertain how it works might argue). But any materialist change agents who succeed are efficacious technologists of society--they change it, materially effect it through thought and word--without really understanding what they do in a scientific sense.
And finally JKS again:
> I am familiar with the social >critique of science lit, which is >mostly
scientifically ignorant: after >the Sokal hoax I am surprised >those people
dare to show their >faces. I do not regard science as >above critique or
analysis on a lot >of dimensions, including scientific >ones
What a lot of American academics failed to understand apparently was that much of post-structuralist critique was of 'science' in the very sense we are discussing it here. They were critiquing the foundations and practices of the structuralist social sciences.
Charles Jannuzi