> I do not regard science as above critique or
> analysis on a lot of dimensions, including scientific ones (I was a Kuhn
> student after all), and political ones. I do not think it exhausts
> everything important that can be said. Carrol and I can agree that we would
> trade a whole stack of issues of Nature and Science for a few pages of
> Milton.
I don't think the distinction you make here between "science" and literature is valid.
You seem to be identifying science with the ontological premises that have governed natural science since Galileo. These include the premises that relations are external and that self-determination and final causation have nothing to do with what occurs. These premises do not allow for the existence of a knowing subject. You can't, for instance, generate a logically coherent account of science itself on the basis of premises that do not allow for the existence of purposive, self-determined being. As Whitehead says somewhere, scientists motivated by the purpose of demonstrating their is no purpose in the universe make an interesting subject for study. Also, the interpretation of experience to which the premises lead - e.g. the doctrine of secondary qualities - has as its logical implication "solipsism of the present moment."
Marx's ontological premises are not those of Galilean science. For instance, as I pointed out in an earlier post, he's taken over from Hegel the idea of human being as potentially fully self-determined in the sense of a being having the capacity for a "will proper" and a "universal will."
"The Will Proper, or the Higher Appetite, is (a) pure indeterminateness of the Ego, which as such has no limitation or a content which is immediately extant through nature but is indifferent towards any and every determinateness. (b) The Ego can, at the same time, pass over to a determinateness and make a choice of some one or other and then actualize it." (Hegel, The Philosophical Propaedeutic p. 2)
The "Universal Will" is "the Will which is Lawful and Just or in accordance with Reason." (Philosophical Propaedeutic p. 1)
These ideas are at least consistent with existence of a knowing subject and hence are more "scientific" in the proper sense than premises that are inconsistent with this, aren't they?
Marx's ontology also allows for the obvious fact that great literature is a source of "insight into the inner and universal element lying at the root of the aims, struggles, and fates of human beings. (Hegel, Aesthetics, vol. II, p. 1163)" An adequate "science" of the human must therefore take account of the insight available from this literature. For both Hegel and Marx, Shakespeare is the best example of literature of this kind. Marx's treatment of capitalist subjectivity, for instance, frequently draws explicitly on Shakespeare.
Keynes also rejected the ontological premises of Galilean science as a basis for social theory. It's on this ground that he argues that conventional forms of math, e.g. algebra, can play only a limited role in such theory. The ontological reason for this is the nature of the internal relations involved in social phenomena.
He also shared Marx's view of the insight available to the social theorist from literature, making use, for instance, of Ibsen to explain the psychopathology of Hayek. Keynes says of Ibsen's plays that:
"they can be seen sub specie eternitatis, remote from contemporary moods and problems, as tragedies of character, exploring the depths and often the crannies of human motive with the imagination of a poet and the insight of a novelist. If the plays have sometimes been felt to be painful, it is because Ibsen can penetrate too deeply into regions which we prefer to keep concealed even from ourselves." (Keynes, Collected Writings, vol. XXVIII, p. 327)
Ted Winslow