-----Original Message----- From: Justin Schwartz <jkschw at hotmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 4:31 PM Subject: Re: Science, Science & Marxism
>That's why the pragmatic/sociological definition of science helps:
astrology
>isn't science because it's not accepted as a science by people who call
>themselves scientists, it isn't taught in sciewnce depts, etc. If you
>evaluate it by scientific standards, moreover, it turns oit that it si very
>bad science, not worth serious consideration. So the scientists are right
to
>ignore it. Does it really matter whether you say it's very bad science or
>not science at all? There is no a priori determinable essence of science.
>Science is a set of social practices we stumbled on that happens to allow
us
>to do things we want pretty effectively. So why should we expect a
>definition of it more exact than a description of those practices?
I agree with you. Astrology is not science because scientists don't recognise it as such, not because there is any methodological division that cleanly shears the science from the rest.
And yet, this is not a wholly satisfactory conclusion. Astrology is a shell game where vague predictions become easily fulfilled in the minds of true believers, but science, somehow, really works. It is one of the most wildly successful practices in history. Why? Why should a social class somehow be so key to the production of real value? How does one inconsistent set of cultural values become the source of so many effective practices?
The sociological definition of science is the only one that seems to make sense. Science is a cultural structure whose members decide what is and isn't science by communal, cultural, changing standards. But that definition doesn't explain anything. It doesn't tell us why we can trust our lives every day in the claims of scientists and would never place such a faith in astrologers.
Scott Martens