[lbo-talk] What experiments measure...

[Carl Remick]

>From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
>
>Another reason is that scientific rituals and jargon is what creates and
>maintains the intellectual commodity producing class.  Science becomes what
>scientists do.  These "research workers" (as Heidegger dubbed them) need to
>maintain their own class position, status, control of resources etc.  which
>would be difficult to maintain if their role was limited simply to finding
>the "truth" and making it available to general public.  However, if the 
>goal
>of scientific inquiry is shifted from outcomes to procedures, two things
>happen.  First, it can expand and perpetuate itself almost indefinitely.
>Second it needs a full time of dedicated workers to perform these
>activities.  That justifies the existence of the science producing class.

Yes, this certainly does much to account for the mindless data-grubbing that 
suffuses today's world.

Or as was once memorably put to music:

I read the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all,
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

Carl