Miles wrote:
>A scientific law is a contingent understanding of
the world that is almost certain to be replaced in
the future; it is not an immutable, unchanging
characteristic of the universe that existed before
humans.
and Luke responded:
> But there may be (probably are) immutable,
unchanging characteristics of the universe, and the
fact that some of our prior descriptions turned out to
be "mere" approximations isn't cause for skepticism
of any sort.
This brief exchange crystalizes for me the problem with viewing the world we experience as a product of language -- the linguistic wrong turn if you will.
As far as I was ever taught, a law, such as the law of gravity, is something that holds true for the entire universe. Whether humans observe it, measure it, are even aware of it, the law operates. It operated before we evolved and will operate after we blow ourselves up.
I think one of the pre-requisites for progress in progressive politics is a de-centering of human beings and a substitution of the realization that human beings are part of complex mechanism over which they will exert, in even the best of times, little, if any, control.
It seems to me (and again I am not a historian, but a mere amateur) that from the Enlightenment on there has been an effort to overturn the Abrahamic notion of man at the top of the heap and replace it with a more holistic view.
The alleged linguistic turn seems an attempt to once more place human beings at the center of the action: "I talk, therefore I am." -- the Joan Rivers School of Thinking.
Miles is correct that hyperindividualism is a plague in today's world. However, "let a thousand discourses bloom" is a sure recipe for increasing hyperindividualism.
Maybe progressives need to resurrect the quaint notion that human beings are not the center of the universe. Once we have de-centered ourselves and recognized our place withing the machinery, then we won't have to worry or debate central planning, since elementary observation will show us that planning for the whole is the best way to optimize outcomes for the parts.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resiter