[lbo-talk] An Appeal to Ignorance

[Jeffrey Fisher]

On 6/16/05, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> snitsnat wrote:
> >
> >
> > hmmmm. i detect some of the scientists disrespect for the humanities coming
> > out here -- if you understand , this is, that natural scientists often
> > think that social sciences are 'merely' humanities.  LOL
> 
> I keep trying to reduce the triad of divisions (natural science, social
> science, humanities) to a duality: natural science and [I don't have a
> label: "History" is misleading because, e.g., geology and biology both
> have large historical elements, but it is the best I can come up with
> for a label.] Try "systematic study of human activity," which would
> include what we call "social science" and "humanities." It seems to me
> that the division in to sociology, polisci, and econ is really
> arbitrary, and in fact is an artifact of specifically capitalist social
> relations.
> 
> >[clip]
> 
> > p.s. I sometimes denigrate the "not really" sciences too. can't help it,
> > it's ingrained in our culture to do so.
> 
> Try this (very tentative on my part): the deification of "hard sciences"
> and the contempt for the study of human social relations as not "really
> science" is grounded in the Idea of Progress, which itself was partly
> grounded in the apparently obvious fact of the progress of
> technology?????

right. i was almosst going to ask kelley about whether sociology sees
itself technologically, as producing the means for manipulating the
culture it studies in the way that physics manipulates atoms.  but
then i wussed out and back off.

anyway -- comte kind of DID see himself more or less that way, didn't
he? but i don't get the impression that the discipline in general
does, these days.

j

-- 
Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish
the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed
of paying to Him metaphysical compliments.

  - Alfred North Whitehead