On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:22:52 -0500 Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
writes:
> Jim:
>
> > WS doesn't seem to have picked it up. That was my point.
> > Thanks for allowing me to clarify it. I was criticizing WS's
> > application of the "Popper [falsification] test," not Popper
> himself.
>
>
>
Concerning Popper's falsificationism. A rather interesting, polemical use of it can be found in the writing of the British Marxist philosophy and SWP(UK) leader, Alex Callinicos. To see how he has used Popper (and Lakatos) in his work, take a look at this book, *Trotskyism* which can be found online at:
http://www.marxists.de/trotism/callinicos/, especially the second chapter where he makes explicit use of Popper and Lakatos in formulating his critique of what calls "orthodox" Trotskyism" which he regards as a degenerating research program. (http://www.marxists.de/trotism/callinicos/2-2_crisis.htm)
Notice the parallels between Callinicos' critique of "orthodox" Trotskyism and Popper's critique of Marxism. Just as Popper argued that Marxism had originally been a scientific theory but had lost its scientific character when later generations of Marxists responded to the disconfirmation of specific Marxists predictions by introducing ad hoc hypothesis which saved the theory from refutation at the expense of denuding Marxism of its scientific character, so Callinocos makes a very similar charge against "orthodox" Trotskyism, arguing that Trotsky's theories and analyses had been originally scientific in character but that later Trotskyists responded to the disconfirmation of Trotsky's predictions concerning the Soviet Union and western capitalism by bringing in all sorts of ad hoc hypotheses that saved the theory from refutation at the cost of losing its scientific status.