> ^^^^^
> CB: I believe you are saying Mirowski shows that social science
> borrows metaphors from the "hard"sciences ? "Soft" science borrows
> metaphors from "hard" science ?
>
> Notice that the "hard" sciences "borrow" centrally a metaphor from the
> old "social science" , jurisprudence, in making natural "laws" an
> important part of their theoretical systems. As you say in your number
> 3:
Yes and no... I think you're treading on shaky ground here. It is, of course, true that the hard sciences use linguistic terms and possibly even metaphors derived from the Western legal systems of old - any anthropologist will tell you that; every society establishes The Law before it creates its own notions of natural laws. However, the structures in which these metaphors are deployed is significantly different from legal structures.
^^^^ CB: You and Mirowski raise interesting questions. Yes. Although I'm not sure that every society has the concept of "natural law". Maybe it's simply that modern Western science analogized to people following rules called laws and thought of it as natural processes following rules and called them laws. It's just that when you mention social sciences takes metaphors from natural science, it occurs to me that natural science takes metaphors from law, which deals with human society the subject matter of social science.
^^^^^^^^
What occurs when science matures is an epistemological break (appealing to Bachelard's use of that term before Althusser bastardised it, like everything else he touched). To put it rather crudely: a legal system operates qualitatively and remains open to hermeneutic interpretations and arbitrary modifications. Science, when it reaches a certain point, requires its theories to operate in a predominantly quantitative manner - its laws become more rigid, more fixed.
^^^^^ CB: Here you mean natural science, no ? Social science operates qualitatively ,as in linguistics or cultural anthropology.
The thing about a jurisprudential law _is_ that it's rigid. That's the metaphor
^^^^^^^ Put simply: I can argue over legal distinctions with a judge with a significant amount of wriggle room - try doing that regarding the second law of thermodynamics with a physicist or an engineer and see how far you get.
^^^^ CB: True , but when the ruling or verdict comes, the argument is over and the wiggle room is decided one way or the other. The judge or jury's decision is _law_, almost as hard and fast as the second _law_ of thermodynamics. Of course, natural science has disagreements and "paradigm shifts" that even revolutionize or qualitatively change some sciences fundamentally. Einstein fundamentally changes Newtonian physics.
Lets put it this way. When I went from anthropology to law , I noticed that the law postures as if it has more definite answers to most of its questions than anthropology does. Law presents itself as "harder" than soft social sciences.
^^^^
Hard sciences have an entirely different framework and structure than the social sciences. These frameworks have been built up by painstaking experimentation and mathematical argument. The social sciences have not - in fact they tend not to allow for either of these. This is why Mirowski rightly objects to the arbitrary importation of physics metaphors into a discipline like economics.
^^^^^ CB: Social sciences do some fairly painstaking experimentation and empirical field work.
By the way, I am not arguing against Mirowski that physics metaphors should be used in economics. Physics metaphors don't exclusive define scientific practice however.
There's a well known quote of Marx in which he says that because political economy cannot use "microscopes nor chemical reagants (experiments), it must substitute abstraction
"Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. [1] The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour — or value-form of the commodity — is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm
>
> "It is a reasoning that seems to project onto society the idea that
> this society obeys laws similar to those of (19th century) energy
> physics and, more recently, the internal workings of a computer. If
> these problems are real then how do we avoid engaging in this kind of
> reasoning? "
>
> The hard science notion that energy follows laws is a metaphor
> borrowed from law, which is something of a "soft" science.
>
Dealt with above - but just to point out: the Law is not a soft science. The Law - whether in its totemic or its Western Liberal guise - is far more primitive than anything we refer to as "science" be it hard or soft. The Law is a fundamental given that seems to arise with language acquisition - it literally structures the way humans perceive their world (the best book on this is, in my opinion, "Purity and Danger" by Mary Douglas - although the classic work was done by Levi-Strauss).
^^^^^^^ CB: Of course, in _Les Pensees Sauvage_ , it is Levi-Strauss who is famous for claiming that pre-literate societies have science or at least pre-scientific thinking in. He shows their botany and zoology. Science is "primitive" , too, savage, even, according to Levi-Strauss.
Primitive societies have to be materialist or scientific and understand many objective truths in order to survive.
What you refer to as "law" I call "custom" or "tradition" or "culture". I define law as state enforced custom. The pre-state societies didn't have law because they didn't have states.
>
> ^^^^
> CB: As to Marxists treating economics as a hard science, Marx does
> famously claim (see passage quoted infra) that economics ( political
> economy) can be rendered as precisely as natural science. However,
> Marx does not consider the laws of political economy to be the actual
> laws of physics, but a different set of "hard" laws. In the language
> of epistemology, Marx does not hold the position that political
> economy can be _reduced_ to physics. I believe a social physicist
> would say poltical economy can be reduced to physics. Also, Marx of
> course claims there are different group of "laws" in political economy
> than the ones modern day economists advocate. I believe you indicate
> Mirowski criticizes the modern economists as social physcists.
>
I assume that you are not familiar with Mirowski's work. He argues that economists unconsciously deploy physics metaphors and do so by tearing them out of context. Marx's value theories - just like Smith's and Ricardo's - do this as well.
^^^^^ CB: How is Marx's value theory an unconscious deployment of physics metaphors ? Wouldn't it be physics that took the "metaphor" of "work" from human society and used it in the society of physical bodies.
Even Marx's philosophy reeks of this stuff - see his comments on the conversion of quantity into quality; these sorts of statements are purely tautological - they assume that everything can be quantified, yet provide no such examples. A similar move is undertaken by neo-classical economics when they claim to be able to quantify human desire (theory of marginal utility) - both attempts are farcical and ridiculous.
^^^^^ CB: I don't see quantification of value based on hours of labor in making a commodity as farcical or physics.
>
> Also , Engels claims (below quoted) that the difference between what
> today is termed natural and social sciences is that the former has no
> agents with conscious aims, but the latter does. .
>
>
That's a proper can of worms he's cracking open there. We're into the
murky terrain of free-will here. Do humans have free will or can their
behaviors be measured through scientific... blablabla.
^^^^^^^^^ CB: It's a can of worms we must open if we are to have a science of history. I would say that in this passage, Engels is saying human individuals have free will at one level unlike physical bodies.. or on this one the famous quote from Marx is "Men make their own history , but not just as they please " or some such.
^^^^^^^
Incidentally, Engels is just plain wrong about this. The natural sciences are undertaken by conscious agents. As we all know from the theory of relativity these conscious agents' positions in space and time must be taken into account for natural laws to be properly discernable. People in Engels' time - arguably from a quasi-religious impulse - believed, wrongly, that there was some "other place" where absolute and objective laws existed independent of man; this no longer seems to be the case - God's been dead for a while now!
^^^^^^^ CB; I guess I'm not familiar with Mirowski, and you are not familiar with Engels (smile). He is definitely not a theist. He articulates more precisely than just about anybody what defines the atheist "impulse".
I think you are miss reading this passage , too. He's not saying that natural scientists are not conscious agents. He is saying that the physical bodies that are the subject of natural science are not conscious agents.
Also, of course, the laws of physics and biology , etc. , do operate independently of man , i.e. objectively. They existed before the human species originated. The Solar System followed the laws of gravity etc. before humans existed. Marxists, especially Engels, agree with you that the laws are not divine
Marx claims that the basis of all irreligious criticism is that man makes religion ; religion doesn't make man. For example, the Ten Commandments came from humans and were projected onto "God".