No, I agree, when we look at primitive societies we are projecting our own forms of understanding upon theirs. Where we find "structures" we are, in a way, smothering their own discouses under ours. However, I think that our way of studying their beliefs is far more advanced than taking their beliefs at face value - as some post-structuralists do.
As to the deployment of metaphors - as I pointed out, you can't lift a metaphor from one structure to another without losing its meaning.
>
>
> ^^^^^
> 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
>
Yes, I do mean natural science - and I maintain that although some similarities exist between it and law, they are completely different modes of discourse; completely different methods of reasoning. Incidentally, I don't think that jurisprudential law is actually as rigid as it would like to think that it is - its a discipline which is, unlike, for example, mathematics, handed down through writings and teachings. While these appear fixed, insofar as they are written on a piece of paper, their interpretation depends on the time-period in which they are read - a sentence which appears to mean one thing today may have meant something rather different in Aquinas' time...
^^^^
> 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.
>
> ^^^^
>
>
I don't think the law "postures" at all. The nature of the Law is that it
gets the final say. This is not the nature of science. Perhaps I shouldn't
have used the word "rigid" at all. Here, I'll give a better definition now:
"Science puts forward theories which it then proves through experiments. The Law does not - it proves itself tautologically, as it were. This is why I called it more "primitive" than science. Science seeks truth, the Law IS truth. Again, this is not "posturing" - without Law there would be no truth. It is only with Law that truth appears".
> ^^^^^^^
> 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.
>
>
I think you'll find that the Law is prior to the State. It is also not
enforced by the State - the State rests upon the foundation of the Law. The
State is governed by the Law, not vice versa (barring exceptional
circumstances).
As I said, there is no truth without Law. Just as there is no State without Law. In fact you could push this quite far: there is no human communication proper without Law; Law mediates social relstionships, without Law these would simply dissolve.
>
>
> ^^^^^
> 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.
>
You're quite right, the labour theory of value came before energetics. However, it was in trying to mimic physical, quantitative theory that Marx put forward his theory of value. The problem, as everyone knows is that it doesn't work. It aspired to measure value through labour-inputs and it failed. Of course this is naturally going to be the case because that's not how value forms.
Its succesor (marginal theory) doesn't seem to work properly either. The mistake that every economist made in this regard was to assume a measurable quantity where no measureably quantity exists.
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: I don't see quantification of value based on hours of labor in
> making a commodity as farcical or physics.
>
>
Above - but I would say: read More Heat than Light, it goes into far more
detail than I do here.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^
> 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.
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
Ahhh... the famous quote that flattens the rest of Marx's epistemology. If men are so free then how do you suppose that you can measure this "will" - be it desire or labour. If this "will" was in fact measurable, it would quite simply cease to be free...
>
>
> ^^^^^^^
> 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".
>
>
Saying one thing and doing another - like a good bourgeois! Marx and Engels,
along with their peers, still believed that somewhere there existed
"absolute laws" or "absolute knowledge", independent of human consciousness.
This may not be theism as such, but it has all the characteristics of it.
Your reasoning has this characteristic too. The laws of physics did not exist before man (he wrote them) and they do not exist independent from him - the theory of relativity shows that all theory must take place within finite space and time i.e. subjectively.