[lbo-talk] On the Flight of the Bumble Bee , was Lou Proyect responds...

[// ravi]

On Feb 10, 2012, at 7:30 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> The bumblebee may be a joke, but science, or rather pseudo-science is
> full of arguments that something contradicts the theory and thus
> either cannot exist or will soon cease to exist. <…>
> 
> Such anecdotes, even if apocryphal, illustrate a rather wide spread
> and troubling tendency in academic thinking that can be summarized as
> "if the facts contradict the theory, it is the facts that must give."

That was my point when I posted the joke, to characterise those standing on the peripheries opining on why OWS will fail, has failed, or is bound to fail (because OWS does not see things the way the opinionator does, or OWS does not prescribe to the grand theory the opinionator holds, etc). That their grand theory is a pseudo-science is likely true but I will avoid, in this post, the philosophy of science issues that arise.

	—ravi