On Sat, 26 Aug 2000 17:26:56 +0100 "Mark Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > PS Tom Warren told me offlist (it's no secret anyway) that he is > influenced > by Elisabet Sahtouris, E O Wilson and Garret Hardin. This is > admirable, if > only because the Green-Left in an often unthinking way iconises one > person > and demonises another. Wilson and Hardin are demons, Sahtouris an > icon. That > is all absurd, and Tom is surely rate to take all 3 of them > seriously. The > debate and the issues are much more complex, and we have to learn to > do > justice to them and stop kneejerking around. The left has to stop > supplying > postures in place of thought. This applies to genetics, biology, and > also to > things like the Tragedy of the Commons, where a few slogans > endlessly > repeated also serves as the left's substitute for thought. > > A good example of posturing to no purpose is this: > http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~cscpo/arc.html > > Here you can find archived for example, an attack on E.O. Wilson, by > Steven > J. Rosenthal, of the Department of Sociology, Hampton University. It > is > called: How Science is Perverted to Build Fascism: A Marxist > Critique of > E.O. Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. This article is > not > without interest, but it is an attack which mostly misses the > target. We > need less of this kind of 'gramophone Marxism'. Having looked at the piece by Rosenthal, I was not exactly overwhelmed. His was the kind of thing that gives Marxists a bad name in certain circles. Actually, the notion of consilience is by no means alien to the Marxist tradition, since many Marxists have in their own way been concerned with the establishment of the unity of science. The young Marx after all looked forward to the day when natural science would be unified with the science of man. I suspect that a Marxist critique of Wilson would focus among other things his strictly reductionist approach to the program of consilience, proposing instead that any such program can only be realized through a dialectical appraoch to the relationships between biological science, and the behavioral and social sciences. Actually, one disappointing aspect of Wilson's book IMO was his account of the history of the consilience program. He rightly stressed its 18th century Enlightenment roots (especially in the work of Condorcet) but was rather fuzzy on the details concerning attempts made at implementing this program earlier in the 20th century by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. That's too bad since a way at look how the issue of the unity of science was understood and debated by members of the Vienna Circle could have been most instructive in exploring both the strenghths and limitations of reductionist approaches. While most members of the Circle opted for one variety or another of reductionism, Otto Neurath, the Marxist member of the Circle came to question the reductionist approach to this issue. In his later thought he proposed that the unity of science could be attained through the integration of the various sciences including the natural sciences, the behavioral sciences and the social sciences into what Neurath called a 'cosmic history' which would in effect be a a global history of all of humanity including the natural history of the universe. In this proposed encyclopedic integration of the sciences all scientific propositions would be seen as connected with one another in such a way as they appeared to be parts of a single science that would deal with all phenomena including the stars, the earth, plants & animals, human beings, natural regions, tribes, nations social classes etc. The result of such an agglomeration of propositions would be a very general universal history. BTW an account of Neurath's ideas on 'cosmic history' and its possible implications for ecological thought can be found in Juan Martinez-Alier's book *Ecological Economics*. Jim Farmelant >E O Wilson is not a > fascist, > but even if he was, so what? Heidegger was a Nazi; but Heidegger is > arguably > one of the most important 20th century thinkers. We have to stop > labelling > and stasrt listening. E O Wilson is interesting, he can teach us > and we > have to learn. > > > _______________________________________________ > Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
