SCAB [Strike Breaker]
1. [Most common sense:] ‘Scab’ is the word the
working class in many countries gives to those individuals who go against the collective
interests of their class and cross picket lines to take jobs which belong to striking workers.
It is true that scabs are (normally) workers themselves, and may often really need work
themselves. But they are acting as traitors to the striking workers and to the working class
as a whole when they take striking worker’s jobs, and thus help the capitalists defeat efforts
by the workers to improve their wages and working conditions.
2. [Less common subsidiary sense:] A worker
who engages in other selfish or self-centered actions which go against the interests of the
rest of the workers at a given time and place. (See the quote below for one example.)
[Here is a summary by the authors of a paper written by bourgeois
economists which illustrates the terminology they use to talk about scabs in the second
sense above, and about how workers who refuse to be scabs are—according to them—somehow
supposedly breaking some economy law and harming the holy capitalist economic markets!
(Note also their stilted academic language.)]
“Social norms have the potential to
alter the functioning of economic markets. We test whether norms shape the aggregate labor
supply curve by preventing workers from supplying labor at [during] wage cuts—leading
decentralized individuals to implicitly behave as a cartel to maintain wage floors in their
local labor markets. We partner with 183 existing employers, who offer jobs to 502 workers
in informal spot labor markets in India. Unemployed workers are privately willing to accept
jobs below the prevailing wage, but rarely do so when the choice is observable to other
workers. In contrast, social observability does not affect labor supply at the prevailing
wage. Workers give up 49% of average weekly earnings to avoid being seen as breaking the
social norm. In addition, workers pay to punish anonymous laborers who have accepted wage
cuts—indicating the behavior is reinforced through the threat of social sanctions.
Punishment occurs for workers in one’s own labor market and for those in distant regions,
suggesting the internalization of norms in moral terms. Finally, consistent with the idea
that norms could have aggregate implications, measures of social cohesion correlate with
downward wage rigidity and business cycle volatility across India.” —Emily Breza, Supreet
Kaur, & Nandita Krishnaswarmy, “Scabs: The Social Suppression of Labor Supply”, NBER
Working Paper No. 25880, May 2019.
SCHLICK, Moritz (1882-1936)
Austrian philosopher and founder of the ultra-empiricist Vienna Circle
and logical positivism.
“Schlick had worked on his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (General Theory
of Knowledge) between 1918 and 1925, and, though later developments in his philosophy were
to make various contentions of his epistemology untenable, the General Theory is perhaps
his greatest work in its acute reasoning against synthetic a priori knowledge. This
critique of synthetic a priori knowledge argues that the only truths which are
self-evident to reason are statements which are true as a matter of definition, such as the
statements of formal logic and mathematics. The truth of all other statements must be evaluated
with reference to empirical evidence. If a statement is proposed which is not a matter of
definition, and not capable of being confirmed or falsified by evidence, that statement is
‘metaphysical’, which is synonymous with ‘meaningless’, or ‘nonsense’. This is the principle
upon which members of the Vienna Circle were most clearly in agreement — with each other, as
well as with Wittgenstein.” —Wikipedia article on Schlick (accessed 12/14/17).
[This sounds at first more reasonable
than it really is. Many abstract principles in philosophy, the sciences, and other branches of
knowledge are by this standard "meaningless”. Even the statement of this “Verification Principle”
itself is meaningless according to the extreme doctrine stated by that principle! —Ed.]
SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT
A thought experiment in the philosophy of
quantum mechanics proposed by the physicist Erwin
Schrödinger in 1935, and designed to show that the idealist
Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum
mechanics had to be nonsense. Suppose, said Schrödinger, that you have a cat in a
sealed box where a quantum event (such as the detection or non-detection of the decay of a
radioactive atom) will determine if the cat will live or die (by either releasing a vial of
poison or else not doing so). The Copenhagen Interpretation of the situation is that the cat
is either both dead and alive until the box is opened to see the result, or else that
the cat is neither dead nor alive until the box is opened. Obviously either way is a
complete absurdity. (The defenders of the Copenhagen Interpretation have of course tried to
wiggle out of this predicament, but have not succeeded in coherently doing so!)
See also:
MEASUREMENT—Concept of in Quantum Mechanics,
WAVE FUNCTION
“What is the situation today? The remarkable answer: virtually all
physicists accept the Born-Heisenberg point of view. [The Copenhagen Interpretation
of quantum mechanics.] Yet the absurdity of Schrödinger’s cat has never been
satisfactorily answered. How do today’s physicists respond to the reductio ad
absurdum, the ridiculous example, of Schrödinger’s cat? They don’t.
Schrödinger’s cat still bothers them today, when they think about it, but then
they choose to ignore the problem and move on.” —Richard A. Muller, a prominent
bourgeois physicist, in his book Now: The Physics of Time (2016), pp. 196-7.
“Scientists have ideological positions just like everyone else,
especially in conflicted situations, and sometimes the consequences are bizarre. The
Schrödinger cat has grown over time to become a symbol of transcendence, a meaning
exactly opposite to the one Schrödinger himself intended. It has acquired
quasi-religious overtones, so that twisting one’s mind around to understand this cat is
often viewed by students as a step on the path to enlightenment. Unfortunately, it is
not. In science one becomes enlightened not by discovering ways to believe things that
make no sense but by identifying things that one does not understand and doing
experiments to clarify them.” —Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel Prize winning physicist,
A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down (2005), p. 50.
SCHUMPETER, Joseph (1883-1946) [Pronounced: SHUM-PAY-ter]
Important Austrian bourgeois economist of the first half of the 20th century.
His father owned a textile factory, and not surprisingly Schumpeter found great virtues in
the capitalist system. He emphasized the importance of change under capitalism, and is
famous in bourgeois circles for his description of capitalism as “creative destruction”.
(Of course this is old news to us Marxists! In the Communist Manifesto Marx and
Engels say “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments
of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations
of society.” [MECW 6:487.])
At a time when most bourgeois economists
denied that economic cycles should even exist, Schumpeter said there were actually three
different ones:
1) A very short-term inventory cycle (which he called the “Kitchin Cycle”, after another
bourgeois economist, Joseph Kitchin), and which lasted 3 to 4 years;
2) An approximately 10-year cycle, which is the industrial cycle that Marx focused on (but
which Schumpeter—loathe to give any credit to Marx—called “Juglar Cycles”, after a
minor French economist, Clément Juglar, who talked about them long after Marx did). These
cycles were erroneously explained by Schumpeter as being due to changes in investment
patterns; and
3) Schumpeter’s version of Kondratiev’s 45-year long-term
waves, which Schumpeter attributed to waves in invention and innovation.
None of his discussion of economic cycles
had much validity, but by bourgeois standards even to have recognized the existence
of any cycles or waves makes you seem rather smart these days!
One of Schumpeter’s students was
Paul Sweezy, the primary founder of the
Monthly Review school of Marxist political
economy. While Sweezy broke away from Schumpeter and bourgeois economics in many ways,
there is still more than a touch of his ideas that were carried over.
SCIENCE
See also entries below, and especially
SCIENTIFIC METHOD.
“Science isn’t just about collecting facts; it’s a logical process
for working things out. The point of science is that everyone can look at the data
and come to a reasoned conclusion. At first, those conclusions may differ, but then
you go and collect more data that helps you decide between one description of the
world and another, and eventually the conclusions converge. This is what separates
science from other disciplines—a scientific hypothesis must make specific testable
predictions. That means that if you have an idea about how you think something works,
the next thing to do is to work out what the consequences of your idea would be. In
particular, you have to look hard for consequences that you can check for, and
especially for consequences that you can prove wrong. If your hypothesis passes
every test we can think of, we cautiously agree that this is probably a good model
for the way the world works. Science is always trying to prove itself wrong, because
that’s the quickest route to finding out what’s actually going on.” —Helen Czerski,
a British physicist and science educator, explaining the basic idea of science to
those not so familiar with it, in her book Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of
Everyday Life (2016), pp. 8-9.
SCIENCE — As Having “Come to an End”
It is safe to say that if science ever really does “come to an end”, in which all important
discoveries have already been made, this will certainly be far into the distant future.
Might we even say that it can never happen, and that there will always be
more fundamental scientific laws or principles to be discovered? Marxists, including Lenin
and Mao, have often argued that from the perspective of dialectics this must in fact be the
case. A somewhat more cautious opinion is that it may well be the case, but this is
not absolutely certain. We need to remember Engels’ remark that dialectical laws themselves
have only been generalized from nature and society, and they are by no means some sort of
absolute Kantian imperatives that must from the very principles of reason always and
everywhere be true. Yes, when we look around us with an increasingly careful eye, so far
we always do seem to discover more dialectical contradictions (oppositions) within
everything. And hence there are more scientific laws to be discovered. But will this go
on forever? Dialectics may lead us to expect that it will. But it doesn’t
prove this absolutely.
It is also true, however, that the
occasional claims, even by quite eminent scientists, that “everything” has already been
discovered—at least in physics—have turned out to be laughably wrong. (See first quotation
below for one example.)
“The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science
have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is
exceedingly remote.”
—Albert Michelson, 1894
dedication address, Ryerson Physical Laboratory, University of Chicago. [He said
this just as physics was on the verge of a major revolution, with the discovery of
radioactivity, the beginning investigations into the structure of the atom, and the
advent of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Ironically, it was the famous
Michelson-Morley experiment of 1888 which was one of the key pieces of evidence
which showed his view here to be totally wrong! —Ed.]
“There may be further laws to discover, to do with the unification
of gravity with quantum theory and with the other forces of nature. But in a certain
sense, we have for the first time in history a set of laws sufficient to explain
the result of every experiment that has ever been done.” —Lee Smolin, “Never Say
Always”, New Scientist, September 23, 2006."
[The identical thing could
have well been said in the late 1800s. What Smolin forgets is that there are still
many new experiments to be conceived of and done in light of new ideas
which arise and with the further investigation of existing and newly discovered
anomalies. We might also point out that Smolin is very narrowly focused on the
physics of particles and forces here, and there is a whole lot more to science than
just that! —S.H.]
“I believe that scientific knowledge has fractal properties; that
no mater how much we learn, whatever is left, however small it may seem, is just
as infinity complex as the whole was to start with. That, I think, is the secret
of the Universe.”
—Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov:
A Memoir (1995). [Though phrased in a different terminology, this is quite
similar to the view of many Marxist dialecticians. But again, how do we know
for sure that this fractal nature of knowledge continues indefinitely? Might
not that only be a conjecture? —S.H.]
SCIENCE — As Non-Democratic
[Intro to be added.]
“In the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not
worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.” —Galileo Galilei,
“Third Letter on Sunspots”, in Stillman Drake, ed., Discoveries and Opinions of
Galileo, (NY: Anchor, 1957), p. 134.
[Amir Alexander, in his book
Infinitesimal (2014; p. 176) suggests that Galileo had the Jesuit dogmatists
in mind with this comment, and they did indeed absurdly claim the “spiritual”
authority to decide all scientific matters. But the larger point is that scientific
truth is simply not a matter of who, or how many, believe something.
Neither proclaimed authority nor democracy are appropriate means to determine
scientific truth. —Ed.]
SCIENCE EXPOSITION
See also: PRESENTATION—Methods Of
“If a piece of physics cannot be explained to a barmaid, then it
is not a good piece of physics.” —Ernest Rutherford, famous New Zealand born
British physicist. Quoted in Clifford Pickover, Archimedes to Hawking (2008),
p. 23.
“All physical theories, their mathematical expressions notwithstanding,
ought to lend themselves to so simple a description that even a child could understand
them.” —Albert Einstein, quoted in Pickover, ibid., p. 22.
SCIENCE FADS
There are intellectual fads in all spheres of human activity, including science. But at
least in science these anti-scientific fads are eventually exposed and overcome. However,
in the worst cases, and especially in bourgeois society, this can take a prolonged period
of struggle.
“[The scientific community] is a pack of hounds ... where the
louder-voiced bring many to follow them nearly as often in a wrong path as in a right
one, where the entire pack even has been known to move off bodily on a false scent.”
—Samuel Pierpont Langley, astronomer and president of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, 1889, quoted in: Eric Lerner, The Big Bang Never
Happened (1991), p. 12.
SCIENCE — Limits Of Scientific Knowledge
In an 1872 speech the German physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond put forward the thesis:
“Ignoramus et ignorabimus.” [“We do not know and will not know.”] Or, in other words
that there are some important things that science will never be able to know. His speech itself
was entitled “Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens” [“The Limits of Science.”].
But are there really any facts about the
world which science can never know? Well of course there are many trivial factoids
that are almost certainly permanently beyond our knowledge, such as the precise high and
low temperatures of the air in what is now the center of downtown San Francisco on what we
might now call the first day of January in 100,001 BCE (or B.C.). However, what we are
really concerned about are not trivialities like that, but significant and important facts
about the world, especially those of the sort which get enshrined in scientific theories. And
I maintain that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that science is permanently limited
in this respect. All the postulated examples of “things we can’t know” which have been put
forward have either already been discovered despite their proclaimed “impossibility”; or quite
reasonably may yet someday be found out; or are mathematical conundrums within a formal
(axiomatic) logico-mathematical deductive system (rather than facts and theories about the
physical world); or else are silly idealist philosophical conundrums rather than genuine
scientific mysteries.
A striking example of “impossible knowledge”
that was actually soon discovered is the chemical composition of the stars, which the
positivist philosopher Auguste Comte proclaimed forever
unknowable “by any means” in 1835 and which the invention of the spectroscope easily revealed
shortly after Comte’s death. Many other things which at first seemed impossible to know have
nevertheless been discovered by science, such as the average temperature of certain oceans
several million years ago (by noting the presence of fossils of marine animals which can only
exist within a narrow temperature range).
In reaction to du Bois-Reymond’s dogmatic
skepticism about the supposed narrow limits to scientific knowledge, the great German
mathematician David Hilbert pointed out around 1900 that if we believe a certain type of
knowledge to be impossible we thereby impede efforts to actually discover that knowledge. In
addition to this correct comment, however, he also argued that “in mathematics there is no
ignorabimus”, which is more subject to dispute. In 1930 he stated: “For us there is no
ignorabimus, and in my opinion none whatever in natural science. In opposition to the
foolish ignorabimus our slogan shall be Wir müssen wissen—wir werden wissen”
[“We must know—we will know.”] The problem with extending this quite reasonable position in
natural science to formal mathematical deductive systems (such as that formulated by Whitehead
and Russell in their influential work Principia Mathematica (1910-13), is that it was
proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931 that all such systems are “incomplete”; that is, there are
always theorems which can be framed within such a system which cannot be proven (or disproven)
within it. At the beginning of the 20th century Hilbert presented a list of 23 important
mathematical problems that he challenged mathematicians to solve in the coming century. As of
2020 some of these have been solved, some have not, and a few have been shown to be impossible
to answer because of the limitations of the formal mathematical systems they are framed within.
But, again, what is possible within such formal logical systems is not at all the same as
answering scientific questions about the physical world!
Finally, here are several of the supposed
scientific problems (or “world riddles”), which were claimed to never be capable of solution,
which Emil du Bois-Reymond himself put forward in 1872 and 1880, together with my brief
commentaries. It is not at all clear that many of these even truly are scientific questions,
rather than apparently quite silly philosophical puzzles propounded from an idealist
perspective:
1) “The ultimate nature of matter and
energy.” The history of physics since at least the time of Galileo and Newton has been an
ever deeper explanation of the nature of “matter and energy”. But that seems to be not good
enough for du Bois-Reymond: He wants the ultimate explanation! Whether there even is such
a thing is highly problematic; many dialectical materialists such as Lenin have argued that the
world is “inexhaustible”, or that there is always more to discover (but that more always can
be discovered!). He even said this is true of individual aspects of the world, such as the
nature of the atom or of the electron. And so far, at least, he has been proven
right. Asking for “ultimate explanations” in nature may in fact often be anti-scientific in
itself, and something closer to religion.
2) “The origin of motion.” This too
is really just a fanciful puzzle in idealist philosophy. Since the world consists of matter in
motion, this is hardly any different than demanding an explanation for why the world
exists, or the silly question “why is there something rather than nothing?” There seem to be
only idealist or religious reasons for even pondering questions like this!
3) “The origin of simple sensations.”
When the physiologist du Bois-Reymond posed this question psychology was indeed barely getting
started as a science and neuropsychology and neurophysiology did not even yet exist at all. No
wonder the topic of what sensations are, and how they arise in the body and the brain, seemed
hopelessly mysterious to him. However, today there has been a vast amount of knowledge accumulated
about how human and animal sensory systems work, and how brains make use of this input data. On a
larger scale, the once mysterious problem of what a “mind” really is is
now understood at least in its essence, as being a functional description of the activities and
states of brains. In effect this “world riddle” that so puzzled du Bois-Reymond has been solved.
4) “The enigma of consciousness”
Ah, consciousness, which even today many people—especially idealist philosophers—call the
mystery of mysteries. However, while there is always more to learn about the brain and therefore
about consciousness, the basics have now been obvious for many decades. (See the entry on
CONSCIOUSNESS in this dictionary for an introductory
explanation.)
In sum, the claims of those in past ages about
any supposed drastic limitation on the ability of science to discover the nature of the world
around us look pretty foolish now, motivated as they were by very scientifically obsolete idealist
philosophical ignorance. —S.H.
Some of the information above is from the Wikipedia.
See also my essay “Can We Really Understand the World?” (March 1989), online at:
https://www.massline.org/Philosophy/ScottH/understand.htm
SCIENCE OF REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism)
[Intro material to be added... ]
See also:
“Why Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a Science”, by Scott H., Feb. 1997, online at:
https://www.massline.org/Philosophy/ScottH/MLM_sci.htm
“Marxism-Leninism is a science, and science means honest, solid
knowledge; there is no room for playing tricks. Let us, then, be honest.” —Mao,
“Reform Our Study” (May 1941), SW 3:22.
SCIENCES — Development of the Separate Sciences
“There has been achieved what Engels called ‘the successive development
of the separate branches of natural science’—the evolution of the different sciences
one from another, and their differentiation one from another as distinct ‘disciplines’.
“Apart from mathematics, astronomy,
and mechanics, which were already in existence’, writes Engels, ‘physics becomes
definitely separated from chemistry (Torricelli, Galileo ...). Boyle put chemistry on a
stable basis as a science. Harvey did the same for physiology.... Zoology and botany
remain at first collecting sciences, until paleontology appeared on the scene—Cuvier—and
shortly afterwards came the discovery of the cell and the development of organic
chemistry. Therewith comparative morphology and physiology became possible.... Geology
was founded at the end of the eighteenth century.’
“In this process, which, as Engels
says, must be ‘studied further in detail’, the successes scored in one field of science
create the possibility for the establishment of the scientific investigation of new
fields. The whole process exhibits its own internal logic of development, which unfolds
on the basis of the development of the productive forces of capitalist society, which
at one and the same time present new problems for science to tackle and provide the
technical means for tackling them.
“This successive development and
differentiation of the sciences, which proceeds right to our own day, and will continue,
has, however, its negative side. This is shown in the tendency to the separation of the
sciences and to over-specialization, which continues to operate despite the
establishment of intermediate sciences, such as physical-chemistry, bio-chemistry, etc.,
and which today results in ‘the unity of science’ being posed as a major unsolved
problem by bourgeois philosophy of science.” —Maurice Cornforth, “Dialectical
Materialism and Science”, (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1949), pp.6-7. Cornforth here
summarizes the views of Engels in his Dialectics of Nature, on pp. 214-215 of
the edition he used.
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION
[Intro to be added...]
See also:
FOOLING YOURSELF,
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
“You see, the problem of obtaining facts from experience—it sounds
very, very simple. You just try it and see. But man is a weak character and it turns
out to be much more difficult than you think to just try it and see. For instance,
you take education. Some guy comes along and he sees the way people teach
mathematics. And he says, ‘I have a better idea. I’ll make a toy computer and teach
them with it.’ So he tries it with a group of children, he hasn’t got a lot of
children, maybe somebody gives him a class to try it with. He loves what he’s doing.
He’s excited. He understands completely what his thing is. The kids know that it’s
something new, so they’re all excited. They learn very, very well and they learn
the regular arithmetic better than the other kids did. So you make a test—they
learn arithmetic. Then this is registered as a fact—that the teaching of
arithmetic can be improved by this method. But it’s not a fact, because one of the
conditions of the experiment was that the particular man who invented it was doing
the teaching. What you really want to know is, if you just had this method described
in a book to an average teacher (and you have to have average teachers; there are
teachers all over the world and there must be many who are average), who then gets
this book then tries to teach it with the method described, will it be better or not?
In other words, what happens is that you get all kinds of statements of fact about
education, about sociology, even psychology—all kinds of things which are, I’d say,
pseudoscience. They’ve done statistics which they say they’ve done very carefully.
They’ve done experiments which are not really controlled experiments. [The results]
aren’t really repeatable in controlled experiments.”
—Richard Feynman, “Richard
Feynman Builds a Universe”, in his book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
(1999), pp. 241-242. [From a truly scientific standpoint a lot of what is considered
to be scientific fact—especially in what are termed the “social sciences” in
bourgeois society—is in reality just pragmatic guess
work. In MLM revolutionary work we must also take great care not to fall into such
pseudo-scientific methodology. This is one of the many reasons why we must strongly
encourage both internal and external perusal and criticism of our policies and
methods. —Ed.]
SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS
See also:
ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON [Alexander quote]
“The [scientific] journals too have financial interests. Most are
owned by commercial companies. The leading journal Nature is the property of
Macmillan, and the giant Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed-Elsevier owns many hundreds of
the most prestigious academic journals. Science [magazine] turns a profit for
its owner, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. University
libraries, compelled to purchase these journals, sag under the costs, and a series
of rivals, including the open access Public Library of Science, has been created—but
here the scientists themselves have to pay to be published. As a result, scientists
working in poor countries and weak institutions can now read the journals but their
chances of publication in them remain weak.” —Hilary & Steven Rose, Genes, Cells
and Brains: The Promethean Promises of the New Biology (2014), p. 12.
SCIENTIFIC LAWS
Human beings have found that nature is not completely random and chaotic, but that there
are certain regularities and patterns to it which can be discovered and often quantified.
A scientific law, or law of nature or society, is a statement of an order or relationship
between phenomena that so far as is known always holds true under the stated or implied
conditions. Thus, for example, the law of gravity is a statement about the mutual attraction
(and the strength of that attraction at various distances) between the various forms of
matter.
“I do not agree with the view that the universe is a mystery.... I feel
that this view does not do justice to the scientific revolution that was started almost
four hundred years ago by Galileo and carried on by Newton. They showed that at least
some areas of the universe ... are governed by precise mathematical laws. Over the years
since then, we have extended the work of Galileo and Newton.... We now have mathematical
laws that govern everything we normally experience.” —Stephen Hawking, Black Holes
and Baby Universes and Other Essays. [Of course there are still many mysteries in
all the sciences, but there is nevertheless a lot of validity in Hawking’s comment,
especially with regard to everyday scientific phenomena. To maintain that “everything
is a big mystery” is a way of ignoring or opposing science. —S.H.]
SCIENTIFIC LAWS — As Mere “Human Inventions”
“It has sometimes been suggested that the laws of nature are not
real—that they are entirely inventions of the human mind, attempting to make sense of
the universe. This is very strongly argued against by the spectacular efficacy of science:
a) its power to solve otherwise intractable problems, and make accurate predictions, and
b) by the fact that newly-discovered laws have typically suggested the existence of
previously unknown or undiscovered phenomena, which have then been confirmed to exist.”
—Wikipedia, “Physical Law” entry, date unknown, quoted in Clifford Pickover,
Archimedes to Hawking (2008), p. 201. [Note: This excellent comment has now been
deleted from the “Physical Law” entry in the Wikipedia, which illustrates the
unsatisfactory transitory nature of that information source. —Ed.]
SCIENTIFIC LAWS — As Mere Tendencies
On rare occasions, mere tendencies or unquantifiable probabilities have sometimes been
spoken of as laws, as with Marx’s discussion of what he calls “the law of the tendency of the
rate of profit to fall” (in Part 3 of Volume III of Capital). A few modern Marxists,
often under the influence of bourgeois post-modernist
ideology, have gone so far as to claim that most or even all laws in social science are
“only tendencies”! [For one example of this by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and a
strong criticism of this stance, see my essay “Notes on Notes on Political Economy”
(Feb. 25, 2000), especially the section “Tendencies and Tendential Laws”, online at:
https://www.massline.org/PolitEcon/ScottH/NotesNPE.htm —S.H.]
However, the modern convention in science in
general is to describe such partial or limited regularities not as “laws” at all, but
simply as “tendencies”. In the way the term ‘scientific law’ is almost universally used in
science today there are never any exceptions to scientific laws. If exceptions to what was
previously thought to be a law are found, then either the scope of the application of
that law is narrowed to exclude such situations, or else (if that cannot be done) it is no
longer considered to be a law at all.
“Social laws are therefore no more than tendencies, the
development of which is constantly interfered with, changed and modified by the
action of counter-tendencies. In fact, there is no difference between a law and a
tendency: the dominant tendency becomes a law.” —Eugen Varga, Politico-Economic
Problems of Capitalism (Moscow: Progress, 1968), p. 19.
[Varga
was the leading representative of the Comintern in the 1930s with regard to political
economy. Some of his views on economics were correct, but some were not! The same goes
for his views on politics and philosophy. (The book from which the above comment was
taken promotes many revisionist ideas.) Personally, I think his views on this specific
point are grossly incorrect, even if there is a sentence or two in Marx which can be
used in support of his position. See the quote below for some of my reasons. —S.H.]
“The new RCP doctrine that all social laws are only ‘tendencies’ is
the sort of notion that has quite a bit of plausibility if you only think about it
briefly and superficially. But if you check it against the sorts of things that we
have been calling laws, or at least well-established law-like principles, it
immediately loses its persuasiveness.
“Let me give a little example of
this. After Engels’ death Lenin wrote a tribute to him which included these words—which
I will intersperse with questions about ‘tendencies’:
“Marx and Engels were the first
to show that the working class and its demands are a necessary outcome of the present
economic system, which together with the bourgeoisie inevitably creates and organizes the
proletariat. [Is the creation of the working class only a ‘tendency’ instead of an
inevitable result of capitalism?] They showed that it is not the well-meaning
efforts of noble-minded individuals, but the class struggle of the organized proletariat
that will deliver humanity from the evils which now oppress it. [Is the class
struggle of the proletariat the definite method by which humanity will free itself, or is
it only a ‘tendency’ in that direction?] In their scientific works, Marx and
Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the
final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern
society. [Is socialism merely a ‘tendency’ of the productive forces in modern
society, instead of a ‘necessary result’ as Lenin says?] All recorded history
hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory
of certain social classes over others. And this will continue until the foundations of
class struggle and of class domination—private property and anarchic social
production—disappear. [Was Lenin wrong here too? Is the continuation of this class
struggle only a ‘tendency’ and not an inevitable characteristic of any society based on
private property?] The interests of the proletariat demand the destruction of
these foundations, and therefore the conscious class struggle of the organized workers
must be directed against them. [Or do the interests of the proletariat only have
a ‘tendency’ to demand the destruction of these foundations?]
“I could go on and on in this vein,
but I think you probably see the pattern here. And of course it is possible to quibble a
bit on some of these questions if you are determined to do so. Thus you could say that
socialism (communism) is not the necessary result of the development of the
productive forces in modern society, since capitalism (or some natural disaster, like an
asteroid hitting earth) might wipe out humanity entirely instead. But this sort of
response is disingenuous, since an implicit premise of the argument is that humanity
continues to exist. (Or if you like, you could say that the more precise law is this:
Unless some unlikely natural disaster, or perhaps the hideous workings of capitalism
itself, wipes out humanity entirely, communism will be the necessary result of the
present capitalist social system. And that law is indeed definitely true, and certainly
no mere ‘tendency’.)
“The general point is just that
the new RCP principle that demands that all the laws and law-like principles of social
science be viewed as mere tendencies looks down-right foolish when it is compared
against the vast majority of those laws and law-like principles. How is it that the RCP
didn’t notice this? Apparently the authors of this new doctrine never thought to compare
it to the actual laws of society that have been discovered by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao
and others. Incredible as it seems, they apparently didn’t think to see if their new
principle was valid in any cases other than the one which led them to it in the first
place.” —S.H., “Notes on Notes on Political Economy” (Feb. 25, 2000), online at:
https://www.massline.org/PolitEcon/ScottH/NotesNPE.htm
SCIENTIFIC LAWS — Hierarchical Structure Of
Something that is all too seldom appreciated is that the laws of science (or laws of nature)
are pitched at different levels of abstraction appropriate to the specific science
and specific phenomena in question, and that therefore there is a hierarchical structure
to scientific laws. At the level of quantum chromodynamics there are laws which have been
discovered about the interactions of quarks via the
strong nuclear force. At the level of atoms and
molecules, and their interactions—that is, at the level of quantum
electrodynamics—there is another set of natural laws. And although QED forms the
theoretical basis for chemistry, in practice there needs to be a whole large additional set
of laws of chemistry such as the knowledge of the nature of acids and bases, which solvents
are useful in specific cases, and so forth. At a slightly higher level there are specific
chemical principles useful in the manufacture of batteries. The laws now start to sometimes
be called engineering principles, but that is just an acknowledgement that the laws
or principles at these levels are of a more practical nature. And finally we get to the laws
or principles used to build complex machines, including such things as sewing machines and
automobiles. And, yes, in a sense, even automobiles and sewing machines function according
to the laws of quantum mechanics, but these machines (and how to build and maintain them)
cannot possibly be understood in practice by Schrödinger equations or Feynman diagrams!
There simply must be new laws and principles to describe how autos and sewing
machines work at a much higher level than that, couched in terms such as drive shafts and
transmissions, or needles and bobbins.
Other sciences have very different sorts of
scientific laws and principles appropriate to the phenomena which they study. In linguistics
there are laws about the structure of words in terms of morphemes, and at a deeper level,
in terms of phonemes. In geophysics there are laws about tectonic plates and “hot spots”,
and how mountains are created, and which explain volcanoes and earthquakes. In the political
economy of capitalism there are laws which explain why capitalism inherently leads to
overproduction crises and the immiseration of
millions. In historical materialism there are
laws and principles couched in terms of social classes, such as explanations of the essence
of the state and of social revolution.
Because each science needs to formulate its
own laws to describe the developments and interactions of the phenomena it studies, any
program of complete reductionism is totally foolish, even
if certain limited types of reductionist explanations can be helpful at times.
From a Marxist philosophical standpoint the
hierarchy of scientific laws is a result of the hierachy of dialectical contradictions and
of the particularity of contradiction.
“The tendency of nature to form a hierarchical society of physical
laws is … why the world is knowable. It renders the most fundamental laws, whatever
they are, irrelevant and protects us from being tyrannized by them. It is the reason
we can live without understanding the ultimate secrets of the universe.” —Robert B.
Laughlin, Nobel Prize winning physicist, A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics
from the Bottom Down (2005), p. 8.
“SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT” [Of Capitalist Production]
[To be added...]
See also:
TAYLORISM
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
The idealized general method used to advance scientific knowledge which itself has been
developed and refined along with the major sciences themselves, especially the physical
sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.). Its most essential points are:
• The careful and systematic
investigation of the phenomena being studied, including careful measurements of attributes
where possible;
• The formulation of hypotheses
which explain or which seem to have led to the existence of the phenomena in question;
• Where possible, drawing out
the implications of the hypothesis and making predictions of new results that we
would expect to be true if the hypothesis in question is correct;
• Criticism and testing of
these hypotheses and predictions, especially through careful experiments where this is
possible, or through further observations where formal experiments are not possible;
• Correcting, revising or
replacing the previous hypotheses in light of this criticism, testing and experiment,
and formulating them into what become generally accepted scientific theories.
• Continuing this procedure in
a reiterative fashion, and especially as long as there are puzzling aspects of the existing
theories which have not yet been adequately explained.
In short, scientific method is the procedure
which the sciences have developed over the centuries to investigate nature, human beings and
society, to acquire new knowledge, to correct or replace views which are found to be wrong,
and to organize the resulting knowledge according to general principles or what we call
theories. These scientific theories are then made use of to guide our scientific,
engineering and social practice.
Although scientific method generally refers
to this overall methodology which is applicable to all the sciences, there are differences
among the sciences which require some modifications or extensions of scientific method in
particular sciences. In some sciences, for example, experiments can be difficult to perform,
or may even be completely out of the question in some cases for ethical reasons. To take an
extreme example to prove the point, there is a quite well established theory that a major
nuclear war between imperialist countries might lead to a “nuclear winter”, a period of
several years in which nearly all sunshine is blocked from reaching the ground, and in which
therefore most life on earth would be killed. While it is technically possible to run a full
experiment—to actually purposely start a major nuclear war!—to see if this is actually the
case, no one in their right mind would consider doing so. Fortunately, many scientific
conclusions such as this can be reasonably demonstrated to be true via lesser experiments
and without drastic “full experiments” of that sort.
In some sciences, such as psychology and
medical science where human subjects are experimented on, scientific method needs to be
extended in ways which eliminate as much bias and wishful thinking on the part of both the
subject and the experimenter as possible. In testing a new drug, for instance, it has been
found that it is an important part of the scientific method to do this in a double-blind
fashion, with neither the patient nor the doctor knowing whether the patient is actually
receiving the new drug or just a placebo, until after the experiment is finished. In
experiments of this sort careful and appropriate statistical procedures are also required.
See also:
FOOLING YOURSELF,
RESIDUAL PROBLEM,
RETRODICTION,
TESTABILITY,
ANALYSIS (Scientific)
SCIENTIFIC THEORY
Scientific theories are the summation of scientific knowledge; theories form knowledge into
a logical and coherent structure and make a whole body of investigations comprehensible. Thus
the formulation of scientific theories is at the core of science and is its highest goal.
(Of course the goal in the application of science is to change the physical or social
world in one way or another.)
On the other hand there have often been
idealist tendencies in science, particularly in cosmology, “theoretical physics”, and the
social sciences, to divorce the construction of theories from the actual results of careful
investigations of nature and society, and to engage in wild flights of fancy with little or
no evidential foundation. Obviously what is needed instead is a dialectical combination of
practice and theory, and of careful investigation and the formulation and testing of theories
based on what has been learned in those actual investigations.
Scientific education should consist primarily
of two things:
1. Learning the scientific
method for science in general, and the specific scientific methods which are useful within
particular sciences; and
2. Coming to understand and appreciate the most
important scientific theories. That is, science education should be “theory-structured”.
Focusing on the explication of the most
important theories in a science actually makes that science both more comprehensible and
easier to learn. Speaking of his own science, Linus Pauling said in the preface to his 1947
book, General Chemistry, “The progress made ... in the development of theoretical
concepts has been so great ... that the presentation of general chemistry ... can be made in
a more simple, straightforword, and logical way than formerly.”
Revolutionary Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
is also a science, and mastering it requires the same approach. One must focus on its central
theories and come to understand and appreciate them. And this requires some considerable study
along with participation in the ongoing revolutionary movement.
See also:
AD HOC PATCHES TO SCIENTIFIC THEORIES,
CENTRAL ORGANIZING THEORY,
REVOLUTIONARY THEORY
SCIENTISTS — Motivation Of
Human beings are complicated creatures and there can be many different sorts of motivations for the
things we do. This certainly applies to scientists as well as to others. But are there some small
number of typical motivations that characterize many scientists? Certainly. And, as one might expect,
these do in fact include curiosity, the deep and genuine desire to understand how nature works.
In the case of medical scientists, especially, there is often also a deep desire to help humanity,
by seeking to cure diseases or in other ways. Of course there are also plenty of rather less admirable
goals that may also often motivate a particular scientist as well, such as strong desires for fame
and fortune.
However, regardless of what the actual motivations
of some specific scientist are, as social revolutionaries our primary overall judgment of them
has to be based not so much on their scientific brilliance as it is on whether or not their work has
in an overall way served the people.
“My impression of photosynthesis researchers is that they are happy to think
that their work is, in some way, of planetary significance. [Such as with regard to helping
deal with the problem of global warming. —Ed.] But most are remarkably uninterested in actually
cashing that significance in. They feel about helping the planet rather as researchers in other
parts of basic biology feel about healing the sick; they’re in favor of it in principle, and
in that they think their work is relevant to that noble end, they feel good about themselves.
It provides an inspiring and self-affirming context in which to do what they wanted to do
anyway. But it’s not why they do what they do; that agenda is set by their own curiosity, and
by the judgment of their peers. And while their work’s relevance is pleasing, and may even help
when selling projects to funding bodies, turning that relevance into practical achievement tends
to be seen as someone else’s business.
“This is not, or not wholly, an abnegation
of responsibility. It is a statement of fact. Most scientists really do see themselves as out to
understand the world, rather than to change it. They often understand the ways in which the
world might be changed far better than their forebears in the Lunar Society did—but the way
their profession has developed has robbed them of that magnificent eighteenth-century sense of
themselves as actors in the world at question. Instead, they follow their own curiosity, often
driven as much by a need for escape from the world as a need for engagement with it. Institutions
provide contexts and channels for this enthusiasm, and will not support it arbitrarily. But to
a surprising extent scientists get to define their own questions.”
—Oliver Morton, Eating the Sun: How
Plants Power the Planet (2008), pp. 405-6. [This unfortunate change in the social consciousness
of scientists from that of the eighteenth century is very probably due to the intensifying sinister
effects of bourgeois society. We will certainly work to return that motivation of working for the
people (along with scientific curiosity) to scientists in socialist and communist society. When
society is run by and for the people, science can once again focus on both understanding
and also changing the world for the benefit of the people. —S.H.]
SCIENTISTS — Obligations of to the People
“‘Science must not be a selfish pleasure. Those who are so lucky as to be able to
devote themselves to scientific pursuits should be the first to put their knowledge at the service
of mankind.’ One of his favorite sayings was, ‘Work for the world.’” —Paul Lafargue, quoting Marx,
in his book Reminiscences of Marx, re-quoted in Political Affairs, the CPUSA journal,
February 1949, p. 96.
SCOPES “MONKEY” TRIAL (1925)
A famous trial held in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 in which a public school teacher, John T. Scopes,
was tried for illegally teaching the Darwinian theory of evolution in a science class. It was given
the name “Monkey Trial” by H. L. Mencken, as part of his ridicule of the entire proceedings. The
prosecution was led by the famous populist politician William
Jennings Bryan and Scopes was represented by a team led by the great defense lawyer, Clarence
Darrow, who was an agnostic. Although Scopes was found guilty and
fined $100 (a significant amount at the time), the verdict was set aside on a technicality. However,
the broader and quite positive result of the trial was that the ignorance and anti-scientific views
of fundamentalist Christians were appropriately denounced and ridiculed both during the trial and
ever since.
On day seven of the trial, Darrow called the counsel
for the prosecution, William Jennings Bryan, to the stand as a self-proclaimed expert on the Bible.
Darrow then asked Bryan a series of embarrassing questions, such as whether he really believed that
Eve was created from Adam’s rib; where their son Cain got his wife (since according to Genesis Adam,
Eve and their sons were the only humans who yet existed); and so forth. Bryan could only answer
the question about where Cain’s wife came from by saying that he would “leave the agnostics to hunt
for her.” After Bryan’s absurd (if sometimes humorous) responses, Darrow said to him: “You insult
every man of science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion.”
Bryan, recognizing the considerable effect that Darrow was having, said that the purpose of Darrow’s
questions was “to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible”. Darrow responded, “We
have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United
States.”
A famous play and then movie based very loosely on
the Scopes Trial is Inherit the Wind. The 1960 movie featured Spencer Tracy in the role based
on Clarence Darrow and Fredric March in the role based on William Jennings Bryan. A more accurate
account of the trial is available in the book by Ray Ginger, Six Days or Forever?: Tennessee v.
John Thomas Scopes (1958).
SCORCHED-EARTH POLICY
See also:
“NERO DECREE”
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