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Title: Science is Capital Author: dot matrix Date: 2006 Language: en Topics: AJODA, AJODA #61, anthropology, Camatte, capitalism, science Source: Anarchy: a journal of desire armed #61
Revolution can no longer be taken to mean just the destruction of all
that is old and conservative, because capital has accomplished this
itself. Rather it will appear as a return to something (a revolution in
the mathematical sense of the term), a return to community though not in
any form that has existed previously. Revolution will make itself felt
in the destruction of all that is most “modern” and “progressive”
because science is capital.
— Jacques Camatte [1]
Science is a system of knowledge acquisition that is based on
empiricism, experimentation, atomization, rationalizing causality, and
methodological naturalism and that is aimed at finding the truth.
Theories — predictive hypotheses — are the basic unit of knowledge in
this system. Science also refers to the bodies of knowledge achieved
from this research.
Most scientists feel that scientific investigation must adhere to the
scientific method, a process for evaluating empirical knowledge under
the working assumption of methodological materialism, which explains
observable events in nature by natural causes without assuming the
existence or non-existence or the supernatural. Particular specialized
studies that make use of empirical methods are often referred to as
sciences as well.
Conversations about science get complicated since the word refers to
distinct yet connected things. For example, physics is a science (a
field of specialized studies) that is not always scientific (according
to the above definition), since quantum physics moves away from the
distinction between observer and observed that is fundamental to
experimentation. However, to the extent that physicists reject the
implications of that moving away, physics continues in the trajectory
that science (as a way of thinking) has established.
Science must be critiqued as the modern problem-solving technique.
Science is so widely accepted that for many people it has in fact become
synonymous with problem solving. Even people who are critical of most
other aspects of the culture we live in, find themselves reverting to
science when pushed to defend their ideas, e.g. anti-civilization
anarchists who refer to biology when attempting to convince about an
optimal diet, or to anthropology to prove the superiority of their blue
print for future societies.
Of the various ways to critique science, the most fundamental addresses
the scientific method, which emphasizes a) reproducibility, b) causality
(that a thing or event causes another thing or event), and c) the
relevance of things (material reality) over all else (more accurately,
it emphasizes a specific perspective on material reality, the only
perspective that science recognizes as valid). One problem with the
scientific model is how it maintains and relies on a perspective of the
world as a frozen (static) place. Also problematic is the idea that
everything can be broken down into discrete, quantifiable parts, that
the whole is never more than the sum of its parts. Underlying both of
these perspectives are the premises that the best or only way to know
the world is to distance ourselves from it, to be outside of it; that
this distance allows us to use the world; that utility is, in fact, the
appropriate relationship to have to the world.
On a practical level there is the understanding that scientists are
operating within a system that is based as much (if not more) on
hierarchy and funding as it is on paying attention to what is actually
going on around us. There are multiple accounts (even from conventional
sources) showing that who is funding a study has a substantive impact on
what the study discovers, from tobacco’s impact on health to the
possibility of restricting the spread of genetically modified organisms,
but these examples are merely the most obvious.
The more subtle ones have to do with how we ask questions (“when did you
stop beating your child?”), who we ask questions of (related to the
questioner’s access, biases, language, etc.), what questions we think to
ask, and how we understand the answers we get, as well as what
meta-interests the questions serve (how are the assumptions of this
culture fed and/or challenged by who, how, and of whom these questions
get asked?).
Western education predisposes us to think of knowledge in terms of
factual information, information that can be structured and passed on
through books, lectures and programmed courses. Knowledge is something
that can be acquired and accumulated, rather like stocks and bonds. By
contrast, within the Indigenous world the act of coming to know
something involves a personal transformation. The knower and the known
are indissolubly linked and changed in a fundamental way. Coming to know
Indigenous [ways of knowing] can never be reduced to a catalogue of
facts or a data base in a supercomputer; for it is a dynamical and
living process, an aspect of the ever-changing, ever-renewing processes
of nature. [2]
And on a philosophical level, knowledge is created from foundations that
limit and construct it in specific ways. While on one hand science is a
response to the superstition and hierarchy associated with religion, it
also continues christianity’s theme of a pure abstract and universal
truth, separate from the sludge of everyday life, with scientists and
doctors in the position of clergy that is, people who know more about us
than we do. Some people believe in science (as something they don’t
understand that can solve their problems) in ways similar to how others
believe in god. Some people cite scientific references the way that
other people cite scripture.
Traditionally, science posits a neutral objective observer, a
fantastical being to compare to any angel or demon: this neutral
observer has no interest other than truth, which comes from information,
and information is received inside of laboratories, with carefully
identified variables and carefully maintained control sets. (The
mystification of this awesome observer is only magnified, not
ameliorated, by the addition of peer review, in which a body of
knowledgeable colleagues examine the experiments and data to verify
their validity). [3]
Science exemplifies this cultures tendency to specialize, and
consequently to create experts, people who know every little thing about
specific bits, but not how those bits interact with other things —
clearly a result of thinking that is thing-based (vs. for example,
relationship-based). So for instance, practitioners of allopathic
medicine prescribe multiple medications to people, frequently without
having any idea about how these specific drugs will interact with each
other, much less any idea about how a person’s feelings or other life
experiences are related to their physical health.
In The Origins of Authoritarianism, Hannah Arendt uses the word
scientism to express the logical extension of scientific thinking, which
makes otherwise impossible moral or ethical questions (such as, “Can
someone be worthless? And if so, can that person be euthanized?”) easily
resolvable. In other words, the inhuman aspects of totalitarian states
are related to the reliance of those states on science as the ultimate
arbiter of value: indeed, the idea that everything must be of measurable
value is part of the scientific paradigm.
By definition, anthropologists scientifically study groups of people —
relationships, customs, behaviors, and social patterns.
(The “scientifically” is what separates anthropologists from say
artists, comedians... or just curious people.) The history of
anthropology is of civilized men and the occasional woman going to
cultures foreign to them and reporting back about these cultures to
their funders. As scientists — with all the quantifying and rationalist
implications of that word — anthropologists are responsible for
interpreting primitive/ Other peoples to the mainstream. To the extent
that anthropologists are mediators between the civilized and the
barbaric, they are also part of a cultural trajectory that includes
missionaries.
Anthropologists, as well as other social scientists, extend the realm of
science by making people’s homes into laboratories, by presuming that it
is possible and appropriate to engage objectively with people in
cultures very different from their own (or even people from their own
culture), for the purpose of distilling the most meaningful information.
And, as with all sciences, what is considered most meaningful is part of
an on-going debate (with many unexplored and unquestioned assumptions),
a debate ultimately framed by funders — from private grantors to
universities. Why do people get paid to study people? What do the
funders get for their money? They get increased markets (in the form of
the studied), increased control of existing markets (more information
about what motivates people — thus how to sell more effectively), and
more products (from tourism to books to drugs).
As a discipline, anthropology is compelling for a number of mostly
obvious reasons, including that it provides a more holistic view of
people than the views from economics, political science, sociology, etc.
More significantly, it provides evidence that our options as a species
are more varied than we are taught to believe. Because anthropology
provides people (who become anthropologists) with a funded way to do
interesting things and have interesting conversations, and the kind of
people who want to find out about other cultures can be intriguing
people, it is tempting to conflate the people, and their experiences,
with anthropology itself. But the study of people scientifically, the
creation of experts, the context of meeting and learning about people
while being funded by corporations, is inherently skewed and
manipulative, no matter the intentions or integrity of the people
involved.
In “Anthropologists and Other Friends,” esteemed American Indian writer
Vine Deloria Jr. brilliantly refutes the possibility of exploring people
in a vacuum, by describing the reciprocal creation that happens between
agents of mediation (in this case, anthropologists) and the mediated (in
this case, Indians). Deloria examines how the anthropologists, by having
clear ideas about what Indians do (ie, who is Authentic) and by
attending only to those Indians who are willing to act the way they’re
supposed to, encourage those Indians to continue acting Authentically,
which then reinforces the anthropologists in their definitions and
expectations. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle — a closed loop in
which people from two groups create and support mutual judgments (which
they take as fact). Two of these judgments are “real Indians do specific
kinds of rituals” and “real anthropologists are experts in the culture
that they study.” It is the very premise of purity of a static identity
(a premise required by science), that is so falsifying to experience and
so limiting to the sort of information that studiers can gather about
the studied. (This model of knowledge creates a similar dynamic between
activists and the targets of their activism — leading people to embrace
concepts like “real women,” “the real working class,” and “real
wildness.”) To the extent that an activist is interacting — in theory or
practice — with abstractions rather than with actual relationships, to
that extent activists become invested in maintaining the distance
between themselves and what — or whomever they are attempting to save.
And interaction with abstractions (vs. relationships) is what is
required for things like funding and school credit; it is what makes a
work scientific.
Anthropologists will always emphasize the difference between the studied
and the studier. This tendency is also demonstrated by all people who
want (for reasons of money or status, or both) to be experts on another
group of people and it usually means reifying (or freezing) the studied,
attempting to keep them distinct, pure, Authentic.
In Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, David Graeber encourages us
to “break down the wall” between cultures studied by anthropologists
(cultures frequently described by words like “primitive” and
“kin-based”) and modern societies. He posits this wall as the belief
that some inherent, essential shift occurred to create modern cultures
as fundamentally different from previous cultures. He suggests that it
is much more interesting and relevant to look at the ways that we are
the same as the people being studied. While his point about the
usefulness of “the wall” is unassailable, the point is that creating and
maintaining this wall is exactly what anthropology is for. As Graeber
himself notes, it’s anthropology when people are talking about
“primitives,” but sociology, political science, economics, architecture,
psychology, etc. when talking about people like the studiers. Science
insists that we distance ourselves — both as groups and as individuals —
from the rest of the world, so as to more effectively use it. The social
role of anthropologists is that particular category of distancing that
involves cultures that are different along specifically those
“primitive” and “kin-based” lines.
While major paradigms will always have offshoots that grow in tangential
directions, these branches grow only to the extent that they are useful
to the main body. Interesting people will want to do interesting things
to and with the tradition, but to the extent that these people expect
and work for recognition within the field, to the extent that they are
judged by standards set within the field, to the extent that their work
is used by corporations — then they are part of the scientific
trajectory with all that that implies.
The only reason to stay distant from the Other, the whole purpose of an
Other, is for control and manipulation, of both the Other and the Same.
Put simply, Others are easier to kill (however that killing might look
in different circumstances), and the easier they are to kill, the more
both sides of the Same/ Other split feel the pressure to conform.
Anthropology, like the other sciences, is useful to the status quo in
its ability to make the studied into objects that can be manipulated and
consumed by the current system, and in its ability to increase control
over the studiers.
bob on science as capital:
Dear Bay Area Anarchist Collective,
I enjoy enigmatic epigrams as much as the next guy, but what does it
mean, actually, to say that “Science is Capital”? That it’s expensive?
Dot Matrix seems to think that saying science is based on “funding” is
some sort of objection to it. Anarchist magazines are also based on
funding, only not as much. Envy, however, is not argument. “Funding and
school credit” are the obsessions of a failed graduate student.
Theories cannot be both “predictive hypotheses” and “unit[s] of
knowledge” (why not call them facts?), because no amount or arrangement
of facts is predictive of anything. Science does not assume that “the
world is a frozen (static) place,” because it includes dynamic
relationships and developmental processes. Since a primary object of
scientific study is natural systems, it is of course absurd to fault it
as static. Dot’s idea of science went out with Linnaeus, if indeed it
ever went in.
Anthropology is not “by definition” the scientific study of human groups
— all the social sciences do that — it is by definition the study of man
by the various methods of biology, archeology, linguistics and
ethnology. The latter, the least scientific variety, is the only one Dot
is talking about. (Few scientists, incidentally, still speak, as does
Dot, of the scientific method.) I have no idea what it means to call
even cultural anthropologists “mediators between the civilized and the
barbaric,” falsely implying that they use this pejorative terminology,
nor what it means to say they “are also part of a cultural trajectory
that includes missionaries? (Who among us isn’t?) Missionaries try to
change the natives; ethnographers try not to. Neither missionaries nor
anthropologists are mediators, because both communicate cross-culturally
in only one direction — but in opposite directions.
The best thinking in the essay is “mediated” from Vine Deloria, Jr.,
whose polemic against anthropologists would have furnished a far better
text. Even his criticisms, however, are outdated commonplaces.
Everything he and Dot have to say may be found in the discipline’s rich
penitential literature going back fifty years. In fact, every thing
factual Dot says is out of date by fifty to one hundred years. The
societies anthropologists study are not frequently described as
“primitive,” and they have not been exclusively “kin-based” for eighty
years. Anthropologists like Robert Redfield and Oscar Lewis noticed that
the method of embedded fieldwork is suitable to all kinds of
face-to-face communities, not just bands and tribes. They have produced
countless studies of peasant communities (in Mexico, India, Sicily,
etc.) and more recently urban neighborhoods. They have followed the
Indians from the reservations to the big cities.
“The only reason to stay distant from the Other, the whole purpose of an
Other, is for control and manipulation? What extravagant nonsense. Has
not Dot identified other purposes, such as careerism? Has Dot ever
ridden a bus? Or been bothered by salesmen, panhandlers or police? (In
Berkeley, of course, these things never happen.) Often you want to keep
the Other an Other, not for control or manipulation, but to avoid it.
It is Dot Matrix, not the typical anthropologist, who essentializes the
natives by positing an Authenticity which the anthropologists (Other to
the Other) with their metaphorical test tubes will never experience. Has
Dot experienced it? If not, how does Dot know that they falsify? By now,
a lot of anthropologists, especially in the United States, are natives
(Jomo Kenyatta, first president of Kenya, was a British-trained social
anthropologist), and many natives read the books written about them.
Jack Goode returned after twenty years to the African scene of his
original fieldwork to find that the locals were citing his monographs in
lawsuits.
To me, there is nothing scandalous about supposing that someone from
another culture might understand it better, on some levels, than some or
all of those who live it. Any economist of any nationality understands
important aspects of my country better than I do.
In some ways, from reading maybe twenty books, I understand the Roman
Empire better than any Roman ever could. A Swedish economist, Gunnar
Myrdal, probably understood American race relations in the 1940s better
than any American, black or white. The “emic” and “etic” (internal and
external) perspectives are complementary; neither should be privileged.
Dot is a hierarch. Trying to come across as a champion (self-appointed)
of the native experience, Dot instead exhibits intolerant hostility
toward epistemological pluralism, and should stand in the corner reading
Paul Feyerabend to Fred Woodworth. But I have a question which I
answered, I suspect, in my first paragraph. Do you have to be an
anthropologist to understand the culture called anthropology? Is Dot an
anthropologist? Or maybe a failed graduate student?
It’s tremendously exciting writing this, not knowing whom I am
insulting!
Hooray for Captain Spaulding!
Bob Black
---
Dear Dot,
It is good that the arguments presented in “Science as Capital” (Anarchy
stimulate some response in the letters section (as long as most readers
aren’t brain dead). However, I think you could develop a much more
effective critique (effective from my perspective, at least — from your
perspective you may have different priorities) if you were less globally
aggressive in your attacks on science and anthropology, and a lot more
nuanced and relativistic instead.
For example, your critique reads to me as being very brash and impulsive
in some major ways, almost caricaturing what you critique to the point
that it becomes a false portrait which tends to lose the interest of
readers like myself, who would prefer less black-and-white posturing and
more exploration of grey areas. In the first place anthropology isn’t
merely a science and has never been merely a science. Some of the things
you criticize anthropology in general for being are really only aspects
of the scientific tendencies of anthropology and aren’t true in anything
like all instances of anthropological practice. You write as though you
are possibly unfamiliar with the development of modem scientific
anthropology from out of philosophical anthropology, or at least, as
though you feel that philosophical anthropology has been absolutely
eclipsed and doesn’t need to even or ever be mentioned (which I feel is
far from true). If you read the essay on the anthropological
investigation of the post-situationist milieu by Karen Goaman
(“Oppositional Currents and the Art of Anthropology”) that I sent last
week (and which will appear in the first issue of the new journal Modern
Slavery), you’ll recognize that while she is practicing anthropology
(and is even doing so from within a university setting), she isn’t
practicing any sort of scientific anthropology, which results in her
work being defined by your critique as either non-anthropological, or as
some sort of anomaly that would be meaningless in an overview of the
subject. From my perspective, I think her work is almost cutting-edge
anthropology and in the future will be recognized as such by an
increasing number of other self-critical, practicing anthropologists
(though, probably not by any means a majority of anthropologists as long
as most anthropological institutions and investigations are organized
and funded by state and capital). My point is that capital and state
influences tend to permeate every aspect of life, but rather than reject
life or all of its individual constituents (from anthropology to art to
everything else) it makes more sense to make a more nuanced critique of
the dominant (capitalist/statist/hierarchical) trends which still leaves
some room for the minority tendencies which are often there (unless the
institution or practice being discussed is clearly and absolutely tied
to hierarchy, market-relations, etc.).
A similar argument can be made with regard to science more generally.
While it has largely been captured and constrained by capitalist and
statist interests, historically this has not always (and during
particular periods often not at all) been the case. It remains
definitely possible in my opinion for scientific practices to operate
outside of the caricature of science you have constructed, though it is
also true that for general shorthand purposes a critique like yours can
be made which will work well enough for dealing with 95% (and maybe even
99%) of actual scientific practices here and now. Still, to be accurate,
and to not perpetuate a falsely totalistic critique, I prefer to at
least give a hint of the areas of actual and potential (and historical)
scientific practice that lies outside of your critique.
Take care,
Jason McQuinn
---
Dot responds:
I agree that my argument is simplistic along the lines that you say.
While I did read and include information from a couple of recent texts,
my point was not to write a careful study of today’s anthropology which
would necessarily include whatever details run counter to the main
thrust of how capital and Control Society work through science in
general and that field of science in particular. As you acknowledge,
your response demonstrates a difference in our priorities. I would
categorize your focus as primarily historical — meaning carefully
factual, scrupulously specific, detail oriented in exactly the way you
say you wish the article was. I would label my interest, on the other
hand, as more philosophical, emphasizing broad brush strokes, a feel for
how associations and context work; more impasto than pointillist. I know
that the historically minded people will read this as an excuse for
sloppiness, just as I sometimes get frustrated with historically minded
people for focusing too much on punctuation and correct dates, rather
than on information that is more relevant to me.
The weakness of philosophical or broad brush writing is obvious: without
enough fact to back up ideas, the ideas either are or seem to be mere
personal ponderings. The strength of it, however; can be that it doesn’t
get tied down in arguments about what year something happened or whether
the latest theories are relevant or not. In this case, I happily
concede, that the most up-to-date anthropology might well seem more
personal, more human, more respectful, less scientific.
But I don’t think that that changes the message in the article, which is
about trajectory, assumption, and yet another way we participate in the
otherification of ourselves and each other. I believe that there will
always be people who find ways to make their practices more human, more
appropriate, no matter how bad the institution they operate within. But
to address those is frequently to take the focus away from the momentum
of the tradition, to distract with details.
The strength of labeling a particular kind of dehumanized interaction
and expectation (in this case as scientific) comes from how much it
allows us to look at things differently, to question something that we
have been encouraged to take for granted.
There will of course be people for whom my method and writing don’t
work, and I hope I am being realistically humble, rather than cavalier,
by acknowledging that. That said I value both pointillism and impasto,
and I definitely welcome your critique along these lines. It is good for
me to be reminded of what I am leaving out, what assumptions I make
about my audience, and to remember that philosophy and history are not
polar binaries, but can combine pleasantly, like peanut butter and jam.
---
Dear Anarchy Staff,
SCIENCE IS COLLECTIVE
A different conception of society, very different from that which now
prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy a new
interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at
the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the
same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences.
— Peter Kropotkin [4]
While I agree with a significant portion of the critique of science by
Dot Matrix, he unfortunately falls prey to a number of fallacies in his
argument. I’ll admit at the outset that I may be biased in my approach
to this issue. I’ve studied what I believe to be science for
approximately six years and plan to continue as I work towards the
completion of my doctorate in evolutionary anthropology. I’ve found that
a scientific understanding of the natural world has enriched my
anarchist principles. So, with that perspective, I was a little
surprised to learn that, despite my best intentions, the entire purpose
of my endeavors to date has been to “stay distant from the Other” for
the sole purpose of “control and manipulation.”
Dot Matrix states that science is largely viewed as “the modem
problem-solving technique” but is troubled that “even people who are
critical of most other aspects of the culture we live in, find
themselves reverting to science when pushed to defend their ideas.”
This is bad, he informs us, because science “maintains and relies on a
perspective of the world as a frozen (static) place,” and is a
methodology that emphasizes “reproducibility”, “causality (that a thing
or event causes another thing or event)” and promotes “the relevance of
things (material reality) over all else.” From this perspective, science
dictates that “everything can be broken down into discrete, quantifiable
parts” and that “the whole is never more than the sum of its parts.”
There is some truth to what he says.
For example, to use Bertrand Russell’s analogy, if we see a cat on one
side of the room and then, after being distracted, we see it on the
opposite side, the most reasonable explanation is that the cat
physically traversed that distance. We could, if we wanted, suppose that
a wormhole opened and the cat was transported to that location (or
perhaps it was a malicious angel sent to confuse us), but since we’re
not confident about the reality of wormholes or angels (nor of their
habit of singling out stray felines) we can confidently discount those
possibilities for the time being. The same applies to all natural
phenomena (however Dot Matrix has clearly never seen the bitter
arguments that occur over which interpretation best fits the evidence or
he could never state that science “emphasizes a specific perspective on
material reality.”
Dot Matrix is also correct that many scientists (though certainly not
all, such as systems theorists) incorporate reductionism into their
approach in order to understand complex phenomena, by breaking them down
into easier to understand components. However, I’ve yet to meet anyone
actually engaging in science who believes that, say, understanding
electron transport within synaptic neurons is all you need to explain
the joy felt while listening to music. But, certainly, an understanding
of why cancerous cells mutate would go a long way to understanding the
disease at large (as would understanding the lifestyle of the person
afflicted). In the same way, Kropotkin (and Marx) used reductionism in
their arguments to promote their political theories.
But reductionism as the ultimate explanation is a commonly held fallacy
about science that hasn’t changed since William Blake condemned the
evils of “single vision and Newton’s sleep” at the turn of the 19th
century. At that time scientists really did believe that if you had
enough facts about the universe, you could predict everything about
future outcomes (Newton, like many early scientists, viewed his research
as determining God’s plan). But no one today, outside of a few
crackpots, would imagine that if you had precise measurements of wind
speed, barometric pressure, relative humidity, and temperature that you
could predict the exact motions of a leaf caught in a summer breeze, let
alone the universe as a whole. However, one could predict, within a
fairly reliable probability, how far and in what direction such a leaf
would travel under such conditions. This is the same principle by which
models of global warming are generated.
Science operates through making predictions (hypotheses) and, if those
predictions fail (repetition) the hypothesis is abandoned. It’s the
process of making a reasoned argument about the natural world. In order
to make a reasoned argument you have to agree on certain axioms,
otherwise you might as well debate in different languages for all of the
sense it will make. So, while I’m not sure what Dot Matrix means by “a
perspective of the world as a frozen (static) place” I can only presume
he’s referring to the laws of physics. However, I seriously doubt he’s
stating that the laws of gravity or thermodynamics are as arbitrary as
the laws of the State.
But if he wants to believe that, no scientist will force him to do
otherwise.
However, Dot Matrix is dead on when he critiques how science has been
abused by the State. Whether you’re talking about capitalists, fascists
or communists, the State has routinely politicized science to further
its grasp on power (including anthropology, in which 1/3 of all grants
in the 1960s were from the CIA[5]). It is this that makes most leftists
shun science as a whole (and why people immediately presume evolutionary
interpretations of human behavior are one step away from Dr. Mengele’s
views on eugenics). However, if we’re going to abandon science on those
grounds we’re also going to have to abandon philosophy, art, literature
and music for also being employed by the power hungry on a routine basis
to further their own ends (while remembering Mengele, people routinely
forget Rosenberg and Riefenstahl and the role of art in the Nazi
movement).
But Dot Matrix seems to be of the opinion that facts don’t matter, that
any wild speculation is as relevant as a controlled experiment and that
science has no place in his revolution (a view that Kropotkin would
heartily disagree with). However, I don’t believe that the politics of
exclusion is a healthy point of view as we work towards building another
world. I’m of the opinion that we should use any tool and any method if
it furthers our collective goal of human freedom. I view a proper
understanding of science to be a dual-purpose tool that anyone can
employ, akin to, say, a hammer. Frequently it is used to build the
edifice of State power, but it can also be used to undermine and
dismantle it.
Moebius Cube
---
Dot responds:
What is the viability of cherry picking? Is it appropriate to isolate
one fundamental aspect of a cultural understanding (in this case,
whatever you consider to be the good points of science) from the rest of
that culture (in this case the Control Society that we presumably both
hate)? If “Science is Capital” raised any hint of this question for you,
then I consider it worth the time you spent reading it.
Your examples of how excellently science has answered the questions that
science has asked are not compelling to me.
But perhaps that is because I am “of the opinion that facts don’t
matter:” (Ah facts, my good friends... )
Or maybe I just haven’t yet recovered from my abrupt and unplanned sex
change.
[1] Camatte, “Against Domestication” This World We Must Leave, 113
[2]
F. David Peat in Blackfoot Physics, 2; Understanding knowledge as an
individual thing, a matter of a relationship and personal
transformation, and not something that an expert can use to fill up
empty containers (aka students), is a fundamental challenge to the
over — emphasis on Mass that currently effects our lives so
intensely — from questions of democracy and social change, to
industrialization and how work is structured, to our sense of our
own personal relevance in the world.
[3] www.aip.org
[4] Kropotkin, “Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal” (1896),
en.wikiquote.org
[5] Church Committee Reports, Book 1.X. The Domestic Impact of Foreign
Clandestine Operations: The CIA and Academic Institutions, The Media,
And Religious Institutions, p. 182; www.aarclibrary.org