[FoRK] Practicing Science: Secular vs. Religious Ideology

[Lion Kimbro]

On Jan 12, 2008 7:33 AM, Russell Turpin <deafbox at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Without commenting on your own take on Hegelian synthesis, let me
> two objections to Marx's. First, he thought he understood the
> economic dialectic that was driving political history well enough
> to predict its stages, and to paint future stages that did not yet
> and still do not exist. There, I think he was factually in error.
> Second, he attached a particular ethic to his view of how History
> would unfold. One was either on the side of History, or against it.
> For all his claim to "science," there was a horrible entanglement
> of the positive and the normative in Marx's views that belies that.


  Thank you.

  When we're talking about the future, we have to make a lot of
  guesses.

  If people are to do something big, something that will require that
  they throw all of their heart, and all of their mind into, then
  there arises a need for leadership, inspiration, conviction, and so
  on.


  I wrote earlier that if someone is going to undertake an
  engineering project, that it requires time, and faith.

  Someone responded saying, "Faith has nothing to do with it;" I
  assume they think I was suggesting a faith in God, or they were
  thinking of simple projects, where it's just a matter of following
  established steps.

  But there's *another* class of projects, where you don't know how
  it's going to turn out, where you're investigating a new territory,
  or something like that -- and I think that a kind of faith is
  required:

  Faith that:
  * unanswered questions will find answers
  * the team won't quit
  * people will keep inspired, and moving on
  * other people (outsiders) will appreciate the work,
    and contribute to it
  * ...
  ...and so on.

  You try and minimize your risks, you try and learn everything you
  can about the domain, you try and be as scientific as possible.

  But when you tread on a risky project, or a project that breaks new
  grounds, the element of faith comes in: Will you act confidently
  that the project will succeed, or will you quake in doubt, when you
  realize that there will be a challenge?  When your confidence
  breaks, will you keep stepping forward, or will you give up?

  (This has nothing to do with the super-natural.)


  So, "how does this relate to Marx?"

  If you're painting a picture of the future, you want it to be as
  true to everything you know.  You want to have good science, the
  best science you understand so far, to guide you.

  I have difficulty blaming any seer for trying to be scientific.  I
  think we should just *automatically* assert:  "Anyone who's
  predicting the future is wrong."  I think that should be an
  obvious, moot point.

  Second:  We're talking about history here;  Human civilizations,
  not individual light switches.  It seems appropriate to me that
  someone would take ethics into account, when painting a picture of
  the future.


  So --  I am inclined to agree with you:  Marx [must have been!]
  factually in error.  Second: Normative and positive (whatever he
  got right?) are mixed entangled.

  Only:  I cannot fault him for that.


  In a certain respect, I think that the **only** way we can avoid
  things like the disaster of Communism, is to account for "lessons
  learned" afterwards, in future thinking.  I don't think we can
  fault the entire concept of looking at history, and projecting
  fowards.

  I don't think that we can responsibly avoid "painting futures."  If
  we don't paint a future, it will be painted for us.

  I think we should collaboratively paint futures, and I think that
  when we do so, we should take into account whatever "science of
  history" (if there is such a science;  it seems like -- necessarily
  -- so much metaphysics, to me) that we can, and I think we'd be
  irresponsible, not to take ethics into account when doing that (and
  thus, to some degree, acting normatively.)


  Tom Atlee has this idea that he calls "the Storycology Project."

    http://storyfieldconference.com/SFC-Atlee-Storycology.html

  The idea is basically an open-source society for future-casting.
  People write, mixing modern day reality and imagined future (for
  example, the "FoRK contribution" might be head-mounted displays,
  projectors, augmented reality, etc.,.) telling stories of real-life
  news and activities, taking place in the future.  You connect the
  stories together, and people attempt to actually live into the
  stories being told.

    http://storyfieldconversations.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/shared-universes-and-collaborative-multimedia-imagineering/

  I think this is an absolutely amazing idea.


  Take care,
    Lion =^_^=