Not All Stories Are Equal
By Michael Albert
One: Someone pulls off a butterfly's wing. Question: Is it sensible for the butterfly to walk? Answer 1: Yes, it is sensible for the butterfly to walk. After all, it lacks a wing, how else can it get around. Answer 2: No, it is not sensible for the butterfly to walk. After all, it lacks a wing, and that's senseless.
Two: A society establishes its military-industrial complex as the main conduit of economic riches and influence. Question: Is it sensible for a scientist to accept defense contracts? Answer 1: Yes, it is sensible for the scientist to accept defense contracts, how else can she utilize her training?. No, it is not sensible for the scientist to accept defense contracts. Militarism is contrary to the code of the scientist's training.
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One: Suppose you are a child and someone says you can have a bath and go to bed, or you can just go to bed. You reply, "I reject your offer. I'll figure out a better alternative."
Two: Suppose a post modern anthropologist says you can hereafter employ thinking constrained to rationalize oppressive confines, or you can employ no thinking at all. You reply I reject your offer. I'll figure out a better alternative."
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One: A multicultural tennis fan notices that John McEnroe, the professional tennis player, often gets very angry on the court and also frequently hits his backhand with slice. The fan decides, "Slice causes fights. Let's put severe limits on its use." You exclaim, "Hold on, some other players hit with slice and rarely lose their composure. Moreover, slice has no demonstrable relation to temper tantrums, and other causes do. You are deluded or trying to delude me."
Two: An activist philosopher notices that scientists frequently propound capitalist, racist, sexist, authoritarian notions and also often think rationally. He deduces, "Thinking rationally causes the problem. Let's transcend our oppressions by deciding what's true in accord with what will be good rather than with what scientific method reveals." You exclaim, "Hold on, some scientists think rationally and rarely propound oppressive notions. Moreover, thinking rationally has no demonstrable relation to propounding oppressive notions, and other causes do. You are deluded or trying to delude me."
Ashis Nandy
Ashis Nandy's "Oh What A Lovely Science" bemoans the "reign of experts, the tyranny of revolutionary vanguards, and the despotism of the development regimes." I agree. It also indicates that these horrors derive from the "principle of rationality that modern science enshrines." I disagree.
Nandy's first claim is borne out by the history of the First, Second, and Third Worlds. His second claim is refuted by the same histories.
When Nandy rejects science because imperialists have claimed to be "scientific," he is committing a non sequitur just as it would be a non sequitur to reject democracy, freedom, love, or solidarity because people with vile intentions have claimed to uphold these ideals when pursuing evil ends. Dispose of the hypocrisy, not the hypocritically abused virtues.
Actually, the analogy is misleading. To make it more accurate imagine someone were to reject breathing or walking or talking because people who breath, walk, or talk have historically often committed vile acts against others. The claim would be self-evidently absurd and impossible, and, in fact, rejecting rationality on similar grounds is similarly absurd and impossible.
Nandy concludes his brief piece by saying that in the future "other kinds of science, based on a different set of assumptions about nature and human nature, will now emerge from the crevices of our social unconsciousness." I don't know what the "crevices of our social unconsciousness" refers to, but it is certainly true that new levels of understanding of "nature" and "human nature" will arise from tomorrow's experiments and theorizing. Science works that way, going from one theory to the next in light of lessons learned from experiments along the way. But Nandy thinks that down the road we're going to think differently using "other kinds of science," not in the sense that relativity theory is other than classical mechanics, or complexity theory is other than quantum physics, but in the sense of entirely escaping the bounds of contemporary scientific method and Western Rationality per se. What might this mean?
At first I thought I would have to go back to Stalin's Russia and Lysenkoism to offer an example of the "other kinds of science" that might emerge if values are injected into research and logic. The Lysenko case, bending genetic theory to fit Marxist Leninist priorities, is certainly appropriate, but I wanted something more up-to-date. And it turns out that there is actually a place in today's world where we can see the results of an effort to revamp science in light of "different values" so that scientists "think differently" and therefore practice what might plausibly be called "other kinds of science." Those interested should consult Islam and Science (Zed Press, 1991), by Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist. Hoodbhoy carefully documents the calamitous effect on education, development, and just plain good sense of denigrating Western science as "purely secular" and correcting it by "infusing ethics," in this case from Islam.
To get a feel for what Islamic Science is like, here are some representative titles of papers from a conference of Islamic scientists inaugurated by President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan and jointly organized by the International Islamic University in Islamabad together with the Organization of Scientific Miracles in Mecca. The conference was held in lavish surroundings (half funded by the government of Saudi Arabia) in October 1987, but it had been closely preceded by two other similar conferences in Karachi, as well as by many earlier ones. In other words, Islamic Science has plenty of serious backing.
Among the papers delivered by some of the hundreds of delegates we find, quite representatively:
- Chemical Composition Of Milk In Relation To Verse 66 Of Surat An-Nabl Of The Holy Qur'an
- Description Of Man At High Altitude In Qur'an
- Cumulonimbus Clouds Description In Qur'an
- Have You Observed The Fire?
- Indeed, there were 66 such papers in all, followed by countless discussion sessions with similar titles. One discussion session, in particular, was called "Panel Discussion on Things Known Only To Allah." The logically inclined might wonder what the panelists could possibly have discussed, assuming Allah wasn't present and divulging the things known only to him. Hoodbhoy also describes how:
- Dr. Mohammed Muttalib, who teaches earth science at the famous Al-Azhar University in Egypt presented a paper "on the relation of geological facts and phenomena in Qur'anic Verses... `Mountains have roots in the earth,' said the good doctor, `and Allah made them act like pegs which tether a tent to the ground and keep it from blowing away.' `Without mountains,' he emphasized, `the earth's rotation would cause everything simply to fly apart. It would be totally catastrophic--no mountains, no earth.'" As, for example, in the desert, on gaseous planets, or on stars.
- Dr. Arshad Ali Beg (a senior research scientist at the Pakistan Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) presented a "bold new scientific theory of munafiqat [hypocrisy]. [Begs] has a mathematical formula by which, he says, the degree of munafiqat in a society can be calculated.... Skipping the details, which the reader can find in his paper, let me quickly come to his conclusions: Western society is calculated to have a munafiqat value of 22, while Spain and Portugal have a value of only 14." And what about Pakistan or Saudi Arabia?
- The chairman of Pakistan's Space Organization [their equivalent of NASA], Salim Mehmud, recently "proposed that an explanation for the Holy Prophet's Mairaj (instant ascension to heaven) be sought in Einstein's theory of relativity." He then got the theory of time dilation when traveling near the speed of light exactly backwards despite that the relevant application is treated in nearly all intermediate college physics texts.
- Not to be outdone, "a German delegate to the Islamic Science conference of 1983 claimed to have calculated the `Angle of God' using mathematical topology." This fellow was hosted and supported at the expense of the Pakistani government.
- Like Hoodbhoy--and, I would imagine, everybody else in this debate--I think Islamic Science is a travesty. If it were to become an international norm, it would have calamitous consequences for the human spirit and body. Obviously the marriage of Islam and "Science"--the only (non-Lysenko) example I could find anyplace of "other kinds of science"--has done nothing good for either science or religion. But the experience ought not be dismissed as an aberration. I think, instead, it tells us a great deal about the dangers of letting a valid critique of some scientific knowledge and of many scientists' behaviors expand into a wholesale rejection of "scientific method" per se.
Kate Ellis
- Kate Ellis's piece begins with a description of a dilemma posed in an Ursula Leguin novel, The Lathe of Heaven. The choice the book poses, as Ellis recounts it, seems to be that we opt to have a single expert with God-like powers revamp history or that we passively sit back and take the future as it comes. No doubt the contrast makes a useful point in the book, but I prefer that in the real world people study their circumstances and potentials and take shared responsibility for making positive changes in light of the best understandings they can attain.
Ellis says that ideas or policies rarely become popular because they have been carefully assessed by all concerned. I don't know about "rarely" but I do agree that fear of reprisal or desire for reward often obscure what uncoerced, unbribed rationality would tell us if we gave it a chance. But what are we supposed to conclude from this? That we should pay attention to coercive factors? Agreed, but that's consistent with rationality.
Indeed, when Ellis says we should pay more attention to "why people on the whole don't want to do what they clearly should," there is a sense in which she is absolutely right. But I think that such attention will often reveal that the people who Ellis thinks aren't doing "what they clearly should" are in fact sensible in the same way as the butterfly with no wing that walks instead of flying or the scientist who works for a defense contractor, both recounted in the short-takes at the outset of this article. That is, people often don't "do what they clearly should" because they find themselves in circumstances that will punish them if they "do what they clearly should" and reward them if they do what Ellis thinks they clearly shouldn't. In such cases, it's not "irrationality" or even ignorence but the conditions people confront that cause them/us to skew our behaviors. In this sense, and in spite of the anti-rationalists' otherwise admirable hostility to authoritarian decree, I wonder why Ellis seems unable to perceive that more than one answer to what people "ought to do" might "make sense."
When Ellis says we shouldn't ground values in objective truth, I don't know what she means. Values do not arise from facts. You can't get "ought" from "is" and no scientist claims you can. So who is Ellis contesting with this claim? On the other hand, suppose I say we ought to fulfill humanity's capacities, and then I say that since a human capacity is to teleport unassisted, we ought to fulfill humanity's capacity to teleport unassisted. Clearly, I will have gone from a plausible value to an absurd agenda by way of a false statement about people. Ellis can't advocate that. She must prefer that we develop arguments about what to seek in light of truthful assessments of our circumstances and potentials--for example, in light of the fact that people can't teleport unassisted--even as we choose underlying values that are based on "an amalgam of facts, beliefs, and desires." But if she agrees with this, then on this score she has no disagreement with science or rationality.
When Ellis seems to bemoan that "rationalism" leads some people to propose goals that extend beyond what already exists and that this is a colonizing act, I again wonder what she means. Does she really think there is something colonizing about using understandings of history and humanity to pose a vision more suited to human fulfillment and development than anything that now exists? I find it hard to believe that Ellis or any of themany people who put forward this type of claim consistently feel this way. For example, Ellis wants to eliminate sexism even though it now exists everywhere. Does her wanting to eliminate sexism make her a colonizer in favor of subjugating others to "a widening capacity of control," or does it make her a caring person who understands human potential and sexist curbs on it, and who would like to remove the sexist curbs to fulfill the human potential? Moreover, if Ellis is allowed to favor a non-sexist solution for humanity as a caring, thoughtful person, as she certainly ought to be, why isn't an ecological activist, an economic activist, a cultural activist, or a political activist allowed to favor an innovative Green, participatory economic, intercommunalist, or participatory democratic vision as a caring, thoughtful person?
To deny creative vision per se is to cut off humanity's singular capacity to create in light of preconceived aims. Consistently applied, such a stance would leave us never accomplishing anything beyond what is behaviorally wired in. Since no one could possibly advocate that degree of abject passivity, actual anti-visionary stances confine themselves to ruling out particular (but not all) visions. In that sense, actual anti-visionary positions are not only inconsistent in rejecting only some visionary thinking, they are profoundly sectarian. We should be as clear as possible about this. To impose visions on others is despicable. To have visions and try to develop support for them is the left's reason for being. Likewise, to be passionate about aims and seek them vigorously is not authoritarian. It is good sense. We're not playing "socialist basketball" with Donald Trump and Ross Perot where the goal is for us to help them utilize their skills and talents as much as possible and vice versa and they just haven't quite gotten the idea yet. We are out to establish solidaritous social values, to be sure, but via a struggle that we have to win, to implement new social structures, not just enjoy to benefit from structures we already have.
At the same time as I find the "post modernist" rejection of vision and goals horribly inconsistent and reactionary, I certainly agree that people who have a vision or a goal or an analysis are often sectarian about it, calling those with different views idiots, trying to impose the views without repeatedly reassessing them, etc. But none of this unproductive behavior is scientific. Nor is it a necessary outgrowth of having a goal or analysis. If Ellis and others offered practical methodologies, reminders, or ways of formulating claims that average folks and political activists could use that had qualities able to counter U.S. cultural tendencies toward domineering, competitive, stances, that would be excellent. Instead, post modernists throw out what is needed, vision, and offer nothing comprehensible to counter what is destructive, sectarianism. Indeed, it is my impression that post modernists actually aggravate tendencies toward sectarianism by way of their convoluted modes of expression and their continual references to incomprehensible authors and convoluted texts, rather than evidence and logic, as reasons why we should all take their claims seriously.
In any case, despite Ellis's worries about rationality, not surprisingly her disagreements with authors of prior Z Papers articles are all presented logically and with an attempt to offer evidence. I agree with some of what she says, and disagree with some (not least, her misreading of the dynamics and philosophy of participatory economics), but I don't see anything countering science or rationality in it, save for Ellis's hostility to having innovative goals, mentioned above.
Stephen Marglin
- Stephen Marglin is a practicing economist at Harvard University, and, as such, he has great familiarity with the vulgar obfuscation and obtuse nonsense that goes under the name "economic theory." The problem is, Marglin seems to accept that economics is a "science" rather than a con game, so that what's wrong with economics is also wrong with science.
Marglin claims that science says that "knowledge is of one kind, that only one system deserves the name of knowledge, that other systems do not exist--except to the extent that they are validated by the One True System." No doubt some people believe this. Few if any of those people, however, are real scientists. Instead, what real scientists believe is that one way of learning about the reality around us is the way of science which emphasizes hypotheses, experiments, the elaboration of theories linking hypotheses to one another, etc. This way of knowing, scientists argue, has the distinct advantage that people can test its claims. As a result, when this way of knowing can be successfully applied, its lessons carry great weight. Therefore, if (1) guessing, intuiting, or analogizing without evidence and testing, or (2) using fiction, poetry, or drama that is not necessarily logical, or (3) just using accumulated experience and habit, conflict with science in domains where evidence and testing can be undertaken, science is to be believed. But in domains where testing isn't possible--including, for example, the domain of knowing human emotions or settling on basic values--then non-scientific ways of knowing can have great weight. As the great physicist Max Plank says, "There can never be any opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other." Of course, Plank is talking about spirituality on the one hand and true science on the other.
Marglin also talks about the ills of theoretical knowledge based on thought disconnected from experience. If he is referring to the pro-market propaganda propounded by economists intentionally isolated from the reality of market alienation, bias, inequality, etc., his concern is apt. For that matter, if he is talking about the canons of marxism, intentionally isolated from the existence of not just men but also women, of not just one but many cultures, of not just workers and capitalists but also "coordinators," his concern is again apt. But if he is referring to the claims of real science, he is ill-informed.
Science's defining feature is it's connection to experience, evidence, and experiment. To say that science is "disembedded from experience" is therefore at least as wrong as saying that art is "disembedded from sensory perception" or that athletics is "disembedded with physical effort." Marglin's distinction between ways of knowing based exclusively on thought or exclusively on practice is an abstraction that highlights features he cares about but is false as a description of what scientists actually do. The abstract model of these two opposed ways of thinking is largely irrelevant for making claims about the real world of real scientists, in much the same way that neoclassical economic theory's model of the market is largely irrelevant for making claims about the places where we work and consume. Ironically, that is, Marglin's model of how people do science is Marglin's own abstract thought about doing science "disembedded" from any actual experience of how scientists really do do science.
Marglin's study of the nature of work and of the process of deskilling associated with capitalist development influenced me greatly when I was first thinking about how economies work. But when Marglin implies that the problem in capitalist and Soviet production relations was/is the worship of "T-knowledge," I think he does a horrible disservice to his own research. Of course ideologies play a critical role in why people accept their lot in life. Indeed, I believe that one of capitalism's main "accomplishments" has been convincing humanity that work is something odious from which no one who isn't a boss should expect to get any gratification, fulfillment, or equality of any kind. Once people accept in their belief system and expectations that pain, subordination, and alienation is part of the nature of work, then we can sensibly fight for higher wages or shorter hours, but not for fulfilling or equitable work. The main battle, that is, is removed from the agenda of what's doable. Nonetheless, despite the importance of the (false) idea that work necessarily hurts, the division of labor where some people always command while others always obey stems firstly from combining tasks into jobs in a skewed fashion that separates conceptualization and implementation. When people's ideas about work change, they fight oppressive social relations. Until the social relations change, however, the offending conditions persist.
Likewise, to attribute the fact that "the commissar turned out to be an even more formidable obstacle to workers' control than the capitalist" to mistaken beliefs is again to tell only one side of the story. Marglin knows that the Bolshevik goal for economic organization always included only a class divided workplace. The Bolsheviks got the institutional structure that their strategy and practice sought. What needs explaining--perhaps in terms of their collective beliefs and interests--is why the Bolshevik leadership sought hierarchy, not why they attained it. I think Marglin and I would agree that the solution to workplace hierarchy is to combine diverse tasks into jobs balanced for conceptual and manual responsibilities and for enriching and boring activity. But if this is so, then we can both advocate comprehensive workplace equity as our vision and we can both oppose propagandistic rationales for hierarchy as obstacles to it without, however, making believe that somehow the obstacle to attaining workplace justice is some kind of bad "rationality."
Marglin also criticizes the heritage of Marxists arguing that people should subscribe to Marxist theory and to Leninist vision on the grounds that these are "scientific." What was wrong with this Marxist Leninist behavior, however, was twofold. First, it was an inflated claim to say that Marxist theory, much less Leninist vision, was scientific. Second, and much more important, it was anti-scientific in the extreme to try to bludgeon people into accepting a view or vision on the grounds that the view or vision was scientific. Science isn't revealed truth. It is hypotheses, tested repeatedly, and more or less verified. Claims made by scientists are distinguishable from other claims precisely by the fact that each individual can test them and decide for themselves whether they agree--not based on allegiance to authority, but based on a rational assessment of evidence and logic. Thus even as the Marxists and Leninists were trying to gain the legitimacy that comes with being scientific, they were behaving in an anti-scientific fashion. No physicist, biologist, chemist, or other scientist ever went to a conference and said "here, believe this, it is science." To elevate science to dogma is anti-scientific as well as horrible in its effects. We can all agree on that, but let's not mistake our critique of dogmatism with a critique of science itself.
As long as we're on Bolshevism, another point is important, though even less subtle. Marglin, Ellis, and indeed all the anti-rationalist contributors and most people who I've encountered who have qualms about vision and rationality nearly always seem to believe and often explicitly say they believe that the demise of the Soviet model is evidence (though why they need evidence I don't know) of the futility and oppressiveness of subscribing to a vision. I have written about this so often, that it feels redundant before I even express the point, but nonetheless, I have to repeat that this "interpretation" is unmitigated nonsense. What was wrong with theSoviet model, from the outset, was not that it was a goal other than what people previously had, but that it was a horribly flawed goal, at least from the perspective of most citizens, and now we see, even from the perspective of its own elites. It was politically authoritarian. It was culturally homogenist. It was sexually patriarchal. And, rhetoric aside, it was economically coordinatorist--that is, dominated by a ruling class of planners, managers, and other conceptual/administrative "workers." If Nazism doesn't prove that having a goal means being a thug, then neither does the history of the Soviet Union.
Marglin's entreaty that humanity should not take chances with the environment when we are unsure of the outcome is good sense for dealing with an uncertain condition in context of high risks. It is the rational choice with the evidence available, and I agree that we should follow it.
Marglin's closing quote of Pirsig, however, seems ill-conceived. Going simply by the paragraph presented, Pirsig uses the word "rationality" to mean the "systematic patterns of thought" that produced capitalism. We can certainly reject those capitalism-supporting "systematic patterns of thought," as Pirsig entreats, but to then imply that in doing so we are rejecting rationality is ridiculous. Rationality is the name for how we think much of the time, not for what we think at a particular moment. Rejecting what we think at a particular moment, or what someone else thinks at a particular moment, or the thoughts that rationalize some historic injustice, does not imply rejecting rationality. This confusion seems to me to run through all the anti-rationalist papers, to one degree or another.
I should add that It's been a long time since I read Pirsig, but I qualified my comments in the last paragraph insofar as they might be taken to apply to him as opposed to Marglin, because right after writing a first draft of this article I happened to stumble across another quote from Pirsig. It introduces chapter two in a just published book about mathematics, Pi In The Sky, by John D. Barrow. Barrow quotes Pirsig saying, "data without generalization is just gossip." To my reading, it is hard to imagine a more succinct argument for disciplined science, unless, of course, we wish to "just gossip" not just when it is entertaining or appropriate, but always.
Wahneema Lubiano
- Wahneema Lubiano bemoans that "Western rationality's hegemony marginalizes other ways of knowing about the world." But the "other ways of knowing" that I can conceive of Lubiano having in mind are either (a) part of formulating scientific hypotheses, such as using intuition, guesses, and experience, or (b) far from being "marginalized," such as using poetic expression, novels, and music. Lubiano seems to feel that something sectarian and finalistic characterizes science so that, contrary to science, we need to be skeptical and open to change or pay attention to intuition, guesses, and experience. However, being skeptical and open to change and paying attention to intuition, guesses, and experience, as well as any other potential source of insight, is exactly what science is all about. To be a scientist is constantly to challenge received wisdom to develop better ideas in its place. Nowhere is there even a minuscule pressure toward "finality." Quite the contrary, the pressures of science per se are all oriented toward continuous insight, testing, and change.
Lubiano says, "I am suggesting that knowledge is produced--not found, fought for--not given," as if this is a critical new insight. But what does the claim mean?
Yes, we work to get knowledge and in that sense it's true that we "produce" it. But we should not abuse this analogy. Shoes and sneakers are each produced and are each, thereby, valid products. Newton's laws and Islam's laws are each produced, but one is valid knowledge and the other isn't. What counts in determining the validity of claims as knowledge is not their having been "produced" but their "correspondence with experience."
Likewise, it is true that we must fight for knowledge whenever obstacles block our path, though at other times knowledge may come rather easily, as when we are growing up in a supportive environment. Does Lubiano think scientists would deny this? Is the claim supposed to imply that if we fight for something it is thereby knowledge regardless of whether it corresponds to experience or that if something comes without a struggle it can't be knowledge, again regardless of whether it corresponds to experience? In the context of the debate, I don't get the point.
After a look at what black drill teams are and do, Lubiano says that a rationality "unable to imagine a black drill team as an object of analysis and possible site for politics" would indicate "something of the limits of Western science and rationality in accounting for the nexus of pleasure, ritual, history, and political significance." Actually, a person who was functioning rationally but was unable to recognize such possibilities would indicate, instead, his or her own lack of understanding of the terms, or lack of understanding of conditions, or lack of ability to make certain connections, etc. On the other hand, if no person functioning rationally could imagine Lubiano's thoughts in a context where people weren't brainwashed and constrained by countervailing pressures, this would raise important questions. But Lubiano's rationality imagined "a black drill team as an object of analysis and possible site for politics." My rationality can imagine it. So, regarding rationality as opposed to the importance of the black drill team, what's the point?
In fact, I can't find anything in Lubiano's piece that indicates any reason to dismiss, transcend, or alter her or my rationality (as compared to our actual beliefs, thoughts, prejudices, methods, values, etc.), and that's as it should be.
Frederique Marglin
- Frederique Marglin begins by saying "[Western] rationality is characterized by being disembedded from the body, from metaphorical thought, from ethical thought, and from the world."
I disagree, or perhaps I should say I think I disagree, because I'm not at all sure what "disembedded" means.
Is science "disembedded from the body"? Science is done by bodies (and their heads). It's often applied to understanding bodies. What additional embeddedness could there be?
Is science "disembedded from metaphorical thought"? Science often uses metaphors to develop hypotheses, just as it often uses hunches, guesses, experience, analysis, and literally anything else that yields worthy results. What additional embeddedness could there be?
Is science "disembedded from ethical thought"? Science studies the features of reality and how they interconnect, but Marglin is right that it does not study values. Of course, what we choose to do often depends on how we think things are or how we think we might best move from one condition to another, and these understandings are informed by science. But that's different from science determining or being determined by values. Beyond the tenuous connection, therefore, does Marglin want scientists to derive what we ought to do from what they determine about how things are? Or, reciprocally, does Marglin want science to be guided by values established from without, perhaps chosen from the Koran or the Talmud? If these are not the extra links between science and values that Marglin seeks, what additional embeddedness could there be?
Is science "disembedded from the world"? Science is about the world. The world is science's subject. The world. via rules of evidence, is science's arbiter. Again, what additional embeddedness could there be?
Marglin seems to feel that something about its "disembeddedness" makes science and rationality wrong, anti-social, and even anti-human. But her repeated use of the term "disembedded" is, to me, academic hand-waving. The term is never clearly defined because if it was, the claim that science or western rationality is "disembedded from the body, from metaphorical thought, from ethical thought, and from the world" would be transparently false.
I have some differences with Marglin's discussion in the labor relations section of her article, but I don't think they matter for the current debate. What does matter about that section, however, is that Marglin's discussion of labor is based on the work of people like Stephen Marglin, E. P. Thompson, Karl Marx, and others who certainly employed the rules of evidence and the methods of logic in developing the ideas she celebrates. Why are these results not tainted by having been produced by "Western Rationality"? Similarly, rational and scientific methodology is fine with Marglin when carried out by "feminist historians [like Barbara Ehrenreich, for example, who] have rightly pointed out the sexist nature of such beliefs [about menstruation, gestation, birth, etc.]." Do these two instances of the efficacy of logic, evidence, etc., mean that science and rationality are okay when the results are to one's taste, but not when they aren't?
Later in her article Marglin says, "The imperialism, racism, and classism of much middle class anglo-american feminism is an inevitable outcome of the colonizing form of rationality lodged at the heart of the modern dominant system of knowledge." If this means that the oppressive features of "middle class anglo-american feminism" reflect the oppressive features of the surrounding society, fine, though it's a convoluted way of saying it. If it means, however, that the oppressive features of this feminism are due to something about how these women "think" as compared to what they think, that is utter nonsense.
To see why, notice that that claim could only be true if lower class or non anglo women actually think in some different way than middle class or anglo women. It would not suffice to show what is obviously true--that is, that women from different classes and cultures know different things and have different interests and therefore often think different things. That is not having different rationalities and, I think, not what Marglin means. So I would like Marglin to tell us how the poorer or non anglo women think differently then the middle class women suffering under the burdens of Western Rationality. Do they have a different logic? Do they ignore evidence? When middle class anglo women get things wrong, does Marglin think it's because they are too logical and care too much about evidence and this makes them imperial? Why doesn't she think it's because they are ignorant of some elements of reality or allow their interests or biases to interfere with their perceptions?
In fact, of course, we all err mostly when we are irrational, non-rational, or anything but rational, or when we are being rational but don't have all the information we need or don't properly understand some of it. Despite differences in culture, values, and knowledge, we all think the same way as each other and we are all rational to the extent that we pay attention to evidence and logic while we are not rational to the extent that we let our desires or fears overrule evidence and logic.
A lot of people seem to need to get this straight about rationality. Women do not have a different rationality than men. Rich people do not have a different rationality than poor people. People from one culture do not have a different rationality than people from another culture. People from each of these different constituencies often have systematically different beliefs, experiences, values, priorities, and even methods that they use to arrive at hypotheses--for example, some might try harder to break things down into parts and others might seek more wholistic connections--all laid on top of their "rationality." Nonetheless, as profoundly important as these many differences can be, none of them indicate a different rationality.
In light of the above, saying that we should take male biases about women out of science is not saying that we should change rationality or the scientific method. Saying that we should balance a reductionist methodology that seeks component parts down the smallest scale with a holistic methodology that pays special attention to emergent characteristics at the largest scale is not saying we should change rationality or the scientific method. Moreover, the difference really matters because saying that we should remove biases from our thought and refine the methodologies we use when developing concepts and theories is damn good advice, while saying that we should change our rationality or the scientific method is patent nonsense and has the additional debit that it may make people who hear this entreaty anti-intellectual and anti-knowledge--instead of anti-intellectual elitism and anti-monopolies of knowledge. Ultimately, entreaties against rationality--as opposed to entreaties against sexism, excessive reductionism, etc.--can cause people to celebrate their own (school-enforced) inclination to not read and to know little about the rules of logic or science, as if these lacks were signs of an advanced, post modern human attainment, rather than a socially imposed denial of human potential. The real way to fight against sexism in science, racism in science, classism in science, etc., is to use more reason and better science to counter racist, sexist, and classist claims while simultaneously working to change the sexist, racist, and classist social relations in society's defining institutions.
Marglin says the "disembedded rationality" that some of us partake of--middle class anglo feminists, all scientists, etc.--is different from non-Western as well as non-dominant Western ways of knowing which are, in contrast, embedded in the lived world.
I agree that paying disciplined attention to evidence, logic, experiments, and the rules of evidence is different from trying to experience reality directly without testing or from trying to learn about reality by way of novels, dance, drama, or poetic analogies, but isn't it totally obvious that these other perfectly valid ways of knowing are no less Western or more non-Western than science itself?
There is no such thing as Western and non-Western rationality, though there are certainly cultural differences, knowledge differences, experiential differences, methodological differences, and value differences from one cultural community to another. Moreover, I think that's why neither Marglin nor any other critic of "Western Rationality" ever describes any non-Western rationality in detail. On the other hand, concerning an alternative to the kind of science that Marglin criticizes, one does exist. But would Marglin advocate researching "The Angle of God" or a theory of hypocrisy, and, if not, then just what does she have in mind for science?
Marglin says other (unnamed) ways of knowing do not incorporate "arrogant, absolutist, reason" in that they only claim to know things for the local context they address rather than universally for all possible or all but a few ruled out contexts. Apparently she would therefore disavow all of physics with its universally valid "laws of nature," and all of modern biology with its assertions about diseases, evolution, and genetics applicable to all humans, and all of chemistry with its universal rules for chemical composition, etc. Also, supposing Marglin is following one of these (unnamed) non-Western approaches in her own thinking, she should only locally claim that if she uses logic and evidence it will lead her to absolutism, but she should certainly not universally claim it will lead me to absolutism if I use it, or lead everyone everywhere to absolutism if we all use it. Contrary to her own injunctions, however, Marglin claims that science has absolutism as an outcome for everyone by virtue of its inherent dynamics. I don't know why Marglin is willing to use a "universalizing approach" in this instance, but won't allow others to do so in reference to other realms of concern. This certainly seems inconsistent, though I don't argue with universalizing, of course. Indeed, if we accept Robert Pirsig's opinion, quoted earlier, to be solely local and therefore never generalize "is just gossip." I do, however, reject Marglin's argument. Her claims about science have little if anything to do with the way science is actually practiced and with the way people actually think. Not surprisingly, therefore, like all the other anti-rationalists in this debate, Marglin provides no explanation of science's (or Western Rationality's) inherent dynamics that links them to any of the ills she criticizes.
Finally, on the issue of understanding reality, Marglin seems to reject the idea that science finds truths. In this sense, assuming that she means something more than what every scientist would agree to--that is, that all knowledge is contingent--I think her perspective is pre-modern not post-modern. In fact, it seems to me that the anti-science stance that Marglin and many others take is either empty of implications or proposes a return to the Middle Ages or much earlier, when religious values were part of "Science," humanity had not yet carefully codified logic, the idea of experimentation was unknown, and people lived short brutal lives not solely due to others oppressing them but also because humanity didn't yet know how to do any better. I honestly wonder whether, if the case were reopened, Marglin would take the side of the Vatican or of Galileo.
Marcus Raskin
- After a philosophical/historical introduction, Raskin gets down to business:
- Scientists and technologists have risen to the top of the shaman scale surpassing theologians and ministers even though they have gotten no closer to explanations of cause whether in quantum mechanics or molecular biology.
One wonders whether cosmologists at universities are less fanciful than astrologers in understanding the stars, or is it that they have more funding and better PR?
These quotations from Raskin's essay are outrageous grist for anti-knowledge, anti-reading, anti-thinking ideologues, but I have no idea how to refute them in a way that will convince Raskin. If Raskin or anyone else thinks there is nothing gained in knowing how electricity travels and can be used to transmit information, how molecules form and their characteristics, why chemical compounds combine as they do, how genes and red blood cells affect life, how viruses make us sick, how stars generate energy and the evolutionary development they go through, so be it. But when Raskin and other people who think that science is "just another story" no better than astrology want to write, feel better, get across town, or see something in the dark, they should feel acutely hypocritical using a computer, taking antibiotics, riding a train or bicycle, or using a pair of glasses or a light bulb.
Much of Raskin's article recounts nasty behavior or the monopolization of knowledge by oppressive people. But the real issue for this debate is, does this anti-social behavior arise because scientists are logical, pay proper attention to the rules of evidence, and are as objective as possible (Raskin's view)--or does it arise when these norms are circumscribed or violated to attain other ends entirely, such as big contracts from the Pentagon or status in a macho academy (my view)?
Raskin, as with the other critics, says nothing to help us judge between these opposed possibilities. He says nothing, for example, to indicate why society's overarching institutional context explains racism, sexism, classism, and associated monopolies of power in the culture, families, schools, and workplaces of our society but not in its scientific laboratories and lecture halls, where we need to blame science instead. Nor does Raskin say anything to indicate why "being scientific" would yield these oppressive manifestations were the broader institutional pressures absent. When Raskin recounts the ills of "accounting rationality" and of "biotechnical research where universities hunger for good deals" and asks, "how did it come to this?" I can't bring myself to believe that he doesn't know that it came to this because capitalism turns everything into a commodity, not because science makes everyone amoral.
Raskin seems primarily put out that science doesn't incorporate into its inner structure concerns about good and bad. Science is just another "story," he tells us, and a "valueless" one at that, so why not create a more likable story and put values in as well? Raskin even tries to legitimate his desire to settle on what is true using criteria other than verification by referring to the way "some scientists favor various theories or experiments because of their supposed beauty and elegance." If scientists can do that, he reasons, why can't I use criteria other than verification as well? The trouble is, Raskin is reasoning from a false premise because he has misperceived the scientists' approach. Raskin is right that Scientists often talk about the "beauty and elegance" of theories and even about using "beauty and elegance" to help formulate new hypotheses or even to help formulate or refine new theories. The thing is, in addition to the fact that for scientists "beauty and elegance" are hard-to-define attributes of equations rather than visual artistic considerations, the fact that seeking "beauty or elegance" in formal representations often yields good theory is for scientists a remarkable and even awe-inspiring convenience. In their research, scientists favor "beauty and elegance" not the way an artist would, for their own intrinsic value, but because history shows that theories which win out as being better verified by experiment are most often also more beautiful and elegant than competing theories that do less well. Contrary to Raskin's implication, therefore, it is still verification by evidence that drives the choice among competing views. For example, whenever an "ugly" or "less elegant" theory better matches the evidence for an extended period, it is accepted. Likewise, any competent scientist could easily construct "prettier" equations and theories than those currently accepted, once all concern with verification was removed but no scientist would even think to do this because science isn't just telling a story, it's telling a story that corresponds with experience. In short, the heuristic to search for "beauty and elegance" often works, but only to distinguish among theories that are all already aimed at explanation and prediction.
More disturbing then misunderstanding scientists' methods, however, is that even if he reads and then accepts the argument in the above paragraph, while it might interest Raskin it won't deter him since he doesn't rest his case entirely on the "beauty and elegance" analogy. He also argues, for example, that "what we categorize and label comes through a process of socialization at institutions and laboratories" which makes it subject to doubt. This is certainly true. Moreover, everything that "comes through" to us at all, "comes through a process of socialization." But what distinguishes science from most other pursuits also affected by socialization is that scientists test the results of their categorizing and labeling to remove socialized biases. This is a distinguishing facet of science that Raskin and all other critics in this debate conveniently ignore.
Yet, even more disturbing than ignoring this defining aspect of science, even if Raskin reads and then accepts these points too, he will still persist in his argument because he just doesn't care much about science's trying to weed out socialization effects. In fact, Raskin's point is that instead of trying to weed out socialization effects--which is a main aim of the scientific method--we should decide which socialization effects we want to welcome in.
Raskin says, "value questions can no longer be hidden or consigned to after hours concerns." If he only meant that people (and not just scientists) can and should morally decide whether we will use scarce intellectual and material resources to investigate recombinant DNA techniques, or to find ways to direct missiles down smokestacks, or to discover the best techniques for eliciting unhealthy purchases from consumers, or to get energy from fission reactors, this would be fine. But Raskin has more in mind. He says, "Because nature is constructed, as for example in the linear accelerator, decisions can be made about how it is constructed." And he doesn't just mean we can decide to build the accelerator or not, or that we can decide to use it or not--that's pedestrian and obvious--but that we can decide to use the accelerator to make nature correspond to a particular story or not. The problem is that this claim is not only nonsense regarding the actual dynamics of science--assuming we're doing the same experiment, a particle accelerator doesn't get one result when you use it and another when I use it, because we each want to "construct" a different world--it is also a significant step down the road toward Lysenkoism or even Islamic Science.
Now there's a cheap shot, you might think, but I don't think it's a cheap shot at all.
Raskin says we can change knowledge because our "view of reality can be shaped by any series of myths and I choose the shared consciousness of things and beings as the definition of reality and the project which human beings should accept, just because there is no set of laws about reality which can be known but there is a common consciousness which we need to make the dominant expression of this period." What can this possibly mean other than that we can freely choose our truths and that we ought to do it to foster good outcomes and shared consciousness or, even worse, we ought to do it on the basis of whatever consciousness is already most widely shared? But if that is what this passage and others like it mean, then if Islamic Science is upheld not only by the state and the mullahs but by a lot of citizens all of whom claim they have a high moral goal in mind, why doesn't Islamic Science thereby become truth and "the project which human beings should accept"? For that matter, if a poll of the public in the U.S. determines that common consciousness of a majority is that Elvis is alive or Kennedy was a peacenik, or women belong in the home, why shouldn't these claims thereby become part of "the project which human beings should accept" here in the U.S.? Raskin wants to "make" a knowledge that is more humane than Islamic Science or other humbug, but that doesn't exempt his claims from the same critique that anyone not stuck in a philosophical conundrum would make of calling such articles as "Chemical Composition Of Milk In Relation To Verse 66 Of Surat An-Nabl Of The Holy Qur'an" or "The Angle of God" science. If science is just "stories," then these "essays," supported by the Pakistani state and a host of "scholars," have every right to claim to be science. And if one story is as good as another, and if any story is better to the extent that it's closer to "common consciousness," then mainstream media was scientific in explaining to the public that the U.S. bombed the life out of untold numbers of Iraqis to defend freedom and democracy against a new Hitler, while Raskin and the rest of us who fought against that lie were merely hung-up on an unpopular storyline.
Concluding Views
- Thus far, I have responded to points explicitly raised by the six critics in this issue of Z Papers. In fact, however, as concerned as I am about their stated views, I think hostility to science and even rationality is more aggressive in many quarters of the left, and perhaps even among some of these critics, than their largely scholarly essays suggest. As a result, I want to conclude by addressing that broader more virulent trend of anti-science and anti-rationalism. Above and below, it should be obvious, I am not "pulling punches." I know and like many of the people currently saying things like "Leftists need to get beyond science to accomplish anything worthwhile," or "Western Rationality is at the root of the oppressions we endure and we must escape it," or "Easterners think differently than us. We need to emulate them," or "Aren't those old-time leftists horrible. They are actually arrogant enough to propose visions for society." But whether I like some of the people who say these kinds of things or not, I think that on this topic they are horribly confused. The left needs more rationality, not less.
Feminism assails scientific machismo. Multiculturalism abhors scientific racism. Social ecology attacks excessive scientific reductionism. Anthropology rejects exaggerated reliance on scientific abstraction. Humanists battle elevating the "scientific method" as the only way of knowing things. Common sense laughs at scientific propaganda. The working class hates coordinator class elitism. And all of these critics are right on target, as well as eminently rational in making these claims, so long as they don't exaggerate them into claims about science per se.
As a body of verified knowledge, science is sometimes limited, biased, or just plain propaganda. As the practice of accumulating verified knowledge, science is sometimes distorted in its questions and answers, sometimes dominates those with different agendas, and is sometimes just plain bought and paid for. As the behavior of the people who accumulate verified knowledge, science is sometimes narrow, mechanical, colonizing, or hypocritical. All told, science can be an illegitimate totalizing project, can marginalize less scientifically presented knowledge, and can argue, seemingly quite rationally, for the most odious projects. In short, science is sometimes sexist, racist, ecologically destructive, imperial, arrogant, opportunist, and exploitative, and so are many scientists.
So what's wrong with a little "anti-rationalism," you might wonder. When I was a student at MIT (from 1965-1969) I used to spend considerable time struggling against the nearly overwhelming arrogance and hypocrisy of much of MIT's science. I called the school "Dachau on the Charles," and railed at its noted scientists for having despicable values, for contributing to the Vietnam war, and for imperially usurping the rights of others. Since then, much of my political activity has gone toward criticizing Marxism Leninism as a totalizing and coordinator-elevating ideology; toward criticizing bourgeois economics as vile propaganda propounded in pursuit of profit and status; toward developing intellectual methodologies to counter excessive reductionism, economism, and "finalism" in political thinking; toward incorporating concern for gender, culture, and power equally with a concern for economics in left theorizing and practice; toward criticizing intellectually elitist (coordinator) mentality and practice in the left and in society; and toward developing and arguing for an economic vision that truly removes elitist, knowledge-based inequalities of power and influence from economic and social life. Moreover, I militantly pursued all these stances before post modernism was even a concept and before the current wave of anti-rationality was first forming, (and so did many other people, all without recourse to words like "discourse," "deconstruction," "disembedded," and so on). Nonetheless, from 1965 to the present I have not once criticized rationality or logic, and anti-intellectualism has always been anathema to me.
To critique scientific knowledge and scientists is part of understanding the world to make it better. To suggest methods people could use to avoid excessive reductionism, to guard against exaggerating the scope of scientific insights, or to ward off sexist, racist, and classist biases is a useful way to aid scientists (and political activists). But to critique reason and logic as being at the root of science's many evils is both wrong and has no role in making the world better.
The fact is, overarching institutions establish boundaries for what scientists do and this easily explains the ills prevalently found in modern science just as it easily explains related ills in sports, drama, work, family life, and all other domains of contemporary society. To explain racism, sexism, classism, and authoritarianism in science, we no more need to appeal to a "more basic" corrupting cause in the "ways of thinking" that all scientists use than we have to appeal to a more basic corrupting cause in the ways of metabolizing that all athletes use, or in the ways of memorizing lines that all actors use, or in the ways of coordinating eyes and hands that all workers use, or in the ways of speaking with mouths that all family members use, to explain similar ills of sports, stage, work, and family roles. The racist, sexist, classist, and authoritarian ills of science derive from the overarching institutional context of the whole society, just as do related ills characterizing the other sides of social life. The ways our brains work are not the problem. The world they work in is.
In fact, what actually distinguishes science from non-science is precisely:
- Science's eagerness to continually improve its ideas rather than preserve them as fixed dogma
- Science's openness to simultaneously celebrating multiple conflicting explanations, at least while there is no convincing way to choose among them
- Science's disregard for credentials, authority, or even past achievement in judging any person's claims, and
- Science's elevation of experience to the prime arbiter of disputes.
- In other words, real science is distinguished by its allegiance to exactly the aims the anti-rationalist critics of science say they seek. Therefore, science's critics are either not looking very hard or are very disingenuous. Moreover, due to the way its emphasis on verification combats socialized biases of all kinds, instead of tending to produce racist, sexist, classist, and authoritarian claims, employing rationality, particularly with scientific rigor, helps counter these distortions. It is bad science, not science, that is the problem.
Finally, in addition to being diametrically wrong, anti-rationalism has three devastating strategic implications.
First, in the struggle over how to improve society, activists confront established power with, essentially, our minds and bodies. Anti-rationalism says let's not use a significant portion of our minds, thereby giving away a chief asset before the contest even begins. Elites not only have the guns and money, now we let them have "truth" too. That's pathetic.
Second, short of engaging in a permanent primal scream there is, of course, no such thing as choosing to be systematically non-rational. However, while we can't always entirely abridge our rationality, we can certainly sometimes let other factors override our attention to logic and the rules of evidence. Therefore, while anti-rationalists can't sensibly urge people to be permanently non-rational, they can sensibly urge everyone to ignore evidence and logic whenever these disagree with preferred views. While this lacks philosophical profundity, it is a very effective way for an anti-rationalist to enforce that his or her critics never utter an effective contrary sound. Obviously the anti-rationalists making their case in this issue of Z Papers don't have this as their purpose, but I think anti-rationalism leads to this kind of stifling dynamic more or less inexorably, which is still another reason why anti-rationalism is a self-defeating strategy for making the world a better place. One can easily hear the anti-rationalist responding to a disliked presentation--"Gosh, listen to the way the speaker argues, offers evidence, uses logic, and says things are true and false. We don't have to pay any attention to the content. It's obviously compromised by being too scientific." This is, contrary to the desires of the contributors, an end to communication and therefore also an end to democracy, participation, and any hope of effective activism.
Third, once one removes evidence and logical argument as the favored means for choosing among analyses, what's left? How should we decide what explanations to support, what policies will work, what tasks we can reliably undertake? Revealed wisdom? Dogma?
The claim of science is that we should use our experience and the experiences of others, our intuitions and the intuitions of others, and even our fears and guesses and the fears and guesses of others, all mediated by logic and the rules of evidence and tested by experiment. We should assemble this whole aggregation into "an argument" where we distinguish facts from wishes and collectively assess whether we have a compelling or only a very tentative case. In contrast, if we set rationality aside, communication goes with it. Instead of comparing evidence and using logic to help examine and verify connections and implications, we will have to rely only on largely uncommunicable and certainly untestable feelings, emotions, preferences, whims, and revelation--or on mindless obedience to authority. In short, charisma and herd mentality will replace informed judgment and communication, and the Left will turn into the Right, another winning strategy.
In this day and age even many scientists would empathize strongly with folks attracted to anti-scientific and even anti-rationality rhetoric. Indeed, much of my own political life has rested on sentiments that could easily lead to my reacting positively to humorous potshots directed at scientists, and, from there on, it's like laughing at Polish, Jewish, or Black jokes. First, they're jokes that you find funny for more or less innocuous reasons. Then you're rationalizing your laughing, perhaps unconsciously. Then you're repeating the stereotypes in non-humorous contexts. Then you're racist. Likewise, first the joy we take in exaggerated attacks on scientists is rooted in sensible fears and desires. Then, however, we are carried further by anti-rationalists playing to our mood. Soon, we rationalize our pleasure in their hyperbole. Next we repeat the rhetoric ourselves in other contexts. Finally, we are anti-intellectual in the worst sense. This is an unenlightened, reactionary, and defeatist trajectory, politically and personally.
There is nothing truthful, wise, humane, or strategic about confusing hostility to injustice and oppression with hostility to science and rationality. There is nothing insightful, innovative, or helpful about academics who get paid to think using that fantastic privilege to tell other people that thinking is not such a good idea after all. There is nothing redeeming about political commentators claiming there is no truth, just a bunch of competing viewpoints, and that science is just another story.
As to the question that initiated this debate: No, we do not have to get beyond or otherwise transcend science or rationality as a prerequisite to developing worthy vision and strategy. We could use some new concepts and methods of inquiry, but logic and the rules of evidence are here to stay. Moreover, they're on our side.