positivism

[Ralph Dumain]

I have much homework to do before answering these objections.  Let me just 
point out the elementary distinction I make between natural science and the 
philosophy of science.  I am defending neither positivism, logical 
empiricism, nor analytical philosophy.  These are all programs seeking to 
interpret and justify scientific methods in various ways, but they are not 
exhaustive of the alternatives, nor do they necessarily reveal the varying 
mentalities of actual natural scientists.  As for social "science", most of 
it in the USA as I remember it in the 1970s was puerile number crunching 
coupled with the most trivial sort of hypothesis formation.  Quite clearly 
it met managerialist needs under cover of scientism.

I would love to know where A & H offer interesting ideas about natural 
science.  Hopefully, I have "Traditional and Critical Theory" here in one 
of my anthologies.  I do not have the text on the positivist disputes, so I 
can't check it out forthwith.

I cannot claim that Adorno _evolved_ in the 1960s beyond his former 
positions.  I intended to make a more modest statement: that some of his 
statements in the 1960s were more subtle than some from the 
1940s.  Popper's take on social scientific matters is pure drivel.

Again, my interest is not in defending positivism, but distinguishing it 
from science.  As for what I think of science, that's a long story, but I 
would like to mention another quasi/ex-marxist philosophical tradition that 
has an affinity to analytical traditions but is anti-positivist: the Polish 
Poznan School.   See:

Polish Philosophy Page: The Poznan School
http://www.fmag.unict.it/PolPhil/Poznan/PoznanEngl.html

and Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities
http://www.cs.okstate.edu/%7Epoznan.studies/

For this school, Marx falls in line with Galileo rather than Hegel.  The 
key concept is scientific idealization.  This may not satisfy so-called 
humanists, but I adduce it to show that there are other conceptions around, 
and that academics are very provincial people who know little of the work 
that goes on outside their tiny network of colleagues and the texts they 
are obliged to cite.

At 11:56 PM 4/8/2003 -0300, filipe ceppas wrote:
>I think that it is not fair, because you can find some very interesting
>ideas about [natural] science in A & H's work. Of course they are not very
>familiar with "analytical" tradition, but they are far from being totally
>ignorant about it. And I think that we cannot totaly segregate the
>discussion about science and its ideologies... In "Traditional and Critical
>Theory", we find very intereting insights about scientific method. If I'm
>not wrong, youcan find one about the revising nature of scientific
>hypotheses that could be easily atributed to Quine of "Two Dogmas of
>Empiriscism"! Some Adorno's remarks about Wittgenstein are interesting
>enough. When you say that Adorno became more nuanced around the 60's, I
>would ask you what do you think about the debate with Popper, from 1961. At
>that time, he insists on the same critic of positivism you are criticizing.
>Well, I think that if you change the term "positivism" and use "cientism" on
>Adorno's texts at that time, the criticism is very fine for Popper and are
>sadly still valid for a large number of analytical philosophers today! If
>you read the excellent Laudan's "Science and Values, the aims of science and
>their role in scientific debate"; Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1984,
>you will find some links between Laudan's critics of Popper and Adorno's. I
>wrote a full text about this debate, but it is in Portuguese. I would not
>have time (and probably neither the ability) to translate it.
>
>http://orbita.starmedia.com/~outraspalavras/art09fc.htm
>
>I agree that some A & H's ideas about science and logic seems totaly out of
>place. But in my point of view those ideas are one of the best things they
>ever wrote! It is ironic, it reveals the dark side of the "positivist"
>tradition (i.e, scientism) in epistemology from Frege to Quine by
>overstating it, by exageration. If A&H's didn't get close to the nature of
>scientific issues, neither did the scientism perspectives of analytical
>philosophers...
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Filipe.