I don’t know if this is going to speak to many here, I hope it does, but it’s good anyway in the process of trying to understand what dialectical science would look like, as opposed to our current outlook on science which is metaphysical.

By which I don’t mean the scientific method, or scientists themselves, but science as a whole and as itself. If we hold that it doesn’t exist outside society (and of course it doesn’t), then science has a philosophical character. Metaphysics being the contradiction to dialectics, it’s also not the philosophy of the bourgeoisie but rather the philosophy that was the most advanced, the most usable for people’s needs, before we discovered dialectics. Much like we first learned to make stone tools before we learned to make them with metal, we first had to know metaphysics and idealism before we could know dialectics and materialism.

Today, science is taught metaphysically; it is seen metaphysically, it’s practiced metaphysically, and we take that as fact. We have trouble seeing science any other way because this way makes sense to us, it’s all we know.

If you were already aware of this character (studying in isolation, with observations and facts plucked out of their dialectical process and studied by themselves), this question should make sense to you. How do we rethink science in a way that is dialectical. Basically, in a way that we are still doing and studying science, but dialectically?

And of course I don’t mean generalities like “it would be placing dialectics back in science”, I want to see how far we can struggle with it.

  • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.mlOP
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    7 months ago

    This sounds cool and exactly what I’m looking for, thanks! But keep answers coming 😃

    edit: is it accessible to laymen? I’m not a scientist haha

    • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      I just flipped through my copy and it’s about as accessible as a pop science article. He uses a few graphs and tables with technical parts of his studies, but explains it all in normal English without much Marxist vocabulary.

      Another really great book is James O’Connor’s Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism: https://www.academia.edu/48811710/OConnor_1998_Natural_Causes

      Because it’s an essay collection it can be repetitive. There’s one neat chapter in it where he studies Monterey Bay in California as a Marxist ecologist. It’s not just the present conditions of the bay or the wildlife or the people or the structures framing those things, but a wonderfully dynamic natural history that merges with sociopolitical theory and political economy and the physical sciences. It’s a coherent picture of where things came from, how they presently exist, and how the principal/secondary contradictions could rupture.

      • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.mlOP
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        7 months ago

        You should request an account and upload all those books lol, we recently started a science section on the library and really wanted to start filling it in. We have a library editor role that is easier to get; you still have to answer all the questions, but we’re more lenient lol

        We could also start an ecology category!

          • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.mlOP
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            7 months ago

            I was surprised how easy it was to find a copy of the dialectical biologist, I just googled it and found a website called Ebin, and it was right there. Gonna join my list of free epub providers