roachboy

ok so let's see...if this continues along these lines, it seems like all we are in store for is apissing match, so how can the ground be shifted a bit harder?

way back in the posts numbered in the 70s somewhere, i wrote something about not quite understanding why the arguments in this thread were set up as they were such that for one side there is a notion of science that is roughly consistent with the contemporary understandings of the term that--letigimately--rejects astrology *as a science*--and this simply because to accept it as science requires that you also accept a geocentric universe. period.

and on the other side, there are two sets of objections: dave's position, which to mind is a misunderstanding of thomas kuhn's "the structure of scientific revolutions" that relies on a sequence of claims that i see as having no merit which amount to the claim that astrology may well be a science, but that only visionaries (like dave, presumably) think so---and that the "common herd" enacts its slave mentality by ridiculing these visionaries---the problem being--than as now--that the argument pivot not on the claim that astrology might be interesting for some or many reason(s), but rather that in order to BE interesting, astrology has to be accepted as a science. so dave and ustwo are arguing mirror images of the same game.

it seems to me that these positions over and undervalue "science" at once--overvalue it in that science comes to occupy the position of arbiter for determinations of interest in general, which is absurd on the face of it, and little more than an expression of an aesthetic position at a deeper level--and undervalue science insofar as it is presented as a monolithic abstraction hovering over what by this point in the thread has become a kind of tedious ritual concerning whose posts get to invoke the word.

this is a no-win situation, and it seems to me that the game is by now basically over on this argument.

and then there are the positions pan outlines, which are quite different, but which seem to be getting collpased back into davematrix's positions. maybe this is the power of context, i dunno.

so the point of this post is to see if i can help push things onto another set of grounds. pan addresses questions of belief, the loops that link up general propositions (statements about the world, about the orders of the world) to information. if i read his posts correctly, i could extend one of their dimensions into a basic challenge to ustwo's position---how exactly are you using the abstraction "science"?
when it comes down to it, and a bit of the underpinning gets revealed, the basic discipline invoked appears to be biology, but of no particular genre, as if biology is a single entity, one stream of work, one logic structuring all research--none of which is true. so when you use the term "science" to dismiss the positions of others, what exactly are you referencing?

another way: on what basis do you adopt the rhetorical position of the voice of science in your posts in this thread?

second problem: this notion of what is and is not "true" i
if you just throw the word around, no problemo. that which is not "true" is a lie so anything that is not a lie is "true"....but it aint like that. not really.
a statement that is true is formally correct. it (implicitly or explicitly) references the results of running a proof, and emerges as true if it is logically consistent with the axioms--and does not violate the rules that govern deductions--which are particular to given proofs--there are not generally agreed upon rules for deduction, there is no Big Single Proof that we have around, that we can reference and on the basis of which we can say that any proposition is "True" in an absolute sense. knowledge, like everything else, is regional.

you can have arguments about which set of axioms is preferable to another, which set of rules governing deduction (which is a procedure and nothing more--an efficient procedure, a worhtwhile procedure--but still, a procedure) are preferable to others--and that debate would devolve sooner or later onto a discussion of the persuasive power of this or that proof, which would in turn devolve onto structures of belief, procedures that enable one to guage relative interpretive power, etc. in such a debate, the relative *social value* of one set of axioms and procedures over another becomes a criterion amongst others that are involved in the play of the debate--these claims would not hover over the debate, and invoking them would not end it. because in the end, what is being debated is less the accumulated bodies of socially legitimate information about the world in themselves than the relations one adopts to these bodies of information---because you are NOT that information, you invoke it in particular contexts, in particular ways.

this is not to say that anything goes--but it is to say that there is a different and quite complex discussion that could be had at this point that is simply not happening, even though the ball is now bouncing around the court and pan has put it there.

another way: at this point in the discussion, it seems absurd to make the move that ustwo makes in number 125, which amounts to the claim that i, the subject position from which the post operates, i occupy Science and that anyone who raises questions--NOT about science, but about my claims regarding science--is stupid. you act as though the sciences are the ONLY legitimate discursive framework available--which is ridiculous--but it might explain something of your politics--not in themselves, but about your relation to politics, IF you route those committments through the same circuit of legitimation as you route your claims to be the voice of science.

this is a matter of rhetoric in posts, btw. this is a written debate and there is nothing but rhetorical postures involved with it.

let's see if this shove works.
maybe it's kinda opaque in that it invokes a separate discursive frame (philosophy) and places that frame in a position of being able to adjudicate in an argument. that itself might be a problem--but you'd have to argue that point. you cant simply assert it.

anyway, shove delivered.
the wings await me awaiting in them.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite