ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE

ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE - SOME QUESTIONS
A-REVIEW OF THE PAPER "EVIDENCE FOR AN ALTERNATIVE IN SCIENCES"
BY ANTONINO DRAGO*

THIS paper is an attempt to construct a model for an alternative in exact sciences by putting together elements within the history of Western sciences which have been rejected in the dominant tradition. The merits and or the relevance of such an attempt are of course questionable. However, in constructing this model the paper touches upon a number of questions which inevitably arise in any discussion of alternatives to the present day western science. Questions such as: the political relevance of alternatives, the lessons of the various debates on and attempts at executing such alternatives, the epistemological status of the largely held belief in the uniqueness of the exact sciences, etc. In this review we summarise the author's position on those questions and make only a brief reference to the particular model of an alternative science proposed by the author*.

1. Political necessity of a critique of science:

The concept of a unique universal value-free science is a development caused by the political necessities of the western capitalist system; and to seek an alternative political framework it is imperative to free oneself from this myth and to establish that different societies can and must produce different sciences. 

The concept of a unique universal value-free science as used in this paper implies the attitude that there is some ‘objective’ truth independent of the social realities that can be approached through the methods of western science which themselves are ‘objective’ and free of any social values. 

According to the paper the establishment of this concept is directly related to the aims of the western civilization. It was the historical project of the western science to separate itself from the individual life, be neutral with respect to the social conflict, not to be related to history except for the dates of the various discoveries. The same thing happened to all western institutions: the church, the state, the bureaucracy, the law administration, the school and the University and the same hold true for their results: theology, law, knowledge'. This alleged value-free-ness of sciences allowed ‘the power systems of western society to absorb all social trends into the scientific framework, an thereby relate them to some unlimited targets presented to the people as valid ‘per se’ aims'. However, these 'metaphysical aims were functionally related to its (western society's) social aims'. Thus the result of establishment of the concept of value-free-ness of science was to transform the social aims of the power systems of the west into some value-free technical aims which are universally valid.

If what is said above is correct, then it follows that whenever a society accepts the allegedly value-free technical aims of the western science, it also accepts the social aims of the western power system. The acceptance of these technical aims of western science makes it ‘unavoidable that any efficient economy must, at least potentially, be capitalistic'. This accounts for the phenomenon that ‘even a nationalised economy may revert to a capitalistic one; this is why the ‘Chinese society after its first revolution, was obliged to do another revolution in order to remain in search of a socialist society’ *.

From these observations about the social-content of the ‘value-free’ criteria of western science the author concludes that the role

of science has been central to the historical project of western society and that no political alternative will be a success until a radical critique of science occurs. In developing this critique one must first attack the major claim of modern science, that of being an ‘absolute’ both for our 'knowledge’ and our society - a claim that legitimatises the present social development.

2. Lack of consensus:

Historically there has never been a consensus on the characterisation of western science as unique and value-free. The criticism of this concept has emerged both from outside science: from social groups opposed to the historical project of the western society: and from within science-from the failure of western epistemologists to support this claim and from the failure of the most developed of the western sciences to develop clearly defined objective foundational principles. 

Right from the beginning there has been opposition to the western science and technology. ‘The churches criticised many scientific conclusions and the materialistic trend of scientific research and technical progress. The idealistic philosophies assigned to the sciences a more technical role, without any intellectual relevance. The workers’ movements, although maintaining that the sciences and the technological progress would give social power to the proletarian class, declared that scientific theories are bourgeois and claimed both an alternative use of science and an alternative science. The anti-colonial movement opposed western science and technology as instruments of domination by the colonial countries. In India, the liberation movement headed by Gandhi, expressed so radical a critique of western technology as to adopt the old manual work as the symbol of the liberation movement'. In our own times, most of these criticisms, from the church, from the idealists, from the workers! movements and from the third-world movements have indeed become muted. But there have emerged now social groups opposed to the neutrality of western science: the student movements of the sixties and the Chinese cultural revolution* are examples of this protest against the western claim of uniqueness and value-free-ness of their science. 

Developing an epistemology that will support the concept of a unique value-free science has been a continuing exercise in the western philosophical tradition. However, that tradition now seems to have reached a stage where it cannot unanimously support the claim of western science to be unique and value free. The work of Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend may, be taken as examples. However, the author makes it clear that the aim of those critics of standard epistemology is not to develop a critique of western science, but only 'to build a sure methodology of a new specialization ‘History of Science', without any relation to the problems of present scientific research and with feeble links to the social history and conflicts'. However, it is of interest that this attempt to build a methodology of science leads to such irreconcilable epistemological dogmas that supported the thesis of uniqueness and value-free-ness of western science. 

The third and according to the author the most important blow to the concept of uniqueness and value-free-ness of western science comes from within the most developed of the sciences themselves. According to the author for a science to have a claim to uniqueness it must have clearly defined consistent and objective foundations. Both modern day mathematics and modern day physics lack such foundations. In mathematics the lack of self-consistent objective foundation is formally proved by the Godel Theorem. In physics the development of quantum mechanics and relativity theory have removed the sure foundations on which classical mechanics rested without providing any new set of foundational principles. The author concludes that sciences cannot now pursue any longer the old programme of western society, to build an abstract neutral science’. In the 'more abstract sciences, mathematics and physics for example’, the programme has been halted by their internal development itself. 

3. Marxist position on science:

Marxism unequivocally refuted the possibility of a ‘neutral’ social science. However, the position of Marxists on the question of ‘neutrality' or otherwise of natural sciences has been vacilating both in theory and in practice throughout history. This has led to the Marxist-Leninist to an impase, and a thorough revision of Marxism is urgently required. 

Marx in developing the science of political economy negated all the assumptions about an ‘objective’ ‘unique’ 'value-free’ science. 'He was a participant in the object of hissscience, the proletarian class. He based his science upon presuppositions that arc not universal but shared by one social group; so he built not his science but that of his group, and finally he claimed his science to be true not according to a priori formal criteria but according to the future history of the society, i.e., the victory of the proletarian class'. In building his political economy Marx built the most attractive example of an alternative social science. Though Marxist thought is so unequivocal about the non-neutrality and class-specificity of social sciences, the marxist position on natural sciences remains ambiguous. Marx did not leave us a definition of natural science, though from his till recently unpublished mathematical papers, it can be concluded that Marx did pursue 'a program to refowd differential calculus by paralleling the historical development of the latter with the historical evolution of the idealistic philosophy'. ‘It is noteworthy that in the same way he had reconstructed the historical development of economic theory’. 

These mathematical papers of Marx are little known. Officially it was left to Engels to define the Marxist position on natural sciences. Engéls insisted on the objective neutrality of science and ‘accepted the conflict in science only at the level of philosophy'. In fact Engels attacked and politically destroyed’ E. Duhring, a notable mathematician and mechanical physicist, who advocated a refounding of the natural sciences on and sure bases’. 

Lenin followed Engels’ characterization of science. He accepted the theory of objective neutrality of science; and declared that no radical changes in science are possible, only it can be put to alternative uses. Bogdanov, a political rival of Lenin, on the other hand, made a clear attempt to develop an alternative in natural sciences. ‘Bogdanov announced in 1911 the historical task of the proletarian class to express its view on the whole of culture, art and science. Its point of view entails a radical change of the fundamental premises (even if the old results are maintained in great part) and of the methodology of constructing science’. According to Bogdanov's view ‘there is more than one science, it depends on the social group that constructs it; only scientific and political struggle allows a group to make clear what science is suitable for it. This decision cannot be shifted to post-revolutionary times, because the success of proletarian class in winning the political revolution depends on its capability to organize society on the basis of a scientific programme, Only in this manner the prolatarian class can demonstrate its progressiveness before political revolution, Indeed, even the concept of progress depends on the social group’. 

Bogdanov was of course, politically defeated by Lenin, and the theory of objectivity in both science and technology prevailed for some time in Soviet Union. However, in 1931, the programme of Bogdanov of building a proletarian science was renewed. This new shift in the Communist policy manifested itself at the political level in the person of Bukharin and at the scientific level it was Lysenko who was chosen to lead the attempt to build a proletarian genetics. Lysenko, as is well Known failed, and by 1950 Stalin himself ended the search for a proletarian science. Marxist policy on science thus wort a full circle by 1950. According to the author the Lysenko affair is not a relevant example to prove that there cannot be an alternative science. Lysenko affair has a centralised operation of imposing the party's will on scientists and scientific research’. But alternative science cannot be built by the Party. According to tho Bogdanov programme, on the other hand, scientific effort was 'to be sustained by a mass movement, by developing a popular knowledge into an organised system of thinking’. Building proletarian sciences is the task of the whole proletarian class - not of the Party bureaucracy. Hence the irrelevance of Lysenko affair to the present argument. 

According to the author the official Marxist theory having drawn the wrong lessons from the Lysenko affair, and having accepted the objectivity of science, has reached a crisis. The only alternative they have to offer to the western model of capitalist organisation with the some giant science free from any boundary conditions imposed by the working class. The history of past years has shown this Latter model to be often spontaneously reverting to the capitalist organisation: and this history leaves the Marxists baffled, ‘capitalism appears to them an omnipotent and unfailing monster'. A thorough revision of the Marxist theory is required urgently. Essential elements in this revision have to be: clarification of the possibilities of alternative science, and dismissal of the ‘dogma' of progress in history. We have to realize that ethical and political values must precede science and technology rather than being tailored to suit scientific and technological progress.

4. An alternative from within sciences:

There are elements within the western science and technology: Marxism in social sciences, intuitionalism in logic, consructivism in mathematics and finally operativism in physics - which can be put together to form the basis for a 'people's science’. 

The paper spends a lot of time in analysing this thesis. The major argument centres around the development of thermodynamics in physics - which, according to the author, was a development entirely different from the usual physics activity and was developed by people like S. Carnot who had a clear political social philosophy in developing it. What is more, this line of development in physics was quickly stopped and supercoded by nuclear physics etc. we shall not review this thesis here in any detail, because one, it is highly technical in nature, and two, this thesis seems to have developed out of a despration with social solutions to the problem of alternative science - a desperation often stated in the paper - and seems to be another attempt to offer a technical solution.

Madras Group