By Doug Lorimer
Ron Guignard ("Marxism and science", GLW #150) repeats his argument in GLW #145 that Marxism is not a scientific theory of society because it does not accord with his personal definition of what constitutes science.
In his first article, Guignard defined a science as the examination "of a given system using logic and especially mathematics to model a way the system might work so as to be able without fail to predict its future state, given enough knowledge of its present state".
In GLW #146 I pointed out that Guignard's definition would disqualify all those sciences "that make no predictions about the future state of the object of their study". In his reply he attempts to refute this argument by attributing to me the ridiculous claim that these sciences make no predictions whatsoever ("Does not the palaeontologist predict the whereabouts of oil?" Yes, s/he does. But s/he, at least in his/her capacity as a palaeontologist, does not make predictions about the future state of the oil).
Further, I pointed out that Guignard's definition of a science would not only "disqualify all of the social sciences (including Marxism) from warranting the definition 'scientific', it would also disqualify all of the natural sciences, since none of them is able to predict unfailingly the future state of any given object or system" because (a) we can never obtain enough knowledge of its present state to be able to make totally accurate predictions about its future state, since every object or system possesses a practically endless number of connections and relations; and (b) it is in a state of continuous change and development, giving rise to new connections and relations with every other object and system.
Guignard fails to deal with these objections. Instead, he claims that "my" definition of a science "could arguably include such subjects as astrology, phrenology etc." Unlike Guignard, who seems to believe he can give any meaning he wants to commonly used words, I defined science as it is commonly used and understood in the English language. I cited the meaning given in the Macquarie Dictionary: "the systematic study of man [sic] and his environment based on the deductions and inferences which can be made, and the general laws which can be formulated, from reproducible observations and measurements of events and parameters within the universe".
Neither astrology nor phrenology nor any other system based on superstition conforms to this definition. Contemporary astrology, for example, does not even attempt to formulate general laws that can be tested through observation and experiment to account for its claim that the heavenly bodies determine the course of human affairs.
Guignard claims that the commonly used meaning of the word "science" is "designed to let in soft pseudo-'sciences' of sociology, psychology, etc." Unfortunately, Guignard does not tell us why he thinks these are "soft pseudo-'sciences'". He only hints at the reason later when he takes up the last paragraph of my response, claiming that it "amply aids" his case.
Guignard claims that my answer to the question of why capitalism has not been overthrown in the most highly industrialised countries ("The answer to that question involves a detailed critical review of 20th century political and social history") "clearly shows that Marxism is not lawfully scientific in the important sense that I use". Why? Because, he writes:
"A physicist would never say 'The answer to the question of the behaviour of a confined gas involves a detailed critical review of the behaviour of each molecule'. Instead, s/he would say, simply, 'PV=RT'. This is the law that governs the behaviour of confined gases in all but some special cases for which different laws are used. You may apply one or other of these laws (and know which to apply before you apply it) no matter how many molecules a volume of gas contains nor how individual their random motions.
"Doug shows that the laws are not yet known that govern the behaviour of political and social history confined to humankind on planet earth. If they exist, no doubt they may be much more complex, but should still be expressible so as to predict correctly and in detail, rather than hit or miss in generalities more suitable to sociology or astrology."
From these comments it becomes clear that what Guignard regards as science is only those branches of science that are able to express their laws in mathematical formulae. There are a number of problems with such a view.
Firstly, because of the dialectical nature of material reality, which I have noted above, it is simply not possible to reduce any of its laws to formulae. Reality is too full of contradictions, too mutable, too complex to be snared totally in any set of formulas.
Let us look at the example cited by Guignard, ie, the formula which expresses the laws governing a confined gas: pv=RT, where p is the pressure exerted by the molecules of a gas contained in a volume v at an absolute temperature T, and R is a constant that relates the volume, pressure and temperature of a mass of gas. This formula (equation) predicts the general behaviour of confined gases (whose temperature is not too low or whose density is not too great). But it does so only very approximately because the formula is based on the arbitrary assumption that the molecules are tiny elastic solids without any size. The formula does not allow for the size of the molecules, and their consequent interference with each other's motion; and does not allow for the attractive force between the molecules, which, although small, is real.
The Encyclopedia Britannica explains: "When not too close together, two molecules attract each other; as they approach this attraction increases to a maximum, then decreases to zero and is replaced by a rapidly mounting repulsion. Because of this repulsion when close together, the molecules behave in many respects as if they were hard objects having a certain size and shape. The equivalence is not exact, however, and no simple formula can be written to represent exactly the relation between p, v and T" (my emphasis).
Thus the formula pv=RT does not predict "correctly and in detail" the real behaviour of real gases. It describes their behaviour approximately, one might even say, "in hit or miss generalities" that are only roughly exact.
Secondly, Guignard's argument that the laws governing society discovered by Marx are not scientific because (with the exception of the laws of capitalist production and exchange of commodities) they are not expressed in mathematical formulae, is a particular example of reductionism. This is the concept that it is possible to reduce the more complex forms of matter and their motions to the simple forms.
What distinguishes the Marxist, ie, dialectical materialist, concept of matter from the mechanical materialist concept that dominated science from the time of Isaac Newton up to the 19th century (and still seems to dominate Guignard's conception of the world), was Marxism's denial of the possibility of reducing the more complex forms of development to its simpler forms.
Each of the different structural levels of matter has its own specific laws. More complex levels of material organisation include simple levels within them, but they cannot be reduced to those simpler levels.
Thus the biological organisation of matter, while arising out of the chemical organisation of matter, has its own specific laws of motion which cannot be reduced to purely chemical laws (because the latter are subordinated within living organisms to specifically biological tasks). We cannot explain by purely chemical laws, for example, why an ape will sacrifice its life to save its young.
The more complex the form of organisation of matter that science deals with, the less can the laws it formulates to describe the objectively necessary relations governing those forms be expressed in mathematical formulae.
Guignard's hypothetical physicist might be able to provide a formula to express the laws governing the behaviour of confined gases, but how would s/he answer a question like, "Why does oxygen make up 21% of the Earth's atmosphere?" S/he might say "The answer to that question involves a detailed critical review of the Earth's chemical and biological history", but only a fool would attempt to answer such a question with a mathematical formula.
When it comes to the study of human society, ie, the most complex form of organisation of matter known to us, the range and relative independence of the variables involved in its development are so great that it is impossible to formulate the laws in mathematical formulas, even very complex ones.What is 'pseudo'?
Reductionism