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Re: Modifying the Body
Tibor Benke (benke@SFU.CA)
Mon, 22 Jul 1996 04:29:48 -0700
Mike Schupp wrote:
> Nothing personal, but the hard sciences are very very real. If
> social anthropologists are unwilling to make use of Darwinian
> ideas, we ought to turn to the sociology of knowledge and focus
> on _them_.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fair enough, they too should be illuminated.
Though it is merely an analytic truth, it is nevertheless important:
illusion is only distinguishable from reality from outside or in
retrospect.
I suggest you consider Peter Kropotkin's critique of Darwin, _Mutual Aid_
and also some later contributions to the primate ethological literature,
for example:Franz Waal _Peacemaking Among Primates_, Wilmos Csanyi,
_Evolutionary Systems and Society_, or Elisabet Sahtouris, _Gaia_.
Mannheim noted that ideology had the structure of a lie. This is
frequently misinterpreted to raise the famous "liar's" or "Cretan's"
paradox. It is to ignore what Mannheim meant by 'structure'. Briefly, a
well constructed lie is not a mere untruth, but a statement composed of
true parts and false in such a way as to achieve credibility. Ideology is
constructed similarly, except by unconscious social processes that operate
in the scientific community the same as everywhere else. Since the
ideologist is not conscious of his [sic] lieing, he gets rather defensive
when the ideological character of his assertions are pointed out.
On the other hand, even Karl Popper would agree, that science remains
properly scientific, only as long as it leaves its assertions open to
falsification.
Methinks you protest too much.
Tibor Benke
Graduate Student (Master's Programme)
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby,B.C. Canada
benke@sfu.ca
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