memes

Also, the 'postmodern' or 'poststructural' critique does not seem to understand, again, that science is real. It is impossible to study the scientific method without understanding that certain key types of reasoning are involved in it. The only way you prove that something is not scientific is by Of course that leaves the question of what science is constituted of, by these thinkers do not offer much of anything practical in this line of questioning, otherwise there wouldn't be the crises of methodology and reproducibilty which we see in the departments where this kind of thought predominates or is very influential.

For instace, there is nothing in Latour which gives any real understanding of how science produces genuine knowledge. When you speak to people who are influenced by Latour - in particular many sociologists, unfortunately also under the influence of Bourdieu - they have frequently expressed to me that they think that neoclassical economics is 'just as scientific' as, say, physics or mathematics or biology. They say this because they have often a purely 'external' as opposed to 'internal' view of sciences, meaningly that they look simply at the, at times very superficial and in any case partial, sociological activities such as conferences, networking, team, lab and research group organization, discourses, apparent types etc. They do not take an internal view of the subject where they ask: "what are the internal logical relations of the key principles, axioms, propositions of this science? What are the relations with experience, with the data of experience? To what extent are the theoretical concepts we inherit culturally imbedded deeply in even the most apparently immediate perceptions we have of objects?" I am not interested in any epistemology or theory of science if it cannot contribute to the question of how it is that science as a process or social institution is able to produce a particular kind of very powerful knowledge. If it cannot explain the mechanics that allow us to answer that normative question, then it is useless imo. It's a luxury that falls in a yelling alarm the moment you have to do actual theory or explain things in a way that matters. Sociology and much anthropology in particular, when I read papers of theses in these topics, have often basically abandoned any pretence of presenting models of reality in order to explain a particular type of phenomenon, which is what every science does. I have read literally nonsensical word salads which have gotten people in 'top universities' on the western model, when that quality of work would almost certainly never be accepted in several other disciplines.

Capitalists do need engineers to actually know how they objects of study work in order for them to be of value. In the social sciences this is not necessary. In fact, the opposite is to a very high degree necessary, because obfuscuation and mystification is part of what capitalists are paying for when they fund, say, economics departments. In the other social science departments the situation is of course somewhat different, but, especially in Western anthropology and sociology, there is a crisis of methodology which has intensified since the post-structural turn. There is of course still good anthropology and sociology that gets done, but it is a relatively small proportion imo and is in general and exception which proves the rule I'm highlighting.