Diane,
Maybe if you didn't personalize it all so much you might see your desire to
respond to my posts as an expression of the differences between our
approaches, our philosophy, our training, etc. I'm not quite sure how to
characterize your theoretical orientation but it doesn't seem to come out of
the tradition of dialectical materialism that fundamentally informs and
orients my thinking and intellectual practice. For example, I can't
remember ever having seen you relate your observations to either the
tradition of cultural-historical activity theory: ie "that the structure and
development of human psychological processes emerge through culturally
mediated, historically developing, practical activity" or the tradition of
dialectical materialism (cf Bakhurst 1991) of which activity theory is a
development (in my opinion).
I agree with you about the way that science (which is no longer Western per
se but actively pursued in many of the same ways by peoples of all cultures)
is appropriated and used by the dominant interests of now global capitalism.
I'm fully aware of all the examples you make. There can be no doubt that
science in the hands of capitalism serves very particular interests and is
applied in activity systems whose goals. From the perspectives outline
above the scientific activity systems are embedded in economic activity
systems that determine the uses to which they are applied and the dynamics
of their application (cf. Engestrom, Miettinen). Scientific activity
outside that system doesn't get supported or finds support only with a great
deal of effort. How many technologies, how much knowledge has been
suppressed because its development would undermine the existing power
structures? As I pointed out, my concern is to not throw the baby out with
the bathwater, let alone throw out the baby and drink the bath water.
The global culture is much more than the global commercial culture of Big
Mac, Pokemon, etc., it is rather an increasingly shared system of "artifacts
and mind" of which science is a fundamental component.
Western science does not promote the practice of sterilizing women in
thirdworld countries". These are policy decisions. Female infanticide was
pretty common in lots of cultures before they had any contact with
European/American powers. The goal was the same: control population
growth. Scientific approaches to controlling population are perhaps more
humane than allowing infants to starve to death but that's not the point.
The point is that science doesn't generate the policy. China has the most
rigorous population control system in the world--are you prepared to say
that China is the West?
Clearly you want to take it further now, it isn't just "western science" but
all scientific conceptual knowledge. You write "there is, seems to me, a
shadowy practice of dominance underwriting scientific practice, whether in
mayan or western culture... " OK. Now we're to the nub. On the basis of
this statement you apparently accept that science is a transcultural
activity, not restricted to "the West" . Now it's clear that you want to
deny the validity of science itself or any knowledge so derived. For
example, you write in another post, " concepts don't understand anything,
scientific or otherwise". Of course concepts don't understand anything,
people understand things using concepts. But if humans don't understand
anything using concepts how do they understand things? It seems you are
proposing the most extreme kind of luddism here, not directed at machines
but at conceptual, scientific knowledge itself. Damned old tree of
knowledge, why didn't Adam and Eve listen to God?
Paul H. Dillon
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