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The Scientific Method Applied To Society


Singularitarian1992

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I would like to start an ongoing discussion with anyone interested in conversing with an open mind (meaning open to the evidence) and respectful tone on the idea of applying the scientific method holistically and systematically, to the social design.

 

Now, many after reading this sentence might think to themselves, "wait a minute, we already live in a society that applies the scientific method". While this is true to a certain extent, I would argue that we really have just begun to use the knowledge and technology we have to make society function better and improve our lives. It seems that our age old institutions, superstitions and traditions have a monopoly (literally) on how we are to think and live our lives.

 

So, i'll open up the conversation by starting with a question. What are the near-empirical processes by which we could look for influence on how to structure our social systems? Obviously, there is no short and simple answer (at least not without first synthesizing vast and multidisciplinary concepts). But here's what the essence boils down to. Society today, as advanced as it may seem to be in comparison to the past and with all our knowledge and increased technical capability, is grossly infested with outdated and unnecessary cultural "noise" that in many cases is actually quite harmful to the overall social and ecological web of living.

 

What can we do to change this? How can we smooth out the "artificialities" and create something that works for everyone no matter what, while facilitating constant change and growth? I believe that Science steers us toward this new exploration and understanding by revealing key processes in Nature. The hardest part is reaching people and getting past their ingrained value systems which might be threatened by the new understandings and applications.

 

What exactly are these cultural "artificialities? In a sentence, Money, Politics, and Religion. Let this be an introduction to a beginning way to solve these problems: http://www.thevenusp...e-based-economy

 

So in other words, how much of the way that society operates really matters? How much is unnecessary and outdated? How much is pathological? You can see that this topic could theoretically be pursued forever, so i'll stop here for now. By now, I'm well familiar with opposition to this proposition (which I will further elaborate after your responses) so bring it on. Keep in mind my request above to be open and respectful. Thanks for your time and I hope to pursue this matter further.

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  • 2 weeks later...

the scientific method cannot be applied to society, because the society is made of irrational and subjective beings... the venus project is itself the brainchild of extremely irrational and subjective beings, who don't have even the slightest idea about the nature of the human being, the nature of economics, money and so on...

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  • 2 weeks later...

The general question posed is an interesting one, however. That is, how is it that we have now lived for the last four centuries in a scientific world which is quite concerned to be maximally accurate and rational in its design of economic plans, air conditioning units, airline schedules, mass production lines, mathematical hypothesis, computer programs, etc., but its thinking with respect to social organization still ranges from the ad hoc and imprecise to the grossly irrational and superstitious. You would think that all levels of rationality in a single society would be similar.

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The general question posed is an interesting one, however. That is, how is it that we have now lived for the last four centuries in a scientific world which is quite concerned to be maximally accurate and rational in its design of economic plans, air conditioning units, airline schedules, mass production lines, mathematical hypothesis, computer programs, etc., but its thinking with respect to social organization still ranges from the ad hoc and imprecise to the grossly irrational and superstitious. You would think that all levels of rationality in a single society would be similar.

 

"You would think that all levels of rationality in a single society would be similar." Why would that be a necessary conclusion? In every sphere of life we can identify easily quantifiable things and others that are completely impossible to rationalise or measure. This was the basic problem with Benthamism - possibly neat idea but the calculus is impossible. An objective measurement is necessary - without that any analysis is merely ideology masquerading as science. We can measure that 5 men making pins from beginning to end are slower at making pins over a week than 5 men dividing their labour - we cannot measure how this affects society's happiness and wellbeing.

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The usual assumption among historians and sociologists, starting with Max Weber, is that the rationalization of production of goods, distribution of goods, sale of goods, financial planning, and labor organization demanded by the goal of profit maximization in captalism, beginning around 1720 in England, introduced a corresponding rationalization throughout society. This general rationalization of society meant that instead of each class of person having special legal rights and duties, the streamlined world of capitalism required all people to be treated as equal for simplicity of labor exploitation, capital mobilization, contract formation, and trade. Similarly, all days of the year had to be treated as identical so that there would be no breaks on commercial efficiency. There could be no special sacred places either, since everything had to be open to efficient capitalist development. Superstitution had to give way to science, since only science operates with a thoroughly rational methodology. Thus once one large aspect of society, such as the economy, has to become rationalized, that rationalization spreads ruthlessly throughout the rest of society until we find ourselves living in a generally logical world, since each surviving illogical element looks all the more incongruous compared to the general rationality.

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I would go with a few years later obviously - thus my pin example - but yes the industrial revolution and growth of the power of capital required a change in the exploitation of labour. However, I think you are conflating the attempt to rationalize the pool of unskilled labour from which the owners of the mean of production could draw workers; with a general rationalization of society which never happened apart from with in the minds of some philosophers at large. The great founding socialogists Weber, Durkheim, Comte et al were studying perhaps the most regimented yet most laisez faire era of modern history - the late Victorian / early Edwardian age (as we would call it in the UK). I realise that I have seemingly contradicted myself but that era was an age of contradictions - I would recommend History of Sexuality - Michel Foucault which starts with an exploration of the perception and reality of Victorian morals and ethics in We Other Victorians. The idea that if a concept works well in the economy (which is by its nature should be quantised and countable) that it must also work for all other areas is naive and blinkered and has never be successfully produced - and even more so now, we are learning that the economy is not linear and predictable, but chaotic and emotional.

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Instead of weighing in on this discussion of canonical social thinkers, I would just like to point out that the application of rationality to economic and other social matters has paradoxically always been used to the pursuit of maximizing the irrational potential of those with social power. So while economic rationality increases power, that power gets appropriated in the pursuit of irrational goals of powerful subjectivity. It would be quite interesting if power was used toward rational ends instead. But who can convince the powerful that it is not rational for them to maximize their freedom to pursue their interests regardless of how rational those interests may be?

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But once capitalism introduces the paradigmatic example of ruthless rationalization in one large sphere of human life, that model tends to be generalized, so before long people who in their everyday lives become accustomed to rational analysis to structure this new form of human life stripped of traditional, ritualized modes of prescribed behavior and having to accommodate rational structures of bureaucratized social institutions around them also stop believing in fantasies like god, or stop thinking that hope is a sensible way to deal with life's stresses, or that there is anything special about a 'sacred' statue beyond its cash value. Not all of these generalizations of the seed of rationality originally planted by capitalist organization necessarily support capitalism.

 

Everyone used to cite Foucault all the time in the 1980s, but now the shockingly thin patina of research supporting his grandiose conclusions has led to people taking him much less seriously than they used to. Generally, while he is right that knowledge claims and scientific theories are sometimes used to support power claims and silence others claiming their own social power, the vast majority of knowledge claims are about things which are objectively true or provable and have only tangental connections with social power.

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But once capitalism introduces the paradigmatic example of ruthless rationalization in one large sphere of human life, that model tends to be generalized, so before long people who in their everyday lives become accustomed to rational analysis to structure this new form of human life stripped of traditional, ritualized modes of prescribed behavior and having to accommodate rational structures of bureaucratized social institutions around them also stop believing in fantasies like god, or stop thinking that hope is a sensible way to deal with life's stresses, or that there is anything special about a 'sacred' statue beyond its cash value. Not all of these generalizations of the seed of rationality originally planted by capitalist organization necessarily support capitalism.

 

I agree, in general, with you. Does capitalism have an idea of what makes a human happy? IMHO, it does not? Humans are far too different, in emotional intelligence and in what I may claim is general intelligence which is measurable in IQ Tests. They are also creatures of habit, culture and emotion as you have already mentioned. There should be a model for the ideal Capitalist state where both the worker and the boss have achieved happiness but I do not know of any. Marxism and Libertarianism have tried to deal with the issue but Marxism fell at the first step, believeing that the Hegelian method of thesis and antithesis would cause the collapse of Socialism and that the 'new man' would emerge with a collective ideal, thinking for the good of the many, before his own good. It failed because humans do not seem to fit a paradigm. Good thoughts Marat.

Edited by jimmydasaint
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