|
Historicism |
||
|
|
||
|
Attempts to produce theories spring from the Scientific Revolution, which is itself an emergent factor inside the eonic series. Theories are a novelty in world history. Prior to that we used 'counsels to action', myths, moral/religious systems of ethics. In fact, theories create a problem which is that attempts to formulate scientific laws flow out from the domain of physics into the social realm, there to be taken as counsels to action. But that they are not, they are theories. Kant exposed this problem in essence with his careful delineation of two levels, the theoretical and the practical spheres of reason. Thus we must distinguish counsels of action from statements of theory. The sloppiness of much evolutionary theory suddenly becomes apparent. The sloppiness starts with the attempt to extend theories into the biological realm, then they appear in the social realm, generalizations of pseudo-laws being taken ambiguously as suggestions to action. The misfire of natural selection thus becomes apparent, and we have the classic Oedipus Effect, where the statement about natural selection in the past becomes an incentive to action in the future. The fallacies are rife here. The term, Oedipus Effect, from Popper sprang from his critique of Marx, or else of some imaginary Marxist successor who turned judgments about ideology into statements of historical inevitability, e.g. the inexorable future of socialism, or communism. The fallacy of such statements of law springs from the Oedipus analogy, i.e. no theory can preempt our freedom to simply 'act otherwise', in the process falsifying that predictive theory. This issue of historicism is not confined to Marxists, and the critique tends to suddenly dropped when the subject of economic ideology comes up.
|
Resources/
Tutorials Notes Toward an Eonic
Model
Was There an Axial Age?
|
|
|
|
||