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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 174 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 174, April 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
I was pleased to read John Baxter’s recent enthusiastic review of Lewontin’s book, The Doctrine of DNA (January SR). It is indeed a fine book to use in countering the ‘human nature’ arguments socialists often come up against.
However, Baxter also reduces much of the discussion to an attack on ‘reductionism’ in science. Here I think we must be careful, for there is another set of arguments involving science which socialists need to counter. Some people argue that the whole scientific approach is of limited use and cannot explain anything complicated.
Some environmentalists, for example, reject science as being inherently destructive, and some feminists see science as irredeemably patriarchal and oppressive. I think that it is important for socialists to clearly argue that it is the misuse of the fruits of scientific inquiry which is the cause of problems, not the scientific method and philosophy itself. The essence of science is knowledge about the material world, tested through experiment and experience. It is only through such knowledge that we can understand how this world works, and how to affect it.
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Bill Spence |
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