Re: <nettime> Why I won't support the March for Science

[David Garcia <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>]

     3) Just as opposition against Trump creates false solidarity with
     neoliberals, opposition against climate change-denying, creationist etc.
     politics can create false solidarity with a Popperian understanding of
     research and knowledge. (Coincidentally, Popper's philosophy provided
     the point of departure for both, scientific neo-positivism and
     political-economic neo-liberalism.)

Hi Florian, I think it is too simple to reduce Karl Popper's philosphy
of science based on the principal of "falsifiability" with which he
challenged the narrow verificationism of the logical positivists, as
neo-positivist or as foundational to neo-liberalism. A charge much truer
of the  logical positivists.

In some ways I see him, as a neo Kantian with a strong sense of the
necessary limits of human knowledge and that this led to a position that
science though better than superstition worship could only ever tell us
more and more about what we do not know.

I take this to be an approach to knowledge founded on perpetual doubt
and the humility to, whenever possible, be willing test one's beliefs,
and if required admit it when we get things wrong..

Far from neo-liberalism that seeks to create structures (including
aspects of the EU) that limit the reach and traction of democracy
(particularly in economic policy) Popper was staunch in his belief that
only democracy provided the framework of opposition and the means to
peacefully remove goverments and was thus the closest politics could
come to the scientific (in the ideal case) willingness to submit ones
ideas to scrutiny and review by those with opposing views.

Best

David

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