Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 14:47:50 05/11/01
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Hi Dann: Not that I share fully Marx and Engels theories, but as a trained sociologist let me say this: in the social field of theory -and many others fields- it is not expected -and it was not so for Marx- that predictions behaves as it is supposed to do in hard sciences. In fact , even these last cannot pride too much of that, also. What even the harder sciences do is to predict what will happen IF reality fits with a simplified model, which rarely happen. Or what will happen if a mechanical device made out from a blueprint is put into action. Reality as such, I mean, the empirical world before us, is a tricky, complicated, changeable thing almost always beyons the scope of mathematical, accurate prediction. Or just when the outcome is a simple 0-1 kind of thing. Or this or that. Even then sometimes is difficult to say. At most some kind of accuracy when real alternatives exist -several and complex- is got only in very narrow and so not very interesting locations. So what social sciences do is just to describe posible sceneries and at most alocate some probabilistics chances to each of them. Not asociation with time vector. "Revolution will happens tomorro at 12:00 o'clock". No sense at all. If you look carefully at Marx analysis, you will see that although things did not happened in the moment some people thought he have said, there is a lot of general structures that have became real and that is real knowlñedge and real prediction. less numbers. Like in meterology, where you can predict the arrival of a cold front, but surely you can mistake the timing, in social sciences you can do very good prediction without the sacral sphere of calendar. Oh yes, that can be crucial sometimes, exactly when and where, but does not means such kind of extrapolations are just unuseful stuff. Just my cent as you say in USA Fwernando
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