As the title suggests, a critique of the notorious so-called “philosophy of science” within modern bourgeois schools. The philosophy of science is actually an extremely reactionary idealist thought, a mixture of Berkeley, Hume, Mach, and others, and is an extremely reactionary idealist philosophy.
Lakatos: Lakatos is a skilled proponent of relativism. He divides scientific theories into two parts: hard core and auxiliary hypotheses. The “hard core” is the most fundamental premise of a theory, such as in bourgeois economics where the core assumption is that capitalism cannot perish and economic crises can be thoroughly resolved within capitalism. The “auxiliary hypotheses” are used to uphold the correctness of the “hard core” and prevent it from being overturned by new empirical facts. For example, in this cycle, the auxiliary hypothesis is used to defend the correctness of geocentrism. Lakatos also proposed the so-called “method of negative and positive heuristics.” The “method of negative heuristic” refers to modifying the auxiliary hypotheses arbitrarily when rebutted to patch the theory, thus maintaining the rationality of the hard core. The “method of positive heuristic” involves self-examination of the auxiliary hypotheses for vulnerabilities and proactively patching them. Lakatos called his entire framework the “scientific program.”
Lakatos also introduced the concepts of “evolution” and “degeneration” to judge the truthfulness of a “scientific program.” “Evolution” means that the auxiliary hypotheses become more coherent and explanatory, while “degeneration” means they become less coherent and explanatory. People can only determine whether a theory is degenerating after it is proven bankrupt. He believed that the reason heliocentrism replaced geocentrism was that, by Copernicus’s time, geocentrism had more and more flaws, while heliocentrism was becoming more reasonable as it placed the Sun at the center.
Lakatos’s rhetoric is entirely used to defend various bourgeois fallacies. The bourgeoisie always likes to propose absurd statements, such as wrapping their “solutions” to economic crises in “models,” “equations,” “parameters,” and then interpreting superficial phenomena arbitrarily. According to Lakatos, even vulgar bourgeois economics can be considered “scientific” as long as it continuously fabricates fallacies from various aspects. Even if some bourgeois economic theories are falsified, it cannot prove the Marxist “hard core” that capitalism must perish, because their failure is due to their inability to “cover up the lie,” not because they are false. In fact, it acts as a shield when attacking bourgeois fallacies, jumping out as a “mediator” when they are hard to counter, shouting “Wait, let’s see if it can continue to ‘evolve’”—a sinister philosophical compromise tactic.
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Thomas Kuhn: The ‘paradigm’ theory advocates relativism. Kuhn mixed Hume, Mach, and others’ agnosticism, inventing the ‘paradigm’ theory.
According to Kuhn, a ‘paradigm’ is a scientific theory that is widely accepted in society. Kuhn further stated that all scientific research must be conducted within a certain ‘paradigm’ and cannot go beyond its scope (for example, when Newtonian mechanics was popular, physics had to be studied according to Newton’s three laws; when relativity became popular, physics had to be studied using relativistic methods). He also believed that ‘paradigms’ are constantly changing because there are always elements within a ‘paradigm’ that cannot be self-consistent or explain all empirical facts. When these gaps expand, they develop into new ‘paradigms’ that replace the old ones. Kuhn thought this demonstrated that humans cannot discover ‘objective’ or ‘absolute’ truths, only replace old ‘paradigms’ with new ones, because people always judge truth based on certain ‘paradigm’-based methods, and ‘paradigms’ themselves are continually overthrown. Therefore, whether a theory is scientific or not depends solely on the personal preferences and beliefs of scientists, leading to the idea of ‘incommensurability’—that one theory cannot be seen as superior to another. He proudly called this a ‘scientific revolution.’
Kuhn completely inherited Hume’s nonsense of agnosticism, describing all scientific theories as elusive ‘paradigms’ and using the relativity of truth to deny the absoluteness of truth. The best standard for proving truth is practice: when people can achieve their intended goals according to a certain theory, then the truth is confirmed. As for judging truth based on ‘paradigm’-based methods, this rhetoric is entirely derived from Kant’s nonsense, because Kant used the claim that all human thought is subject to ‘a priori intuitive forms’ to deny humans’ ability to know absolute truth, describing absolute truth as something ‘beyond.’ However, like Kant, Kuhn fundamentally does not understand that scientific methods, data, tools, etc., are not purely logical deductions but are developed through practice. Is the methodology of dialectical materialism derived from the ‘paradigm’ of Marxism? Isn’t it the result of countless practical experiments by Marxists, summarized and verified through actual practice? If so, then using dialectical materialism to refute bourgeois fallacies is the most correct approach.
Kuhn’s philosophy is to use agnosticism to cause people to doubt Marxism, to doubt whether Marxism itself comes from a certain ‘paradigm.’ As a result, it was enthusiastically promoted by the Chinese Revisionists in the 1980s and became a ‘guest of honor’ in their philosophical circles.
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The most absurd aspect of modern bourgeois philosophy is probably Feyerabend’s philosophy. Feyerabend advocates so-called “scientific anarchism,” which is essentially a naked opposition to science. He loudly proclaims that science is a “superstition,” and that science can also be “wrong,” citing various seemingly plausible scientific theories that have been repeatedly overturned. His approach is a replica of Kuhn’s “paradigm” theory.
Unlike Kuhn, Feyerabend is more explicit. His view of history is a regressivist perspective, believing that even the most outdated and absurd theories could be proven to be “truth” by future generations. He distorts the theory of the integration of Chinese and Western medicine in socialist China, absurdly claiming that the integration indicates that we should preserve those “ancient” things because of a supposed “historical return,” where people discover truth from old texts. He even unabashedly advocates a “reserved attitude” towards the absurdity of myths, because someday myths might come true. According to his view, even the account in the Bible about the creation of the world on the seventh day should not be “recklessly” dismissed, or it would be considered “superstition” of science. Clearly, the so-called “scientific anarchism” is a reckless revision of all groundless and illogical nonsense, representing the extreme degeneration of the bourgeoisie.
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The above is also a reading note on Chapter 6 of Part 5 of “Outline of Marxist Philosophy”.