On the dialectics of nature, technology and capital
Published in Original Philosophy
3 days ago (Medium.com)
Karl Marx published Das Kapital in 1867, almost eight years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Both were momentous in changing our way of thinking about relationships, particularly that between society and science. But more importantly, they got us thinking about what relationship nature has to science. While both authors were similarly interested in how the social could be extracted from the scientific, they each had their personal trajectory when it came to analyzing how the science figured in the social, and vice-versa. But the focus in this story will be on Marx and the parallels between his thinking about scientific knowledge and that of the natural scientists making up his contemporaries.
The mid-nineteenth century also saw increased divergence between the biological and physical sciences, probably because physics was becoming more of a mathematically-abstract investigation into nature while biology remained largely concerned with describing nature as they could be humanly observed, even if instrumental extensions, such as the microscope and field glasses, were used. Even when the physicists and biologists worked together, it was still about adapting physical models to biological issues rather than vice-versa. And these physical and mathematical models would become foundational to the materialist philosophical discourse on science and technology, without reducing the discourse to pure models.
The Economics of Science
Marx was eager to ensure that his work would have scientifically solid foundations, and he dived into mathematics, economics, and the physical sciences to give his work a more rigorous padding [1]. The correspondences between Engels and Marx demonstrated their continuous interest in keeping abreast of developments in the different disciplines of the natural sciences from the mid to late nineteenth century. They desired to comprehend the relationship between ‘scientific’ developments and the idealist philosophy of nature that was dominant during their time. Their areas of interests included examining the physical forces at work in nature and how quantification operated in heat, electricity, and magnetism [2].
In his 1856 speech delivered at the anniversary celebration of the People’s Paper, Marx made metaphorical references to geological features while declaring that the revolution of a social nature was ephemeral and incapable of holding a candle to technological revolution. He warned that ignorance over the interactions between scientific discovery and society, and the subsequent deployment of science without awareness to serve the desire of capital, could lead to the enslavement of humans.
That social revolution, it is true, was no novelty invented in 1848. Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even citizens Barbés, Raspail and Blanqui… On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire. [3]
The critique on physics and metaphysics that Engels and Marx had engaged in were increasingly reified with the rise of logical positivism, starting from the late nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century, specifically in Vienna, Cambridge, London, and later, North America. It was a historical irony that some of the important scholars in the philosophy of science during the early twentieth century were concerned with differentiating the perceived affectations of metaphysics from the natural sciences. On the other hand, physicists, including the pioneers of quantum physics, were less concerned about separating their ideological beliefs from their scientific work. Indeed, there were conflicts in how the pioneers of quantum mechanics saw as extensions to interpretations in the new physics they pioneered — many were not against contemplating the philosophical and political implications of their work [4].
While Marx and his fellow philosophers (and sociologists) were raising consciousness around the superstructures of capitalism, value, and (asset) accumulation, the pioneers of modern science were busy reconciling the theorization of ‘atoms’ (electricity) with paradoxes observed in the thermodynamics of heat. One of the latter, Lord Kelvin, had thought that the atomic spectra might have a role to play in making time more precise because of the observable discrete behaviors of the atoms[5]. Time became a valuable commodity from the time it had been used to plot the financial graphs of loss and profits as embodied by the Stock Exchange. The increasing complexity of stock manipulation and the financial markets made the need for greater precision in measuring time inevitable.
Time as the subject of measurement became pre-eminent in philosopher Antonio Negri’s analyses of productivity, circulation, and collectivity under capital, in his book Time for Revolution. In fact, the notion that time could have an evolutionary role to play came about when Galilean/Newtonian physics, with its arbitrary constitution of time, had to be revised against the idea that the position, direction, and momentum of a static and dynamic object in relation to each other could make time less fixed but not necessarily more fluid, especially with the onset of the theory of relativity.
Through the emergence of quantum time, driven by the interpretation of atomic wave properties against its discrete values, we are able to re-conceptualize the operation of time at the intersection of what is visible to our world and that which exists at the subatomic scale. Each scale of visibility is represented by the different dimensions of attention in classical physics (with the center of reference being our world of direct experience) and quantum physics (whose conceptualization is non-intuitive and mediated by hidden actors).
Professionalizing Science
It is not coincidental that the rise of scientific knowledge as we know it, after breaking ranks with natural philosophy, occurred at the coming-of-age of the industrial revolution in Europe and the industrialization of North America as well as Japan, as the latter third was also an actor in the construction of scientific modernity during the 19th century. After all, the time for industrial revolution represented the formalization of techno-scientific labor, as that labor moved from the artisanship of the cottage industry to the specifications of machine-driven productivity.
Development in engineering and the applied natural sciences led the more observant and curious of the practitioners, who were not necessarily university-trained, to formulate principles and laws to account for their observations. The players of the new sciences were educated men with footholds in the various scientific academies and royal societies of their countries, as well as autodidacts who apprenticed themselves to other men of science, such as in the case of Humphrey Davy and Michael Faraday.
In the nineteenth century, it was still possible to be an amateur scientist without the academic credentials greasing today’s scientific enterprise, as long as one could find ways of attaining sufficient intellectual capital to enable one’s scientific paper to be accepted and given the stamp of approval by the national academies of science. Of course, an imbalance of power was still at play, in that the learned members of the elite class would still act as gatekeepers. Such attitudes shaped the development of the kind of science Negri refers to as bourgeoisie science — a science that is not about dispelling superstition and terror, but generative of its own collective arbitrary pronouncements in contending with the presuppositions of science as legitimate knowledge[6]. Nevertheless, scientific knowledge was still able to disseminate rapidly not just among the elite circles, but also to members of the public[7].
Science as Commodity
It is still important to keep in mind the probable fallacies and contradictions that can emerge when we consider how science’s modernizing imperative went hand-in-hand with aggressive imperial expansionism. Most of the colonial men of science had been condescending towards the indigenous knowledges they came into contact [8]. For the colonized, access to the scientific knowledge of the colonizers became the tools for claiming emancipation and nation-building.
The elite class of the group might adopt an attitude of condescension toward knowledge heritage perceived as pseudo-scientific without questioning the rationale, or intellectual conditioning, underlying their attitudes. However, the colonized ‘proleteriats’ were still able to resist at some level.
Take for instance the case of India and her staunch claim regarding the pre-eminence of her intellectual traditions in mathematics and the physical sciences. Even if that heritage knowledge bore little resemblance to modern science, India was not discouraged. Marxism, having contributed ideologically to India’s independence movement, not without some resistance from some of the agitators for India’s independence [9], had also become a big part India’s humanistic scholarship, as Indian scholars became major contributors to postcolonial theories. They also contributed immensely to thinking about postcolonial science and technology that are crucial to the critique of scientific imperialism and commoditization.
The Massification of Science
The revolution in publishing is a revolution in capitalism and a form of socialistic subversion where knowledge was pried from the firm grip of the bourgeoisie. The rise of mass publishing parallels today’s impetus for open access scientific publishing, as did particular sentiments with regard to the nature of knowledge and the importance of its availability to the public.
The rise of mass publication (such as the penny presses) was supposed to democratize knowledge and encourage social mobility. For the first time, scientific treatises and popular science writings that were considered too much of a luxury even by the rising middle class were now within reach of most of the literate class except the poorest. Readers could read political tracts in tandem with the science books, and writers had been known to dissect them in equal measure.
Among the most active popularizers of the new sciences were women, who were writing mainly to a female market. However, some also wrote to other men less knowledgeable than themselves and to children.[10] After all, women had been involved, as invisible actors, in the scientific enterprise for some centuries. While they were known to publish erudite papers and even books, regardless of whether they had the opportunity for formal advanced education, writing popular science allowed the women to expand their reach and a chance at earning an income in a way that their other intellectual endeavors did not provide.
However, most of the women with any chance of involvement in disseminating scientific knowledge were from the upper to upper-middle classes, and were born into educated (and scientific-minded) families. The intellectual mobility that the democratization of knowledge was supposed to accord was not as available to women except during extenuating circumstances, such as in the absence of men and labor shortage during the war years [11].
The Endgame
Values internal to science and the social world that surrounds science are not exclusive to each other, either now or in the past. Politics were important to scientists of the past when it comes to justifying their theories and interpretations of experimental outcomes. Since the time of Marx, the critical reception of science has undergone several levels of development — we see the rise and fall of social constructivism (the idea that scientific knowledge is socially constructed as knowledge communities develop their own ways of knowing)[12] and relativism (that science is determined by cultural standards that are neither stable nor absolute — it overlaps with social constructivism) [13].
How do the politics of the left (together with the politics from across the spectrum) come together and negotiate policy and ethics in science? Karen Barad, a theoretical physicist and professor of feminist studies, had produced an example of such an intervention happening at the intersection of politics (specifically leftist politics), social justice movement, and theoretical physics through her work [14]. Even then, her work has been met with mixed reception, with some seeing her as a messiah for opening up the materiality of abstract science for interface with politics while others regarded her project as problematic with too many assumptions that are obscured by a dense sea of tangled critical theory.
At the end of the day, it is up to the rest of us who want to push the boundaries of the possible in science and critique of/in science to see how we can produce more pragmatic interventions through our knowledge of history without being held a prisoner of science and its difficult history. It is also up to us to discover if the Marxist materialist politics of science has anything to offer in the age of technoeconomic incursions where policies around the support of scientific production are overshadowed by the economic imperative underpinning the drive toward increased productivity via technologization.
Egalitarianism and Democratizing Technological Know-How
Why democratizing technology is easier said than done.
References
- Oliveira, A. (2021). “History and Political Economy in Karl Marx’s Mathematical Manuscripts.” Advances in Historical Studies, 10, p. 176–190. doi: 10.4236/ahs.2021.103011.
- “Engels to Marx in London: Manchester, 14 July 1858” in Marx and Engels: Works, Moscow, 1929, p 325. 10 March 2013. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_07_14.htm>.
- See the online version of his speech at <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm>.
- Beller, M (1998). “The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?” Physics Today. 21 Oct. 2013.<http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~bohmmech/BohmHome/sokalhoax.html>.
- Kelvin, W.T.B., and P.G. Tait. (1879). Treatise on Natural Philosophy. Vol 1 Part. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Negri, A (2003). Trans. Matteo Mandarini. London & New York, Continuum, 48–9.
- Nieto-Galan, Agustí, and Fiona Kelso. Science in the Public Sphere: A History of Lay Knowledge and Expertise. London & New York: Routledge, 2016. Print.
- Waziyatawin Angela Wilson. “Introduction: Indigenous Knowledge Recovery Is Indigenous Empowerment.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 3/4, 2004, pp. 359–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4138922.
- Singh, Jamal. “Indian Independence: A Revolution Lost.” In Defence of Marxism. N.p., 14 Sept. 2017. Web. 10 Jan. 2024. <https://www.marxist.com/indian-independence-a-revolution-lost.htm>.
- See Benjamin, M (1991). “Elbow Room: Women Writers on Science, 1790–1840” Gender and Scientific Enquiry 1780–1945. Ed Marina Benjamin. Oxford: Basil Blackwell and Patricia Philips (1990) The Scientific Lady: a Social History of Women’s Scientific Interests, 1520–1918. New York: St Martin’s Press.
- I wrote a review essay of a book that included discussions into the role of women in STEM during the period preceding and in the aftermath of the second world war. Lee, Clarissa Ai Ling. “Science, Gender, and Internationalism: Women’s Academic Networks,1917–1955/Girls Coming to Tech! A History of American Engineering Education for Women.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 11.1 (2017): 119–125. Web. 6 Feb. 2021. <https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-3494390>.
- See Mallon, Ron, “Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/social-construction-naturalistic.
- Swoyer, Chris, “Relativism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/relativism/.
- See Barad, K. (2919)“Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come.” Derrida Today 3.2: 240–268.
Written by Clarissa Ai Ling Lee, PhD
·Writer for Original Philosophy
I write about theory, philosophy, artscience, speculations, technoscience, cultural strategies, and media industries. I may also write on personal development.