03.23.08
Marx, Darwin, falsification
From Is Marxism Deterministic?
Popper’s falsificationism has been the object of considerable criticism, and his criticisms of Marxism are a mixture of correcting pointing to flaws and ideological bias, both. And on the subject of Darwinism, the same is true. Popper justly critiqued Darwin’s theory of natural selection on the grounds of falsifiability, despite the problems in that charge, and the fact that he (suspiciously) changed his mind. Whatever the context of that change of mind (I frankly think he back out under duress) his point is roughly speaking correct: Darwinian selectionism persists because it hasn’t been falsified, and in fact it can’t easily be falsified because observing the immense data sets required in deep time is impossible. So Popper was right the first time: for all intents and purposes Darwin’s theory is not falsifiable. In fact, over time that falsification has nearly been achieved, but there is no simple way to finalize the argument.
Meanwhile, Marxist are completely confused on the subject of Darwinism, and the attempts to compare/collate Marx and Darwin simply shows the confusions in Marxist theory which has been misled by the Darwinian illusion over natural selection.
But while some have criticized Marxism for being deterministic, others have claimed that a theory of historical tendencies rather than deterministic processes is equally problematic.
This was the argument of the philosopher Karl Popper, who claimed that Marxism is unscientific because it “is not refutable by any conceivable event.” According to Popper:
In some of its earlier formulations…[the] predictions [of Marxist theory] were testable, and in fact falsified. Yet instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. In this way they rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made it irrefutable…and by this stratagem they destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status.
Popper’s argument remains influential, even though philosophers of science have been shooting holes in it for several decades. To begin with, there is nothing wrong with modifying a scientific hypothesis when it fails to fit with the evidence. In fact it would be crazy to adopt the practice of abandoning a hypothesis every time it made an incorrect prediction, particularly if it already has a track record of success.
In fact, Popper initially argued that Darwin’s theory of evolution is also unscientific because it “is not refutable by any conceivable event.” Later, Popper retracted the claim that Darwinism is unscientific, but in doing so he effectively abandoned his whole account of what makes something scientific.
Popper assumes that scientific theories are tested by making accurate predictions that can be compared with the results of observation. But many sciences don’t make precise predictions. Darwin’s theory does make some predictions—for example, that we won’t find a rabbit fossil in a two-billion-year-old rock—but it doesn’t predict where we will find any particular fossils, or what species we will find in particular geographical areas, or how well adapted particular species are to their environments. And it can’t predict the future course of evolutionary development.
However, while Darwin’s theory isn’t very good at making predictions, it is very good at generating explanations. It can explain the patterns we observe in the fossil record, the facts of biogeographical distribution, and why organisms are only imperfectly adapted to their environments. It’s because it can explain these facts, and many others, by showing how natural selection acting on populations over time can account for what we observe, that Darwin’s theory is so well established.
Darwinism is compatible with many conceivable observations. If distinctive species of land mammals are found on an island many miles from the mainland, the theory can explain that. If there are no land mammals on the island, the theory can explain that too. But that doesn’t mean that the theory couldn’t be refuted. If in order to explain the biological facts, Darwinians were forced again and again to make highly implausible assumptions, or if someone could come up with a better explanation of the evidence, then we would have reason to reject the theory. But evolutionary explanations don’t require implausible assumptions, and there are no remotely satisfactory alternatives that can explain the same range of biological facts.
Marxism is in these respects analogous to Darwinism. It is not particularly good at making predictions, because the outcome of social and historical processes depends on too many interacting factors; and often, quite small differences between two otherwise similar situations can lead to very different outcomes. But it is highly successful in generating explanations, and showing which strategies for social change are likely to be successful and unsuccessful.