X-Message-Number: 19185 From: Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 16:00:17 EDT Subject: Re: CryoNet #19171 - #19179 In a message dated 5/31/02 2:00:56 AM, writes: << Message #19176 >> Thankyou Mike La Torra for getting it exactly right about social constructivism. This pernicious anti-science ideology creeped into American culture via neo-Marxist, especially European French sociologists, no doubt frustrated both by the failure of Marxism and the failure of the social sciences to become true sciences. For many years I labored as a research social psychologist, trying to do the science and trying to make sociological sense out of the world of science [my specialty] only to discover that I was surrounded by ideologues who denigrated my work as 'mechanistic' when they were pushing various social agendas, all on the left, some of which I agreed with and some not. What I find most pernicious about this so-called constructivist theory is that it allows people pushing virtually any agenda to claim that they have science on their side, picking and choosing their facts and breezily dismissing anything that doesn't fit. This is the opposite of true science which requires that all empirically verifiable observations must be taken into account, regardless of whether they support, fail to support, or manifestly contradict a theory. I hope that my fellow cryonicists are as committed as I am to empirical science as the basis of our beliefs. There is no other path. Our enemies and scoffers continually fail to realize or recognize that the core group of cryonisists are committed to a scientific view of the world. Ron Havelock Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19185