[Marxism] -ismic doctrine or science? (was: Cockburn contrarianism )

[Néstor Gorojovsky]

2008/1/30, Les Schaffer <schaffer en optonline.net>:

>
> > On the other hand, this from Alfred Barron (1999):
> >
> >
> >>> By way of conclusion the following observation from the late
> >>> Soviet mathematician Andrei Kolomogorov is offered for thought:
> >>> "In an especially detailed manner, Marx analyzed the question of
> >>> the concept of the differential. He proposed the concept of the
> >>> differential as an 'operational symbol', anticipating an idea that
> >>> came forward again only in the 20th century".
> >>>
>
> And Kolmogorov is one of the giants of 20-th century mathematics. i had
> a math prof in grad school who called the KAM Theorem
> (Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser) one of the great pieces of 20th century
> mathematics. and yet, in all the brouhaha of chaos theory in the public
> eye, KAM was given short shrift.
> Les

Been reading again Oparin's work on the origin of life. It is an old
book now: prepared during the early/mid 1930s, biology has changed so
much since. Hotbeds of life, probable places of  original living
things, have been found around oceanic sulphur fumes a couple of
decades ago (or in more recent times). Oparin had to wrestle with
creation of life under conditions that were quite different to those
that might have prevailed, actually, in the early times. And of course
nobody would think of a "Snowball Earth" at those times. Why, even
plate tectonics was absolutely unimagined and continental drift, first
posed by Wegener as a result of deep geographic speculation, was
assumed to be false since the driving force had not been found.

Still....

When one reads Oparin, his long and thoroughly philosophical
discussion of the reasons behind the debate between those who were
_for_ spontaneous creation of life and those who were against, his
effort of generalization and conceptualization, his overall depiction
of the probable forces behind the eons of "chemical evolution" (I
guess he was the first to think in those terms), etc., one can't but
feel awe and admiration.

His concepts, of course, were looted by Western  (particularly US
American) biologists, and he was not mentioned. Never. I remember the
handbook on biology by Weisz. Not a single word on Oparin, though
Weisz's rendering of the problem is absolutely Oparin's.

Then, one begins to understand the insistence of Soviet authors in
permanently stress the "first times" a Soviet scientist proved,
guessed, hinted, demonstrated or made something. It was -and still is-
boring. But it is only a struggle for fairness.

However, the basic ide