Sun, 05 Sep 2004 13:13:22 GMT

Science is Political.

In a classic televised debate from 1971 titled Human Nature: Justice versus Power Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky discuss their respective approaches to understanding the foundations of social structure. Since Chomsky and Foucault entertain partially contradictory views on human nature and society their exchange highlights the differences of their theoretical departure points.

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well, yes. science depends on context and theoretical constructs… language even, and lets not even think about where lab money, grad studetn salaries or other funding comes from….. and then… as aristotle had it, mankind is a political animal. mankind also pursues science. the real question thought in the chomsky/foucault debate is the location of the political and really… power., whether it is discursive or materially based and how power relates to subjectivity… the problem of course is those questions are partisan and political too. though inarguably, the parties are different than most. the real answer is probably some inclusive combination of both theoretic positions because they wouldn't be as well thought of, if they did not each have some aspect of knowable fact about them…