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

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