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UTOPIAN_SCIENCE

                                             March 16, 2010
      In his novel "Antarctica",
      Robinson teases us with description         FIRE_DOWN_BELOW
      of a fictional book on a favorite
      thesis of his: _The Ethical,
      Political, and Utopian Elements
      Embodied in the Structure of Modern
      Science_.

      Carlos talks to Wade and X about this (p.272, hdbk):

      "... it demonstrates very clearly that what we think
      of as neutral objective science is actually a utopian
      politics and worldview already.  There is a big
      historical section ... showing that science is
      self-organizing and self-actualizing, and always
      trying to get better, to be more scientific, as one
      of its rules.  And there is a big middle section
      showing how various features of normal scientific
      practice, the methodology and so on, are in fact
      ethical positions.  Things like reproducibility, or
      Occam's razor, or peer review-- ... "

      "Capitalism is the dominant economic order, and
      it tends to subsume everything else, it wants to
      subsume everything else.  But the great outsider,
      the system that capitalism cannot conquer, is
      science.  The two are actually at odds with each
      other, the one trying to defeat the other.  This is
      the great war of our time!"

      "First it was capitalism versus socialism,
      and then capitalism versus democracy, and
      now science it the only thing left!"

                                    BLUE_SPARKS

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