Workers of the World, Unite!

“Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

It’s shared knowledge that philosopher Karl Marx introduced his Communist Manifesto with these two striking sentences. My ultimate goal isn't to assess Marx theory's validity, but rather if it can be classified as a scientific theory. To accomplish such analysis, I will rely on Karl Popper and Kuhn’s insights on what is a scientific theory and how to construct one. 

Kuhn described the break of a cumulative enterprise and setting a new paradigm with three steps. Initially, the observer should find and be aware of an anomaly in a paradigm. Then, through constant observation, the break of normality is deeper analyzed, which will lead the observer to the conceptualization of the event. Finally, If it can be expected, than it shaped a new paradigm. Similarly to Kuhn’s interpretation on what is exactly a scientific theory, philosopher Karl Popper argued that the criterion of a scientific theory is its falsifiability. A theory can only be considered scientific if risky confirmations are observed and if it can be refutable. What Popper criticized were theories proposed as scientific, but which couldn’t be refuted or the observed confirmations were the ones their adepts hoped they were, with a very low risk of invalidating the theory. What these two brilliant minds have described is the constant and gradual change that science concepts should undergo in order to be considered truths. 

With this now instilled in my reader’s mind, I will break apart Marx’s proposed concept that at the time, broke a solid paradigm. Whenever defending your ideas, it is instinctive to look where you will find confirmations. Early adepts of Marxism started looking everywhere in the corporate world for conformations, and in 100% of the cases, they found them. But only workers could look for these confirmations, as employers were being attacked and couldn’t find a situation where this newly concept was false. If only Kuhn’s arguments were to be taking into consideration, it would be acceptable to classify Communism as a scientific theory. But Popper defends that confirmations aren’t the only ingredient to construct a scientific theory. It was nearly impossible to prove Marx wrong, as everywhere you looked, signs appeared to prove his concept. However, one aspect could be taken into consideration, which was history. Marx had predicted that Communism would spread around the world in all industrialized nations. It can be considered a very risky prediction, since it was based on the prediction of a number of revolutions throughout every single capitalist country. If proven, his theory could be opened for discussion on rather it was scientific or not. But history showed us that the spread of this ideology lost momentum and entered in decadence during the 1990’s.

Although Communism failed to integrate the category of scientific theory, question such as what is the right number of confirmations needed to be observed in order to prove a scientific theory arose. And why are we trying to get theories into the scientific category? Is it because there is a certain positive connotation to the scientific method, where scientific theories are seen as absolute truth? History again sheds light on how this bias towards scientific method with absolute truth is flawed. Until 1764, western society still thought that objects in the universe were made by mixing the four elements, a concept conceptualized in Ancient Greece. From 1764 until today, we have replaced thousands of paradigm that were first thought to be so perfect that it was nearly impossible to contradict it. Whenever we propose a new concept, it’s hard to look for flaws, but what makes the scientific community credible today is its harsh testing, and looking for infinite ways that could break the newly idealized paradigm, although observation will constantly question existing knowledge.   

In Physics, Newton’s laws are portrayed as the ten commandments for the Bible. They have set the bases for our cumulative enterprise which is the scientific community. It’s not a coincidence that they aren’t considered theories, but laws. As we already know that language shapes our schemas, whenever we put the words “theory" and “law” in juxtaposition, there is a clear intent of the reader to assign a heavier connotation to law than to theory. Law are rules that cannot be broken, while theories are still in the phase of being proven to become laws. As Kuhn would argue, Newton successfully assessed the anomaly, and came up with a new concept where the anomaly now became normal. As Popper would argue, extremely risky calculations regarding the movement of planets were made by Newton, which were confirmed as a range of tools that permitted the observation with greater certainty were invented. But when Einstein came up with his theory of relativity (it’s called theory for a reason), it shocked the entire scientific cumulative enterprise. Through observation Einstein saw that Newton’s law weren’t incorrect, but they could  be perfected. This one element, which is observation, is science’s fuel towards progression. But then, as Kuhn explains, the scientific cumulative enterprise is based on bases, just like math, and if the bottom cards of the pyramid can be questioned, the entire structure could collapse, and that is the aspect which both opposes science progression (scientific community is extremely skeptical to change), but also helps filter wrong premises that could then lead to false future concepts. The science community’s skepticism towards change is justified if you look at the situation from inside the system. If any theory has collected enough evidence and is now considered law, if any minimal future observation questioned that law, all other laws could be questioned and all the shared knowledge of that topic would collapse. However, like every theory and even law, it can be improved if a second mind set were to be introduced and through different lens, observe the flow of events. Physicist  may ignore details that is set as absolute truth such as gravity, but which could be contested by an individual with complete different lens such as philosophers or artists. That it be positive, or negative, progress is an essential ingredient for the scientific enterprise and its main fuel is observation.