If they want to believe their silly theory, fine. I just don't get how you can pretend it is scientific in any way. I mean, we have Dumar specifically laying out why it is unfalsifiable. That completely takes it out of the realm of science. He essentially admits it is his religion.
Because it's not that simple. As I said to you in the other thread, you can't always just apply the positivistic, observational, deductionist model to everything.
Critical theory, like I said was the school of thought I approached this from, and much of social science argues that this model of looking at social relations is very flawed: the supposed 'scientist' or researcher has in his mind already certain concepts of social relations based on a historical point and time, and his observations, led into his theories, are born of that existing mental framework. The scientistic mode of thought is not only not applicable to everything, it's dangerous to make conclusions thinking that it is. And you can see it's on display here: you dismiss certain social theories as 'wrong' because they've been 'proven wrong', regardless of the fact that I've shown the very requirements of that social theory were not met to begin with.
There's a
small wikion this subject. I'm only privy to the thoughts of Weber on this, because his is mostly a criticism of positivism relating to the social sciences directly. This isn't some fringe radical, but a founder of the discipline of sociology if you're unaware.
That's what I've been trying to tell you. Hodj has been framing my words as some radicalist bent, but in social theory, I'm pretty damned mainstream. Marx is enormously influential, probably more than any other author in history in this field, and to discount that is ridiculous.
And to further say that Maoist policy is Marxist just because he said it was, even more so.