MEASUREMENT
The ability to measure the characteristics of things is of enormous significance in
many sciences, most notably physics and chemistry, but also often in the biological sciences
too. Such measurements, and advances in measurement techniques, have often led to important
scientific discoveries, principles or theories. So important is measurement in many sciences
that Galileo is said to have advanced the maxim: “Measure what is measurable, and make
measurable what is not so.” [Scientific American, Nov. 2017, p.
63.]
On the other hand, there are other sciences
where measurement is for the most part not so central to their investigations and theories,
and sometimes not even relevant at all. This includes not only most of the social sciences, but
even some areas of the physical sciences such as biology. Darwin’s basic theory of evolution,
for example, is not really a result (for the most part) of any detailed measurements of
nature. Similarly, Marx described his basic approach in the analysis of capitalism as depending
on the method of scientific abstraction, rather than from any
empiricist obsession with precise economic measurements.
So perhaps we should add an addendum to
Galileo’s maxim: “Measure where you can, and where it is important to do so; but also
recognize that science can often be advanced even where measurement is irrelevant or
impossible.”
MEASUREMENT — Concept of in Quantum Mechanics
The unexplained, ultra-mysterious, and so far totally unknown process which is said to cause a
wave function to “collapse” (or be “updated”), according to
the crazy, philosophically idealist, Copenhagen
Interpretation of quantum mechanics.
See also:
SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT
“Nothing is more embarrassing to physicists than our complete inability
to define what we mean by measurement. We chuckle when we teach about Schrödinger’s
cat, but deep down we know it is not a laughing matter. When we have no good response to
a student’s questions about the cat, we excuse ourselves; we are only following [Richard]
Feynman’s advice to avoid thinking about it, lest we go down the drain.
“There are books, chapters of books,
conferences, and essays on the ‘theory of measurement.’ Google gives 239 million hits....
These results might give the misimpression that there is such a theory. If you look hard,
you’ll discover that what we really have is a collection of thoughts, many of which
disagree with each other, and none of which have yet led to a satisfying conclusion.
“One possibility is that for a valid
measurement, a human must be involved—a sentient, self-aware, thinking soul. That idea
was the very one that Schrödinger was attacking by putting a cat in the picture. Can
you really believe that the cat is both dead and alive until a human peers into the box?”
—Richard A. Muller, American bourgeois physicist, in his book Now: The Physics of
Time (2016), pp. 214-5.
[The quandary of contemporary
idealist physicists is in fact for them no laughing matter no matter how much they try to
laugh it off, and no matter how much we materialists enjoy laughing at them. Their
philosophical idealist theories make absolutely no sense, and sometimes (as in this
passage) even they have to admit this. —S.H.]
MEDIA — Conservative Attitudes Towards
While the overwhelmingly dominant character of the media (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio,
major Internet sites, etc.) is solidly bourgeois in the United States and all capitalist
countries, it is a curious thing that there is at present a lot of hostility toward the media
by American conservatives, right-wingers, and rightist “populist”
movements such as the Tea Party adherents. Ironically, one of
the loudest sources of continuing diatribe against the “liberal media” is on right-wing talk
radio, which seems to almost totally dominate that particular branch of the media!
This right-wing hostility toward the media
is a reflection of contradictions within the bourgeoisie itself. As the economic,
social and political crisis of capitalism steadily worsens, different sections of the ruling
class become more and more at each other’s throats about what to do about it all. In
order to keep the masses under control many sections see the need to more strongly encourage
racism, discrimination, hostility to immigrants, and attacks on other scapegoats such as
women and the LGBT community. And while the ruling class is pretty much united now on the
“need” to drive the working class down with neoliberal
attacks, there are still huge disputes within their ranks about just how vicious to be in
doing so. The liberal wing of the bourgeoisie thinks their class can maintain control with
only a slow shift in the direction of fascism; the right-wing wants more immediate and
drastic action in that direction.
The ironic thing, of course, is that the
American media does in fact deserve to be strongly and totally condemned, but from the left
and not the right; that is, from the point of view of the people’s interests and not from the
point of view of the interests of any section of the capitalist ruling class. The media
is in fact owned by and representative of the interests of the capitalist ruling class, and
that goes for the more rightist Fox News corporate segment of it at least as much as
for the more “liberal” New York Times corporate section of it.
“The Heartland’s Hatred of the Media
“For most conservatives, said
Rich Lowry, ‘the media has become what the Soviet Union was during the Cold War—a
common, unifying adversary of overwhelming importance.’ Donald Trump remains popular
among Republicans largely because he’s ‘a righteous, unyielding warrior’ against the
primary enemy, which is not ISIS or the Taliban, but CNN, The Washington Post,
and The New York Times. ‘The Right’s hostility toward the media is long-standing,’
and has deepened as the cultural divide between ‘the heartland’ and the coasts has
grown more pronounced. With his showman’s sense of what excites an audience, Trump made
scorn of the media a centerpiece of his long-shot 2016 campaign, and ‘rode his mutual
enmity with the media to the White House.’ Many Republicans are willing to overlook the
‘indefensible things’ Trump says as long as he stands up to the mob of ‘braying
reporters’ from New York and Washington. Trump’s constant attacks on them only lead to
more negative coverage—perpetuating the cycle. This president may struggle to fulfill
his campaign promises, but what counts most for his supporters is that he has ‘the
right enemy.’” —Rich Lowry, posting on the right-wing NationalReview.com website,
as summarized in The Week magazine, Sept. 8, 2017, p. 12.
[Right-wing demagoguery by Trump
and others portrays the media as the enemy of the people. The media is in fact the
enemy of the people! But the views of Trump and his allied right-wing forces are
also totally opposed to the interests of the people, and are just as dangerous
for them, if not more so. —Ed.]
MEME
1. [As the term is most commonly used today:]
An image with text overlay which is most often posted or spread on the Internet. In other words,
a little image with text added onto it which promotes an idea or point of view. (See the example
to the right, of Malcolm X warning people not to allow themselves to be brainwashed by the
ruling class media.) “Memes” in this sense are highly useful in promoting serious progressive
or revolutionary viewpoints, and—unfortunately—are also sometimes all-too-“useful” in promoting
reactionary or nefarious viewpoints. However, it is also true that most memes on the
Internet today are of little importance. Many are meant to be just transient jokes or snide
passing comments.
2. [Earlier, and now much less common:] An idea
or viewpoint that spreads from one person to another person (or “from one brain to another
brain”) in a way which is supposedly similar to how genes spread among individuals in
biological reproduction. This quite shallow and weak analogy was cooked up by the evolutionary
biologist Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene, whose erroneous basic theme—that
genes and not complete organisms are central in biological evolution—is also quite hokey. In the
case of memes (in his original sense), Dawkins went so far as to proclaim a whole new field of
study about memes which he grandiosely called “memetics”. This silly “science” has been taken
up by others who also lean toward superficiality in their intellectual analyses, such as the
bourgeois philosopher Daniel Dennett.
The main reason why “memetics” is such a falsely
“profound” subject is that we have long been familiar with categories,
concepts and ideas, and that they can and do spread from person to person. Even
the dullest intellect knows this! Talking about memes in the grandiose fashion of Dawkins and
Dennett adds nothing whatsoever to what we have always known.
“The word [‘meme’] was coined by the British ethnologist Richard Dawkins
in his 1976 book, ‘The Selfish Gene,’ as a way to conceptualize the transmission of
culture in biological terms. For Dawkins, a meme, shortened from the Greek mimeme—‘an
imitated thing’—was a unit of culture, a building block of our mental architecture. ‘Just
as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or
eggs,’ Dawkins wrote, ‘memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain
to brain.’ They could be as small and short-lived as a tune or a catchphrase, he explained,
or as large and consequential as ‘God’ and ‘eternal damnation.’
“Genes, Dawkins argued, do not aim to
propagate a species; they seek only to propagate themselves. Memes, he believed,
were similarly selfish. ... If a meme is to dominate the attention of a human brain,’
Dawkins wrote, ‘it must do so at the expense of “rival” memes.’...
“[T]he things we call ‘memes’ today
are largely just joke formats—mechanisms for the efficient production of humor.” —Willy
Staley, “Brain Candy”, The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 20, 2019. [We would
remind the simpleton Dawkins that memes or concepts themselves do not “aim” or “seek” to
do anything; it is conscious entities like people and groups of people who seek to
do things. —Ed.]
MEMORY
The human memory system is the ability of the brain to reproduce or recall what has
previously been learned and retained, especially through complex associative mechanisms.
While we do all remember a great many things, and often quite accurately, our memory
system is by no means as infallible as is generally assumed. Some things we believe we
remember did not in fact happen or at least did not happen in the way we later think
they did. This is something which, ironically, it is important for all of us to
remember!
See also:
CONFABULATION
“POPULAR MYTHS...
“• Our memory
is an accurate, objective record of the past.
“Our memories are anything
but objective. The truth is that every time you pull out the ‘file’ that contains
a memory, you have to ‘rewrite’ the whole story. And your current beliefs and
emotional state affect how that memory gets rewritten and stored once again.”
—Indre Viskontas, Professor
of Psychology at the University of San Francisco, summarizing one of many points
covered in her course Brain Myths Exploded: Lessons from Neuroscience (c.
2016).
METAPHYSICS
1. [In Marxist usage:] Views which are
opposed to dialectics, such as views which deny the unity and connections which exist
among things in the world, or which deny the struggle of opposites that exist within
processes and things, or which take a static view of the world or parts of it and deny
the possibility of any change or development.
2. [In non-Marxist usage:] The branch of
philosophy, or philosophical views, which are concerned with the ultimate nature of reality,
about which sorts of things truly exist, about which things depend on the existence of
other things, and with interminable totally obscure discussions about what it even means
for something “to exist”, etc. The primary sphere here, which talks about “existence” in
the abstract, is also called ontology. The more concrete
sphere, about the nature of the universe and its contents is called cosmology, and
is supposed to be much more “scientific”. However, most contemporary cosmological theories
are still based at least in part on religious metaphysical notions, biases and speculations,
such as that the universe must have “come into existence” at some particular time and before
that time nothing existed at all—except maybe God! (See “Big
Bang Theory”). It will still be some time before cosmology completely divorces itself
from metaphysics and becomes a solid science.
See also:
Philosophical doggerel
about metaphysics.
“To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are
isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are
objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He things in absolutely
irreconcilable antitheses.... For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a
thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative
absolutely exclude one another; cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to
the other.
“At first sight this mode of
thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common
sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm
of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into
the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and
and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to
the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a
limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble
contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things, it forgets the connection
between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and
end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the
wood for the trees.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring, MECW 25:22-23.
“The metaphysical or vulgar evolutionist world outlook sees things
as isolated, static and one-sided. It regards all things in the universe, their forms
and their species, as eternally isolated from one another and immutable. Such change
as there is can only be an increase or decrease in quantity or a change of place.
Moreover, the cause of such an increase or decrease or change of place is not inside
things but outside them, that is, the motive force is external. Metaphysicians hold
that all the different kinds of things in the universe and all their characteristics
have been the same ever since they first came into being. All subsequent changes have
simply been increases or decreases in quantity. They contend that a thing can only
keep on repeating itself as the same kind of thing and cannot change into anything
different. In their opinion, capitalist exploitation, capitalist competition, the
individualist ideology of capitalist society, and so on, can all be found in ancient
slave society, or even in primitive society, and will exist for ever unchanged. They
ascribe the causes of social development to factors external to society, such as
geography and climate. They search in an over-simplified way outside a thing for the
causes of its development, and they deny the theory of materialist dialectics which
holds that development arises from the contradictions inside a thing. Consequently
they can explain neither the qualitative diversity of things, nor the phenomenon of
one quality changing into another. In Europe, this mode of thinking existed as
mechanical materialism in the 17th and 18th centuries and as vulgar evolutionism at
the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In China, there was the
metaphysical thinking exemplified in the saying ‘Heaven changeth not, likewise the
Tao changeth not’, and it was supported by the decadent feudal ruling classes for a
long time. Mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism, which were imported from
Europe in the last hundred years, are supported by the bourgeoisie.”
—Mao, “On Contradiction”
(August 1937), SW 1:312-313.