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There have been very few men in history nicer and more considerate than James Clerk Maxwell, and he made the biggest leap of genius in physics ever with electro

There have been very few men in history nicer and more considerate than James Clerk Maxwell, and he made the biggest leap of genius in physics ever with electromagnetic field theory, the foundation of everything that is modern in physics. Well, there is statistical physics too, which he also was a founding father of.

kryptiskt 7y ago
Off-topic but I'll take the opportunity to paste my favorite Maxwell quote (from James Clerk Maxwell, A Treatsie on Electricity and Magnetism, 1873): "In the present state of science the most universal standard of length which we could assume would be the wave length in vacuum of a particular kind of light, emitted by some widely diffused substance such as sodium, which has well-defined lines in its spectrum. Such a standard would be independent of any changes in the dimensions of the earth, and should be adopted by those who expect their writings to be more permanent than that body."
claudiawerner 7y ago
Very true, and an interesting example. While it's true that many great scientists were agreeable, sometimes lack of agreeability can mean you provoke more interesting responses, and more heated debate. Two examples - Karl Marx and Andrew Kliman, as political economists, were/are known for being not only rude but provocative in rudeness - to the point where a response is provoked simply because of the language they used. Marx's Capital, for example, got such a wide response not only because of the bold claims but also the rhetorical style it was written in (his contempt is shown in the famous preface to The Poverty of Philosophy, a response to Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty[0]). Kliman insists (and continues to insist) that his opponents don't understand him, that they haven't read the relevant litarture, and other things. He's even gone as far as accusing his opponents of having a psychological a-priori presumption against the theory he advocates[1]. On the other hand, Kliman is at the forefront of post-Samuelson heterodox economics today, and his extremely influential theories have spawned a great deal of debate. It's hard to imagine that debate happening if he were "quieter". [0] "M. Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood in Europe. In France, he has the right to be a bad economist, because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher, because he is reputed to be one of the ablest French economists. Being both German and economist at the same time, we desire to protest against this double error." [1] "Mohun and Veneziani (2009: 278) state that we “conjecture that [his paper’s logical and factual errors were] not apparent to Veneziani because of a psychological a priori commitment to the falsity of the TSSI, in turn founded on a psychological a priori commitment to the demonstration of the internal inconsistency [...]"
- QuesnayJr 7y ago
  I genuinely cannot imagine a less consequential figure than Kliman, mainly because if they were less consequential I would never have heard of them. TSSI is when Marxist economics became what the philosopher Imre Lakatos called a "degenerating research program". People have a psychological a-prior presumption against the theory he advocates because he is transparently playing a game with words. It was well-understood the context in which Marx wrote, and everyone understood Marx in connection with that context. His contemporaries understood him that way, and everyone for the next hundred years understood him that way. Kliman now pretends that everyone between Marx' time and now read Marx wrong, and only he, Kliman, has uncovered the key to decode Marx. At the same time, his supposed key, the TSSI, is so arid and unrelated to any real-world activity that the response to more serious scholars (even serious Marxist economists) is repulsion. It's clear that Marx mastered a certain rhetorical strategy that made him disproportionately influential -- the rhetorical strategy of the bully. People love the bully. Who doesn't want to be the bully, rather than the bullied? Freud used a similar strategy, to similar effect. I'm not surprised that Kliman has turned to the same strategy, but at least Marx was animated by the great events of his day, but all Kliman can hope for is to defeat his rivals in argument over interpreting Marx. As someone once pointed out, it is philosophers who interpret the world. The point is to change it.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    > It was well-understood the context in which Marx wrote, and everyone understood Marx in connection with that context. Not really. Hilferding's reply to Bohm-Bawerk so early on showed that many of Marx's critics still misunderstood him, and Marxist economists have dealt with those criticisms time and time again, not only philosophical misunderstandings but on the transformation problem too. The most outrageous is the charge of inconsistency between Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 - luckily Marx isn't charged with such inconsistency any more (only the failure to transform values to prices in the specific context of competing capitals) but Kliman is partly responsible for that turn. Bohm-Bawerk's objections to Marx's value theory gain new life in fancy terminology (such as "Generalized Commodity Exploitation Theorem"). The degenerative research program actually seems to be in the responses of philosophers and economists to Marx[0]. >Kliman now pretends that everyone between Marx' time and now read Marx wrong, and only he, Kliman, has uncovered the key to decode Marx. The idea of the TSSI was about before Kliman, and it'll be about after him; the point I was making is that he was the first one to be loud enough about it to attract attention. Kliman at least attempts to make a convincing case based on textual exegesis of Marx's works that shows misinterpretation, which is not unreasonable in a world dominated by equilibrium economics and thereby equilibrium responses to Marx. His only contention is that Marxian economists had surrendered too much ground. Further, in several places his claim is not that Marx is correct, only that the charge of inconsistency is misplaced. >that the response to more serious scholars (even serious Marxist economists) is repulsion. That's not true; the TSSI is as popular as it is criticized. For every explicitly anti-TSSI scholar I can probably name a pro-TSSI one. I'm sure you'd agree that Marxists tend to like orthodoxy and established traditions just as much as anyone else, which shows in the responses (by Marxian economists) to the TSSI and also to Okishio's theorem. There are plenty of good mathematical and philosophical objections to the TSSI on Marxist grounds, but very few claim it is as philosophically bankrupt and divorced from reality as you seem to make it out to be. Veneziani and Mohun's objections are mathematical, not "practical". The charge of a vacuous theory divorced from understanding the dynamics of capitalism usually falls on the New Interpretation rather than the TSSI. >As someone once pointed out, it is philosophers who interpret the world. The point is to change it. I agree! As it happens, so do Kliman's co-authors. From Alan Freeman: >I conclude that it is a legitimate political and research project to attempt to understand capitalism on the basis of the Marx’s own work. The persistent denial of its validity, on the false grounds that Marx’s theory has been proven incoherent, should be resisted by the political movement. Whatever the personal motivations of individuals that subscribe to this view, its actual effect is to deny access to Marx’s own economic views. To persist in promoting it now, above all, as is usually done, as an incontrovertible truth, must be treated as an unscientific act of censorship. Before beginning I want to lay before the audience the exact nature of the debate. First, it is not a scholastic debate. An audience of trade unionists, political activists, and professional intellectuals represents a genuine encounter, in Gramsci’s words, between those who think because they suffer and those who suffer because they think. It is a debate whose purpose is to change the world. [0] http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Marxism/Marxism%20As%20Science.pdf http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Marxism/Marxism%20As%20Science.p...

kryptiskt 7y ago

Off-topic but I'll take the opportunity to paste my favorite Maxwell quote (from James Clerk Maxwell, A Treatsie on Electricity and Magnetism, 1873): "In the present state of science the most universal standard of length which we could assume would be the wave length in vacuum of a particular kind of light, emitted by some widely diffused substance such as sodium, which has well-defined lines in its spectrum. Such a standard would be independent of any changes in the dimensions of the earth, and should be adopted by those who expect their writings to be more permanent than that body."

claudiawerner 7y ago

Very true, and an interesting example. While it's true that many great scientists were agreeable, sometimes lack of agreeability can mean you provoke more interesting responses, and more heated debate. Two examples - Karl Marx and Andrew Kliman, as political economists, were/are known for being not only rude but provocative in rudeness - to the point where a response is provoked simply because of the language they used. Marx's Capital, for example, got such a wide response not only because of the bold claims but also the rhetorical style it was written in (his contempt is shown in the famous preface to The Poverty of Philosophy, a response to Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty[0]). Kliman insists (and continues to insist) that his opponents don't understand him, that they haven't read the relevant litarture, and other things. He's even gone as far as accusing his opponents of having a psychological a-priori presumption against the theory he advocates[1]. On the other hand, Kliman is at the forefront of post-Samuelson heterodox economics today, and his extremely influential theories have spawned a great deal of debate. It's hard to imagine that debate happening if he were "quieter". [0] "M. Proudhon has the misfortune of being peculiarly misunderstood in Europe. In France, he has the right to be a bad economist, because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher, because he is reputed to be one of the ablest French economists. Being both German and economist at the same time, we desire to protest against this double error." [1] "Mohun and Veneziani (2009: 278) state that we “conjecture that [his paper’s logical and factual errors were] not apparent to Veneziani because of a psychological a priori commitment to the falsity of the TSSI, in turn founded on a psychological a priori commitment to the demonstration of the internal inconsistency [...]"

QuesnayJr 7y ago
I genuinely cannot imagine a less consequential figure than Kliman, mainly because if they were less consequential I would never have heard of them. TSSI is when Marxist economics became what the philosopher Imre Lakatos called a "degenerating research program". People have a psychological a-prior presumption against the theory he advocates because he is transparently playing a game with words. It was well-understood the context in which Marx wrote, and everyone understood Marx in connection with that context. His contemporaries understood him that way, and everyone for the next hundred years understood him that way. Kliman now pretends that everyone between Marx' time and now read Marx wrong, and only he, Kliman, has uncovered the key to decode Marx. At the same time, his supposed key, the TSSI, is so arid and unrelated to any real-world activity that the response to more serious scholars (even serious Marxist economists) is repulsion. It's clear that Marx mastered a certain rhetorical strategy that made him disproportionately influential -- the rhetorical strategy of the bully. People love the bully. Who doesn't want to be the bully, rather than the bullied? Freud used a similar strategy, to similar effect. I'm not surprised that Kliman has turned to the same strategy, but at least Marx was animated by the great events of his day, but all Kliman can hope for is to defeat his rivals in argument over interpreting Marx. As someone once pointed out, it is philosophers who interpret the world. The point is to change it.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  > It was well-understood the context in which Marx wrote, and everyone understood Marx in connection with that context. Not really. Hilferding's reply to Bohm-Bawerk so early on showed that many of Marx's critics still misunderstood him, and Marxist economists have dealt with those criticisms time and time again, not only philosophical misunderstandings but on the transformation problem too. The most outrageous is the charge of inconsistency between Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 - luckily Marx isn't charged with such inconsistency any more (only the failure to transform values to prices in the specific context of competing capitals) but Kliman is partly responsible for that turn. Bohm-Bawerk's objections to Marx's value theory gain new life in fancy terminology (such as "Generalized Commodity Exploitation Theorem"). The degenerative research program actually seems to be in the responses of philosophers and economists to Marx[0]. >Kliman now pretends that everyone between Marx' time and now read Marx wrong, and only he, Kliman, has uncovered the key to decode Marx. The idea of the TSSI was about before Kliman, and it'll be about after him; the point I was making is that he was the first one to be loud enough about it to attract attention. Kliman at least attempts to make a convincing case based on textual exegesis of Marx's works that shows misinterpretation, which is not unreasonable in a world dominated by equilibrium economics and thereby equilibrium responses to Marx. His only contention is that Marxian economists had surrendered too much ground. Further, in several places his claim is not that Marx is correct, only that the charge of inconsistency is misplaced. >that the response to more serious scholars (even serious Marxist economists) is repulsion. That's not true; the TSSI is as popular as it is criticized. For every explicitly anti-TSSI scholar I can probably name a pro-TSSI one. I'm sure you'd agree that Marxists tend to like orthodoxy and established traditions just as much as anyone else, which shows in the responses (by Marxian economists) to the TSSI and also to Okishio's theorem. There are plenty of good mathematical and philosophical objections to the TSSI on Marxist grounds, but very few claim it is as philosophically bankrupt and divorced from reality as you seem to make it out to be. Veneziani and Mohun's objections are mathematical, not "practical". The charge of a vacuous theory divorced from understanding the dynamics of capitalism usually falls on the New Interpretation rather than the TSSI. >As someone once pointed out, it is philosophers who interpret the world. The point is to change it. I agree! As it happens, so do Kliman's co-authors. From Alan Freeman: >I conclude that it is a legitimate political and research project to attempt to understand capitalism on the basis of the Marx’s own work. The persistent denial of its validity, on the false grounds that Marx’s theory has been proven incoherent, should be resisted by the political movement. Whatever the personal motivations of individuals that subscribe to this view, its actual effect is to deny access to Marx’s own economic views. To persist in promoting it now, above all, as is usually done, as an incontrovertible truth, must be treated as an unscientific act of censorship. Before beginning I want to lay before the audience the exact nature of the debate. First, it is not a scholastic debate. An audience of trade unionists, political activists, and professional intellectuals represents a genuine encounter, in Gramsci’s words, between those who think because they suffer and those who suffer because they think. It is a debate whose purpose is to change the world. [0] http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Marxism/Marxism%20As%20Science.pdf http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Marxism/Marxism%20As%20Science.p...