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If you tell me an action is either physical or political (how you define it), I get no new information. Why waste words on it? No science is necessary for anyt

If you tell me an action is either physical or political (how you define it), I get no new information. Why waste words on it? No science is necessary for anything I've said - you havent actually made any falsifiable claims. I don't know why you keep bringing it up.

pron 12y ago
The categorization of something as "political" is not meant to be falsifiable or objective, but to serve as a useful tool in studying it. It's exactly like saying that studying planet motion is best done by applying physics, rust is best studied with chemistry (so we say it's a chemical process), and mitosis should best be studied by biologists (i.e., it's a biological process). But all of those are physical, and the latter two are chemical, and yet the categorization helps. Is it always absolute? No. Carbon nanotubes might be studied by both physicists and chemists, and ATP by both biologists and chemists. When we say an action is political, we mean it is best analyzed through political sociology/psychology, i.e. by using the techniques used to study about power dynamics in society, and drawing on the knowledge learned in that field. Usually, those categorizations aren't even contentious. No chemist is offended when we say that metabolism is a biological process, even though it is also chemical. But I think that in this case (of politics), many people -- and especially here on HN -- don't even know what the word means, let alone its academic definition. And consider this. If you were to travel in time to, say, Mesopotamia, and tell them that fire was a chemical process, they won't know what you're talking about. In fact, they may have used the word "chemical" to mean material or something. But you know that the process is really one of reactions among molecules -- they wouldn't even know molecules exist. So too in politics. The power dynamics shaping our society are often hidden from those who aren't trained to see them. When we say "the invention of the fork was a political action that caused..." (we don't, but the invention of the fork was just something I studied once so it came to mind) everybody understand what that means, and no one is offended, because people who know about power in society immediately grasp what we're talking about. Those who don't might either don't understand at all, or even push back -- like you have -- and say something like, "but that was purely technological", which is not too much unlike saying that lightning is a spear of a god. You need to learn -- even a little bit -- to see politics at work, and that Wikipedia article on power is an OK place to start.

pron 12y ago

The categorization of something as "political" is not meant to be falsifiable or objective, but to serve as a useful tool in studying it. It's exactly like saying that studying planet motion is best done by applying physics, rust is best studied with chemistry (so we say it's a chemical process), and mitosis should best be studied by biologists (i.e., it's a biological process). But all of those are physical, and the latter two are chemical, and yet the categorization helps. Is it always absolute? No. Carbon nanotubes might be studied by both physicists and chemists, and ATP by both biologists and chemists. When we say an action is political, we mean it is best analyzed through political sociology/psychology, i.e. by using the techniques used to study about power dynamics in society, and drawing on the knowledge learned in that field. Usually, those categorizations aren't even contentious. No chemist is offended when we say that metabolism is a biological process, even though it is also chemical. But I think that in this case (of politics), many people -- and especially here on HN -- don't even know what the word means, let alone its academic definition. And consider this. If you were to travel in time to, say, Mesopotamia, and tell them that fire was a chemical process, they won't know what you're talking about. In fact, they may have used the word "chemical" to mean material or something. But you know that the process is really one of reactions among molecules -- they wouldn't even know molecules exist. So too in politics. The power dynamics shaping our society are often hidden from those who aren't trained to see them. When we say "the invention of the fork was a political action that caused..." (we don't, but the invention of the fork was just something I studied once so it came to mind) everybody understand what that means, and no one is offended, because people who know about power in society immediately grasp what we're talking about. Those who don't might either don't understand at all, or even push back -- like you have -- and say something like, "but that was purely technological", which is not too much unlike saying that lightning is a spear of a god. You need to learn -- even a little bit -- to see politics at work, and that Wikipedia article on power is an OK place to start.