Thackeray had doubtless no intention of illustrating ideological theory, and for all we know he may have been unfair to Louis XIV, but his drawing does bring out the way in which ideological function (in this case that of domination) overrides personal qualities. from Ideological Commentary 59, February 1993.
Reviewing Lewis Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science (Faber), Steven Rose notes that modern science differs from Greek and other ancient sciences by being powerfully interventionist. Science as we know it originated in the 17th Century, with Newtonian mechanics and Bacon [1]. (And, we may add, with the rise of Nonconformism and what was later… read more »
Just below the surface of orthodox thinking there hovers the idea that opposites are not only opposed but also in some deep way united. Buddhism assures us that complete attachment brings total unity, anarchists propose restrictions to win freedom, Zen holds emptiness to be fullness, an old saw has it that everything in general is… read more »
MARXISTS tell us that people have to eat, and produce their food, before they can think. If these highfalutin intellectuals would only turn away from their idealistic theorising for long enough to look at the actual, concrete, living, historical, social, material reality, they would see that people neither eat nor produce food without thinking about… read more »
NAVIGATION was long known among its practitioners as the inexact science. Far from contraverting the definition of the central feature of science as the pursuit of precision this rather confirms it, for the phrase recognises inexactitude as distinguishing navigation from the other sciences. Navigators always did strive for accuracy and have eagerly taken up the… read more »
GUESS the date of this one: Sunday next will be May Day. That there will be trouble because of the Anarchist and Socialist movements there is little doubt; but the steps that have been taken during the past week are calculated to maintain the peace and to secure property at all hazards. It’s from the… read more »
Under this title IC reports instances of the divisiveness of the eidodynamics, contrasting it with the ‘don’t rock the boat’ approach of the traditionalists. This year it looked as though the Labour Party Conference was failing to make its usual contribution, but the hard left journal Briefing came to the rescue, attacking the shadow chancellor… read more »
Let me start by declaring an interest. Donald is a friend of mine, and when reviewing Beyond Politics for Freedom he said some flattering things about it. This obliges me to be extra generous in reviewing his new pamphlet, since compliments will tend to be discounted while any hint of criticism will carry extra weight…. read more »
SPANNER 4, so long awaited, includes both Napoleonics of Marxism (for the appearance of that in SPANNER and IC in the same week see the Editorial in IC 57), and a review of Beyond Politics by Ken Smith. In reprinting the review we omit one paragraph on Popper and another on Huxley and Orwell and… read more »
In 1845 Johann Kaspar Schmidt, writing under the name of Max Stirner, published his version of egoism. Highly original, intensely provoking, puzzling and disconcerting, the book acts as an irritant. Working with the English translation by Steven J. Byington [1] I produced more than one short study (appearing in IC and Freedom) which proved on… read more »