Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 08:56:59 -0500
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: the possibility of naturalism


At 10:00 AM 1/8/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Tobin wrote:
>
>Anyway, my point is that
>nothing can be an object of study until it enters the past.  One cannot study
>the absolute present moment.

Tobin,

As a planner, I take some issue with this.  I agree that much of the
transitive/intransitive debate has to do with time.  However, we must be
cautious here.  My reading of RB indicates that CAUSAL TENDENCIES are
intransitive, not the entities or events associated with them.  Gravity, as
a tendential force, still exists after we blow up the planet.  Still, who
are we to say that even the laws of gravity do not change as the universe
changes.  In such cases, there would presumably be more fundamental
entities that science would, in principle, retroductively discover as the
cause of the formerly law we formerly thought was intransitive but now
think of as transitive.

The more interesting question, I think, is can we study the future?
Certainly there's a whole literature on forecasting, projections,
scenarios, etc.  RB gives an account, which is wholly inadequate IMHO, of
making the future in Ch. 6 of Reclaiming Reality.  I do think this question
of relating social science to the future, both as a vision of the good
society and as a theory of transition, is a central one.



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Marshall Feldman, Associate Professor		                marsh-AT-uriacc.uri.edu
Graduate Curriculum in Community Planning and Area Development	401/874-5953
The University of Rhode Island					401/874-5511 (FAX)
94 West Alumni Avenue, Suite 1; Kingston, RI 02881-0806


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