Gods and Monsters: The Scientific Method Applied to the Human Condition - Book II Read online

  Chapter 15:

  Cyclic trend of the universe structural statual, with the transition periods and the partitions of the two historical cycles

  The Mayas had a calendar with cycles of 52 years and another, defined “Account along”, which contemplated a cycle of 5.125,36 years (which, according to them, would correspond to the duration of the universe structural statual), based on partitions that, in addition to the “uinal” (or “months” of 20 days), contemplates the “tun” (or years of 360 days), and also the “katun” (or periods of 20 years: corresponding to the cycles of around twenty years), and the “baktun” (or periods of 20 “katun”, that can prefigure the duration of the phases statual). This demonstrates how the mayas had sensed the main partitions of the evolution of the universe structural statual (1).

  David Hume accepted the principle of historical cyclicity, while not giving on a judgment in the society of him contemporary, avoiding to say if it were in a moment of progress or of regression. Had recognized, however, that it was in place a degree of “civilization” never before reached (had deduced this conclusion from the fact that had been overcome the slavery).

  Under the term of “categoriale law” (2), the philosophers of history identify the tendency to classify, in a cyclic way, the historical events. With the term of “connection” they identify the classification of more phenomena in a single fact, if this proposes a process of change, understood as a unitary, as for example: the revolutions, the wars, the “Renaissance” and so on (3).

  Henri de Saint - Simon and Auguste Comte they theorized the statual society as bipartite in two stages: the “feudal stage” and the stage “industrial”, theorizing as the first it is differentiated for the purpose of the accretion of power (defined as conquest), and the second for the purpose of the wellness and of the productive labor (4). The “positivists”, even it they have started, all, from a organismic conception of society, have expressed different conceptions. Herbert Spencer, for example, had recognized as the mercantile society it is based on an organization which is less restrictive for individuals, and for this more advanced. Stressed, namely, the fact that, while the feudal society is based on compulsory cooperation, the mercantile society is based on voluntary cooperation. He saw, therefore, progress, in the gradual departure f this the latter type of the society from a model super-organic, as it was at the beginning (with the formation of the universe structural statual), namely, that is with the stage feudal of the first cycle of the universe structural statual and of the feudal phases of the subsequent historical cycles. Spencer had hoped in the overcoming of the society mercantile statual, with a society where production is aimed at social purposes; unfortunately he did not see as in this there was as a danger that its not that a simple wish of a return to feudal society (5), where the purposes of the production, are dictated not by human needs (social or individual type), but by the socio-political and religious hierarchies, whose goals and needs, are entirely unconnected with relation to the purposes and needs of those who produce and consume. Spencer had considered, however, clearly the “Communism” as a return to feudal society, that he defined “military system”, and had considered every state intervention n the economy as a degeneration of the social body (6). Henri de Saint – Simon had characterized correctly the two phases statual, starting from the analysis of the foundations of the relations of production: the conquest (for the feudal stages) and work (for the mercantile phases), ignoring the fundamental distinction of the ratio of exchange: the market (namely the equal interchange, for the mercantile phases) and the favor (or exchange hierarchical, for the feudal phases) (7). Comte had stated that at the time of transition from feudal phase to phase merchant (of the historical cycle “medieval” – “modern” – “post-modern”) there was an awareness of where the society were, historically, and for where she was moving. Had considered that this fact was the fruit of scientific development, favored by the society that was developing. In reality. knowledge and awareness of he phase in which they was living at a given moment in history, was already widespread inprevious eras: for we know that the philosophers of Greece “classical”, by foreseeing the advent of feudal phase that approached, consider as a golden age, the age that they had behind, while they considered the future harbinger of moral decline and social. The consciousness of the historical evolution in act, more that knowledge of the essence of this evolution, is therefore very ancient, although it can be presumed that it is more common at the time of transition between an feudal phase and an mercantile phase, than can be at the time of the transition in reverse. This, because of the deception carried out by the ideologies, which tend to consider the society which is born, generally hailed as progressive, with respect to the society existing, especially when this is absolutely false (8).

  Saint-Armand Bazard, continuer of the work of Saint-Simon, active in the first half of XIX century, recognized that there are, in history, “organic” periods, alternatives to periods: “critical”. He interpreted the law of the three stages, of Comte, as a different exposure of the two phases, with an intermediate period. The same Durkheim acknowledged that the alternations theorized from Bazard are indisputable (9). Karl R. Popper had clearly identified the essence of the merchant phase (which defined “Open Society”) and of the feudal stage (or “closed society”), and the ideologies own of the latter, such as the “Platonism”, the “neo-Platonism” and the “Marxism” (10).

  Durkeim had defined “community” the structural reality, for his influence on the individual (11). Had distinguished between social relations rational or contractual, and therefore characteristic of merchant phases, from the reports based on an emotional response and the total involvement and, therefore, own of feudal phases. In this regard, he spoke of Communities mechanicals and of Communities structured as organs (12), inside the “reality of the community” or structural, namely, indicating these two type of “community” as the two phases of the universe structural statual. The “Enlightenment” had identified the structural reality with the “Society", which we defined as: mercantile society or mercantile phase. Also Vilfredo Pareto had accepted the cyclic theory of the Pythagoreans. He stated that the historical phases alternate with rhythm unpredictable. He defined the two historical phases as: “societies more combinatorial” and “societies who are more likely to aggregate”, to respectively define merchant phases and feudal phases. He said that the only constant of the two phases is the presence of the germs of its degeneration and of the origin of the stage of the opposite type and, therefore, that at an society of a given type is destiny that occur a society of type opposed. This conception is, therefore, of type dyadic, like that hobbesian (13). By Vilfredo Pareto was used for first time the term “social system”: to indicate the overall static reality of a society, namely the entirety of its components (14). Comte stated that every social system has the its own characteristic “quality of an organ”. Stated that the function of every political regime is to adapt to that organic order, by adjusting the social stratification that tends to occur spontaneously in that given society. Had asserted, then, that another task of the institutions is that to define the “purposes of the activities” of society, namely the so-called: Values (15). Marcel Mauss had defined “fact social total” the whole of the social life of a given society, namely, the various social systems (16). Marx had provided for the realization of a capitalist system bureaucratic, as intermediate reality, on the way of realization, later, of the transition in feudal sense, to be implemented, according to him, earlier than elsewhere, in the “advanced countries”. Such systems bureaucratic capitalists would be characterized by the “centralization of credit and the banks, the management on the part of the state of the means of communication and transport, the strengthening of factories and the other means of production of the property of the state” (17). All historical conceptions of the sociologists imply intrinsically a cyclic conception of the historical evolution, conception which they look good by clearly ex
press and that indeed, often, deny and they counteract explicitly. Robert Michels had recognized, for example as, the “historic flows and ebbs” are indisputable (18). The same Ferdinand Tonnies, explaining the real purpose of Marxism, it showed the determination and prediction of the cyclical evolution, implicit in Marx's theories (19). Engels had recognized as authoritarianism and the despotism in the large factories is greater than it is in the small factories (20). Namely, knew the nature of the capitalist system bureaucratic, as intermediate system between the capitalist system competitive, and the systems of the feudal phases. Tonnies had analyzed the evolution of the reality structural statual, such as a transition from a “communism of the origins” , namely, from a phase feudal of type decentralized to a mercantile phase industrial, and from this to a “socialism”, namely, at a new phase feudal (withholding, necessarily, of the centralized type) (21). This analysis does not differ much from the historical analysis “Marxist”, as he recognized the same Tonnies. Even Durkheim had analyzed the history, practically in the same way, and believed that, realized the “socialism”, you will tend to the return to the “communism”, namely at a decentralized phase feudal (22). Vladimir Lenin took the view that the “financial capital” (namely: what prevails in the capitalist systems oligopolists and in the systems bureaucratic capitalists) was a reality intermediate between the capitalist system (competitive) and the “socialism” (23) or feudal phase. Lenin spoke of them, in fact, in: “Imperialism, supreme phase of capitalism, Assay Popular”. Max Weber, already in 1918, he had understood as “socialism” is equivalent to a “dictatorship of bureaucracy” (24). After all, Marx himself had well understood the mode of the evolution of the statual society and he knew that at what we called the merchant phase would follow soon a new feudal phase, also for the crunches increasingly evident of the capitalist system, and for the effects of the devastating cyclical crises, tht are repeated, alternating two different types of crisis, but in a way that is ever more disruptive.

  Claude Levi Strauss which, also, had conceived: the historic structures, as a simple methodological concept or survey instrument of social relations, had distinguished between “orders lived” and “orders theorized” (25), where, with the firsts, he wanted denote the individual elements of the social structure and of the objective reality, and for the seconds he wanted to indicate the images created from myths, by religions and by the political ideologies. Stated that the “Orders theorized” are determined directly by the “Orders lived”, and constitute, with this latters, a “ordered totality” (namely: a social system). In other words, you are referring to the distinction between the material base and the ideal projection.

  Part IV

  Nature of science and of the ideologies