Abstract
This chapter explores not only the factors that make postmodernism singularly unsuited to its role as a critic of industrialisation and modernisation, but also Karl Popper’s belief that research and understanding can only be built upon logical deduction and the testing of verifiable evidence. In the case of postmodernism it is argued that its idealist philosophical roots deny it the capacity to make meaningful contributions to debates involving economics and wealth creation. Popper’s emphasis on logical deduction and his associated hostility to logical induction are also declared deficit. For although the theses drawn from logical induction can never be disproved in the way that conclusions drawn from deduction can, they nevertheless remain vital to social and economic inquiry.
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Notes
- 1.
René Descartes (trans. Elizabeth Haldane), Mediations on First Philosophy, (Internet Encyclopaedia, 1991), http://selfpace.uconn.edu/class/percep/DescartesMeditations.pdf, Section 1, 8.
- 2.
David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1896), Vol. 3, 288–89.
- 3.
Thomas Hobbes (Ed. A.P. Martinich), Leviathan, (Broadway Press: Peterborough, Canada, 2002), 38.
- 4.
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2002), 17.
- 5.
Paul Ricoeur (trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellaeur), Memory, History and Forgetting, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 448.
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Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Vol. 2, 241.
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George Berkeley , “The principles of human knowledge”, in George Berkeley (ed. Howard Robinson), Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996), 38.
- 8.
Berkeley , “The principles of human knowledge”, 36.
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Jacques Derrida (trans. Alan Bass), Writing and Difference, (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2001), 100; Immanuel Kant (trans. Marcus Weigelt), Critique of Pure Reason, (London, UK: Penguin Classics, 2007), 116–17, 130–31, 348, 424–25.
- 10.
Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery, 23.
- 11.
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- 12.
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- 17.
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 100.
- 18.
Karl Popper, “The poverty of historicism, I”, Economica, Vol. 11, No. 42 (May 1944), 100.
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- 22.
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- 23.
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- 24.
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- 25.
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- 26.
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- 27.
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- 28.
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Twilight of the idols”, in Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. R.J. Hollingdale), Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, (London, UK: Penguin Classics, 1990), 103.
- 29.
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- 30.
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- 31.
Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery, xxii.
- 32.
Ibid., 6, 23.
- 33.
Ibid.</Emphasis>, 31.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Karl Popper, “The poverty of historicism, II”, Economica, Vol. 11, No. 43 (Aug. 1944), 120, 130, 123.
- 36.
Henri Poincare (trans. William John Greenstreet), Science and Hypothesis, (New York, NY: Walter Scott Publishing, 1905), xxi. Poincare’s Science and Hypothesis was first published in French in 1902.
- 37.
Ibid., xxi, 167.
- 38.
Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery, 25–26.
- 39.
Immanuel Kant (trans. Marcus Weigelt), Critique of Pure Reason, (London, UK: Penguin Classics, 2007), 137.
- 40.
Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery, 37–38.
- 41.
Max Weber, “Objectivity of social science and social policy”, in Max Weber (trans. Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch), The Methodology of the Social Sciences, (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1949), 56.
- 42.
Ibid., 92.
- 43.
Ibid., 79, 87.
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- 49.
Marc Bloch (trans. Peter Putman), The Historian’s Craft, (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1954), 40.
- 50.
Elton, Practice of History, 73.
- 51.
Elton, The Practice of History, 23, 42.
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- 53.
Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, (London, UK: Macmillan Publishers, 1920), 291.
- 54.
Marshall’s views on time are enunciated in: Ibid., 274–75.
- 55.
Braudel, “History and the social sciences”, 178; Fernand Braudel (trans. Sarah Mathews), On History, (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1980), 74.
- 56.
Braudel, On History, 74.
- 57.
Marshall, Principles of Economics, 291.
- 58.
Ibid., 274.
- 59.
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- 60.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 1, 85, 66; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The social contract”, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau (trans. C.D.H. Cole), The Social Contract and Discourses, (London, UK, J.M. Dent and Sons, 1950), 1–141.
- 61.
John Locke, Two Treatise on Government, (Toronto, CAN: McMaster Archive of the History of Economic Thought, no date), 5–6.
- 62.
Ibid., 202.
- 63.
Karl Marx, “The British rule in India”, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow, USSR: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1951), 323.
- 64.
Sidney Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management: A Study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, (London, UK: Edward Arnold, 1965), 160–66.
- 65.
Ibid., 252.
- 66.
Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings, (New York, NY: Dutton, 1927), 2–3, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0597/72b61b68c3efb89e67cf889d235cb09ae4cb.pdf [Accessed 27 December 2017].
- 67.
Ibid., 2, 7. For a critical discussion of Owen’s cooperative schemes, see: John H. Humphreys, Milorad M. Novicevic, Mario Hayek, Jane Whitney Gibson, Stephanie S. Pane Haden, Wallace A. Williams, Jr., “Disharmony in New Harmony: Insights from the narcissistic leadership of Robert Owen”, Journal of Management History, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2016), 146–70.
- 68.
Bruce Kaufman , “The core principle and fundamental theorem of industrial relations”, Internal Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring 2007), 12.
- 69.
Shelton Stromquist, A Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America, (Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 244–50.
- 70.
Rockefeller , “Labor and capital – partners”, 47.
- 71.
Bruce E. Kaufman , “Paradigms in industrial relations: Original, modern and version in-between”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vo. 46, No. 2 (Jun. 2008), 328.
- 72.
See, for example: Raymond Markey and Keith Townsend, “Contemporary trends in employee involvement and participation”, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 55, No. 4 (2013), 475–487; Peter Wirtz and Pierre-Yves Gomez, “Successfully mobilizing for employee board representation: lessons to be learned from post-war Germany”, Journal of Management History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2018), forthcoming; Raymond Hogler, “From Ludlow to Chattanooga: a century of employee representation plans and the future of the American labor movement”, Journal of Management History, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2016), 130–45.
- 73.
Hugh Cunningham , “Child labour’s global past 1650–2000”, in Kristoffel Lieten and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (Eds.), Child Labour’s Global Past, 1650–2000, (Bern, Switz: Peter Lang, 2011), 68.
- 74.
Work Bank, On-line Database: Gender Indicators, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?view=chart [Accessed 1 December 2017]. The lower unemployment rate in China—typically 4–5 per cent—means that gap between “employed” workers in China and the United States is higher than indicated by participation rates.
- 75.
World Bank Group, Global Economic Prospects, June 2017: A Fragile Recovery, (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2017), 61, Figure SF2.1.
- 76.
Ibid., 61–69.
- 77.
Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 2, 918.
- 78.
Thomas Piketty, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2014), 1, 15, 22.
- 79.
Thucydides (trans. Rex Warner), History of the Peloponnesian War, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), 47.
- 80.
Hobbes, Leviathan, 22.
- 81.
Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Vol. 3, 288–89.
- 82.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 283, 348.
- 83.
For details, see: Henry Reynolds, With the White People, (Ringwood, AUS: Penguin, 1990); Dawn May, From Bush to Station: Aboriginal Labour in the North Queensland Pastoral Industry 1861–1897, (Townsville, AUS: James Cook University, 1983).
- 84.
Fiona Skyring, “Low wages, low rents, and pension cheques: The introduction of equal wages in the Kimberley, 1968–1969”, in Natasha Fijn, Ian Keen, Christopher Lloyd and Michael Pickering (Eds.), Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies II: Historical Engagements and Current Enterprises, (Canberra, AUS: Australian National University ePress, 2012), 153. Also, Bill Bunbury, It’s Not the Money, It’s the Land: Aboriginal Stockmen and the Equal Wages Case – Talking History with Bill Bunbury, (North Fremantle, AUS: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2002).
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John Watson, former Chair of the Kimberley Aboriginal Land Council, cited in, Paul Marshall (Ed.). Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra: All Right, Now We Go ’Side the River, Along that Sundown Way – Stories from the Fitzroy River Drovers, (Broome, AUS: Magabala Books, 1989), 208.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Commonwealth Census, 2016: Community Profiles – Northern Territory Outback.
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Jacinta Nampinjinpa Price, “Debit cards protect Aboriginal women and children”, Australian, 26 December 2017, 10.
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Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Child Protection Australia 2014–15, (Canberra, AUS: Australian Government/Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016), 54.
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Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, The Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, 2015, (Canberra, AUS: Australian Government/Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2016), 92–94, 103.
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Bowden, B. (2018). Reflections. In: Work, Wealth, and Postmodernism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76180-0_9
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