I agree with examinator.

The article reeks of a personal grievance. The author spent 20 years at the AFR, so it's to be expected that he'd reject everything Marx wrote as easily as he'd uncritically accept any aspect of free market fundamentalism.

As for Freud, his ideas have been reviewed, dismissed and modified, but still form the basis of psychological therapy. The kind of contempt Mr Lawson has for Freud is, in my experience, a defensive reaction to hearing unpleasant truths from a shrink. Just like the Scientologists.

There is not ever a debate when it involves Karl Marx; the fact of the matter is that the whole syntheses of idiocy that became a ridicules manifesto was written by some clown who extorted his parents- Never had a job – and that is never; Kicked out of Germany – Kicked out of France and blessed the Poms with his presence – Unemployed and Unemployable- In fact, the only leader in the whole world who ,aspired to Marxism to the very letter ;- is that communist nemesis; Adolf Hitler –
Figure that one out.

Now you need to ask yourselves why it took 100 years for Marx and cronies letters – Publications- and profile to be found and translated – and it takes propaedeutic efforts to untangle the web - the profusion of obsequious myrmidon is inter generational ;-
The whole entire episode is Reductio Ad Absurdum-

EQ
"Darwin in his book tries to disprove his theory with various arguments and then comes to the conclusion that as he cannot disprove it you may as well accept it as the simplest explanation. Accordingly Darwin is a scientist. Marx and Freud take the opposite tack and try to prove their theories.
Both were pseudo-scientists."

You have hit the nail right on the head.

Examinator
"I fairly point out that neither capitalism as it’s practiced nor economics has got a good track record for universal predictability."

There is no reason for capitalism to have a good track record for universal predictability, as it is not a science and is not claiming to be. The claim is that, of all the competing entrepreneurs, those who successfully predict the future state of the market will make profits, and that a prediction system based on profit and loss will be far more effective in general and over the long run than one based on centralised command and control.

Economics in general does not have a good track record for predicatability, but the Austrian School of economics does. They predicted the Great Depression, the collapse of socialism and its degeneration into economic chaos and totalitarian government, and correctly predicted the current crisis, years in advance: see www.mises.org

Interestingly, even though the Austrian school has proved better at predicting than the other schools, it considers that predictability is not the criterion of the science of economics, because of the variability of human behaviour. Prediction is not the job of economics, but of entrepreneurs. The Austrian school instead holds that the criterion of a science of human action is that its tenets must be logically deduced from axioms of human action, and must be internally consistent, and consistent with external reality. It passes these tests, and also coincidentally has much higher predicting value than those schools of economics which mistakenly model themselves on the science of physics or mechanics

The bulkman

Could you please render your objection in plain English? I can't understand what you're saying.

Dictionary.com defines ontology as "The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being."

The question 'why should life perpetuate itself?' is ambiguous, depending whether we are asking why it should as a fact or as a value. Science and Darwin provide and assume no normative value why it should.

However given or assuming that life does perpetuate itself, Darwin's theory provides an explanation how species originate.

Darwin's claim as to ontology, the nature of being, is that species originate by a certain process. It does this by referring to ontological evidence, ie evidence on the nature of being, as follows:
1. more of a species are born than can surive
2. members of a species differ as between themselves
3. these differences are inherited and are decisive as to survival and reproduction
4. species originate from these differences accumulated over long periods of time.

Therefore Darwin's theory is not fundamentally flawed for the reasons you allege.

I would respectfully suggest that Lawson and respondents at least attempt to read Capital before spouting such ignorance about Marx. Leslie

I'm no Marx scholar, but at least one of the criticisms is wrong. Marx changed his ideas in the course of his life.

As for proof in science, it is a normal part of scientific reasoning. Galileo demonstrated that heaver bodies did not fall faster than lighter ones by a process of reasoning, not by going up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropping stones.

Newton maintained his theory of motion and of gravity in spite of numerous apparent counter-examples. He indeed said that the counter-examples were mistaken. (But he did adjust other theories, such as that of optics, to account for them; and the other theories were tested in their turn, and gave better predictions than those relied on by those who produced the counter-examples.) Newtonian mechanics continued to be the dominant theory until Einstein, in spite of the fact that the orbit of Mercury could not be reconciled with it. It continued in part because of few spectacular correct predictions--two new planets for example.

Because all observation is theory-laden, scientific development is never just a matter of throwing up examples and counter-examples.

Note also that there are no examples of Newton's first law of motion. You can only test it as part of the whole theory.