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[A rival theory that has to be better than the dominant “90 percent explanation” cannot go wrong very often and still stay in the contest. For the ch… - James Burnham
" "[A rival theory that has to be better than the dominant “90 percent explanation” cannot go wrong very often and still stay in the contest. For the challenger of a 50 percent incumbent, some shortcomings are not that fatal. This comparative situation has to be remembered as argued by James Burnham:] ... we must keep in mind an obvious principle of scientific method. To disprove the theory, it is not enough to show that it is not 100% certain,that difficulties confront it, and certain evidence seems to be against it. It must be further shown that it is less certain than alternative theories covering the same subject matter, that there are in its case more difficulties, more negative evidence than in the case of at least one alternative theory. No theory about what actually happens and will happen is ever ‘certain’.
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About James Burnham
James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy and became a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years Burnham rejected Marxism and became an even more influential theorist of the political right as a leader of the American conservative movement. His 1941 book The Managerial Revolution speculated on the future of capitalism. Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics. He rejected containment of the Soviet Union and called for the rollback of communism worldwide.
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Additional quotes by James Burnham
Liberals, unless they are professional politicians seeking votes in the hinterland, are not subject to strong feelings of national patriotism and are likely to feel uneasy at patriotic ceremonies. These, like the organizations in whose conduct they are still manifest, are dismissed by liberals rather scornfully as ‘flag-waving’ and ‘100 percent Americanism.’ The national anthem is not customarily sung or the flag shown, unless prescribed by law, at meetings of liberal associations. When a liberal journalist uses the phrase ‘patriotic organization,’ the adjective is equivalent in meaning to ‘stupid, reactionary and rather ludicrous.’ The rise of liberalism to predominance in the controlling sectors of American opinion is in almost exact correlation with the decline in the ceremonial celebration of the Fourth of July, traditionally regarded as the nation’s major holiday. To the liberal mind, the patriotic oratory is not only banal but subversive of rational ideals; and judged by liberalism’s humanitarian morality, the enthusiasm and pleasures that simple souls might have got from the fireworks could not compensate the occasional damage to the eye or finger of an unwary youngster. The purer liberals of the Norman Cousins strain, in the tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt, are more likely to celebrate UN day than the Fourth of July.
In its own more confused, less advanced way, New Dealism too has spread abroad the stress on the state as against the individual, planning as against private enterprise, jobs (even if relief jobs) against opportunities, security against initiative, "human rights" against "property rights." There can be no doubt that the psychological effect of New Dealism has been what the capitalists say it has been: to undermine public confidence in capitalist ideas and rights and institutions. Its most distinctive features help to prepare the minds of the masses for the acceptance of the managerial social structure.
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