Erich Fromm on objectivity, positivism, bias, evidence and scholarship

Here is something I put in my research101 moodle at http://learn.nmmu.ac.za/mod/forum/view.php?f=3710

Worth reiterating and focusing on.  I completely agree with Fromm.  Scholarship and academic and scientific writing does not mean isolating ideas and observation from the person making them. Somebody, a person is making and developing and communicating them. It means backing ideas with evidence, or facts.  It means making significant contributions to humanity, human and the world's development and prosperity.  It means challenging and critical engagement with existing ideas, adding to them and transforming them.

Every claim must be backed up with evidence or fact, all ideas must be critically and clearly engaged with, scrutinized challenged and enquired into

If you do this, and do this well, you will have a PhD, publications and successful academic careers.

Erich Fromm 1969

page 9

Humanistic radicalism is radical questioning guided by insight into the dynamics of man’s nature; and by concern for man’s growth and full unfolding. 

In contrast to contemporary positivistic thinking it is not “objective”, if objectivity means theorizing without a passionately held aim which impels and nourishes the process of thinking.  But it is exceedingly objective, if it means that every step in the process of thinking is based on critically sifted evidence, and furthermore if it takes a critical attitude toward common-sensical premises. All this means that humanist radicalism questions every idea and every institution from the standpoint of whether it helps or hinders man’s capacity for greater aliveness and joy.

Erich Fromm. Introduction.  In

Illich, I. (1969).  Celebration of Awareness A Call for Institutional Revolution. London. Calder & Boyars

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