Few if any political philosophers have had the courage of tackling the Cold War. Even the best of them have kept silent or have stated some bromides glossing over the serious shortcomings of "our" side, such as racism, social injustice, extreme income disparities, the exploitation of the Third World, and environmental degradation.
Mario BungeWhereas science elicits changes in order to know, technology knows in order to elicit changes.
Mario BungeIn the scientific community you find competent teachers and original researchers, just as in the musical community you find many good performers but very few good composers.
Mario BungeEven philosophies who have denounced pseudosciences like psychoanalysis, have condoned pseudoscientific economic theories like neoclassical microeconomics. It is far safer and easier to criticize Freud and Jung than to criticize Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, because the latter are backed by political movements whereas the former are not.
Mario BungeI have nothing to fear from serious social studies of science, and I hope that my philosophy will help progressive science policies while showing that the most modern views of science are ignorant and regressive, even if they are accompanied by a leftist-sounding rhetoric.
Mario BungeMy Third-World roots remind me that the vast majority of our fellow human beings live hungry, sick, and uneducated, and that most social scientists, even in that world, ignore that ugly reality. This is why my papers in mathematical sociology deal not with free choice among 30 flavors of ice-cream, but with social structure, social cohesion, and social marginality.
Mario Bunge