18. The Theory of Knowledge¶
Core Argument¶
18. The Theory of Knowledge
This chapter mounts a vigorous defence of dialectical materialism as the only coherent foundation for scientific inquiry, against both naïve empiricism and idealist regression. It begins from the premise that all rational thought presupposes an objective physical world whose laws are knowable, not through any single revelation but through an infinite process of successive approximations. Each generation’s supposed absolutes are later revealed as relative, their exceptions demanding new explanations. There is no fixed barrier between appearance and essence; the entire history of thought is the progressive transformation of the Thing-in-Itself into a Thing-for-Us. The scientific method—observation, hypothesis, mathematical reasoning—is exemplified by Eratosthenes, not by abstract deduction.
The twentieth century saw a partial regression to idealism, partly because Einstein’s prestige lent weight to the mistaken view that theories arise from pure thought rather than experiment. His cosmology, taking as fundamental an assumption of universal homogeneity contradicted by observation, regressed toward the medieval notion of a finite universe. Exclusive empiricism, meanwhile, claims to operate only with undeniable facts but in reality relies on obsolete traditional notions, its mathematical rigour obscuring the hypothetical nature of its premises. As Engels long ago noted, the purely empirical school inevitably leads to mysticism.
The Marxian dialectic differs from Hegel’s in two decisive respects: it is materialist, deriving categories from physical reality, and it is open-ended, not a closed absolute system. The contradiction between the need for complete knowledge and its impossibility is the main lever of intellectual advance. Prejudice against dialectics arises partly from its connection with Marxism and revolutionary implications. Scientists are often compelled to adopt dialectical conclusions but then resort to disclaimers; chaos and complexity theory moves close to dialectics, though its proponents often misunderstand Marxism. Stephen Jay Gould recognised parallels between punctuated equilibria and dialectical materialism.
Stalinism presented a bureaucratic caricature of socialism that stifled scientific freedom, distorting Marxist philosophy into sterile dogma. The Soviet army high command was forced to reintroduce formal logic into military academies because teachers of “diamat” had created shameful confusion. Scientists were compelled to accept false theories like Lysenko’s genetics, discrediting dialectical materialism. Yet where scientists did apply the dialectical method, significant advances were made: Soviet research into chaos theory, influenced by dialectical materialism, led the West by at least two decades, with much of the new Western science already familiar in Moscow since Kolmogorov’s work in the 1950s.