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Flexible Scientific Naturalism and Dialectical Fundamentalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Dale Riepe
Dale Riepe*
Affiliation:
University of North Dakota
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Extract

By dialectical fundamentalism I mean the view that maintains the inerrancy of the orthodox classical scriptures of dialectical materialism; by flexible scientific naturalism I mean the view recognizing the past heuristic value of dialectical materialism, but also the realization for the need to develop and change it along lines suggested by complementary philosophies relevant to the scientific outlook.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1958 , pp. 241 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © 1958, The Williams & Wilkins Company

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References

1 This notion is closer to “fundamentalism” as used in religious philosophy than to that of Prof. C. West Churchman's notion of “fundamentalism in science”.

2 Also called The Holy Family, Frankfurt, 1845.

3 The dialectical fundamentalist classics today comprise more than fifty-three separate volumes, from Marx-Engels to Plechanow.

4 C. West Churchman, “A Materialist Theory of Measurement,” Philosophy for the Future, (eds.) Sellars, McGill, Farber, New York: Macmillan, 1949, pp. 476ff.

5 Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954, p. 59.

6 American anthropologist (1818-81).

7 Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 83.

8 Ibid.

9 Sommerville, “Dialectical Materialism”, in Living Schools of Philosophy, (ed.) D. Runes, Ames, Iowa: Littlefield, Adams, 1956, p. 426.

10 P. I. Chasschatschich, Materie und Bewusstsein, Berlin: Dietz, 1956, p. 189.

11 Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1952 p. 98.

12 Bernal, Science in History, London: 1954, p. 762.

13 A. Kosing and E. Kosing (eds.), Über Formale Logik Und Dialektik, Gesellschaft Für Deutsch-Sojetische Freundschaft, Berlin: Kultur Und Fortschritt, 1954, p. 237f. [the writer's translation].

14 See p. 247 of this article.

15 Freistadt, “Dialectical Materialism: A Friendly Interpretation”, Philosophy of Science, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, (April 1956), p. 105.

16 Tarski, in Science and Freedom (Proc. of the Congr. for Cult. Freedom, 1953), London: Secker & Warburg, 1955, p. 155.

17 The dialectical fundamentalists have mechanically followed Lenin's criticism of the idealistic critical realists of pre-revolutionary Russia. Anglo-American critical realism appears to be unknown among them.

18 E.g., Profs. Roy Wood Sellars, G. P. Conger.

19 E.g., Mr. Maurice Cornforth.

20 E.g., Prof. Phillip Franck.

21 E.g., P. S. Trofimow, “Der Semantische Idealismus Eine Ideologische Waffe Der Imperialistischen Reaktion”, in Gegen Die Philosophie Des Verfalls. Berlin: Veb Deutscher Verlag Der Wissenschaften, 1956, p. 206f.

22 Churchman, op. cit., p. 478.

23 See his remarks, such as, “Die Dialektik herrscht überall ...” in Kosing, op. cit., p. 11.

24 Who divides logic into the “higher” dialectical and the “lower” formal, ibid, p. 54.

25 Stalin, Marxism and ... Language, cited supra.

26 Churchman, op. cit., pp. 478-9.

27 Lenin, op. cit., p. 107.

28 The most important recent dialectical fundamentalist work on this topic with which I am familiar is that of Chasschatschich, op. cit. This posthumous work was written before 1942, but brings the fundamentalist position up to that. date.

29 Freistadt, op. cit., p. 104.

30 The, to me, agreeable view of Prof. E. F. Caldin in Science and Freedom, p. 149.

31 Gallie, “What Makes a Subject Scientific?”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. VIII, No. 30 (August 1957), p. 139.

32 Gallie, ibid.

33 Margenau, Science and Freedom, p. 147.

34 Ibid.

35 S. K. Allison, discussing the scientific method at the Hamburg Conference (1953), in Science and Freedom, p. 153.

36 Manuscript volume of Hooke's papers, cited by J. D. Bernal, “Science and the Humanities,” Science and the Humanities, Tokyo: Eihosha, 1957, p. 46.

37 See Lenin, op. cit., p. 247, 273, 286.

38 Prof. Gallie's appeal, cited above, moves in this direction, whatever his intention.

39 See Oliver L. Reiser, “Postulates for an Ethics of Belief in Science, Religion and Philosophy,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. XXIII, No. 4 (October 1956), p. 280f.

40 Hegel's contribution to historical materialism was that he invented a model which combined the dialectic of Heraclitus with that of Aristotle into a historical-idealistic dialectic. The best accounts of this model are to be found in Plechanow and Thalheimer from the point of view of historical materialism. McTaggart's account ranks high from the idealistic viewpoint.

41 The latest two are reputed to be a new gravitational hypothesis and a new electro-particle hypothesis concerning the sun's corona.

42 I am indebted to Prof. N. Sawada of Keio University in Tokyo for this phrase.

43 Some of the social hypotheses attributed to its use include: balanced development, restricted experiments, slow reform, mixed regime, increased economic dependence, blind economic operations and psychological frustration. See Bernal, Science in History, pp. 830-41.