Re: cyberwars / cybertruth

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Adolfo wrote

>Engels says:
>
>"The question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of spirit
Criticising the thesis of Kant and other idealists that the world is
>unknowable and that there are "things-in-themselves" which are unknowable,
>and defending the well known materialist thesis that our knowledge is
>authentic knowledge, Engels writes:
>
>"The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosofical fancies is
>practice, viz., experiment and industry.  If we are able to prove the
>correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves,
>bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own
>purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian
>"thing-in-itself".  The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants
>and animals remained such "things-in-themselves" until organic chemistry
>began to produce them one after another, wher-upon the "thing-in-itself"
>became a thing for us, as for instance, alizarin, the coulouring matter of
>the madder, which we no longer trouble to grow in the madder roots in the
>field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.  For three
>hundred years the Copernican solar system was a hypothesis, with a hundred,
>a thousnad or ten thousand chances to one in its favour, but still always a
>hypothesis.  But when Leverrier, by means of data provided by this system,
>not only deduced the necessity of existance of an unknown planet, but also
>calculated the position in the heavens which this planet must necessarily
>occupy, and when Galle really found this planet, the Copernican system was
>proved" (Karl Marx, Selected Works, Eng. Ed., Vol I, pp 432-33)
>


Fascinating. A transcendental argument for realism sometime before Bhaskar!
And a lot bloody  easier to understand.

regards

Gary



     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---