Had an argument where someone tried to tell me historical materialism is “necessarily true” and therefore not scientific or useful. Only response I can think of is that dialectical materialism is a philosophical framework, and isn’t subject to the same rules of falsification as a hypothesis. It feels somehow unsatisfying.

Have any of you encountered this argument before? What do you say to it?

  • xanthespark
    3·
    2 years ago

    But, of course, if someone did contrive an engine which ran without fuel, or which was one hundred per cent efficient (it would be a kind of fairy-tale engine), that would falsify the laws of thermodynamics—and technologists would have to undertake some new and very fundamental rethinking of their concepts. No one expects this to happen, but it is imaginable (i.e. it can be described in fairy tales). The laws of thermodynamics are thus falsifiable but not falsified. That is, no doubt, why they are considered to be such very “good” laws.

    I think this was the only part that confused me a bit.

    Sure enough, this other planet (now named Neptune) was observed when telescopes were directed in the right direction—so Kepler’s laws were “saved”, since they did not “forbid” there being another planet but allowed for its existence. It is just the same with Marxism, when social “irregularities” (such as the Russian Revolution or full employment in Britain) take place—we look for and find the causes of these “irregularities”.”

    I think I get it. The most important framework from which to understand the validity of a theory is what it forbids, not what it doesn’t account for. So if a prediction is made with a theory serving as a base, and that prediction is proven to be false, it doesn’t mean the theory as a whole is necessarily untrue. It just means that the prediction was untrue. Whoever made it did not account for certain factors that, when further examined, could be perfectly consistent with the theory as a whole.

    Anyhow, this was an excellent read, comrade. Thank you for sharing.

    • redtea
      1·
      2 years ago

      You’re welcome.

      To follow up…

      To me, your first quote just says that creating a fuel-less engine would disprove the laws of thermodynamics. There is a temptation to say, ‘but such an engine is impossible!’ That reply begs the question (uses the conclusion as a premise – look up ‘syllogisms’ and logical fallacies if this is unfamiliar; understanding these can help to pick out the flaws in anti-communist arguments). We can only say that it is impossible to build a fuel-less engine because the laws of thermodynamics have not been disproved. Were such an engine built, it would falsify those laws, and engineers would need a new theory to explain the new engine. I don’t know if this makes things any clearer.