Science, Science & Marxism "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
This is evident. I am an epistemological pragmatist and a scientific realist.
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Lenin once said that Marxism is all-powerful because it is true. That contains the basic insight: science is superior to nonscientific approaches for explaining and manipulating our world because it is (approximately) true. And we know it is true because it works. You can't change lead into gold through alchemy, but you can (though very expensively) through nuclear chemistry.
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CB: Indeed, in so many ways the Engels-Lenin theory of knowledge seems pragmatist, and their "metaphysics" realism. For pragmatists, isn't the test of a theory what "works" ? For Marxists, practice is the test of theory too. Lenin defines materialism as belief in objective reality. I'm wondering how Quine's ideas differ from those in _Materialism and Empiro-Criticism_.