Ayer admitted in his autobiography, *A Part of My Life* that Lenin had been correct in perceiving that Machist positivism (like the sort that Ayer, himself, had championed in his *Language, Truth, and Logic) was very much rooted in Berekeleyian subjective idealism. Then again, in *Language, Truth, and Logic*, Ayer pointed out in passing that it was a development of a stream of thought that began with Berkeley.
^^^^
CB: Yes, that was it. Did Ayer stick with his subjective idealism at the end ?
Just to get a glimpse of a real scientist on this issue of realism, Einstein ended up specifically disagreeing with Mach on this. Mach didn't believe that atoms or subatomic particles are real , but are rather thought constructs. Einstein, who had admired Mach and gotten some inspiration for relativity theory from Mach's ideas, broke with Mach on this issue, saying atoms are objectively real.
On the old Sokal and Bricmont "scandal" and thread from a few years ago on this list, and their criticism of post-modernist ontological ( I think this is ontology , not just epistemology, no ?) relativism: I have always thought the postmods are a new incarnation of the philosophical types Lenin criticized then. He even specifically mentions "French symbolists" in M and EC.
So Simkin is on target in his quizling observation.
Anyway, Einsteinian relativity is not based on relativistic ontology. On the other hand, Einstein never believed quantum mechanics. Maybe Les can help us see objective reality of qm.
In fact , while I'm at it, it recently occurred to me that in the transition from a physics with absolute rest ( the ether) to one with absolute change , the speed of light, and relative rest, physics is rendered more dialectical.
Then I'm trying to figure whether Lenin and Einstein were in Switzerland at the same time :>): Switzerland, land of banks and clocks, finance capital and absolute time.
Einstein , living in Germany with most physicist-colleagues doing work for the military, had a courageous position opposed to Germany prosecuting WWI, better than Kautsky and the German Social Dems, more like Leninism.