It's weird how often this topic comes up. I just read:
"It has long been my personal view that the separation of
practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious. Much
of the practical work done in computing, both in software and in
hardware design, is unsound and clumsy because the people who do
it have not any clear understanding of the fundamental design
principles of their work. Most of the abstract mathematical and
theoretical work is sterile because it has no point of contact
with real computing."
-- Christpher Strachey, 1965
"To review: Classical Marxism says knowledge derives from
practice, guides it, and is either verified or transformed by
it. It says production is at the root of people's consciousnesses
but it doesn't say much about precisely how. It doesn't go into
details of how productive influences manifest themselves in
consciousness and thus overlooks the extents to which they often
do not. It doesn't tell how emotional needs, creative potentials,
previously arrived at knowledge, and previously adopted thought
habits all subjectively affect new perceptions and analyses. It
doesn't deal sufficiently with the ways people's subjective
weaknesses affect their consciousness formation processes.
"Like the classical dialectical methodology, the classical
understanding of consciousness formation sees the forest, or at
least one aspect of it, but directs attention away from the trees,
thus often completely misunderstanding the interrelation. It
overcomes many idealist errors but in doing so pays only lip
service to the fact that thinking is a process involving on-going
interactions between various aspects of people's natures, of their
personalities, and of the contexts or things they're thinking
about."
-- Michael Albert http://www.zmag.org/WITBU/witbu07.html
Tayssir
--
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice there is."
-- Yogi Berra (or someone else)