On the one hand there are “those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other,” which we term idealism and on the other there are those “who regarded nature as primary, to the various schools of materialism.” This struggle takes place principally between what Engels described as the “two great camps” in philosophy: idealism and materialism. What the textbooks also fail to convey is the uninterrupted philosophical struggle that has accompanied the development of science since its beginnings. However, whilst the general curve of human development is an upward one, it is a curve broken by periods of stagnation and collapse it bursts forward only to retreat and then move forward again. The result can be a haughty attitude to science – that “we” know better and couldn’t repeat the mistakes of past, unenlightened generations.
However, what is not recorded in today’s textbooks is the fitful and often violent character which the struggle for scientific knowledge often took on. Phenomena which yesterday were shrouded in mystery and would have terrified grown adults, today form the mundane subjects of school textbooks.
Human beings have brought one natural force after another under their control. From the simplest stone axe to the harnessing of fire from the development of irrigation, of cities, writing, mathematics, philosophy, science and modern industry: the trend is unmistakable. Over the hundreds of thousands of years that anatomically modern human beings have existed, the development of society has followed an unmistakable upward curve. S cience is always rooted in class society, and the lack of a dialectical materialist perspective has led some modern scientists back to the idealism and mysticism that the bourgeoisie railed against in its revolutionary phase.
Ben introduces the dialectical materialist outlook, explains how it applies to the natural world and demonstrates how the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome laid the foundations for modern science. In this article, Ben Curry explains the development of scientific thought from a Marxist perspective.
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