Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 17:53:01 +0100
From: m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Hugh Rodwell)
Subject: Re: ENGELS ON EMPIRICISM & SUPERSTITION


Ralph D writes:

>And now, here's a treat for you, smart guy.  Long ago I mentioned
>Engels wrote that pure empiricism would inevitably lead to
>table-tipping.  I think I found the quote.  It is an excerpt from
>DIALECTICS OF NATURE, but unfortunately I can't give you page
>references.  The best I can do is refer you to the book where I
>found the excerpt, namely ON RELIGION by Marx and Engels with an
>introduction by Reinhold Niebuhr (barf), New York: Schocken Books,
>1964, p. 186.

It's in the chapter 'Natural Science in the Spirit World', pp 60-61
(Progress Publisher, 3rd revised ed.,1964).

Engels rounds off the chapter by showing how 'mere empiricism is incapable
of refuting the spiritualists':

        ... As long as *every* [Fred's emphasis] single alleged miracle has
not been
        explained away, they have still room enough to carry on, as indeed
Wallace
        says clearly enough in connection with the falsified spirit
photographs. The
        existence of falsifications proves the genuineness of the real ones.
           And so empiricism finds itself compelled to refute the importunate
        spirit-seers not by means of empirical experiments, but by theoretical
        considerations, and to say, with Huxley:
           "The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of
        'spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument against
suicide. Better
        live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a
'medium'
        hired at a guinea a seance."

Perhaps the discussion of the PCP would also benefit by turning to
'theoretical considerations'?

Cheers,

Hugh




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