Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 23:06:39 -0800
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: ENGELS ON EMPIRICISM & SUPERSTITION


Thanks, Justin, for your sobering reminder of the depths of human
imbecility.  Your story about the Nazi Jew reminds me of a
newspaper report on Lyndon Larouche's followers.  Some public
figure these people had allegedly harassed called them "the worst
bunch of anti-Semitic Jews I have ever seen."

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.

"Here it becomes palpably evident which is the surest path from
natural science to mysticism.  It is not the extravagant
theorizing of the philosophy of nature, but the shallowest
empiricism that spurns all theory and distrusts all thought.  It
is not _a priori_ necessity that proves the existence of spirits,
but the empirical observations of Messrs. Wallace, Crookes, and
Co.  If we trust the spectrum-analysis observations of Crookes,
which led to the discovery of the metal thallium, or the rich
zoological discoveries of Wallace in the Malay Archipelago, we are
asked to place the same trust in the spiritualistic experiences
and discoveries of these two scientists.  And if we express the
opinion that, after all, there is a little difference between the
two, that we can verify the one but not the other, the
spirit-seers retort that this is not the case, and that they are
ready to give us the opportunity of verifying also the spirit
phenomena.

"Indeed, dialectics cannot be despised with impunity.  However
great one's contempt for all theoretical thought, nevertheless one
cannot being two natural facts into relation with each other, or
understand the connection existing between them, without
theoretical thought.  The only question is whether one's thinking
is correct or not, and contempt of theory is evidently the surest
way to think naturalistically, and therefore incorrectly.  But,
according to an old and well-known dialectical law, incorrect
thinking, carried to its logical conclusion, inevitably arrives at
the opposite of its point of departure.  Hence, the empirical
contempt for dialectics is punished by some of the most sober
empiricists being led into the most barren of superstitions, into
modern spiritualism."

Freddy, you came out of your face that time.  This profound
statement applies to so many phenomena on so many levels, I'm just
beside myself.


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