Talk:Dialectical materialism
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[edit] Science and philosophy
Aside from a rudimentary understanding of the philosophy of science and its history, I'm no student of philosophy in general. Would someone who has a bit more understanding of such things mind telling me what the actual philosophical approach of dialectical materialism actually is? The Wikipedia article on the subject is quite vague, and I'm trying to determined whether the issues with dialectical materialism in science are related primarily to a flawed philosophy, or people (especially from the former Soviet Union) saying and/or doing stupid things. - Grant (Talk) 17:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
- I minored in philosophy as an undergrad, and though I'm not familiar with this topic from my studies, I'm pretty sure my professors would be nauseated by the idea of judging scientific principles' validity by how well they conform to some author's philosophical preconceptions. One of my profs had a saying along the lines of "Philosophy that isn't useful in the real world is garbage." This would certainly qualify in my book. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] [留] 03:22, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
- It's good that this view isn't widespread. I'm still curious whether this is an underlying property of dialectical materialism. From Googling and other such searching, it's somewhat difficult to find concrete statements on the subject. Some good scientists did good things while espousing this philosophy, and some crazy people said some crazy things about science while espousing this philosophy. I wonder where the dividing line is. At the very least, it certainly seems there's plenty of stuff we could write about here, at least about the people who applied this philosophy to create dubious science. - Grant (Talk) 17:42, 13 February 2014 (UTC)