Empiricism and Its Evolution: A Marxist View

by George Novack

Traces the evolution and contradictions of the philosophical outlook of empiricism as an ideological expression of the social system of capitalism.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

183 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Leftist political activist and Marxist theoretician.

He attended Harvard University, earning a B.A. in 1926, and an M.A. in 1927. He was on a successful track in the publishing business, when the beginning of the Great Depression radicalized him. He joined the Trotskyist Communist League of America in 1933 and was a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) from 1940 to 1973.

In 1937-40 Novack served as the secretary of the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky. This body initiated the celebrated 1937 Dewey Commission that inquired into the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow show trials, and found the Moscow trials to have been a complete frame-up.

George Novack was not one of the 18 SWP leaders imprisoned in World War II under the Smith Act, but he played a major role in the defense campaign.

Novack produced a number of books on various aspects of Marxism: An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism, America's Revolutionary Heritage, Democracy and Revolution, Empiricism and Its Evolution, Humanism and Socialism, The Origins of Materialism, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, Revolutionary Dynamics of Women's Liberation, and Understanding History, Marxist Essays.

Reviews

[Hantz FV · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you George Novack! I now understand all the minute differences between various trends of empiricism (pragmatism, impressionism, positivism, etc. There are so many wtf...)!

I've always understood empiricism as "materialism but not quite". This book clarifies really well the composition of the "not quite" part. Namely the back doors being left wide open for idealism by taking an ambiguous position on the relationship between matter and thought. To cope with that glaring deficiency, empiricists, old and new, dabble in all kinds of eclecticism driving them closer to either materialism or, more often than not, idealism. The contradictory and eclectic social position of today's empiricists (liberal professors and politicians trying to chart a safe course between the two main classes), drive them to that equally contradictory and eclectic philosophical viewpoint.

If some positivist is annoying you while tabling on campus, check out the last chapter where GEORGE NOVACK DESTROYS KARL POPPER WITH FACTS AND LOGIC 💯

[Olivier Turbide · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnifique petit livre, chapeau à George Novack pour avoir été une des rares personnes à avoir gardé en vie le flambeau de la philosophie marxiste authentique dans les années 60-70.

Le livre fait une explication très bien vulgarisée des idées de Locke et de leurs défauts, pour ensuite toucher à Berkeley, Hume, et plus tard les pragmatistes comme James et Dewey, et les positivistes comme Wittgenstein, Carnap, etc.

J’aurais aimé avoir lu ce livre au début de mon bac en philo

[Ebi · Rating 2 out of 5]

پیش‌ریویو:
نام انگلیسی کتاب پسوندی دارد که در روی جلد فارسی نیست:
Empiricism and it's evolution
A view Marxist
احتمالا به دلیل حساسیت دوستان به مارکسیسم و کلا مارکسیست‌ها چنین حذفی صورت گرفته و به همین دلیل خواننده‌ای چون من بدون اطلاع قبلی سراغ کتابی می‌روم که سرشار از اصطلاحات مارکسیستی در نقد سرمایه‌داری و پر از ادبیات سوسیالیستی‌ست. البته در پشت جلد اشاره به این نکته دارد که این کتاب پیش درآمدی به روش مارکسیستی رویکرد به تاریخ اندیشه‌هاست.
--اوایل تابستان ۸۷

[Castor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une analyse à la fois concise et profonde de l'empirisme, la philosophie dominante du régime bourgeois en Angleterre et en Amérique du Nord. Comme le système socioéconomique qu'elle représente, cette école de pensée a d'abord connu de grandes avancées avant de dégénérer en un frein réactionnaire au progrès, et le livre montre bien ce lien entre le monde matériel et la philosophie. La polémique contre Karl Poppers est particulièrement pertinente. La lecture peut être ardue au début, car l'auteur passe rapidement sur certains points importants qui sont traités plus tard. Mais le livre donne dans l'ensemble une analyse complète avec juste assez de détails pour argumenter solidement sans tomber dans une longue dissection académique.

[Sasha Boucher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you feel like a lot of the representatives of the social sciences are drowning hopelessly in subjectivism, with a tendency for myopia and seeing everything as incidental? It's the mindset of comfortable middle-class liberal academics in late-stage capitalism, wanting social progress, but too cowardly to challenge the basis of their own comfort. The socially necessary philosophy for this demographic, especially in the most advanced capitalist countries, is one of various forms of Empiricism, the original capitalist philosophy, *EXTREMELY unconsciously* experiencing its own death rattle.

This book shows the limitations of an epistemology which takes quantifiable sense experience as the be-all end-all for possible knowledge. It explains to what extent relying on sense experience alone can offer no concrete and conclusive statements regarding the reality or primacy of the objective world independent of humans and our perception of it. Empiricism is skeptical that we can have true knowledge of anything and has no means on its own basis to define truth and error or of distinguishing between the two. It was a necessary means of categorizing and analyzing the world in the early days of capitalism, but today, the former tendency of empricists to assert that experience reflected something fundamental about the objective world, has been inverted into the most banal subjectivism imaginable.

This book is SO important and needs to be read, reread, and read yet again by everyone who wants to understand literally anything, in real life, today. It lays out in a comprehensive manner to just what extent empiricism has gone from being the mode of thought of Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Newton, which led revolutionary progress against feudal scholasticism, to becoming, in late-stage capitalism, a complete and utter cancer upon the scientific method and collective human understanding, most adequately represented by the advocate of its incarnation in the form of Positivism, Karl Popper.

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

جورج نواك ويراستار اگزيستانسياليسم در برابر ماركسيسم و مولف كتابهايي از جمله مقدمه‌اي بر منطق ماركسيسم، دموكراسي و انقلاب و تازه‌ترين آنها اومانيسم و سوسياليسم است. وي در دانشگاه‌هاي سراسر امريكا، كانادا و استراليا درباره نظريه فلسفه و سياست ماركسيستي درس‌گفتارهايي ايراد كرده‌است.
كتاب پيش در آمدي به روش ماركسيستي رويكرد به تاريخ انديشه‌ها و حاوي نكات جالبي از پراگماتيسم و به‌ وي‍ژه فلسفه جان ديويي است

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Novack identifies empiricism as arising "out of the first superficial and uncritical experiences of everyday life." But at the same time, he says, "these first impressions and unreliable inductions can be surpassed and improved upon." He traces empiricism from Francis Bacon to John Locke and beyond, Karl Popper and John Dewey (he also has a book specifically about Dewey--Pragmatism versus Marxism: An Appraisal of John Dewey’s Philosophy.

As with all Novack's books, written for workers and students, not for academics. Contrary to what their biography says, he attended Harvard for five years without earning a degree and was probably better off without it. Nevertheless, he was honored by Harvard as the best-known member of his class. At the time his books were being widely used in college courses.

There is a beautiful new cover design, which can't be found here yet, but can be found on the Pathfinder Press website.

Don't miss The Origins of Materialism: The Evolution of a Scientific View of the World andLabor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History.