Space and Time (continued)
Religion…has general significance as expressing the social co-ordination of the experience of the greater part of humanity. But there is no objective reality that corresponds to the teachings of religion, for example, on the past of the earth and the creation of the world. There is an objective reality that corresponds to the teaching of science (although the latter is as relative at every stage in the development of science as every stage in the development of religion is relative) that the earth existed prior to any society, prior to man, prior to organic matter, and that it has existed for a definite time and in a definite space in relation to the other planets. According to Bogdanov, the various forms of space and time adapt themselves to man’s experience and his perceptive faculty. As a matter of fact, just the reverse is true: our “experience” and our knowledge adapt themselves more and more to objective space and time, and reflect them ever more correctly and profoundly.
V.I.Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, 169-170
Part twenty-two/to be continued…
Full text at Marxists Internet Archive
materialism, mysticism and art 
It amazes me sometimes, how partial semi-doctism can pass as philosophy…
From my p.o.v., Lenin’ “logic” is as flawed as his knowledge of it. For example, his understanding of objective reality is so narowly limited, that sometimes I truly feel, that his actual understanding of what reality is wouldn’t pass a secondary school’s requirements…
As events past exist only as perceived by contemporaries, neither religion nor science can pretend to objectively explain them. Both are flawed by both presumptions and also by further inept perceptions of these presumptions. The most sane example of true scintific endevour is Francis Crick’s refuge in his coordinated panspermia idea, which satisfied both his scientific thinking and also his ethics of logic. And as the difference between a god’s “creation” and a dying ET civilisation’s last effort of preservation is purely semantic, any beligerant efforts by defendants on both sides is just pathetic.
I just don’t understand why would any human, with an infinity grasping mind locked in a digestive tube dependent body, would spend his cosmically related life second on warmongering, instead of a balanced epicurianism, lost in arts, from gastronomical to all other?
No wonder children want to be birds and any other animals; they seem to better feel what life should be…
All the best to you, dear Phil.
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Hello Moshe, Thanks for your comment. Would you expand on why Lenin’s understanding of objective reality is ‘narrowly limited’?
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“The assertion made by science that the earth existed prior to man is an objective truth. This proposition of natural science is incompatible with the philosophy of the Machians and with their doctrine of truth: if truth is an organising form of human experience, then the assertion that the earth exists outside human experience cannot be true.”
Dear Phil, for me, the reading of ineptitudes like the one above, posing as knowledge and logic, while bitterly lacking both, bring back painful memories of what such pseudo-philosophies have spawned, e.g. Ceausescu’s sick understanding of democracy and human rights. I won’t even attempt disecting it, as it is utterly repulsive…
This chase of philosophical absolutes trasformed philosophy from being the Queen of sciences, into being their whore…
Whenever philosphy has ceased of its ability to critically challenge all thoughts, and lifted herself onto a pedestal of absolutes, it has become as dead as the marble showing a form, but having no heart…
You see, the biblical David may have had children, but Michelangelo’s, certainly not…
As all seasoned secular Jews, I am a leftists, but I tend to use my other hemisphere as well:-)
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Hello Moshe, thanks for your reply. I understand you to be referring to these words ‘There is an objective reality that corresponds to the teaching of science (although it is as relative at every stage in the development of science as every stage in the development of religion is relative) that the earth existed prior to any society, prior to man, prior to organic matter, and that it has existed for a definite time and in a definite space in relation to the other planets. According to Bogdanov, various forms of space and time adapt themselves to man’s experience and his perceptive faculty. As a matter of fact, just the reverse is true: our “experience” and our perception adapt themselves more and more to objective space and time, and reflect them ever more correctly and profoundly.’
Lenin was stating, consistent with science, that the earth (matter) has existed long before humans (consciousness) and that aspects of matter – space and time – are (again consistent with science) objective (space is the distribution of matter and time is matter in motion). On the point of ‘truth’ Lenin’s position was that it is relative to ‘absolute’ truth and continually deepening (my own example is that it was once ‘true’ that the earth is flat). I think of truth as ‘living’ (in that it grows and develops). The degree of truth is dependent on the level of technological development of a society. Where the earth has not the least requirement for humans in order to exist, it is somewhat different with regard to our origins, development and needs. Best wishes, Phil
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