Science and Socialism

Throughout its history Marxism has identified itself with science. According to the French Communist biologist Marcel Prenant the method of dialectics is the scientific method,1 and the choice of materialism over idealism is the verdict of scientific investigation. The allegiance of scientists to the Marxist philosophy would seem to follow then as a matter of course. But historically this has not been the case in those countries contributing most heavily to the history of modern science. France is the major exception to this generalization. Indeed, after World War II anticommunists were expressing dismay at their estimate that 65 per cent of the personnel of the French Commissariat i l'En-rgie atomique was communist.2 Reformist republicans and socialists had in fact dominated the French scientific elite since the turn of the century, with the two major exceptions of Louis Leprince-Ringuet and Louis de Broglie. Of the left-leaning scientists two of the most influential were the close friends Paul Langevin and Jean Perrin. The physicist Edmond Bauer remarked about them in 1948 that there was scarcely a physicist or a

Allegiance · Art history · Communism · Dialectical materialism · Economic history · Epistemology · Ilya · Marxist philosophy · Materialism · Political science · Politics · Scientific socialism · Socialism · Classics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy

• Evident atoms

  Open Access•Charlotte Bigg•Studies in History and Philosophy…•2008

  Add to list

• The Phenomenon of Soviet Science

  Alexei Kojevnikov•Osiris•2008

  Add to list