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by Comrade Kiwi
Published: 2025-11-02 (last update: 2025-11-03)
5-15 minutes

The positivists have thus far only interpreted nature as data; the task, however, is to dissolve the observer into the process, to make science itself a moment of praxis.

THESES ON POSITIVISM

Critique of the empiricist metaphysics

I.

The positivist treats scientific laws as descriptions of nature yet operates as if they were nature itself. He admits epistemology but practices ontology. This collapse is not accidental error but structural necessity: empiricism cannot justify its own presuppositions and therefore must naturalize them as self-evident.

When philosophy challenges these foundations, the positivist demands empirical evidence for philosophical argument. The demand itself proves the critique.

II.

All positivism rests on axioms it cannot prove. When pressed to defend these axioms against solipsism or subjective idealism, the positivist retreats: "I take them as given." But what is given is not thereby justified.

The unexamined foundation remains unexamined, not sound. Philosophy interrogates precisely what empiricism must take as given, and the positivist who declares this interrogation irrelevant has merely announced his incapacity to think at the level of presupposition.

III.

The positivist demands concrete examples of how philosophical critique manifests in scientific practice, mistaking framework-level analysis for content-level disagreement.

This is to ask: show me which room has cracks when told the foundation is unstable. The critique is not that individual measurements fail but that the entire structure of positivist epistemology fragments reality, isolates phenomena from totality, and reproduces bourgeois ideology's incapacity to think relation and motion.

IV.

When cornered on axioms, the positivist shifts from "we know only what we can prove empirically" to "we disregard what is not useful." This is not answer but evasion, switching from positivism to utilitarianism when the former fails. That he must switch frameworks when challenged reveals not empiricism's strength but its bankruptcy.

A framework that cannot defend its own presuppositions and must appeal to utility has already conceded the philosophical argument.

V.

The positivist claims presuppositions are both relevant and irrelevant within the same argument. He admits theories are formed and broken on presuppositions, then declares philosophical examination of presuppositions useless to his practice. This is not dialectical contradiction but simple incoherence.

He wants foundations to matter without having to examine them, wants to operate within a framework without being responsible for its logic.

VI.

The fragmentation of totality into discrete measurable units is not neutral method but ideological operation. The positivist studies batteries without grasping the social relations that necessitate batteries, measures particles without recognizing that measurement categories are historically produced through human practice, calculates motion without theory of what motion is.

This fragmentation reproduces capital's logic: treat all phenomena as isolated, analyzable independent of the whole, understandable without reference to the totality producing them.

VII.

Empiricism cannot account for qualitative development, only quantitative measurement. It has no theory of motion, only of states. When science advances from Newton to Einstein, the positivist records the transition but cannot think the logic of transition itself.

He measures before and after but the movement between, the negation and sublation, the dialectical transformation, this remains opaque to him. His framework contains only being and non-being, not becoming.

VIII.

The positivist who says "philosophy does not matter to my work" has made a philosophical claim he cannot defend without doing philosophy. His refusal to examine foundations is not escape from philosophy but submission to unexamined philosophy, which is always the philosophy of the ruling class.

The claim that one can do science without philosophy is itself philosophy, and bad philosophy at that.

IX.

Scientific practice is social practice embedded in material relations. The questions asked, the research funded, the applications pursued, all reflect the mode of production within which science operates.

The positivist who claims neutrality, who insists he merely describes nature without philosophical commitment, reproduces ideology precisely through this claimed neutrality. To refuse examination of how your framework is socially constituted is not objectivity but mystification.

X.

The standpoint of positivism is fragmented civil society treating knowledge as individual acquisition and science as collection of isolated facts. The standpoint of dialectical materialism is social humanity grasping knowledge as collective product emerging from human practice in its totality. The positivist measures; the dialectician comprehends. The positivist prescribes; the dialectician transforms. The positivist fragments; the dialectician grasps the whole.

XI.

When the positivist finally admits he cannot defend his axioms empirically, that he takes them as given, that philosophy of foundations does not interest him, he has conceded everything. A framework that rests on assumptions it declares unjustifiable and irrelevant is not science but faith.

The positivist is not materialist but mystic, worshipping at the altar of measurement while refusing to ask what measurement means, what it presupposes, what it cannot grasp. His demand for empirical proof of philosophical critique is category error so fundamental that every conclusion derived from it is worthless.

XII.

The positivists have thus far only interpreted nature as data; the task, however, is to dissolve the observer into the process, to make science itself a moment of praxis.

Positivism is bourgeois ideology in epistemological form: fragmenting, reifying, naturalizing what is historical, treating description as prescription, collapsing knowing into being, and declaring its own presuppositions beyond interrogation. The positivist cannot answer philosophy and therefore declares philosophy irrelevant. This is not refutation but retreat.

Addendum:

Question: What relevance do the theses hold to our Marxist-Leninist movement?

Answer: As the very first statement of my text declares, epistemology determines the validity of a question, what questions can even be asked and what questions can simply be discarded. When we ask, what of exploitation? The enemy class responds:

"But bourgeois economics don't show that, look at the data, look at our paradigm!"

The framework of how knowledge can be known and what questions are valid, that is epistemology, thus they seek to invalidate the revolutionary question by maintaining hegemony over what can even be questioned. We must combat their hegemony over what knowledge is, and how it is acquired, as Lenin declared, a struggle on all fronts must be waged.

Question: Why the positivist must collapse epistemology to ontology? What is the structural necessity even?

Answer: The positivist must practice not in description but prescription, not epistemology but ontology, in that him declaring axioms and observation to be what reality is rather than the most advanced description, precisely because if he doesn't then positivism collapses because it is based on only upholding what is empirically true as the truth and nothing else, so since its axioms, i.e. the external world exists, causality is stable and what have you, cannot be justified empirically, he must posit that - that is how it is, rather than mere description.

Question: For thesis II, these axioms are taken as such because there are no known counter-example, what do you say to that?

Answer: I argue, that the empirical nature of this argument falls apart when not based on rigorous philosophical basis, for example: What of the empirically unfalsifiable position solipsism, of positing that only the mind is, what is? The presuppositions themselves demand stabilization which cannot come empirically, lest we declare circularity. You cannot justify empiricism through empiricism when the very framework is what is being brought into question.

Question: For thesis VI, quantum mechanics has pretty much ensured that studying systems in isolation is useless although other sciences may not have caught onto it, what then?

Answer: I am moreso making a general paradigm and foundation critique, it is not that science is unable to think in categories and inter-relation, it obviously can, the point is that, it is not structural paradigm which dictates this, dialectical materialism enables not only allows for stabilization of axioms but also making relational and systemic thinking embedded in the very logic of science.

Question: Quine's naturalism accepts circularity but denies foundationalism. Doesn't this sidestep your critique by refusing the game of grounding rather than playing it badly?

Answer: Quine still presupposes nature as pregiven object for cognition rather than recognizing thought as moment of nature's self-development. His "no first philosophy" retains subject-object dualism, consciousness studies nature from outside. Dialectical logic grasps thought as material practice through which reality comes to know itself. The circle isn't vicious because thinking is real activity transforming its object. Quine's naturalism remains contemplative; ours is practical.

Question: Your own categories, totality, contradiction, negation etc require grounding. How does dialectical materialism escape the axiom problem it diagnoses in positivism?

Answer: We don't "escape" it; we recognize axioms as historically produced through collective practice, not timeless prerequisites. Thought-forms develop from human activity transforming nature. Contradiction isn't imposed as external law but discovered as actual movement of things, capital is self-contradictory motion, not logical inconsistency projected onto it. Our categories are stabilized practically, not deductively. Positivism mystifies its axioms as natural; we grasp ours as social-historical achievements requiring ongoing reproduction. The difference: we think our presuppositions as presuppositions.

Question: If knowledge is historical and from practice, as you posit, then doesn’t it become relative? How can anything be objectively true if the basis keeps changing?

Answer: To call knowledge historical does not mean it lacks objectivity; it means objectivity itself develops. Every historic stage produces forms of knowledge adequate to its mode of production; adequacy is not eternal diktat but living dialogue with objective conditions that contain within them those objective conditions. Objectivity arises when social practice reproduces the world consciously; the more conscious the practice, the more objective the knowledge. Knowledge is not eternal truth nor born out of subjective nothingness but successful participation in society's own unfolding.

Question: If positivist science "works" instrumentally despite philosophical incoherence, haven't you just shown scientists have bad philosophy, not bad science?

Answer: False separation. Scientific practice embeds theoretical commitments that fragment phenomena, naturalize contingent social forms, and block comprehension of development. That batteries "work" doesn't vindicate treating electrochemistry as isolated domain, it means instrumental success coincides with theoretical mystification. The critique isn't that measurements fail but that positivist frameworks render invisible the social totality producing both battery and physicist. Limited-fragmented theoretical basis produce limited and fragmented results in isolation from the whole.

Question: Doesn't studying isolated systems remain methodologically necessary even granting your critique? How does one grasp totality without abstract reduction first?

Answer: The error is treating methodological abstraction as ontological truth, forgetting that isolated system is produced by abstracting activity and must be sublated back into concrete totality. Positivism mistakes moment for whole, reifies the abstraction. We begin with chaotic whole, reduce to abstract determinations, then reconstruct the concrete as thought-totality. The positivist stops at step two and calls it nature.