Critical Realism

16

REASON AS DIALECTIC

Science, social science and socialist science

Roy Edgley

The current crisis, social and intellectual

The current crisis in world affairs, in particular the economic and social crisis in those countries that dominate world affairs, the advanced industrial states of Europe and America, is reflected in an intellectual crisis, especially in those countries. As they move into the so-called ‘post-industrial’ phase, into ‘technological society’, their dominant form of theoretical knowledge, scientific knowledge, increasingly becomes a crucial economic resource, a factor of production; and the intellectual crisis reveals itself as a radical uncertainty about the nature and status of science. Europe invented modern science, and ...