Riley's Commie Book Club - Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History

TRASHFUTURE

Comedy

4.7 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2019

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As of next month, all episodes of Commie Book Club will be published on on our Patreon feed... BUT without any paywall in front of them at all. So they'll be free each month with no delay. If you nonetheless want to support us anyway and get next month's book club early, check out www.patreon.com/trashfuture/ Another instalment of Riley's Commie Book Club delivered to you, our delightful and beloved patrons. This month, Riley decided to take it in a bit of a different direction, and talk about an under-discussed field of study, Marxism and the Philosophy of Science. How should we think about knowledge, what is knowable, and how these questions are related to history and power? To get to these questions, he reads from Helena Sheehan's Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History. The focus of the book is on charting Marxist approaches to the philosophy of science from Engels to the mid 20th century, and while this is interesting, Riley focuses more on the underlying concepts. He absolutely encourages you to look into the book and the actual history it tells, though! It's linked here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2565-marxism-and-the-philosophy-of-science

Transcript

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0:00.0	Right. So today we're doing something a little bit different for Come Me Book Club,
0:19.2	because that's right. You guessed it. It's only me talking. No one's
0:22.2	yelling over me. Everything's going to be quite organized. Hussein's not going to do the weird thing
0:28.8	where he just knows a lot about the TV of the 90s. No, we're doing something entirely different.
0:35.9	And we're doing something entirely different from the normal book clubs as well.
0:40.4	Because the book today we're sort of discussing as kind of a secondary concern to a larger discussion.
0:49.8	It's called Marxism and the Philosophy of Science, a critical history. And it is by Helen Ashian, who's an American professor of the philosophy of science,
0:58.7	and would probably identify as like a humanist Marxist,
1:01.8	which is more than a Gramshy than a Stalin.
1:04.7	And it's a much more directly academic book than I would have done in the past.
1:10.0	It's like this one and state of
1:11.7	insecurity are more likely to be encountered in like graduate seminars than in like Waterstones.
1:17.8	That's why we do this show. Well, that's why we do this show within a show of this show.
1:22.9	It's certainly not why we do TF. And it seems like an odd choice, right?
1:29.2	I don't usually do this kind of thing.
1:31.0	I try to take something that's more directly political
1:33.8	and talk about how it can be used and understood,
1:37.6	how you can take its ideas and apply them in your daily life
1:40.1	or just because it's interesting
1:41.0	or just because I feel like getting sent a free book by Verso.
1:44.3	But I'm very interested in this, in the whole element of the philosophy of science when it comes to
1:52.4	the way that we understand the world around us and the way that that has been colored by ideology
	...

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