ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, we explore the dialectic of subject and object more directly, that is, the essential scientific situation in the philosophy of science as observed earlier. With the character of dialectics most appropriate to science having been established as the presence of self-sameness and difference in both thought and being, we turn to the logical identity and non-identity of the subject and object. It is observed that the subject is saturated with the object, but never entirely reducible to it, as is disappointingly implied by simplistic reflectivist epistemologies such as 20th-century logical positivism. And the object is, likewise, saturated with the subject, but not reducible to it, as is unfortunately implied by postmodern epistemologies. In their moment of logical identity, we see the subject in the object and the object in the subject, but in their moment of logical non-identity, we see the subject “reading off” the object in its presumed antecedence and independence. Marx and Engels’ science conforms to this dialectical presentation of the subject and the object. Their theory can be grasped as an evolving creation of the subject as its struggles to theorize the world of capitalist social relations.
