Marxism, Physics and Philosophy

The cutting edge of Physics is in crisis and has all but abandoned materialism for formal ideality in my opinion. I have been a Physicist and a Marxist for 50 years so I am all too aware of the fact that they have ceased to be compatible.

As Marxists we should be in a position to criticise these positions rather than to bend our way of thinking to theirs.

I have been working on a Marxist critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory (the basis for most modern Physics) for many years.

I have written extensively on this subject... here might be as good a place as any to start: http://theelectronicjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/issue-24-of-shape.html

Physics is about 1000x more credible than Marxist philosophical pseudoscience. Marxists should definitely "bend their way of thinking" to fit science rather than the other way round, otherwise they become nothing but cultists, and will make embarrassing blunders comparable to the church and Galileo...

Lysenko?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

Anyway, what "advances" in physics? Ones made 90 years ago?

Yep and see the marxist scientists that towed the party line for 20 years despite the emerging evidence from genetics - eg JBS Haldane, John Maynard Smith etc

Even Maynard Smith spent ages cutting tails of mice because he wanted the Lamarckism of Lysenko to be true. He did eventually break from lysenkoism, and communism generally.

Whether or not you agree with Dialectical Materialism, there are certainly some very questionable assumptions made in modern physics (yes, the consensus for the last 90 years!) which very few people are currently addressing. I have recently published a conspectus of Pete Mason's Quantum Mechanics and Dialectical Materialism which may be interest in this debate. Pete Mason is a Marxist who subscribes to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, but in my opinion his arguments are seriously flawed.

http://theelectronicjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/new-special-issue-jigsaw.html

Has anyone attended the talk mentioned in the OP? Is there a recording or anything?

I'd love to hear what exactly contradicts "assumptions made by Marxists". I can hardly think of anything that would apply to those not adhering to Dialectical Materialism (which seems to be the case for like, about anyone on this site as the concept seems to be pretty much dead now), at least I can't think of anything else since most are preoccupied with social phenomena and relations which I dare say have little to do with physics...

The problem I think Shape was pointing to is that physics doesn't have a grounding. It is descriptive of the world but does not tell us the what or how. I am of course speaking loosely as this is not the main topic of discussion. Marx may be "philosophical pseudoscience" from the point of this descriptive model, but it may be able to give more of a groundwork.

A critique of science is important, Marxist or otherwise.

doam, you are talking bullshit. physics is grounded in reproducible experiments.

Yeah, I think what you're describing there sounds more like statistics and econometrics (surprise surprise!)

Physics is very much interested in the what and how, I just kinda fail to see what quantum physics have to do with value theory for example...

I expect little better from a bourgeois positivist scum, to anyone else it should be quite obvious that the wave/particle ambiguity plays out on the macro scale with value, with labour only being retroactively determined to have produced value depending on it's fate in the marketplace.

Like, if matter itself is undetermined, how can we be sure about anything at all huh?

Mindblowing. Suddenly neoliberalism makes sense!

Correct, this is because it can predict what matter in motion can do (it is descriptive as I said). This leads to incredible technologies and all the other things.

It doesn't necessarily lead us to knowledge of the world. It is a mathematical account of matter in motion, but it is possible that this does not fully account for the world.

I do not think this goes far enough, as it does not talk about the grounding modern science claims, but see also: http://libcom.org/library/commoditization-science