W041: Reality, knowledge and forecasting

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This paper is a "dynamic document" to use a fashionable term in the field of electronic publishing. It is the next step in an attempt to attack the problem of human knowledge from a materialistic and dialectical point of view. A first skeleton was published in the anthology Returns in Marxism. What follows below is more an exercise in stock-taking and in posing the question. What does it mean to say a dialectical and materialistic approach to the understanding of human knowledge? After the dogmatic period of the a Stalinist philosophy of science, we balance on a tightrope, as it is easy to retreat to empty dogmatic notions, whilst the far end of the rope is still not visible. The theory is still in the making and only after a full understanding (or a mature view), can you explain something comprehensively as if it were obvious. Unrolling thoughts and investigations map out a bumpy road. So, what follows below represents a more inductive approach than derived from the so-called hypothetical deductive method, where the author supposedly has a firm idea and consequently tries to prove or disprove it. New ideas largely pop up intuitively.