Scientific theories are superstructures explained by history, not causes of it.
Evidence
According to the theory of praxis it is evident that it is not atomic theory that explains human history but the other way about: in other words that atomic theory and all scientific hypotheses and opinions are superstructures. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1652
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to late Foucault/the Islamophobia field’s treatment of race-thinking and ‘scientific’ categories as historically produced — e.g., Muslims in the Western Imagination’s claim that Orientalist philology manufactured Muslim identity. — connects to: Race in racism is an explanatory idea, not an object of scientific study. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1062; The dialectic is the marrow of historiography and political science, not formal logic. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1548; Economic abstractions are historically determined, not universal or extra-historical (+5 more)
- DEFINE: Defines the inverted causality claim: history explains science, never science explains history.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1652
Broader Connections
- Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical
#corroborates(0.75) - The mediaeval mind lacked a conception of history as cause and effect
#exemplifies(0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 82 - Economic abstractions are historically determined, not universal or extra-historical
#corroborates(0.72)