Post by random on Feb 7, 2004 8:50:08 GMT -5
In "Materialism and Romanticism: Can We Do Without Myth?" by Bob
Avakian, www.rwor.org/a/1211/baonmyth.htm
"...This harks back to the error in our polemic against the Mensheviks concerning the Chinese mathematician who was studying the Goldbach conjecture. In a previous talk I made the point that the way we dealt with this in our answer to the Mensheviks** involved a tendency toward philistinism and what could be characterized as vulgar materialism...
... But there is a lesson I'm trying to draw from this relatively minor error. The lesson is that there is an importance to "pure research," to "pure science"; and there is a way in which that is analogous to the need for myth, as I have spoken to it--to the need for the imagination, the need for metaphor, the need for poetry..."
Avakian, www.rwor.org/a/1211/baonmyth.htm
"...This harks back to the error in our polemic against the Mensheviks concerning the Chinese mathematician who was studying the Goldbach conjecture. In a previous talk I made the point that the way we dealt with this in our answer to the Mensheviks** involved a tendency toward philistinism and what could be characterized as vulgar materialism...
... But there is a lesson I'm trying to draw from this relatively minor error. The lesson is that there is an importance to "pure research," to "pure science"; and there is a way in which that is analogous to the need for myth, as I have spoken to it--to the need for the imagination, the need for metaphor, the need for poetry..."