52
PARTISAN REVIEW
Levy's exposItIon of dialectical materialism is grounded on a con–
ception of "isolates" within which the scientist's investigations are carried
out. An "isolate" is "a bit of a wider situation," methodologically
separated in order to study, for certain specific purposes, the processes
which go on within its restricted field. The difference between the
exact sciences and common sense thinking, however, is one of degree of
precision; science is but an extension of the thought used daily by
unsophisticated men in the pursuit of ordinary practical ends. Both
laymen and scientists address themselves to the discovery of processes
within the field under analysis. I repeat this, already stated above, for
the sake of emphasis, since it is the failure to realize its full implication
that gives rise to the crucial difficulty of materialistic philosophy.
That it is the processes of nature that the scientist is in search of,
Levy himself is quite well aware of. Thus on page 65 of his earlier book
en scientific method,
The Universe of Science,
he tells us, "From the
standpoint here adopted we see that the great adventure of science lies
in the query, 'Are there any processes in Nature that can not be ade–
qU<ltely explored by seeking for isolated systems neutral to their environ–
ment?' " And again, eight pages farther on in the same book, "We have
viewed science as an examination of . . . what is happening in detail
in the universe." Of course the purpose of the search for what is hap–
pening in Nature is accurate prediction and, through it, efficient control.
That is what modern men demand of science in the social field no Jess
than in the field of the brute physical environment. And that is what
Levy is interested in finding out. The very chapter headings of the book
under review tell the story: "How a Quality Is Modified," "How a
Quality Is Transformed," "What Causes Change," What Causes Change
in Society: Being a Study of Social Development." Thus the main em–
phasis in the central chapters of the present book is on process.
But if it is process that science is in search of, and if science is but
a refined extension of common sense, what need is there for a Marxist
to load himself up with the inert baggage of a metaphysic, as Levy
does? What need to assert that "science" demands a "materialistic
philosophy?" It would seem, rather, if we can find enough courage to
strip ourselves of all this stuff, that materialism is just as childish a
metaphysical incantation about the alleged "nature of things" as idealism
IS.
This of course does not in any way whatever impinge on the validity
of the theory of economic determinism. For economic determinism-his–
torical materialism, if the term be preferred-is the belief that the
processes of history can best be understood, for ihe purposes of predic–
tion and efficient control, by referring them to economic forces as
"basic" factors. And this doctrine, susceptible of verification, and al–
ready adequately verified, is a methodological device, not a metaphysic
about "the nature of things." Nor can these remarks be taken in any
way as giving comfort to the muddle-headed needs of idealists or pan–
ps;chists or any other such emotionally immature searchers after
im-
