A new era is opening in cosmology, brought to us by powerful instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope and the DESI instrument. These technological marvels are extending a piercing view deeper and with more precision than we have ever had access to before into our awesome, expansive, infinite universe.
And as our horizons extend, the old cosmology – that of the Big Bang which has reigned as the consensus since its invention by a Belgian priest-astronomer a century ago – is ever more clearly a theory in crisis.
Why are we discussing this at The School of Communism? Because the working class needs a philosophy. It needs a party armed with an independent worldview, a scientific worldview, if it is to challenge the ruling class for supremacy.
How we conduct science, how we look upon the cosmos and our relationship to the cosmos – these are profound philosophical questions. And today, the old cosmological views – which are bound up with idealistic philosophical prejudices that even find their way into the sciences during this epoch of capitalist decay – those views are in crisis. A revolution is being prepared as the Big Bang is being tested and found wanting.
In this talk we will look back at the philosophy of science, how revolutionary materialists look upon the cosmos, the laws of scientific progress, and how educated men and women, if they do not have their own conscious philosophy, are not immune from the philosophical moods and prejudices that hold sway over society.
Reading list
Books
Alan Woods, Ted Grant – “Reason in Revolt”
Articles
David García Colín, Vincent Angerer – “The James Webb telescope: an eye onto a universe, infinite in time and space”
Ben Curry – “The Big Bang: shoehorning the facts to fit the theory”