Discovery in East Africa: Footprints of Our Ancestors
Posted by Mike E on March 17, 2009
photo of the new footprint discovery
by Mike Ely
Almost no bones of early humans had been studied when Charles Darwin announced his belief that humans descended from ape-like creatures. Today, more than a century later, there remain major gaps in our picture of the human family tree — but a great many exciting details are now known — validating Darwin’s theory, and deepening our understanding in many ways.
The study of human evolution has long been rooted in bones — which by their nature reveal early humans at the moment of death. More recently, a second major means of study has emerged: the comparison of DNA strands (which reveal a great deal about the genetic material of different species and subgroupings of hominids). And there are, of course, cultural artifacts (scratchings, paintings, stone tools, chips of flint, beads, early statuettes and more) which reveal fragmentary details of how human ancestors lived, hunted, and started upon that unique human road of technology.
Now in an exciting new development: Researchers have uncovered in Kenya a very rare form of early human evidence — footprints in soft mud that have hardened, preserving in rock the motion of an early hominid, not bone alone, not genetic material, not chips of rock, but the imprint of actual flesh and blood striding through an ancient landscape.
In an exciting discovery, a set of early human footprints have now been found in Kenya. they are 1.5 million years old. Homo erectus is believed to have been a direct ancestor of modern humans (Homo Sapiens, who evolved around 200,000 years ago in this same region of Africa).
The Homo erectus was a highly sucessful species of early human that emerged in Africa an thrived between one and two million years ago — spreading out across much of the Eurasian land mass, developing early culture including stone implements and fire. Its brain size was about two-thirds the size of modern humans — indicating a very high intelligence (compared to other primates).
One of the things that emerges from these footprints is confirmation that erect walking on two legs is the distinctly human trait that developed first. for millions of years, our ancestors walked upright — in a way quite close to modern human strides — not in shuffling, bent over, awkward, shakey gaits or knucklewalking. In fact, it appears (from multiple evidence) that upright walking was one of the first distinctly human traits to emerge — and that upright walking preceded the human brain in the emergence of humans. This is an issue that has been a long focus of debate and investigation.
Homo Erectus drawn by Jay H. Matternes
In the 19th century, as scientific thinkers adopted the theory of human evolution, there was a lot of speculation about what came first, how the remarkable and distinctive package of human features appeared. Some thought that the break from other primates came with higher intelligence — that we emerged from a specially intelligent ape. (This view gave rise to the Piltdown Man hoax, which was disproven as it became clear that higher intelligence developed in leaps over time in human evolution).,
The early communist Frederick Engels starts his 1876 essay “The role of labor in the transition from ape to man” by saying:
“First, owing to their way of living which meant that the hands had different functions than the feet when climbing, these apes began to lose the habit of using their hands to walk and adopted a more and more erect posture. This was the decisive step in the transition from ape to man.”
And these new footprints (coming on top of earlier evidence) confirm that upright walking was, in fact, one of the earliest human traits to emerge, and that human ancesters were walking in remarkably modern ways very early in the evolution of human beings.
* * * * * *
the following is a press report giving details of the new discovery
Earliest ‘human footprints’ found
(BBC 26 February 2009) The earliest footprints showing evidence of modern human foot anatomy and gait have been unearthed in Kenya.
The 1.5-million-year-old footprints display signs of a pronounced arch and short, aligned toes, in contrast to older footprints.
The size and spacing of the Kenyan markings – attributed to Homo erectus – reflect the height, weight, and walking style of modern humans.
The findings have been published in the journal Science.
The footprints are not the oldest belonging to a member of the human lineage. That title belongs to the 3.7 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis prints found in Laetoli, Tanzania, in 1978.
Those prints, however, showed comparatively flat feet and a significantly higher angle between the big toe and the other toes, representative of a foot still adapted to grasping.
Exactly how that more ape-like foot developed into its modern version has remained unclear.
The fossil record is distinctly lacking in foot and hand bones, according to lead author Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University, UK.
“The reason is that carnivores like to eat hands and feet,” Professor Bennett told BBC News. “Once the flesh is gone there’s a lot of little bones that don’t get preserved, so we know very little about the evolution of hands and feet on our ancestors.”
The footprints were found near Ileret in northern Kenya. The site, on a small hill, is made up of metres of sediment which the researchers carefully cleared away. What they found was two sets of footprints, one five metres deeper than the other, separated by sand, silt, and volcanic ash.
The team dated the surrounding sediment by comparing it with well-known radioisotope-dated samples from the region, finding that the two layers of prints were made at least 10,000 years apart.
Another critical feature that the series of footprints makes clear is how Homo erectus walked.
There is evidence of a heavy landing on the heel with weight transferred along the outer edge of the foot, progressing to the ball of the foot and lifting off with the toes.
“That’s very diagnostic of the modern style of walking, and the Laetoli prints don’t give that same character,” Professor Bennett said.
Map of Homo erectus range, including sites of fossil discovery
The finding is a critical clue for mapping out the evolution of modern humans, both in terms of physiology and also how H. erectus fared in its environment.
H. erectus was a great leap in evolution, showing increased variety of diet and of habitat, and was the first Homo species to make the journey out of Africa.
“There’s some suggestion out there that Homo erectus was able to scour the landscape for carcasses and meat…and was able to get there very quickly, had longer limbs and was much more efficient in terms of long distance travel,” Professor Bennett added.
“Now we’re also saying it had an essentially modern foot anatomy and function, which also adds to that story.”
Eddy Laing said
The BBC provides a fairly good summary of the paper (although, notably, the paper does not attribute the foot prints specifically to H. erectus), but to underscore the inductive process represented in their analysis of the track-ways, here is the concluding paragraph of Bennett et al’s paper:
“The Ileret footprints show the earliest evidence of a relatively modern human–like foot with an adducted hallux, a medial longitudinal arch, and medial weight transfer before push-off. Although we cannot conclude with certainty what hominin species made the footprints at FwJj14E or GaJi10, these modern human characteristics, in combination with the large size of the prints, are most consistent with the large size and tall stature evident in some Homo ergaster/erectus individuals (19, 20). These prints add to the anatomical (19, 20, 23) and archaeological (24, 25) evidence pointing to a major transition in human evolution with the appearance of hominins with long lower limbs, conferring advantages at a lower energetic cost (26), and archaeological indications of activities in a variety of ecological settings and the transport of resources over long distances (27). These lines of evidence, together with the earliest evidence of a relatively modern foot anatomy and function, support the hypothesis that this was a hominin with a larger home range related to increasing average body size and enhanced dietary quality (28). These factors add to an emerging picture of the paleobiology of H. ergaster/erectus that suggests a shift in cultural and biological adaptations relative to earlier hominins.”
In other words, the track-ways provide an example of one ‘fossilized behavior’, sixty-thousand generations (1.5 Ma) ago.
(references cited above)
19. C. B. Ruff, A. Walker, in The Nariokotome Homo erectus Skeleton, A. C. Walker, R. E. F. Leakey, Eds. (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993), pp. 234–265.
20. H. M. McHenry, K. Coffing, Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 29, 125 (2000).
23. B. G. Richmond, L. C. Aiello, B. A. Wood, J. Hum. Evol. 43, 529 (2002).
24. M. J. Rogers, J. W. K. Harris, C. S. Feibel, J. Hum. Evol. 27, 139 (1994). [CrossRef] [ISI]
25. B. L. Pobiner, M. J. Rogers, C. M. Monahan, J. W. K. Harris, J. Hum. Evol. 55, 103 (2008).
26. H. Pontzer, J. Exp. Biol. 210, 1752 (2007).
27. D. R. Braun, J. W. K. Harris, D. N. Maina, Archaeometry 10.1111/j.1475-4754.2008.00399 (2008).
28. S. C. Antón, W. R. Leonard, M. L. Robertson, J. Hum. Evol. 43, 773 (2002).
rowlandkeshena said
Great article Mike. As an anthropologist with an affinity for palaeoanthropology I always get a kick out of seeing the latest evidence for how we as modern humans emerged on the scene.
I just wanted to comment on one thing with regards to your intro to the piece though. You said:
“In the 19th century, as scientific thinkers adopted the theory of human evolution, there was a lot of speculation about what came first, how the remarkable and distinctive package of human features appeared. Some thought that the break from other primates came with higher intelligence — that we emerged from a specially intelligent ape. (This view gave rise to the Piltdown Man hoax, which was disproven as it became clear that higher intelligence developed in leaps over time in human evolution).”
With regards to the Piltdown Man hoax, perhaps as much, or even more so, European racism towards Africans and other non “white” peoples played a part in the hoax. Along with the debate over whether increased brain size or habitual bipedalism was the key to humans diverging from our ape ancestors, there was also an equally heated debate over where exactly humans first emerged from. The evidence, now and then, points to Africa, but many European scientists and anthropologists were also racists and Eurocentrists, and at the height of the European imperial conquest of the now Global South many simply could not accept that man first emerged from Africa. They were committed to the theory that man first emerged from Europe. The two ideas, that humans first came from Europe, and that larger cranial capacity came first (which played into further European racism about the supposed inferior intellect of non-whites), came together in helping to perpetrate the Piltdown Man hoax.
Adrienne said
Very exciting news, and more vindication of what we already understood.
I suspect we’ll be hearing from the Evangelicals/Dominionists that this is yet another trick that “God” has “planted” in order to “test” the faithful within a world “he created” in the magical blink of an eye a mere 6000 years ago.
This seems to stem from an incredibly strange phenomena that a friend of mine likes to call: Fear and Loathing Of Their Wild Inner Monkey.
:^)
Mike E said
Rowland writes:
There is much truth to what you write. It was widely believed (and argued) in Europe that humans had emerged in Eurasia (with considerable thought on the middle east, and perhaps eden). And this was true despite the fact that Darwin (for example) speculated (even before fossils emerged) that origin was more likely in Africa, where the majority of the primate relatives were concentrated. (I.e. for scientific reasons, there was always a good reason to look to Africa).
But the Piltdown Hoax did not JUST take place in the context of that one controversy….
At the time of the Piltdown discovery, 1912, two other things were in the air:
First conflicts between Germany and Britain were moving into intensifying conflict, that would (shortly) erupt into the first world war. As part of that, there was conflict in all kinds of domains (not just the key ones involving colonies and navies).
Second, in the particular field of paleoanthropology, the ball had been in the German court: Paleoanthropology started with the discovery of Neanderthal remains — which, as the name reveals, happened in the Neander valley of Germany. This happened near Dusseldorf in August 1856, three years before Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. (There were early discoveries of Neanderthal bones, but they had not reached scientific attention before the German discovery). By the early 1900s a number of discoveries were being found in France.
In short, it is widely believed that the Piltdown Hoax got easy acceptance in Britain because of the emergence of sharpening patriotic fervor (reflected in the scientific community by a craving for a BRITISH early human discovery.)
It is valuable to explore the role of reactionary and imperialist ideology in the clouding of scientific work (as Gould does in “the mismeasure of man”) — and certainly (as Rowland points out) European racism towards Africa (and a visceral dislike of the “African origins” thesis) played a role.
But we don’t live in a binary world (where the only contradiction is “north-south” or where the only reactionary ideology is white racism). We also live in a world where there are interimperialist rivalries… that also play a role (and often a significant one) both in driving science and in clouding scientific objectivity. (This often comes up in the realm of history of science, where various imperialist countries “claim” discoveries in highly suspect or contradictory ways.)
It is also worth pointing out that there is, today, still a school of thought that rejects African origins, and that its popularity rests heavily on nationalist claims: In China, there is still a semi-official upholding of the “multi-regional development” theory.
Since the 1990s, the “Recent African Origins” theory has become the accepted theory.
There are, to some extent, scientifc reasons why there continues to be a debate over this. But from what I can tell, much of it seems rooted in narrow nationalist Chinese pride in the “Peking man” and the early discovery of hominid remains in china — and the belief that Chinese (Han) people developed independently from Homo Erectus (while other human races and nationalities developed from homo erectus in their regions) — with (included in the theory) an assumption of considerable sharing of DNA over time that prevented speciation.
So there is an irony here:
Originally, it was white racism that helped produce a controversy (and a blind spot) in regard to African origins.
In the current debate over African origins, there is an element of “third world pride” of a chinese kind (which has its own overtones of racism toward African people in the way it spontaneously emerges).
BobH said
This is off-topic, but last night my local PBS affiliate played a BBC “Horizons” episode about the origins of civilization. It focused on the debate among archaeologists and anthropologists whether warfare was the driving force for the origin of civilization, giving a lot of airtime to an American archaeologist Jonathon Haas who’s a big proponent of the warfare idea.
They then focused on the recently excavated remains of the first know city in Peru, at Caral, circa 2,600BC. A Peruvian archeologist, Ruth Shady, basically proved that agriculture, irrigation and trade played the key role in urbanization, and that there were *no* signs of warfare or a warrior culture.
This was practically begging for a historical materialist interpretation, but that’s a bit much to expect for TV.
rowlandkeshena said
You bring up a good point about the role of inter-imperialist rivalries Mike, I have no idea why that slipped my mind. Regardless it is good that you pointed out quite clearly the role of English/British nationalism in the story of the Piltdown Hoax.
As for the out of Africa vs multi-regional, at last I checked, there was still debate going on over the topic. It is true that that most anthropologists, palaeoanthropologists and palaeontologists, including me, do accept the out of Africa hypothesis, but there is evidence for multi-regional as well, especially coming from more recent genetic studies, and we still get taught both in our introductory level courses on human evolution (compare this for example to the fact that no one teaches the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, as it has been firmly supplanted by the Savannah Hypothesis). It is interesting to note though, as you pointed out, that in the case of countries like China there is a kind of nationalist pride driving semi-official support for the multi-regional hypothesis.
Muqeem said
Creationist and Darwinists
Can any body tell me? Who has made the perfect, mathematical and complex laws of Physics, laws of Chemistry and laws of biology , complex reproductive system in human and animal and plants ?. Scientists are only discovering these laws and in through obeying these law making some imperfect or semi perfect things. Yet the scientists have discovered a tiny part of the Creator’s innovative world. 99% yet to be explored. Keeping in view only a stupid or illogical persons can deny the perfect, and the wise Creator.
The Darwin has proposed a theory not fact . His tautology could not be proved by any undoubtedly/real true scientific evidence/fact. After studying 10,000 fossils, Harun Yahya (click here to explore) a Turkish biologist has challenged all Darwinists of the world to produce a single intermediate fossil, he will pay US$100 billion . He has proved that every species appeared in perfect shape and disappeared and new specie appeared in perfect shape. No incomplete bird can survive and incomplete eye can see. A half build eye and half build wing cannot see and cannot fly.
Survival of the fittest? Why love existence? Why a mother dies for her child?, Why A perfect family system of Honey bee functions?. Why Peacock beautiful colors appeared?. Darwinists have failed miserably to explain the facts of creation. So fact of existence of creator of a perfect, very beautiful and complex creation is just like Sun on the sky but blind cannot see.
Click to watch video : Death of Darwinism and Win of Creationists
Click to watch video : Fossil Record Prove Creationism
Click to watch Video : Collapse to Ethism
Click to Watch video : Disasters Darwinism Brought to Humanity
Indeed Creation and ordering of the universe is seen as an act of prime mercy for which all creatures sing God’s glories and bear witness to God’s unity and lordship. According to the Islamic teachings, God exists without a place. According to the Qur’an, “No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision. God is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things” (Qur’an 6:103)
rowlandkeshena said
I don’t whether or not Muqeem is a troll or not, but I’ll bite.
Easiest part first, the transitional fossils bit. To put it simply, any denial of the existence of transitional fossils tends to be a mix of obscurantism and bold-face lying. For example, we have loads of transitional fossils showing the development of humans and their ancestors from our most recent common ancestor with the Pan (Chimp) line, so a common tactic is to say “well show me the transitional forms between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens.” It’s part of a strategy where creationists basically want evolutionary theorists to provide what amounts to fossils for every tiny change that happens from form to form. There is of course also just outright denial that these forms exist, or that they are anything by horribly deformed humans.
I worked in a palaeoanthropology laboratory for a while three years ago while I was taking my courses on human evolution and I literally got to handle on a weekly basis the skulls of our ancestors, so if one wants some transitional forms, how about the Ardipithecine line (5.5–4.4 Ma) and Ar. kadabba and Ar. ramidus, followed by the Australopithecine line (4–2 Ma) and Au. anamensis, Au. afarensis and Au. africanus, moving onto finally the Homo line (2 Ma–present) which includes Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo ergaster, Homo georgicus, Homo antecessor, Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens idaltu and Homo sapiens sapiens (us).
However, best of all is the fact that there are, for example, Homo erectus fossils towards the early part of that particular species existence that look more like Homo cepranensis and ones from the later period that look more like Homo heidelbergensis, thereby actually showing us that all species are constantly in a state of evolutionary transition, and not in an unchanging, static state. For a more modern example, Homo sapiens sapiens is currently undergoing a major speciation event, the loss of our third molars.
As for the bit about “No incomplete bird can survive and incomplete eye can see. A half build eye and half build wing cannot see and cannot fly,” Irreducible complexity has been soundly defeated as a proposed serious problem to evolutionary theory. For example the eye, which was upheld since the times of the Ancient Greek idealistic philosophers as an example of the working of an intelligent designer, has now had its development from most primitive to most developed has been quite well shown, starting with the most basic sort of photosensitive cells to the camera lens like modern mammalian eye. The eye, specifically the cephalopod and vertebrate eyes, is also an excellent example of convergent evolution, which describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages, as the vertebrate camera eye is an outgrowth of the brain, while the cephalopod eye formed as invaginations of the body surface.
Now a series of rapid fire questions, “Survival of the fittest? Why love existence? Why a mother dies for her child?, Why A perfect family system of Honey bee functions?. Why Peacock beautiful colors appeared?. Darwinists have failed miserably to explain the facts of creation. So fact of existence of creator of a perfect, very beautiful and complex creation is just like Sun on the sky but blind cannot see.”
To start, if I am reading the poster right, I think is some sort of reference to the fact that evolutionary theory does not explain the existence of sort of objective morality. This is a bit of philosophical reasoning for the existence of god/ess(s/es) I have encountered from a number of creationists / intelligent design proponents, including well known apologists like William Lane Craig (who I had the (mis?)fortune of meeting and speaking with last year), which tends to go like this: objective morality exists, only a divine source can be the source of objective reality, therefore, ipso facto, god/ess(s/es) exist. The first, and real problem with this line of reasoning has to do with the existence of objective morality. Not to sound ethically relative or anything, but objective morality emanating teleological sources does not exist. Rather morality arises from the material needs of human communities, both socially and evolutionarily (see Peter Kropotkin’s classic “Mutual Aid, A Factor in Evolution). With regards to apologists like Craig I find their philosophical reasoning tends, if anything, to be based on fear. They don’t like a universe where an objective moral score board, with ultimate rewards for a high score and eternal punishments for losing, does not exist. It makes them uncomfortable, so they just make the leap to faith that they do indeed exist. Flowing on from this leap, they then reason the existence of god/ess(s/es) based on the supposed existence of objective morality.
As for the natural beauty of things like a peacock’s tail feathers, or the Grand Canyon, or (for the stellar minded) the Eagle Nebula being proofs of the work of a divine designer, there are so many problems that it is hard to list them all. First of all, beauty is not an objective standard removed from human, or individual, affairs. You just can’t say “I think a peacock’s colourful tail feathers are ‘objectively’ beautiful.” You just can’t, such a statement is relativistic and subjective. The problem’s of then using such things as evidence of a creator then become eminently clear.
As for evolutionary theory not having succeeded in demonstrating why a peacock’s feathers are so colourful, or why bees make their hives the way they do, in fact it has, and quite clearly so, For the peacock, a more colourful, vibrant set of tail feathers is a sign of fitness (in the evolutionary biology sense) and hence helps it to attract a mate. As this happens over the generations, via the process of natural selection, further generations of peacock’s development more and more colourful plumage.
Finally, even though there were no links, I will just take a quick second to comment on what I assume the last video’s topic is. Simply, Social Darwinism and its manifestation in the eugenics movement and most intensely in Nazism is a perversion of Darwinian theory. It was Darwin himself who said “If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin” in the chapter on slavery in his “Voyage of the Beagle.” Furthermore, the implications, or possible implications, of a scientific theory do not, in fact, disprove that theory. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Chornobyl do not disprove Atomic Theory, just as the philosophical problems caused by certain interpretations of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity for dialectical materialism as it was codified in the USSR does disprove either of those theories. So, even if Social Darwinism was a legitimate interpretation of evolutionary theory, that still doesn’t mean that evolutionary theory is somehow wrong.
Zack said
You’re using the colloquial meaning of the word “theory”, not the scientific meaning.
“In the sciences, a scientific theory (also called an empirical theory) comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed to conform to available empirical data about such observations, and is put forth as a principle or body of principles for explaining a class of phenomena.” source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory, or just google it (it’s insanely easy)
More to the point… theories, scientifically speaking, are a shit-load of facts put together. Facts based on evidence such as the ones mentioned above by comrade Rowlandkeshena.
rowlandkeshena said
Thanks for pointing that out Zack, I got so caught up in the other stuff that I totally missed that one.
future's ours said
I would like to point out some ideas we should consider while debating about Darwinism:
1. We communists, as materialists, know that in the history of philosophy, the main contradiction is between materialism an idealism. We are, or followers that matter has evolved, or gone through a long series of changes, or followers of some divien intervention.
2. Since Darwin, -and since Hawking -, the creationists (or idealists) have tried to undermind them, in order to defend their view of divine intervention. As far as I know, the Catholic Church, and very aggressively, Jehova’s witnesses, that’s a religious sect.
3. Darwin has some flaws, and there are new ideas and new researches that advance further his theory. But to deny Darwin is equivalent to embrace Creationism. Are we, as communists, as materialists, ready to do that? Are we ready to accept that there is a foreign hand a divine mind interving in this earthly process?
4. So, it is important that when we weigh science, biology, evolution, as compared to philosophy, philosophy definitely weighs more. Philosophy – materialism- will definitely prevent us from going astray, and to ponder on our discoveries.
Future’s ours
Mike E said
Future’s Ours writes:
Do “we” know that? How? Why is that “the main contradiction” in the whole history of philosophy? Where was that analyzed and proven?
The fight for scientific materialism was perhaps the burning contradiction in the period around the French revolution as modern scientific thinking broke with medievalism. But is that still the case? Will it somehow be the case forever? How likely is that?
Can anyone assert that simply, without bothering to make an analysis of living philosophy and its contradictions?
This whole view implies that the path is known, and the main task is to stay on the path.
But perhaps we NEED to go astray from previous paths, and perhaps philosophy (which is not equatable to materialism in some simplistic way) is a means for shaking up our minds, breaking us out of ruts, and precisely “leading us astray” in the work of new insights and synthesis.
future's ours said
Mike,
I agree with you about your way of saying “going astray”.
Of course it is good to go astray and to look at things whatever way, even the way the idealists tell us to see.
Because reality is stubborn, and it will tell us that the world we live in is Darwinist, and not Creationist.
But, are we not witnesses of the deathly struddgle between materialism and idealism? Between Darwinism and Creationism? Don’t those Jehova’s witnesses wish that Darwin never existed? Didn’t the Catholic Church try to change Hawking’s Big Bang theory?
If we try to be too open, too eclectic, too benevolent to their point of view, aren’t we giving them chances to destroy us?
I really am not so sure that this struggle has already finished. Who won anyway?
Mike E said
I see many struggles going on philosophically — and they certainly don’t all fall into categories of “materialism vs. idealism.” Is the fight between Darwinism and Creationism really a cutting edge struggle OF PHILOSOPHY today? In my view, it may be a kind of political battle, but is philosophically rather dated.
Also, we need to make a distinction between the philosophical conflicts that are moving philosophy (and revolutionary theory) forward… and those philosophical conflicts that wrack society as a whole. Creationism may be an issue on the social political stage, but not in the conflicts that are most fruitful for the advancement of revolutionary theory.
My main point is that we should not be so impressed by Stalin’s or Mao’s 1930′s verdict dividing all of philosophy into materialist and idealist — as if such statements should be accepted (forever) as the state of affairs. There is a lot of water under the bridge — and communists have been (generally) pretty oblivious to the developments and new insights emerging from philosophy as such.
I never argue for ecletics. And certainly not for “benevolence’ toward reactionary views .
But i do believe that revolutionary theory should be an open project, not a closed one — meaning both that it is constantly developing, and also that it serious engages with the thoughts and controversies of the surrounding society. The point of being open is not to invite a muddle, but to exit inherited muddles, and to transcend new problems, and learning from the larger projects going on around us.
And I am not arguing that the fight with medieval idealism is somehow “already finished” — it is obviously ongoing in society, and even (to an unfortunate extent) among communists. But does it remain “the main contradictions” until it is somehow “finished”? And are such conflicts of human investigations ever “finished” — or do they develop, with new contradictions emerging.
My basic point is that the intense debates and explorations in philosophy (including revolutionary trends in philosophy) do not simply fall out as “materialism vs. idealism” — those are not permanently the terms. Just one example: Communist theory has not (as far as I’ve seen) come up with a clear and sharp differentiation between itself and scientific positivism.
What does it mean for Marxists to claim to be “scientific” without ever bothering to delve into what modern science believes philosophically, and how THAT relates to the revolutionary project. And is that exploration simply some new manifestation of an old collision between “materialism vs. idealism” as some mechanical and diletantist figures contend? I don’t think they have a clue (or frankly any real interest in getting a clue).