Defending Materialism

Greg Michaelson is Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.Katarina Kolozova is senior researcher and full professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje, North Macedonia.Paul Cockshott is a Marxist economist and computer scientist, formerly Reader in Computing Science University of Glasgow, Scotland.

• 1. Introduction2. Philologico-philosophical Examination of the Conceptual Material proffered by Greek Antiquity and the Trans-millennial Exchanges it has Foregrounded 3. Classical Atomism4. Dialectics, Materialism, Change From Epicurus to Marx via Aristotle5. Historical and Mechanical Materialists6. Idealist Reprise and Responses 7. Logic and Materialism 8. Logic and Dialectical Materialism9. The Crisis in Logic and the Apotheosis of Anti-formalism10. Language, Automata and Meaning11. Dialectical and Stochastic MaterialismsAppendix: How the Ptolemaic Method Works

Defending Materialism is a monumental effort. Its commitment to leave hardly a stone unturned in its account of materialist thought from the classical to the contemporary age, paying equal attention to philosophy, science and logic, is, unmatched. The sheer breadth of the task reminds us that to honor, to defend, the scientificity of Marx’s work requires reading science and philosophy with unstinting fidelity to the difficulty of each.