John Desmond Bernal: Most

“If Engels had not been the constant companion in arms of Marx in the revolutionary struggles of the 19th century, there is no doubt that he would be remembered chiefly as one of the foremost scientist-philosophers of the century. It was an ironical tribute paid to the correctness of his views as to the relations between politics and ideology that he suffered complete neglect from the scientists of the Victorian age. But time now has taken its revenge, and Engels’ contemporary views on 19th century science seem to us now in the 20th far more fresh and filled with understanding than those of the professional philosophers of science of his day, who for the most part are completely forgotten, while the few that linger on, such as Lange and Herbert Spencer, are only quoted as examples of the limitations of their times.”

John Desmond Bernal

Bernal (1930s) "Labour Monthly Pamphlets, No. 6" (No date). Online ( here http://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1930s/engels.htm) on Marxists Internet Archive (2008).

Age , Quotes , Understanding , Revenge

“One of the questions on which clarity of thinking is now most necessary is that of the relation between the methods of science and of Marxist philosophy. Although much has already been written on the subject, yet there is still an enormous amount of confusion and contradictory statement.”

John Desmond Bernal

J.D. Bernal (1937) "Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science" in: Science and Society, Volume II, No. 1, Winter 1937; Online ( here http://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1930s/dsams.htm) on Marxists Internet Archive (2002).

Question , Thinking , Science

“World Encyclopaedia. -- Behind these lies another prospect of greater and more permanent importance; that of an attempt at a comprehensive and continually revised presentation of the whole of science in its social context, an idea most persuasively put forward by H. G. Wells in his appeal for a World Encyclopaedia of which he has already given us a foretaste in his celebrated outlines. The encyclopaedic movement was a great rallying point of the liberal revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The real encyclopaedia should not be what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has degenerated into, a mere mass of unrelated knowledge sold by high-pressure salesmanship, but a coherent expression of the living and changing body of thought; it should sum up what is for the moment the spirit of the age…
The original French Encyclopaedia which did attempt these things was, however, made in the period of relative quiet when the forces of liberation were gathering ready to break their bonds. We have already entered the second period of revolutionary struggle and the quiet thought necessary to make such an effort will not be easy to find, but some effort is worth making because the combined assault on science and humanity by the forces of barbarism has against it, as yet, no general and coherent statement on the part of those who believe in democracy and the need for the people of the world to take over the active control of production and administration for their own safety and welfare.”

John Desmond Bernal

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 306-307. Chapter SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION. The Function of Scientific Publication. See also World Brain

People , Age , World , Democracy

“The present aristocracy of western culture, at the very moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country.”

John Desmond Bernal

Source: The world, the flesh & the devil (1929) (1969), p. 68

World , Country

“The problem of the re-organization of science will not be solved by administrative or financial changes. It will also be necessary to reorganise in a most comprehensive way the whole apparatus of scientific communication.”

John Desmond Bernal

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 292

Way , Communication , Problem , Science