Marxist scientific theory on the general laws of the emergence and development of knowledge. In epistemology, there have always been two fundamentally opposing lines of thought: one is “to proceed from things to sensation and thought”, i.e., the materialist line; the other is “to proceed from thought and sensation to things”, i.e., the idealist line. Materialist epistemology holds that the material world is an independent being apart from human consciousness, and that knowledge is the reflection of things or phenomena of the external world in the human brain. Idealist epistemology holds that the material world is the product of the spirit, and that knowledge is either a priori idea or reason, or inherent in the human brain, or the process of self-knowledge of the absolute spirit. In addition, there is an agnosticism which holds that only human sensations are knowable, and that knowledge is the representation of the thing-in-itself acting on human senses, while the essence of the thing-in-itself cannot be known by man, which has raised the question of the unity of knowledge and objects, the subjective and the objective, i.e., the question of the universality of knowledge. Upholding the materialist theory of reflection, Marxist epistemology holds that the world can be known. But the old materialist theory of reflection was an intuitive theory of reflection, i.e., it regarded knowledge as a process in which the subject receives external stimuli passively, reactively, and conceived reflection as a static, passive activity similar to mirroring-like reflection. Therefore, old materialism could not scientifically interpret the question concerning the universality of the achievements of knowledge and reason. Marx pointed out: “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.” Apart from practice, man’s conscious agency, and without understanding the dependence of knowledge on social practice, it was incapable of understanding the dialectical nature of knowledge and could not conceive knowledge as a process in constant development. Marx and Engels, from the standpoint of social practice, have scientifically solved the problem of the source and essence of knowledge and founded the revolutionary and dialectical theory of dynamic reflection, thus consistently refuted agnosticism and idealistic transcendentalism…
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