this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
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I know that this is a communist forum but this is related I swear!

Basically, I want to become a better educated communist. Ofc I'm taking my time and learning all the classics. But we also need to learn... many other things (as a movement). One gap I've noticed online and in-person is that Marxist historiography for the feudal period in African and Asian regions is not commonly discussed (in English; I'm sure China has dissected all of China in Mandarin to hell and back lmao); this could be my lack of awareness but it could be a genuine research gap. Also, when I started showing up to things intermittently, a lot of people were like "wow a math guy that's rare." I tend to be a knowledge-hungry guy in general, I love learning.

This led me to have sort of multiple points of what I'd call "epistemic crises" (not existential crises, notably). It's all kind of a jumbled and terrible knot in my head that's difficult to untangle into words (because I know very little about epistemology, just like some basics from high school philosophy ages ago). Basically some Big Thoughts and Big Feelings.

So I've reached the conclusion that, if I'm to be ok with learning about the world, first I need to make peace with knowledge itself, and concepts like "I can't know most things" and "how do I learn who to put my trust in" and "when can one consider themselves educated enough to speak with authority as opposed to with naivete". Things like that.

So now I am here, and I have come to you strangers to beg for tomes. Or maybe just like one tome I'm a slow reader. Obviously a marxist approach to epistemology is preferred but I'll take anything.

Tl:dr; knowledge is cthulhu to me help me tame it

(PS: you might read this and think "this guy needs therapy!" you're right ๐Ÿ˜Ž but 1. For insurance reasons I'm cut loose for ~2-3 months, and 2. I find that when I encounter issues similar to this one, it's better in the long run to philosophy my way through them instead of psychology my way through them. idk someone should look into that lmao)

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[โ€“] plinky@hexbear.net 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

if you want generic overview what pet theories people bang on about, russell is fine for history of philosophy, cause some people genuinely inhabit 17th century seemingly.

if you want modern philosophy of science, search name larry laudan (history of science and his anti-realist conclusions) and his critics from model/structural realism or otherwise (ian hacking and others) (you have to have not completely forgotten history of science; reference or reread wikipedia a lot, because lots of arguments there are circling back to history of science and theories progressions as pointing to either reality or unreality of reference objects/ontologies etc) <- generally philosophy of science is rotating around several observations: (1) science is very successful at predicting and doing stuff (2) theories and models can be successful at predicting stuff but be completely ontologically wrong (see aether or early heat theories) (3) ontologically correct description might not be successful by itself (early atomism) (implicating myself with choice of words here btw, you can try to guess where as an exercise in your philosophical quest)