Socialism Utopian and Scientific

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft) is an extract from Anti-Dühring, a polemic against philosopher Eugen Dühring published by Friedrich Engels in 1878. Composed of the introduction and Part 3, Chapter 2 of Anti-Duhring, it was first published in France in 1880. The title Socialism: Utopian and Scientific was adopted for the English publication in 1892.Show Excerptuestion, why in the great astronomer's Mécanique céleste the Creator was not even mentioned, proudly replied: Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse. But nowadays, in our evolutionary conception of the universe, there is absolutely no room for either a Creator or a Ruler; and to talk of a Supreme Being shut out from the whole existing world, implies a contradiction in terms, and, as it seems to me, a gratuitous insult to the feelings of religious people.Again, our agnostic admits that all our knowledge is based upon the information imparted to us by our senses. But, he adds, how do we know that our senses give us correct representations of the objects we perceive through them? And he proceeds to inform us that, whenever he speaks of objects or their qualities, he does in reality not mean these objects and qualities, of which he cannot know anything for certain, but merely the impressions which they have produced on his senses. Now, this line of reasoning seems