In this episode, Mac Parker and Anatarah Bin AlKaf have a casual chat on Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins seminal book the Dialectical Biologist. They cover why this book remains a key contribution to Marxist theory, philosophy of nature, and philosophy of technology. Along the way, the conversation tackles the influence of Friedrich Engels on Marxist science historiography and science critique from Boris Hessen to the Max Planck institute’s historical epistemology research program. Our discussion culminates in a call for an integrative approach—one that unites political philosophy and science, the local and the global—in the spirit of the dialectical biologists’ vision.

The books discussed were (or alluded to):

- The Dialectical Biologist (1985) by Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin

- Biology Under the Influence (2007) by by Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin

- The Social and Economic Roots of the Scientific Revolution (2009) ed. Gideon Freudenthal and Peter McLaughlin

- Abstraction and Representation (1996) by Peter Damerow

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