facts

When you read a work of history, always listen out for the buzzing. If you can detect none, either you are tone deaf or your historian is a dull dog. The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use—these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. – Carr

sophism and facts.

Sophism: A series of clever arguments to justify anthing you like.

Immediately jumping to conclusions - nevermind the facts, “our preconceived idea is this” - is an extreme form of mental lazyness and has nothing to do with Marxism.
In das Kapital, you find a mass of facts. In fact, Marx doesn’t give a general introduction in the book: “… because it seems objectionable to me, to prejudge the results in advance.”
You must study things carefully - scientific attitude - collect all the neccessary facts and figures.
Facts are important, but facts alone are not sufficient for understanding - There are definite limits to empiricism / the emperical method.

• Books with a whole collections of facts are created. Facts which allegedly prove this and that.
  • … but facts do not select themselves. The same facts one can prove many different things.
  • You need to establish a connection between all the facts, generalize to internal, dynamic relationships, processes and tendencies: From fact to law … in order to make predictions
  • not necessarily precise predictions

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A mass of undigested facts is not an analysis!

→ From the facts to the law / From the particular to the general.
→ AND back from the general to the particular

Beyond the facts, I looked for laws. Naturally, this lead me - more than once - to hasty and incorrect generalizations. Especially in my younger years, when my knowledge - book aquired - and my experience in life were still inadequate. But in every sphere, barring none, I felt that I could only move and act when I held in my hand the thread of the general. - Trotzki

• Beware of hasty generalization → “from the particular to the general”
• Theory is necessary for practice → “from the general to the particular”

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This reminds me of a clever bit of psychology (and clear thinking) employed by John Maddox, the former editor of Nature. Maddox had little sympathy for authors who wanted to title their paper “Evidence for…,” and always insisted that a paper’s title should describe the facts that the work really established, rather than what those facts might possibly be taken to imply. If authors objected, as they often did, Maddox offered to leave “Evidence for” in the title, so long as it was, for clarity, modified to “Inconclusive Evidence for.” I don’t believe there were any takers.

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