For Engels (1925, 469), such reductive approaches are a form of “naïve materialism”.
Engels criticises mechanical materialism that does not see and analyse the qualitative and dialectical aspects of the world. Engels in this passage refers to the first part of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia, where Hegel discusses dialectical logic. The reference is to the discussion of pure quantity as an aspect of quantity. Hegel writes in this passage that
when we look closely at the exclusively mathematical standpoint that is here referred to (according to which quantity, which is a definite stage of the logical Idea, is identified with the Idea itself) we see that it is none other than the standpoint of Materialism. (Hegel 1830 [1991], 159, addition to §99)
He stresses that “freedom, law, ethical life […] cannot be measured and computed or expressed in a mathematical formula” (Hegel 1830 [1991], 159, addition to §99) and that
we know very little about these things and the distinction between them, if we simply stick to a ‘more or less’ of this kind, and do not advance to some grasp of specific determinacy, which is here in the first place qualitative.
(Hegel 1830 [1991], 160, addition to §99)
Hegel and Engels remind us that computational social science cannot grasp society’s dialectical relations that are not easily quantifiable. It cannot understand, model, calculate freedom, law, moral judgement, love, etc. Its analyses are one-dimensional. Critical social science should certainly adopt and experiment with data-driven methods, but not at the expense of the engagement with and application of critical theory (Fuchs 2017a). Digital data gathered on social media and other data-intensive environments can reveal important aspects of life in contemporary societies. What is needed are not simply new forms of prediction and quantification, but critical, creative and experimental methods that combine aspects of quantitative data with a qualitative understanding of humans’ motivations, experiences, interpretations, norms and values (Fuchs 2017a). Whereas Marx and Engels were social scientists who wrote the Communist Manifesto, some contemporary social scientists write manifestos for new positivism and many more believe in what such manifestos postulate, which results in the institutionalisation of computational social science and big funding for big data-based methods and project. Big data analytics and computational social science miss the difference between society and nature that Engels points out. The danger is that they reduce society to quantitative data and neglect its indeterminate, open, dialectical qualities.
To speak of “scientific socialism” doesn’t automatically and not necessarily apply a mechanistic and deterministic theory of society that assumes that capitalism automatically breaks down and society is determined by natural economic laws. The scientific understanding of socialism is not a natural science applied society but rather a social science of society (Gesellschaftswissenschaft) that stresses the key role of the conscious human being, social practices, social production, and social relations in society. Natural science theories are not necessarily deterministic and mechanistic. The point is that in the social sciences, the positivist tradition treated society based on natural science methods and mathematics, focuses on pure quantification and assumes that everything can be calculated.
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Theorists