Background
Kopnin, Pavel Vasil'evich was born on January 27, 1922 in Moscow province, till June 1971.
Kopnin, Pavel Vasil'evich was born on January 27, 1922 in Moscow province, till June 1971.
Moscow Institute of Philological and Literary Studies. Moscow State University and Moscow Pedagogical Institute, /nfls: Marx and Lenin.
194762, taught Philosophy at various institutions in Moscow. Tomsk and Kiev; 1962-1968. Director, Institute of Philosophy of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev.
1968-1971. Director. Institute of Philosophy of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at Moscow State University.
Kopnin’s many original investigations in the theory of knowledge and the methodology of science generated much interest in those fields in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and helped to establish epistemology as an identifiable discipline within dialectical materialism, dealing with the relation between subjective mind and the °bjective world. Kopnin accepted the Leninist theory of cognition as the mental reflection of an independently existing reality, but he believed that such reflection is not passive but active, even creative: he argues that, because of the mind’s ability to synthesize and project, creativity has et)ual importance with reflection as a principle of Marxist-Leninist epistemology. Kopnin also accepts Lenin’s thesis of the unity °f dialectics, logic and the theory of knowledge, interpreting that thesis to mean that a dialectical *°gic is the proper Marxist epistemology: to deal adequately with the objective dialectical processes ln the real world the mind must utilize a corresponding subjective dialectic. Kopnin thus devoted much attention to the elaboration of dialectical logic, particularly in its relation to scientific investigation. He did not, however, reJect formal logic, which he regarded as a different but legitimate and valuable approach to the analysis of cognition, complementing dialectical logic. Kopnin is credited with initiating the serious study of the logic and methodology of science utttong Soviet philosophers. Although he believed •hat philosophy should develop a general methodology for scientific investigation, he gave Priority to the findings of science over philosophical assumptions and argued that the categories °f dialectical materialism require continual adjustment to scientific advances. He was an early uefender of the view that dialectical materialism can accommodate finitist models of the universe.