Methodology

Theory on methods by which men know and change the world. There are different levels of methodology, including philosophical methodology, general scientific methodology, and concrete scientific methodology. Philosophical methodology is the theory on most general methods for knowing the world, reshaping the world, and exploring to achieve the coincidence of the subjective and objective world; general scientific methodology is the theory on methods with certain general significance in various sciences and applied to multiple disciplines; concrete scientific methodology is the theory on methods in a concrete field and discipline. Among them, philosophical methodology is the most fundamental methodology, which has a guiding significance for both general and concrete scientific methodology and general and concrete scientific methodology are the basis for the formation of philosophical methodology. General scientific methodology lies between philosophical methodology and concrete scientific methodology. There is a universal, particular, and individual relation between the objects of these three levels of methodology.

Philosophical methodology is in agreement with the world outlook. A philosophical methodology takes a certain world outlook as its ground, and as the world outlook is, so the methodology will be. There is no methodology that is divorced from the world outlook, nor is there a world outlook that does not have methodological significance. But the agreement of world outlook and methodology is not a simple identity, does not mean that understanding a world outlook is tantamount mastering a methodology, and to achieve unity between the two certain conditions are needed.

Marxist philosophy is both a scientific world outlook and a scientific methodology, the unity of scientific world outlook and methodology. It has revealed the universal essence and the universal laws of the world and achieved the combination of materialism and dialectics. Marxist philosophy upholds the unity of theory and practice, not only to interpret the world in a scientific manner, but rather to change it in a scientific manner. Marxist philosophy is both a method of theoretical knowledge and a method of revolutionary practice, a unified, complete and scientific methodology.

Dialectical and historical materialism is the scientific theoretical system of Marxist philosophy and also the fundamental methodology of Marxist philosophy. Dialectical and historical materialism is the scientific world outlook and methodology of the proletariat. The unity of the scientific, the class and the revolutionary nature is one of the outstanding characteristics of Marxism. The fundamental principles of dialectical and historical materialism have the significance of world outlook and methodology at the same time. These fundamental principles require men to start out from the objective reality, seek the truth from facts, uphold the thinking methods of materialism and dialectics, grasp things from their universal interconnection and eternal motion, use the method of contradiction analysis to know the trend of development and conditions of transformation of contradictions of things themselves, and to further their transformation and push forward their development.