Notes from the Underground as a scientific novel

Abstract

Notes from the Underground, by Dostoevsky, has been highlighted in scientific literature as a work that calls into question the rationalism of his time. Furthermore, it has been studied from psychoanalytic and materialist paradigms by a series of contemporary researchers. Viewed as a scientific novel (specifically epistemological), we operate an epistemological inversion: we will use the theoretical framework of the underground man to study the methods (notably psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism) that were used to study him [the underground man]. As results, we demonstrate psychoanalysis as a pseudoscience and dialectical materialism when used in historical sciences as a protoscience. We conclude by identifying in the “underground method” the characteristic features of skepticism as a philosophical basis for scientific practice.

Keywords: Russian literature. Scientific methodology. Skepticism.