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The eminent British epistemologist Roy Bhaskar opposes a new version of critical realism to prevailing empiricist orthodoxy. Scientific laws cannot claim universality unless some kind of natural necessity is assumed. But only scientific experimentation can create closed systems where constant conjunctions apply. The world is an open, stratified system. Bhaskar can thus appropriate the Hegelian dialectic. Reinterpreted through Marx, Hegel's dialectic gives rise to a variety of configurations, topologies, and perspectives. Originating in basic drives, it is transformed, through a logic of desire, into a philosophy of emancipation.