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To Lisa:
Of course much of the physics in DN is antique. Hey, the book was
written in the nineteenth century!
Note that many of his examples date from earlier and are actually
directly taken from Hegel himself.
Barkley Rosser
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Dialectics of Nature
Chris M. Sciabarra [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri, 14 Jun 1996 16:46:51 -0400
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On Fri, 14 Jun 1996 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> To Lisa:
> Of course much of the physics in DN is antique. Hey, the book
> was written in the nineteenth century!
> Note that many of his examples date from earlier and are actually
> directly taken from Hegel himself.
> Barkley Rosser
Barkley is right of course... actually, Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE (all 3
vols.) is filled with such musings, and Hegel himself, takes much
>from Aristotle's organicist analogies.
- Chris
==================================================
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Dialectics of Nature
Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fri, 14 Jun 1996 20:34:44 -0700 (PDT)
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However amateurish Engels's unpublished writings on the natural sciences may
have been, he doesn't deserve to be equated with pomo analogical word magic.
That is insulting and I won't stand for it. At the time when DIALECTICS OF
NATURE was published, people were still struggling, especially in the
English-speaking world, to figure out what dialectics really meant, in the
absence of a tradition and with only the Russians to follow. I would
suggest that you look for a good historical article that explains what
Engels was trying to do in the context of his time, and also remember that
Engels wasn't the one who made his exploratory work into a finished,
dogmatic philosophy. Remember too that it is not only Western Marxism that
challenged Engels: Lenin criticized Engels's examples of dialectics in
nature, so it was not he who froze Engels in stone either. To be
scandalized that others worshipped at the throne of Engels disregarding his
imperfections is one thing, but to be scandalized at Engels himself is to
read him through the lenses of Stalinism and thereby to compound the
problem.
I do not have the time to explore this matter, or to respond to DIALECTICS
OF NATURE specifically, but I would at least like to raise some issues that
might make the context more understandable.
I'm basing these remarks on general considerations, not on a reading of this
text in particular.
These are some of the battles that needed to be fought at the
time:
1. The battle against naive empiricism and mechanical materialism and a
disconnected, atomistic view of reality.
2. The need for a unified, coherent world-picture, that would connect all
phenomena, which was already under way within physics itself in the
understanding of thermodynamics, motion, electromagnetism in their various
manifestations.
3. The need to show that the universe undergoes development, qualitative
change, that it is not static and eternally fixeed in the state in which it
is now found.
4. The need for a non-reductive materialism that recognized qualitative
differences within in the material universe and a stratified conception of
the organization of matter, not merely unity of the universe, which itself
had been rendered in a mystical holist or reductive fashion, but also
qualitative difference, so that the natural sciences -- physics interpreted
in a purely quantitative manner -- could not be misused to explain social
processes. Before ideas of emergent evolution, emergent properties, general
systems, the theory of integrative levels, and related notions gained
currency, there was Engels.
A final note: to approach the world in a piecemeal fashion is always to fill
in the inevitable gaps with ideology. Engels too was aware of this and knew
what blockheads petty bourgeois minds were outside of their narrow
specialties. Only the working class movement sought to create a unified yet
non-mystical world-picture, neither mechanical materialist (i.e. reducing
our scientific ambition to mere measurement), nor holist nor
lebensphilosophie. Self-educated workers kept their Dietzgen in their
living rooms in place of the Bible. The significance of dialectical
materialism lies in the general world-picture of the universe organized on
several qualitative levels, from the physical to the chemical to the organic
to the social, and not in spurious examples of dialectical processes in
nature.
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Dialectics of Nature
lisa rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:50:24 +0000
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Adam:
> The Dialectics of Nature isn't a book or a pamphlet, but a series of
> strung together notes, sometimes properly worked small essays,
> sometimes just jottings in margins.
Lisa: I know that.
Adam:
> And I don't see that you can critisize Engel's for only knowing the
> physics of his time.
Lisa: I'm not.
[Adam remembers]... a longish article about
> how scientists who start off as materialists end up as mystics,
> because>
without dialectics they are unable to see their particular
specialism> as part of a whole. A contribution to the sociology of
science ?
Lisa: Good point, regarding the connections of everything in general.
I'm just not sure that the word "dialectics" is required to discuss
this or point it out. I think that Engels was observing the state of
science at the time, and could see these things happening. Physicists
were figuring out that various forms of energy were not immutably
separate different things, but were able to be converted into other
forms of energy, into each other, but not because Engels told them so.
Part of what DN seems to do is to look at the fascinating developments
in physics, an on-going, un-finished revolution in the understanding of
matter, energy, motion, the scales of things from planetary motion, to
earthly mechanics, the molecular motion of heat, to chemical reactions
between atoms - Engels looked at this work in progress and said 'Wow,
that's an example of dialectics!'
One of my questions was 'what's the point of calling it that?' Ralph's
post gave me some ideas, which I'll get to later.
I wonder if comparisons of Kant and Helmholtz and such were common at
the time - should that be called philosophy of science? I don't see
what it adds to science, in terms of furthering the solving of the
puzzles of physics. It _looks_ like a spurious parallel to me, but I'd
welcome any attempt to explain why it is not.
Adam:
> In general though, Lisa, you say you are a Marxist, or that you see
Marxist> thought as a useful set of ideas to work within. Well . . . I
haven't seen> any evidence at all of this, ever.
Lisa: I'm not very concerned with meeting your standards in this area,
whatever they are. I intend to remain thoroughly hard-headed and to
require some logical persuasion before pouncing upon "quantity into
quality" or anything else as some kind of generally useful idea, or core
principle of marxism. Calling me "not a marxist" is not helpful.
Engel's DN uses the evaporation of water as an example of "quantity into
quality" [which you cite] - this does not establish Q/Q as a generally
useful principle in my mind.
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Adam Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Lisa writes:
>
> One of my questions was 'what's the point of calling it that?' Ralph's
> post gave me some ideas, which I'll get to later.
>
> I wonder if comparisons of Kant and Helmholtz and such were common at
> the time - should that be called philosophy of science? I don't see
> what it adds to science, in terms of furthering the solving of the
> puzzles of physics. It _looks_ like a spurious parallel to me, but I'd
> welcome any attempt to explain why it is not.
>
Well, I think that any one particular analysis from a dialectical
materialist
point of view could be arrived at without that formal framework. A framework
which is useful, however, guides and helps organise investigation. I think
that dialectical materialism is such a useful framework for both social and
natural phenomena. I think the reason it is a useful framework is that
reality
really is, firstly material, and secondly a dynamic, changing whole made
up of many interacting parts. Many scientists, trapped within a more
classical
approach, seem surprised each time they rediscover this. Dialectical
materialism
would lead us to expect it.
> Adam:
> > In general though, Lisa, you say you are a Marxist, or that you see
Marxist> thought as a useful set of ideas to work within. Well . . . I
> haven't seen> any evidence at all of this, ever.
>
>
> Lisa:
> Engel's DN uses the evaporation of water as an example of "quantity into
> quality" [which you cite] - this does not establish Q/Q as a generally
> useful principle in my mind.
>
Of course that example wouldn't convince you of it in general. It's just one
aspect of a general phenomenon. Surely evolution in general would supply
countless
examples.
> Lisa: I'm not very concerned with meeting your standards in this area,
> whatever they are. I intend to remain thoroughly hard-headed and to
> require some logical persuasion before pouncing upon "quantity into
> quality" or anything else as some kind of generally useful idea, or core
> principle of marxism. Calling me "not a marxist" is not helpful
I didn't mean it as abuse. Some of my best friends are non Marxist radicals
!
It's just that I think you can approach any of the Marxist classics,
especially
those which rely on specialist knowledge which has become outdated, as
something
you can learn from, or something you can just slag off. So, you can ask,
what is
Engels trying to say here about the transformation of quantity into quality
? Or,
you can just dismiss it, saying "I can understand water boiling without
dialectics,
so what's the point ?"
And, I don't think it's such an outrageous thing to ask, "What do you mean
by
Marxism ? Do you consider yourself to be a Marxist, in the sense you choose
to define it ?"
Do you ?
I actually asked this question in order to establish some shared point of
reference,
which up till now any conversation between us lacked. It's a simple
statement of fact :
so far, nothing you have said about anything has shown any point of contact
between
Marxism and your ideas. [ Of course, this in itself does not invalidate any
single one
of them ]. Do you not think this observation is true ?
Adam.
Dialectics of Nature
lisa rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tue, 18 Jun 1996 01:03:59 +0000
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Well, Adam, I thought I _was_ asking just what it is that I can get from
DN. I'm asking you what is Engels saying about Q/Q and what is it based
on? No, I cannot produce examples from evolution, because I don't think
that way. But no matter how many "examples" one lists, that would not
constitute a demonstration of its general usefulness or validity, or
show how it is a better way to understand what is going on than some
other way of thinking. Examples alone do not explain things.
When I ask "so what?" that is not just to "dismiss it", I really want to
know.
Adam wrote: A framework
> which is useful, however, guides and helps organise investigation. I
think> that dialectical materialism is such a useful framework for both
social and> natural phenomena. I think the reason it is a useful
framework is that reality> really is, firstly material, and secondly a
dynamic, changing whole made> up of many interacting parts. Many
scientists, trapped within a more classical> approach, seem surprised
each time they rediscover this. Dialectical materialism> would lead us
to expect it.
Lisa: How does dialectics "organise investigation" ? I am familiar
with something called a "research strategy", (I think Marvin Harris
[cultural materialist anthropologist] does a pretty good job of
explaining what that is and comparing several different strategies
within anthropology.) If DMat is a useful method of thinking and
learning stuff in physics and biology, this scientist wants to know!
Also, where does this view of "classical" science come from? I don't
recognize it from actually growing up with it, studying science since I
was about 12. Many scientists? Which ones? Of course nature is
material, dynamic and interconnected. What is more to the point of
trying to appreciate DN is the question of what "classical" science and
its method were at the time that Engels wrote, in the 1870's. According
to his own account, physicists of that time were finding
interconnectedness and such, but not by a priori philosophy, by hard
work. They figured out and _demonstrated_ by the methods of whatever
"classical" science they had at the time, that mechanical [kinetic]
energy could be converted into electricity, then into heat, etc. That
they had been previously wrong and were making advances in understanding
is a standard example of the progress of normal science, isn't it? [Not
that I believe any pure myths of pure science or anything silly like
that, but I'm asking, _how_ would dialectics have helped the development
of physics, as Engels at least hints that it would?]
I appreciate your story of the Green critique of science, but I think it
gets even worse. Not only did Engels and others make the same
"critique" over a hundred years ago, not only has science possibly
changed, it is also a diverse collection of methods and such, and I'm
not sure that the earlier critique of science was entirely on the mark
in the first place!
Lisa earlier wrote:
> > Engel's DN uses the evaporation of water as an example of "quantity
into> > quality" [which you cite] - this does not establish Q/Q as a
generally> > useful principle in my mind.
Adam replied:
> Of course that example wouldn't convince you of it in general. It's just
one> aspect of a general phenomenon. Surely evolution in general
would supply countless> examples.
Adam also wrote:
> It's just that I think you can approach any of the Marxist classics,
especially> those which rely on specialist knowledge which has become
outdated, as something> you can learn from, or something you can just
slag off. So, you can ask, what is> Engels trying to say here about the
transformation of quantity into quality ? Or,> you can just dismiss it,
saying "I can understand water boiling without dialectics,> so what's
the point ?"
Adam:
"What do you mean by> Marxism ? Do you consider yourself to be a
Marxist, in the sense you choose> to define it ?"
...
> so far, nothing you have said about anything has shown any point of
contact between> Marxism and your ideas. [ Of course, this in itself
does not invalidate any single one> of them ]. Do you not think this
observation is true ?
Lisa: I don't know. I suppose that your "observation" is based upon
your own definition, but I'm more interested in discussing Engels,
science and dialectics than definitions of marxism right now, or
definitions of me or you.
Finally, Engels, recommending a method of investigative, scientific
thought:
In order to understand the separate phenomena, we have to tear them out
of the general inter-connection and consider them in isolation, and
there the changing motions appear, one as cause and the other as effect.
_Dialectics of Nature_ Internat. Pub. 1940 page 174 [from notes for DN]
Best wishes,
Lisa
Dialectics of Nature
Rahul Mahajan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tue, 18 Jun 1996 04:05:18 -0500
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Lisa:
Finally, Engels, recommending a method of investigative, scientific
thought:
In order to understand the separate phenomena, we have to tear them out
of the general inter-connection and consider them in isolation, and
there the changing motions appear, one as cause and the other as effect.
_Dialectics of Nature_ Internat. Pub. 1940 page 174 [from notes for DN]
Rahul: This is about on the level of a small boy coming up to Einstein
after he's published the general theory of relativity and saying, "Think
really hard about apples." Well, duh. What do scientists do? They use this
method, and any other that works, to arrive at an understanding of the
phenomena they're investigating. They may do it well or badly, but this
doesn't mean that throwing a few vague words like crumbs to them is
suddenly going to revolutionize scientific thought.
Funny. What Engels recommends is the kind of mode that supposedly works
extremely well for physics, but not for other things. Many people call it
"reductionism" and say it's horribly "undialectical." Not only does it
often work well, you can, if you do it right, even get around what would
seem to be its inherent limitation, that the identities of the objects of
study change when you "tear them out of the general interconnection."
Rahul
ENGELS & DIALECTICS
Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tue, 18 Jun 1996 06:04:48 -0700 (PDT)
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I'm going to make a few brief remarks which may help divert this
discussion from blind allies:
1. I don't believe Engels was providing advice to scientists on
how to do better science, i.e. in whatever particular specialty
they happened to find themselves. One: I think he was combatting
the limitations of the simple-minded empiricism that flooded the
cultural environment at that time, which was entirely consonant
with spiritualism as it was with the billiard-ball conception of
the cosmos. Two: Engels was concerned with what happens when
scientists jump out of their narrow specialties and try to make
more general pronouncements about the universe, physical, and
especially social, especially when they use a faulty
interpretation of their own methods to justify the distortion of
social reality. Tell me Lisa, how many sociobiologists have the
slightest understanding of cultural and social phenomena in
complex societies like ours? Do you think religion can be
explained as a computer virus of the brain?
2. There is a philosopher of science, Gerald Holton, who has
written at least one book on the role of themata in science. I
don't recall him ever mentioning a dialectical thema, but I do
remember reading a few of his articles long long ago. Themata are
guiding general principles by which one approaches phenomena.
With respect to physics, Holton cites two contrasting styles of
contemporary physicists, one who is interested in the fundamental
building blocks, presumably the search for fundamental particles,
and another, who prefers the study of relationships rather than
building blocks. I wish I could remember more.
There are many scientists, both in the physical and social
sciences, who have claimed that dialectical thinking helped to
organize their thinking on some problem. Many of them were Soviet
scientists, and from what I read, I have no reason to think they
were just making it up to please the party bosses. As for the
sciences that involve humans and society, I think the case is
pretty obvious. Can anyone deny that Vygotsky's psychology as
opposed to Piaget's involves a certain way of looking at things,
and that the dialectical view is relevant? How about Marxist
criticisms of Freud? It is precisely where dealing with complex
systems that involve the sorting out or interpenetration of
various categories where the simple-minded and naive thinking of
petty bourgeois ideologues with their graphs and charts falls
apart.
One final note: it has been known at least since Kant that it is
impossible to deduce specific empirical matters of fact from
general philosophical categories. Therefore, the only relevance
dialectical thinking could have to the sciences is a way of
organizing one's general approach to one's subject matter, as with
themata.
3. The notion of dialectics dos not just involve universal
interconnection, or the interaction of opposing forces or
disequilibria. There is something more: contradiction and the
interpenetration of opposites, to use the terminology that is
usually employed. I'd rather put it another way. To me these
notions apply when one has to use two complementary but opposing
categories, categories which cannot exist one without the other
but have contrasting and incompatible meanings, such as chance and
necessity, or free will and determinism.
The second salient feature of dialectical thinking is to take
apart an indivisible phenomenon and see distinct forces operating
within it, though inextricably tied together. It is the art of
taking apart some phenomenon which cannot be separated into
distinct objects and putting it back together conceptually,
recognizing distinctions and interpenetration of different forces
within the indissoluble object of investigation. This obviously
applies to social phenomena. Let's take the arguments over
science and its objectivity. In society at one place and time,
the scientific enterprise may be driven by economics, empire,
personal ambition, in some of its manifestations embody various
biases or ideological constructions, may be symbolically tied to
other mythologies, etc. Well, as a cultural system, you can't
take it apart and put one piece of a social enterprise over here,
another over there, and sort them out like pieces of a watch. But
within one physically indissoluble phenomenon, you can distinguish
various forces operating, whether it be the forces and relations
of production, the objective vs. subjective factors, etc.
Dialectics is the art of analyzing and reconstructing the
concrete. It can be done more or less spontaneously with simpler
objects of investigation, but on the level of social phenomena,
scientists only exhibit their philistinism and utter naivete if
they are not operating at least implicitly with some conception of
how to deal with the concrete totality. I think Lenin does a
better job of explaining this than Engels, but in his better
moments Engels is aiming at this, too.
4. Precisely when one deals with problems of sufficient
generality, questions of ontology and world view come into play,
and that is when naivete and ideology show up. When Sir John
Eccles, not content with brain research, tried to tackle the
mind-body problem, he fell apart, not to mention the political
questionability of some of his associations. I have personally
tangled with biologists who base their reactionary views of
society on inappropriate analogies with biological models. And
physicists over a whole century have shown their intellectual
ineptitude when turning to philosophy. And I lived through the
zen and motorcycle maintenance period, too. Though I will defend
science against anti-science, please be advised that I do not
trust scientists, either. If you don't want people taking
potshots at you, then be responsible, for you too will be held
accountable for your crimes.
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Just to really muddy the waters, let me note that a
mathematical analogue for the dialectical transformation
of quantity into quality is the structural bifurcation in
catastrophe theory, a point made by Rene Thom, the main
developer of cat theory (actually it had been around earlier
under a different name in the form of work by Hassler Whitney
and Marston Morse).
I have not yet read the infamous piece by Sokal in _Social
Text_, but in one of the discussions of it (a sneering column by
George Will) it was mentioned that in his conclusion Sokal went
on about dialectics and cat (not Schrodinger's (btw, to Jeff
Johnson: I started that thread)) theory. I am now curious to
see what he said. He may have been mocking, but he may also at
that point not have been utterly ridiculous.
To Lisa and Adam: Yeah, one can do physics without DM. It just
provides a broader framework that can put things together. The
real problem arises, as I noted a long time ago to much moaning
on the old unbifurcated marxism list, when one gets a political
agenda for control of science going justified according to DM.
The canonical case was the Lysenko episode under Stalin and Khrushchev.
Barkley Rosser
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Adam Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tue, 18 Jun 96 17:31:20 GMT
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>
> Well, Adam, I thought I _was_ asking just what it is that I can get from
> DN. I'm asking you what is Engels saying about Q/Q and what is it based
> on? No, I cannot produce examples from evolution, because I don't think
> that way. But no matter how many "examples" one lists, that would not
> constitute a demonstration of its general usefulness or validity, or
> show how it is a better way to understand what is going on than some
> other way of thinking. Examples alone do not explain things.
>
> When I ask "so what?" that is not just to "dismiss it", I really want to
> know.
>
When I think about the question "dialectical materialism : so what ?" , all
my
answers are basically political : dialectics helps us to understand the
Labo(u)r party, for instance. For me, it is interesting that there is
a dialectic in nature, but not actually that crucial, since if there
weren't, there would still be a dialectic in society, and between society
and nature, and the whole of Marxism would still stand. It's just a
pleasant confirmation, as it probably was for Engels.
If I try to look at it from a scientists point of view, I can only really
repeat what I've already said about a "classical" ( "Newtonian" ?
"Cartesian" ? ) point of view.
> Also, where does this view of "classical" science come from? I don't
> recognize it from actually growing up with it, studying science since I
> was about 12. Many scientists? Which ones? Of course nature is
> material, dynamic and interconnected.
I don't believe that you don't know what I'm talking about. For instance,
the deep consternation that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle caused
amongst physicists. Or, the flurry of surprise around chaos theory
( even forgetting about the hype + bullshit which surrounded it ).
I think if you asked any scientist "Is nature material, dynamic and
interconnected"
they'd reply "of course it is" and then go back to using a paradigm which
does not
reflect those things.
>
>
> Finally, Engels, recommending a method of investigative, scientific
> thought:
>
> In order to understand the separate phenomena, we have to tear them out
> of the general inter-connection and consider them in isolation, and
> there the changing motions appear, one as cause and the other as effect.
>
> _Dialectics of Nature_ Internat. Pub. 1940 page 174 [from notes for DN]
>
>
Sure - and I bet he goes on to say you've then got to reintegrate them,
and reconsider your fragmented findings in terms of their definite
interrelationships.
And if he doesn't, this is Marx's method anyway.
Adam.
Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK
Dialectics of Nature
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Barkley:
"(not Schrodinger's (btw, to Jeff Johnson: I started that thread))"
Thanks, I think. At this point, I think it should be banished permanently.
If
I can secure Rahul's cooperation, I intend to make it so.
Yours &c.,
Jeff Johnson "Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato,
Graduate Student, Political Science sed magis amica veritas."
University of Wisconsin--Madison --Aristotle
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evolutionary dialectics (fwd)
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Lisa:
The point is that while on the one hand there
really is not all that much difference in the hardware
between us and chimps, there is a lot of difference in
the software which may in turn be the result of a gradual
accumulation of changes in the mode of production (toolmaking,
organizing hunting and gathering leading to language and culture,
blah blah) to the point that we are now able to threaten the
very existence of life on earth while chimps are barely able
to threaten each other.
Surely a quantitative change has become a qualitatie one
here.
Barkley Rosser
evolutionary dialectics (fwd)
Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thu, 20 Jun 1996 10:20:22 -0700 (PDT)
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And who says there is no appreciable differnce in hardware? Sure,
we can now teach chimps the rudiemtnes of linguistic symbolic
manupualtion with differnt shaped objects and he like, but they do
not have our native linguistic capacoty at all. You cant stop a
humanfrom learning language unless his brain is destroyed or you
lock him in a closet for 7 years. There is no question that this
differnce exists, and it is the differnce that makes a difference
in cognitive capacty -- the capacity to think. Lisa's
prevarications on this point show that she is the one who is
idealist -- by ignoring the qualitative differences in the
material world, i.e. between the demonstrated cogitive capacities
of humans and the lack of same beyond a rudiemanary elevel in the
other monkeys.
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evolutionary dialectics
Chris M. Sciabarra [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sat, 22 Jun 1996 11:13:25 -0400 (EDT)
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On Fri, 21 Jun 1996, Zeynep Tufekcioglu wrote:
> I think the greatest strength of "dialectical" outlook is not the
> "interconnections". That's but a part of it. Understanding contradiction
as
> the force of movement and change, continuity in otherwise discrete jumps
> -those are the most important basics for me.
> What I have problem accepting is "negation of negation". I've never been
> convinced of that.
> I think Hegel's dialectic is necessarily idealistic - can't turn it on its
> head and make it materialistic, as Marx thinks he did. "Negation of
> negation"? Either this is a tautology, used to denote continuous change,
> thus useless; or meaningless.
> Zeynep
Just as an aside, re Hegel's idealism -- I am also persuaded that
he's an idealist, but a very provocative case for his realism is made in
Kenneth Westphal's HEGEL'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM. Check it out.
- Chris
evolutionary dialectics
Hugh Rodwell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sat, 22 Jun 1996 16:58:49 +0100
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Zeynep writes:
>I think using the term "transcend" instead of qualitative change would
clear
>the argument up a bit. (Transcend is a poor translation - the original
>German word I can't remember for the life of me means - to become something
>else in continuation. That's the word Marx often used).
'Aufheben' -- cancel, raise, resolve.
A contradiction is resolved by being raised to a higher level where there
is no contradiction, thus it is cancelled at a higher level even though it
may remain at a lower level. Ice and water (or water and steam) are in
contradiction as far as their states (solid, liquid, gas) are concerned,
H2O gives a non-contradictory representation of all three states of the
substance. The negation involved in the contradiction is negated by the
unifying concept at the higher level.
Hegel starts his logic off with a bang -- in my opinion a bigger bang than
the Big Bang itself -- by negating the negation involved in the
contradiction of Being and Nothing by unifying them in the higher-level
concept of Becoming.
The negation of the negation in this sense is at the very heart of Marx's
view of the prospects for human society. The contradictions between classes
in human society which have provided the motor for developing production
and social wealth through history attain their highest expression in the
contradiction between the capitalist class and the working class in
capitalist society (let's not forget the landowning class, just leave it to
one side for the moment). The contradiction can only be resolved (and we
can also leave the collapse into barbarism aside for the moment) by
abolishing this antagonistic polarity and raising the material processes
involved to the higher plane of socialist relations of production and
distribution
>We are not that different from our ancesters of 50,000 years ago hardware
>wise. The human being as a social being through reproduction of conditions
>and relations of production- That's Q/Q.
Good.
>I think the greatest strength of "dialectical" outlook is not the
>"interconnections". That's but a part of it. Understanding contradiction as
>the force of movement and change, continuity in otherwise discrete jumps
>-those are the most important basics for me.
In other words, Becoming as the resolution of the antinomy of Being and
Nothing. Hegel is really very good on movement, change, continuity,
discreteness, infinity and so on.
>What I have problem accepting is "negation of negation". I've never been
>convinced of that.
>
>I think Hegel's dialectic is necessarily idealistic - can't turn it on its
>head and make it materialistic, as Marx thinks he did. "Negation of
>negation"? Either this is a tautology, used to denote continuous change,
>thus useless; or meaningless.
You see, Marx didn't just turn it upside down and leave it as it was, he
cancelled the contradiction involved in its fundamental idealism, and
raised the whole thing to a higher level where the polar contradiction of
being and thought was resolved NOT on an idealist foundation, but a
materialist one. Hegel negated Kant's dualism, but on an idealist basis.
Marx used Hegel's dialectical method to negate Kant's dualism, this time on
a materialist basis. Hegel was still tied to Kant's idealist agenda (I
originally wrote 'gender' but just caught it in time!), and thus trapped in
the contradictions of the existential priority of Spirit and Thought.
Hegel's idealist, reified principles were in monstrous contradiction to his
method (fundamentally scientific and materialist, explaining empirically
observed phenomena). Marx brought the method and the principles into
harmony.
Cheers,
Hugh
evolutionary dialectics
Zeynep Tufekcioglu [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sat, 22 Jun 1996 20:00:55 +0300
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>'Aufheben' -- cancel, raise, resolve.
Yes, "Aufheben". You know, when I tried and couldn't remember the world, I
thought, if my favorite adversary Hugh wasn't so busy, he'd definitely come
up with the word. Thanks.
Hugh:
>Hegel starts his logic off with a bang -- in my opinion a bigger bang than
>the Big Bang itself -- by negating the negation involved in the
>contradiction of Being and Nothing by unifying them in the higher-level
>concept of Becoming.
Hugh, help a bit more. I've forgotten what little German I knew. What was
the "becoming" word as used in German? German seems to have the ability to
express "a thing" and "a process" in one word. No such luck in English. It
is often not necessary just arrogant to use foreign words when speaking
English, but when it comes to Hegel, English is so poor.
Also, the above quote is exactly where I start to think Hegel's method is
inherently and necessarily idealistic. From there on, one, two, three and he
removes the world - He negates existence.
What you describe as negation of negation, is movement through
contradiction. Fine. Why's that "negation of negation"? I said, "negation of
negation" is either meant to mean what you describe it means and hence a
redundant term, or is idealistic. Why do we need include that in the method
of dialectical thought?
>In other words, Becoming as the resolution of the antinomy of Being and
>Nothing. Hegel is really very good on movement, change, continuity,
>discreteness, infinity and so on.
Yes, Hegel is good as such. That's why I thought of Hegel in this thread,
when Lisa was discussing discreteness and continuity without naming the
words, in terms of biology and physics.
The Marxist method of thinking starts from the empirical. The concrete is
reproduced in thought as a concrete-in-thought. A never complete process of
successive approximations as the subject moves and acts in the real world.
An inherent limitation to epistomology that can never be overcome. Is this
not contrary to Hegel?
>You see, Marx didn't just turn it upside down and leave it as it was, he
>cancelled the contradiction involved in its fundamental idealism, and
>raised the whole thing to a higher level where the polar contradiction of
>being and thought was resolved NOT on an idealist foundation, but a
>materialist one.
Yes, I think so too. That' why I said Marx didn't turn it upside down, just
place it on its feet. Maybe, turned it inside out would be a better
description.
Zeynep
Waiting for Goedel
Hugh Rodwell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fri, 28 Jun 1996 00:21:10 +0100
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Zeynep wrote:
>Godel's famous theorem (as paraphrased into English by Douglas Hofstadter)
is :
>"All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable
>propositions".
>
>Which means, that within each -closed- system, one may make a claim, that
>can not be proven to be true or false *within* that system.
>
>I think one may believably claim that human brain does not work in a way
>different than computers, but is a much more complicated network, resulting
>in associative thinking yet unknown to computers. (Something like an ever
>intertwined hypertext, to draw an anology from the internet).
>
>I don't know what the original quote was related to.
>
>To make it clearer, let me confess I'm lying. Am I? If so, I'm not. If I'm
>not lying then I am.
Well, our brain operates as a biological machine to help us in
1) orientation (which is really an aspect of
2) goal satisfaction
An interesting thing about it is that it's utterly insensitive, while the
rest of us is very sensitive, responding to environmental and hormonal
signals with the appropriate (!) reaction.
It's a single-user computer, purpose-developed (teleology rules, OK!) to
help satisfy a biological individual's social (food, shelter) and sexual
needs in a species framework. This is not what desktop computers were
designed for originally. Of course, they did represent extensions of our
biological capabilities, and the extensions they and their descendants will
provide will fit more and more naturally into our way of solving individual
and species needs.
One of the brain's tasks is thinking, both as a routine operation (2+2=4)
and in the sense of a search for valid axioms, first principles and such
(what is a number? what is =?). Now, what Zeynep is pointing out is that
you can't apply the rules for the routine operations (what Aristotle called
analytical logic, didn't he?) to the creative search for principles
(dialectical logic) without getting into trouble. Goedel's theorem
formalizes this.
I think there's a parallel to Marx's aphorism about each epoch only setting
itself problems it can solve. If you like, each epoch has its own
principles which are thrashed out in practice and eventually formalized
(bit like the Reformation and the Enlightenment, for instance). The
concrete advances and solutions fall within this practical-theoretical
framework. (I should imagine this is roughly what Sartre is saying in his
Critique of Dialectical Reason, but I haven't read it, so I'm probably way
off target.) And the working out of the various aspects of practice in the
epoch can more and more be left to routine operations as it more and more
'runs itself'.
We are in the final stages of the Capitalist Age, and the earliest stages
of the Socialist Age, and our present epoch of transition from the one to
the other offers the new spectacle of a necessary fusion of principles and
practice.
One question which arises given this fusion, is whether logic will see a
breakthrough in the sense of finally arriving at a formalization of the
search for and evaluation of first principles -- values, priorities and
all. Hegel talks somewhere of Apodeictic Logic, the logic of demonstration.
My guess is that it won't come anywhere near it in general terms -- though
it might get very close in one or two specialized areas -- until socialism
is established as the dominant mode of production worldwide, removing the
antagonistic class interests that bedevil all discussion of (and based on)
principles in the biological (nature/nurture) and social sciences
(economics and sociology).
Another guess is that the removal of capitalism and its antagonisms will
remove a lot more obstacles in the way of really human development of
'hard' science (maths, including its foundations, physics etc) than most of
us thought existed. For starters, the universal mastery of maths
fundamentals (including calculus of course) that will follow on the freeing
of education from fear ('mind-forged manacles' that a lot of us
internalize) and compartmentalization, will make possible a completely new
level and relevance of public debate in relation to selecting alternative
courses of action. And this discourse in turn will sharpen the questions
being investigated in front-line research.
Most people know the amazing impact on the depth and breadth of knowledge
in a subject that can be made if it is studied in the company of even a
single kindred spirit. Just imagine a world of kindred spirits!
Finally, all the Goedel stuff is very self-reflective, and capitalism
cannot tolerate anything self-reflective. So a lot of the investigations
being pursued in basic maths and natural science today are in fact
transcending the bounds of capitalist society. Behaviourism (capitalist
science par excellence) dogmatically proclaims an invisible, abstract,
unknowable Thing-In-Itself subject. Socialist science takes the real, live,
flesh-and-blood human subject as its starting point.
My friend and teacher, Goeran Printz-Paahlson, wrote a poem in Swedish
about this kind of thing in the early sixties, called Turing Machine.
(Might well have been when he was at Berkeley). There's a good translation
he did himself, but I haven't got it to hand right now, so I'll hack one.
It ends:
De imiterar i spraaket. I oaendliga
slingor, laengre and laengre tillbaka i sin retraett
mot subtilare
algoritmer, mera rekursiva funktioner.
De aer konsekventa och beskriver sig sjaelva.
Som naer en man med en handspegel tryckt mot sin naesa
framfoer en spegel
ser i oaendlig rad samma bild maangfaldigas
i en krympande, moerknande korridor av glas.
Det aer en Goedel-teorem lika gott som naagot.
Han ser oaendlig-
heten, men det han inte ser aer sitt ansikte.
(They imitate in language. In endless
loops, farther and farther back, retreating
towards more subtle
algorithms, more recursive functions.
They are consistent and describe themselves.
As when a man with a handmirror pressed to his nose
in front of a mirror
sees the same image multiplied in a row without end
in a shrinking, darkening corridor of glass.
That's a Goedel theorem as good as any.
He sees eternity,
but what he doesn't see is his own face.)
Anyone read (reread?) Phenomenology of the Spirit recently?
Cheers,
Hugh
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