Louis writes:
>
> This sounds like Malthus to me, not Marx.
This must be the same hearing problem that led you mistakenly to attribute
to Whitehead the Leibnizian theory of the 'best of possible worlds'.
"the Malthusian Law, with its sociological consequences, is not an iron
necessity. ...
"In the first three hundred years of the slow development of the Feudal
System after Charlemagne, we see a population barely gaining a livelihood by
hard toil. This state of things exemplifies the application of Malthus'
Doctrine in the primitive stages of civilization. The only way of coping
with an increase in population was to cut down another forest, and
arithmetically to add field to field, till fertile land was fully occupied.
Also fertility became exhausted, so that until the close of the eighteenth
century fallow fields bore witness to the iron limits that nature set to
agriculture. The essence of technology is to enable mankind to transcend
such limitations of unguided nature. For example, the rotation of crops,
the scientific understanding of fertilizers and of genetics, have already
altered the bounds set to food production. ...
"Nature is plastic, although to every prevalent state of mind there
corresponds iron nature setting its bounds to life. Modern history begins
when Europeans passed into a new phase of understanding which enabled them
to introduce new selective agencies, unguessed by the older civilizations.
It is a false dichotomy to think of Nature and Man. Mankind is that factor
*in* Nature which exhibits in its most intense form the plasticity of
nature. Plasticity is the introduction of novel law. The doctrine of the
Uniformity of Nature is to be ranked with the contrasted doctrine of magic
and miracle, as an expression of partial truth, unguarded and uncoordinated
with the immensities of the Universe." Adventures of Ideas, pp. 73-8
Ted
--
Ted Winslow E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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