Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I'm still waiting for your account of biosemiotics. From what I've found on the web, it looks like crackpot mystical pseudoscience to me. Once again, my EMERGENCE BLOG: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog.html As for current objectives, one ought to consider refining one's tools rather than repeating the same old crap from a century ago. Marxism-Leninism continues to wreak its harm from beyond the grave--what a shame. At 01:18 PM 3/9/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: As I, hopefully with some success, indicated above, method cannot be divorced from the objectives. The theory of Natural Selection certainly works. Combined with population genetics it has become the foundation of some of the most dramatic and disturbing social and cultural changes yet encountered by man (including even the effect of Newtonian physics and 18th and 19th century chemistry on industrial process in the early 19th century). Yet it is a very simple (and very abstract) theory that is almost entirely restricted to explaining the fact of change without any value for understanding the formal changes in the development of organisms. It is the very modesty of the objectives of Darwin's theory that lies at the heart of its gradualism. If you wish to explain how the relative distribution of populations of species changes over time, Natural Selection is a more than adequate model. In Natural Selection theory everything having to do with formal changes or even in adaptive interaction of life forms with their environment is relegated to absolute chance and therefore totally outside the ken of serious investigation. Even the integration of evolutionary theory with genetics does no more than explain the changes in the relative distribution of known genes and genetic combinations. The actual development of anatomical and behavioural formations is regarded as the function of improbable mutations and of equally fortuitous environmental conditions completely external to the useful interaction of statistically measureable inputs and outputs of the selective process. I doubt whether punctuated equilibrium alone is an adequate basis for introducing the dialectic into evolutionary theory. By and large it is based on the same kind of statistical considerations that are important to standard evolutionary theory. Dan Dennett in his Darwin's Dangerous Idea does a fairly thorough job on Punctuated Evolution (see chapter 11, 3, Punctuated Equilibrium: A hopeful Monster pp. 282 -298 and 4, Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Burgess Shale Double-Play Mystery pp 299-312. Rather I see the potential for a dialectical understanding of evolutionary process in the research on the mechanisms of adaptation, coevolution, and organic symmetry (both in anatomical form and in activity). Stuart Kauffman is the most prominent of theoreticians in this field, but far from being the only one. Others, including Varela and Maturana (Maturana uses some dialectics - Marxist dialectics in his formulations) on autopoiesis, Salthe's (also much influenced by Hegel) on hierarchies of being and emergent systems, and Mark Bedau who formulates conditions for artificial life. Despite the nearly frantic exploration for the theoretical formulation that will unite the disparate and far-ranging investigations on the development of life forms, we have yet to see a thinker in this area on the level of Marx who can produce a satisfactory general paradigm for the development of life forms. I suspect that the philosopher of science who will effect such a synthesis has already been born and may be even well on his way to producing such a theory. Dennett, always the champion of evolutionary theory, argues that Stuart's ideas do not really contradict Darwin's Dangerous Idea, since the object of his work concerns the restrictions on the development of organic design rather than the changes in the relative distribution of genetically defined populations over time. Just as the gradualist model of the transformation of liquid to gas doesn't contradict the negation of Magnitude by Quantity, nor should the gradualist theory of Natural Selection contradict a dialectical theory of the development of organic form, the practical objectives of these theories (and the circumstances involved in the realization of these objects) are entirely different. Lenin's idea of a unified, universal science is engendered by his failure to realize that adherence to an uncompromising theory of the material nature of being was in fact in direct contradiction with Marx and Engel's view that labour, the unity of thought and activity, is the paradigm for the understanding of the development of human activity, collective and individual, in human history. To argue that all practice must be based on dialectical method is much like asserting that one needs to adopt the same factory system for boiling a pot of tea for guests as for the production of teapots for marketing purposes.
[Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
Gould's statement that punctuated equilibrium is a form of dialectic is good. I think Gould's emphatically rejects something that is not dialectics. Dialectics is _not_ that all change is punctuated. It is that change is both equilibriated or gradual _and_ punctuated. Dialectics does not fail to take account of the gradual erosion of soft rocks in the Appalachian mountains. Dialectics asserts that there are gradual processes that are then rarely punctuated by leaps. To take the boiling water example, dialectics takes account of the fact that in raising the temperature from 32.1 degrees Farenheit ( freezing) through 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 ,38...208,209,210, 211, there is only quantitative change in the water, no leap. All that is not ignored by dialectics. It is named the gradual or quantitative change. So, Gould's criticism of dialectics below is criticism of a strawman. Dialectics does not hold that all change is in leaps or punctuations. Dialectics holds that there are both gradual change and leaps. Of course, the other issue is that dialectic is not only quantity transforming into quality and vica versa. To me one of its most important aspects is that it accepts as fundamental contradiction. Those who confine themselves to formal logic are constantly running into contradictions as problems or dilemmas. The history of mathematics, the formal logic par excellent, if full of paradoxes: Zeno's, Cantor's , Russell's, Goedel's proof. For those confined to formal logic, this is problematic. For dialectics, contradiction is expected, welcomed. I'd call this a bit more than a heuristic. It is a fundamental in thought, as fundamental as formal logic. Dialectic is the combination of formal logic and dialectical logic, a unity and struggle of opposites. Jim and I have discussed this question of dialectics as a heuristic on this list a while back. Since that discussion I have had another thought on that idea , but I forgot what it was :). I'll think of it soon. Again, using Hegel's notion that dialectic is a logic seems a good idea. Formal logic doesn't give an algorithmic or guaranteed process for solving problems either. Yet, formal logic is more than a heuristic in scientific thought. heuristic adj : of or relating to or using a general formulation that serves to guide investigation [ant: algorithmic] n : a commonsense rule (or set of rules) intended to increase the probability of solving some problem [syn: heuristic rule, heuristic program] heuristic 1. programming A rule of thumb, simplification, or educated guess that reduces or limits the search for solutions in domains that are difficult and poorly understood. Unlike algorithms, heuristics do not guarantee optimal, or even feasible, solutions and are often used with no theoretical guarantee. CB ^ farmelantj Here is what Stephen Jay Gould had to say about punctuationism and dialectics in his book, *The Panda's Thumb. There, in the essay Episodic Evolutionary Change, he wrote: -- If gradualism is more a product of Western thought than a fact of nature, then we should consider alternate philosophies of change to enlarge our realm of constraining prejudices. In the Soviet Union, for example, for example, scientists are trained with a very different philosophy of change - the so-called dialectical laws, reformulated by Engels from Hegel's philosophy. The dialectical laws are explicitly punctuational. They speak, for example, of the transformation of quantity into quality. This may sound like mumbo jumbo, but it suggests that change occurs in large leaps following a slow accumulation of stresses that a system resists until it reaches the breaking point. Heat water and it eventually boils. Oppress the workers more and more and bring on the revolution. Eldredge and I were fascinated to learn that many Russian paleontologists support a model very similar to our punctuated equilibria. I emphatically do not assert the general truth of this philosophy of punctuational change. Any attempt to support the exclusive validity of such a grandiose notion would border on the nonsensical. Gradualism sometimes works well. (I often fly over the folded Appalachians and marvel at the striking parallel ridges left standing by gradual erosion of the softer rocks surrounding them). I make a simple plea for pluralism in guiding philosophies, and for the recognition of such philosophies, however hidden and unarticulated, constrain all our thought. The dialectical laws express an ideology quite openly; our Western preference for gradualism does the same more subtly. Nonetheless, I will confess to a personal belief that a punctuational view may prove to map tempos of biological and geologic change more accurately and more often than any of its competitors - if only because complex systems in steady state are both common and highly resistant to change. - I think a careful reading of Gould's words will
[Marxism-Thaxis] Dialectics of Nature
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ Frederick Engels (1883) Dialectics of Nature Transcribed: 1998/2001 for MEIA by Sally Ryan and [EMAIL PROTECTED] Table of Contents Preface http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/preface.htm , by J. B. S. Haldane Introduction http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch01.htm Dialectics http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch02.htm Basic Form of Motion http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch03.htm The Measure of Motion - Work http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch04.htm Heat http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch05.htm Electricity http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch06.htm Dialectics of Nature - Notes http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch07.htm Tidal Friction, Kant and Thomson-Tait on the Rotation of the Earth and Lunar Attraction http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch08.htm The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch09.htm Natural Science and the Spirit World http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch10.htm Appendices Notes to Anti-Dühring http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/appendix1.htm Source References http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/appendix2.htm Fragment: Historical http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/appendix3.htm Fragment on Art and Literature http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/art-literature.htm Bibliography Letters on Natural Science http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/subject/science.htm Marx and Engels on Science and Mathematics http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/science/index.htm Marx Engels Archive http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/index.htm | Preface http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/preface.htm ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Dialectics of Nature
Dialectics of Nature. Frederick Engels (1883) 1. INTRODUCTION MODERN natural science, which alone has achieved an all-round systematic and scientific development, as contrasted with the brilliant natural-philosophical intuitions of antiquity and the extremely important but sporadic discoveries of the Arabs, which for the most part vanished without results - this modern natural science dates, like all more recent history, from that mighty epoch which we Germans term the Reformation, from the national misfortune that overtook us at that time, and which the French term the Renaissance and the Italians the Cinquecento, although it is not fully expressed by any of these names. It is the epoch which had its rise in the last half of the fifteenth century. Royalty, with the support of the burghers of the towns, broke the power of the feudal nobility and established the great monarchies, based essentially on nationality, within which the modern European nations and modern bourgeois society came to development. And while the burghers and nobles were still fighting one another, the peasant war in Germany pointed prophetically to future class struggles, not only by bringing on to the stage the peasants in revolt - that was no longer anything new - but behind them the beginnings of the modern proletariat, with the red flag in their hands and the demand for common ownership of goods on their lips. In the manuscripts saved from the fall of Byzantium, in the antique statues dug out of the ruins of Rome, a new world was revealed to the astonished West, that of ancient Greece: the ghosts of the Middle Ages vanished before its shining forms; Italy rose to an undreamt-of flowering of art, which seemed like a reflection of classical antiquity and was never attained again. In Italy, France, and Germany a new literature arose, the first, modern literature; shortly afterwards came the classical epochs of English and Spanish literature. The bounds of the old orbis terrarum were pierced. Only now for the first time was the world really discovered and the basis laid for subsequent world trade and the transition from handicraft to manufacture, which in its turn formed the starting-point for modern large scale industry. The dictatorship of the Church over men's minds was shattered; it was directly cast off by the majority of the Germanic peoples, who adopted Protestantism, while among the Latins a cheerful spirit of free thought, taken over from the Arabs and nourished by the newly-discovered Greek philosophy, took root more and more and prepared the way for the materialism of the eighteenth century. It was the greatest progressive revolution that mankind has so far experienced, a time which called for giants and produced giants - giants in power of thought, passion, and character, in universality and learning. The men who founded the modern rule of the bourgeoisie had anything but bourgeois limitations. On the contrary, the adventurous character of the time inspired them to a greater or less degree. There was hardly any man of importance then living who had not travelled extensively, who did not command four or five languages, who did not shine in a number of fields. Leonardo da Vinci was not only a great painter but also a great mathematician, mechanician, and engineer, to whom the most diverse branches of physics are indebted for important discoveries. Albrecht Durer was painter, engraver, sculptor, and architect, and in addition invented a system of fortification embodying many of the ideas that much later were again taken up by Montalembert and the modern German science of fortification. Machiavelli was statesman, historian, poet, and at the same time the first notable military author of modern times. Luther not only cleaned the Augean stable of the Church but also that of the German language; he created modern German prose and composed the text and melody of that triumphal hymn which became the Marseillaise of the sixteenth century. The heroes of that time had not yet come under the servitude of the division of labour, the restricting effects of which, with its production of onesidedness, we so often notice in their successors. But what is especially characteristic of them is that they almost all pursue their lives and activities in the midst of the contemporary movements, in the practical struggle; they take sides and join in the fight, one by speaking and writing, another with the sword, many with both. Hence the fullness and force of character that makes them r.omplete men. Men of the study are the exception - either persons of second or third rank or cautious philistines who do not want to burn their fingers. At that time natural science also developed in the midst of the general revolution and was itself thoroughly revolutionary; it had to win in struggle its right of existence. Side by side with the great Italians from whom modern philosophy dates, it provided its martyrs for the stake and the prisons of the
[Marxism-Thaxis] Dialectics of Nature
Note: Engels sort of one sentence definition of dialectics is the science of interconnections. Most discussions of dialectics don't even mention this emphasis, rather quantity to quality to quantity, contradiction, change are emphasized. CB Engels' Dialectics of Nature II. Dialectics (The general nature of dialectics to be developed as the science of interconnections, in contrast to metaphysics.) It is, therefore, from the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself. And indeed they can be reduced in the main to three: The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa; The law of the interpenetration of opposites; The law of the negation of the negation. All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought. If we turn the thing round, then everything becomes simple, and the dialectical laws that look so extremely mysterious in idealist philosophy at once become simple and clear as noonday. Moreover, anyone who is even only slightly acquainted with his Hegel will be aware that in hundreds of passages Hegel is capable of giving the most striking individual illustrations from nature and history of the dialectical laws. We are not concerned here with writing a handbook of dialectics, but only with showing that the dialectical laws are really laws of development of nature, and therefore are valid also for theoretical natural science. Hence we cannot go into the inner interconnection of these laws with one another. 1. The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy). All qualitative differences in nature rest on differences of chemical composition or on different quantities or forms of motion (energy) or, as is almost always the case, on both. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned. In this form, therefore, Hegel's mysterious principle appears not only quite rational but even rather obvious. It is surely hardly necessary to point out that the various allotropic and aggregational states of bodies, because they depend on various groupings of the molecules, depend on greater or lesser quantities of motion communicated to the bodies. But what is the position in regard to change of form of motion, or so-called energy? If we change heat into mechanical motion or vice versa, is not the quality altered while the quantity remains the same? Quite correct. But it is with change of form of motion as with Heine's vices; anyone can be virtuous by himself, for vices two are always necessary. Change of form of motion is always a process that takes place between at least two bodies, of which one loses a definite quantity of motion of one quality (e.g. heat), while the other gains a corresponding quantity of motion of another quality (mechanical motion, electricity, chemical decomposition). Here, therefore, quantity and quality mutually correspond to each other. So far it has not been found possible to convert motion from one form to another inside a single isolated body. We are concerned here in the first place with nonliving bodies; the same law holds for living bodies, but it operates under very complex conditions and at present quantitative measurement is still often impossible for us. If we imagine any non-living body cut up into smaller and smaller portions, at first no qualitative change occurs. But this has a limit: if we succeed, as by evaporation, in obtaining the separate molecules in the free state, then it is true that we can usually divide these still further, yet only with a complete change of quality. The molecule is decomposed into its separate atoms, which have quite different properties from those of the molecule. In the case of molecules composed of various chemical elements, atoms or molecules of these elements themselves make their appearance in the place of the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 8:44 PM Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels Marxism-Thaxis] OudeyisHegel, Marx, and, for that matter, Jay Gould (he and Dan Dennett - the American reductionist philosopher - fought over this issue) did not regard development to be incremental or continuous. The dialectic, the successive emergence of negations of previous conditions suggests that development hops and jumps rather than grows by inches. The principle of Quantity is also not a case of incremental change. You can think of it as a teapot on the burner or the apparent lull before a sudden popular rising; the conditions conducive to a boiling pot or a popular uprising cook slowly without any apparent sign of dramatic change until a critical state is reached and then, things happen very suddenly indeed. The concept of Quantity for Engels and Marx as for Hegel refers to the sudden change of state rather than to the accumulation of conditions that engenders it. The issue really is the essentialism that Marx and Engels adopted from Hegel. The significant fact of the sudden boil of the teapot and the popular uprising is the end product of the process that generates them and not the conditions. After all, a teapot on a low fire is just a teapot on a low fire and a long, hot Summer is just a long, hot, Summer; they both only become interesting when they result respectively in a pot of boiling water and an uprising of an angry community. Victor ^ CB: My understanding of this is that there is a long period of exactly continuous or incremental change that is suddenly altered by the leap, the quantum leap or qualitative change. Dialectics doesn't deny continous or incremental change, rather it relates the two types of change, quantitative and qualitative. The temperature of the water is continously increasing, but the surface is not bubbling. At 212 degrees farenheit , continuous, gradual change leaps into bubbles burst on the surface, a qualitative change in the surface of the water. This is quantitative change turning into qualititive change or continuous change turning into discontinuous change. Quantity turning into quality is a change in the type of change; it is quantitative _change_ turning into qualitative _change_. For Hegel and for Marx and Engels, regular incremental changes (magnitude) do not turn into quality, but rather at some critical point, a new quality emerges out of and negates regular incremental change. It is this dialectical moment that Hegel calls Quantity. The determination of both regular incremental change and of differential quality is not only a matter of fact but of the unity of observation and of thought, or fact and essence (significance). If the objective of our activity is the determination of the negation of some prior state by a subsequent one, i.e. dialectical development of relations, then the issue of importance concerning the heated teapot is that critical boiling point of 212 degrees fahrenheit (at sea level) when liquid water is negated by gaseous H2O. Naturally, the transformation of a long, hot Summer into a popular uprising is a much more complex issue (and a more interesting one), but the same principle obtains. Gradual, incremental change (Magnitude) negates immediate identification of quality (Quality), a sudden essential change in quality (Quantity) negates gradual incremental change; that is the negations describe the dialectic, not the states of being that are the moments of the dialectical process. Dialectics is very abstract, (as Marx points out in his criticizing Hegel for regarding the Boiling Teapot and the French Revolution as essential identities). It is ultimately only a method, and like all methods its utility is restricted to certain kinds of objectives (which are themselves only partially a function of mind, dialectically or otherwise expressed). The high school physics teacher can show that the difference between H2O as liquid and as a gas is a matter of the regular, incremental change of the speed of the movement of molecules, and that the change from liquid to gas is a matter of the progressive energization of the water molecules relative to the force of gravitation (atmospheric pressure). For him the process of boiling water is a gradual change of the balance of forces of energization and of gravity. As I see it there is no theoretical or practical problem with the high school physics teacher's description of the process of water vaporization. On the contrary, it is a most useful lesson regarding the conditions for boiling water for tea, including the necessity for packing a pressure cooker if we wish to boil tea at high altitudes. His use of a gradualist paradigm is
[Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
Waistline2 * My question is how does heating water to a boiling point change the quality of water rather than its form? I agree that the form of a thing can change in front of its constituent parts. What quality of H2O has changed? ^ CB: I think there is a problem with your implication that water has an abstract quality orsubstance and form. What are you calling the substance/quality of water ? In chemistry they call this a change of _state_. Matter has three states - solid, liquid, gas. The transformation from one to the other is a qualitative change of state. ( I think they have a fourth state of matter now: plasma). It is quite appropriate to refer to the state of matter as one of its qualities. There is change of quantitative change to qualitative change at the molecular level. When one hydrogen atom is combined with one oxygen atom , if that is possible, you get ??? If as we increase the _quantity_ of hydrogen atoms to two and combine it with oxygen, there is a qualitative leap to water. There are many different qualities between hydrogen or oxygen and water. Water is a liquid at many temperatures at which h and o are gases. Water can quench your thirst and the other two cannot. Oxygen can meet your need to breathe. Water cannot ( it will drown you if you breathe too much of it). These are some of the qualitative changes that occur in the transition from o and h to h20 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Dialectics of Nature
Engels gives an impressive historical overview. Of great interest is the relationship between the advances in science and the overall legitimating philosophy--deism or French materialism. This illustrates a subtlety often lacking in such discussions. At 09:36 AM 3/9/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: But what especially characterises this period is the elaboration of a peculiar general outlook, in which the central point is the view of the absolute immutability of nature. In whatever way nature itself might have come into being, once present it remained as it was as long as it continued to exist. The planets and their satellites, once set in motion by the mysterious first impulse, circled on and on in their predestined ellipses for all eternity, or at any rate until the end of all things. The stars remained for ever fixed and immovable in their places, keeping one another therein by universal gravitation. The earth had persisted without alteration from all eternity, or, alternatively, from the first day of its creation. The five continents of the present day had always existed, and they had always had the same mountains, valleys, and rivers, the same climate, and the same flora and fauna, except in so far as change or cultivation had taken place at the hand of man. The species of plants and animals had been established once for all when they came into existence; like continually produced like, and it was already a good deal for Linnaus to have conceded that possibly here and there new species could have arisen by crossing. In contrast to the history of mankind, which develops in time, there was ascribed to the history of nature only an unfolding in space. All change, all development in nature, was denied. Natural science, so revolutionary at the outset, suddenly found itself confronted by an out-and-out conservative nature in which even to-day everything was as it had been at the beginning and in which - to the end of the world or for all eternity - everything would remain as it had been since the beginning. High as the natural science of the first half of the eighteenth century stood above Greek antiquity in knowledge and even in the sifting of its material, it stood just as deeply below Greek antiquity in the theoretical mastery of this material, in the general outlook on nature. For the Greek philosophers the world was essentially something that had emerged from chaos, something that had developed, that had come into being. For the natural scientists of the period that we are dealing with it was something ossified, something immutable, and for most of them something that had been created at one stroke. Science was still deeply enmeshed in theology. Everywhere it sought and found its ultimate resort in an impulse from outside that was not to be explained from nature itself. Even if attraction, by Newton pompously baptised as universal gravitation, was conceived as an essential property of matter, whence comes the unexplained tangential force which first gives rise to the orbits of the planets? How did the innumerable varieties of animals and plants arise? And how, above all, did man arise, since after all it was certain that he was not present from all eternity? To such questions natural science only too frequently answered by making the creator of all things responsible. Copernicus, at the beginning of the period, writes a letter renouncing theology; Newton closes the period with the postulate of a divine first impulse. The highest general idea to which this natural science attained was that of the purposiveness of the arrangements of nature, the shallow teleology of Wolff, according to which cats were created to eat mice, mice to he eaten by cats, and the whole of nature to testify to the wisdom of the creator. It is to the highest credit of the philosophy of the time that it did not let itself be led astray by the restricted state of contemporary natural knowledge, and that - from Spinoza right to the great French materialists - it insisted on explaining the world from the world itself and left the justification in detail to the natural science of the future. I include the materialists of the eighteenth century in this period because no natural scientific material was available to them other than that above described. Kant's epoch- making work remained a secret to them, and Laplace came long after them. We should not forget that this obsolete outlook on nature, although riddled through and through by the progress of science, dominated the entire first half of the nineteenth century, and in substance is even now still taught in all schools. 1 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch01.htm#p1 The first breach in this petrified outlook on nature was made not by a natural scientist but by a philosopher. In 1755 appeared Kant's Allgemeine Naturgesehichte und Theorie des Himmels [General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens].
[Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin on Dialectics
Ralph Dumain : These quotes are all fine, and show these authors at their best. The issue is, however, developing the logical precision to analyze specific phenomena. As expressed, these are all general thematic principles, which do not function well merely as being quoted chapter and verse. CB: There is more than one issue, developing logical precision to analyze specific phenomena not being the only one. On the other hand, the quoted general thematic principles might help someone make a more logical precise analysis of some problem they are working on. There are quite a bit of people working on quite a few phenomena, many of whom you don't know about. Also, much of the discussion here is _on_ Engels' _Dialectics of Nature_ ,so it is good to have the total of what we are discussing right at hand. ^^^ ^^ A large historical problem, though, is how the entity Marxism became congealed, not only stabilizing its political-ideological existence but putting a brake on its conceptual development and interaction with the whole world of knowledge. ^ CB: You're skipping a step. You haven't yet demonstrated that Marxism became congealed. Nor have you demonstrated that it's political-ideological existence was stabilized nor that a brake was put on its conceptual development and interaction with the whole world of knowledge. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
At 10:28 AM 3/9/2005 -0800, andie nachgeborenen wrote: --- Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't speak to THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, as I haven't read it, though it is gathering dust somewhere. The Dialectics of Biology group produced a couple of interesting books, mostly without mumbo jumbo, as I recall. I assume you meant 100% not 10% external. Lewontin, Kamin, and Rose are all first rate scholars, and the book is quite good in its substantive parts. But the so-called dialectics is some sort of ritual chant, and the history is potted and not altogether accurate. As for dialectics and emergence, I think there is an essential distinction to be made between emergent materialism and idealist/vitalist notions. Vitalism of any sort has been dead dead dead since the mid-late 19th century. Certainly no serious biologist has maintained any such notion in this century. Everyone agrees that there are no special vital properties that explain why organisms are alive. The dispute has been between crude reductionism and variants of sophisticated reductionism and emergent antireductionism. It is very hard to tell these positions apart when they are suitably qualified. Well, there was Driesch in the '20s, but I suppose that wasn't serious. But some of this stuff--biosemiotics--is highly suspect, and I'm suspicious of process philosophy as well. Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If dialectics can help, I'm in favor of it, though i have not seen any evidence that dialectics itself is more than an emergent property of a certain sort of usefully holistic thinking. I mean, it's a real enough phenomenon. Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci are crealy dialectical thinkers. But I don't think they came to their subject matters with an antecedent dialectical method they could apply to those subject matters. They thought about things in a manner that was dialectical. Better to try to follow their example in their concrete analyses than to extract a method from their procedures. Yes, I agree. I was trying to get at the same thing. And of course for Marx, Lukacs, and Gramsci, dialectics of natural processes was irrelevant. Fair enough. But analytical philosophers certainly developed versions, e.g. Moore's theory of supervenient properties -- the good being (he thought) a non-natural property that supervened on natural ones, such that two actions/people could not be alike in all natural properties but differ in whether they were good or not. Soviet tampering with the various sciences and disciplines is not news. . . . Perhaps though another thing to look at is the dominant schools of bourgeois philosophy in the teens and '20s--what was the competition doing Well, there is what it looks like now and what it looked like then. And what it to liked to them as opposed to what it looked like, e.g., to Russell or Dewey or even to Gramsci or Lukacs or Weber. I'm not sure what you mean, but of course there's a different perspective at that moment and retrospectively. Perhaps the historical research being done now will help. I think for example of THE PARTING OF THE WAYS, which is about Canrap, Heidegger, and Cassirer. Where sympathetic critics try to refine the concepts, they are constantly beaten back by intellectual ineptitude and dogmatism, whether it is Bernal against Macmurray, Novack against Van Heijenoort, Sayers against Norman The record is dismal. I don't know MacMurray, but the other examples are like the Jones Junior High vs. the Green bay Packers, just in terms of sheer candlepower. Bernal was no second-rater, though, at least in hsi biology and history. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
