Carlos A. Rivera wrote:
> I argue that incompleteness in mathematics and uncertainity in quantum
> mechanics actually point to materialist dialectics. As dynamic,
> never-ending systems, they exhibit the same continous struggle that
> dialectics call, while firmly footed on a materialist grasp on reality.
>
> Yeah, postmodernists eat your heart out!!!
There's no reason to look for the justification of dialectics in the
incompleteness theorem of mathematics and the uncertainty theory in quantum
mechanics. Mechanism, the description of determinate cause where The
particular principle of each object is reduced to some particular action of
yet other objects, and these in turn explained in terms of other objects,
represents only the simplest and least versatile kind of logic. It is
particularly appropriate to the description of the most abstract
representations of world conditions where the objects are few and the
relations between them restricted (anyone recall the "third body problem" of
Newtonian physics). It's what enables the Highschool physics teacher to
present the boiling teapot as a purely mechanical dialectical system. A
system that purports to treat relations between objects more concretely,
i.e. high energy physics, coevolution, and, of course, the social
interactions of our own species, must resort to other dialectical modes or
tolerate high levels of incompleteness and uncertainty in its
representations.
The standard model of Natural Science theory is based on the very
abstract and relatively simple objects of Physical science. It works fairly
well in Physics, less well in Chemistry, and only barely in certain areas of
the Life Sciences. Even in these areas the growing use of stochastic and
now chaotic, mathematical models to build mechanical representations of
fundamentally non-mechanizable relations is transforming scientific
descriptions into representation of how little we know, rather than of how
much. Naturally, the uninitiated public (which includes most of the
decision-makers who depend, at least partially, on scientific description
for understanding the problems they are expected to solve) tend to regard
these so-called descriptions as either as determinative as Newton's Laws or
just a lot of mumbo-jumbo (which it mostly is, if the object of science is
regarded as the provision of useful information).
The alternative to the science of indeterminism is reductionism. Game
theory, evolutionary systems, and swarm systems have been given a great
boost in recent years, since the development of advanced computing machinery
that can grind out descriptions of the mechabnical relations between immense
numbers of variables involving an almost innumerable quantity of objects.
The problem with these reductionist mechanical theories is that they do not
even get to the starting line. As v. Clauswitz writes (1873 [1832])
concerning the abstact representation of war as a contest (the fundament of
Game Theory):
"Thus reasoning in the abstract, the mind cannot stop short of an extreme
[read here absolute competition], because it has to deal with an extreme,
with a conflict of forces left to themselves, and obeying no other but their
own inner laws. If we should seek to deduce from the pure conception of war
an absolute point for the aim which we shall propose and for the means which
we shall apply, this constant reciprocal action would involve us in
extremes, which would be nothing but a play of ideas produced by an almost
invisible train of logical subtleties. If adhering closely to the absolute,
we try to avoid all difficulties by a stroke of the pen, and insist with
logical strictness that in every case the extreme must be the object, and
the utmost effort must be exerted in that direction, such a stroke of the
pen would be a mere paper law, not by any means adapted to the real world".
The dialectics of process and of means and ends ("teleological
dialectics" for Hegel) represent valid logical alternatives to mechanical
dialectics where the material to be understood requires a consideration of
relations that is more concrete than the abstract representations of
Newtonian Physics. The effectiveness of these alternative logical modes is
well evidenced by the tremendous (and sometimes quite disastrous) effects of
their application, even if only in an incomplete and partially misguided
fashion, in the last century and a half. The incompleteness theorem and the
uncertainty theory are not justifications of other forms of dialectics,
rather they are indications of the inadequacy of mechanical systems for any
but the explication most simplified of world conditions .
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