Steve Gabosch: Hi, Charles. Yes, treasure trove is a very good description. Same with the wealth of discoveries in complexity science etc. - there is a tremendous field of knowledge now extant that dialectical materialism can help generalize, and like you and Ralph, I think emergence theory can be a terrific conceptual tool to help do that. Its an application so to speak of the concept of the transformation of quantity to quality simply not available in the 19th Century - or if so, only in a very rudimentary form. The kind of data that is really revealing this concept of emergence seems to have only become practically available since the 1960's, and especially since the 1980's. ^^^^
CB: Yes, emergence seems an example of, I'd say, quantitative change turning into qualitative change: quantum leap. I think some comrades criticisms of the Engelsian attitude to dialectic might be understood in part if we consider that Hegel termed it a logic. Logic, formal logic , is so pervasive and fundamental that to an extent it is trivial. Dialectical logic has some of this same "triviality" as well as pervasiveness. Usually a discussion of dialectic proceeds as if it is a sort of profound mystery. This initial attitude of the investigation contradicts the experience of actual examples which are somewhat common place, for example, water reaching a boiling point and going through a qualitative change of state. So, critics say a sort of "so what". They were expecting something deep and they are given something trivial. But we aren't disappointed when formal logic is trivial, for example the identity principle , "a is a", yet pervasive. Similarly, we need not be disappointed at the triviality of some levels of dialectic. > CB: I've been reading Fuchs article recently. Fuchs, by the way, is the nephew >of Comrade Klaus Fuchs, who was one of the main inventors of the bomb. Steve: Really! With Feynman? I read one of RF's delightful biographies some years ago. I wonder if Feynman picked one of Klaus' locks! Why do you say "Comrade"? ^^^^^^ CB:Do you have _Nature, Society and Thought_ Vol.16. No.2 ? There is an article "Klaus Fuchs, atom secrets & scientists responsibility" by Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski. Klaus Fuchs was in Britain as an anti-Nazi refugee, where he was a leading physicist in nuclear research. Later, 1950, he was convicted of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. In 1943 he went to the US as part of the British team on the Manhattan Project. He worked in Los Alamos in 1944-46. The article says that Klaus Fuchs joined the Communist Party of Germany in July of 1932. During his studies in Kiel (1931 -33) , Fuchs was sentenced to death by Nazi students in a "lynching trial." They formed a posse that was supposed to throw him into the Forde River. At this time he fled to Berlin and hid himself there. The article says he was an assistant to Max Born, and Born considered him , together with Werner Heisenber as two of his most important students. >I just got my latest Nature, Society and Thought (Vol. 17 No.3, 2004). It has an article by Herbert Horz, a philosopher from the former GDR, titled >"Quantum Physics and the Shaping of Life: Commentary on Klaus Fuch'sCritique of Mechanistic Determinism." The puzzle of quantum mechanics suggests using Engels' notion of the dialectic of chance and necessity ( see_Anti-Duhring_) in solving same. ^^^^^^ I took a peek at this article but haven't tackled it. Quantum mechanics has always eluded me. Perhaps sometime if you have a little time and if the impulse hits you you'd be willing to review the article and give a little overview of quantum physics while you are at it. - Steve ^^^^ CB: Although I have an ongoing study project trying to understand quantum mechanics, I am not qualified to give an overview of it (smile). We had a thread on QM on PEN-L a while ago. Go to the archive at http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/index.htm And go to the weeks of October 18 and 25, 2004. Look to posts with titles " Dialectics/Phil of Math / quantum mechanic " and similar titles. However, just last night, I was thinking I might type out for the list(s) a copy of yet another N,S and T article (Vol. 15, no.3) by Efthichios I Bisakis "Complementarity: Dialectics or Formal Logic ?" which discusses Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics in terms of dialectics and all the debates about the implications of quantum mechanics for philosophical realism and determinism. As I skim the article, I think it may be a "motherload" in terms of Marxists and materialists' response to those who draw idealist philosophical implications from quantum mechanics indeterminancy. You may know that there have been a number of other articles on quantum physics in N,S and T over the years. The main person at N,S and T is Erwin Marquit, who is a physics professor. Marquit himself has a couple of articles on QM from a ways back. _______________________________________________ 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
