Ralph Dumain: There's a treasure trove buried inside mountains of crap,
^^^^ CB: No doubt true. Maybe we can even use some of the crap as fertilizer for fruitful endeavor :>), and then treasures of yore are surrounded by earthly dirt. Thanks for all these direct texts , Ralph ! I will be reading your list of articles. I actually have a fair number of hardcopy books and articles of Soviet philo and philo of science, and they are not in computer texts. I'll gather some to post. I actually did come across Jean Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels, and arrogant non-pro mathematician that I am , I had a response to Van Heijenoort. I can't remember it right off, but I'll reread Van Heijenoort and see if I can remember what I thought of. Comradely, Charles ^^^^^^^ but nevertheless there is a lot of important Soviet work, in the history of philosophy and philosophy of science. Even some of the more general programmatic works are important, because the Soviets had some basic orientations, which were, at least generally speaking, better than ours, esp. in connection with critiques of neopositivism. Hence you'll find some interesting stuff in Lektorsky, Naletov, and others, including some figures from our standpoint which are even more obscure (unknown). For example, Bazhenov is wary of indiscriminate condemnations of mechanicism and reductionism, and defends what is valuable in reductionism: "Matter and Motion" by L. Bazhenov http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/bazhenov.html On the philosophic misuse of physics and biology as master metaphors, see: "The Image of Science and Metaphysics" by Nina Yulina http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/sci-image.html Lektorsky, among other things, incorporates a notion of subjectivity within a dialelectical materialist perspective differing from the comparable subjectivisms of the West: Subject, Object, Cognition: Contents & Preface to the English edition by V. A. Lektorsky http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/lektorsky0.html The Collective Subject. The Individual Subject by V. A. Lektorsky http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/lektorsky1.html Now, on Engels. In some ways Engels screwed up very badly. Jean Van Heijenoort, Trotsky's erstwhile bodyguard and famous mathematical logician, enumerated Engels' intellectual misdeeds. You might have missed this one, as I don't believe MIA has corrected the omission on its Van Heijenoort page: Friedrich Engels And Mathematics http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/heijen/works/math.htm The problem with "laws" is that others, following Engels' worst practice, tend to conflate logical with natural laws. (There is what Lisa was stumbling over in her final months when reading Engels.) But even as logical laws applied to real world processes there's a problem. Richard Norman explains this very clearly in a debate with Sean Sayers, who takes the totally confused, sectarian diamat line. A general problem, in my opinion, is that people preserve the worst of Engels while often overlooking his more perspicacious remarks. There is an even more general trap to avoid, the trap of ensconcing oneself in a ghetto called "Marxism". The intellectual goal of Marxism, especially as relates to the special sciences, is to take an overview of the totality of knowledge, recognizing that the totality of knowledge is not cornered and sequestered in one place, but fragmented in a million different specialized places under alienated social conditions of intellectual reproduction. Hence, one has to have a foot in both worlds--the mainstream world where knowledge production takes place, and the "Marxist" world where criticism and sythesis is performed to repair the malformations of the big picture caused by bourgeois society. Our local philosophy group covered some ground on the emergence question. Early on, I raised the issue of materialist vs mystical conceptions of emergence, but I don't think anyone caught on. One theoretical biologist is into Bradley and Whitehead, and also cited Teilhard de Chardin. Suspicious. Perhaps I should try to organize the e-mails I wrote into some coherent order so I can circulate them more widely. I thought our in-person group discussion of emergence could serve as a focal point for transcending the split between positivist and irrationalist tendencies, and we even got some scientists interested, but only a few people had anything to say amidst a barrage of BS. I think the emergence question is pivotal in a number of areas, e.g.: (1) diagnosing the fragmentation vs pseudo-unification (mysticism) of the world picture in bourgeois society, (2) bridging the gap between object and subject. I have a few projects in progress addressing these questions, which also includes a novel interpretation of Marx's 1844 mss, and an analysis of mystification in popularization of cosmology. Finally, there are some article from NST already online. A couple are on my web site, but the MEP web site offers others: Selected articles from Nature, Society, and Thought http://webusers.physics.umn.edu/~marquit/selected.htm If there's an article you really want to see, you might contact Marquit. He might not have the time to do format conversions to put something online, but you never know. _______________________________________________ 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
