Have been following your discussion with considerable interest. Sorry
to lurk so long, but I was occupied in finishing up a paper.
I was particularly interested in your earlier discussion on emergence.
I agree strongly with Jay Gould that dialectics; Hegelian and Marxist alike,
describe what I suppose would now be called "emergent functions". I have
many reservations about Engel's representation of the dialectic and his
three so-called "laws" appear to me to be a snobbish attempt to present
"Dialectics for the Working Class". Certainly Llyod Spencer and Andrzej
Krauze's Hegel for Beginners and Andy Blunden's Getting to Know Hegel are
much more successful representations of dialectical theory. A search for
emergentism in Marxism would be better served by reinvestigating the methods
of Hegel (his Logics) and of Marx (Practice, or, better, labour practice)
for the mechanics and process whereby they derive emergent complex moments
from simpler prior conditions. I suspect that the concretisation of
abstraction through successive negation, unity of labour practice and extant
condition in the productive process, and sublation of prior syntheses in
extant dialectical moments will have more significance for understanding
emergence in human history than the hierarchy theories of Salthe, Swenson,
and O'Neil, the emergent semiotics of Hoffmeyer and so on. That is not to
say that systems, even cybernetic systems, are not relevant to the
investigation, but, we must remember that despite Engel's (sometimes
brilliant and sometimes embarrassing) adventures in the dialectics of
Nature, that Hegel and Marx theoretical interests were exclusively focussed
on human activity and human history and were only interested in Nature as a
derived function of human inteaction with material conditions. Even
Hegel's dialectics on Nature concerned the Natural Sciences and not Nature
as such (as the subject of human contemplation).
Which bring us to the problem of Natural science and Marxism.
Certainly the Natural sciences are a component of modern history. They
more or less emerge in late Mediaeval Europe together with the development
of powerful urban commercial and industrial institutions. From the point of
view of Marxist theory, the interesting thing about the Natural sciences is
the relation between the moment of their emergence and the concurrent
developments of European society in all its aspects. For example, the
optical and astronomical discoveries of the earliest Natural scientists were
most useful for the long-range navigation needs of Europe's commercial and
colonial enterprises while the mathematical developments in geometry,
trigonometry and the calculus were important for the development of improved
techniques for the prompt and accurate estimations of volume, mass, and
weight of goods as well as managing cannon fire. Even the origin of the
Social Sciences can be traced to this period; Machiavelli and de Seyselle's
practical analyses of government as well as the contemporary development of
double entry accounting and . But, note, that the Marxist interest in these
developments is in their practical relations to the needs growing out of the
urbanization and commercialization of human life and not as representations
of contemplated Nature.
Mathematics and the Natural sciences can contribute to the development
of Marxist theory, but only in a form that contributes to the objectives of
the dialectical explication of historical conditions and events. After all,
in Capital, Marx exploits and develops the practices of contemporary
accounting to provide mechanical mathematical objectifications of the
relations between productive and commercial processes that are critical to
the aims of his theory. Marx also demonstrates considerable interest in the
physics of machine engineering, but not as an objective description of
Nature, but specifically as it relates to the historical development of
human productive and social practice. Marx and Engels also adapt
contemporary thinking on organism and on pre- and proto-human, behaviour to
describe the fundamental material conditions for the development of human
practice.
In short, the objectives of the practice of the Natural Sciences are
distinct from those of Marxist theory, and their products satisfy needs
different from those that engender social historical theory. Even the
methods are different insofar as the natural scientist enjoys a bit more
distance from the subject of his research (except for quantum
indeterminism)than the social-historian. Natural Science can be the subject
of investigation by social historical scientists and some of its products
can, with suitable modifications, be adopted to the objects of social
history, but social history has no more qualifications for determining the
practices (theory and activity) of Natural science than do the natural
scientists for the determination of the practices of social historical
science (e.g. the silly foray of Pinker and Dawkins into Memics).
Wirh regards,
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Dumain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 6:37 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
> You are correct about Lenin as well as Marx and Engels. Lenin was careful
> about communists' overstepping their bounds of competence. However, even
> during the 1920s, when activity in all areas was quite creative before
> Stalin's clampdown, certain bad habits got established.
>
> I don't recall exactly when interference in the sciences began. There was
> of course the notorious meddling in Soviet genetics, which resulted in
> Lysenkoism and severe consequences for Soviet agriculture. But the theory
> of relativity was also denounced as not conforming to principles of
> dialectical materialism, which occasioned some mockery from
> Einstein. (After the Post-Stalin thaw, Einstein was held up as an
exemplar
> of dialectical materialist thought.) Mathematicians also suffered during
> this period. Kolman testifies to the ineptitude imposed on a number of
areas.
>
> No, there was no lack of scientific enterprise in the USSR, but it's a
> miracle that the incompetence and despotism of the leadership didn't sink
> the whole country completely, ironic in view of the crash program of
> industrialization which was dubbed "building socialism."
>
> It is also important to recognize that the ideological rhetoric used was
> similar to yours:
>
> >This aspect is also interesting because Engels' theory and philosophy of
> >mathematics is exactly materialist, of course, in contrast with that of
> >what is probably the theory of most abstract mathematicians, i.e.
idealist,
> >emphasis on derivation outside of practical activities. Business is the
> >_most_ practical activity. Even physics is less practical. Business is
the
> >most highly math practical activity, in a sense.
>
> And yet how impractical the repression of theoretical thought proved to
> be. Even Bukharin was naive in this area. Some talk he gave to the
effect
> that there was no future for "pure" research got Michael Polanyi so
> perturbed, he proceeded to develop his own ideas about science.
>
> There's a new book on the strange career of Soviet cybernetics I need to
get.
>
> I know I had some correspondence with Rosser in the '90s, but I can't
> remember what about. The first of his essays most pertinent to our
> discussion seems to be;
>
> Aspects of Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
> http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb/DIANONL.DYN.doc
>
>
> At 04:45 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote:
> >They were probably doing good physics and math all along. Don't think
they
> >suddenly changed course and caught up and passed the rest of the world.
> >Crude scientists would not have been able to pick up on the atom bomb so
> >quickly. You know Sputnik and all that.
> >
> >Afterall, Marx, Engels and Lenin put a lot of emphasis on science.
Stalin
> >and Stalinists did a lot of following those three to the tee. M,E and L
did
> >not teach establishing an intellectual ghetto, but rather exactly
> >participating in the "totality of human knowledge."
> >
> >The problem with the Soviet Union was _not_ lack of scientific work and
> >culture.
> >
> >However,on cybernetics the word seems to be that they missed the boat on
> >that , contra what you say below.
> >
> >Charles
>
>
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