Oudeyis :
For Hegel, and I assume for Marx and Engels, regular incremental changes
(magnitude) does not turn into quality, but rather at some critical point, a
new quality emerges out of and negates regular incremental change.
^^^^^
CB: I said quantitative change turns into qualitative _change_ . I didn't
say incremental changes turn into quality - if that makes a difference.
Here's what I said:
> Quantity turning into quality is a change in the type of change; it is
> quantitative _change_ turning into qualitative _change_.
This is a change of a change, "change squared" , so to speak.
I appreciate your introduction of the concept of "essence" or significance.
Your discussion of water's changes of state is helpful. Since water cannot
get hotter than 212 degrees, your saying that the qualitative change negates
the quantitative change is right on. The changes in the temperature cease at
212; that change is negated. A new type of change occurs: a change in the
_state_ of the matter, not a change in its temperature.
Charles
^^^^^^^
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). Essence is a function of the objectives of our
activity. 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).
For the high school physics teacher the description of the boiling teapot in
dialectical form is nonsensical. He 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
whole process 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 preminently practical where the significant components of the desired
object are known, observable and measureable. On the other hand, I suggest
that if among our physics teacher's objectives are, say, managing student
activity in the classroom, he will have to search for other methods for
understanding the conditions of classroom management and design his
activities accordingly. Here he should take into account the fact that his
objectives involve the influencing of the behaviour of human beings in a
complex social context in which the individuals and the social entities they
produce and comprise are in a process of continual change relative to his
objectives as a teacher and as an instructor in physics (I'm idealizing
here, if you haven't noticed). Many of the factors significant for
realizing his objectives are outside his observational capacities and most
cannot be measured exactly; and, most importantly, he can never be sure that
he has identified all significant factors, and whether those he has
identified will retain their original significance over time. Finally, he
should recognize that his practice, theory and activity, are an integral
part of the "historical" development of the social life of the classroom,
and that whatever the changes he may introduce, they will effect his own
practices and his relations to classroom society. The complexity of the
concrete circumstances of classroom interaction just cannot be modelled by
gradualist models of the sort he uses to describe how liquid water becomes
gaseous water.
> Evolution punctuated by revolution is another way of saying quantitative
> change turns into qualitative change.
It appears to me that this is a virtually meaningless statement when it
comes to doping out the problems of social change. The differentiation of
Quality, Magnitude, and Quantity is so abstract, that it is valueless when
it comes to the complex conditions of social historical development. An
understanding of social historical change requires a far more concrete
representation of the development of human activity and of social
organization than the model of the boiling teapot.
> Socially, the ebb and flow of reform is evolutionary. It is change without
> changing the mode of production out of capitalism. Socialist revolution is
a
> leap in which the mode of production changes.
Even in 1867 this was a pretty abstract represtentation of social process
(in three large, richly developed tomes I might add). Since then the mode
of capitalist production has undergone some pretty dramatic revolutionary
changes of its own, the social relations of production have changed almost
beyond recognition from those of early industrial England, and the very rate
of change of productive processes now generates greater developments in
production and labour in 5 years than can be measured for 5 centuries.
Isn't it time that we seriously re-investigated our theories and our
(collectively speaking) practices and their consequences in recent history?
> Darwin was an evolutionist, precisely speaking. He thought all change was
> gradual. He didn't posit revolutions. Lenin predicted that Darwin's
> gradualist model would be replaced by one with leaps. Punctuated
equilibrium
> is exactly that replacement. Speciation occurs in the leaps after long
> periods of "circular" motion in the , equilibrium, in the forms _within_ a
> species. "Equilibrium" doesn't mean no change, just changes that stay
> within the species.
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.
> Gradual, quantitative or circular changes last for a longer period of time
> than the leaps. Leaps are relatively rare compared to gradual changes. In
> other words, the "suddenness" of the leap or hop you mention is _relative_
> to the slowness of the continous change. The leap change and continous
> change have to be related ( as a unity and struggle of opposites).
>
> The dialectic of quantity and quality impinges in that essentially
> "quantitative" process , counting. To count counting or whole numbers
seems
> inherently gradual and continuous at first. But when we establish the real
> numbers, then counting the counting numbers involves leaps over an
infinite
> number of numbers just to go from one (1) to two (2). And then there is
> transformation (back) from qualitative change to quantitative change, as
the
> leaps become regular, and 1,2,3,4, 5, 6... can be considered a continous
> series of numbers.
Again, the contradiction or, better, negation is not between the numbers
themselves, but between the concept of whole and real numbers.
> Charles
>
>
>
>
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