Note my interleaved comments on a fragment of a key post of yours
At 03:08 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote:
.......................... > I don't see this. I see the problem this way: that stage of the > development of materialism is inadequate to grasp the nature of human > activity, both practical and cognitive. Labels such as 'nature as such' or > 'contemplative' don't work for me without such clarification, though it > does seem that your characterization here is consistent with me though > apparently not synonymous. The old materialism, as well as the course of > development of modern natural science, is such that it begins with the > study of the lowest levels of the organization of matter and works its way > up. But once it works its way up to the human species itself as an object > of study, its intellectual limitations become manifest. And I think this > is where Marx intervenes. If I understand you correctly, you argue that so long as the natural sciences dealt with phenomena that was simple enough to contemplate without our needing to be aware o the activity of the contemplating subject, the old materialism served as a sufficient paradigm for explanations of the observed. It is only when we deal with men, i.e. ourselves that we must take into account our own subjectivity to understand what's going on. I prefer to stand your argument on its head. As long as human needs could (and given the available technology, only could) be satisfied by manipulation of his world on a purely mechanical level, the contemplative and mechanical paradigms of classical materialism was a viable system for explaining the effectiveness of human practice.
In turn, I could stand your argument on its head. What is the vantage point: objective reality with the relation of human practice as a reflection of it, or the justification of practice by its ability to fulfill needs? Either vantage point could be considered a question of perspective from one angle or the other. They could be equivalent. Yet I see my argument as basic as yours as derivative, though that perspective is also valid, i.e. explaining the effectiveness of human practice under defined conditions.
With the development of new technologies and new needs, (like the development of machinery and instruments powered by electricity). One of the earliest examples of this development in Physics was the birth (emergence?) Heisenberg principle in Quantum physics. Newtonian physics dealt with big things that could be measured with instruments that had no apparent effect whatsoever on the measure itself, thus the measurement itself could be factored out of the explanation of the activities of the things measured. Small particle, high energy physics deals with things so small and so sensitive to the effects even of light that physicists must at very least take into account the effect of their measuring activities on the subjects of their research. As I suggest below the big revolution in modern natural science, the revolution that is giving birth to concepts such as autopoiesis, emergence and non-linear causality (attractors and Feigenbaum trees) is mostly, (if not mistaken the attractor was first formally described by Lorenz in 1963 a weatherman and the term "strange attractor was first used in 1971 by Ruelle and Takens to describe fluid dynamics) connected to the investigation of systems that are ever more sensitive to our handling of their components; such as weather, the behaviour of ecosystems, animal ethology and so on. This is of course a function of the kinds of needs that our once largely mechanical handling of the conditions of our existence has produced. Thus, for example, the development of air transport has created an urgent demand for extremely accurate weather prediction, much more accurate than the simple Newtonian based physics of atmospherics and energetics (the meteorology we learned in Highschool) can provide. The modern aircraft which is still, perhaps only barely, a mechanical instrument has compelled the development of meteorology into a science in which mechanism is entirely sublated into a system that cannot be regarded as mechanical by any definition.
But note it's not just our needs, but the objectivity of the realities under investigation, for whatever reason we needed to engage them, that force methodological and philosophical revisions. One could easily argue for a dialectics of nature on this basis and not just a dialectic of science. Your perspective is interesting because it begins from the vantage point of practice. But do you really prove anything different from my perspective?
It is not enough to explain the increasing dominance of processual and teleological explanations in natural science as a function of the subjects of scientific investigation. This is obvious. The real issue is the effect of the development of human needs (mostly as a consequence of the transformations men have made on the conditions of his own existence) on the determination of the components of our life support system that must be changed and the means available to us (mostly the accumulated practices that men apply to transform the conditions of his existence) to change those components. ..........
Again, I see this as adapting the vantage point of needs and praxis as the point of departure. But I don't see the difference that makes a difference.
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