Is Professor Haldane's Account of Evolution Dialectical?Professor Haldane
Replies
Ralph Dumain rdumain at igc.org
A. P. LERNER succeeds in criticizing the kind of crap that passes for
dialectics of nature in the Marxist literature. A study of the arguments of
Marxist scientists in the 1930s would be historically profitable, if one has
the patience to review the literature. I have quite a bit of it myself.
^^^^
CB: A.P. Lerner sounds like the typical metaphysical thinker who doesn't want
to understand dialectics , and tries to make it seem silly. Haldane sort of
puts him out to pasture in his reply. Haldane is clear as a bell. Sounds like
Engels, and he's a great , professional biologist to boot ?!
^^^^^^
Helena Sheehan also provides quite a bit of info in her book MARXISM AND THE
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. But what she leaves out is also instructive.
There are two or three aspects of dialectical materialism to consider:
(1) diamat as ontology
(a) diamat as emergent materialism
(b) what is 'dialectical' in diamat (incl. dialectical contradiction)
(2) diamat as epistemology (abstraction, concept formation, categorial
thinking, contradiction, etc.)
And of course the relation between (1) and (2).
^^^^^
CB: This might be rendering dialectical materialism in terms of categories of
bourgeois philosophy, ontology and epistemology. Dialectical materialism
explicitly claims to make these categories obsolete.
^^^^^^^
And then of course the relationship between abstract philosophical categories
and empirical concepts, fudged from Engels on.
^^^^^^^
CB: Care to elaborate ?
^^^^^^^
I've devoted quite a bit of effort over many years to straighten out this mess,
but my efforts have fallen on deaf eyeballs.
Sheehan not only leaves out quite most of Marx as well as quite a bit of
Engels, but she leaves subjective dialectics (epistemology & logic) out of
account, the area where the Soviets of the '30s, Somerville (ass-kissing the
Soviets), Novack (following Trotsky) and others messed up completely.
Dialectics of nature was plausible to scientists, I think, based on the
plausibility of emergent materialism, sans scrupulous logical scrutiny of the
actual doctrine. This may have been due to some form of ideological
subservience to Moscow, or the power of metaphor, it's hard to tell.
^^^^^^
CB: Emergence concerns the transformation of quantity into quality and vica
versa. Levels of integration of the sciences, and all that. Levels don't
reduce to each other. Anti-reductionism, like Levins and Lewontin emphasis in
_The Dialectical Biologist_. Emergent analysis is the other side of
anti-reductionist analysis...The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
^^^^^^^
The best one can say of Haldane here, I think, is that diamat belongs to what
Gerald Holton called themata:
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/themata1.html
I might be able to accept that Haldane was thematically guided in a certain
direction, but otherwise his account of his own discovery process is
implausible.
^^^^^
CB: :>) Well we'll have to look into the matter a little further at some point.
For now, I think I'll believe Haldane as knowing his own thought processes
better than others, with all due respect. Sounds entirely plausible to me.
Reminds me of how I've thought of some things.
Anyway, Jim F. mentioned here way back when that Stephen Jay Gould referred to
dialectic as a heuristic device, which may be similar to this thematic idea.
Heuristic
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For heuristics in computer science, see heuristic (computer science).
Heuristic is the art and science of discovery and invention. The word comes
from the same Greek root as "eureka": εὑρισκω, which means "I find". A
heuristic is a way of directing your attention fruitfully. The term was
introduced by Pappus of Alexandria in the 4th century.
The mathematician George Pólya popularized heuristic in the twentieth century
in his book How to Solve It. He learned mathematical proofs as a student, but
didn't know how mathematicians think of proofs, nor was this taught. How to
Solve It is a collection of ideas about heuristic that he taught to math
students: ways of looking at problems and casting about for solutions.
Some commonplace heuristics, all from How to Solve It:
If you are having difficulty understanding a problem, try drawing a picture.
If you can't find a solution, try assuming that you have a solution and seeing
what you can derive from that ("working backward").
If the problem is abstract, try examining a concrete example.
Try solving a more general problem first (the "inventor's paradox": the more
ambitious plan may have more chances of success).
Lexical note: The name of the topic is heuristic (not "heuristics"), a
particular technique of directing your attention toward discovery is a
heuristic, two or more of these are heuristics, and the adjective for
"pertaining to how something is discovered" is heuristic.
Contents [hide]
1 Psychology
1.1 Theorized psychological heuristics
2 Philosophy
3 Law
4 Computer science
4.1 Human-computer interaction
5 See also
6 External links
7 Further reading
[edit]
Psychology
In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules of thumb which have been
proposed to explain how people make decisions, come to judgments and solve
problems, typically when facing complex problems or incomplete information.
These rules work well under most circumstances, but in certain cases lead to
systematic cognitive biases.
For instance, people may tend to perceive more expensive beers as tasting
better than inexpensive ones. This finding holds true even when prices and
brands are switched; putting the high price on the normally relatively
inexpensive brand is enough to lead experimental participants to perceive that
beer as tasting better than the beer that is normally relatively expensive. One
might call this "price implies quality" bias.
Much of the work of discovering heuristics in human decision makers was ignited
by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who shared an important influence on
behavioral finance. Critics led by Gerd Gigerenzer focus on how heuristics can
be used to make principally accurate judgments rather than producing cognitive
biases — heuristics that are "fast and frugal".
[edit]
Theorized psychological heuristics
Well-known:
Anchoring and adjustment
Availability heuristic
Representativeness heuristic
Lesser-known:
Affect heuristic
Contagion heuristic
Effort heuristic
Familiarity heuristic
Fluency heuristic
Peak-end rule
Recognition heuristic
Scarcity heuristic
Similarity heuristic
Simulation heuristic
Social proof
Take-the-best heuristic
[edit]
Philosophy
In philosophy, especially in its Continental European kind, the adjective
"heuristic" (or the designation "heuristic device") is used when an entity X is
there to understand or to find out about some other entity Y. A good example is
a model, which, as it is never identical with whatever it models, is a
heuristic device to understand the latter. Stories, metaphors, etc., can also
be termed heuristic in that sense. A classic example is the notion of utopia as
described in Plato's best-known work, Politeia. This means that the purpose of
the "ideal city" as depicted in the Politeia is not to be pursued or to present
an orientation-point for development, but rather, that it shows how things
would have to be connected, and how one thing would lead to another—often with
highly problematic results, if one would opt for certain principles and carry
them through rigorously.
[edit]
Law
In legal theory, especially that of law and economics, heuristics are used in
the law when case-by-case analysis would be impractical.
For instance, in the United States the legal drinking age is 21, because it is
argued that people need to be mature enough to make decisions involving the
risks of alcohol consumption. However, assuming people mature at different
rates, the specific age of 21 would be too late for some and too early for
others. In this case, the somewhat arbitrary deadline is used because it is
impossible or impractical to tell whether one individual is mature enough that
society can trust them with that kind of responsibility.
The same reasoning applies to patent law. Patents are justified on the grounds
that inventors need to be protected in order to have incentive to invent (or
else suffer the tragedy of the commons if anyone could use their idea). So, it
is argued that it is in the best interest of society to issue inventors a
temporary government-granted monopoly on their product so they can recoup their
investment costs and make economic profit for a limited period of time. In the
United States the length of this temporary monopoly is 20 years from the date
the application for patent was filed, though the monopoly does not actually
begin until the application has matured into a patent. However, like the
drinking age problem above, the specific length of time would need to be
different for every product in order to be efficient, but the 20-year number is
used because it is difficult to tell what the number should be for any
individual patent. More recently, some including Lawrence Lessig have argued
that patents in different kinds of industries such as software patents should
be protected for different lengths of time.
[edit]
Computer science
Main article Heuristic (computer science)
In computer science, a heuristic is a technique designed to solve a problem
that ignores whether the solution can be proven to be correct, but which
usually produces a good solution or solves a simpler problem that contains or
intersects with the solution of the more complex problem.
Heuristics are intended to gain computational performance or conceptual
simplicity potentially at the cost of accuracy or precision.
[edit]
Human-computer interaction
In human-computer interaction, heuristic evaluation is a usability testing
technique devised by usability consultant Jakob Nielsen. In heuristic
evaluation, the user interface is reviewed by experts and its compliance to ten
usability heuristics (broadly stated characteristics of a good user interface)
is assessed and any violating aspects are recorded.
[edit]
See also
Behavioral economics — an economic subfield with heuristics as one of its main
arguments
Problem solving
[edit]
External links
The Heuristic Wiki
Heuristics and artificial intelligence in finance and investment — The use of
heuristics and AI techniques in finance and investment.
[edit]
Further reading
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