This chapter and others does indeed confirm Frank's interest in a united
front against the common right-wing enemy.
As I did not digitize the chapters in their original order, one may get a
different impression: i.e., Frank's objections to Soviet philosophy and
dialectical materialism only appear in later chapters; in these earlier
chapters one sees a common opposition to the retrogressive idealist right.
I am partially sympathetic to Frank's philosophical views as well as
critical of their limitations. His capsule summaries of the history of
physics are valuable in documenting the disconnects between science and
philosophy I've been writing about. The problem appears at the very
beginning of the scientific revolution, in part because of the influence of
religion, but also due to an inability to disentangle concrete scientific
content from its alleged support of philosophical or theological positions.
I'm not so sure that Frank's critique of the Kantian thing-in-itself with
respect to the Uncertainty Principle is the same as Engels'. I don't like
Frank's position here, and I remain unsure of his velocity.
BTW, here's a paragraph from my intellectual diary, 19 November 2003:
A few days ago I read Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism by Betty Jo
Teeter Dobbs and Margaret C. Jacob. I once had quite an interest in Newton,
circa 1979, when I was interested in the dynamics of the totality of his
thought (which includes alchemy and theology) in the
cultural-philosophical-ideological complex of his time. This little book
shows how archaic Newton was in his overall perspective—he was no mechanist
that we would recognize. Aside from his vitalistic conceptions of matter
outside of the realm for which he is famous, his aversion to materialism
with the ever-present atheistic tendencies attributed to or associated with
it reveal a Newton not fully modern and a society caught in irresolvable
ideological contradictions. Newtonianism was ideologically tinged with
non-scientific political preoccupations: it could be an apology for order
or a call to revolution. Newton was of the party of order and moderation,
favoring neither revolution nor absolute monarchy.
At 12:33 PM 1/9/2006 -0500, Charles Brown wrote:
Impressive that Frank is consistently battling "idealist philosophy". This
certainly indicates a unity with Marxist approach to philosophical issues.
Interjections below.
CB
...........
^^^^^
CB: Frank is straight forward critiquing "idealism", by name. A Pop front
with Marxism ,indeed !
^^^^^^
..............
One often reads the following formulation: "It is impossible to measure
the position and the velocity of a moving particle simultaneously." The
world, therefore, just as it is according to classical mechanics, is
filled with particles having definite positions and velocities;
unfortunately, we can never attain a knowledge of them. This presentation,
in which the states of the particles play the role of the "thing in
itself" in idealistic philosophy, leads to innumerable pseudo problems.
^^^^^
CB; Here Frank seems to be in comradely unity with Lenin and Engels on
criticism of the Kantian idea of the unknowable thing-in-itself as an
idealist error.
And he raises it directly in discussing idealistic interpretations of
Quantum Mechanics. This is what I was getting at in my comments on
Heisenberg just debated with andie.
_______________________________________________
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
