In a message dated 4/28/01 11:39:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Scott was right, and I was wrong, about the date of Einstein's Brownian
> motion paper (1905). Of course this pushes back the date at which it was
> still reasonable to be skeptical of the atomic hypothesis, and so supports
> my point, and not Scott's about whether Mach was just a typical scientist
> who has a hard time accepting new ideas (my view) or a "doctrinaire nut"
> (Scott's). But having actually looked up the paper, I must post my
> correction and acknowledge my error.
>
> jks
>
I weary of this discussion, which is going nowhere--and probably others weary
of it too. So, I'll wrap up my part in it with a bit more about Mach and his
attitude toward atoms, which really does epitomize one of the major sins of
positivism, as we "traditional Marxists" use the term.
Let me preface this with a quotation from Richard Feynman, about the
importance of the atoms to scientific theory:
"If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and
only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what
statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe
it is the ATOMIC HYPOTHESIS (or the atomic FACT, or whatever you wish to call
it) that ALL THINGS ARE MADE OF ATOMS--little particles that move around in
perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance
apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one
sentence, you will see, there is an ENORMOUS amount of information about the
world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied." ["The Feynman
Lectures on Physics", lecture 1, p. 2.]
In short, the question of whether atoms really exist is one of the most basic
and important in all physical science.
A few pages later, Feynman asks: "How do we KNOW that there are atoms? By one
of the tricks mentioned earlier: we make the HYPOTHESIS that there are atoms,
and one after the other results come out the way we predict, as they ought to
if things ARE made of atoms." (Note that this is exactly what Popper, as part
of his positivist doctrine of "falsification", DENIES that it possible and
proper for scientists to do--i.e., CONFIRM any scientific theory this way!)
Feynman goes on to mention some of the specific pieces of evidence, including
the Brownian motion of tiny chunks of matter being bounced around by
individual collisions with atoms or molecules--which Einstein finally gave a
completely convincing explanation for in 1905.
How much of this evidence for the existence of atoms became available in the
19th century? A tremendous amount. Atoms and their motion were used as basic
principles in the construction of whole new spheres of science, such as
Boltzmann's statistical mechanics. Atomic theory transformed all of 19th
century physical science, however, most especially chemistry, but even
astronomy with the advent of the spectroscope (c. 1861).
Of course a lot more direct evidence for the existence of atoms was
discovered in the 20th century, some of it quite recently (by means of new
tools such as the scanning electron microscope and its derivatives, for
example). I have no doubt that plenty of yet further evidence for atoms will
be discovered in this new century. But, while this further evidence is no
doubt interesting in a number of respects, it is no longer really relevant to
the "question" of whether atoms exist--because that has long since ceased to
be a real scientific question.
For most working physicists, chemists, and other scientists, this "atom"
question was clearly settled in the second half of the 19th century. Oh, a
few people still had some doubts, but as Justin has admitted, you would have
to say that at least by the time of Einstein's paper on Brownian motion, in
that "miraculous year" 1905, the existence of atoms had been scientifically
proven, definitely and for sure.
Now let us turn to Mach. Boltzmann, was a professor of physics at the
University of Vienna while Mach became a professor of philosophy there in
1895.Boltzmann, who was a fine philosophical materialist, reports: "I once
engaged in a lively debate on the value of atomic theories with a group of
academicians, including Hofrat Professor Mach, right on the floor of the
academy [of science] itself.... Suddenly Mach spoke out from the group and
laconically said: 'I don't believe that atoms exist.' This sentence went
round and round in my head." [Quoted by Jeremy Bernstein in his introduction
to a reissue of Mach's book, "Popular Scientific Lectures" (Open Court,
1986), p. xiv.] The materialist Boltzmann was astounded by this. He could not
believe his ears!
But that was still before Einstein's Brownian motion paper, so Justin still
wants us to cut Mach some slack. OK. But Jeremy Bernstein writes:
"[Mach] surely must have understood that one of Einstein's other papers in
the 'miracle year' of 1905 was credited with being an important proof of the
'existence' of atoms. This was Einstein's paper on what is now known as
Brownian motion--after the nineteenth century Scottish botanist Robert Brown.
Brown had observed that microscopic pollen grains, when suspended in water,
appear to dance around indefinitely in an agitated random way. Einstein
interpreted this as the result of the constant bombardment of these objects
by the invisible water molecules, and, what was more important, he was able
to make quantitative predictions about the nature of the 'random walk' of the
suspended particles--predictions that were soon experimentally verified. This
convinced many of the skeptics that atoms indeed existed, but it did not
convince Mach. No one, as far as he was concerned, had seen one." [p. xvi]
The story that Mach eventually came to admit the existence of atoms depends
mostly upon a report of a conversation he had with Stefan Meyer. Defenders of
Mach have seized upon this unverifiable ( ! ) report in order to defend their
hero. But, as Bernstein writes, "in 1910, seven years after this alleged
conversion, Mach wrote 'The results of the atomic theory can be just as
manifold and useful if one is not in such a hurry to treat atoms as
realities. Therefore all honor to the beliefs of physicists! But I myself
cannot make this particular belief my own.'" [p. xvii] "What could be
clearer?," Bernstein adds. Note also that this was 5 years AFTER Einstein's
Brownian motion paper.
When he was over 70 years old (which means in 1908 or after), Mach also had a
meeting with Einstein. Bernstein writes: "The conversation concerned atoms.
Einstein tried to persuade Mach to accept the atomic hypothesis on the ground
that with it properties of gases could be predicted that could not be
predicted without atomic theory. He argued that the fact that such
predictions might require long calculations did not mean that this theory was
not 'economical'. Mach's position had always been that theories were merely
economical descriptions of observed facts. According to Professor Frank, Mach
seemed willing to concede that such a theory could be economical in a logical
sense, and it was Professor Frank's feeling that there had been a meeting of
the minds. If there was, it didn't last long. After Mach's death on February
19, 1916, his son Ludwig found the following passage among his father's
papers: 'I do not consider the Newtonian principles as completed and perfect;
yet in my old age, I can accept the theory of relativity just as little as I
can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogma.'" [pp. xvii-xviii]
Bernstein also quotes Einstein as calling Mach, after his death, a
"deplorable philosophe' [deplorable philosopher]. [p. xviii]
Well, what are we to make of all this? Despite Justin's strenuous defense of,
and apologies for, Mach, it seems to me that it is obvious he was letting his
dogmatic philosophical views blind him to reality. He had sort of an super
extreme version of Ockham's Razor hard-coded in his brain, something along
the lines of, if it is somehow possible (even if we have to go to bizarre
lengths) to avoid admitting the existence of any physical entity, then do so.
And, if it is somehow possible to avoid adopting any scientific theory, even
if we have to twist over backwards to do so, then still DO SO! I stand by my
characterization of this point of view as "nutty".
Is Mach's point of view also appropriately called positivism? Well, as we
have seen in this back-and-forth debate, different people use that word in
different ways. People like Justin, who look on logical positivism in a
favorable light, may feel a little uneasy calling Mach a positivist because
it is so hard to defend someone like him (even though Justin also goes to
great lengths to do so!).
But my only claim all along is that in the way the word 'positivism' is used
by "us Marxists" (or us "traditional Marxists", or us "old-fashioned
Marxists" if you prefer), someone like Mach is the epitome of positivism, or
at least one of its most central features--the hostility to scientific
theory. This anti-theoretic aspect of positivism is clear, for example, in
the following definition from a 1984 Soviet philosophical dictionary:
"POSITIVISM, a trend in bourgeois philosophy which declares natural
(empirical) sciences to be the sole source of true knowledge and rejects the
cognitive value of philosophical study. P. emerged in response to the
inability fo speculative philosophy, q.v. (e.g., classical German idealism)
to solve philosophical problems which had arisen as a result of scientific
development. Positivists went to an opposite extreme and rejected theoretical
speculation as a means of obtaining knowledge....." ["Dictionary of
Philosophy", (International, 1984)]
* * *
I would like to close with a few words about "Marxism" and what it means
these days. When I presented views like the above as what "we Marxists"
believe, Justin said that many of those who count themselves as Marxists
would very much disagree. Of course he is right, and that's why I backed off
to "traditional Marxists" above. Or is that still unacceptable?
Lenin said that there are three component parts of Marxism, each extremely
important: philosophy, political economy, and politics. These days, however,
we find people who consider themselves to be Marxists who deny that Marxism
has any distinctive philosophy, or at least oppose its "traditional"
philosophy of dialectical materialism. Justin, for instance, says his
philosophy is basically derived from logical positivism and Quine's style of
pragmatism. And we find others who deny large parts of its "traditional"
political economy, preferring Keynes to Marx for example. And we find many
others (and sometimes the same folks as before), who don't like the
traditional revolutionary politics of Marxism, and prefer the road of
peaceful reform, and so forth.
Anybody can call themselves whatever they like. What puzzles me though is why
anybody WANTS to call themselves a Marxist when they seem to find so little
of value IN Marxism, and in the Marxist tradition of not only Marx, but of
Engels, Lenin and Mao.
We "traditional Marxists" also recognize that Marx is not the last word in
Marxism. We, at least many of us, believe that Marxism itself must be pursued
and developed as a science, that it is open to modification and extention.
That, indeed, is evidenced in our penchant for changing the very name of the
science, from just Marxism (which we still use as shorthand), to
Marxism-Leninism or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. And Mao is not the last word
either.
But, really, if so little of that Marxist tradition is deemed by many
"up-to-date Marxists" today to have any value... If Lukacs, Adorno and Keynes
should be read, but not Marx and Lenin... Well, I just wonder how much of a
thing can you throw out before the nature of that thing changes its essential
nature into something totally different.
--Scott Harrison
