Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
into the natural world produces matter that can extend itself in time and space by reproducing offspring and actively interact with its environment. By interacting with its surroundings, the self-reproducing matter incorporates elements of the latter into its internal system or, in other words, its internal space. GENERAL CRITIQUE OF BIOSEMIOTICS: 20. I will limit the criticism of Biosemiotics to 3 main points: 1. Its absolute (or nearly absolute) obliviousness to the role of social life; conscious and unconscious in the development of semiotic systems. 2. It's fundamentally ahistorical conception of development. 3. It's failure to account for the development of learning in virtually all multi-celled organisms and of consciousness in all vertebrates and possibly in some of the invertebrates. 21. In general, the biosemoticists ignore the role of social life in the development of semiotic systems. Hoffmeyer and Emmeche's approach is unabashedly a subjectivist one in which the whole semiotic process is regarded as an immanent feature of organism without almost any need to postulate a learning process much less the formation of normative representations (ideas) to account for knowledge and thought. I write here, almost, because of Hoffmeyer's only partially successful effort to identify the interpreter of the object with the swarm, which is, indeed, a primitive and non-conscious sort of sociality. The effort is only partially successful since Hoffmeyer, in the final analysis, cannot actually account for the actual physical link between the swarm and the single cell member (the digital interpreter). Sharov's adoption of Dubrovsky's avowedly non-social materialism is implicit in his definition of ideality as a purely subjective, or, in this case, individual property. Though Sharov does present a tolerable theory for conditioned learning, ideality and value, i.e. information does not exist outside the bounds of the individual and he encounters considerable difficulty in determining an objective medium whereby information acquired through conditioning is transferred from individual to individual. The best he can do is propose that similarity of macro- (material) and micro- (ideal) fields of related organisms enables them to communicate through the use of shared signs, which is about as precise a representation as any of Kant's ideas of common understanding (see Ilyenkov, 1974 Dialectical Logic chap. 3 and 5) . 22. The object of Hoffmeyer, Emmeche and Sharov's work is to produce a single theory that encompasses the semiotic activities of all life forms from the retrovirus to man. In truth, all three recognize that human semiotic activity is quite different from that of primitive life (Hoffmeyer identifying the nearly total independence of human consciousness from natural restraints and Sharov in recognizing that human semiotic activity is associated with man's virtually absolute control over the properties of his environment), but none of them can account for these strange developments within the context of their theoretical formulations. It appears to me that the failure of Hoffmeyer's argument that the swarm is the interpreter of the object arises out of his attempt to unite the swarm and cell in a simple synthesis. In fact, the swarm represents a dialectical negation of the cell and that it is out of this dialectical negation that one might generate the fully organized multicellular life form. By regarding the relation between cell, swarm, and multicellular organism as a dialectical process, Hoffmeyer might have been able to postulate a parallel history of semiosis involving distinct processes for each stage of organizational development, each stage of semiosis negating and sublating the prior stages in a truly historical schema for semiotic development. 23. Without a consideration of the impact of social life on the development of semiotic systems and committed to an abstract, ahistorical representation of semiotic activity, the proponents of biosemiotics cannot account for the development of the very consciousness that enables them to reflect on natural phenomenon and to construct ideas about it. It's hard to believe that the same processes whereby the ambient bacterium senses a good meal just a little to his starboard bow is the same as that produced the papers on biosemiotics. Links on Biosemiotics: The international biosemiotics page Overview of Gatherings in Biosemiotics The S.E.E.D. Journal (Semiotics, Evolution, Energy, and Development) Jakob von Uexküll Centre Zoosemiotics Home Page Biosemiotics Home Page . - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 6:23 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels I'm substantially in agreement with you here. Now, if one wants to unify the marxist and natural-scientific perspectives, in place of relegating
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
Wow! Thanks for the synopsis. I don't understand how biosemiotics is Neo-Kantian, though. If you are referring to Soviet philosopher David Dubrovsky, I'd appreciate some expansion on this topic as well. Do you know whether Whitehead had a social theory? The lack of social theory in the biosemiotcs schema is as telling as the failure to distinguish between the semiosis of unicellular organisms and human beings. I saw Sebeok back in the '70s. He didn't talk about this, but he did say something suspicious. He said something about overeating as a craving for information. This is a cute metaphor, but it also reveals the idealism of interpreting the material universe as information. This picture shows up what I'm trying to get it in the distinction between mystical and materialist emergentism. There is a dialectical lesson here. Note that the linchpin of all these bad biosemiotic arguments comes from the metaphysical ordering of empirical data and the manipulation of the relationships between philosophical categories. This is where dialectics is important, not in the direct intervention into empirical science. I think I need to repeat this last paragraph a few hundred times and then explain it. For now, though, just note the categorial relationships between matter, information, meaning, mind, society ... that form the basis of this idealist discipline. At 12:26 PM 3/12/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Ralph, 1.You should be distrustful of this biosemiotics business. In essence, it's just a new twist on the kind of Neo-Kantian Ideas, Western and Russian, that Lenin (1908) warned us about in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. 2. I don't know just how much you want to know about it so I'll just provide a quick sketch of the origins, history and family ties of biosemiotics and a general description and criticism of two of its more important theoretical developments (Western: Hoffmeyer and Emmeche, Russian: Alexei Sharov). ORIGINS, HISTORY, AND GENEOLOGY OF BIOSEMIOTICS: 3. Biosemiotics shares with Ethology and Biosociology a common ancestor in Jakob v. Uexküll of umweltforschung fame. Umwelt can be understood to mean the world of significant experience of any specified, individual life form. 4.Here's how it's put in the encyclopedia of the free dictionary.com http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Umwelt Umwelt (from the German umwelt, environment) is the biological foundations that lie at the very epicentre of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal. The term is usually translated as subjective universe. Uexküll theorized that organisms can have different Umwelten, even though they share the same environment. Each component of a Umwelt has a meaning which is functional for a particular organism. Thus it can be water, food, shelter, potential threats, or points of reference for navigation. An organism creates its own Umwelt when it interacts with the world, and at the same time the organism reshapes it. This is termed a 'functional circle'. The Umwelt theory states that the mind and the world are inseparable, because it is the mind that interprets the world for the organism. 5.As you can gather from this description, umwelt is a very Kantian concept. That is to say that umwelt describes the world of the life form as the product of its subjective consciousness. Uexküll (1864-1944) along with Dilthey and Popper in historical studies and Levy-Bruhl and Franz Boas in anthropology and Mach and Avenarius in the philosophy of science is among the considerable number of European and Russian intellectuals who developed the distinctive Neo-Kantianism that still dominates much of the so-called advanced thinking of modern science, even today. 6. Thomas Sebeok (1920-2001), the Hungarian-American semioticist, combined v. Uexküll's ideas with the theories of language of de Sassure and Jakobsen thereby inventing the discipline of biosemiotics. Sebeok's biosemiotics is based on the following three principles: See http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/biosemiotics for more on this. 1. The signification, communication and habit formation of living processes 2. Semiosis (changing sign relations) in living nature 3. The biological basis of all signs and sign interpretation Biosemiotics is biology interpreted as sign systems. It certainly is a revolutionary approach when compared with the almost exclusive focus of orthodox biological theorizing on the mechanical properties of life systems. Biosemiology represents a new focus on life process (rather than mechanism) as the conveyance of signs and and their interpretation by other living signs in a variety of ways, including by means of molecules. While biosemiotics takes for granted and respects the complexity of living processes as revealed by the existing fields of biology - from molecular biology to brain science and behavioural studies - its object is to bring together
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I'm still waiting for your account of biosemiotics. From what I've found on the web, it looks like crackpot mystical pseudoscience to me. Once again, my EMERGENCE BLOG: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog.html As for current objectives, one ought to consider refining one's tools rather than repeating the same old crap from a century ago. Marxism-Leninism continues to wreak its harm from beyond the grave--what a shame. At 01:18 PM 3/9/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: 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.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 8:44 PM Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels Marxism-Thaxis] OudeyisHegel, Marx, and, for that matter, Jay Gould (he and Dan Dennett - the American reductionist philosopher - fought over this issue) did not regard development to be incremental or continuous. The dialectic, the successive emergence of negations of previous conditions suggests that development hops and jumps rather than grows by inches. The principle of Quantity is also not a case of incremental change. You can think of it as a teapot on the burner or the apparent lull before a sudden popular rising; the conditions conducive to a boiling pot or a popular uprising cook slowly without any apparent sign of dramatic change until a critical state is reached and then, things happen very suddenly indeed. The concept of Quantity for Engels and Marx as for Hegel refers to the sudden change of state rather than to the accumulation of conditions that engenders it. The issue really is the essentialism that Marx and Engels adopted from Hegel. The significant fact of the sudden boil of the teapot and the popular uprising is the end product of the process that generates them and not the conditions. After all, a teapot on a low fire is just a teapot on a low fire and a long, hot Summer is just a long, hot, Summer; they both only become interesting when they result respectively in a pot of boiling water and an uprising of an angry community. Victor ^ CB: My understanding of this is that there is a long period of exactly continuous or incremental change that is suddenly altered by the leap, the quantum leap or qualitative change. Dialectics doesn't deny continous or incremental change, rather it relates the two types of change, quantitative and qualitative. The temperature of the water is continously increasing, but the surface is not bubbling. At 212 degrees farenheit , continuous, gradual change leaps into bubbles burst on the surface, a qualitative change in the surface of the water. This is quantitative change turning into qualititive change or continuous change turning into discontinuous change. Quantity turning into quality is a change in the type of change; it is quantitative _change_ turning into qualitative _change_. For Hegel and for Marx and Engels, regular incremental changes (magnitude) do not turn into quality, but rather at some critical point, a new quality emerges out of and negates regular incremental change. 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). 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). The high school physics teacher 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 process of boiling water 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I have always wondered about the fruitfulness of abstract consideration of dialectics, particularly where they are (it is?) discussed as a method. Here Jim F seems to suggest the SJG thought that dialectics was a method or at least a heuristic for producing hypotheses. I have never seen any evidence that there was ever any method for producing hypotheses, dialectical or other. To use SJG's contrast of Soviet (dialectical)-Western (not dialectical -- mechanical? gradualist? evolutionary?) scientific training, one would expect to be able to test whether this supposed difference in training made any difference in the kind of hypotheses scientists from Soviet and non-Soviet backgrounds put forward. I have not done any such study, but I am very skeptical that it would turn up any systematic differences in the way science was done in the USSR vs the US, or in the kinds of hypotheses created by Soviet and American scientists. I expect that this is so in part because scientists (in my experience) don't pay a lot of mind of methodological broughaha that is not immediately relevant to work they are doing. The transformation of quantity into quality (for example),a t that level of abstraction, is not something with obvious application to just about anything in practical scientific wirk, so is likely to be ignored by practicing scientists. This is what we would expect if we buy into the broadly Kuhnian picture of science as involving periods of normal science punctauted by episodic revolutionary transformations that give scientists a new paradigm to work out by normal scientific methods. This picture of scientific activity -- which, incidentally, sounds dialectical even though it was developed by a nice liberal in Cold-War America (first ed. of Kuhn's Structure of Sciebtofic Revolutions published in 1960) -- suggests that most science is going to be normal, incremental, evolutionary working out of accepted big hypotheses until the general framework cracks -- and this does not depend on the particular training of scientists in doalectics (or not). In fact all the standard examples of scientific revolutions come from science done by non-dialectically trained thinkers -- Lavoisier's discovery of oxygen, Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg, Dirac, and Bohr's development of quantum theory, etc. Anytway, I tink taht the meaning of diaklectics in, for example, Hegel or (to a lesser extent) Marx is a valid topic for inquiry, there has been less than no payoff in the idea that there is something called the dialectical method which can be grasp in advance of and apart from one's scientific work in concreto and used to adavance thatw ork. jks --- Jim Farmelant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here is what Stephen Jay Gould had to say about punctuationism and dialectics in his book, *The Panda's Thumb. There, in the essay Episodic Evolutionary Change, he wrote: -- If gradualism is more a product of Western thought than a fact of nature, then we should consider alternate philosophies of change to enlarge our realm of constraining prejudices. In the Soviet Union, for example, for example, scientists are trained with a very different philosophy of change - the so-called dialectical laws, reformulated by Engels from Hegel's philosophy. The dialectical laws are explicitly punctuational. They speak, for example, of the transformation of quantity into quality. This may sound like mumbo jumbo, but it suggests that change occurs in large leaps following a slow accumulation of stresses that a system resists until it reaches the breaking point. Heat water and it eventually boils. Oppress the workers more and more and bring on the revolution. Eldredge and I were fascinated to learn that many Russian paleontologists support a model very similar to our punctuated equilibria. I emphatically do not assert the general truth of this philosophy of punctuational change. Any attempt to support the exclusive validity of such a grandiose notion would border on the nonsensical. Gradualism sometimes works well. (I often fly over the folded Appalachians and marvel at the striking parallel ridges left standing by gradual erosion of the softer rocks surrounding them). I make a simple plea for pluralism in guiding philosophies, and for the recognition of such philosophies, however hidden and unarticulated, constrain all our thought. The dialectical laws express an ideology quite openly; our Western preference for gradualism does the same more subtly. Nonetheless, I will confess to a personal belief that a punctuational view may prove to map tempos of biological and geologic change more accurately and more often than any of its competitors - if only because complex systems in steady state are both common and highly resistant to change. - I think a careful reading of Gould's words will indicate that he viewed
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 13:51:13 -0800 (PST) andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have always wondered about the fruitfulness of abstract consideration of dialectics, particularly where they are (it is?) discussed as a method. Here Jim F seems to suggest the SJG thought that dialectics was a method or at least a heuristic for producing hypotheses. I have never seen any evidence that there was ever any method for producing hypotheses, dialectical or other. I think he may well have used the term heuristic, he most certainly used the term constraining prejudice. Thus, for Gould punctuationalism was a useful alternative constraining prejudice, to that of gradualism, and Gould as in the passage I quoted from, did link punctuationalism with Engels' dialectical laws, which Gould seems to have thought did have some value for science as long they were not taken as expressing an exclusive or absolute truth about the world. I think he that he may have had in mind, the idea that dialectics constitutes what Gerald Holton (a writer that Gould admired greatly) would call a themata. To use SJG's contrast of Soviet (dialectical)-Western (not dialectical -- mechanical? gradualist? evolutionary?) scientific training, one would expect to be able to test whether this supposed difference in training made any difference in the kind of hypotheses scientists from Soviet and non-Soviet backgrounds put forward. Well, apparently Gould thought there was a difference between American biologists and Soviet biologists in terms of the kinds of hypotheses they were inclined to put forward, at least in regards to evolutionary biology. Gould asserted that the sort of punctuationalism that he was famous for championing was widely accepted among Soviet biologists. I am also aware that Loren Graham, who is an expert on the history of Soviet (and contemporary Russian) science, in his book *Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union* emphasized that many Soviet scientists did take took dialectical materialism quite seriously and they wrote some significant works on the philosophy of science from a dialectical materialist perspective. www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu/msg00704.html I have not done any such study, but I am very skeptical that it would turn up any systematic differences in the way science was done in the USSR vs the US, or in the kinds of hypotheses created by Soviet and American scientists. I expect that this is so in part because scientists (in my experience) don't pay a lot of mind of methodological broughaha that is not immediately relevant to work they are doing. The transformation of quantity into quality (for example),a t that level of abstraction, is not something with obvious application to just about anything in practical scientific wirk, so is likely to be ignored by practicing scientists. Well, if Graham is correct, then that assertion would be wrong or at least standing in need for some qualification, since, according to Graham, many Soviet scientists did take those sorts of issues seriously and wrote about them, even during times when it was not necessary for Soviet scientists to genuflect before Marx, Lenin, and and whoever was the general secretary of the Communist Party to get support for their work. This is what we would expect if we buy into the broadly Kuhnian picture of science as involving periods of normal science punctauted by episodic revolutionary transformations that give scientists a new paradigm to work out by normal scientific methods. Kuhn's analysis of scientific revolutions has always struck me as being dialectical in character. Furthermore, lots of Soviet philosophers (i.e Igor Naletov in *Alternatives to Positivism*) saw it that way too. This picture of scientific activity -- which, incidentally, sounds dialectical even though it was developed by a nice liberal in Cold-War America (first ed. of Kuhn's Structure of Sciebtofic Revolutions published in 1960) -- suggests that most science is going to be normal, incremental, evolutionary working out of accepted big hypotheses until the general framework cracks -- and this does not depend on the particular training of scientists in doalectics (or not). In fact all the standard examples of scientific revolutions come from science done by non-dialectically trained thinkers -- Lavoisier's discovery of oxygen, Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg, Dirac, and Bohr's development of quantum theory, etc. I'm surprised that you didn't include Darwin in that list since both Marx Engels had some pretty interesting things to say about him. See my post on Marxmail: http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2002/msg01714.htm Anytway, I tink taht the meaning of diaklectics in, for example, Hegel or (to a lesser extent) Marx is a valid topic for inquiry, there has been less than no payoff in the idea that there is
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 13:51:13 -0800 (PST) andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In fact all the standard examples of scientific revolutions come from science done by non-dialectically trained thinkers -- Lavoisier's discovery of oxygen, Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg, Dirac, and Bohr's development of quantum theory, etc. How could I have let that one slip by me. In the case of Bohr, we have hear someone who WAS a dialectically trained thinker, although the sort of dialectics that he was attracted to was the dialectics of his fellow countryman, Sorens Kierkegaard. I discussed Bohr on this list back in 1999: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1999-January/013669.h tml http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1999-January/013696.h tml Anytway, I tink taht the meaning of diaklectics in, for example, Hegel or (to a lesser extent) Marx is a valid topic for inquiry, there has been less than no payoff in the idea that there is something called the dialectical method which can be grasp in advance of and apart from one's scientific work in concreto and used to adavance thatw ork. jks --- Jim Farmelant [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ___ 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
Evolution punctuated by revolution is another way of saying quantitative change turns into qualitative change. 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. Comment I would disagree with this as well as the description of what constitutes a qualitative change as well as the concept of the leap or rather the dialectic of the leap. The leap or a leap really means in my opinion the dialectic of the leap. Further, the social revolution is the result of qualitative changes in the economic structure in society and the dialectic of the leap means the process of transition from one qualitative state of society to another. The leap is the transition or rather understood as transition. I don't recall Lenin stating that the Russian October Socialist Revolution constituted a leap or change in the mode of production - however one defines it. In my estimate the qualitative change in the material power of production is already under way. That is, society is already leaping but is held back by the relations of the superstructure. We are leaping from industrial society and political revolution destroys the fetters on the productive forces that allows the quantitative expansion of a new qualitative definition (all ready underway, hence leap as transition) in the material power of production. My question is how does heating water to a boiling point change the quality of water rather than its form? I agree that the form of a thing can change in front of its constituent parts. What quality of H2O has changed? Just asking. A leap or the dialectic of the leap is not to be understood as jumping rope or an after thought or the result of a qualitative change. The process of emergence of the new qualitative definition is itself the leap. A qualitative change expressing antagonism is a somewhat different process than that of a non antagonistic transition from one qualitative state to another. The former expresses a polarization where the two previous aspect of a unity begin to emerge in external collision and one aspect is annihilated as the basis for the emergence of a new unity. The opinions above are mine and I am not speaking for any one else. Waistline ___ 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
It depresses me that we still have to have these discussions in 2005. But once more into the breach . . . First, I'd suggest looking at Engels' motives for doing what he did, which was not to present a finished ontology for all time but to combat the half-assed philosophical vulgarities of his day which were also interfering with a proper theoretical perspective on social organization. Duhring was only one example of the mismosh that occupied so much of the intellectual energy of the second half of the 19th century--second-rate metaphorical extensions of physics and biology into the social sciences, vulgar evolutionism, etc. Secondly, I am reminded of a now-defunct journal of Marxist philosophy of science called SCIENCE NATURE. See the table of contents on my web site: http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/sncont.html This journal illustrates the ups and downs of the subject, from attempts at refined thinking to the usual intellectual sloppiness and dogmatism, unfortunately practiced by the journal's editor. There was at least one article by a Soviet scientist illustrating how dialectical thinking helped him. I can't be certain, but this might be the one, in issue #1: NIKOLAI N. SEMYENOV: A study in creativity On Intuition Versus Dialectical Logic As I recall, it really is an example of Holton's themata, as Jim has described it. In cases like this--theoretical problems in physical sciences--I think that's the only way the dialectical concept makes any sense. The conception of emergent properties, which ties into diamat--matters in certain types of cases, i.e. with the emergent properties of organisms, and ultimately with human existence--consciousness and social organization. There may also be some importance in physics or others areas--but in a much more subtle form than the generally crude conceptions of dialectic repeated ad nauseam. The real question is which has done more harm--botched notions of subjective dialectic (logic) or of objective dialectic (dialectics of nature)? The two issues are linked though distinct. This reminds me that I need to write up my analysis of a British Marxist book from the '30s, ASPECTS OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM, is which the usual sloppy notions of dialectical logic were debated. When I acquired this recently, I was surprised to find how dogmatic and fuzzy-minded J.D. Bernal in response to reasonable objections. Allegiance to Soviet Marxism did a lot of harm, which obviously has yet to be undone. I also have some more info for later on how party interference in science as well as other areas such as philosophy set the USSR back considerably. The record is disgraceful, esp. from 1929 on. At 01:51 PM 3/8/2005 -0800, andie nachgeborenen wrote: I have always wondered about the fruitfulness of abstract consideration of dialectics, particularly where they are (it is?) discussed as a method. Here Jim F seems to suggest the SJG thought that dialectics was a method or at least a heuristic for producing hypotheses. I have never seen any evidence that there was ever any method for producing hypotheses, dialectical or other. To use SJG's contrast of Soviet (dialectical)-Western (not dialectical -- mechanical? gradualist? evolutionary?) scientific training, one would expect to be able to test whether this supposed difference in training made any difference in the kind of hypotheses scientists from Soviet and non-Soviet backgrounds put forward. I have not done any such study, but I am very skeptical that it would turn up any systematic differences in the way science was done in the USSR vs the US, or in the kinds of hypotheses created by Soviet and American scientists. I expect that this is so in part because scientists (in my experience) don't pay a lot of mind of methodological broughaha that is not immediately relevant to work they are doing. The transformation of quantity into quality (for example),a t that level of abstraction, is not something with obvious application to just about anything in practical scientific wirk, so is likely to be ignored by practicing scientists. This is what we would expect if we buy into the broadly Kuhnian picture of science as involving periods of normal science punctauted by episodic revolutionary transformations that give scientists a new paradigm to work out by normal scientific methods. This picture of scientific activity -- which, incidentally, sounds dialectical even though it was developed by a nice liberal in Cold-War America (first ed. of Kuhn's Structure of Sciebtofic Revolutions published in 1960) -- suggests that most science is going to be normal, incremental, evolutionary working out of accepted big hypotheses until the general framework cracks -- and this does not depend on the particular training of scientists in doalectics (or not). In fact all the standard examples of scientific revolutions come from science done by non-dialectically trained thinkers -- Lavoisier's discovery of
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
(e.g. the silly foray of Pinker and Dawkins into Memics). Wirh regards, Victor - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 6:37 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels You are correct about Lenin as well as Marx and Engels. Lenin was careful about communists' overstepping their bounds of competence. However, even during the 1920s, when activity in all areas was quite creative before Stalin's clampdown, certain bad habits got established. I don't recall exactly when interference in the sciences began. There was of course the notorious meddling in Soviet genetics, which resulted in Lysenkoism and severe consequences for Soviet agriculture. But the theory of relativity was also denounced as not conforming to principles of dialectical materialism, which occasioned some mockery from Einstein. (After the Post-Stalin thaw, Einstein was held up as an exemplar of dialectical materialist thought.) Mathematicians also suffered during this period. Kolman testifies to the ineptitude imposed on a number of areas. No, there was no lack of scientific enterprise in the USSR, but it's a miracle that the incompetence and despotism of the leadership didn't sink the whole country completely, ironic in view of the crash program of industrialization which was dubbed building socialism. It is also important to recognize that the ideological rhetoric used was similar to yours: This aspect is also interesting because Engels' theory and philosophy of mathematics is exactly materialist, of course, in contrast with that of what is probably the theory of most abstract mathematicians, i.e. idealist, emphasis on derivation outside of practical activities. Business is the _most_ practical activity. Even physics is less practical. Business is the most highly math practical activity, in a sense. And yet how impractical the repression of theoretical thought proved to be. Even Bukharin was naive in this area. Some talk he gave to the effect that there was no future for pure research got Michael Polanyi so perturbed, he proceeded to develop his own ideas about science. There's a new book on the strange career of Soviet cybernetics I need to get. I know I had some correspondence with Rosser in the '90s, but I can't remember what about. The first of his essays most pertinent to our discussion seems to be; Aspects of Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb/DIANONL.DYN.doc At 04:45 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: They were probably doing good physics and math all along. Don't think they suddenly changed course and caught up and passed the rest of the world. Crude scientists would not have been able to pick up on the atom bomb so quickly. You know Sputnik and all that. Afterall, Marx, Engels and Lenin put a lot of emphasis on science. Stalin and Stalinists did a lot of following those three to the tee. M,E and L did not teach establishing an intellectual ghetto, but rather exactly participating in the totality of human knowledge. The problem with the Soviet Union was _not_ lack of scientific work and culture. However,on cybernetics the word seems to be that they missed the boat on that , contra what you say below. Charles ___ 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 -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.6.0 - Release Date: 02/03/05 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.6.0 - Release Date: 02/03/05 ___ 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
Dialectics and systems theory (was Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels)
I wrote the following back in 1998 for Proyect's Marxmail list. Jim F. -- The Fall 1998 issue of SCIENCE SOCIETY is a special issue devoted to dialectics: The New Frontier. It features noted Marxist scholars, Bertell Ollman and Tony Smith, as the guest editors and includes articles by such noted Marxists as Frederic Jameson, Richard Levins, Nancy Hartsock, Istevan Meszaros and Joel Kovel amongst others. This issue attempts to cover many of the important questions concerning dialectics why Marxism needs dialectics in the first place, whether Marx's dialectic constitutes a reflection of what the world really is (ontological dialectics)or is it a method for investigating the world (epistemological dialectics)or both. Does the dialectic apply just to history and society or does it apply to nature in general (dialectics of nature)? Is dialectical analysis applicable just to organic interactions within capitalism or is it generally applicable to historical change? Was dialectics for Marx primarily a method of exposition (especially for *Capital*) or was it also a method of inquiry as well? Also, which dialectical categories: contradictions, internal relations, the negation of the negation etc. were of central importance for Marx? One interesting article is the one by Richard Levins, Dialectics and Systems Theory. Levins attempts to answer the question of whether or not the development of a rigorous, quantitative mathematical systems theory makes dialectics obsolete. That is a question that Barkley Rosser and others here (if not on this list then on earlier lists like the old M-I and M-SCI) have dealt with. As Levins notes, his friend the evolutionary biologist, John Maynard Smith, had argued that systems theory has made dialectics obsolete because it offers a set of concepts like feedback in place of Engels' notion of the interchange between cause and effect; the threshold effect in place of the mysterious transformation of quantity into quality and that the notion of the negation of the negation is one that he never could make sense of. Levin, however, disagreed with Maynard Smith and he contended that dialectics should not be subsumed into systems theory while at the same time acknowledging that in his opinion contemporary systems theory does constitute an important example of modern science becoming more dialectical albeit in an incomplete, halting and inconsistent manner. As he pointed out systems theory is a moment in the investigation of complex systems which facilitates the formulation of problems and the interpretation of solutions so that mathematical models can be constructed that will make the obscure obvious. At the same time, Levins stresseed that systems theory is still a product of the reductionist tradition in modern science which emerged out of that tradition's struggle to come to terms with complexity, non-linearity and change through the use of sophisticated mathematical models. Richard Levins in beginning his article with an account of his exchanges with John Maynard Smith over whether or not mathematical systems theory can replace dialectics raises in my mind some interesting questions. First, it is worth noting that Maynard Smith, himself, was best known for his work in the application of game theory to elucidating Darwinian theory. John Maynard Smith has along with other evolutionists like William Hamilton, George Williams, and Richard Dawkins elaborated an interpretation of Darwinism that takes a gene's eye view of evolution - that in other words treats not organisms but individual genes within the gene pool of a given population as the units of selection. This conception arose out of Hamilton's work in developing Darwinian explanations of altruism. Hamilton concluded that altruism could not be explained if we took individual organisms as the basic units of selection since altruistic behavior almost by definition impairs the reproductive fitness of the individual organism by acting in the interests of other organisms at the expense of its own interests. Hamilton argued that such behavior becomes explicable once we realize that it is individual genes that are the units of selection. Thus, if an organism sacrifices itself to protect the lives of its siblings or offspring it is in fact ensuring that its own genes survive into future generations through its siblings or offspring so natural section will favor such behavior. Hamilton and fellow theorists like George Williams argued that it is possible to understand evolution at the gene level if we postulate that genes are acting like rational self-interested actors or what Dawkins call selfish genes. Maynard Smith has taken this a few steps further by using game theory to show what kinds of strategies that genes (conceived of as being rational and self-interested) will adopt to ensure their survival either in competition or in cooperation with other genes. Thus he has given to evolutionary biology
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I'm substantially in agreement with you here. Now, if one wants to unify the marxist and natural-scientific perspectives, in place of relegating them to separate perspectives, then one has to rise to that level of abstraction to construct a unified account of both. This ridiculous meme theory is a noteworthy example of the failure of natural scientists to encompass the social. They've still learned nothing. And Marxists also have their work to do. (I just ran into Sohn-Rethel's first blunder: his account of Galileo's concept of inertia.) BTW, what do you think of this biosemiotics business. The one theoretical biologist I know who is into this is full of crackpot ideas. Im very distrustful: Claus Emmeche Taking the semiotic turn, or how significant philosophy of biology should be done http://mitdenker.at/life/life09.htm Also at this url: http://www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/cePubl/2002b.Wit.Sats.html Note this key passage: More and more biologists are beginning to understand that the essence of life is to mean something, to mediate significance, to interpret signs. This already seems to be implicitly present even in orthodox Neo-Darwinism and its recurrent use of terms like code, messenger, genetic information, and so on. These concepts substitute the final causes Darwinists believed to have discarded 150 years ago, they have become firmly established in molecular biology with specific scientific meanings; and yet they the semiotic content or connotations are rarely taken serious by the scientists to the extant that there is a tendency to devaluate their status as being merely metaphors when confronted with the question about their implied intentionality or semioticity (cf. Emmeche 1999). This secret language, where code seems to be a code for final cause, points to the fact that it might be more honest and productive to attack the problem head-on and to formulate an explicit biological theory taking these recurrent semiotics metaphors serious and discuss them as pointing to real scientific problems. This means that a principal task of biology will be to study signs and sign processes in living systems. This is biosemiotics -- the scientific study of biosemiosis. Semiotics, the general science of signs, thus becomes a reservoir of concepts and principles when it is recognized that biology, being about living systems, at the same time is about sign systems. Moreover, semiotics will probably not remain the same after this encounter with biology: both sciences will be transformed fundamentally while gradually being melded into one more comprehensive field. While many of the ideas adumbrated in this review seem to be quite fruitful, this paragraph is the tipoff that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. At 05:28 PM 3/4/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Have been following your discussion with considerable interest. Sorry to lurk so long, but I was occupied in finishing up a paper. I was particularly interested in your earlier discussion on emergence. I agree strongly with Jay Gould that dialectics; Hegelian and Marxist alike, describe what I suppose would now be called emergent functions. I have many reservations about Engel's representation of the dialectic and his three so-called laws appear to me to be a snobbish attempt to present Dialectics for the Working Class. Certainly Llyod Spencer and Andrzej Krauze's Hegel for Beginners and Andy Blunden's Getting to Know Hegel are much more successful representations of dialectical theory. A search for emergentism in Marxism would be better served by reinvestigating the methods of Hegel (his Logics) and of Marx (Practice, or, better, labour practice) for the mechanics and process whereby they derive emergent complex moments from simpler prior conditions. I suspect that the concretisation of abstraction through successive negation, unity of labour practice and extant condition in the productive process, and sublation of prior syntheses in extant dialectical moments will have more significance for understanding emergence in human history than the hierarchy theories of Salthe, Swenson, and O'Neil, the emergent semiotics of Hoffmeyer and so on. That is not to say that systems, even cybernetic systems, are not relevant to the investigation, but, we must remember that despite Engel's (sometimes brilliant and sometimes embarrassing) adventures in the dialectics of Nature, that Hegel and Marx theoretical interests were exclusively focussed on human activity and human history and were only interested in Nature as a derived function of human inteaction with material conditions. Even Hegel's dialectics on Nature concerned the Natural Sciences and not Nature as such (as the subject of human contemplation). Which bring us to the problem of Natural science and Marxism. Certainly the Natural sciences are a component of modern history. They more or less emerge in late Mediaeval Europe together with the development of powerful urban commercial
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
We should find out more about what the Chinese have done. It would also be interesting to know if in some way, Marx's attempts to think through the problem based on outdated math books anticipated future developments. However, the account below looks silly to me. The existence of multiple models for number systems is the product of advances in axiomatization which were just underway in the late 19th century. It was not possible before then to create a consistent conception of infinitesimals. Hence dogma is not an issue. The development of the theory of limits by Weierstrauss (et al) provided a rigorous foundation for calculus for the first time. I do not know whether Someone like Robinson could have accomplished nonstandard analysis several decades earlier, but I don't think it could have been done in the 19th century. It does seem odd, as Goedel says, that things developed as they did, but on the other hand, foundations always come last, not first. Marx missed out on all this, but he could be said to have made an honorable effort at analyzing the old math textbooks he was using. Van Heijenoort has no beef with Marx, but he is unhappy with Engels' dogmatism as well as his lack of knowledge. Engels, though, seems to be an innocent victim of working in an intellectual vacuum in a hostile environment. However, as time goes one, the excuses decrease. As for the philosophical meaning of axiomatic systems--which is quite a different matter from the nonsense about flux and static--and which version of analysis is more intuitive, I once posed the question to Saunders MacLane. He was rather puzzled by my question, and could only recite the usefulness of various axiomatic systems. In any case, the relationship of axiomatic systems to one another, to intuition, and to the material world, is a much more dynamic and complex relationship--well worth investigating!--than the childish level of Marxism is prepared to engage. Perhaps this is one reason Van Heijenoort got so disgusted with Marxists in the 1940s and decided to try his luck elsewhere. The notion that Marxists have a right to be provincial, sectarian, and ignorant has got to be stopped. Marxists should take as their province the totality of human knowledge, not a pitiful little intellectual ghetto called Marxism. When you have a police state to back you up, you can puff out your chest, but when you're a tiny marginalized subculture, you're just pathetic. At 12:21 PM 3/3/2005 -0700, Hans G. Ehrbar wrote: Abraham Robinson's nonstandard analysis adds more numbers, infinite numbers and infinitesimal numbers, to the numbers line. Just as Margaret Thatcher says that society does not exist, modern mainstream mathematics is based on the dogma that infinitesimals do not exist. Robinson showed, by contrast, that one can use infinitesimals without getting into mathematical contradictions. He demonstrated that mathematics becomes much more intuitive this way, not only its elementary proofs, but especially the deeper results. I understand that the so-called renormalization problem in physics, according to which certain physically relevant integrals become infinite and somehow have to be made finite again, has a much more satisfactory solution in nonstandard analysis than in standard analysis. The well-know logician Kurt Goedel said about Robinson's work: ``I think, in coming years it will be considered a great oddity in the history of mathematics that the first exact theory of infinitesimals was developed 300 years after the invention of the differential calculus.'' When I looked at Robinson I had the impression that he shares the following error with the ``standard'' mathematicians whom he criticizes: they consider numbers only in a static way, without allowing them to move. It would be beneficial to expand on the intuition of the inventors of differential calculus, who talked about ``fluxions,'' i.e., quantities in flux, in motion. Modern mathematicians even use arrows in their symbol for limits, but they are not calculating with moving quantities, only with static quantities. Robinson does not explicitly use moving quantities, he uses more static quantities, and many mathematicians criticize nonstandard mathematics because it simply has too many numbers. The Chinese manuscript you just sent to the list seems to have a much more dialectical view of nonstandard analysis than Robinson himself, and in addition it makes a bridge between Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts and nonstandard Analysis. This is very exciting News to me. Can we find out more about this? Hans. ___ 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I've got to run now, so briefly: At some point, a modus vivendi was worked out, which allowed the propaganda apparatus to do its thing while leaving scientists and mathematicians alone to do theirs. This has roots towards the end of the Stalin era, in the late 1940s, when formal logic was once again taught as a subject. Perhaps by this time Stalin had stopped sending scientists and mathematicians to the Gulag. But obviously, he and his henchmen realized that the USSR could not compete in the dawning atomic and computer age without serious investment in physics, logic, math, cybernetics. So of course they were encouraged. In this respect, Stalin proved to be smarter than the dumbass Maoists who looked to peasant society. At 02:37 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: I'm not sure that abstract mathematics was altogether destroyed in the Soviet Union's academics, because of some anecdotal evidence I have. When I was an undergraduate in 1968, the honors math majors ( the best math students) _had_ to take Russian language courses, because so much of the world's advanced math and physics was being done by Soviets. Charles ___ 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
At 2005-03-03 20.52, you wrote: Perhaps this is one reason Van Heijenoort got so disgusted with Marxists in the 1940s and decided to try his luck elsewhere. The notion that Marxists have a right to be provincial, sectarian, and ignorant has got to be stopped. Marxists should take as their province the totality of human knowledge, not a pitiful little intellectual ghetto called Marxism. When you have a police state to back you up, you can puff out your chest, but when you're a tiny marginalized subculture, you're just pathetic. Marxism isn't Marxists, and definitely not Stalinists. The ideas of Marxism are the only ideas that can save humanity from destruction and barbarism via the revolutionary transformation of society by the revolutionary working class. It's not pathetic to know the power of the genie in your battered old lamp. It's not a question of attitude (pitiful, puffed up, pathetic) but of organization and determination. Nice to know someone's against provincialism, sectarianism, ignorance and pettiness, though. So inspirational. Yup, a veritable Moses to lead us out of our pitiful little intellectual ghetto... Choppa Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto ___ 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I haven't been online since mid-afternoon, so I'm just now catching up. I hope others paid more careful attention to my recent posts. There are serious consequences when one allows oneself to get trapped in a narrow corner. It is incumbent upon anyone attempting to speak for the whole to attempt to gather up the whole of knowledge and not just hide in a tiny corner. With respect to philosophy, it is important to understand how fragmented philosophy has been for well over a century. The artificial attempt to overcome fragmentation within bourgeois philosophy in the Anglo-American world is based on the deceptive and false dichotomy of analytical and continental philosophy. Even those who recognize the spurious basis of this categorization have done little more than to defect to or incorporate the irrationalist wing of bourgeois philosophy (which also includes Wittgenstein, though classed among the analytical philosophers). Later on I will have more to say about a book I'm reading, FUTURE PASTS: THE ANALYTIC TRADITION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY. There is a tremendous amount of useful historical information here from people in the know. However, the attempts to accommodate the irrationalist tradition new and old are pitiful and really show up the duplicitous basis of liberal inclusiveness. Of course, Hegel and Marx are silenced in this story. And it should also be evident how tortured so much of the history of analytical philosophy is from the false phenomenalist premises on which it was built. There's a chapter on Mach as a pivotal figure inspiring this movement. And remember that Lenin took a hard lone against Mach, for which he deserves a lot of credit. There is a lot entailed by writing Marxism back into the history it has been written out of. But this shows up not only the inadequacy of analytical and irrationalist philosophy, but the underdevelopment of Marxism in certain areas due to the fragmentation and segregation of intellectual traditions. Marxism will have something to say about all this, but not from hiding among the Marxist classics and their imitators. Part of resurrecting the history of Eastern European (Marxist) philosophy is to look at how philosophers in those countries themselves attempted to negotiate the boundaries of intellectual traditions, not just in the USSR, but even more conspicuously in Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere. There are more sophisticated models to be found than one finds in the usual party literature. Lenin made an honest attempt to deal with the situation he inherited as best he could, but he was helpless in combatting the inward-turning of Marxism, which he partially abetted whatever his intentions. Lenin's conception of the unity of logic, epistemology, and ontology lacked the specificity to come to terms with contemporary developments of which neither he nor his successors were apprised. (Interestingly, I have a very obscure book from Czechoslovakia on the history of logic which takes up Lenin's perspective with the sophistication of a professional logician.) Just was the rest of the world refused to have anything to do with Marxism, so Marxism was not favorably positioned to integrate the newest developments in logic and mathematics. It is essential, in order to complete the story, to recognize the distinction between objective and subjective dialectics. There is a whole history of Marxist philosophy of science (see, e.g. Helena Sheehan). If you read Sheehan carefully or other literature, you will find that the philosophical substance of dialectics of nature lies in emergentism, and that most Marxist scientists completely skirted around the issue of subjective dialectics (logic), preferring to reiterate vague assertions inherited form Engels and canonized by the Soviets. I will get into this in more detail another time. The moral of the story: historical reconstruction of knowledge is a huge task. You don't want to leave it in the hands of bourgeois philosophy, do you? At 09:05 PM 3/3/2005 +0100, Choppa Morph wrote: Marxism isn't Marxists, and definitely not Stalinists. The ideas of Marxism are the only ideas that can save humanity from destruction and barbarism via the revolutionary transformation of society by the revolutionary working class. It's not pathetic to know the power of the genie in your battered old lamp. It's not a question of attitude (pitiful, puffed up, pathetic) but of organization and determination. Nice to know someone's against provincialism, sectarianism, ignorance and pettiness, though. So inspirational. Yup, a veritable Moses to lead us out of our pitiful little intellectual ghetto... Choppa ___ 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
You are correct about Lenin as well as Marx and Engels. Lenin was careful about communists' overstepping their bounds of competence. However, even during the 1920s, when activity in all areas was quite creative before Stalin's clampdown, certain bad habits got established. I don't recall exactly when interference in the sciences began. There was of course the notorious meddling in Soviet genetics, which resulted in Lysenkoism and severe consequences for Soviet agriculture. But the theory of relativity was also denounced as not conforming to principles of dialectical materialism, which occasioned some mockery from Einstein. (After the Post-Stalin thaw, Einstein was held up as an exemplar of dialectical materialist thought.) Mathematicians also suffered during this period. Kolman testifies to the ineptitude imposed on a number of areas. No, there was no lack of scientific enterprise in the USSR, but it's a miracle that the incompetence and despotism of the leadership didn't sink the whole country completely, ironic in view of the crash program of industrialization which was dubbed building socialism. It is also important to recognize that the ideological rhetoric used was similar to yours: This aspect is also interesting because Engels' theory and philosophy of mathematics is exactly materialist, of course, in contrast with that of what is probably the theory of most abstract mathematicians, i.e. idealist, emphasis on derivation outside of practical activities. Business is the _most_ practical activity. Even physics is less practical. Business is the most highly math practical activity, in a sense. And yet how impractical the repression of theoretical thought proved to be. Even Bukharin was naive in this area. Some talk he gave to the effect that there was no future for pure research got Michael Polanyi so perturbed, he proceeded to develop his own ideas about science. There's a new book on the strange career of Soviet cybernetics I need to get. I know I had some correspondence with Rosser in the '90s, but I can't remember what about. The first of his essays most pertinent to our discussion seems to be; Aspects of Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb/DIANONL.DYN.doc At 04:45 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: They were probably doing good physics and math all along. Don't think they suddenly changed course and caught up and passed the rest of the world. Crude scientists would not have been able to pick up on the atom bomb so quickly. You know Sputnik and all that. Afterall, Marx, Engels and Lenin put a lot of emphasis on science. Stalin and Stalinists did a lot of following those three to the tee. M,E and L did not teach establishing an intellectual ghetto, but rather exactly participating in the totality of human knowledge. The problem with the Soviet Union was _not_ lack of scientific work and culture. However,on cybernetics the word seems to be that they missed the boat on that , contra what you say below. Charles ___ 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
