File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-25.033, message 84


Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 19:04:05 -0500 (EST)
From: Siddharth Chatterjee <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: M-I: Dialectics of Nature



The latest hysterical outbursts from our "historical materialist",
Andrew Wayne Austin (AWA), needs a detailed response since we are moving
in very deep waters here. In doing so, I will be forced to resort to some
technical details which I shall try to keep as simple as possible. 


On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:

> This characterization of my argument is exactly opposite of the argument I
> have been making. I have stressed that I do not believe that reality exist
> only in the domain of human thought. What I said, over and over again, is
> that knowledge of reality is a social production. I therefore do precisely
> contrary to what you here suppose: I tie the production of philosophy
> directly to concrete historical conditions in which knowledge about
> reality is produced. Either you have (1) not been carefully reading my
> posts, (2) you do not understand what I am writing, or (3) you are
> purposely constructing a strawman of my views. I leave it to you to decide
> which one of these it "really" is. What is obvious is that you have taken
> what I said and constructed the exact opposite of it. Is this a vulgar
> dialectical exercise on your part? 

Here again AWA is propounding his "historical materialist" doctrine that
knowledge of reality is a social production which implies that it is
"socially constructed". What this means, in the muddled thinking
of our materialist, is that knowledge of reality is relative, that is, it
depends on the state of social development of the productive forces.
Again in a sense that is "correct". However, AWA forgets the massive
presence of the outside world and the interaction of humans with this
world which determines this knowledge besides the productive forces at
a specific historical moment. What Newton, and Galileo before him,
discovered, still approximately describes the physical world
in every day life. And recall that the productive forces in their
time were tiny compared to those in our epoch. 

Each new generation succeeds in penetrating in more and more detail 
the nature of reality due to (1) more advanced development of productive
forces, and (2) building on the knowledge of the previous generation as
the famous remark of Newton ("standing on the shoulder of giants")
implies. In all of this, there is a two-way interaction between theory
and practice as Mao-Tse Tung explained. From practice to theory and back
into practice and so on and on with further and further refinement of
theory (understanding) is the forward *SPIRAL* trajectory of the progress
of knowledge.

In contrast to this, according to our materialist (who will deny this
vehemently - but this is what he meant), since each generation's
knowledge is socially produced, the next generation's knowldege will be
so too, but "different" since different social development. Thus each
succeeding generation builds its own *closed* circle of knowledge with
no apparent connection between two neighbouring circles. This is nothing
but metaphysical idealism like that exhibited in Carlos Castaneda's
fictional writings of Don Juan - the Yaqui sorcerer, according to whom,
each individual constructs his/her own reality. Thus, if you are high
on peyote, your reality will be different from, say, a person high
on alcohol. In a crude sense this is *apparently* true and a child will
be fooled by it. AWA, of course, replaces Castaneda's individual with
any particular generation (a collection of individuals) and refers to this
as "materialism" *historically* determined as propounded by Marx -
a preposterous claim!

Not only this but we should realize that the "laws" of science are
approximate descriptions of reality. A higher law will describe reality
more accurately than a lower one. Laws are often derived and postulated 
>from very limited observations in the beginning. As the story goes,
Newton discovered the law of gravitation from the falling of an apple. 
However, later on with extremely careful measurements, it was discovered
that this inverse square law was valid for massive bodies (planets and
stars) as well as between two tennis balls. That is why it is called
the *UNIVERSAL* Law of gravitation - valid every where and for all time
(this is an assumption since no law can be validated for
every possible circumstance). Thus, this law trancedends history and
does not depend upon the state of the social production of knowldege.
Although, it was discovered during a particular social phase (the era
in which Newton lived) but nevertheless it is independent of society
and thus its production of knowledge. That is, it was valid in the dim
past of the universe much much before the earth and human society evolved
and it is highly probable that it will be valid in the future too.

Note that in the above I have not said a word about the cause of
gravitation - no one knows this to this day although Einstein gave an
explanation for it in term of "curved" space. Nevertheless, this law
is used routinely in practice, for example, to calculate the trajectory
of satellites and spacecraft. Numerous other such laws can be cited
that govern our world, which contrary to AWA's deceptive "historical
materialist" doctrine, are independent of history.     

> 
> I provided a quote in one of previous post where Marx was angry over
> Proudhon supposing Marx's method posited a dialectical process that was
> external to history. Did you not read this post? The request was that I
> cite other sources arguing that Marx did not advocate dialectical
> materialism. My argument in this regard was that I did not need to cite
> other sources, that I am using Marx's work directly, and I even provided a
> long quote. And here again you produce the exact opposite of what I have
> argued and what I have done. Did you miss that post, too? No, you couldn't
> have, this argument is in the post to which you now respond. Where is your
> integrity?

AWA's pique is amusing. All he provided was a quote of Marx which, from
what I could gather, said something like "do not apply a limited law to
every circumstance", a fact which is well known to any reasonable
person. But I could not discern anything  about the validity or
invalidity of dialectical materialism or any such implication. Again
AWA avoids my question of Marx's investigation of differential calculus
and his proposed plan to write a treatise on dialectics.


SC
> > I also think that studying modern bourgeois philosophy and epistemology is
> > a big waste of time. 
>
AWA 
> You do not need to inform me or the list that you regard "modern bourgeois
> philosophy and epistemology" "a big waste of time" - this is painfully
> obvious to everybody here. We are very fortunate that Marx did not share
> your position.
> 
> Individuals who regard studying history and thought a big waste of time
> are generally big time wasters. I enter your string of recent posts into
> evidence.

What I meant was that at this point of life, this subject does not
interest me. You are of course welcome to pursue such studies
as many people on the left do. Time is short so every one has to make
their own decisions. Marx has already done much of this work. What do
we have now other than old wine served in new bottles. 

<snip>

  EXAMINATION OF THE VALIDITY OF THE 2ND LAW OF DIALECTICS IN NATURE

Instead of continuing to answer AWA'a every facile little quip, I will now
turn to an examination of the applicability of the second law of dialec-
tics to the field of Transport Phenomena - the subjects of fluid dynamics
(momentum transport), heat transfer and mass transfer. I will show that
these processes appear to confirm to this dialectical law but much more
work has to be done. Some elementary physical and mathematical concepts
will be unavoidable in this presentation and I ask the readers to bear
with this since ultimately it is quite simple.

The three well-known laws at the heart of Transport Phenomena are:

1. Momentum Transport (Fluid Dynamics):

   Newton's Law 

	Momentum Flux (or stress) =      Velocity Gradient
				      ---------------------
					1/fluid viscosity

2. Heat Transfer

   Fourier's Law

	Heat Flux       	  =      Temperature Gradient
				      ------------------------------
					1/fluid thermal conductivity

3. Mass Transfer

   Fick's Law

	Mass Flux of a species	  =     Concentration Gradient
				      ----------------------------
					1/species diffusivity


The flux of any quantity is defined as the amount of that quantitiy
crossing a unit surface area normal to its direction of transport
per unit of time.

Note the similarity in the form (both physical and mathematical) of
the above three laws all of which have been experimentally confirmed
on numerous occasions. In recognition of this similarity, Transport
Phenomena is often taught as a single course at present.

The above 3 laws can be expressed generically as

		    Gradient
 	   Flux  = -----------                          (A)
		    Resistance  

That is, flux of a quantitiy (momentum, heat or mass) is equal to the
appropriate gradient divided by the corresponding resistance. The
above equation (A) expresses the dependent variable (flux) in terms of
the independent variables Gradient and Resistance. The higher the
imposed gradient and lower the resistance of the medium in which the
transport is occuring, the higher the flux, and vice versa. Gradient
and Resistance can be looked upon as the two opposing aspects of a 
contradiction expressed by the above equation (A), whose mutual balance 
determines the magnitude of the flux. 

If there was no resistance offered by the medium to transport
(of momentum, heat or mass), there would be no gradient
and the flux would occur infinitely fast at the very first instant (i.e,
when we start our experiment) and thereafter would cease to zero.
Similarly, if we do not observe any gradient then this implies the
absence of any resistance. Thus, these two aspects of the contradiction
are mutually "dependent" on each other - interpenetration of opposites.
This is very much like if there was no proletariat, there would be
no capitalist class and if there was no capitalist class, there would
be no proletariat. This may sound like a tautology to our *historical
materialist* fanatics but it is not. Concepts like this are also
used in geometry.

The above has an analogy in the field of electricity in which
the magnitude of the electric current is expressed as

			      Voltage Gradient
	Electric Current   =  --------------------
			      Resistance of medium 

Same as before - no resistance implies no voltage drop and vice versa and
an infinite current will flow at the first instant which will then cease
to zero immediately after.

Upto now, we have only tasted the flavor. The richness of the
phenomena described by eq (A) is actually revealed in a dynamic process
in which one can "see" the two aspects of the contradiction unfolding
over time from one state to another. The contradiction can either be
resolved by a mutual balancing or dissipation of its two aspects and
at the end of the process, the system will reach a new equilibrium
state. Or, a new process can start at the end of the old one if the
external (often called boundary) conditions are changed in which a
new contradiction can arise or the old one may recur in a another
form. Since dynamic processes generally lead to the subject of partial
differential equations, I will not pursue this any further here. Those
technically oriented readers who are interested in this area should
open any textbook on Heat Conduction or Diffusion and take a look at the
beautiful graphs of temperature & concentration distributions and heat
& diffusion flux variations with time. The presence of source or sink
terms will greatly increase the richness and complexity.    

A third example comes from the field of "Chemical Reaction Kinetics".

Consider the following elementary bimolecular reaction:

	A  +  B  ---> C

One molecule of A collides with one molecule of B giving rise to one
molecule of the product C. The speed of such reactions are often
expressed by what is called the "reaction rate constant" expressed
symbolically by the letter "k". The higher the magnitude of "k" the
faster is the chemical reaction. "k"  depends on the type of the molecules
that participate in the reaction, temperature and "activation energy"
of the reaction. Specifically, "k" is often expressed by the
Arrhenius Law (yet another law! - our "materialists" must be going
mad at this point). This law is given by

	k (at any temperature T) = F * exp [-E/(RT)]

where the * and exp denote multiplication and exponential, respectively,
and

	F = frequency factor
	E = activation energy of reaction
	T = absolute temperature
	R = universal gas constant

(To our "historical materialist" friends: note the word "universal"
 above and squirm).

Instead of the the simple linear relationship exhibited by Equation (A)
previously, we now have "k" which depends exponentially on E and T.
Nevertheless, the above equation embodies the same logic. The lower the
E (i.e., the lower the energy hill or barrier) and the higher the T,
the higher is the k. And vice versa. Here, the value of k is determined
by the two counteracting aspects, E and T. Also if  E = 0 or T = infinity,
k becomes equal to a constant, F (exponential raised to zeroth power is
1). Interpenetration of opposites!

Let me make something clear at this point. I do not claim that there is
conclusive proof that nature obeys the second law of dialectics. Much
more evidence will be required to substantiate such a claim. But as
the above examples from three widely different fields show, there
seems to be some preliminary confirmation which should arouse one's
curiosity to see if this law holds, at least, in certain areas of
the natural world.

It is highly likely that this post will arouse further paroxyms of hatred
and frenzy from our "historical materialists" and assorted company like
Mr. Ralph Dumain. whose pig-like squeals and parrot screechings
recently graced the M-SCI and M-TH list. As Louis G says, "so be it".

Finally, I acknowledge the extremely quick perception of comrade Adolfo
who at once saw into the utter emptiness of the gobbledygook coming
>from our "historical materialist". "Emptiness of the gobbledygook" - this
is true tautology. Finally, we are in the realm of the theologians!

S. Chatterjee

(S stands for "Stalinist")    

    



 
    










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