File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9707, message 169


Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 13:32:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: Carl Davidson <cdavidson-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-I: re: Chaos/Bhaskar/Marxism


I suggest taking a lot at Robert Pirsig's "Lila", his 
sequel tp "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," 
for some interesting ideas on the Patterns of the Universe.
Pirsig makes the first cut "dynamic" vs "static", rather 
than "subject / object" or "matter / motion". I wouldn't
be put off by Pirsig's literary form--he's a deep thinker
on these matters.  Carl Davidson, Chicago.


At 09:01 PM 7/3/97 GMT, Chris Burford wrote:
>
>I cannot safely join you on the ground of post modern
>thinkers but I will try to respond to your comments about 
>chaos theory:
>
>Deb:
>
>The terms in which the objective
>world is presented by chaos theory--and those terms in the main
>posit the objective world as brute matter--provide the basis for
>bourgeois knowledges. 
>
>
>Chris:
>
>I do not recognise this way of putting it, that the objective
>world is "brute matter". Chaos theory seems completely compatible 
>to me with a Leninist view about the universe being "matter in 
>motion". I am not sure about the nuances behind the word "brute".
>The shifting but regular patterns of chaos, like the veins in 
>a leaf, or the motion of waves on a sea-shore or in an inlet,
>are neither brute nor human. They are material and have to 
>my mind a beauty. Perhaps it is rather fundamental that we
>have to recognise patterns, and the patterns of the 
>universe are tantalisingly similar but not identical, and 
>every so often the pattern becomes disrupted. 
>
>But that too has its patterning.
>
>Bhaskar's fundamental question (from memory) "what must 
>the universe be like such that we can have scientific ideas
>about it?" - seems to me to be a universe of matter in 
>repetitive motion interacting in non-(recti)-linear ways, sometimes 
>in conformity with chaos theory, sometimes with complexity 
>theory.
>
>I do not recognise chaos theory explaining the instabilities of 
>capitalism as due to "external perturbation". It does not 
>seem to me to be a "bourgeois model of change."
>
>I do not accept that 
>" conjoining chaos theory with Marxism would be only
>the latest in the series of attempts to "develop" Marxism known as
>"analytical Marxism". I am wary of the lack of dialectics in 
>analytical marxism.
>
>I do not intend to be combative but to state that my perspectives
>feel different to yours.
>
>I will appreciate your summarising and then commenting 
>on the articles by Harvey and Reed.
>
>Chris Burford
>
>London
>
>
>
>     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>
Keep On Keepin' On



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