Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 23:19:35 +0100
From: Chris Burford <cburford-AT-gn.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-I: Internal & External Change: 1


At 01:47 AM 8/29/97 -0400, SC wrote:
>
>[From the book "Dialectical Materialism - Its Laws, Categories and
>Practice", Ira Gollobin, Petras Press, NY, 1986, Chapter 5, pp. 103.
>
>Note: Most footnotes are not cited here. A "thing" referred to below
>can be an object, entity, process, quality, property, system, level,
>etc. - SC]


I appreciate Sid's comment here about "thing". 

Mao's "On Contradiction" opens:

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of
opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics. Lenin said,
'Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction *in the very
essence of objects*' "

This opening concerned me because of the use of the word "thing", as I was
unsure how concrete an implication this had. I suppose unless anyone knows
the Chinese word used in the original and can describe its range of
meanings, we will all have to decide for ourselves. Similarly with whatever
word Lenin used for "objects".

For my part I would like to accept Sid's usage, and out of his suggestions
I prefer the concept of process. After all an atom is the process of
continuing movement of electrons around a nucleus. The chair you are
sitting on at the moment is very largely empty space with a meshwork of
atoms in a semi-flexible dynamic lattice which is supporting the lattice
holding together the largely empty space of your body.

I want the concept of process because it can be applied through to the
biological, social, and economic spheres of organisation.



On the passages Sid quotes here I do not understand the sharpness of Jim
B's strictures, unless the book has an appendix supporting Pol Pot. I do
not know the book and I do not see why the passages should not be read on
their merits. Hegel and Piaget were undoubtedly one-sided in important ways
but they were still major thinkers in their fields. (IMO of course). I do
not see the value of dissing people on a mailing list like this because it
can quickly degenerate even with people who are otherwise intelligent
thinkers into a sort of symbolic competition like which singer, style of
song or sporting team is tops and which crap. A sort of competitive
affiliation ritual rather than a discussion. 


The passages quoted by Sid seem to me to be a fairly good handling over
quite a wide range of scientific approaches. 

I take Sid's point that the emphasis by the popularisers of "chaos theory"
on "sensitivity to initial conditions" is a mechanical emphasis on external
causes. In  fact it suggests to me that this whole interesting area of
mathematics has been distorted in the way it is superficially presented.
Misleadingly called "chaos theory", what it shows is that in the majority
of cases of iterative systems in which it applies, for much of the time the
patterns observed are broadly *regular*. This is consistent with an
emphasis on the role of internal contradictions largely determining the
character of the process or phenomenon.

One major aspect which these passages do not touch on is the extent to
which the dialectical materialist approach to external and internal causes
could be integrated with modern scientific concepts of different fractal
level, or levels of organisation. I think they can and not just in terms of
quantitative changes leading to qualitative. The interactions between large
numbers of relatively discrete objects (or processes) creates a wider
system with emergent properties which has as an entity at a higher level of
organisation, its own internal contradictions. 

Thus what are external causes at the lower level are part of the internal
causes at a higher level. 

I do not think we have to treat dialectical materialism as some sort of
Procrustean bed into which we have to try to fit all modern scientific
understanding, but serious approaches within each tradition have in my
opinion a high degree of mutual complimentarity.

And in ordinary life, as well as politics, trying to think always in terms
of contradictions, has a lot to be said for it.




Chris Burford

London.



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