Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 12:33:09 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: M-TH: In Defence of Dialectics 


Viraj Fernando...that name sounds familiar.  Reading his puerile post I
think I have another reason to be grateful for my surreptitious expulsion
from marxism-and-sciences, where such neanderthals congregate (to be
distinguished from paleo-Marxists, with whom I stand).  However, one element
of Fernando's post reminds me of a question I've been meaning to pose since
Juan Inigo's last intervention pertaining to matters of science and
philosophy.  

First, the relevant cite:

At 04:38 AM 11/19/97 -0500, Viraj Fernando wrote:
>ENGELS LETTER TO MARX (July 14, 1858): ..." By the way, do send me Hegel's
>'Philosopy of Nature' as you promised....This much is certain: if he had a
>philosophy of nature to write *today*  the facts will come flying to him
>from everyside. ......Another result which would have pleased old Hegel is
>the correlation of forces (energy - ed) in physics, or the law that under
>given conditions mechanical motion,.. changes into heat, into light, light
>into chemical affinity, chemical affinity... into electricity, electricity
>into magnitism..  But is this not a splendid MATERIAL proof of the way in
>which determinations of REFELXION are resolved into one another?

Given other demands on my time, I am not prepared to re-open the debates
involving Juan Inigo with respect to Marx's views on philosophy, the natural
sciences, logic, and mathematics.  Nor would I wish to put words in Juan's
mouth, imputing labels to him which he would not apply to himself.  I am
left to wonder, though, given the heavy coloration of Inigo's arguments with
the discourse of Hegel, whether Marx's (and/or Inigo's for that matter)
views on the sciences could have been influenced by Hegel's
naturphilosophie.  Sadly, this is the one area where I am least competent
(as are a great number of bona fide Hegel scholars).  A few years back, I
attended a conference on Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE and I could not
understand most of the proceedings.  From my reading of secondary
literature, all I vaguely remember are descriptions of some seemingly
eccentric views on mathematics and physics.  With respect to Marx himself,
all I remember is an outline of Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE in vol. 1 of
the Collected Works.  So, is there any further documentation of Marx's
appropriation of Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE?



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