Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 18:07:51 -0600
Subject: Darwin and dialectics


Adam Rose wrote, on Tue, 13 Aug 96:
Subject: Darwin ( dialectics ? )
DIALECTICS
Three laws of dialectics :
i)	Quantity -> Quality
ii)	Interpenetration of opposites
iii)	Negation of negation

Lisa:  What gets my attention here is that Adam seems to assume,
without any discussion of his method or goal, that the way to read
Origin of Species is to see if he can identify in what ways it
exhibits the "three laws of dialectics."  

Implying that - it is more accurate? or better in some unspecified
way?  if it is "dialectical" by this definition?

Adam, what exactly is the point of approaching Origin [or anything]
in this way?  


iii) No examples of this, as far as I can see. Why ? . . . 

The obvious example of negation of negation in society is the role of
the working class
under capitalism - in raising itself to the position of the ruling
class ( negation
of the capitalists ) it abolishes itself as a working class (
negation of the working
class, ie negation of the negation ) and brings about something
qualititively new on
the basis of the old.

First point about this example : it works at a very high level of
complexity - 
atoms - organic beings - animals - humans - classes - revolutionary
change in
relations between classes

Second point - it works by dividing relations between classes into
types. It's as if
Darwin had introduced a succession of types of ecology, and explained
how natural
selection moved from one type of ecology to another.

Such things DO seem to happen in evolutionary history - replacement
of the dinasaurs
by mammals, single cell organism by multi cellular, mass extinctions,
and huge differentiation
of successor species. Hmm . . . 

3. Darwin points out that chemical and physical laws are of more and
more importance
the lower down the scale of complexity you go. We can add that
natural selection does 
not apply to humans either, as his basic condition for the operation
of natural selection,
that we produce more many many more young than we can feed, does not
hold. ( Negation
of the negation ? stretching it a bit . . . ). The definition of
limits of applicability
of your own theory seems really cool . . .

4. Darwin talks about the Law of Divergence of Character, and the
vague feeling amongst
naturalists that there is a progression in evolution. I know any idea
that evolution
has a direction allows god in by the back door, but a tendency to
complexity in evolution
does emperically exist, and Darwin himself recognises this.

5. The chapter on Hybrids and Crossing seems particularly weak -
unlike his knowledge
of geology, which though limited, was sufficient for his purposes ( I
assume he is
more or less right about fossils usually being found in slowly
subsiding strata ).
I assume this was because genetics hadn't got going properly in his
time . . . could
Lisa expand on this . . . ?

Adam.
------------------------------

From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 96 08:08:58 GMT

I was listening to a tape on the Dialectics of Nature by
Paul McGarr at Marxism 96. During it, he explains the process
of focusing on a small part of nature, abstracting general rules
>from this small part of nature, and then explaining why specific
cases deviate from these general rules ...

He goes on to argue that these rules, however general they seem, in
fact only have limited validity. This is for two reasons : firstly,
they are by definition abstractions of a small part of nature,
secondly, even this small part of nature itself has a history. 

LR:  So, how does that make generalization invalid?

AR: ...
He [Darwin] has uncovered the laws of development of  life - but he
does not ( cannot ) explain how and why life first developed. For
instance, he ( tentatively, admittedly ) puts forward a rule which
suggests that there are always more or less the same number of
species at any one time. He also explains that were there are no
mammals, other animals have taken their place - tortoises in the
Galapagos islands, large flightless birds in pre human New Zealand.
These rules are probably true, given a certain type of underlying
ecology, given a starting point similar to most of geologically
recent history. But as life was developing, it simply cannot have
been true - in the beginning, there must have been one, or at most a
very few, single celled organisms.

LR:  I don't think of these as "rules".  What do you think he meant
by that?  Non-theory types of and before his time used "rule" and
"law" for observed trends and tendencies, and sometimes inferred some
underlying process or mechanism, even tho it was the "mind of god" or
"nature's beneficience" or something like that.  But Darwin offered a
NatSel explanation of _why_ these patterns occurred, didn't he?

Or what was his point in talking about replacements for mammals?
[Which edition of Origin are you using, btw?]

And of course it all started with unicellulars.  I don't recall if he
spelled it out in Origin, but I think that the vision of everything
"descending with modification" from other species, the connection of
all living things to one geneological tree, this was a mind-boggling
insight, especially given the lack of any knowledge of Mendel and
modern genetics.

Are you saying that he _should_ have included a theory of the origin
of life in his work?  Why?  

AR:  But neither [Newton and Darwin] give us a history of the
circumstances which give rise to their laws in the way that Marx and
Engels do for human society.

LR:  What do you mean, "give rise to" a law?  First off, "law" is so
archaic in science I can hardly think of that term at all.  Second,
the nature of natural selection is that is is contingent upon
specific circumstances.  When these occur, natural selection occurs. 
Period.  Where do you get a "law" out of that?  

AR: He cannot tell us why the law of Natural Selection started, and
why it no longer applies to humans, even though it
gave rise to humans. 

LR:  The "law of NS" didn't start at any particular time, other than
with the origin of life.  There is no _why_ it started, it is simply
the result of certain circumstances occurring.  I address its
application to humans briefly, below.

I think Rahul got it right, that Darwin didn't try to explain the
origins of the first life because it seemed impossible given the
state of science at the time.  Actually he was pretty busy with this
other little thing - I mean, it was rather ambitious to try to
explain the origin of new species, one or more from an earlier one. 
Did he do a pretty good job of it?  I think so, even tho he did it
without being very "dialectical", apparently.

From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 96 08:24:24 GMT
Subject: Re: Darwin ( dialectics ? )

> Rahul wrote:
> Adam, you might want to ponder the fact that Newton and Darwin
didn't have> much to say about origins because there was no
conceivable way they could> do more than the airiest speculation
about them ...

AR: ... I was just saying that the relative "historicalness"
of the three sets of theories [Newton, Darwin, Marx] seems to have a
relationship to their relative "dialecticalness". ... 

LR: But Adam, why should we care about their "dialecticalness" ??

And BTW, NS _does_ apply to humans.  Are you saying that Darwin said
it doesn't, or is that your own opinion?  

Don't just think of industrial elite humans, think of the whole of
human experience in the last 30,000 years.  The more general picture
of relative reproductive success does not strictly require "many more
births" than can be supported.  Darwin also addressed sexual
selection, for instance.  But there is good evidence for "excess"
births in many cases as well.

Lisa
p.s. Darwin's second edition was better, clearer, unpressured by all
the opposition, I've been told.  [Haven't got around to comparing
them, myself.]  Sixth edition is most commonly used today, but it
contains a lot of accomodation to other claims that evolution had to
work faster than by pure NS alone, due to the allegedly short life of
the planet.  Things are different now.  We know the earth is a lot
older than was thought then.


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