Rosa Lichtenstein
15th May 2009, 19:08
It is quite clear that the first two of Engels's so-called 'laws' are incompatible with one another. Here is how Engels characterised them:
"...[T]he transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy)…. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned." [Dialectics of Nature, p.63. Emphasis added.]
"The law of the interpenetration of opposites.... Mutual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes...."
However, according to Engels and Hegel, such 'qualitative' changes are 'nodal', that is, they aren't gradual, they are sudden:
"It is said, natura non facit saltum [there are no leaps in nature]; and ordinary thinking when it has to grasp a coming-to-be or a ceasing-to-be, fancies it has done so by representing it as a gradual emergence or disappearance. But we have seen that the alterations of being in general are not only the transition of one magnitude into another, but a transition from quality into quantity and vice versa, a becoming-other which is an interruption of gradualness and the production of something qualitatively different from the reality which preceded it. Water, in cooling, does not gradually harden as if it thickened like porridge, gradually solidifying until it reached the consistency of ice; it suddenly solidifies, all at once. It can remain quite fluid even at freezing point if it is standing undisturbed, and then a slight shock will bring it into the solid state." [Hegel's [I]Science of Logic, p.370, §776. Bold emphasis added.]
And here is Engels:
"With this assurance Herr Dühring saves himself the trouble of saying anything further about the origin of life, although it might reasonably have been expected that a thinker who had traced the evolution of the world back to its self-equal state, and is so much at home on other celestial bodies, would have known exactly what's what also on this point. For the rest, however, the assurance he gives us is only half right unless it is completed by the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations which has already been mentioned. In spite of all gradualness, the transition from one form of motion to another always remains a leap, a decisive change. This is true of the transition from the mechanics of celestial bodies to that of smaller masses on a particular celestial body; it is equally true of the transition from the mechanics of masses to the mechanics of molecules -- including the forms of motion investigated in physics proper: heat, light, electricity, magnetism. In the same way, the transition from the physics of molecules to the physics of atoms -- chemistry -- in turn involves a decided leap; and this is even more clearly the case in the transition from ordinary chemical action to the chemism of albumen which we call life. Then within the sphere of life the leaps become ever more infrequent and imperceptible. -- Once again, therefore, it is Hegel who has to correct Herr Dühring." [Anti-Dühring, pp.82-83. I have used the online version here, but quoted the page numbers for the Foreign Languages edition. Bold emphasis added.]
"We have already seen earlier, when discussing world schematism, that in connection with this Hegelian nodal line of measure relations -- in which quantitative change suddenly[.B] passes at certain points into qualitative transformation -- Herr Dühring had a little accident: in a weak moment he himself recognised and made use of this line. We gave there one of the best-known examples -- that of the change of the aggregate states of water, which under normal atmospheric pressure changes at 0°C from the liquid into the solid state, and at 100°C from the liquid into the gaseous state, so that at both these turning-points the merely quantitative change of temperature brings about a qualitative change in the condition of the water." [Ibid., p.160. Bold emphasis added.]
Here, too, is Plekhanov:
"[I]t will be understood without difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical thinking...[that] [B]quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps, interruptions in gradualness…. That is how all Nature acts…." [The Development Of The Monist View Of History, pp.74-77, 88, 163. Bold emphases added.]
Despite this, it is quite clear that the 'nodal' aspect of the first 'Law' is incompatible with the second 'law', the Unity and Interpenetration of Opposites (UIO), or at least the UIO is inconsistent with the DM-rejection/criticism of the LEM.
[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle; FL = Formal Logic; DL = Dialectical Logic.]
Here is Novack on the alleged 'laws' of FL:
"There are three fundamental laws of formal logic. First and most important is the law of identity. This law can be stated in various ways such as: A thing is always equal to or identical with itself. In algebraic terms: A equals A.
"...If a thing is always and under all conditions equal to or identical with itself, it can never be unequal to or different from itself. This conclusion follows logically and inevitably from the law of identity. If A always equals A, it can never equal non-A.
"This conclusion is made explicit in the second law of formal logic: the law of contradiction. The law of contradiction states: A is not non-A. This is no more than the negative formulation of the positive assertion expressed in the first law of formal logic. If A is A, it follows, according to formal thinking that A cannot be non-A. Thus the second law of formal logic, the law of contradiction forms the essential supplement to the first law.
"Some examples: a man cannot be inhuman; a democracy cannot be undemocratic; a wageworker cannot be a non-wageworker.
"The law of contradiction signifies the exclusion of difference from the essence of things and of thought about things. If A is necessarily always identical with itself, it cannot be different from itself. Difference and identity are, according to these two rules of formal logic, completely different, utterly disconnected, mutually exclusive characteristics of both things and thoughts.
"This mutually exclusive quality of things is expressly taken note of in the third law of formal logic. This is the law of the excluded middle. According to this law, everything is and must be either one of two mutually exclusive things. If A equals A, it cannot equal non-A. A cannot be part of two opposing classes at one and the same time. Wherever two opposing statements or states of affairs confront each other, both cannot be true or false. A is either B or it is not B. The correctness of one judgement invariably implies the incorrectness of its contrary, and vice versa." [Novack, Intoduction to the Logic of Marxism, pp.20-21.]
Of course, Novack is just parroting Hegel and Engels here (all the while offering no evidence to substantiate his claim that Aristotle's logic (let alone modern logic) is based on these 'laws', or even that he (Novack) has got these 'laws' right!
For example, here is Engels on the LEM:
"To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. 'His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' [Matthew 5:37. -- Ed.] For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.
"At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.
"In like manner, every organic being is every moment the same and not the same, every moment it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter; every moment some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew; in a longer or shorter time the matter of its body is completely renewed, and is replaced by other atoms of matter, so that every organic being is always itself, and yet something other than itself.
"Further, we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.
"None of these processes and modes of thought enters into the framework of metaphysical reasoning. Dialectics, on the other hand, comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their essential connection, concatenation, motion, origin, and ending. Such processes as those mentioned above are, therefore, so many corroborations of its own method of procedure.[[I]Anti-Dühring, pp.26-27.]
Now, I have shown (here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2004.htm) and here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm)) that the above ideas are far too confused to be assessed for their truth or falsehood, but the point I wish to make in this post is that the above 'law' (the interpenetration of opposites, etc.) is incompatible with the first law (the 'nodal' change of quantity into quality).
To see this, consider object/process P which is just about to undergo a qualitative 'nodal' change (a "leap") from, say, state P(A) to state P(B) -- for example, water that is just about to boil, and thus change from liquid to gas.
For there to be a 'nodal' change here it would have to be the case that P is in state P(A) one instant/moment, and in state P(B) an instant/moment later (howsoever these "instants/moments" are defined). There is no other way of making sense of the abrupt nature of 'nodal' change.
[To spare the reader, I will simply refer to these as "instants" from now on.]
Of course, we are never told how long such 'nodes' are supposed to last, which fact allows DM-theorists to include anything from an ice age to a quantum leap as a 'node', introducing an element of subjectivity into what is supposed to be an 'objective' law.
However, given the strife-riven and sectarian nature of dialectical politics, any attempt to tell us how long such DM-'nodes' are could lead to yet more factions. Thus, we are sure to see emerge the rightist Nanosecond Tendency -- sworn enemies of the Picosecond Left Opposition -- who will both take up swords with the 'eclectic' wing: the "it depends on the circumstances" 'clique' at the 'centrist' Femtosecond League.
Be this as it may, if the above were so (i.e., if P is in state P(A) one instant, and in state P(B) an instant later), then any state description of P would have to obey the LEM, for it would have to be the case that at one instant it would be true to say that P was in state P(A) at that instant but not in state P(B) at the same instant.
That is, it would not be true to say that P was in both states at once (which is, of course, a core idea of the DM-account of 'nodal' change). In that case, these two states would not interpenetrate one another, since the LEM would apply to this process at that instant: P must therefore be in state P(A) or state P(B) (but not both) if the change from P(A) to P(B) is to be 'nodal', or "sudden".
On the other hand, if these two states do in fact interpenetrate one another (and the above conclusions are false) -- such that the "either-or" of the LEM does not apply, which, we are told, it cannot do at a point of change -- and it were thus the case that P was in both states at once, then the transition from P(A) to P(B) would be smooth and non-'nodal', after all!
Now, this fatal dilemma is independent of the length of time a 'node' is supposed to last (that is, if we are ever told).
It is also worth noting that this inconsistency applies at just the point where dialecticians tell us DL is superior to FL --, that is, at the point of change.
So, once more, we see that not only can DL not explain change (on that see here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1401001&postcount=77)), at least two of Engels's three 'Laws' are inconsistent with one another (when applied to objects/process that undergo change).
"...[T]he transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy)…. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned." [Dialectics of Nature, p.63. Emphasis added.]
"The law of the interpenetration of opposites.... Mutual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes...."
However, according to Engels and Hegel, such 'qualitative' changes are 'nodal', that is, they aren't gradual, they are sudden:
"It is said, natura non facit saltum [there are no leaps in nature]; and ordinary thinking when it has to grasp a coming-to-be or a ceasing-to-be, fancies it has done so by representing it as a gradual emergence or disappearance. But we have seen that the alterations of being in general are not only the transition of one magnitude into another, but a transition from quality into quantity and vice versa, a becoming-other which is an interruption of gradualness and the production of something qualitatively different from the reality which preceded it. Water, in cooling, does not gradually harden as if it thickened like porridge, gradually solidifying until it reached the consistency of ice; it suddenly solidifies, all at once. It can remain quite fluid even at freezing point if it is standing undisturbed, and then a slight shock will bring it into the solid state." [Hegel's [I]Science of Logic, p.370, §776. Bold emphasis added.]
And here is Engels:
"With this assurance Herr Dühring saves himself the trouble of saying anything further about the origin of life, although it might reasonably have been expected that a thinker who had traced the evolution of the world back to its self-equal state, and is so much at home on other celestial bodies, would have known exactly what's what also on this point. For the rest, however, the assurance he gives us is only half right unless it is completed by the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations which has already been mentioned. In spite of all gradualness, the transition from one form of motion to another always remains a leap, a decisive change. This is true of the transition from the mechanics of celestial bodies to that of smaller masses on a particular celestial body; it is equally true of the transition from the mechanics of masses to the mechanics of molecules -- including the forms of motion investigated in physics proper: heat, light, electricity, magnetism. In the same way, the transition from the physics of molecules to the physics of atoms -- chemistry -- in turn involves a decided leap; and this is even more clearly the case in the transition from ordinary chemical action to the chemism of albumen which we call life. Then within the sphere of life the leaps become ever more infrequent and imperceptible. -- Once again, therefore, it is Hegel who has to correct Herr Dühring." [Anti-Dühring, pp.82-83. I have used the online version here, but quoted the page numbers for the Foreign Languages edition. Bold emphasis added.]
"We have already seen earlier, when discussing world schematism, that in connection with this Hegelian nodal line of measure relations -- in which quantitative change suddenly[.B] passes at certain points into qualitative transformation -- Herr Dühring had a little accident: in a weak moment he himself recognised and made use of this line. We gave there one of the best-known examples -- that of the change of the aggregate states of water, which under normal atmospheric pressure changes at 0°C from the liquid into the solid state, and at 100°C from the liquid into the gaseous state, so that at both these turning-points the merely quantitative change of temperature brings about a qualitative change in the condition of the water." [Ibid., p.160. Bold emphasis added.]
Here, too, is Plekhanov:
"[I]t will be understood without difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical thinking...[that] [B]quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps, interruptions in gradualness…. That is how all Nature acts…." [The Development Of The Monist View Of History, pp.74-77, 88, 163. Bold emphases added.]
Despite this, it is quite clear that the 'nodal' aspect of the first 'Law' is incompatible with the second 'law', the Unity and Interpenetration of Opposites (UIO), or at least the UIO is inconsistent with the DM-rejection/criticism of the LEM.
[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle; FL = Formal Logic; DL = Dialectical Logic.]
Here is Novack on the alleged 'laws' of FL:
"There are three fundamental laws of formal logic. First and most important is the law of identity. This law can be stated in various ways such as: A thing is always equal to or identical with itself. In algebraic terms: A equals A.
"...If a thing is always and under all conditions equal to or identical with itself, it can never be unequal to or different from itself. This conclusion follows logically and inevitably from the law of identity. If A always equals A, it can never equal non-A.
"This conclusion is made explicit in the second law of formal logic: the law of contradiction. The law of contradiction states: A is not non-A. This is no more than the negative formulation of the positive assertion expressed in the first law of formal logic. If A is A, it follows, according to formal thinking that A cannot be non-A. Thus the second law of formal logic, the law of contradiction forms the essential supplement to the first law.
"Some examples: a man cannot be inhuman; a democracy cannot be undemocratic; a wageworker cannot be a non-wageworker.
"The law of contradiction signifies the exclusion of difference from the essence of things and of thought about things. If A is necessarily always identical with itself, it cannot be different from itself. Difference and identity are, according to these two rules of formal logic, completely different, utterly disconnected, mutually exclusive characteristics of both things and thoughts.
"This mutually exclusive quality of things is expressly taken note of in the third law of formal logic. This is the law of the excluded middle. According to this law, everything is and must be either one of two mutually exclusive things. If A equals A, it cannot equal non-A. A cannot be part of two opposing classes at one and the same time. Wherever two opposing statements or states of affairs confront each other, both cannot be true or false. A is either B or it is not B. The correctness of one judgement invariably implies the incorrectness of its contrary, and vice versa." [Novack, Intoduction to the Logic of Marxism, pp.20-21.]
Of course, Novack is just parroting Hegel and Engels here (all the while offering no evidence to substantiate his claim that Aristotle's logic (let alone modern logic) is based on these 'laws', or even that he (Novack) has got these 'laws' right!
For example, here is Engels on the LEM:
"To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. 'His communication is 'yea, yea; nay, nay'; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' [Matthew 5:37. -- Ed.] For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other.
"At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.
"In like manner, every organic being is every moment the same and not the same, every moment it assimilates matter supplied from without, and gets rid of other matter; every moment some cells of its body die and others build themselves anew; in a longer or shorter time the matter of its body is completely renewed, and is replaced by other atoms of matter, so that every organic being is always itself, and yet something other than itself.
"Further, we find upon closer investigation that the two poles of an antithesis positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as they are opposed and that despite all their opposition, they mutually interpenetrate. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.
"None of these processes and modes of thought enters into the framework of metaphysical reasoning. Dialectics, on the other hand, comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their essential connection, concatenation, motion, origin, and ending. Such processes as those mentioned above are, therefore, so many corroborations of its own method of procedure.[[I]Anti-Dühring, pp.26-27.]
Now, I have shown (here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2004.htm) and here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm)) that the above ideas are far too confused to be assessed for their truth or falsehood, but the point I wish to make in this post is that the above 'law' (the interpenetration of opposites, etc.) is incompatible with the first law (the 'nodal' change of quantity into quality).
To see this, consider object/process P which is just about to undergo a qualitative 'nodal' change (a "leap") from, say, state P(A) to state P(B) -- for example, water that is just about to boil, and thus change from liquid to gas.
For there to be a 'nodal' change here it would have to be the case that P is in state P(A) one instant/moment, and in state P(B) an instant/moment later (howsoever these "instants/moments" are defined). There is no other way of making sense of the abrupt nature of 'nodal' change.
[To spare the reader, I will simply refer to these as "instants" from now on.]
Of course, we are never told how long such 'nodes' are supposed to last, which fact allows DM-theorists to include anything from an ice age to a quantum leap as a 'node', introducing an element of subjectivity into what is supposed to be an 'objective' law.
However, given the strife-riven and sectarian nature of dialectical politics, any attempt to tell us how long such DM-'nodes' are could lead to yet more factions. Thus, we are sure to see emerge the rightist Nanosecond Tendency -- sworn enemies of the Picosecond Left Opposition -- who will both take up swords with the 'eclectic' wing: the "it depends on the circumstances" 'clique' at the 'centrist' Femtosecond League.
Be this as it may, if the above were so (i.e., if P is in state P(A) one instant, and in state P(B) an instant later), then any state description of P would have to obey the LEM, for it would have to be the case that at one instant it would be true to say that P was in state P(A) at that instant but not in state P(B) at the same instant.
That is, it would not be true to say that P was in both states at once (which is, of course, a core idea of the DM-account of 'nodal' change). In that case, these two states would not interpenetrate one another, since the LEM would apply to this process at that instant: P must therefore be in state P(A) or state P(B) (but not both) if the change from P(A) to P(B) is to be 'nodal', or "sudden".
On the other hand, if these two states do in fact interpenetrate one another (and the above conclusions are false) -- such that the "either-or" of the LEM does not apply, which, we are told, it cannot do at a point of change -- and it were thus the case that P was in both states at once, then the transition from P(A) to P(B) would be smooth and non-'nodal', after all!
Now, this fatal dilemma is independent of the length of time a 'node' is supposed to last (that is, if we are ever told).
It is also worth noting that this inconsistency applies at just the point where dialecticians tell us DL is superior to FL --, that is, at the point of change.
So, once more, we see that not only can DL not explain change (on that see here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1401001&postcount=77)), at least two of Engels's three 'Laws' are inconsistent with one another (when applied to objects/process that undergo change).