A question about dialectics

[Existence]

Greetings,

I've been reading about dialectics for a while. I have a question about the laws of dialectics

1- The law of the unity and conflict of opposites;
2- The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
3- The law of the negation of the negation

Are these laws interrelated ? When we take the example of buttefly which engels wrote :
“We have cited barley seed, but the same process takes place among the majority of insects, for example, among butterflies. They appear out of the egg by way of negating it, they pass through different phases of change till maturity, they copulate and then negate themselves (i.e. they die)"

Does the butterfly appears out of the egg due to conflict or struggle between opposites that leads to it getting out of the egg (1st law) ?
Are these subject to the 2nd law ? That there's a struggle between A and B so when A gets enough quantitative changes it leads to qualitative one (the butterfly appears out of the egg) ?

I'm sorry if this sounds stupid, but I'm still trying to learn :blushing:

Thanks in advance

[RedMaterialist]

Greetings,

I've been reading about dialectics for a while. I have a question about the laws of dialectics

1- The law of the unity and conflict of opposites;
2- The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
3- The law of the negation of the negation

Are these laws interrelated ? When we take the example of buttefly which engels wrote :
“We have cited barley seed, but the same process takes place among the majority of insects, for example, among butterflies. They appear out of the egg by way of negating it, they pass through different phases of change till maturity, they copulate and then negate themselves (i.e. they die)"

Does the butterfly appears out of the egg due to conflict or struggle between opposites that leads to it getting out of the egg (1st law) ?
Are these subject to the 2nd law ? That there's a struggle between A and B so when A gets enough quantitative changes it leads to qualitative one (the butterfly appears out of the egg) ?

I'm sorry if this sounds stupid, but I'm still trying to learn :blushing:

Thanks in advance

I would say that the emergence from the egg to the caterpillar is negation of the negation. Also, transition from caterpillar to pupa, then to butterfly. Each stage negates itself and transforms into a new stage.

I think the quantitative to qualitative change occurs at the cellular level. As more cells divide the finally change into a new structure. DNA splitting and recombining would enter as a factor of the unity and conflict of opposites.

The problem with this type of analysis (I'm certainly not saying mine is correct) is that it just is so broad, vague and apparently unscientific. I doubt if entomologists think very much about the dialectical method when studying butterflies. Even though it might be happening right in front of their eyes. Or, for that matter, astrophysicists when studying black holes.

DM would have to be able to predict scientifically social change in order for the method to be accepted. I just wonder if that really is possible.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think the description of dialectics you cite is extremely minimal, and it could apply to both the materialist dialectics of Marx and Engels and to the idealist dialectics of Hegel. Lenin gives a more extensive summary:





the objectivity of consideration
(not examples, not divergencies, but
the Thing-in-itself).
X
the entire totality of the manifold
relations of this thing to others.
the development of this thing,
(phenomenon, respectively), its own
movement, its own life.
the internally contradictory tenden-
cies (and sides) in this thing.
the thing (phenomenon, etc.) as the
sum and unity of opposites.
the struggle, respectively unfold-
ing, of these opposites, contradictory
strivings, etc.
the union of analysis and synthesis—
the break-down of the separate parts
and the totality, the summation of
these parts.
the relations of each thing (phenome-
non, etc.) are not only manifold, but
general, universal. Each thing (phe-
nomenon, process, etc.) is connected
with every other. X
not only the unity of opposites, but
the transitions of every de-
termination, quality, feature, side,
property into every other [into its
opposite?].
the endless process of the discovery
of new sides, relations, etc.
the endless process of the deepening
of man’s knowledge of the thing, of
phenomena, processes, etc., from ap-
pearance to essence and from less pro-
found to more profound essence.
from co-existence to causality and from
one form of connection and reciprocal
dependence to another, deeper, more
general form.
the repetition at a higher stage of
certain features, properties, etc., of
the lower and
the apparent return to the old (nega-
tion of the negation).
the struggle of content with form and
conversely. The throwing off of the
form, the transformation of the con-
tent.
the transition of quantity into quality
and vice versa ((15 and 16 are examples of 9))



The example of the butterfly is not the happiest one since it can be taken as claiming that the butterfly emerges from the egg because the concept of the egg has been negated by the concept of the butterfly; even if it is taken in a materialist way, it all sounds pretty hand-wavy. Comrade redshifted has provided a better example: the butterfly starts as a zygote, on the same level of organisation as any other cell, and develops by quantitative addition of the same sort of cell; but at some point new possibilities for structure begin to form in the previously undifferentiated mass of cells, and the embryo has advanced to a new level in complexity.


The problem with this type of analysis (I'm certainly not saying mine is correct) is that it just is so broad, vague and apparently unscientific. I doubt if entomologists think very much about the dialectical method when studying butterflies. Even though it might be happening right in front of their eyes. Or, for that matter, astrophysicists when studying black holes.

They don't, but they usually don't think about materialism, methodological naturalism, the posit of natural laws etc. But dialectical themes are, I think, easy to notice in science: consider the status of most objects as the result of a precarious balance between competing tendencies (in the case of stars, gravitational collapse and the pressure resulting from compactification), for example.


DM would have to be able to predict scientifically social change in order for the method to be accepted. I just wonder if that really is possible.

Several predictions made through the historical materialist method have been confirmed; consider for example the claims that another imperialist war was necessary, made by internationalists before the first and the second world wars.

[CyM]

Also, please see Chaos mathematics, Complexity and Ubiquity.

[kasama-rl]

I think it is a good question -- asking what the relationship of those three laws is.

The answer is that communists question the existence of these three as three distinct laws.

Mao in particular explicitly argued that dialectic is the existence of contradiction: unity and struggle of opposites.

He argued that quality to quantity is merely an instance (mainifestation) of that law of contradiction.

And Mao argued that the negation of negation did not exist at all. I.e. that it is an intrusion of European metaphysics into the assumptions of some communist forms of dialectics.

I wrote an essay explaining this:
http://kasamaproject.org/theory/2621-53what-039-s-normal-for-a-grain-of-barley-on-negation-of-negation