Daymare17
16th August 2004, 21:44
The problem is that Hegel was absolutely dominant in German philosophy in the period when Marx was attending university. Hegel's critics were marginalized figures read by few and ignored by most.
This is a periodic occurrence in academia; someone becomes "all the rage" and every student must define his own ideas "in the shadow" of this "towering figure". There've even been a few university departments in the west where Marx himself was such a dominant figure.
It's unfortunate...especially if the dominance comes while the "big gorilla" is still alive, making academic appointments, etc. Every foolish scribble is picked up as "gospel"...the "great man's" laundry list is carefully analyzed.
In my opinion, Marx's initial philosophical works were written to prove that he was "a better Hegelian" than Hegel...that his "materialist dialectic" was inherently superior to Hegel's "idealist dialectic" because his (Marx's) was "true".
To put it mildly this is extremely childish. Have you ever considered that the reason Hegel was so great, was because he had created a philosophy that was unlike anything else? You try to palm off the relation between the 2 greatest philosophers, and philosophies, of the 19th century as nothing more than the relation between a (for some unexplained reason) popular teacher and his attention-seeking ambitious pupil ... hilarious! I definitely think you should study some philosophy before you start making bold claims like that.
It's not, of course. Historical materialism is true -- it's based on real evidence that actually explains why things happen (on a "large scale").
"Dialectics" is just meaningless metaphysical gibberish that can be "used" to "explain" anything...and therefore, of course, explains nothing.
Dialectical materialism is the first component part of Marxism. It is the mainspring from which the whole thing flows. Marxism without dialectics is like a clock that lacks a spring. Marx began with a study of philosophy. He discovered that the Hegelian dialectic was better than other philosophies, however it had to become materialist in order to be rational. It was from this that he got historical materialism. You can't have historical materialism without materialist dialectics, it's completely absurd. This is not Marxist materialism but vulgar materialism.
Marx explained his relation to Hegel well enough in the afterword to the 2nd German edition of Capital:
"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?
"Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connection. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction…
"The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of Das Kapital, it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in the same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., a ‘dead dog.’ I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
"In its mystified form, dialectic become the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary."
Morpheus
5th September 2004, 07:45
Originally posted by
[email protected] 21 2004, 03:59 PM
I don't see how she could. If you strip away all the dialectical terminology from Marx's work, then you're left with assertions about social reality that, in principle, can either be empirically proven or disproven.
Marx doesn't just use dialectical terminology, he used dialectics as an integral part of his reasoning. If you remove dialectics you remove his whole thought process. They're an integral part of his theories. Dunaveskaya proved this far better than I could. And Marxism is about more than just social reality, things like dialectics & materialism (theoretically) extend beyond human societies.
Furthermore, many elements of marxism (meaning the theories elaborated by Marx) are unfalsifiable. Dialectics are an obvious example. Exchange value isn't really falsifiable, either, and if we apply occam's razor we should get rid of it. Marx talks about labor being embodied in commodities - how could such a claim possibly be falsifiable? He makes claims like "As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour-time." How could such a theory be empirically proven or disproven? Such claims smack of idealism. How can a commodity be a "definite mass of congealed labour-time"? Is labor-time supposed to be some non-material ethereal substance sitting inside commodities?
Much of Marxism is too vague to be empirically proven or disproven. The Marxist theory of history in its broadest sense is quite vague. Many Marxist analysis of specific historical events are empirically provable or disprovable (and some have been disproven - like the English revolution), but the general theory of all of human history is vague & contradictory. On the one hand we have the claim that, "the history of all hitherto existing society [except primitive communism] is the history of class struggles." Taken literally, this claim is empirically verifiable but trivially false. Religion, racial conflict, changes in gender relations, and imperialism are not class struggle. You can argue they are a reflection of class struggle, but that does not mean they are class struggle. Marx probably didn't mean the phrase literally, but that makes the statement rather vague, open to different interpretations of what he did mean. Compounding this, Marx never really defined what exactly he meant by class - making all theories based on class vague & unverifiable. Given the great importance he places on class, this is a major problem.
Contrast this focus on class with Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm), where he says:
My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term "civil society"; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy. The study of this, which I began in Paris, I continued in Brussels, where I moved owing to an expulsion order issued by M. Guizot. The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient,[A] feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence — but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.
etc.
Contrast the above with Marx's focus on class struggle elsewhere. First, class struggle is not central in the above, unlike in other statements. Marx doesn't even explicitly mention class struggle. This raises the question: is the history of all hitherto existing society the history of class struggle or is it the history of the development of the forces of production? Second, Marx leaves open the possibility that the super-structure might have some degree of independance and not be 100% determined by the base, although the base is dominant (the base affects the super-structue but not vice versa). If the super-structure can have some degree of independance, then doesn't that mean that not all of history is the history of class struggle? That maybe most of it is, but there are also other parts?
Or take his statement that:
Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist(emphasis added)
This decreases the degree of independance potentially allowed to the superstructure and further de-emphasizes class struggle in favor of technological determinism. If certain technologies create certain kinds of societies, then history isn't class struggle it is technological development.
The marxist theory of history is too vague & contradictory to really be empirically proven or disproven. This ambiguity is one of the reasons so many different variants of Marxist theory have been developed. Plus, even if we ignore Marxism's unfalsifiable aspects dialectics are still an important part of it. If you could construct a theory with the same empirical predictions but a different explanation behind it, that would not be the same theory. In that case we should use occam's razor to choose between the two.
Daymare17
5th September 2004, 15:05
Furthermore, many elements of marxism (meaning the theories elaborated by Marx) are unfalsifiable. Dialectics are an obvious example. Exchange value isn't really falsifiable, either, and if we apply occam's razor we should get rid of it. Marx talks about labor being embodied in commodities - how could such a claim possibly be falsifiable? He makes claims like "As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour-time." How could such a theory be empirically proven or disproven? Such claims smack of idealism. How can a commodity be a "definite mass of congealed labour-time"? Is labor-time supposed to be some non-material ethereal substance sitting inside commodities?
No, it's an abstraction. An abstraction is not a real thing. But it's impossible to think without using abstractions and generalities. An abstraction is verified by comparing it to concrete reality. The labour theory of value is verified in every slump, so we can assume it to be correct. Or do you have a better explanation of the capitalist trade cycle?
This is a point that dialectical materialism stresses very much - the thought must always be accountable to reality. And since reality is contradictory and always changing, the thoughts must also change, and describe the contradictions (not be contradictory :rolleyes: ).
"the history of all hitherto existing society [except primitive communism] is the history of class struggles." Taken literally, this claim is empirically verifiable but trivially false. Religion, racial conflict, changes in gender relations, and imperialism are not class struggle. You can argue they are a reflection of class struggle, but that does not mean they are class struggle. Marx probably didn't mean the phrase literally, but that makes the statement rather vague, open to different interpretations of what he did mean.
And then you say later, answering your own question:
Second, Marx leaves open the possibility that the super-structure might have some degree of independance and not be 100% determined by the base, although the base is dominant (the base affects the super-structue but not vice versa).
Compounding this, Marx never really defined what exactly he meant by class - making all theories based on class vague & unverifiable. Given the great importance he places on class, this is a major problem.
And then you contradict yourself in the same post!
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness."
It says it well enough - classes are categories of people in distinct relations to the means of production.
This decreases the degree of independance potentially allowed to the superstructure and further de-emphasizes class struggle in favor of technological determinism. If certain technologies create certain kinds of societies, then history isn't class struggle it is technological development.
You fail to see the totality, and you confuse the parts with the whole. If you take any of Marx' writings and counterpose them to the rest, then obviously you can get very interesting conclusions. But taking things apart and analysing the separate pieces isn't dialectics, it's reductionism. Dialectics can also put them together and make them work.
At bottom, in the last analysis (and only in the last analysis) the superstructure of society is dependent on the productive forces. This doesn't mean that you can't have different superstructures on the same productive base. It only means that the productive forces set absolute limits. For instance, Eminem could never have become a world star in the Dark Ages. And you couldn't have a proletarian revolution either, since there was no proletariat owing to the lack of industry.
Before the French Revolution, the productive forces were constrained by the feudal superstructure. The superstructure was burst asunder by revolution, and a bourgeois one put in its place. The productive forces were now allowed to grow. In the same way the productive forces are now hampered by the capitalist system of private ownership and the nation state. If there was a major world depression, this underlying process would be given a very concrete expression. Then there could be a proletarian world revolution freeing the productive forces (given that the proletariat can assemble a leadership in time)
Daymare17
5th September 2004, 15:10
Oh, and
Furthermore, many elements of marxism (meaning the theories elaborated by Marx) are unfalsifiable. Dialectics are an obvious example.
Dialectics are continuously proved by the empirical investigation of science. To paraphrase Engels, science has proven, and is proving, that nature works dialectically. An extract from Reason in Revolt:
The law of the transformation of quantity into quality has an extremely wide range of applications, from the smallest particles of matter at the subatomic level to the largest phenomena known to man. It can be seen in all kinds of manifestations, and at many levels. Yet this very important law has yet to receive the recognition which it deserves. This dialectical law forces itself to our attention at every turn. The transformation of quantity into quality was already known to the Megaran Greeks, who used it to demonstrate certain paradoxes, sometimes in the form of jokes. For example, the "bald head" and the "heap of grain"—does one hair less mean a bald head, or one grain of corn a heap? The answer is no. Nor one more? The answer is still no. The question is then repeated until there is a heap of corn and a bald head. We are faced with the contradiction that the individual small changes, which are powerless to effect a qualitative change, at a certain point do exactly that: quantity changes into quality.
The idea that, under certain conditions, even small things can cause big changes finds its expression in all kinds of sayings and proverbs. For instance: "The straw that broke the camel’s back," "many hands make light work," "constant dripping wears away the stone," and so on. In many ways, the law of the transformation of quantity into quality has penetrated the popular consciousness, as Trotsky wittily pointed out:
"Every individual is a dialectician to some extent or other, in most cases, unconsciously. A housewife knows that a certain amount of salt flavours soup agreeably, but that added salt makes the soup unpalatable. Consequently, an illiterate peasant woman guides herself in cooking soup by the Hegelian law of the transformation of quantity into quality. Similar examples from daily life could be cited without end. Even animals arrive at their practical conclusions not only on the basis of the Aristotelian syllogism but also on the basis of the Hegelian dialectic. Thus a fox is aware that quadrupeds and birds are nutritious and tasty. On sighting a hare, a rabbit, or a hen, a fox concludes: this particular creature belongs to the tasty and nutritive type, and—chases after the prey. We have here a complete syllogism, although the fox, we may suppose, never read Aristotle. When the same fox, however, encounters the first animal which exceeds it in size, for example, a wolf, it quickly concludes that quantity passes into quality, and turns to flee. Clearly, the legs of a fox are equipped with Hegelian tendencies, even if not fully conscious ones.
"All this demonstrates, in passing, that our methods of thought, both formal logic and the dialectic, are not arbitrary constructions of our reason but rather expressions of the actual inter-relationships in nature itself. In this sense, the universe throughout is permeated with ‘unconscious’ dialectics. But nature did not stop there. No little development occurred before nature’s inner relationships were converted into the language of the consciousness of foxes and men, and man was then enabled to generalise these forms of consciousness and transform them into logical (dialectical) categories, thus creating the possibility for probing more deeply into the world about us." (24)
Despite the apparently trivial character of these examples, they do reveal a profound truth about the way the world works. Take the example of the heap of corn. Some of the most recent investigations related to chaos theory have centred on the critical point where a series of small variations produces a massive change of state. (In the modern terminology, this is called "the edge of chaos.") The work of the Danish-born physicist Per Bak and others on "self-organised criticality" used precisely the example of a sand-heap to illustrate profound processes which occur at many levels of nature and which correspond precisely to the law of the transformation of quantity into quality.
One of the examples of this is that of a pile of sand—a precise analogy with the heap of grain of the Megarans. We drop grains of sand one by one on a flat surface. The experiment has been conducted many times, both with real sand heaped on tables, and in computer simulations. For a time they will just pile up on top of each other until they make a little pyramid. Once this point is reached, any additional grains will either find a resting place on the pile, or will unbalance one side of it just enough to cause some of the other grains to fall in an avalanche. Depending on how the other grains are poised, the avalanche could be very small, or devastating, dragging a large number of grains with it. When the pile reaches this critical point, even a single grain would be capable of dramatically affecting all around it. This seemingly trivial example provides an excellent "edge-of-chaos model," with a wide range of applications, from earthquakes to evolution; from stock exchange crises to wars.
The pile of sand grows bigger, with excess sand slipping from the sides. When all the excess sand has fallen off, the resulting sand-pile is said to be "self-organised." In other words, no-one has consciously shaped it in this way. It "organises itself," according to its own inherent laws, until it reaches a state of criticality, in which the sand grains on its surface are barely stable. In this critical condition, even the addition of a single grain of sand can cause unpredictable results. It may just cause a further tiny shift, or it may trigger a chain-reaction resulting in a catastrophic landslide and the destruction of the pile.
According to Per Bak, the phenomenon can be given a mathematical expression, according to which the average frequency of a given size of avalanche is inversely proportional to some power of its size. He also points out that this "power-law" behaviour is extremely common in nature, as in the critical mass of plutonium, at which the chain-reaction is on the point of running away into a nuclear explosion. At the sub-critical level, the chain-reaction within the plutonium mass will die out, whereas a supercritical mass will explode. A similar phenomenon can be seen in earthquakes, where the rocks on two sides of a fault in the earth’s crust reach a point where they are ready to slip past each other. The fault experiences a series of little slips and bigger slips, which maintain the tension at the critical point for some time until it finally collapses into an earthquake.
Although the proponents of chaos theory seem unaware of it, these examples are all cases of the law of the transformation of quantity into quality. Hegel invented the nodal line of measure relations, in which small quantitative changes at a certain point give rise to a qualitative leap. The example is often given of water, which boils at 100°C at normal atmospheric pressure. As the temperature nears boiling point, the increase in heat does not immediately cause the water molecules to fly apart. Until it reaches boiling point, the water keeps its volume. It remains water, because of the attraction of the molecules for each other. However, the steady change in temperature has the effect of increasing the motion of the molecules. The volume between the atoms is gradually increased, to the point where the force of attraction is insufficient to hold the molecules together. At precisely 100°C, any increase in heat energy will cause the molecules to fly apart, producing steam.
The same process can be seen in reverse. When water is cooled from 100°C to 0°C, it does not gradually congeal, passing from a paste, through a jelly, to a solid state. The motion of the atoms is gradually slowed as heat energy is removed until, at 0°C, a critical point is reached, at which the molecules will lock into a certain pattern, which is ice. The qualitative difference between a solid and a liquid can be readily understood by anyone. Water can be used for certain purposes, like washing and quenching one’s thirst, which ice cannot. Technically speaking, the difference is that, in a solid, the atoms are arranged in a crystalline array. They do not have a random position at long distances, so that the position of the atoms on one side of the crystal is determined by the atoms on the other side. That is why we can move our hand freely through water, whereas ice is rigid and offers resistance. Here we are describing a qualitative change, a change of state, which arises from an accumulation of quantitative changes. A water molecule is a relatively simple affair, one oxygen atom attached to two hydrogen atoms governed by well understood equations of atomic physics. However, when a very large number of these molecules are combined, they acquire a property which none of them possesses in isolation—liquidity. Such a property is not implied in the equations. In the language of complexity, liquidity is an "emergent" phenomenon.
"Cool those liquid water molecules down a bit, for example, and at 32°F they will suddenly quit tumbling over one another at random. Instead they will undergo a ‘phase transition,’ locking themselves into the orderly crystalline array known as ice. Or if you were to go the other direction and heat the liquid, those same tumbling water molecules will suddenly fly apart and undergo a phase transition into water vapour. Neither phase transition would have any meaning for one molecule alone." (25)
The phrase "phase transition" is neither more nor less than a qualitative leap. Similar processes can be seen in phenomena as varied as the weather, DNA molecules, and the mind itself. This quality of liquidity is well known on the basis of our daily experience. In physics, too, the behaviour of liquids is well understood and perfectly predictable—up to a point. The laws of motion of fluids (gases and liquids) clearly distinguish between smooth laminar flow, which is well defined and predictable, and turbulent flow, which can be expressed, at best, approximately. The movement of water around a pier in a river can be accurately predicted from the normal equations for fluids, provided it is moving slowly. Even if we increase the speed of the flow, causing eddies and vortices, we can still predict their behaviour. But if the speed is increased beyond a certain point, it becomes impossible to predict where the eddies will form, or, indeed, to say anything about the behaviour of the water at all. It has become chaotic.
Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table
The existence of qualitative changes in matter was known long before human beings began to think about science, but it was not really understood until the advent of atomic theory. Earlier, physics took the changes of state from solid to liquid to gas as something that occurred, without knowing exactly why. Only now are these phenomena being properly understood.
The science of chemistry made great strides forward in the 19th century. A large number of elements was discovered. But, rather like the confused situation which exists in particle physics today, chaos reigned. Order was established by the great Russian scientist Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev who, in 1869, in collaboration with the German chemist Julius Meyer, worked out the periodic table of the elements, so-called because it showed the periodic recurrence of similar chemical properties.
The existence of atomic weight was discovered in 1862 by Cannizzaro. But Mendeleyev’s genius consisted in the fact that he did not approach the elements from a purely quantitative standpoint, that is, he did not see the relation between the different atoms just in terms of weight. Had he done so, he would never have made the breakthrough he did. From the purely quantitative standpoint, for instance, the element tellurium (atomic weight = 127.61) ought to have come after iodine (atomic weight = 126.91) in the periodic table, yet Mendeleyev placed it before iodine, under selenium, to which it is more similar, and placed iodine under the related element, bromine. Mendeleyev’s method was vindicated in the 20th century, when the investigation of X-rays proved that his arrangement was the correct one. The new atomic number for tellurium was put at 52, while that of iodine is 53.
The whole of Mendeleyev’s periodic table is based on the law of quantity and quality, deducing qualitative differences in the elements from quantitative differences in atomic weights. This was recognised by Engels at the time:
"Finally, the Hegelian law is valid not only for compound substances but also for the chemical elements themselves. We now know that ‘the chemical properties of the elements are a periodic function of their atomic weights,’…and that, therefore, their quality is determined by the quantity of their atomic weight. And the text of this has been brilliantly carried out. Mendeleyev proved that various gaps occur in the series of related elements arranged according to atomic weights indicating that here new elements remain to be discovered. He described in advance the general chemical properties of one of these unknown elements, which he termed eka-aluminium, because it follows after aluminium in the series beginning with the latter, and he predicted its approximate specific and atomic weight as well as its atomic volume. A few years later, Lecoq de Boisbaudran actually discovered this elements, and Mendeleyev’s predictions fitted with only very slight discrepancies. Eka-aluminium was realised in gallium… By means of the—unconscious—application of Hegel’s law of the transformation of quantity into quality, Mendeleyev achieved a scientific feat which it is not too bold to put on a par with that of Leverrier in calculating the orbit of the until then unknown planet Neptune." (26)
Chemistry involves changes of both a quantitative and qualitative character, both changes of degree and of state. This can clearly be seen in the change of state from gas to liquid or solid, which is usually related to variations of temperature and pressure. In Anti Dühring, Engels gives a series of examples of how, in chemistry, the simple quantitative addition of elements creates qualitatively different bodies. Since Engels’ time the naming system used in chemistry has been changed. However, the change of quantity into quality is accurately expressed in the following example:
"CH2O2 — formic acid boiling point 100° melting point 1°
C2H4O2 — acetic acid " " 118° " " 17°
C3H6O2 — propionic acid " " 140° " " —
C4H8O2 — butyric acid " " 162° " " —
C5H10O2— valerianic acid " " 175° " " —
and so on to C30H60O2, melissic acid, which melts only at 80° and has no boiling point at all, because it does not evaporate without disintegrating." (27)
The study of gases and vapours constitutes a special branch of chemistry. The great British pioneer of chemistry, Faraday, thought that it was impossible to liquefy six gases, which he called permanent gases—hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, nitric oxide and methane. But in 1877, the Swiss chemist R. Pictet managed to liquefy oxygen at a temperature of –140°C under a pressure of 500 atmospheres. Later, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon monoxide were all liquefied at still lower temperatures. In 1900, hydrogen was liquefied at –240° and, at a lower temperature, it even solidified. Finally, the most difficult challenge of all, the liquification of helium, was achieved at –255°. These discoveries had important practical applications. Liquid hydrogen and oxygen are now used in large amounts in rockets. The transformation of quantity into quality is shown by the fact that changes of temperature bring about important changes of properties. This is the key to the phenomenon of superconductivity. Through super-cooling, certain substances, beginning with mercury, were shown to offer no resistance to electric currents.
The study of extremely low temperature was developed in the mid-19th century by the Englishman William (later Lord) Kelvin, who established the concept of absolute zero (the lowest possible temperature) which he calculated to be –273°C. At this temperature, he thought, the energy of molecules would sink to zero. This temperature is sometimes referred to as zero Kelvin, and used as the basis for a scale to measure very low temperatures. However, even at absolute zero, motion is not done away with altogether. There is still some energy, which cannot be removed. For practical purposes, energy is said to be zero, but that is not actually the case. Matter and motion, as Engels pointed out, are absolutely inseparable—even at "absolute zero."
Nowadays, incredibly low temperatures are routinely achieved, and play an important role in the production of superconductors. Mercury becomes superconductive at exactly 4.12° Kelvin (K); lead at 7.22°K; tin at 3.73°K; aluminium at 1.20°K; uranium at 0.8°K, titanium at 0.53°K. Some 1,400 elements and alloys display this quality. Liquid hydrogen boils at 20.4°K. Helium is the only known substance which cannot be frozen, even at absolute zero. It is the only substance which possesses the phenomenon known as superfluidity. Here, too, however, changes of temperature produce qualitative leaps. At 2.2°K, the behaviour of helium undergoes so fundamental a change, that it is known as helium-2, to distinguish it from liquid helium above this temperature (helium-1). Using new techniques, temperatures as low as 0.000001°K have been reached, though it is thought that absolute zero is unattainable.
So far, we have concentrated on chemical changes in the laboratory and in industry. But it should not be forgotten that these changes take place on a much vaster scale in nature. The chemical composition of coal and diamonds, barring impurities, is the same—carbon. The difference is the result of colossal pressure which, at a certain point, transforms the contents of the coal-sack into a duchess’ necklace. To convert common graphite into diamonds would require the pressure of at least 10,000 atmospheres over a very long period of time. This process occurs naturally beneath the earth’s surface. In 1955, the big monopoly GEC succeeded in changing graphite into diamonds with a temperature of 2,500°C, and a pressure of 100,000 atmospheres. The same result was obtained in 1962, with a temperature of 5,000°C, and a pressure of 200,000 atmospheres, which turned graphite into diamond directly, without the aid of a catalyst. These are synthetic diamonds, which are not used to adorn the necks of duchesses, but for far more productive purposes—as cutting tools in industry.
Phase Transitions
A most important field of investigation concerns what are known as phase transitions—the critical point where matter changes from solid to liquid or from liquid to vapour; or the change from nonmagnet to magnet; or from conductor to superconductor. All these processes are different, yet it has now been established beyond doubt that they are similar, so much so that the mathematics applied to one of these experiments can be applied to many others. This is a very clear example of a qualitative leap, as the following passage from James Gleick shows:
"Like so much of chaos itself, phase transitions involve a kind of macroscopic behaviour that seems hard to predict by looking at the microscopic details. When a solid is heated, its molecules vibrate with the added energy. They push outward against their bonds and force the substance to expand. The more heat, the more expansion. Yet at a certain temperature and pressure, the change becomes sudden and discontinuous. A rope has been stretching; now it breaks. Crystalline form dissolves, and the molecules slide away from one another. They obey fluid laws that could not have been inferred from any aspect of the solid. The average atomic energy has barely changed, but the material—now a liquid, or a magnet, or a superconductor—has entered a new realm." (28)
Newton’s dynamics were quite sufficient to explain large-scale phenomena but broke down for systems of atomic dimensions. Indeed, classical mechanics are still valid for most operations which do not involve very high speeds or the processes which take place at the subatomic level. Quantum mechanics will be dealt with in detail in another section. It represented a qualitative leap in science. Its relation to classical mechanics is similar to that between higher and lower mathematics and that between dialectics and formal logic. It can explain facts which classical mechanics could not, such as radioactive transformation, the transformation of matter into energy. It gave rise to new branches of science—theoretical chemistry, capable of solving previously insoluble problems. The theory of metallic magnetism underwent a fundamental change, making possible brilliant discoveries in the flow of electricity through metals. A whole series of theoretical difficulties were eliminated, once the new standpoint was accepted. But for a long time it met with a stubborn resistance, precisely because its results clashed head-on with the traditional mode of thinking and the laws of formal logic.
Modern physics furnishes a wealth of examples of the laws of dialectics, starting with quantity and quality. Take, for instance, the relation between the different kinds of electromagnetic wave and their frequencies, that is, the speed with which they pulsate. Maxwell’s work, which Engels was very interested in, showed that electromagnetic waves and light waves were of the same kind. Quantum mechanics later showed that the situation is much more complex and contradictory, but at lower frequencies, the wave theory holds good.
The properties of different waves is determined by the number of oscillations per second. The difference is in the frequency of the waves, the speed with which they pulsate, the number of vibrations per second. That is to say, quantitative changes give rise to different kinds of wave signals. Translated into colours, red light indicates light waves of low frequency. An increased rate of vibration turns the colour to orange-yellow, then to violet, then to the invisible ultra-violet and X-rays and finally to gamma rays. If we reverse the process, at the lower end, we go from infrared and heat rays to radio-waves. Thus, the same phenomenon manifests itself differently, in accordance with a higher or lower frequency. Quantity changes into quality.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
The Electromagnetic Spectrum Frequency in oscillations/sec Name Rough behaviour
102 Electrical disturbance Field
5 X 105-106 Radio Broadcast
108 FM-TV Waves
1010 Radar
5 X 1014-1015 Light
1018 X-rays
1021 y-rays, nuclear Particle
1024 y-rays, "artificial"
1027 y-rays, in cosmic rays
Source: R. P. Feynman, Lectures on Physics, chapter 2, p. 7, Table 2-1.
taken from http://www.marxist.com/science/dialecticalmaterialism.html
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