Quantity to Quality.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Howdy chaps.

I recently attended Socialism 2007 and in particular a meeting on dialectics. I went there with a view to basically figuring out what it actually is, simply. I confess I went there slightly sceptical; Any idea which is talked about so much and is so notoriously difficult to explain earns my suspicion straight away. And I might have found it boring and irrelevant, a little bit. Still, I went with an open mind, and hoped that since the meeting featured scientists and the editor of the socialist, I would at the very least get a clear and concise statement of what dialectics actually was.

I managed to gather this:

1) It attempts to create a "Science of Change". Great, but that doesn't really tell me an awful lot. I mean, all three natural sciences already talk about change, but yeah, perhaps dialectics is specifically about change.

2) Things are always changing, and the change has something to do with three "Laws".

3) Nothing else.


Why is it so damn hard to explain? Am I being stupid? Anyway, I thought that I had managed to grasp the Quantity to Quality one best of the three, by means of the apparently famous kettle analogy. I still had reservations though, because the analogy didn't stack up as far as I could see. I asked a slightly hostile question about it, which was met with stony silence for a few seconds, a snigger from the chair and then a kindly looking lady and a few science-types tried to explain it to me. I couldn't make head or tail of it, it flew straight over my head - So after a while I just stopped asking, it was clear I'd been disrupting the meeting a bit.

So I'll ask my questions to any RevLeft dialecticians.

The analogy says that by increasing quantity of heat, you change the quality of the water, right? Here's my criticism. If you have a pan of water that you want to boil on say, a gas hob, how do you go about it? You light the gas. No way around that. Lighting the gas, though, is a quality change, surely. So the entire thing is flawed. You can't just increase the heat energy without first initiating a quality change. So the chain of events, contary to dialectical materialism, does not run like this:

Quantity-Quality.

But like this:

Quality-Quantity-Quality

Secondly, it is not as if there are no qualitative changes before the boil. The water molecules vibrate faster and faster, the whole body of water bubbles and moves around, etc. It seemed at that meeting as if they were saying nothing happens until the quantity of heat reaches some weird kind of critical mass of a 100 degrees. That ain't true.

Third, the water, when it boils, is not significantly different to the water pre-boil. Steam, when all is said and done, is still good ol' H20. Again, the dialecticians seemed to be equating water boiling with a socialist revolution! All that's changed with the water, as far as I know from my pathetic knowledge of science, is the bond structures.

Fourth, an actual quantity change would be to simply pour more water in to the kettle. Water is what you've got, so altering it's quanity is to add more water. Adding 100 degrees of heat is qualitative.


Any clear, concise answers are totally welcomed. Any obscure re-statements are not.

-Alex

P.S. Rosa, I know you will make a witty comment and direct me to an essay. :) Since I do not actually subscribe to dialectics, perhaps you can save your conversionist efforts for greater battles. I'm mainly interested in what the "other side" has to say.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Burn, good luck on receiving a reply from the mystics, but you will first of all need to say what you mean by 'quality' -- or rather, you will need to get them to say what they mean by it.

Hegel called it 'determinate being' (eh?). :wacko: :blink: :wacko: :blink:

Engels did not say, neither did Plekhanov or Lenin and Trotsky...

You will find a very brief attempt to say what it is in the work of a few Russian dialecticians (CP hacks), but they use Aristotle's 'definition', which does not work.

Without a clear idea, as you can see from my 'debate' with Zurdito in the 'Stalin and materialism' thread, DM-fans use this notion entirely subjectively, and inconsistently

So, they use it in the boiling water example -- but only for phase changes (liquid to steam, for instance), even though either side of that phase change you still have H2O (that, incidentally, violates the Aristotelian 'definition'), but they refuse to use it for the change from cold water to hot water (surely a qualitative change if ever there was one).

So, be prepared for some pretty sloppy answers (if you get any), and also watch out for Mickey Mouse Science.

Mickey Mouse Science is highly superficial science; kindergarden science, if you like.

For example, from a few cliched examples (check out the ones Criticise Everything tried to use in the 'Stalin and Materialism' thread), and very few details, they derive fundamental Laws applicable everywhere in the entire universe and for all of time. :o

Now, I do not know if you have ever seen a genuine science research paper (in say, Physics, Chemistry or Geology), but the amount of detail scientists have to go into to alter even tiny areas of knowledge, let alone make significant changes to theory, is quite daunting. They have to be very thorough and pay close attention to detail, and loads of it!

But dialecticans hope to convince us that their 'laws' work based on a few paragraphs (or if you are lucky, a few pages) of cliched, anecdotal, and trite examples, no original data, compounded by an extensive lack of attention to detail.

For example, they refuse to define 'quality' or 'node'/'leap' (I tried to get Zurdito to do so, just as I have tried to get others to do so now for nigh on 20 years); deadly silence there.

Also, they will not tell you if the changes they envisage are in open or closed thermodynamic systems (in fact, I work out all the possible combinations and options at my site -- for the first time ever in this field -- they refue even to read it!).

They not only ignore significant details like this, they give you a hard time for doubting their sacred 'laws' -- just like creationists do.

And as if to top that, they ignore cases where their 'laws' do not work (and there are loads of those).

And yet they expect us to take their science seriously.

Can you imagine genuine scientists refusing to do this, or operating with such ill-defined terms?

Mickey Mouse Science, as I said.

Minnie Mouse Philosophy, too.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

It is instructive to comapre the paucity of detail offered by dialecticians in this area of Marxism, with the extensive and well-researched detail they give in economics, history and politics.

Which just goes to show that historical materialism is a science whereas dialectical materialism is a joke.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 01:08 pm
Third, the water, when it boils, is not significantly different to the water pre-boil. Steam, when all is said and done, is still good ol' H20.
In case anyone was wondering what happens there ... the Van der Waal's (cohesive) forces between adjacent H2O molecules fall off so rapidly with distance, not according to the inverse square law, but with the _seventh_ power of the distance. When a surface molecule reaches the escape velocity, it becomes completely detached from the liquid. There is an abrupt change from having considering bonding with one's neighbors to having virtually none.


Fourth, an actual quantity change would be to simply pour more water in to the kettle. Water is what you've got, so altering it's quanity is to add more water.

The quantity referred to in this case isn't the amount of water, but the mean value of the kinetic energy of the water molecules.

[mikelepore]

We ought to remember that, around the time of Marx and Engels, it was then very recent news: that properties of a compound are determined by the kinds and amounts of the elements in it, and the elements are combined in definite proportions (Dalton) ... that periodic properties of elements can be understood by listing them in a table in a certain order (Mendeleev) ... that thermal energy isn't some kind of "fluid" but a measure of the motion of particles (Maxwell and Boltzmann). Such discoveries being so recent, it must have seemed as though it was being found that "number" is the basic building block of everything, almost in the Pythagorean sense. Also, it's understandable that many people of that generation would have had expectations that we no longer have about everything, including society and thought, soon becoming quantitative sciences.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mikelepore, I am not sure whether you are defending Engels or not, but if you are you need to address the points I raised which refute his entire 'theory'.

[mikelepore]

Rosa, I'm not so good at responding on my own to a book-length study of something, and I usually respond to individual sentences as I come accross them. I can say this much: Engels sneaked the dialectics into conjuction with Marxian topics, somewhat while Marx was still around to yell at him, but much more after Marx died - just as he waited until Marx was dead before he did a lot of his overdone myth-making about how idyllic the early the tribal societies were. Some of the dialectics is mystical in a Taoist sense -- the "interpenetration of opposites" is I Ching style magic. Engels' playing around with the square root of negative one and the other mathematical curiosities is a big "so what?", and there either he's practicing numerology or else he exhibits attention deficit disorder, because it has no relevance to social science, or none that he is prepared to point out. His use of Hegel's idea of "contradiction" merely repeats Hegel's error. Give me Boolean algebra and De Morgan's theorem any day to really understand how opposites interact. His emphasis on the structure of the very small, like electrically charged particles, and implication that this enlightens us about human society, seems to be the comission of the fallacy of composition, as if to say: if the bricks of which a building is made are rectangular, that explains that a buiding must be rectangular. I believe it would be proper if dialectics were used all the while the people using it were aware that it's only a hunch generator, as the exercise of automatic writing in a trance may be used as a hunch generator. The problem is that people think dialectics is a kind of logic, indeed, a superior branch of logic, as described in the book George Novack, _Dialectics of Marxism_. It must be made clear that dialectics in not capable, in even one case ever discovered to date, of distinguishing unambiguously between a true proposition and a false proposition -- some hell of a logic system, huh? It's poetry, not logic. Occasionally one of the metaphors may generate a eureka moment. In no case is it reliable to expect that in advance.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for clarifying that; there's not much in what you say with which I would want to disagree.

I was of course referring to the comments I have posetd here, in this and another recent threads, not my Essays, but since we are in almost total agreement, you can ignore my earlier comment.

[mikelepore]

One area where we may disagree, I wonder .... I think the quantity and quality argument is both correct and necessary when debating conservative people who continue to say, for example, if some of anything is good then more must be better still. The laissez faire capitalism movement would say, for example: if it advances human expression that the printing press and radio were invented, then it must be a whole lot of free expression that a U.S. corporation owns a thousand radio corporations, and now the socialist has to try to explain to them that one corporation owning a thousand radio stations is more censorship, not more free speech. I believe that quantity truly does tranform into quality. Changing the numbers can make something flip to its opposite. It was liberating to invent the tool, but oppressive that the capitalist has millions of such tools. To realize that private ownership of a garden shovel is socially different from private ownership of a large industry is a quantity-quality consideration. I criticize Engels' version of it because he thought he was helping to prove the point by reciting irrelevant examples from nature such as methane, ethane, propane, butane. Engels' thought that the relationship in world events comes from the relationship in the constituent particles. Taking us from the formation of the solar system to the socialist revolution, Engels makes a dharma-like all-is-one argument.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, it's not much of a principle if we only use it when it suits us.

It certainly cannot be a 'law'.

And, it's not a very good principle, either -- since the term 'quality' is impossible to define, as is 'node'.

And it has so many exceptions, you'd only be able to win an argument with it when faced with a rather dim oponent.

[RebelDog]

BurnTheOliveTree:

What about nuclear fusion as a better analogy? Atoms of hydrogen undergo gradual tremendous changes in pressure, temperature, gravity and a new element is created (helium) and on and on up the periodic table.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Hot_fusion

[BurnTheOliveTree]

It is just a problem with the analogy then dissenter, not dialectics as a whole? If it's just a problem with the analogy then why is it used so much, and if not then surely you can answer the questions on the kettle analogy?

I say this because nuclear fusion is way over my head and beyond me. Keep it simple! :)

-Alex

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Both of you seem reluctant to grasp the nettle (not the kettle): this 'law' is far to vague for anyone to be able to decide if it is correct/useful or not.

[mikelepore]

Rosa:

That's right, it's not a law, and it has many exceptions. It's just a point about "this sometimes happens", to be made because we have an opponent in a debate who asserts that "this never happens."

That dim-witted opponent is, unfortunately, not a rarity. It's quite common for people to say that my possession of my shirt is exactly the same thing as the capitalist's right to own society's means of life.

Changing the numbers in a process will sometimes make something become fundamentally different. Teaching that point is useful. Actually using terms like quantity and quality in a public debate is not necessary.

(When I say "debate" there I mean any introductory article, speech, pamphlet, FAQ document, organization's declaration of principles, etc.)

The famous witticism by Anatole France is a point about a numerical change causing something to become fundamentally different: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 04:56 pm
because nuclear fusion is way over my head
Two protons tend to repel each other electrically because they're both positively charged, but if they are moving toward each other so fast that, despite their repulsion, they manage to get within 10^-15 meter of each other, then the attractive nuclear force suddenly snaps on, and then they are pulled together to bond.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


That's right, it's not a law, and it has many exceptions. It's just a point about "this sometimes happens", to be made because we have an opponent in a debate who asserts that "this never happens."

If it's not a law, then how do you know it is not just coincidental, or a false partial generalisation (like many we have seen in the history of science)?

And the way you use it is entirely subjective -- i.e., when you choose to do so.


Changing the numbers in a process will sometimes make something become fundamentally different. Teaching that point is useful. Actually using terms like quantity and quality in a public debate is not necessary.

Only because, like others who accept this vague idea, you refuse to (or cannot) tell us what a 'quality' is.

So, it is in fact no more use than "An apple a day keeps the doctor away...".

Or a stopped clock telling the right time twice a day.

And what is the 'quantity' added in your proton example?

[RebelDog]

Originally posted by mikelepore+November 25, 2007 01:42 am--> (mikelepore @ November 25, 2007 01:42 am)
[email protected] 24, 2007 04:56 pm
because nuclear fusion is way over my head
Two protons tend to repel each other electrically because they're both positively charged, but if they are moving toward each other so fast that, despite their repulsion, they manage to get within 10^-15 meter of each other, then the attractive nuclear force suddenly snaps on, and then they are pulled together to bond. [/b]
Thats actually the 'strong nuclear force' you are describing there. More on dialectical materialism later, I haven't the time right now.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Yes, but what is the 'quantity' added here, and what exactly is a 'quality'?

[Guest1]

Look, it's really not that hard.

"Faster and faster" is not a qualitative change really, it's a quantitative change.

It's a quantitative increase, that we can see at the level of individual particles. In the case of the actual boiling, and the transformation to a gas, that's a qualitative increase that is generalized, and really noticeable in terms of the entire system, the entire container of water, and not as much in terms of individual particles.

Water molecules are the same, moving in different ways and at different speeds, in the different forms of water, ice, liquid and gas. But they remain, individually, water molecules. The real change is at the collective level.

Small changes at the level of individual particles, changes that do not signify revolutionary change in and of themselves, translate into massive change if enough particles are involved. At a certain point, the individual particles taken together reach a tipping point where they crystallize in relation to each other, or turn into a gas, etc...

This is a generalized change that happens through a tipping point when enough individual particles are modified, hence quantity into quality. Dialectics deals with that tipping point, slow evolution giving birth to revolutionary changes.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 04:13 am
tell us what a 'quality' is
That problem is there is any case. There's always a decision to be made about when we want to announce that we have something that's fundamentally different from something else, and we want to apply a different name to it. It's like the microorganism that's an animal due to its flagellum and is also a plant due to its chloroplast. Or the crocodile which might have been called a small dinosaur, if a different classification system were in use, except that a new name was chosen for it. Or the amorphous solid that some people prefer to call a liquid which happens to be flowing very slowly. But whenever people do decide that they see something fundamentally different over there compared to what's over here, what has happened is that some measurable variables were changing incrementally until something abrupt took place. The definition will be somewhat arbitrary.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 04:13 am

And what is the 'quantity' added in your proton example?
One way to say it might be: there's a sliding scale of influence between a weaker but long-range repulsion and a stronger but short-range attraction. That sliding degree of the interactions may be called "quantity". But what is the "quality" -- in addition to what was already said by other posters, we might also note that the newly formed nucleus suddenly requires obedience to Pauli's exclusion principle, no two or more particles in the nucleus are allowed to have the same set of quantum numbers. What used to be separate individuals are now a single system with its parts, and somehow it was sliding scale of influences that initiated it.

[Volderbeek]

Originally posted by BurnTheOliveTree+November 23, 2007 09:08 am--> (BurnTheOliveTree @ November 23, 2007 09:08 am)I recently attended Socialism 2007[/b]
Yeah, how was that?


Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 09:08 am
I [hoped I] would at the very least get a clear and concise statement of what dialectics actually was.

If you want a concise explanation of dialectics, it's simply the doctrine of union of opposites. That's the most important and fundamental law/idea of dialectics.


Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 09:08 am
Why is it so damn hard to explain? Am I being stupid?

Kinda actually. No offense or anything but it's not nearly as complicated as you're making it seem.


Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 09:08 am
So the chain of events, contrary to dialectical materialism, does not run like this:

Quantity-Quality.

But like this:

Quality-Quantity-Quality

Haha, I think you just got negation of negation. Quantity and quality are a dialectic themselves actually.

Also, in this formulation there would also have to be a quantity for the first quality. IOW, it's just a chicken-egg thing.


[email protected] 23, 2007 09:08 am
Fourth, an actual quantity change would be to simply pour more water in to the kettle. Water is what you've got, so altering it's quantity is to add more water. Adding 100 degrees of heat is qualitative.

This is why you shouldn't isolate the laws. Quantity-quality doesn't ignore cause and effect. External causes become operative through internal causes.

Besides, pouring water into the kettle does eventually cause qualitative change: it no longer collects in the kettle once it is full, but rather spills out over the sides.

[Volderbeek]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 12:14 am
Yes, but what is the 'quantity' added here, and what exactly is a 'quality'?
Trying to bury us in semantics again are we?

Quantity - relative magnitude

Quality - a distinctive property

Simple enough.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

M:


That problem is there is any case. There's always a decision to be made about when we want to announce that we have something that's fundamentally different from something else, and we want to apply a different name to it. It's like the microorganism that's an animal due to its flagellum and is also a plant due to its chloroplast. Or the crocodile which might have been called a small dinosaur, if a different classification system were in use, except that a new name was chosen for it. Or the amorphous solid that some people prefer to call a liquid which happens to be flowing very slowly. But whenever people do decide that they see something fundamentally different over there compared to what's over here, what has happened is that some measurable variables were changing incrementally until something abrupt took place. The definition will be somewhat arbitrary.

That means you are just a conventionalist, and in view of the fact that you only see this principle work sometimes, an inconsistent conventionalist.

Nothing wrong with conventionalism so long as it is consistent, and non-metaphysical.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CYM:


Look, it's really not that hard.

It is if you are happy with Mickey Mouse Science, and ignore the difficulties the real world and genuine science throw our way.

I note you too leave 'quality' and node/'leap' undefined.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ah, the Uber-mystic returns.

V:



Quantity - relative magnitude

Quality - a distinctive property

Simple enough.

In that case, the change from cold water to hot water is qualitative, but non-nodal.

And the change in geometry between isomers results in qualitative change, but this is not the result of an increase in matter/energy. Change in geometry causes change in 'quality' here, contradicting Engels.

Either way, this piece of Mickey Mouse Science that you have swallowed fails.


Trying to bury us in semantics again are we?

I did not know you were joining in, too

In that case, self-burial is OK with me, so long as you are the only one who ends up six feet deep.

With, of course, your mystical 'theory'.

[Zurdito]

I think some people look too deeply into the whole boiling water analogy anyway. It's just an analogy, an evocative image to explain the buil-up to a revolution. the thing about the match lighting the gas is not as clever as it seems, because the the change to capitalist society which creates the conditions for a qualitative buil-up to the revolution, was a qualitative one. So it's not like there were no qualitative changes which directly led to the quantative build-up before the qualitative change to communism.

Now as Marxists we are SOCIAL SCIENTISTS. We want to create a society based on communal ownership. All changes within a society based on profit are therefore insufficient and do not change the root of the problem - we can call this quantitative change. What we argue for is a qualitative change - a revolution, the establishing of workers states, and the ending of the capitalist state which serves the profit motive.

In this sense then, the kettle analogy makes sense: the conflict of interests within capitalism between proletariate and bourgeoisie lead to continual resolution by the triumph of one interest over the other, which then creates the conditions for the next manifestation of conflict.

The process is continual, and all politics is a manifestation of this. The kettle analogy refers to capitalism building up the conditions for its own overthrow, through a combination of technological progress which empowers us, and continual increase of the rate of exploitation, monopoly and centralisation of wealth and power, which makes the simultaneously makes proletariate grow in numbers and concentration and forces the bourgeoisie to confront it ever more, especially in times of inevitable crisis.

[Volderbeek]

Originally posted by Rosa Lichtenstein+November 25, 2007 11:30 am--> (Rosa Lichtenstein @ November 25, 2007 11:30 am)Ah, the Uber-mystic returns.[/b]

:banner: :che: :banner:


Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 11:30 am
In that case, the change from cold water to hot water is qualitative, but non-nodal.

I'm not sure what your criteria for being "nodal" is, but that change happens as a result of quantifiable increases in temperature. You could, though, reference the infinitesimal increase and argue from the calculus perspective, but that just results in a good example of Unity of Opposites (I believe Engels used it).


Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 11:30 am
And the change in geometry between isomers results in qualitative change, but this is not the result of an increase in matter/energy. Change in geometry causes change in 'quality' here, contradicting Engels.

And how are those changes not quantifiable again?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


I think some people look too deeply into the whole boiling water analogy anyway. It's just an analogy, an evocative image to explain the buil-up to a revolution. the thing about the match lighting the gas is not as clever as it seems, because the the change to capitalist society which creates the conditions for a qualitative buil-up to the revolution, was a qualitative one. So it's not like there were no qualitative changes which directly led to the quantative build-up before the qualitative change to communism.

You are right -- those who do not like Mickey Mouse Science look into this deeply. You Mickey Mouse impersonators do not.

And I note you retreated to this fall-back position only after I have shown this 'law' is defective from start to finish.

Anyway, the analogy does not work, for steam and water are both H2O, so if this is used as an anlaogy, then after the revolution, the capitalist system should survive. :o

So, the rest of what you say is now irrelevant.

Engels 'law' cannot assist in our endeavour to understand history, nor help us change it.

Now, can we move on from this 19th century screw-up?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Uber-M V:


I'm not sure what your criteria for being "nodal" is, but that change happens as a result of quantifiable increases in temperature. You could, though, reference the infinitesimal increase and argue from the calculus perspective, but that just results in a good example of Unity of Opposites (I believe Engels used it).

Dialectics does not work with the calculus either.

And, as I noted, it's you mystics that have yet to tell us what a 'node' is; so don't look at me. I do not prefer this term, and am happy to throw it away. I will however use it to embarrass your 'theory' -- as I have done.


And how are those changes not quantifiable again?

Who said they weren't? But whether they are or they aren't, it's a change in geometry that causes the change in 'quality', contradicting Engels.

Now, if you know how to 'quantify' these changes, let's hear it.

[Volderbeek]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 08:09 pm
The kettle analogy refers to capitalism building up the conditions for its own overthrow, through a combination of technological progress which empowers us, and continual increase of the rate of exploitation, monopoly and centralisation of wealth and power, which makes the simultaneously makes proletariate grow in numbers and concentration and forces the bourgeoisie to confront it ever more, especially in times of inevitable crisis.
Yes, but let's not forget that it's the external causes that bring real change. Capitalism may build up the conditions of its demise, but nothing will change without communist agitation.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


Yes, but let's not forget that it's the external causes that bring real change. Capitalism may build up the conditions of its demise, but nothing will change without communist agitation.

I thought everything changed because of its 'internal contradictions' according to you mystics? If it needs outside forces, perhaps aliens might help us out here?

And of course, you can only get away with such vague ideas because you refuse to define any of the terms you use, or say whether these systems are open or closed thermodynamically.

Mickey Mouse Science, as I said.

[Volderbeek]

Originally posted by Rosa Lichtenstein+November 25, 2007 08:26 pm--> (Rosa Lichtenstein @ November 25, 2007 08:26 pm)Who said they weren't? But whether they are or they aren't, it's a change in geometry that causes the change in 'quality', contradicting Engels.[/b]

Why does it being a change in geometry matter so much? I don't follow. Did Engels say it couldn't be or something?


Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 08:26 pm
Now, if you know how to 'quantify' these changes, let's hear it.

What you're talking about is simply different arrangements, anagrams if you will. Therefore, it's easy to see how these changes can be quantified: how many positions they move, how many changes are made, etc.

[Zurdito]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 26, 2007 12:21 am
Z:


I think some people look too deeply into the whole boiling water analogy anyway. It's just an analogy, an evocative image to explain the buil-up to a revolution. the thing about the match lighting the gas is not as clever as it seems, because the the change to capitalist society which creates the conditions for a qualitative buil-up to the revolution, was a qualitative one. So it's not like there were no qualitative changes which directly led to the quantative build-up before the qualitative change to communism.

You are right -- those who do not like Mickey Mouse Science look into this deeply. You Mickey Mouse impersonators do not.

And I note you retreated to this fall-back position only after I have shown this 'law' is defective from start to finish.

Anyway, the analogy does not work, for steam and water are both H2O, so if this is used as an anlaogy, then after the revolution, the capitalist system should survive. :o

So, the rest of what you say is now irrelevant.
erm, no...human beings still remain the same species after a revolution, only, they organise in a different way...just like H2O organises itself in a different way after boiling.

Anyway, the point of an analogy is that it illustrates a concept, not that a revolution can be adequately explained solely by a boiling kettle. :rolleyes: It's like arguing with a non marxist. Oh, wait...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


human beings still remain the same species after a revolution, only, they organise in a different way...just like H2O organises itself in a different way after boiling.

Maybe so, but then you cannot use this analogy to help you understand the radical change a revolution will bring about, for water is still H2O either side of boiling or freezing.

If so, the capitalist system will still be the capitalist system after the revolution, but just reorganised.

Now, if you ignore this, then that just underlines my earlier point that you apply these 'laws' entirely subjectively.

[Volderbeek]

Originally posted by Rosa Lichtenstein+November 25, 2007 08:40 pm--> (Rosa Lichtenstein @ November 25, 2007 08:40 pm)I thought everything changed because of its 'internal contradictions' according to you mystics?[/b]

I believe I already posted the relevant Mao quote about that.


Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 08:40 pm
If it needs outside forces, perhaps aliens might help us out here?

Ah, I knew the black helicopter UFOs would be back!


Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 08:40 pm
And of course, you can only get away with such vague ideas because you refuse to define any of the terms you use, or say whether these systems are open or closed thermodynamically.

:huh: I just did define terms! Like anything else, they're both open and closed (Union of Opposites :lol:).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


Why does it being a change in geometry matter so much? I don't follow. Did Engels say it couldn't be or something?

Dear me, you need to re-read Engels, for he says this:


"...the 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." [Engels (1954), p.63. Emphasis added.]

Now, he was writing when not very much was known about science, so he can be forgiven.

But you cannot.


What you're talking about is simply different arrangements, anagrams if you will. Therefore, it's easy to see how these changes can be quantified: how many positions they move, how many changes are made, etc.

Which just goes to show Engels got it wrong. For Engels did not just mention any old quantification, but specifically the addition of matter and energy.

None is 'added' here.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


Anyway, the point of an analogy is that it illustrates a concept, not that a revolution can be adequately explained solely by a boiling kettle. It's like arguing with a non marxist. Oh, wait...

It's like arguing with someone who will not put up with your Mickey Mouse Science, you mean.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


I believe I already posted the relevant Mao quote about that.

Maybe so, but as I showed a few weeks ago, Mao screwed up too.


I just did define terms! Like anything else, they're both open and closed (Union of Opposites

You clearly haven't a clue how to go about defining anything, have you? You seem to think that if a few ill-considered words are strung togther that that is a 'definition'.

That just shows what serious damage this branch of Hermetic logic has done to your thought processes.

[Zurdito]

Rosa you can and surely will find some way to get the last word, but you're butchering the kettle analogy totally. Nowehere does it say that "water=capitalism". All you have to understand is the build-up, and then the boiling point. The minutiae of it aren't important...though judging by your homepage, that's what you like best!

EDIT: responding to your points above, geometry can only be changed by adding motion.

[Demogorgon]

One has to wonder if the sheer quantity of arguments on dialectics is going to increas the quality any time soon.

I guess the thread starter's point that it doesn't seem to offer any clear definition of what it is, is pretty telling. I sometimes think the only reason people use it at all is because they feel it is part of the Marxist package.

From what I can make out here, the theory doesn't even tell us much of interest even if it were correct. I suppose it tries to show the way society might build up towards revolution, but you don't need some sort of bizzarre meta-physics to do that-you just have to look at the way social movements take time to build up.

I don't normally get involved int hese discussions because I don't really think it is that worth discussing msot of the time, but I read through this thread just to keep up to date on this war and was struck by how little the defenders of dialectics can actually say here. I'm not sure I can agree with Rosa's position that it has ruined Marxism simply because I am not sure enough people, even amongst Marxists care enough, but it does strike me as an utterly pointless and dreary theory.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


Rosa you can and surely will find some way to get the last word, but you're butchering the kettle analogy totally. Nowehere does it say that "water=capitalism". All you have to understand is the build-up, and then the boiling point. The minutiae of it aren't important...though judging by your homepage, that's what you like best!

Then I look forward to you never using this analogy again.


geometry can only be changed by adding motion

Not so, it depends on whether you are dealing with what us mathematicians call a 'conservative field' -- but you would have known that had you read that Essay properly.

And, anyway, this depends on another vaguary you are happy to gloss over; Engels speaks of "adding" energy, not expending it.

No energy is "added" when these molecules are re-configured.

Again, I dealt with all this in that Essay you decided to skim read.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Demogorgon:


I'm not sure I can agree with Rosa's position that it has ruined Marxism simply because I am not sure enough people, even amongst Marxists care enough, but it does strike me as an utterly pointless and dreary theory.

Where have I claimed it has done this?

What I do say is that it is part of the reason Dialectical Marxism is a long-term failure.

On the other hand, the idea that our core theory (dialectics) has nothing to do with that failure is, quite frankly ludicrous,

[Demogorgon]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 26, 2007 01:21 am
Demogorgon:


I'm not sure I can agree with Rosa's position that it has ruined Marxism simply because I am not sure enough people, even amongst Marxists care enough, but it does strike me as an utterly pointless and dreary theory.

Where have I claimed it has done this?

What I do say is that it is part of the reason Dialectical Marxism is a long-term failure.

On the other hand, the idea that our core theory (dialectics) has nothing to do with that failure is, quite frankly ludicrous,
Okay granted, I may not have phrased that very well. I know you don't claim it is the only cause of failure, I am just taking the position, and I know you disagree with this, that it is not particularly relevent. Dialectics strikes me as intellectual masturbation, it seems so divorced from actual action that I don't know how it could be doing much more than simply wasting our time.

I'm not criticising you for putting so much effort into refuting it, because as long as it is around someone has to, but I tend to view it as nothing more than a bit of superstition.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

OK, but if you check out this essay, and use the Quick Links to skip down to the 'Case Studies' section, you will see exactly what damage this 'theory' has done to our movement:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_02.htm

So, we cannot afford to be laid back with these mystics.

They will continue to help ruin our movement if we just ignore them and their dotty 'theory'.

That is why I have spent literally tens of thousands of hours on my work (no exaggeration), and ten years' effort.

I reckon it will take another ten before I am finished.

[Volderbeek]

Originally posted by Demogorgon+November 25, 2007 09:13 pm--> (Demogorgon @ November 25, 2007 09:13 pm)One has to wonder if the sheer quantity of arguments on dialectics is going to increase the quality any time soon.[/b]

Let's hope so.


Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 09:13 pm
I guess the thread starter's point that it doesn't seem to offer any clear definition of what it is, is pretty telling.

I don't think the thread starter had much of a point at all. He just introduces his own confusion into the issue.


Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 09:13 pm
From what I can make out here, the theory doesn't even tell us much of interest even if it were correct.

I actually sort of agree. Quantity-quality, at least in my opinion, is the least insightful of Engels' laws.


[email protected] 25, 2007 09:13 pm
I read through this thread just to keep up to date on this war and was struck by how little the defenders of dialectics can actually say here.

I wonder what more you'd like us to say. I've addressed all the reasonable points brought up so far.

[Volderbeek]

Originally posted by Rosa Lichtenstein+November 25, 2007 09:03 pm--> (Rosa Lichtenstein @ November 25, 2007 09:03 pm)
Dear me, you need to re-read Engels, for he says this:


"...the 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." [Engels (1954), p.63. Emphasis added.]

Which just goes to show Engels got it wrong. For Engels did not just mention any old quantification, but specifically the addition of matter and energy.[/b]

Interesting. But you answered your own question:


Rosa [email protected] 25, 2007 09:03 pm
Now, he was writing when not very much was known about science, so he can be forgiven.

[Zurdito]

Then I look forward to you never using this analogy again.

That's rather unscientific Rosa, do you now claim that such an analogy could never be useful in any circumstance?


And, anyway, this depends on another vaguary you are happy to gloss over; Engels speaks of "adding" energy, not expending it.

No energy is "added" when these molecules are re-configured.

Again, I dealt with all this in that Essay you decided to skim read.

Actually I did read that part, and Engels in fact, in a quote you used, refers to such usage of the term"energy" in a derodatory fashion. Engels understood that by heating something up, you set the molecules in motion. Just because he talked about "adding energy" when he was speaking to people to get the point across doesn't make him wrong, you are just using semantics again.

Demagorgon, I'd suggest that the reason defences of DM on here are so dreary is because we only get dreary arguments to answer to rather than any attempt to deal with the exhilirating philosophical vision of Marx in itself.

[mikelepore]

Rosa,


in view of the fact that you only see this principle work sometimes, an inconsistent conventionalist.

I don't know your meaning of "conventionalist".

Of course the principle only works sometimes. That's because some thing are linear and some things are nonlinear. When people speak of a sudden change in the "quality" of something they are generally saying (whether they know it or not): I see a noticably nonlinear process. The variable x was stepping up bit by bit, and suddenly y jumped. Move the lighted match just a little bit closer to the wick of the dynamite, change x by one percent, and y goes boom. That's a big nonlinearily.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 26, 2007 12:26 am
Dialectics does not work with the calculus either.


Maybe people are using the word "dialectics" to mean "several outstanding issues that still seem to be paradoxical, at our limited stage of understanding." We still have a paradox in the calculus: that no one could figure out another way to calculate certain things from real life, until they tried saying that a finite thing is an infinitely large number of infinitely small parts. Something we do see in everyday life has to be expressed in terms of things that we will never see, infinitely small slices, infinitely many of them, and that's the only way to know, for example, how thick to make the wall of a dam so that it won't burst, a real-life problem. We have that paradox. To call it the "unity of opposites" seems like a poetic metaphor to me, but we are discussing what the users of 19th century terminology were trying to express by it.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

V:


Yeah, how was that?

The meetings were excellent, the rallies were shit. Perhaps it's just me, but I can't stand listening to predictable "The bosses are bastards" lines over and over, and then clapping like a pratt when they're finished. Like I say though, the meetings were very good, especially one on Historical Materialism.


union of opposites

:lol: I commend the effort mate, but this is still too abstract to grasp. Perhaps it's unreasonable to ask for an explanation that short?


Kinda actually. No offense or anything but it's not nearly as complicated as you're making it seem.

Well okay, but if I can flatter myself for a moment and say that I am not utterly brain-dead, I don't see why self-described experts on dialectics can't seem to get through to me on it. It's as complicated as the people at that meeting made it seem - I'm just reporting what came across to me.


Haha, I think you just got negation of negation. Quantity and quality are a dialectic themselves actually.

Please explain this.


Also, in this formulation there would also have to be a quantity for the first quality.

I don't see how you got this conclusion. Sorry, you're gonna have to accomodate for the layman.


This is why you shouldn't isolate the laws. Quantity-quality doesn't ignore cause and effect. External causes become operative through internal causes.

Explain this in layman's terms. I genuinely am apologetic for this, I just don't understand. :(


Besides, pouring water into the kettle does eventually cause qualitative change: it no longer collects in the kettle once it is full, but rather spills out over the sides.

But what "distinctive property" has changed here? None! The water is still water with precisely the same molecular structure. No change.

-Alex

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


Interesting. But you answered your own question:

I think not, since there is no "addition" of matter or energy.

Me:


Now, he was writing when not very much was known about science, so he can be forgiven.

You:


------------------------

Silent at last?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


That's rather unscientific Rosa, do you now claim that such an analogy could never be useful in any circumstance?

Only in Mickey Mouse Science -- but then again, only you and your fellow mystics seem to like that kind of 'science'.


Actually I did read that part, and Engels in fact, in a quote you used, refers to such usage of the term"energy" in a derodatory fashion. Engels understood that by heating something up, you set the molecules in motion. Just because he talked about "adding energy" when he was speaking to people to get the point across doesn't make him wrong, you are just using semantics again.

I am sorry, this is far too confused to do anything with.

And when you mystics begin to refer to 'semantics' that is short hand for "I, Zurdito, prefer to use language in sloppy and ill-defined ways", as mystics have always done.

That is why I call what you indulge in "Mickey Mouse Science" -- there is no way that genuine scientists carry on in this way.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mikelepore:


I don't know your meaning of "conventionalist".

Check this out;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventionalism

In this case, you are just proposing a terminolgical revison.


Of course the principle only works sometimes. That's because some thing are linear and some things are nonlinear. When people speak of a sudden change in the "quality" of something they are generally saying (whether they know it or not): I see a noticably nonlinear process. The variable x was stepping up bit by bit, and suddenly y jumped. Move the lighted match just a little bit closer to the wick of the dynamite, change x by one percent, and y goes boom. That's a big nonlinearily.

What has 'linearality' got to do with anything?

You are clearly using this term as a way of magicking this 'law' into respectibility.

And with a few ill-considered metaphors thrown in for good measure. "Jumped" -- wtf is that?

That is as vague as 'node' ever was.

And you are being very liberal with 'increase in quantity'.

Engels specifically referred to increases in quantity of matter or energy, not increase or decrease in distances, or variables.

And. you are using an ill-defined notion of 'linerality' you clearly got from Woods and Grant (or the same source those jokers pinched it from).

[mikelepore]

I find it interesting _where_ the differences of opinion in this thread have appeared. I am critical of what Engels did with "quantity and quality" because his concept, while it's true, and while it's easy to understand, is not very important or relevant, perhaps minimally useful, not a universal law, not rigorously applicable to anything, just a curiosity, equivalent to a page from Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not. But here I have found other people stopping at the steps that I jumped over -- they don't concede that it's true or that it's easy to understand.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mikelepore:


Maybe people are using the word "dialectics" to mean "several outstanding issues that still seem to be paradoxical, at our limited stage of understanding." We still have a paradox in the calculus: that no one could figure out another way to calculate certain things from real life, until they tried saying that a finite thing is an infinitely large number of infinitely small parts. Something we do see in everyday life has to be expressed in terms of things that we will never see, infinitely small slices, infinitely many of them, and that's the only way to know, for example, how thick to make the wall of a dam so that it won't burst, a real-life problem. We have that paradox. To call it the "unity of opposites" seems like a poetic metaphor to me, but we are discussing what the users of 19th century terminology were trying to express by it.

I wish it were this simple, but what is actually happening is that from a few ill-defined notions dialecticians derive universal laws applicable throughout the entire universe and at all times (while they appeal to a few trite examples as 'proof'), which they then use to produce crude theories of revolutionary change. And they are not at all phased by the fact that this is a Mickey Mouse way to do science.

None of their examples work -- and even yours can only be made to seem to work by the liberal use of metaphor and yet more ill-defined terms.

Why we/you give this ancient piece of metaphysics any time at all beats me.

[mikelepore]

Question: What does "node" mean in this context? I never heard of it before.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mikelepore;


Question: What does "node" mean in this context? I never heard of it before.

Dialecticians use it to refer to 'leaps' -- what you call 'jumps'.

None of these terms is defined -- how long is a 'leap'?

This is what I have written about it in Essay Seven:


The boiling water example is one of the most overworked clichés in the dialectical box of tricks. Hardly a single DM-fan fails to mention it, so mantra-like has dialectics become.

However, it's worth noting that as water is heated up, steam increasingly leaves the surface in a non-"nodal" fashion. So, even here we have a smooth transition from liquid to gas; indeed, if a pan of water is kept at 99oC for long enough, all of the water will disappear as steam. Hence, this example illustrates a well-known fact, many, if not most processes in nature run smoothly, and are non-"nodal".

At 100oC, events accelerate dramatically; but even then, they do this non-"nodally". A few tenths of a degree below the critical point, depending on the purity of the water, ambient conditions, and how it is being heated, bubbles begin to form in the liquid more rapidly. This accelerates increasing quickly as that temperature is reached. What we see, therefore, is a non-"nodal" change of phase/state of matter, even here. The phase or state of matter change here is not sudden -- like the snapping of a rubber band, or of glass breaking. We do not see no bubbles, and then a micro second later a frothing mass, which we would do if this were "nodal".

Of course, dialecticians could concede the truth of the above observation -- that before water reaches 100oC water molecules leave the surface all the time --, but they might argue that this is not non-"nodal". Thus, when a water molecule changes from its liquid to its gaseous state certain chemical bonds are broken, and that happens suddenly, and "nodally".

Once more, this depends on how a "nodal point" is defined.

As we saw earlier, since the time interval allowed for a dialectical "node" to be described as such is left hopelessly vague, dialecticians might want to challenge the above assertions. But, they can only do so if they are prepared to specify the length of a DM-"nodal" interval. Is there a DM-standards authority we can appeal to here? Genuine scientists use this system [link ommittted]; that is why their results can be checked. Are there any standards at all in this branch of Mickey Mouse science?

The answer is pretty clear: no, there are none.

On the other hand, if dialecticians take the trouble to re-define the word "node" just to accommodate these awkward non-dialectical facts (we noted earlier that in certain circumstances this is sometimes called a "persuasive definition"), it would become increasingly difficult to distinguish DM from stipulative conventionalism.

But, as we will see in later Essays, there is in fact no problem with this (since scientists do this sort of thing all the time), but it does mean that dialecticians will have to abandon their claim that DM is 'objective', and that it is not conventional.

So, DM-theorists could specify a minimum time interval during which a phase or state of matter transition must take place for it to be counted as "nodal". In the case of boiling water, say, they could decide that if the transition from water to steam (or vice versa) takes place in an interval lasting less than k seconds/minutes (for some k), then it is indeed "nodal". Thus, by dint of such a stipulation, their 'Law' could be made to work (at least in this respect). But, there is nothing in nature that forces any of this on us -- the reverse is, if anything, the case. Phase/state of matter changes, and changes in general take different amounts of time; under differing circumstances even these alter. If so, as noted above, this 'Law' would become 'valid' only because of yet another stipulation and/or foisting, which would make it eminently 'subjective'.

However, given the strife-riven and sectarian nature of dialectical politics, any attempt to define DM-"nodes" 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'.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 26, 2007 02:05 pm
from a few ill-defined notions dialecticians derive universal laws (and they appeal to a few trite examples as 'proof') which, when examined, only seem to fit a few cases.

You do the same.
I don't think I am doing the same. As I said earlier, I view it, not as a universal law, but as an observation that "this sometimes happens", and its usefulness is to offer it as an illlustration to other people who assert that "this never happens." It's important to note that there are some people whose political views are stuck at a place where they think it never happens that something can become qualitatively different because of quantitative measures. Every time a member of the Libertarian Party goes up to a homeless pauper lying in the gutter and says to them, "Why don't you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, by establishing your own competitive industrial corporation?" - they are being so unrealistic because they don't know that a quantitative and incremental variable, in this case, economic wealth, can produce a binary can-do/can't-do result. The person being so unrealistic about social issues needs some illustrations, not of a universal law, but of "this sometimes happens." Whether analogies to atoms and molecules will communicate the point to them, I have my doubts about that, but, if not that, then I hope some other illustration will be found to get through to them.

[mikelepore]

Thanks for that explanation of "node".

The reason water vapor leaves the surface when the temperature is below the boiling point is because the molecular speed is a normal distribution in any phase. Temperature is a way of speaking about the mean of a bell curve. Even in cold water there are some fast molecules.

Anyway, I want to mention social issues again ...

Conservatives can't recognize the existence of economic classes beause they think that the existence of classes would require pinpointing a boundary between them, and pinpointing the precise amount of class mobility. They keep tossing questions such as this at a socialist: "If someone gets 70 percent of their income from wages and 30 percent from dividends, are they a worker or a capitalist? If one out of seven workers who work hard and save their money becomes a capitalist, is it still a class system? What are the exact boundaries? You don't have any? Or, if you do suggest certain boundaries, you have selected them arbitrarity. A-ha! That proves that there are no classes at all!" --- that is what conservatives say to socialists. What cognitive process is making them think that way? It is because they don't realize that classes are like mountain and valley -- you don't need to know where some boundary between them is in order to recognize that they are there. Classes are like clouds, they are over here and not over there, and yet, if you look for a sharp edge, there is none. Suddenly things are noticed to be of a different "quality."

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 26, 2007 02:05 pm
that from a few ill-defined notions dialecticians derive universal laws applicable throughout the entire universe and at all times
I'm sure that bad habit came from the Kant-Hegel stream. It's thought that everything has to be universal law before it can be worth saying at all.

Where the Communist Manifesto said that "Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things", that surely was a foolish remark. To believe that a movement is pointed in the right direction is to believe that it deserve support; to believe that a movement is pointed in the wrong direction is to believe that it doesn't deserve support. They could only write what they wrote because they thought that history moves in a fixed track toward a unique result, so any nudge or kick will produce the motion in the right direction. It can't just be my advocacy and your advocacy, it must be a unique solution, a universal law. Why? Because they never escaped from the influence of Hegel.

[Zurdito]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 26, 2007 01:54 pm
blah blah blah
no, because Engels defined himself. Heating up=adding motion.

"adding energy" might be a sloppy way to phrase it - like "snails on downers" (bet you can't prove that claim) - but it doesn't make the argument wrong just because Engels phrased himself badly once.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 26, 2007 02:12 pm
None of these terms is defined -- how long is a 'leap'?

Do you offer the same criticism about the several loosely defined terms that some scientists use, such as chaos, fractals, and emergent properties?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mike:


I don't think I am doing the same. As I said earlier, I view it, not as a universal law, but as an observation that "this sometimes happens", and its usefulness is to offer it as an illlustration to other people who assert that "this never happens."

And I said it was about as useful as "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" (but who would use that in a scientific analysis of public health policy?), or as useful as a stopped clock which by default tells the time 'correctly' twice a day (but who would use that to time even a race?).

And even then this highly limited 'non-law' of yours only works because all the terms you use are vague, and are left vague.

Mickey Mouse partial science, in your case.


It's important to note that there are some people whose political views are stuck at a place where they think it never happens that something can become qualitatively different because of quantitative measures. Every time a member of the Libertarian Party goes up to a homeless pauper lying in the gutter and says to them, "Why don't you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, by establishing your own competitive industrial corporation?" - they are being so unrealistic because they don't know that a quantitative and incremental variable, in this case, economic wealth, can produce a binary can-do/can't-do result. The person being so unrealistic about social issues needs some illustrations, not of a universal law, but of "this sometimes happens." Whether analogies to atoms and molecules will communicate the point to them, I have my doubts about that, but, if not that, then I hope some other illustration will be found to get through to them.

Once more, you help yourself to hopelessly vague terms, but think somehow the conlusions you draw are sound.

Unless we know what the something is that 'sometimes' happens, it is impossible to determine whether or not what you say is correct.

Up to now, you have yet to say what these things are that 'sometimes' happen -- all you have appealed to is yet more Mickey Mouse science.

Recall, I am not sying this never happens (that is up to genuine scientists to decide), only that we do not yet know what the options are before us; all we have is a hoplessly vague 'theory' -- and in your case a 'non-theory'.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mike:


The reason water vapor leaves the surface when the temperature is below the boiling point is because the molecular speed is a normal distribution in any phase. Temperature is a way of speaking about the mean of a bell curve. Even in cold water there are some fast molecules.

Yes, I do know the science.

But, these molesules do what they do non-'nodally', and they stay the same molecules after boiling or freezing.

So, even here this 'law' is defective.


Conservatives can't recognize the existence of economic classes beause they think that the existence of classes would require pinpointing a boundary between them, and pinpointing the precise amount of class mobility. They keep tossing questions such as this at a socialist: "If someone gets 70 percent of their income from wages and 30 percent from dividends, are they a worker or a capitalist? If one out of seven workers who work hard and save their money becomes a capitalist, is it still a class system? What are the exact boundaries? You don't have any? Or, if you do suggest certain boundaries, you have selected them arbitrarity. A-ha! That proves that there are no classes at all!" --- that is what conservatives say to socialists. What cognitive process is making them think that way? It is because they don't realize that classes are like mountain and valley -- you don't need to know where some boundary between them is in order to recognize that they are there. Classes are like clouds, they are over here and not over there, and yet, if you look for a sharp edge, there is none. Suddenly things are noticed to be of a different "quality."

I am OK with vague terms, but this is not the same.

Here we have an allegedy precise 'law' which cannot be made precise, so no one knows if it ever applies or not (well they claim they do know, but as you can see from the comments here, they refuse to say what they do mean).

What would you say, though, if Marx had never indicated what 'relative surplus value' meant?

So, you can see how precise Marx was, compared to Engels's sloppy thought.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mike:


I'm sure that bad habit came from the Kant-Hegel stream. It's thought that everything has to be universal law before it can be worth saying at all.

But every single dialectician (including those who post here) does the same. Proof here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2002.htm

They take a few words (and appeal to a handful of trite examples) and hey presto: a universal law, applicable for all of time and space, leaps frm the page.

This is a trick they learnt from ruling-class hacks, who used this method to argue that there is an a priori structure underlying reality, accessible to thought alone (hence evidence is not needed), which justifies the staus quo, and since workers cannot access this hidden world, they will just have to do as they are told.

Dialecticians have used this theory too to justify substitutionsm, and a state terror form of status quo (in the former USSR and in China).

If you do not like it, well you just do not 'understand' dialectics.

I have worked these ideas out in detail in my Essays.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z:


no, because Engels defined himself. Heating up=adding motion.

Do at least try to pay attention; we were specifically talking about the isomers. No energy is added here, and a change in geometry is what causes a change in quality.


"adding energy" might be a sloppy way to phrase it - like "snails on downers" (bet you can't prove that claim) - but it doesn't make the argument wrong just because Engels phrased himself badly once.

But all you have are sloppy phrases. Nothing in this 'theory' is at all clear. That is why you think you can get away with the conclusions you draw. When asked to be clear, you cannot.

Mickey Mouse Science, as I said.

"Snails on downers?"

Wh...? :blink: :blink: :blink: :blink:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mike:


Do you offer the same criticism about the several loosely defined terms that some scientists use, such as chaos, fractals, and emergent properties?

I do wherever I encounter it, yes.

In science there is no excuse for sloppy thought.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 26, 2007 05:48 pm
In science there is no excuse for sloppy thought.
We can find sloppiness all over the scientific fields. There's entropy, which gets defined rigorously in terms of the input and output of a heat engine. Then there's the waving of the hands, and then the student is told that the idea of "disorder" is generalized to include the dilapidated condition of an old farm house, etc. Pretty sloppy teaching.


these molesules do what they do non-'nodally', and they stay the same molecules after boiling or freezing

Somehow the author of every physics book in the world was induced to say that real gases, as long as the temperatures aren't too low or the densities aren't too high, will approximately follow the ideal gas law. Water vapor included. But not liquid water, where the moledules continuously tumble over each other, and even exhibit surface tension. They will also say: liquid -- a nearly constant volume; gas -- it takes on the volume of its container. All of the scientists except for you thought that something very fundamental was going on with a phase change.


What would you say, though, if Marx had never indicated what 'relative surplus value' meant?

Marx defined surplus value, but I bash Marx because he never wrote any coherent sentences in his entire life about what sort of system he would like capitalism to be replaced with, or what program he would recommend for achieving it.


about as useful as "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"

But it is useful to note that a gradual change in the voltage across a diode will suddenly bring about a six order of magnitude change in the current that flows through it. Like I said, there may be occasions for reminding people that it's possible for a functional relationship to be grossly nonlinear. If you mean to say that, when other people believe it's a good the time for that reminder, you feel that it's not an appropriate time for that reminder, that's another issue.

Criticism is deserved here, but for something else. Criticism is deserved because argument by analogy is invalid (unless the validity of the analogy has previously been demonstrated). The Engels method is argument by analogy. That's the error in his method. But he was writing propaganda for a cause, and during such moments people will tend to use analogies. It seems to them to make the propaganda more persuasive. You're noting that Engels isn't being scientific there. That's right. He's being a politician. And Martin Luther King's comparison between civil liberties and a bounced bank check is also an analogy, a metaphor, not a scientific theorem. Let's not expect too much in politics. It's not supposed to be an exact science. The Marxian claim that it was an exact science was itself part of the propaganda. Remember the thesis, "the point is to change it."

[mikelepore]

Rosa,


What has 'linearality' got to do with anything?

It's my interpretation of what Engels was trying to say with the archaic language agailable to him, with Engels' using Leibniz's term "vis visa" (meaning mv^2, forerunner of the later use of (1/2)mv^2), etc.


using an ill-defined notion of 'linerality'

My choice of words may be influenced by the fact that my degree is an MS EE and I'm a retired design engineer from the electronics business.


And you are being very liberal with 'increase in quantity'. Engels specifically referred to increases in quantity of matter or energy, not increase or decrease in distances, or variables.

Energy as an example. I think it was asked here by someone what's the big deal with the bit of water that spills over the edge of a full container. For one thing, when it fall down it's potential energy will be converted into kinetic energy.

Matter and energy as an example. That uranium already has 235 things in its nucleus, so what's the big deal if we were to add just one more? Answer: the atomic bomb.

Sometimes an important thing happens if a spermatozoon pushes just a little harder against the membrane of an egg.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Mike:


All of the scientists except for you thought that something very fundamental was going on with a phase change.

No problem with phase changes, but I do object to them being recruited to this vague half-'theory' you are trying to defend, with a use of node'/'jump' that still remains undefined (and it's not just vague) -- compounded by an inconsistent use of 'quality' (which has still to be defined, too).


But it is useful to note that a gradual change in the voltage across a diode will suddenly bring about a six order of magnitude change in the current that flows through it. Like I said, there may be occasions for reminding people that it's possible for a functional relationship to be grossly nonlinear. If you mean to say that, when other people believe it's a good the time for that reminder, you feel that it's not an appropriate time for that reminder, that's another issue.

Some changes in nature are sudden, some slow -- I also have no problem with that.

But I object once more to you or anyone else dragging in Engels's confused non-law here. It's like Christians doing the same with science and the Book of Genesis. They try to co-opt the clarity of science to their vague ideas too.


It's my interpretation of what Engels was trying to say with the archaic language agailable to him, with Engels' using Leibniz's term "vis visa" (meaning mv^2, forerunner of the later use of (1/2)mv^2), etc.

I rather suspect Engels is using terms from Boscovitch, not Leibniz here.

On this, see: Williams, L. (1980), The Origins Of Field Theory (University Press of America).

But even if he was, I fail to see what Leibniz's mystical notion has to do with phase changes.


Energy as an example. I think it was asked here by someone what's the big deal with the bit of water that spills over the edge of a full container. For one thing, when it falls down it's potential energy will be converted into kinetic energy.

Matter and energy as an example. That uranium already has 235 things in its nucleus, so what's the big deal if we were to add just one more? Answer: the atomic bomb.

Sometimes an important thing happens if a spermatozoon pushes just a little harder against the membrane of an egg.

But, and yet again, you are still using a vague term in connection with techincal terms that are not vague.

How does any of this illustrate this obscure 'law'?

Unless you say what you mean by 'change in quality' all this is all to no avail.

You keep dancing around this core issue, and somehow think/hope I will fall for each new vague example you use, or forget that you are using such ill-defined terms.

Had any of the great scientists argued like this, no one would now be bothered remembering them.

Engels indulges in a bit of Mickey Mouse science, and because he was a friend of Marx everyone goes weak at the knees, surrendering their critical faculties. :o

[Volderbeek]

To go back to the request to define quantity and quality, I found this Hegel site that has some interesting dialectical definitions:

Quantity (http://hegel.net/en/e112.htm)

Quality (http://hegel.net/en/e111.htm)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Yes, yes, V, this has already been dealt with (you need to read more carefully) -- these are full of incomprehensible verbiage.

How can anyone possibly define something in terms that are not understood, or are incapable of being understood?

You are like the person who, when asked to define the 'Trinity', comes up with:


1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith;

2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.

3. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;

4. Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.

5. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.

6. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.

7. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.

8. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.

9. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.

10. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal.

11. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.

12. As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.

13. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty.

14. And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.

15. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God;

16. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.

17. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Spirit Lord;

18. And yet they are not three Lords but one Lord.

19. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord;

20. So are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say; There are three Gods or three Lords.

21. The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten.

22. The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten.

23. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

24. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.

25. And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.

26. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.

27. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.

28. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.

29. Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

30. For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.

31. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world.

32. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.

33. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood.

34. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.

35. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God.

36. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.

37. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ;

38. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead;

39. He ascended into heaven, He sits on the right hand of the Father, God, Almighty;

40. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

41. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies;

42. and shall give account of their own works.

43. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.

44. This is the catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved.

http://www.ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html

And then looks at us blankly when we point to all the incomprehensible terms and logical impossibilities it contains.

So, these alleged 'definitions' are not definitions, merely long-winded exercises in the aimless knitting-together of jargon.

Finally, they are not even the definitions Engels and later dialectcians were working with (they adopted a cut-down Aristotelian approach) -- or if they were, then many of their examples would not work.

So, away with your acts of faith and your attempts at genuflection toward this mystical bumbler. This is a site for materialists and atheists, not closet theists like you.

Now, let's see you tackle 'node' -- or even 'leap'.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In fact, I inivite comrades here to click on the "Quality" link V has posted above (you can ignore the other one, since no one has asked for "quantity to be defined).

If you do you will see that my description above was somewhat inaccurate.

On the resulting screen, there is in fact very little jargon -- but you will have to borrow a microscope to find the alleged definition, for try as much I could, I could not see one.

All I could see was an odd diagram of a triangle (funnily enough, reminiscent of the ones that Trinitarians use to explain the 'Godhead'), and a few obscure terms dotted around the page.

If anyone wants to examine Hegel's actual 'definition', I will post it anon so that comrades can scratch their heads and try and figure out wtf he is banging on about.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Here we go (warning: you will need a huge shot of Prozac before you wade through all this!!!):


Part One of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic

First Subdivision

VII. BEING

§ 84

Being is the notion implicit only: its special forms have the predicate ‘is’; when they are distinguished they are each of them an ‘other’: and the shape which dialectic takes in them, i.e. their further specialisation, is at once a forth-putting and in that way a disengaging of the notion implicit in being; and at the same time the withdrawing of being inwards, its sinking deeper into itself. Thus the explication of the notion in the sphere of being does two things: it brings out the totality of being, and it abolishes the immediacy of being, or the form of being as such.

§ 85

Being itself and the special sub-categories of it which follow, as well as those of logic in general, may be looked upon as definitions of the Absolute, or metaphysical definitions of God: at least the first and third categories in every triad may — the first, where the thought-form of the triad is formulated in its simplicity, and the third, being the return from differentiation to a simple self-reference. For a metaphysical definition of God is the expression of his nature in thoughts as such: and logic embraces all thoughts so long as they continue in the thought-form. The second sub-category in each triad, where the grade of thought is in its differentiation, gives, on the other hand, a definition of the finite.

The objection to the form of definition is that it implies a something in the mind’s eye on which these predicates may fasten. Thus even the Absolute (though it purports to express God in the style and character of thought) in comparison with its predicate (which really and distinctly expresses in thought what the subject does not) is as yet only an inchoate pretended thought — the indeterminate subject of predicates yet to come. The thought, which is here the matter of sole importance, is contained only in the predicate: and hence the propositional form, like the said subject, viz., the Absolute, is a mere superfluity.

Quantity, Quality and Measure

Each of the three spheres of the logical idea proves to be a systematic whole of thought-terms, and a phase of the Absolute. This is the case with Being, containing the three grades of quality, quantity and measure.

Quality is, in the first place, the character identical with being: so identical that a thing ceases to be what it is, if it loses its quality. Quantity, on the contrary, is the character external to being, and does not affect the being at all. Thus, e.g. a house remains what it is, whether it be greater or smaller; and red remains red, whether it be brighter or darker.

Measure, the third grade of being, which is the unity of the first two, is a qualitative quantity. All things have their measure: i.e. the quantitative terms of their existence, their being so or so great, does not matter within certain limits; but when these limits are exceeded by an additional more or less, the things cease to be what they were. From measure follows the advance to the second subdivision of the idea, Essence.

The three forms of being here mentioned, just because they are the first, are also the poorest, i.e. the most abstract. Immediate (sensible) consciousness, in so far as it simultaneously includes an intellectual element, is especially restricted to the abstract categories of quality and quantity.

The sensuous consciousness is in ordinary estimation the most concrete and thus also the richest; but that is true only as regards materials, whereas, in reference to the thought it contains, it is really the poorest and most abstract.

A. QUALITY

(a) Being

Pure Being

§ 86

Pure Being makes the beginning: because it is on the one hand pure thought, and on the other immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate; and the first beginning cannot be mediated by anything, or be further determined.

All doubts and admonitions, which might be brought against beginning the science with abstract empty being, will disappear if we only perceive what a beginning naturally implies. It is possible to define being as ‘I = I’, as ‘Absolute Indifference’ or Identity, and so on. Where it is felt necessary to begin either with what is absolutely certain, i.e. certainty of oneself, or with a definition or intuition of the absolute truth, these and other forms of the kind may be looked on as if they must be the first. But each of these forms contains a mediation, and hence cannot be the real first: for all mediation implies advance made from a first on to a second, and proceeding from something different. If I = I, or even the intellectual intuition, are really taken to mean no more than the first, they are in this mere immediacy identical with being: while conversely, pure being, if abstract no longer, but including in it mediation, is pure thought or intuition.

If we enunciate Being as a predicate of the Absolute, we get the first definition of the latter. The Absolute is Being. This is (in thought) the absolutely initial definition, the most abstract and stinted. It is the definition given by the Eleatics, but at the same time is also the well-known definition of God as the sum of all realities. It means, in short, that we are to set aside that limitation which is in every reality, so that God shall be only the real in all reality, the superlatively real. Or, if we reject reality, as implying a reflection, we get a more immediate or unreflected statement of the same thing, when Jacobi says that the God of Spinoza is the principium of being in all existence.

(1) When thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought in its merest indeterminate: for we cannot determine unless there is both one and another: and yet in the beginning there is yet no other. The indeterminate, as we have it, is the blank we begin with, not a featurelessness reached by abstraction, not the elimination of all character, but the original featurelessness which precedes all definite character and is the very first of all. And this we call Being. It is not to be felt, or perceived by sense, or pictured in imagination: it is only and merely thought, and as such it forms the beginning. Essence also is indeterminate, but in another sense: it has traversed the process of mediation and contains implicit the determination it has absorbed.

(2) In the history of philosophy the different stages of the logical idea assume the shape of successive systems, each based on a particular definition of the Absolute. As the logical Idea is seen to unfold itself in a process from the abstract to the concrete, so in the history of philosophy the earliest systems are the most abstract, and thus at the same time the poorest. The relation too of the earlier to the later systems of philosophy is much like the relation of the corresponding stages of the logical Idea: in other words, the earlier are preserved in the later: but subordinated and submerged. This is the true meaning of a much misunderstood phenomenon in the history of philosophy — the refutation of one system by another, of an earlier by a later. Most commonly the refutation is taken in a purely negative sense to mean that the system refuted has ceased to count for anything, has been set aside and done for. Were it so, the history of philosophy would be, of all studies, most saddening, displaying, as it does, the refutation of every system which time has brought forth. Now although it may be admitted that every philosophy has been refuted, it must be in an equal degree maintained that no philosophy has been refuted. And that in two ways. For first, every philosophy that deserves the name always embodies the Idea: and secondly, every system represents one particular factor or particular stage in the evolution of the Idea. The refutation of a philosophy, therefore, only means that its barriers are crossed, and its special principle reduced to a factor in the completer principle that follows.

Thus the history of philosophy, in its true meaning, deals not with a past, but with an eternal and veritable present: and, in its results, resembles not a museum of the aberrations of the human intellect, but a Pantheon of godlike figures. These figures of gods are the various stages of the Idea, as they come forward one after another in dialectical development.

To the historian of philosophy it belongs to point out more precisely how far the gradual evolution of his theme coincides with, or swerves from, the dialectical unfolding of the pure logical Idea. It is sufficient to mention here, that logic begins where the proper history of philosophy begins. Philosophy began in the Eleatic school, especially with Parmenides. Parmenides, who conceives the absolute as Being, says that ‘Being alone is and Nothing is not’. Such was the true starting point of philosophy, which is always knowledge by thought: and here for the first time we find pure thought seized and made an object to itself.

Men indeed thought from the beginning (for thus only were they distinguished from the animals). But thousands of years had to elapse before they came to apprehend thought in its purity, and to see it in the truly objective. The Eleatics are celebrated as daring thinkers. But this nominal admiration is often accompanied by the remark that they went too far, when they made Being alone true, and denied the truth of every other object of consciousness. We must go further than mere Being, it is true: and yet it is absurd to speak of the other contents of our consciousness as somewhat as it were outside and beside Being, or to say that there are other things, as well as Being. The true state of the case is rather as follows. Being, as Being, is nothing fixed or ultimate: it yields to dialectic and sinks into its opposite, which, also taken immediately, is Nothing. After all, the point is that Being is the pure Thought; whatever else you may begin with (the I = I, the absolute indifference, or God himself), you begin with a figure of materialised conception, not a product of thought; and that, so far as its thought-content is concerned, such beginning is merely Being.

Nothing

§ 87

But this mere Being, as it is mere abstraction, is therefore the absolutely negative: which, in a similarly immediate aspect, is just Nothing.

(1) Hence was derived the second definition of the Absolute: the Absolute is the Nought. In fact this definition is implied in saying that the thing-in-itself is the indeterminate, utterly without form and so without content — or in saying that God is only the supreme Being and nothing more; for this is really declaring him to be the same negativity as above. The Nothing which the Buddhists make the universal principle, as well as the final aim and goal of everything, is the same abstraction.

(2) If the opposition in thought is stated in this immediacy as Being and Nothing, the shock of its nullity is too great not to stimulate the attempt to fix Being and secure it against the transition into Nothing.

With this intent, reflection has recourse to the plan of discovering some fixed predicate for Being, to mark it off from Nothing. Thus we find Being identified with what persists amid all change, with matter, susceptible of innumerable determinations — or even, unreflectingly, with a single existence, any chance object of the senses or of the mind. But every additional and more concrete characterisation causes Being to lose that integrity and simplicity it had in the beginning. Only in, and by virtue of, this mere generality is it Nothing, something inexpressible, whereof the distinction from Nothing is a mere intention or meaning.

All that is wanted is to realise that these beginnings are nothing but these empty abstractions, one as empty as the other. The instinct that induces us to attach a settled import to Being, or to both, is the very necessity which leads to the onward movement of Being and Nothing, and gives them a true or concrete significance. This advance is the logical deduction and the movement of thought exhibited in the sequel. The reflection which finds a profounder connotation for Being and Nothing is nothing but logical thought, through which such connotation is evolved, not, however, in an accidental, but a necessary way.

Every signification, therefore, in which they afterwards appear, is only a more precise specification and truer definition of the Absolute. And when that is done, the mere abstract Being and Nothing are replaced by a concrete in which both these elements form an organic part. The supreme form of Nought as a separate principle would be Freedom: but Freedom is negativity in that stage, when it sinks self-absorbed to supreme intensity, and is itself an affirmation, and even absolute affirmation.

The distinction between Being and Nought is, in the first place, only implicit, and not yet actually made: they only ought to be distinguished. A distinction of course implies two things, and that one of them possesses an attribute which is not found in the other. Being however is an absolute absence of attributes, and so is Nought. Hence the distinction between the two is only meant to be; it is a quite nominal distinction, which is at the same time no distinction. In all other cases of difference there is some common point which comprehends both things.

Suppose e.g. we speak of two different species: the same genus forms a common ground between both. But in the case of mere Being and Nothing, distinction is without a bottom to stand upon: hence there can be no distinction, both determinations being the same bottomlessness. If it be replied that Being and Nothing are both of them thoughts, so that thought may be reckoned common ground, the objector forgets that Being is not a particular or definite thought, and hence, being quite indeterminate, is a thought not to be distinguished from Nothing. It is natural too for us to represent Being as absolute riches, and nothing as absolute poverty. But if when we wish to view the whole world we can only say that everything is, and nothing more, we are neglecting all speciality and, instead of plenitude, we have absolute emptiness. The same stricture is applicable to those who define God to be mere Being; a definition not a whit better than that of the Buddhists, who make God to be Nought, and who from that principle draw the further conclusion that self-annihilation is the means by which man becomes God.

Becoming

§ 88

Nothing, if it be thus immediate and equal to itself, is also conversely the same as Being is. The truth of Being and of Nothing is accordingly the unity of the two: and this unity is Becoming.

(1) The proposition that Being and Nothing is the same seems so paradoxical to the imagination or understanding, that it is perhaps taken for a joke. And indeed it is one of the hardest things thought expects itself to do: for Being and Nothing exhibit the fundamental contrast in all its immediacy — that is, without the one term being invested with any attribute which would involve its connection with the other. This attribute however, as the above paragraph points out, is implicit in them — the attribute which is just the same in both. So far the deduction of their unity is completely analytical: indeed the whole progress of philosophising in every case, if it be a methodical, that is to say a necessary, progress, merely renders explicit what is implicit in a notion. It is as correct however to say that Being and Nothing are altogether different, as to assert their unity. The one is not what the other is. But since the distinction has not at this point assumed definite shape (Being and Nothing are still the immediate), it is, in the way that they have it, something unutterable, which we merely mean.

(2) No great expenditure of wit is needed to make fun of the maxim that Being and Nothing are the same, or rather to adduce absurdities which, it is erroneously asserted, are the consequences and illustrations of that maxim.

If Being and Nought are identical, say these objectors, it follows that it makes no difference whether my home, my property, the air I breathe, this city, the sun, the law, God, are or are not. Now in some of these cases the objectors foist in private aims, the utility a thing has for me, and then ask, whether it be all the same to me if the thing exist and if it do not. For that matter indeed, the teaching of philosophy is precisely what frees man from the endless crowd of finite aims and intentions, by making him so insensible to them that their existence or non-existence is to him a matter of indifference. But it is never to be forgotten that, once mention something substantial, and you thereby create a connection with other existences and other purposes which are ex hypothesi worth having: and on such hypothesis it comes to depend whether the Being or not-Being of a determinate subject are the same or not. A substantial distinction is in these cases secretly substituted for the empty distinction of Being and Nought.

When a concrete existence is disguised under the name of Being and not-Being, empty-headedness makes its usual mistake of speaking about, and having in mind, an image of something else than what is in question: and in this place the question is about abstract Being and Nothing. In others of the cases referred to, it is virtually absolute existences and vital ideas and aims, which are placed under the mere category of Being and not-Being. But there is no more to be said of these concrete objects, than that they merely are or are not. Barren abstractions, like Being and Nothing — the initial categories which, for that reason, are the scantiest anywhere to be found — are utterly inadequate to the nature of these objects. Substantial truth is something far above these abstractions and their oppositions. And always when a concrete existence is disguised under the name of Being and not-Being, empty-headedness makes its usual mistake of speaking about, and having in mind an image of, something else than what is in question: and in this place the question is about abstract Being and Nothing.

(3) It may perhaps be said that nobody can form a notion of the unity of Being and Nought. As for that, the notion of the unity is stated in the section preceding, and that is all: apprehend that, and you have comprehended this unity. What the objector really means by comprehension — by a notion — is more than his language properly implies: he wants a richer and more complex state of mind, a pictorial conception which will propound the notion as a concrete case and one more familiar to the ordinary operations of thought. And so long as ordinary incomprehensibility means only the want habituation for the effort needed to grasp an abstract thought, free from all sensuous admixture, and to seize a speculative truth, the reply to the criticism is that philosophical knowledge is undoubtedly distinct in kind from the mode of knowledge best known in common life, as well as from that which reigns in the other sciences. But if to have no notion merely means that we cannot represent in imagination the oneness of Being and Nought, the statement is far from being true; for everyone has countless ways of envisaging this unity. To say that we have no such conception can only mean that in none of these images do we recognise the notion in question, and that we are not aware that they exemplify it. The readiest example of it is Becoming. Everyone has a mental idea of Becoming, and will even allow that it is one idea: he will further allow that, when it is analysed, it involves the attribute of Being, and also what is the very reverse of Being, viz., Nothing: and that these two attributes lie undivided in the one idea: so that Becoming is the unity of Being and Nothing. Another tolerably plain example is a Beginning. In its beginning, the thing is not yet, but it is more than merely nothing, for its Being is already in the beginning. Beginning is itself a case of Becoming; only the former term is employed with an eye to the further advance. If we were to adopt logic to the more usual method of the sciences, we might start with the representation of a Beginning as abstractly thought, or with Beginning as such, and then analyse this representation; and perhaps people would more readily admit, as a result of this analysis, that Being and Nothing present themselves as undivided in unity.

(4) It remains to note that such phrases as ‘Being and Nothing are the same’., or ‘The unity of Being and Nothing’ — like all other such unities, that of subject and object, and others — give rise to reasonable objection. They misrepresent the facts by giving an exclusive prominence to the unity and leaving the difference which undoubtedly exists in it (because it is Being and Nothing, for example, the unity of which is declared) without any express mention or notice. It accordingly seems as if diversity had been unduly put out of court and neglected. The fact is, no speculative principle can be correctly expressed by any such propositional form, for the unity has to be conceived in the diversity, which is all the while present and explicit.

‘To become’ is the true expression for the resultant of ‘to be’ and ‘not to be’; it is the unity of the two; but not only is it the unity, it is also inherent unrest — the unity, which is no mere reference-to-self and therefore without movement, but which through the diversity of Being and Nothing that is in it, is at war with itself. Determinate Being on the other hand, is this unity, or Becoming in this form of unity: hance all that ‘is there and so’ is one-sided and finite. The opposition between the two factors seems to have vanished; it is only implied in the unity, it is not explicitly put in it.

(5) The maxim of Becoming, that Being is the passage into Nought, and Nought the passage into Being, is controverted by the maxim of Pantheism, the doctrine of the eternity of matter, that from nothing comes nothing, and that something can only come out of something. The ancients saw plainly that the maxim, ‘From nothing comes nothing, from something something’, really abolishes Becoming: for what it comes from and what it becomes are one and the same. Thus explained, the proposition is the maxim of abstract identity as upheld by the understanding. It cannot but seem strange, therefore, to hear such maxims as ‘Out of nothing comes nothing: Out of something comes something’ calmly taught in these days, without the teacher being in the least aware that they are the basis of Pantheism, and even without his knowing that the ancients have exhausted all that is to be said about them.

Becoming is the first concrete thought, and therefore the first notion: whereas Being and Nought are empty abstractions. The notion of Being, therefore, of which we sometimes speak, must mean Becoming; not the mere point of Being, which is empty Nothing, any more than Nothing, which is empty Being> in Being then we have Nothing, and in Nothing, Being; but this Being which does not lose itself in Nothing is Becoming. Nor must we omit the distinction, while we emphasise the unity of Becoming; without that distinction we should once more return to abstract Being. Becoming is only the explicit statement of what Being is in its truth.

We often hear it maintained that thought is opposed to being. Now, in the face of such a statement, our first question ought to be, what is meant by being. If we understand being as it is defined by reflection, all that we can say of it is what is wholly identical and affirmative. And if we then look at thought, it cannot escape us that thought also is at least what is absolutely identical with itself. Both therefore, being as well as thought, have the same attribute. This identity of being and thought is not however to be taken in a concrete sense, as if we could say that a stone, so far as it has being, is the same as a thinking man. A concrete thing is always very different from the abstract category as such. And in the case of being, we are speaking of nothing concrete: for being is the utterly abstract. So far then the question regarding the being of God — a being which is in itself concrete above all measure — is of slight importance.

As the first concrete thought-form, Becoming is the first adequate vehicle of truth. In the history of philosophy, this stage of the logical Idea finds its analogue in the system of Heraclitus.

When Heraclitus says ‘All is flowing’, he enunciates Becoming as the fundamental feature of all existence, whereas the Eleatics, as already remarked, saw only truth in Being, rigid processless Being. Glancing at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then goes on to say: Being is no more than not-Being; a statement expressing the negativity of abstract Being, and its identity with not-Being, as made explicit in Becoming; both abstractions being alike untenable. This may be looked upon as the real refutation of one system by another. To refute a philosophy is to exhibit the dialectical movement in its principle, and thus reduce it to a constituent member of a higher concrete form of the Idea.

Even Becoming however, taken at its best on its own ground, is an extremely poor term: it needs to grow in depth and weight of meaning. Such deepened force we find e.g. in Life. Life is a Becoming but that is not enough to exhaust the notion of life. A still higher form is found in Mind. Here too is Becoming, but richer and more intensive than mere logical Becoming. The elements whose unity constitute mind are not the bare abstracts of Being and Nought, but the system of the logical Idea and of Nature.

(b) Being Determinate

§ 89

In Becoming, the Being which is one with Nothing, and the Nothing which is one with Being, are only vanishing factors; they are and they are not. Thus by its inherent contradiction Becoming collapses into the unity in which the two elements are absorbed. This result is accordingly Being Determinate (Being there and so).

In this first example we must call to mind, once for all, [that]: the only way to secure any growth and progress in knowledge is to hold results fast in their truth. There is absolutely nothing whatever in which we cannot and must not point to contradictions or opposite attributes; and the abstraction made by understanding therefore means a forcible insistence on a single aspect, and a real effort to obscure and remove all consciousness of the other attribute which is involved. Whenever such contradiction, then, is discovered in any object or notion, the usual inference is, Hence this object is nothing.

Thus Zeno, who first showed the contradiction native to motion, concluded that there is no motion; and the ancients, who recognised origin and decease, the two species of Becoming, as untrue categories, made use of the expression that the One or Absolute neither arises not perishes. Such a style of dialectic looks only at the negative aspect of its result, and fails to notice, what is at the same time really present, the definite result, in the present case a pure nothing, but a Nothing which includes Being, and, in like manner, a Being which includes Nothing. Hence Being Determinate is (1) the unity of Being and Nothing, in which we get rid of the immediacy in these determinations, and their contradiction vanishes in their mutual connection — the unity in which they are only constituent elements. And (2) since the result is the abolition of the contradiction, it comes in the shape of a simple unity with itself: that is to say, it also is Being with negation or determinateness: it is Becoming expressly put in the form of one of its elements, viz., Being.

Even our ordinary conception of Becoming implies that somewhat comes out of it, and that Becoming therefore has a result. But this conception gives rise to the question, how Becoming does not remain mere Becoming, but has a result?

The answer to this question follows from what Becoming has already shown itself to be. Becoming always contains Being and Nothing in such a way, that these two are always changing into each other, and reciprocally cancelling each other. Thus Becoming stands before us in utter restlessness — unable however to maintain itself in this abstract restlessness: for, since Being and Nothing vanish in Becoming (and that is the very notion of Becoming), the latter must vanish also. Becoming is as it were a fire, which dies out in itself, when it consumes its material. The result of this process however is not empty Nothing, but Being identical with the negation — what we call Being Determinate (being then and there): the primary import of which evidently is that it has become.

Quality

§ 90

[a] Determinate Being is Being with a character or mode — which simply is; and such unmediated character is Quality. And as reflected into itself in this its character or mode, Determinate Being is a somewhat, as existent. The categories, which issue by a closer analysis of Determinate Being, need only be mentioned briefly.

Quality may be described as the determinate mode immediate and identical with Being — as distinguished from Quantity (to come afterwards), which, although a mode of Being, is no longer immediately identical with Being, but a mode indifferent and external to it. A something is what it is in virtue of its quality, and losing its quality it ceases to be what it is.

Quality, moreover, is completely a category only of the finite, and for that reason too it has its proper place in Nature, not in the world of the Mind. Thus, for example, in Nature what are styled elementary bodies, oxygen, nitrogen, etc., should be regarded as existing qualities. But in the sphere of mind, Quality appears in a subordinate way only, and not as if its qualitativeness could exhaust any specific aspect of mind. If, for example, we consider the subjective mind, which forms the object of psychology, we may describe what is called (moral and mental) character, as in logical language identical with Quality. This however does not mean that character is a mode of being which pervades the soul and is immediately identical with it, as is the case in the natural world with elementary bodies beforementioned. Yet a more distinct manifestation of Quality as such, in mind even, is found in the case of besotted or morbid conditions, especially in states of passion and when the passion rises to derangement. The state of mind of a deranged person, being one mass of jealousy, fear, etc., may suitably be described as Quality.

Reality, Being-for-another & Being-for-self

§ 91

Quality, as determinateness which is, as contrasted with the Negation which is involved in it but distinguished from it, is Reality. Negation is no longer an abstract nothing, but, as a determinate being and somewhat, is only a form of such being — it is as Otherness. Since this otherness, though a determination of Quality itself, is in the first instance distinct from it, Quality is Being-for-another — an expansion of the mere point of Determinate Being, or of Somewhat. The Being as such of Quality, contrasted with this reference to somewhat else, is Being-for-self.

The foundation of all determinateness is negation. The unreflecting observer supposes that determinate things are merely positive, and pins them down under the form of being. Mere being however is not the end of the matter: it is, as we have already seen, utter emptiness and instability besides. Still, when abstract being is confused in this way with being modified and determinate, it implies some perception of the fact that, though in determinate being there is involved an element of negation, this element is at first wrapped up, as it were, and only comes to the front and receives its due in Being-for-self. If we go on to consider determinate Being as a determinateness which is, we get in this way what is called Reality.

We speak, for example, of the reality of a plan or a purpose, meaning thereby that they are no longer inner and subjective, but have passed into being-there-and-then. In the same sense the body may be called the reality of the soul, and the law the reality of freedom, and the world altogether the reality of the divine idea. The word ‘reality’ is however used in another acceptation to mean that something behaves conformably to its essential characteristic or notion. For example, we use the expression: This is a real occupation; This is a real man. Here the term does not merely mean outward and immediate existence: but rather that some existence agrees with its notion. In which sense, be it added, reality is not distinct from the ideality which we shall in the first instance become acquainted with in the shape of Being-for-self.

§ 92

[b] Being, if kept distinct and apart from its determinate mode, as it is in Being-by-self (Being implicit), would be only the vacant abstraction of Being. In Being (determinate there and then), the determinateness is one with Being; yet at the same time, when explicitly made a negation, it is a Limit, a Barrier. Hence the otherness is not something indifferent and outside it, but a function proper to it. Somewhat is by its quality, firstly finite, secondly alterable; so that finitude and variability appertain to its being.

In Being-there-and-then, the negation is still directly one with the Being, and this negation is what we call a Limit (Boundary). A thing is what it is, only in and by reason of its limit. We cannot therefore regard the limit as only external to being which is then and there. It rather goes through and through the whole of such existence. The view of limit, as merely an external characteristic of being-there-and-then, arises from a confusion of quantitative with qualitative limit. Here we are speaking primarily of the qualitative limit. If, for example, we observe a piece of ground, three acres large, that circumstance is its quantitative limit. But, in addition, the ground is, it may be, a meadow, not a wood or a pond. This is its qualitative limit. Man, if he wishes to be actual, must be-there-and-then, and to this end he must set a limit to himself. People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger lost in abstraction, and their light dies away.

If we take a closer look at what a limit implies, we see it involving a contradiction in itself, and thus evincing its dialectical nature. On the one side limit makes the reality of a thing; on the other it is its negation. But, again, the limit, as the negation of something, is not an abstract nothing but a nothing which is — what we call an "other". Given something, and up starts an other to us: we know that there is not something only, but an other as well. Nor, again, is the other of such a nature that we can think something apart from it; a something is implicitly the other of itself, and the somewhat sees its limit become objective to it in the other. If we now ask for the difference between something and another, it turns out that they are the same: which sameness is expressed in Latin by calling the pair aliad-aliud. The other, as opposed to the something, is itself a something, and hence we say some other, or something else; and so on the other hand the first something when opposed to the other, also defined as something, is itself an other. When we say "something else" our first impression is that something taken separately is only something, and that the quality of being another attaches to it only from outside considerations. Thus we suppose that the moon, being something else than the sun, might very well exist without the sun. But really the moon, as a something, has its other implicit in it. Plato says: God made the world out of the nature of the "one" and the "other": having brought these together, he formed from them a third, which is of the nature of the "one" and the "other". In these words we have in general terms a statement of the nature of the finite, which, as something, does not meet the nature of the other as if it had no affinity to it, but, being implicitly the other of itself, thus undergoes alteration. Alteration thus exhibits the inherent contradiction which originally attaches to determinate being, and which forces it out of its own bounds. To materialised conception existence stands in the character of something solely positive, and quietly abiding within its own limits: though we also know, it is true, that everything finite (such as existence) is subject to change. Such changeableness in existence is to the superficial eye a mere possibility, the realisation of which is not a consequence of its own nature. But the fact is, mutability lies in the notion of existence, and change is only the manifestation of what it implicitly is. The living die, simply because as living they bear in themselves the germ of death.

§ 93

Something becomes an other; this other is itself somewhat; therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on ad infinitum.

§ 94

This Infinity is the wrong or negative infinity: it is only a negation of a finite: but the finite rises again the same as ever, and is never got rid of and absorbed. In other words, this infinite only expresses the ought-to-be elimination of the finite. The progression to infinity never gets further than a statement of the contradiction involved in the finite, viz. that it is somewhat as well as somewhat else. It sets up with endless iteration the alternation between these two terms, each of which calls up the other.

If we let somewhat and another, the elements of determinate Being, fall asunder, the result is that some becomes other, and this other is itself a somewhat, which then as such changes likewise, and so on ad infinitum. This result seems to superficial reflection something very grand, the grandest possible. But such a progression to infinity is not the real infinite. That consists in being at home with itself in its other, or, if enunciated as a process, in coming to itself in its other. Much depends on rightly apprehending the notion of infinity, and not stopping short at the wrong infinity of endless progression. When time and space, for example, are spoken of as infinite, it is in the first place the infinite progression on which our thoughts fasten. We say, Now, This time, and then we keep continually going forwards and backwards beyond this limit. The case is the same with space, the infinity of which has formed the theme of barren declamation to astronomers with a talent for edification. In the attempt to contemplate such an infinite, our thought, we are commonly informed, must sink exhausted. It is true indeed that we must abandon the unending contemplation, not however because the occupation is too sublime, but because it is too tedious. It is tedious to expatiate in the contemplation of this infinite progression, because the same thing is constantly recurring. We lay down a limit: then we pass it: next we have a limit once more, and so on for ever. All this is but superficial alternation, which never leaves the region of the finite behind. To suppose that by stepping out and away into that infinity we release ourselves from the finite, is in truth but to seek the release which comes by flight. But the man who flees is not yet free: in fleeing he is still conditioned by that from which he flees. If it be also said that the infinite is unattainable, the statement is true, but only because to the idea of infinity has been attached the circumstance of being simply and solely negative. With such empty and other-world stuff philosophy has nothing to do. What philosophy has to do with is always something concrete and in the highest sense present.

No doubt philosophy has also sometimes been set the task of finding an answer to the question, how the infinite comes to the resolution of issuing out of itself. This question, founded, as it is, upon the assumption of a rigid opposition between finite and infinite, may be answered by saying that the opposition is false, and that in point of fact the infinite eternally proceeds out of itself, and yet does not proceed out of itself. If we further say that the infinite is the not-finite, we have in point of fact virtually expressed the truth: for as the finite itself is the first negative, the not-finite is the negative of that negation, the negation which is identical with itself and thus at the same time a true affirmation.

The infinity of reflection here discussed is only an attempt to reach the true infinity, a wretched neither-one-thing-nor-another. Generally speaking, it is the point of view which has in recent times been emphasised in Germany. The finite, this theory tells us, ought to be absorbed; the infinite ought not to be a negative merely, but also a positive. That ,ought to be’ betrays the incapacity of actually making good a claim which is at the same time recognised to be right. This stage was never passed by the systems of Kant and Fichte, so far as ethics are concerned. The utmost to which this way brings us is only the postulate of a never-ending approximation to the law of Reason: which postulate has been made an argument for the immortality of the soul.

§ 95

[c] What we now in point of fact have before us, is that somewhat comes to be an other, and that the other generally comes to be an other. Thus essentially relative to another, somewhat is virtually an other against it: and since what is passed into is quite the same as what passes over, since both have one and the same attribute, viz. to be an other, it follows that something in its passage into other only joins with itself. To be thus self-related in the passage, and in the other, is the genuine Infinity. Or, under a negative aspect: what is altered is the other, it becomes the other of the other. Thus Being, but as negation of the negation, is restored again: it is now Being-for-self.

Dualism, in putting an insuperable opposition between finite and infinite, fails to note the simple circumstance that the infinite is thereby only one of two, and is reduced to a particular, to which the finite forms the other particular. Such an infinite, which is only a particular, is conterminous with the finite which makes for it a limit and a barrier: it is not what it ought to be, that is, the infinite, but is only finite. In such circumstances, where the finite is on this side, and the infinite on that-this world as the finite and the other world as the infinite-an equal dignity of permanence and independence is ascribed to finite and to infinite. The being of the finite is made an absolute being, and by this dualism gets independence and stability. Touched, so to speak, by the infinite, it would be annihilated. But it must not be touched by the infinite. There must be an abyss, an impassable gulf between the two, with the infinite abiding on yonder side and the finite steadfast on this. Those who attribute to the finite this inflexible persistence in comparison with the infinite are not, as they imagine, far above metaphysic: they are still on the level of the most ordinary metaphysic of understanding. For the same thing occurs here as in the infinite progression. At one time it is admitted that the finite has no independent actuality, no absolute being, no root and development of its own, but is only a transient. But next moment this is straightway forgotten; the finite, made a mere counterpart to the infinite, wholly separated from it, and rescued from annihilation, is conceived to be persistent in its independence. While thought thus imagines itself elevated to the infinite, it meets with the opposite fate: it comes to an infinite which is only a finite, and the finite, which it had left behind, has always to be retained and made into an absolute.

After this examination (with which it were well to compare — Plato’s Philebus), tending to show the nullity of the distinction made by understanding between the finite and the infinite, we are liable to glide into the statement that the infinite and the finite are therefore one, and that the genuine infinity, the truth, must be defined and enunciated as the unity of the finite and infinite. Such a statement would be to some extent correct; but is just as open to perversion and falsehood as the unity of Being and Nothing already noticed. Besides it may very fairly be charged with reducing the infinite to finitude and making a finite infinite. For, so far as the expression goes, the finite seems left in its place-it is not expressly stated to be absorbed. Or, if we’ reflect that the finite, when identified with the infinite, certainly cannot remain what it was out of such unity, and will at least suffer some change in its characteristics (as an alkali, when combined with an acid, loses some of its properties), we must see that the same fate awaits the infinite, which, as the negative, will on its part likewise have its edge, as it were, taken off on the other. And this does really happen with the abstract one-sided infinite of understanding. The genuine infinite however is not merely in the position of the one-sided acid, and so does not lose itself. The negation of negation is not a neutralisation: the infinite is the affirmative, and it is only the finite which is absorbed.

In Being-for-self enters the category of Ideality. Being-there-and-then, as in the first instance apprehended in its being or affirmation, has reality (§ 91); and thus even finitude in the first instance is in the category of reality. But the truth of the finite is rather its ideality. Similarly, the infinite of understanding, which is coordinated with the finite, is itself only one of two finites, no whole truth, but a non-substantial element. This ideality of the finite is the chief maxim of philosophy; and for that reason every genuine philosophy is idealism. But everything depends upon not taking for the infinite what, in the very terms of its characterisation, is at the same time made a particular and finite. For this, reason we have bestowed a greater amount of attention on this. distinction. The fundamental notion of philosophy, the genuine infinite, depends upon it. The distinction is cleared up by the simple, and for that reason seemingly insignificant, but incontrovertible reflections contained in the first paragraph of this section.

© Being-for-self

§ 96

[a] Being-for-self, as reference to itself, is immediacy, and as reference of the negative to itself, is a self-subsistent, the One. This unit, being without distinction in itself, thus excludes the other from itself.

To be for self — to be one — is completed Quality, and as such, contains abstract Being and Being modified a non-substantial elements. As simple Being, the One is simple self-reference; as Being modified it is determinate: but the determinateness is not in this case a finite determinateness — a somewhat in distinction from an other — but infinite, because it contains distinction absorbed and annulled in itself.

The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the ‘I’. We know ourselves as existents, distinguished in the first place from other existents, and with certain relations thereto. But we also come to know this expansion of existence (in these relations) reduced, as it were, to a point in the simple form of being-for-self. When we say ‘I’, we express this reference-to-self which is infinite, and at the same time negative. Man, it may be said, is distinguished from the animal world, and in that way from our nature altogether, by knowing himself as ‘I’: which amounts to saying that natural things never attain free Being-for-self, but as limited to Being-there-and-then, are always and only Being for another.

Again, Being-for-self may be described as ideality, just as Being-there-and-then was described as reality. It is said that besides reality there is also an ideality. Thus the two categories are made equal and parallel. Properly speaking, ideality is not somewhat outside of and beside reality: the notion of ideality just lies in its being the truth of reality. That is to say, when reality is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, it is at once seen to be ideality. Hence ideality has not received its proper estimation, when you allow that reality is not all in all, but that an ideality must be recognised outside of it. Such an ideality, external to or it may even be beyond reality, would be no better than an empty name. Ideality only has a meaning when it is the ideality of something: but this something is not a mere indefinite this or that, but existence characterised as reality, which, if retained in isolation, possesses no truth. The distinction between Nature and Mind is not improperly conceived, when the former is traced back to reality, and the latter so fixed and complete as to subsist even without Mind: in Mind it first, as it were, attains its goal and its truth. And similarly, Mind on its part is not merely a world beyond Nature and nothing more: it is really, and with full proof, seen to be mind, only when it involves Nature as absorbed in itself. Apropos of this, we should note the double meaning of the German word aufheben (to put by or set aside). We mean by it (1) to clear away, or annul: thus, we say, a law or regulation is set aside; (2) to keep, or preserve: in which sense we use it when we say: something is well put by. This double usage of language, which gives to the same word a positive and negative meaning, is not an accident, and gives no ground for reproaching language as a cause of confusion. We should rather recognise in it the speculative spirit of our language rising above the me ‘either-or’ of understanding.

§ 97

[b] The relation of the negative to itself is a negative relation, and so a distinguishing of the One from itself, the repulsion of the One; that is, it makes Many Ones. So far as regards the immediacy of the self-existents, these Many are: and the repulsion of every One of them becomes to that extent their repulsion against each other as existing units — in other words, their reciprocal exclusion.

Whenever we speak of the One, the Many usually come into our mind at the same time. Whence, then, we are forced to ask, do the Many come? This question is unanswerable by the consciousness which pictures the Many as a primary datum, and treats the One as only one among the Many. But the philosophic notion teaches, contrariwise, that the One forms the presupposition of the Many: and in the thought of the One is implied that it explicitly make itself Many. ...
©


The One, as already remarked, just is self-exclusion and explicit putting itself as the Many. Each of the Many however is itself a One, and in virtue of its so behaving, this all rounded repulsion is by one stroke converted into its opposite — Attraction.

Attraction and Repulsion

§ 98

[c] But the Many are one the same as another: each is One, or even one of the Many; they are consequently one and the same. Or when we study all that Repulsion involves, we see that as a negative attitude of many Ones to one another, it is just as essentially a connective reference of them to each other; and as those to which the One is related in its act of repulsion are ones, it is in them thrown into relation with itself. The repulsion therefore has an equal right to be called Attraction; and the exclusive One, or Being-for-self, suppresses itself. The qualitative character, which in the One or unit has reached the extreme point of its characterisation, has thus passed over into determinateness (quality) suppressed, i.e. into Being as Quantity.

The philosophy of the Atomists is the doctrine in which the Absolute is formulated as Being-for-self, as One, and many ones. And it is the repulsion, which shows itself in the notion of the One, which is assumed as the fundamental force in these atoms. But instead of attraction, it is Accident, that is, mere unintelligence, which is expected to bring them together. So long as the One is fixed as one, it is certainly impossible to regard its congression with others as anything but external and mechanical. The Void, which is assumed as the complementary principle to the atoms, is repulsion and nothing else, presented under the image of the nothing existing between the atoms. Modern Atomism — and physics is still in principle atomistic — has surrendered the atoms so far as to pin its faith on molecules or particles. In doing so, science has come closer to sensuous conception, at the cost of losing the precision of thought. To put an attractive by the side of a repulsive force, as the moderns have done, certainly gives completeness to the contrast: and the discovery of this natural force, as it is called, has been a source of much pride. But the mutual implication of the two, which makes what is true and concrete in them, would have to be wrested from the obscurity and confusion in which they were left even in Kant’s Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science. In modern times the importance of the atomic theory is even more evident in political than in physical science. According to it, the will of individuals as such is the creative principle of the State: the attracting force is the special wants and inclinations of individuals; and the Universal, or the State itself, is the external nexus of a compact.

(1) The Atomic philosophy forms a vital stage in the historical evolution of the Idea. The principle of that system may be described as Being-for-itself in the shape of the Many. At present, students of nature who are anxious to avoid metaphysics turn a favourable ear to Atomism. But it is not possible to escape metaphysics and cease to trace nature back to terms of thought, by throwing ourselves into the arms of Atomism. The atom, in fact, is itself a thought; and hence the theory which holds matter to consist of atoms is a metaphysical theory.

Newton gave physics an express warning to beware of metaphysics, it is true, but to his honour be it said, he did not by any means obey his own warning. The only mere physicists are the animals: they alone do not think: while man is a thinking being and a born metaphysician. The real question is not whether we shall apply metaphysics, but whether our metaphysics are of the right kind: in other words, whether we are not, instead of the concrete logical Idea, adopting one-sided forms of thought, rigidly fixed by understanding, and making these the basis of our theoretical as well as our practical work. It is on this ground that one objects to the Atomic philosophy.

The old Atomists viewed the world as a many, as their successors often do to this day. On chance they laid the task of collecting the atoms which float about in the void. But, after all, the nexus binding the many with one another is by no means a mere accident: as we have already remarked, the nexus founded on their very nature.

To Kant we owe the completed theory of matter as the unity of repulsion and attraction. The theory is correct, so far as it recognises attraction to be the other of the two elements involved in the notion of being-for-self: and to be an element no less essential than repulsion to constitute matter. Still, this dynamic construction of matter, as it is termed, has the fault of taking for granted, instead of deducing, attraction and repulsion. Had they been deduced, we should then have seen the How and Why of a unity which is merely asserted. Kant ... [insisted that] matter must be regarded as consisting solely in their unity.

German physicists for some time accepted this pure dynamic. But in spite of this, the majority of these physicists in modern times have found it more convenient to return to the Atomic point of view, and in spite of the warnings of Kästner, one of their number, have begun to regard Matter as consisting of infinitesimally small particles, termed ‘atoms which atoms have then to be brought into relation with one another by the play of forces attaching to them-attractive, repulsive, or whatever they may be. This too is metaphysics; and metaphysics which, for its utter unintelligence, there would be sufficient reason to guard against.


Quantity and Quality

(2) The transition from Quality to Quantity, indicated in the paragraph before us, is not found in our ordinary way of thinking, which deems each of these categories to exist independently beside the other. We are in the habit of saying that things are not merely qualitatively, but also quantitatively defined; but whence these categories originate, and how they are related to each other, are questions not further examined. The fact is, quantity just means quality superseded and absorbed: and it is by the dialectic of quality here examined that this supersession is effected.

First of all, we had Being: as the truth of Being, came Becoming: which formed the passage into Being Determinate: and the truth of that we found to be Alteration. And in its result Alteration showed itself to be Being-for-self, finally, in the two sides of the process, Repulsion and Attraction, was clearly seen to annul itself, and thereby to annul quality in the totality of its stages.

Still this superseded and absorbed quality is neither an abstract nothing, nor an equally abstract and featureless being: it is only being as indifferent to determinateness or character. This aspect of being is also what appears as quantity in our ordinary conceptions. We observe things, first of all, with an eye to their quality — which we take to be the character identical with the being of the thing. If we proceed to consider their quantity, we get the conception of an indifferent and external character or mode, of such a kind that a thing remains what it is, though its quantity is altered, and the thing becomes greater or less.

B. QUANTITY

C. MEASURE

§ 107

Measure is the qualitative quantum, in the first place as immediate — a quantum, to which a determinate being or a quality is attached.

Measure, where quality and quantity are in one, is thus the completion of Being. Being, as we first apprehend it, is something utterly abstract and characterless; but it is the very essence of Being to characterise itself, and its complete characterisation is reached in Measure. Measure, like the other stages of Being, may serve as a definition of the Absolute; God, it has been said, is the Measure of all things. It is this idea which forms the ground-note of many of the ancient Hebrew hymns, in which the glorification of God tends in the main to show that he has appointed to everything its bound: to the sea and the solid land, to the rivers and mountains; and also to the various kinds of plants and animals. To the religious sense of the Greeks the divinity of measure, especially in respect of social ethics, was represented by Nemesis. That conception implies a general theory that all human beings, riches, honour, and power, as well as joy and pain, have their definite measure, the transgression of which brings ruin and destruction. In the world of objects too, we have measure. We see, in the first place, existences in Nature, of which measure forms the essential structure. This is the case, for example, with the solar system, which may be described as the realm of free measures. As we next proceed to the study of inorganic nature, measure retires, as it were, into the background; at least we often find the quantitative and qualitative characteristics showing indifference to each other. Thus the quality of a rock or a river is not tied to a definite magnitude.

But even these objects when closely inspected are found to be not quite measureless: the water of a river, and the single constituents of a rock, when chemically analysed, are seen to be qualities conditioned by the quantitative ratios between the matters they contain. In organic nature, however, measure again rises into immediate perception. The various kinds of plants and animals, in the whole as well as in their parts, have a certain measure: though it is worth noticing that the more imperfect forms, those which are least removed from inorganic nature, are partly distinguished from the higher forms by the greater indefiniteness of their measure. Thus among fossils we find some ammonites discernible only by the microscope and others as large as a cart-wheel. The same vagueness of measure appears in several plants, which stand on a low level of organic development — for instance ferns.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Could not fit all this on one page.

Here is the rest of this exciting stuff:


In so far as in Measure quality and quantity are only in immediate unity, to that extent their difference presents itself in a manner equally immediate. Two cases are then possible. Either the specific quantum or measure is a bare quantum, and the definite being (there-and-then) is capable of an increase or a diminution, without Measure (which to that extent is a Rule) being thereby set completely aside. Or the alteration of the quantum is also an alteration of the quality.

The identity between quantity and quality, which is found in Measure, is at first only implicit, and not yet explicitly realised. In other words, these two categories, which unite in Measure, each claim an independent authority. On the one hand, the quantitative features of existence may be altered, without affecting its quality. On the other hand, this increase and diminution, immaterial though it be, has its limit, by exceeding which the quality suffers change. Thus the temperature of water is, in the first place, a point of no consequence in respect of its liquidity: still with the increase of diminution of the temperature of the liquid water, there comes a point where this state of cohesion suffers a qualitative change, and the water is converted into steam or ice. A quantitative change takes place, apparently without any further significance: but there is something lurking behind, and a seemingly innocent change of quantity acts as a kind of snare, to catch hold of the quality. The antinomy of Measure which this implies was exemplified under more than one garb among the Greeks. It was asked, for example, whether a single grain makes a heap of wheat, or whether it makes a bald-tail to tear out a single hair from the horse’s tail. At first, no doubt, looking at the nature of quantity as an indifferent and external character of being, we are disposed to answer these questions in the negative. And yet, as we must admit, this indifferent increase and diminution has its limit: a point is finally reached, where a single additional grain makes a heap of wheat; and the bald-tail is produced, if we continue plucking out single hairs. These examples find a parallel in the story of the peasant who, as his ass trudged cheerfully along, went on adding ounce after ounce to its load, till at length it sunk under the unendurable burden. It would be a mistake to treat these examples as pedantic futility; they really turn on thoughts, an acquaintance with which is of great importance in practical life, especially in ethics. Thus in the matter of expenditure, there is a certain latitude within which a more or less does not matter; but when the Measure, imposed by the individual circumstances of the special case, is exceeded on the one side or the other, the qualitative nature of Measure (as in the above examples of the different temperature of water) makes itself felt, and a course, which a moment before was held good economy, turns into avarice or prodigality. The same principles may be applied in politics, when the constitution of a state has to be looked at as independent of, no less than as dependent on, the extent of its territory, the number of its inhabitants, and other quantitative points of the same kind. If we look, e.g. at a state with a territory of ten thousand square miles and a population of four millions we should, without hesitation, admit that a few square miles of land or a few thousand inhabitants more or less could exercise no essential influence on the character of its constitution. But on the other hand, we must not forget that by the continual increase or diminishing of a state, we finally get to a point where, apart from all other circumstances, this quantitative alteration alone necessarily draws with it an alteration in the quality of the constitution. The constitution of a little Swiss canton does not suit a great kingdom; and, similarly, the constitution of the Roman republic was unsuitable when transferred to the small imperial towns of Germany.

§ 109

In this case, when a measure through its quantitative nature has gone in excess of its qualitative character, we meet what is at first an absence of measure, the Measureless. But seeing that the second quantitative ratio, which in comparison with the first is measureless, is none the less qualitative, the measureless is also a measure. These two transitions, from quality to quantum, and from the latter back again to quality, may be represented under the image of an infinite progression-as the self-abrogation and restoration of measure in the measureless.

Quantity, as we have seen, is not only capable of alteration, i.e. of increase or diminution: it is naturally and necessarily a tendency to exceed itself. This tendency is maintained even in measure. But if the quantity present in measure exceeds a certain limit, the quality corresponding to it is also put in abeyance. This however is not a negation of quality altogether, but only of this definite quality, the place of which is at once occupied by another. This process of measure, which appears alternately as a mere change in quantity, and then as a sudden revulsion of quantity into quality, may be envisaged under the figure of a nodal (knotted) line. Such lines we find in Nature under a variety of forms. We have already referred to the qualitatively different states of aggregation water exhibits under increase or diminution of temperature. The same phenomenon is presented by the different degrees in the oxidation of metals. Even the difference of musical notes may be regarded as an example of what takes place in the process of measure the revulsion from what is at first merely quantitative into qualitative alteration.

§ 110

What really takes place here is that the immediacy, which still attaches to measure as such, is set aside. In measure, at first, quality and quantity itself are immediate, and measure is only their ‘relative’ identity. But measure shows itself absorbed and superseded in the measureless: yet the measureless, although it be the negation of measure, is itself a unity of quantity and quality. Thus in the measureless the measure is still seen to meet only with itself.

§ 111

Instead of the more abstract factors, Being and Nothing, some and other, etc., the Infinite, which is affirmation as a negation of negation, now finds its factors in quality and quantity. These (a) have in the first place passed over quality into quantity (§ 98), and quantity into quality (§ 105), and thus are both shown up as negations. (b) But in their unity, that is, in measure, they are originally distinct, and the one is only through the instrumentality of the other. And (g) after the immediacy of this unity has turned out to be self-annulling, the unity is explicitly put as what it implicitly is, simple relation-to-self, which contains in it being and all its forms absorbed. Being or immediacy, which by the negation of itself is a mediation with self and a reference to self — which consequently is also a mediation which cancels itself into reference to self, or immediacy — is Essence.

The process of measure, instead of being only the wrong infinite of an endless progression, in the shape of an ever-recurrent recoil from quality to quantity and from quantity to quality, is also a true infinity of coincidence with self in other. In measure, quality and quantity originally confront each other, like some and other. But quality is implicitly quantity and conversely quantity is implicitly quality. In the process of measure, therefore, these two pass into each other: each of them becomes what it already was implicitly: and thus we get Being thrown into abeyance and absorbed, with its several characteristics negatived. Such Being is Essence. Measure is implicitly Essence; and its process consists in realising what it is implicitly. The ordinary consciousness conceives things as being, and studies them in quality, quantity, and measure. These immediate characteristics, however, soon show themselves to be not fixed but transient; and Essence is the result of their dialectic.

In the sphere of Essence one category does not pass into another, but refers to another merely. In Being, the form of reference is purely due to our reflection on what takes place: but it is the special and proper characteristic of Essence. In the sphere of Being, when somewhat becomes another, the somewhat has vanished. Not so in Essence: here there is no real other, but only diversity, reference of the one to its other. The transition of Essence is therefore at the same time no transition: for in the passage of different into different, the different does not vanish: the different terms remain in their relation. When we speak of Being and Nought, Being is independent, so is Nought. The case is otherwise with the Positive and the Negative. No doubt these possess the characteristic of Being and Nought. But the Positive by itself has no sense; it is wholly in reference to the negative. And it is the same with the negative.

In the sphere of Being the reference of one term to another is only implicit; in Essence on the contrary it is explicit. And this in general is the distinction between the forms of Being and Essence: in Being everything is immediate, in Essence everything is relative.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/.../sl/slbeing.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slbeing.htm)

:wacko: :wacko: :wacko: :wacko: :wacko: :wacko:

With 'theory' like this to guide dialecticians, is it any wonder Dialectical Marxism has been such a monumental failure?

[Volderbeek]

Yes, yes, V, this has already been dealt with (you need to read more carefully) -- these are full of incomprehensible verbiage.

How can anyone possibly define something in terms that are not understood, or are incapable of being understood?

Try the link. No verbiage there.


You are like the person who, when asked to define the 'Trinity', comes up with:

http://www.ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html
Glad you brought that up; that's a perfect example of real mysticism. They literally tell you not to bother trying to understand. Dialectics, on the other hand, is a method of comprehension.


So, these alleged 'definitions' are not definitions, merely long-winded exercises in the aimless knitting-together of jargon.Makes sense to me.


This is a site for materialists and atheists, not closet theists like you.No, this site is for leftists. You don't have to believe in foolishness like materialism and atheism - standard blunders of "Marxist" theorists. Fundamentalist atheists (usually liberal positivists) are no better than Christian and Islamic fundies, and materialism has been outdated for years (what is matter anyway?).


Now, let's see you tackle 'node' -- or even 'leap'.Node is similar to a saturation point, and a leap is when you make revolution. :che::castro::trotski:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


No verbiage there.

I did, and there's even more than at your blog.


Glad you brought that up; that's a perfect example of real mysticism. They literally tell you not to bother trying to understand. Dialectics, on the other hand, is a method of comprehension.

It does not seem to have worked on you.


Makes sense to me.

Let's see you explain it then.


No, this site is for leftists. You don't have to believe in foolishness like materialism and atheism - standard blunders of "Marxist" theorists. Fundamentalist atheists (usually liberal positivists) are no better than Christian and Islamic fundies, and materialism has been outdated for years (what is matter anyway?).

Eh?


Node is similar to a saturation point, and a leap is when you make revolution

Still no clearer then.