Here is Aristotle's law of non contradiction.
One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”
In respect say to say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat
Schrödinger's cat
This is a thought experiment a cat is radiated in a box. In which;" when the box is opened, the universe (or at least the part of the universe containing the observer and cat) is split into two separate universes, one containing an observer looking at a box with a dead cat, one containing an observer looking at a box with a live cat."
Although this thought breaks Aristotles rule. It has a theoretical grounding in indeterminacy.
This thought experiment did not arise spontaneously. From Schrodingers uncertainty relation" an uncertainty relation arises between any two observable quantities that can be defined by non-commuting operators"
Now there is controversy, suddenly infinite universes start to appear.
Much of all this is in the realm of scientific imagination, even big bang theory is mostly theory.
Dialectics is not a specific method, in each case those who are consciously using dialectics as a tool look at the contradictions, and the parameters, and goes deeper and deeper into the problem until the cutting edge of the history of the problem is reached.
As Hegel says. "You cannot learn how to swim without jumping into the pool.''
A conscious dialectician such as Christopher Caudwell, reflected not just on the problem but the social nature of the problem.
"In every way, theory was drifting away from practice. Art was flying away from experience. Philosophy, even philosophy of science, was becoming increasingly remote from science. Positivism, in the name of science, was a philosophy alien to the realm of scientific experiment, and science without the appeal to experiment was pure scholasticism and alexandrian futility. A theory of science drifting further and further from scientific practice gave rise to more problems than it solved.
Thus the crisis in physics. It was a part of the general crisis in science, which in turn was part of the overall crisis in culture. Caudwell saw a causal connection between the crisis in physics and that in biology, psychology, economics, morality, politics, art and, indeed, life as a whole. In a society in which consciousness had become so separated from its environment, because the thinking class had become so separated from the working class, there was growing intellectual fragmentation and cultural disorientation. Consciousness tended to gather at one pole and activity at the other, causing distortion of both. " Hannah Shennan.
Dialectics is not the forms and struggles of opposites per se but this applied to actual matter. Giving problems their context, not necessarily their solution, but perhaps to bring conditions amenable to their solution.
Yet even in a specific problem in which a dialectician was involved is captured by is history.
"At this point I bring this history of Philosophy to a close. It has been my desire that you should learn from it that the history of Philosophy is not a blind collection of fanciful ideas, nor a fortuitous progression. I have rather sought to show the necessary development of the successive philosophies from one another, so that the one of necessity presupposes another preceding it. The general result of the history of Philosophy is this: in the first place, that throughout all time there has been only one Philosophy, the contemporary differences of which constitute the necessary aspects of the one principle; in the second place, that the succession of philosophic systems is not due to chance, but represents the necessary succession of stages in the development of this science; in the third place, that the final philosophy of a period is the result of this development, and is truth in the highest form which the self-consciousness of spirit affords of itself. The latest philosophy contains therefore those which went before; it embraces in itself all the different stages thereof; it is the product and result of those that preceded it." Hegel "History of philosophy."
This latter statement is the key statement in dialectics. As it is true in Hegel's philosophy it is also true in Marx's political economy.
Marx dissects previous theory in order to come up with is own.
To think that dialectics is a mystical conjuring trick is just poppycock and insult to the great intellectual efforts of many great thinkers.
"Great deeds are done, when men and mountains meet that are not done by jostling in the street.
The study of writings on dialectics has to be tempered by practice.
All of these guides as such are useless outside of actual study.
a development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis ("the negation of the negation"),
* a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line;
* a development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions; - breaks in continuity";
* the transformation of quantity into quality;
* inner impulses towards development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given society;
* the interdependence and the closest and indissoluble connection between all aspects of any phenomenon
These are things that happen, like shit happens, but unless you are in the middle of some real study of the history of anything. Then they will not serve very well.
Though I do think dialectical study, helps to make one quick witted and to develop
a rich sense of irony.
Postmodern philosophy is bourgeois decadence, basically irrationalism. The destruction of reason itself, by throwing mud, and dumbed down scientific formulations, at scientific thought at its height. Modern Socialists should not capitulate to it.
Man's dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once.He must so live that dying he can say, all my life and all my strength have been given to the greatest cause in the world, the liberation of mankind
Ostrovski
Muriel Spark:
If I had my life to live over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.
