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| Marx's work was never finished |
In watching David Harvey's excellent series of lectures upon Grundrisse by Karl Marx, the vast differences in efficacy, between these two approaches, were laid out very clearly, enabling us to seriously address the vastly overdue, and absolutely essential Critique of the current Theoretical Bases within all the Sciences in General, and, for this physicist, of Sub Atomic Physics in particular.
For, ever since the wholly illegitimate transfer of pure Mathematical Rationality to both General Reasoning and the Sciences, there also has become established, as the primary goal of all Investigative Experiments and Explanatory Theories, to exclusively seek-out the supposed-to-exist "Eternal Natural Laws", which are considered (according to that unavoidably-involved Principle of Plurality) to be the sole causes of all known phenomena, acting as constantly-unchanging and forever-existing Laws determining everything.
Now, if there is a paramount purpose in Marx's founding of Dialectical Materialism, it was to break all Reasoning free from that incorrect restriction.
Yet, of course, the idea behind its then wholesale transfer to other Disciplines, was to also endow these important intellectual activities too, with the very same powers and facilities delivered to Mathematics, in these important areas also. But Mathematics, regards only the properties and relationships between the whole range of Pure Forms, which certainly DO NOT, and indeed CANNOT, change qualitatively - only quantitatively.
So, they have to be fixed in quality for the whole consequent set of mathematical processes to actually work.
But, of course, Mathematics does NOT evolve, as both Reasoning and Science certainly do, so Plurality is a perfectly legitimate characteriser of the Contents involved there, and nowhere else!
For, everywhere else, the relations between concepts are NEVER FIXED forever.
Mankind was originally faced with a completely unsolveable set of problems when addressing just such areas, precisely because of the unavoidable mutual effects between ALL the always both conceptually-simplified and purposely-physically-restricted relations, that we had only been able to extract in very different and necessary circumstances. And literally NONE of them, outside of those special naturally pluralist circumstances, were ever Eternal and Unchanging!
In fact, the main approach that Mankind had discovered, in order to deliver such conclusions, was only ever possible if the Context was artificially achieved and firmly maintained to only deliver a distorted reflection of the real World, which had thereby been forcibly endowed with just those relations alone.
Such a situation wasn't ever evident in Reasoning, as this was a purely cerebral activity: but in the Sciences, there had developed a means of Experimental investigation to reveal and extract just such artificially-Fixed Laws - but, of course, they would ONLY be legitimate for USE within the precise contexts from which they had been extracted. They couldn't be generally true.
Nevertheless, Pluralistic Science did indeed enable a consequent Technology which created an effective illusion of this being the case, making a whole range of successful Productive Activities both possible and successfully achieved.
But, Mankind, along with their hominid predecessors, had successfully made some progress over vast periods of time, primarily through a pragmatic approach to reality, which offered many practical solutions but little deep understanding.
And, since the Greek Intellectual Revolution, the transfer of Mathematical Rationality, nevertheless vastly increased what they could do - so why would it be questioned?
At the same time, the apparent Stability of the Heavens gave them a perfect arena for successfully employing such means to their view of the entire Universe.
But, to achieve a result via such methods, even in arranged-for circumstances, meant a separate experiment for each and every-single-Law presumed to be involved: and a whole series of production processes, one for each such Law, to, overall, deliver something like the expected result! So, an actual all-laws-present-simultaneously type real situation, as could, and mostly did, happen in Reality-as-is, would never be possible, because those many individually achieved laws don't just add-up like Lego bricks, they actually qualitatively-affect-one-another, in currently unknown ways.
So, the usually-trusted "Scientific Methods" could never replicate the natural effects going on in Reality-as-is situations! Clearly, what was needed to be able to tackle any complex events in Reality-as-is, could never be replicated by such usual purely technological means. And, even more important, the situations, in which outcomes qualitatively changed couldn't be replicated.
As Hegel (for Reasoning), and Marx (for Science), had found out, the pluralist approach was totally incapable of ever tackling qualitative complexity anywhere.
And they began to investigate Dialectics, which deliberately included such mutual effects, and that also involved tracing complex trajectories to many such mutual effects, also taking into account the always changing, and continuously-produced Contexts, as the resulting sequence of Phases, at varying tempos aequentially-occurred, and had to be both identified, time-located, and then appropriately dealt with.
Now, this might validly seem to be wholly impossible!
As the tempos of such Phases are often too swift to catch, or too slow to observe in their totality!
So, Marx in transferring Dialectics also to the Concretely Existing World, had History and Geology as informative partial records, and realised that those perfect examples of such "Interludes of Dramatic Qualitative Changes" - in Social Revolutions, which occurred at a tempo discernible by suitably trained observers, who would always be available in such tumultuous times.
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| Jules Michelet |
And, in Marx's time, The French Revolution had only recently finished, and had been recorded in great detail by the excellent French Historian, Michelet. So Marx set about attempting to elicit the various Phases taking place over that tumultuous 25 years of Revolution. Instead of being swamped by everything affecting everything else incessantly, he found that he was able to discern the gradual establishments and dissolutions of the separate phases, due to their ripening causes, as they developed, and then as they were consumed and redirected in subsequently maturing new dominant phases. He could often, in fact, discern the overall trajectory of the interlude, and begin to reveal Qualitative Changes, their causes and effects, AND their transformations of the underlying, turbulent Context too.
Marx, brilliantly, began to construct a means of carrying out a Dialectical Analysis of an Interlude in History, that would throw light, for the first time ever, upon large scale Qualitative Change at ALL Levels in Mankind's studies of Reality-as-is, as well as what it certainly was within real Qualitative Episodes of revolutionary Changes!
A wholly New Level of Dynamic Qualitative Changes was coming into focus for the first time!
But, he also, and comprehensively, brought his new techniques, to a remarkable level of explanatory power (outside of Revolutions), in his brilliant 40 year-long dialectical analysis of Capitalist Economics in his major work Das Kapital.
For, in that 3-volume work, he not only used what he had learned from his studies of prior Revolutions, but also by literally evolving wholly new aspects of his methods, as-he-went: and thereby demonstrated the only proper way of developing such a Critique in any and indeed every new area of study!
Unfortunately for us all, he died before he could take things further beyond Das Kapital, and, thereafter, nobody tackled the most important area of Dialectical Science, until the work of this theorist some 125 years later.
And, as with the key experiences of Marx in addressing Economics, the trajectory and content of that work could NOT be merely transferred formally solely from the methods developed by Marx: for the Essence of the products of Dialectics, is that none of such processes can ever be predicted in advance, as can always be achieved with "single eternal Natural Laws" within pluralist situations and methodology.
For, Dialectics addresses simultaneous multi-law situations, with diverse outcomes, as the component laws actually affect-and-change one another, are contingent upon one another - and the situations involved necessarily bringing-about an overall restructuring that can seem unpredictable and chaotic.
Each Subject Area will require its own Dialectical detailed studies, and will produce its own characteristic developments! Indeed, instead of idealistic simplifications delivering what seem (erroneously) to be Universal Purely Formal Generalities, any generalities across different disciplines will only become evident only after such necessary studies, and absolutely never before them!
Dialectics doesn't deliver "formal generalities" to be applied everywhere, but, on the contrary, it delivers methods of study arising from the very different Holist view of Qualitative Changes and a resulting Evolution.
One thing that arose out of subsequent initial dialectical investigations, across-the-board, in diverse Disciplines, was the actual trajectory of a Transforming Interlude of Change (a revolution?), which indicated dynamic forms that had to arise to both dismantle old systems, as well as construct the New in such Interludes (though differing markedly at different Levels, were still necessary to articulate such radical and innovatory changes)!
POSTSCRIPT:
The general deterioration of the Sciences, and particularly Physics, was brought about by the universal adoption of Plurality (and all its consequences) originally due to the transfer of Mathematical Rationality to Science, but accelerated by the increasing demands to use its gains in Production and Technology: so Physics was the first to be facing-both-ways as insisted upon by Poincaré and Mach, and composed of both causal Explanations, along with useable Equations, but ultimately impelled by the contradictions and impasses in explanation caused by Plurality, finally transferred wholesale to a uniformly pluralist stance by the abandonment of Explanation for Mathematics!
Indeed, considering the efforts of this Researcher (a physicist) over the last decade: he was initially incapable of making comprehensive inroads into an intended Critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, due, in no small measure, to certain philosophical tricks and fudges instituted originally by Werner Heisenberg, and consolidated wholly pluralistically, by the consequent Mathematically-orientated so-called Theoretical Physicists, whose welcoming milieu was now completely Pluralistic - because it is entirely mathematically driven, with what is left of "explanation" shrinking to a mere commentary upon the "Mathematical Theory" which determines everything.
And, it was unchallegeably re-directed by certain theoretical moves - like the total abandonment of any kind of Universe-Wide propagating Medium - that left whole areas of the subject based solely upon Pluralist Mathematical Equations, and literally NO physical causes whatsoever.
The initial direction, in attempting to find a solution, was therefore, and perhaps surprisingly re-directed towatds studying the methods of Abstraction, that had been involved, and where they were illegitimate!
And this revealed, very clearly, that the foundations of Mathematics had always been based, NOT upon Concrete Reality, but upon Simplified Relateable Abstractions ONLY, so placing that Discipline wholly within the Realm of Idealism and NOT materialist concrete Reality.
And, even then, a really effective start could not yet be made, unless a sound basis was established for both Propagation and Action-at-a-Distance, in so-called Totally Empty Space was adequately explained.
A Purely Theoretical Investigation, involving a currently undetectable, but materially-existing Universal Substrate, was assumed, and an attempt made to define its properties, in order to explain all the anomalies of the Full Set of Double Slit Experiments, that had precipitated The Copemhagen Stance, which was carried through to delivering a completely materialistic set of Explanations for physical phenomena.
And this was indeed achieved by temporarily considering-and-using a mutually-orbiting pair consisting of a Negatively-charged, ordinary matter Electron, and a Positively-charged, antimatter Positron, which had briefly been observed in the Accelerator at Fermilab, and named the Positronium, where it was dismissed as an unstable ephemeral, but instead was here considered, in this Theoretical Experiment, as Stable-within-the-Suabstrate, and renamed (for the theoretical Experiment) as a Neutritron - a wholly neutral joint particle, undetectable by current means, and a Unit of the proposed Universal Substrate (supporting evidence lies in unexplained pair production / annihilation which produce these very component particles, seemingly out of 'nothing', Double Slit experiment outcomes and Yves Couder's experiments using Quantum analogs).
Remarkably, this theoretical entity, devised through a dialectical re-evaluation of Physics, was able to deliver everything that was needed to make the assumptions of Copenhagen in all the Double Slit Experiments totally unnecessary - the Neutritron explained them all!
Marx, brilliantly, began to construct a means of carrying out a Dialectical Analysis of an Interlude in History, that would throw light, for the first time ever, upon large scale Qualitative Change at ALL Levels in Mankind's studies of Reality-as-is, as well as what it certainly was within real Qualitative Episodes of revolutionary Changes!
A wholly New Level of Dynamic Qualitative Changes was coming into focus for the first time!
But, he also, and comprehensively, brought his new techniques, to a remarkable level of explanatory power (outside of Revolutions), in his brilliant 40 year-long dialectical analysis of Capitalist Economics in his major work Das Kapital.
For, in that 3-volume work, he not only used what he had learned from his studies of prior Revolutions, but also by literally evolving wholly new aspects of his methods, as-he-went: and thereby demonstrated the only proper way of developing such a Critique in any and indeed every new area of study!
Unfortunately for us all, he died before he could take things further beyond Das Kapital, and, thereafter, nobody tackled the most important area of Dialectical Science, until the work of this theorist some 125 years later.
And, as with the key experiences of Marx in addressing Economics, the trajectory and content of that work could NOT be merely transferred formally solely from the methods developed by Marx: for the Essence of the products of Dialectics, is that none of such processes can ever be predicted in advance, as can always be achieved with "single eternal Natural Laws" within pluralist situations and methodology.
For, Dialectics addresses simultaneous multi-law situations, with diverse outcomes, as the component laws actually affect-and-change one another, are contingent upon one another - and the situations involved necessarily bringing-about an overall restructuring that can seem unpredictable and chaotic.
Each Subject Area will require its own Dialectical detailed studies, and will produce its own characteristic developments! Indeed, instead of idealistic simplifications delivering what seem (erroneously) to be Universal Purely Formal Generalities, any generalities across different disciplines will only become evident only after such necessary studies, and absolutely never before them!
Dialectics doesn't deliver "formal generalities" to be applied everywhere, but, on the contrary, it delivers methods of study arising from the very different Holist view of Qualitative Changes and a resulting Evolution.
One thing that arose out of subsequent initial dialectical investigations, across-the-board, in diverse Disciplines, was the actual trajectory of a Transforming Interlude of Change (a revolution?), which indicated dynamic forms that had to arise to both dismantle old systems, as well as construct the New in such Interludes (though differing markedly at different Levels, were still necessary to articulate such radical and innovatory changes)!
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| Diagram of a Trajectory of an Emergence |
POSTSCRIPT:
The general deterioration of the Sciences, and particularly Physics, was brought about by the universal adoption of Plurality (and all its consequences) originally due to the transfer of Mathematical Rationality to Science, but accelerated by the increasing demands to use its gains in Production and Technology: so Physics was the first to be facing-both-ways as insisted upon by Poincaré and Mach, and composed of both causal Explanations, along with useable Equations, but ultimately impelled by the contradictions and impasses in explanation caused by Plurality, finally transferred wholesale to a uniformly pluralist stance by the abandonment of Explanation for Mathematics!
Indeed, considering the efforts of this Researcher (a physicist) over the last decade: he was initially incapable of making comprehensive inroads into an intended Critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, due, in no small measure, to certain philosophical tricks and fudges instituted originally by Werner Heisenberg, and consolidated wholly pluralistically, by the consequent Mathematically-orientated so-called Theoretical Physicists, whose welcoming milieu was now completely Pluralistic - because it is entirely mathematically driven, with what is left of "explanation" shrinking to a mere commentary upon the "Mathematical Theory" which determines everything.
And, it was unchallegeably re-directed by certain theoretical moves - like the total abandonment of any kind of Universe-Wide propagating Medium - that left whole areas of the subject based solely upon Pluralist Mathematical Equations, and literally NO physical causes whatsoever.
The initial direction, in attempting to find a solution, was therefore, and perhaps surprisingly re-directed towatds studying the methods of Abstraction, that had been involved, and where they were illegitimate!
And this revealed, very clearly, that the foundations of Mathematics had always been based, NOT upon Concrete Reality, but upon Simplified Relateable Abstractions ONLY, so placing that Discipline wholly within the Realm of Idealism and NOT materialist concrete Reality.
 |
| Diagram of the Processes and Productions of Abstraction |
A Purely Theoretical Investigation, involving a currently undetectable, but materially-existing Universal Substrate, was assumed, and an attempt made to define its properties, in order to explain all the anomalies of the Full Set of Double Slit Experiments, that had precipitated The Copemhagen Stance, which was carried through to delivering a completely materialistic set of Explanations for physical phenomena.
And this was indeed achieved by temporarily considering-and-using a mutually-orbiting pair consisting of a Negatively-charged, ordinary matter Electron, and a Positively-charged, antimatter Positron, which had briefly been observed in the Accelerator at Fermilab, and named the Positronium, where it was dismissed as an unstable ephemeral, but instead was here considered, in this Theoretical Experiment, as Stable-within-the-Suabstrate, and renamed (for the theoretical Experiment) as a Neutritron - a wholly neutral joint particle, undetectable by current means, and a Unit of the proposed Universal Substrate (supporting evidence lies in unexplained pair production / annihilation which produce these very component particles, seemingly out of 'nothing', Double Slit experiment outcomes and Yves Couder's experiments using Quantum analogs).
Remarkably, this theoretical entity, devised through a dialectical re-evaluation of Physics, was able to deliver everything that was needed to make the assumptions of Copenhagen in all the Double Slit Experiments totally unnecessary - the Neutritron explained them all!
