[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: The protectors of the Amazon

Tue Sep 17 22:56:26 PDT 2019

David, I seem to recall that Engels also took atoms to be an 
unprovable hypothesis. The point for Hegel though is that 
the question of atoms or not is not a philosophical 
question, but one which can only be resolved by experiment, 
and like Engels, he simply failed to imagine that such a 
thing was possible. Einstein observed atoms c. 1905 via a 
mathematical analysis of Brownian motion. Another great 
philosopher, maybe you remember who, claimed that although 
we could see the Sun, we could not, in principle, ever know 
what it is made of. Optical spectrometry of course put an 
end to that,

In general, Hegel underestimated the potential for expansion 
of the domain of natural scientific and technical discovery. 
But he updated his philosophy as new insights became 
available, as we all do.

Andy

------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Hegel for Social Movements <https://brill.com/view/title/54574>
Home Page <https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
On 18/09/2019 2:50 pm, David Kellogg wrote:
> While I was (gratefully) checking out this material (and 
> also the previously sent material from Mike on the APA 
> deep poverty challenge) I was turning over in my head the 
> last discussion we had on Hegel and social movements. 
> Andy's book prompted me to dig out my dog-eared copy of 
> Hegel's Logic and give it another go, and this time I did 
> find it went a lot more easily (for which to Andy many 
> thanks).
>
> But I had to cough a bit over Hegel's rejection of atoms. 
> On the one hand, he says, there isn't and can never be any 
> empirical evidence for them. On the other, he says, 
> physics is just miring us in matter, distracting us from 
> our real task, which is a new kind of metaphysics that can 
> overleap mathematics, matter, and elemental sciences stuck 
> in Being merely and establish a true science of the whole 
> (his encyclopedia of philosophy, of which the logic is a 
> part). As usual, when I come up against stuff like this in 
> Hegel, I try hard to imagine what the world really looks 
> like to nineteenth century German philosopher, where atoms 
> are an unproveable hypothesis and God is simply "pure" 
> reality. It still seems to me that what Hegel has to say 
> about atoms is embarrassing, dogmatic, and downright 
> foolish--but as soon as we transfer what he says to 
> sociology and psychology, he starts making sense.
>
> At the same time I've been rereading Darwin. One of the 
> things that struck me was how much Darwin was influenced 
> by political economy, and especially by Malthus. What 
> Darwin is really up to is taking Malthus OUT of sociology, 
> where it really is not very good at explaining things like 
> learning and development, collaboration, and culture 
> generally, and put him where he really belongs, biology, 
> where he really does help us to understand precisely why 
> learning doesn't seem to play much of a role in evolution 
> and speciation. It was Darwin's misfortune that many of 
> his most ardent epigones (e.g. Spencer) were essentially 
> Lamarckians who were trying to reverse what he did, 
> putting his biology back into political economy. It was 
> all of our misfortunes that this resulted in a highly 
> atomistic way of looking at culture, history, sociology 
> and psychology, in which the sole supra-individual unit 
> was a pseudo-biological category of race.
>
> Darwin only makes sense when you ratchet him down from 
> social theory to biology. Human  culture really doesn't 
> obey strict Darwinism anymore: agriculture and husbandry 
> mean we burn forests instead of hunting and gathering like 
> other species, and knowledge of how to do this is 
> essentially Lamarckian in the way it is handed down 
> through language. Similarly, Hegel only makes sense when 
> you ratchet him up from physics into social theory. Atoms 
> exist, and carbon dioxide is made of 'em, but that 
> doesn't tell us much about how to stop global warming. 
> Our, physics doesn't really have to listen to Hegel--there 
> is just too much empirical evidence for atoms--and the 
> proper name of the new kind of metaphysics that Hegel had 
> in mind is not metaphysics at all, but historico-cultural 
> psychology.
>
> (I have always wondered why my Geneva friends insist on 
> "historico-cultural" instead of cultural-historical, but I 
> think I know now...culture, e.g. guarding the amazon, is 
> the emerging concept of history and not the other way 
> around....).
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> New Article:
> Han Hee Jeung & David Kellogg (2019): A story without 
> SELF: Vygotsky’s
> pedology, Bruner’s constructivism and Halliday’s 
> construalism in understanding narratives by
> Korean children, Language and Education, DOI: 
> 10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
> To link to this article: 
> https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>
> Some e-prints available at:
> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KHRxrQ4n45t9N2ZHZhQK/full?target=10.1080/09500782.2019.1582663
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 13, 2019 at 8:02 AM Martin Packer 
> <mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
>
>>
>>
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>>         The Amazon Has True Champions
>>
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>>
>>     A season filled with intense, human-caused wildfires
>>     in the Amazon rainforest has burned thousands of
>>     square miles, turned the skies black and raised red
>>     flags on an international level. The number of fires
>>     is 85% higher than the previous year.
>>
>>     The Amazon is both the lungs and the heart of our
>>     planet.  It takes in enormous quantities of
>>     CO_2and_is thought to produce 12-20% of the world’s
>>     oxygen. It also acts as a biotic pump bringing rain
>>     into South America and all over the world. Without
>>     rainfall, there will be cultural and agricultural ruin.
>>
>>     Let’s credit those who have been and continue to act
>>     as its guardians. Over the course of thousands of
>>     years, the indigenous people of the Amazon have
>>     worked to preserve this diverse biome that has
>>     contributed immensely to the habitability of the planet.
>>
>>     They are the ones who can show us the way, we must
>>     support and follow them in order to save this vital
>>     ecosystem.
>>
>>     Help the indigenous people fight back
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>>
>>
>>     	
>>     *We Mapped All The Fires That Burned In The Amazon In
>>     August -*In 2019 there have been more than 90,000
>>     fires throughout the Amazon rainforest. In August,
>>     smoke from the burns blackened the sky in cities as
>>     distant as São Paulo and caught the world’s attention.
>>     -/BuzzFeed.News
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>>
>>
>>     	
>>     *The Amazon is burning. The climate is changing. And
>>     we're doing nothing to stop it -*The Amazon shouldn't
>>     sting your eyes with smoke, soak your shirt with
>>     sweat, and turn the sky dark but that is exactly what
>>     is happening when humans set fires there. -/CNN
>>     <http://click.email.cooleffect.org/?qs=a0ee0bd947143f7964bb7b7432a0a36ac19304c3baa64671ddf03f14dc0af3c43b3e67fadc5bf1b86108cfc77cea66754e0b7a4bbe7f088d>/
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>>
>>
>>     	
>>     *9 numbers you need to know to understand the Amazon
>>     fires - * Thousands of fires burning across Brazil’s
>>     Amazon rainforest have captured international
>>     attention over the past week. The fires are mainly
>>     set by ranchers and farmers seeking to clear land for
>>     cultivation. - /PBS
>>     <http://click.email.cooleffect.org/?qs=a0ee0bd947143f79773a84b6dbfc0fe08e32d70cbc4ea900bb434407a753519093bfd77cb9f380db8e8fb2ddedba66faefe06c60248605fe>/
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>>     	
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