[Xmca-l] Re: Laws of evolution and laws of history

[Andy Blunden]

And I found the Engels he was quoting, in the Russian translation:

    /Вечные законы природы /также превращаются все более и более в
    исторические законы.

The English translation says:

    The eternal laws of nature also become transformed more and more
    into historical ones.

but then it goes on to say:

    That water is fluid from 0°-100° C. is an eternal law of nature, but
    for it to be valid, there must be (1) water, (2) the given
    temperature, (3) normal pressure.

So this does NOT mean what it appeared to mean. Engels simply means 
"nothing remains constant" It is not saying anything about "laws of 
history"!!

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


mike cole wrote:
> Thanks David -- That is certainly where I must have encountered the phrase
> often enough for it to stick in my mind. And thanks to Jessica and Andy we
> see versions of the idea in many places.
>
> Double the pleasure.
> mike
>
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:36 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>   
>> Mike--
>>
>> See Vol. Four of the Collected Works in English: the quote you refer to is
>> the epigraph to HDHMF. It's from Dialectics of Nature, and Vygotsky keeps
>> coming back to it again and again, throughout the whole text of HDHMF,
>> which is one reason why I am assuming (against what Anton Yasnitsky has
>> written) that HDHMF is a whole book, one of the very few that Vygotsky
>> completedly completed (and also his longest work).
>>     
>