At 11:11 PM -0700 6/14/00, Paul H. Dillon wrote:
"Hegel has an interesting comment in the Science of the Logic about tautology that bears also on the relationship between everyday and scientific language and reasoning: "When a crystalline form is explained by saying that is has its ground in the particular arrangement which the molecules form with one another, the fact is that the existent crystalline form is this very arrangement that is adduced as ground. In ordinary life, these aetiologies, which are the prerogative of science, count for what they are, tautological empty talk. To answer the question, why is this person going to town, with the reason, the ground, that it is because there is an attractive force in the town which urges him in that direction, is to give the kind of reply that is sanctioned in the sciences but outside of them counted as absurd." (SL, Miller, p 458) "
The paragraph is delightful reading to an experimental atomic and molecular physicist, who can and will talk about the electromagnetic forces urging electrons to strike the phosphor on your monitor, that displays the very words you are reading now. It is also *really neat* that a bending of Marx's/Paul's words (quoted later) forms an interjection with which I am comfortable:
Dialectical materialism answers the question concerning the origin of scientific ideas and thereby what counts as true as follows: "Upon the different forms of scientific instrumentation, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life. Science creates and forms them out of its material and instrumental foundations and out of the corresponding social relations. The single individual, who derives them through tradition and scientific apprenticeship, may imagine that they form the real motives and starting points of his activity." (Marx - 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte." The key here is "different forms of scientific instrumentation". Marx understood the periodization of history in terms of "modes of production": the mode of production is not simply the production of physical existence of individuals, "Rather it a definite form of activity of scientific individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part." The scale on which Marx ABSTRACTLY organized the succession of modes of production was "the extent to which each has developed its productive forces, the division of labour and internal intercourse." Division of labour being the most manifest expression of the development of productive forces and "The various stages of development in the division of labour are just so many different forms of ownership" (Marx, German Ideology).
Apologies to Marx and Dillon.
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley College
29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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