Bill,
I don't understand your apologies since I don't really get your point: sub
species aeternitas? twist and shout?
Paul
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Barowy <wbarowy@lesley.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 6:33 AM
Subject: Re: Response to Jay Lemke - pt. 2
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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