Change Through "Internal Contradiction"
Readers will need to make note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final view on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'.
If you are viewing this with Mozilla Firefox you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used.
This Essay is just under 34,000 words long; a summary of its main ideas can be found here.
Quick Links
Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections:
(1) Have Dialecticians Refuted Newton?
(a) How Many Dialecticians Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?
(2) Unfair To Lenin?
(a) There Must Be Some Explanation
(b) Systematic Or Objectual Change?
(i) Causation: Internal Or External -- The Problem Stated
(ii) Contradictions Begin 'Who Knows Where?'
(3) Contradictions And Causation: Internal Or External?
(a) Yet More Dialectical Equivocation
(b) Atomism Returns To Haunt Dialectics
(c) Nixoned
(e) Retreat Into The Concrete Bunker
(4) The Total Confidence Trick
(5) Decision Time
(6) Everything You Wanted To Know About HEX
(b) Any The Wiser?
(7) Idealism Rears Its Ugly Head
(9) Notes
(10) References
Abbreviations Used At This
Site
Have Dialecticians Refuted Newton?
In this Essay, the claim that change is the result of "internal contradictions" will be critically examined.
How Many Dialecticians Does It Take To Change A Light-Bulb?
First, consider a question that is well worth asking: Do objects move one another, themselves, or a bit of both?
Dialecticians have a revolutionary answer. But you might not like it.
Lenin put things this way:
"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites. The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).
"In the first conception of motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of 'self-movement'.
"The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.
"The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Italic emphases in the original. Bold emphases added.]
This is a rather odd passage since it seems to suggest that things can move themselves. If so, much of modern mechanics will need to be re-written. On this view, presumably, when someone throws a ball, the action of throwing does not in fact move the ball. On the contrary, the ball moves itself, and it knows exactly where it is going and how to get there, traversing its path independently of gravity. Intelligent projectiles like this, it seems, need no guidance systems -- they happily 'self-develop' from A to B like unerring homing pigeons. [If this seems unfair to Lenin, then please read Note 1 before proceeding -- or skip forward to here.].1
To make matters worse, Lenin did not assert this innovative piece of mechanics just the once:
"Nowadays, the ideas of development…as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegel…[encompass a process] that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis ('negation of negation'), a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line; -- a development by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions; -- 'breaks in continuity'; the transformation of quantity into quality; -- the inner impulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given society; -- the interdependence and the closest, indissoluble connection of all sides of every phenomenon…, a connection that provides a uniform, law-governed, universal process of motion -– such are some of the features of dialectics as a richer (than the ordinary) doctrine of development." [Lenin (1914), pp.12-13. Bold emphases added.]
Now, these comments come from a published essay (on Marx), so the loose phraseology associated with this new theory of motion cannot be put down to the fact that Lenin's earlier words appeared in unpublished notebooks.
Perhaps then this is the point of that old anti-dialectical joke:
Q: How many dialecticians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None at all, the light bulb changes itself.
A touch unfair? Maybe so, but could this scientific regression on Lenin's part (where he seems to want to return to Aristotelian theories of motion and change) be the result of a mere slip of the dialectical pen? Perhaps Lenin was using language non-literally or metaphorically. Indeed, this is what one or two bemused DM-fans tried to claim when confronted with this example of pre-Galilean mechanics -- which is a get-out that is worryingly reminiscent of the way that theologians used to try to rescue the Book of Genesis when faced with the discoveries of modern science.
Is it possible then that Lenin did not really mean what he said? Or is there a suggestion in what he did say that he thought change in fact has more complex, external causes, too?
Well, as if to disappoint his fans, and provide no help at all for those who still think that dialectics has anything of worth to teach modern science, Lenin not only repeated this odd claim, he "demanded" that all DL-fans see things this way:
"Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…." [Lenin (1921), p.90. Bold emphases in the original. Italic emphasis added.]
Here, not only are objects said to be capable of moving themselves, but Lenin even says that DL "requires" us to view motion in no other way.
[DL = Dialectical Logic.]
It looks, therefore, like Lenin was committed to the belief that not only can light bulbs change themselves, but also that books on dialectics write themselves -- and that DM-fans similarly fool themselves into believing far too much of what they found in Hegel.2
Well, perhaps Lenin was merely referring to the development of certain systems, and not the movement of objects from place to place? If so, the impertinent 'counter-example' from earlier (i.e., the one about light bulbs) would neither be valid nor sensible.
But Lenin's words were pretty clear; he asserted that DL demands and/or requires that "objects" (not processes, nor yet systems, but objects) be taken in "development, in 'self-movement'", so he included both -- development and self-movement -- in this caveat. And, all this is quite apart from the fact that, as we have seen, Lenin counterposed this view of reality to that of mechanical materialists, who hold that objects move because of the action of external forces:
"In the first conception of motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of 'self-movement'.
"The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new." [Lenin (1961), p.358. Bold emphasis alone added.]
There would be no contrast here if objects did not move themselves in the DM-scheme-of-things, both developmentally and as they move from place to place. As we will see, this is indeed how Lenin has since been interpreted by his epigones: holding to the view that things self-develop and self-locomote. [On this, see Note 3.]
Anyway, as we will also see, whatever Lenin intended, his 'innovative' mechanics cannot apply to nature. This is not so much because he was mistaken, but because it is entirely unclear what he could possibly have meant by what he said.
And Lenin was not alone in wanting to return modern science to this ancient 'theory' of change and motion, i.e., one that views nature as a living, self-developing organism, or as a Whole that contains nothing but organisms of this sort --, which, like animals, propel themselves about the place. On this view, nature is en-souled, enchanted, and all things are alive or are governed by some form of intelligence/will. [More on this in Essay Fourteen (summary here).]
Other DM-worthies have made similar claims. Here is Bukharin:
"The basis of all things is therefore the law of change, the law of constant motion. Two philosophers particularly (the ancient Heraclitus and the modern Hegel…) formulated this law of change, but they did not stop there. They also set up the question of the manner in which the process operates. The answer they discovered was that changes are produced by constant internal contradictions, internal struggle. Thus, Heraclitus declared: 'Conflict is the mother of all happenings,' while Hegel said: 'Contradiction is the power that moves things.'" [Bukharin (1925), pp.72-73. Bold emphases added.]
Not to be outdone, Plekhanov joined this backward-facing stampede, too:
"'All is flux, nothing is stationary,' said the ancient thinker from Ephesus. The combinations we call objects are in a state of constant and more or less rapid change…. In as much as they change and cease to exist as such, we must address ourselves to the logic of contradiction….
"…[M]otion does not only make objects…, it is constantly changing them. It is for this reason that the logic of motion (the 'logic of contradiction') never relinquishes its rights over the objects created by motion….
"With Hegel, thinking progresses in consequence of the uncovering and resolution of the contradictions inclosed (sic) in concepts. According to our doctrine…the contradictions embodied in concepts are merely reflections, translations into the language of thought, of those contradictions that are embodied in phenomena owing to the contradictory nature of their common basis, i.e., motion….
"…[T]he overwhelming majority of phenomena that come within the compass of the natural and the social sciences are among 'objects' of this kind…[:ones in which there is a coincidence of opposites]. Diametrically opposite phenomena are united in the simplest globule of protoplasm, and the life of the most undeveloped society…." [Plekhanov (1908), pp.92-96. Bold emphases alone added.]
Countless secondary DM-figures say more or less the same sort of thing.3
Unfortunately, Lenin and his co-dialecticians failed to take any real note of the origin of these ancient ideas: Hermetic Philosophy is based on the belief that the universe is alive; indeed it is a cosmic egg -- later transmogrified by Hegel into a Cosmic Ego.
Since eggs appear to develop all of their own, and because Hegel's immaterial and immanent cosmic Ego self-develops, it clearly seemed 'natural' for Lenin and his epigones to think this of nature, too.
Nevertheless, not even eggs develop of their own; in fact, it is hard to think of a single thing in the entire universe (of which we have any knowledge) that develops of its own, or which moves itself. Not even Capitalism does. Switch off the Sun and watch American Imperialism fold a whole lot quicker than Enron.4
And yet, if Lenin were correct, no object in the universe could possibly interact with any other (since that would amount to external causation, and objects would not be self-motivated). Self-motivated beings must, it seems, be causally isolated from their surroundings, or they would not be self-motivated. This in turn must mean that, despite appearances to the contrary, nothing in reality interacts with anything else. That would, of course, make a mockery of the other DM-claim that everything in reality is interconnected.
So, based on the bird-brained doctrines of ancient mystics, and no evidence at all, we find Lenin once again propounding cosmic ideas that do not make sense even in DM-terms -- and ones that not even chickens observe.
Hold Your Horses -- Unfair To Lenin?
There Must Be Some Explanation
But, perhaps all this is a bit too quick?
Maybe there is a way of interpreting Lenin (and those other DM-stalwarts) which prevents this self-destructing theory from moving itself even closer to the edge of the trash can of history?
Is there any way of preventing the contradictions that seem to lie at the heart of the DM-theory of change from tipping it over the edge, lemming-like, and into oblivion?
As this Essay will show, there isn't; by the end of Part Two it will be abundantly clear that the self-destruction of at least this part of DM is assured. Moreover, and ironically too, this sad denouement will not have been externally caused by me; it will have been entirely internally self-generated -- thanks to Hegel, his Hermetic forebears, and their Cosmic Egg.
Systematic -- Or Objectual Change?
So, is it possible that the above objections are a little too hasty? Is there a perfectly reasonable explanation that not only exonerates Lenin and other dialecticians, but also shows that they did not believe such crazy things?
In what follows I propose to examine a number of ways in which a case for the defence could be mounted -- however, that task has not been helped by the thoroughly confused way this doctrine has so far been presented by dialecticians. In fact, as we will see, they have simply recapitulated all the errors of traditional Ontology, but, in this case, in an entirely amateurish manner.
Or, to put this another way: if this were a trial, I'd be tempted to advise DM-fans to plead guilty and throw themselves on the mercy of the court.
TAR opened its discussion of DM with a consideration of CAR -- to which I earlier counter-posed its far more pernicious DM-opposite: HEX. We have already encountered several core HEX-type ideas: Totality, interconnectedness, mediation -- but here we meet change through 'internal contradiction'.5
[DM = Dialectical Materialism; HEX = Hegelian Expansionism; CAR = Cartesian Reductionism; TAR = The Algebra of Revolution (i.e., Rees (1998)); DB = Dialectical Biologist (i.e., Levins and Lewontin (1985)).]
However, there is an initial but no less important problem that requires resolution up front: i.e., the question whether causation is "internal" or "external" to an object, process or system. The contrast between these two different accounts of change, or at least the 'dialectical' relation between them, might allow defenders of Lenin to squirm their way out of the difficulties noted above.
Well, we shall see.
Causation: Internal Or External?
According to John Rees (quoting DB), CAR-theorists hold that:
"Causes are separate from effects, causes being properties of subjects and effects the properties of objects." [Rees (1998), p.4]
Rees went on to argue that one of the problems with this approach to causation is that it appeals to something Hegel called a "bad infinity", one involving endless 'external' causes. This avenue is to be deprecated, it seems, because:
"…it postulates an endless series of causes and effects regressing to 'who knows where?'" [Ibid., p.7.]
One implication of such 'externalist' theories of causation is that they:
"…leave the ultimate cause of events outside the events they describe. The cause is external to the system." [Ibid., p.7.]
On this account, CAR seems to imply (overtly or covertly) that, for instance, the universe has an external cause/origin --, something that clearly has unacceptable theistic implications (to which Lenin alluded, as we saw earlier):
"[N]ature forms a totality, which it must unless we depart from materialism completely and become believers in the supernatural…." [Ibid., p.78.]
However, with respect to other theorists who adopt various forms of 'externalism', Rees asserts that they:
"…often find themselves courting semi-mystical explanations of original cause." [Ibid., p.78.]
Indeed, Trotsky went even further, arguing that:
"Whoever denies the dialectical law of the transition of quantity into quality…must, in the last analysis, turn back to the biblical act of creation." [Trotsky (1986), p.113.]6
Rees's solution to this problem is to counterpose his own brand of 'internalism' as a fully adequate explanation of causation and change (but clearly not of the origin of the universe).7 This is because ''internalism' is based on the idea that:
"…the cause of change [lies] within the system…and it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect…. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself." [Rees (1998), p.7.]
Furthermore, a system that appeals to a linear series of causes is inferior to one that does not; this is because:
"[It offers a] mere description, not explanation; the what, but not the how or the why." [Ibid., p.7.]8
Despite this, Rees never really explains how an 'internalist' account of the Universe side-steps the need for a deistic or theistic explanation of origins. If, as some like Spinoza believe, there is only one (immanent) substance constitutive of nature (which is 'God'), then 'internalism' cannot be an effective bulwark against theism.
Moreover, Rees and other dialecticians have done nothing to show that an external cause of the universe cannot also be a natural cause. Of course, if the following (suppressed?) premisses were added to the account:
P1: Nature is co-extensive with the universe.
P2: Anything external to the universe is supernatural.
that possibility would indeed be excluded. But, since there is no empirical way of establishing the truth of P1 or P2, their veracity may only be justified definitionally -- perhaps even stipulatively. However, once accepted, either or both of these would, of course, brand DM as a conventionalist (or perhaps even a subjectivist) theory.9
Anyway, even if the cause of the development of nature were internal, it would still be possible to ask whether the whole system had a cause -- as, for example, Thomist theologians do. And, whatever other fatal weaknesses their 'theories' have, Thomists do not appeal to "bad infinities".10
Furthermore, since DM-theorists themselves have inherited their theory of development from Hegel (albeit re-worked and then allegedly given a materialist 'flip') -- who was openly offering both an 'internalist' and a non-standard theistic account of reality -- it is a little rich of such comrades pointing the finger at other theorists, accusing them of the very thing that their own theory had originally been predicated upon, before 'inversion'.
So, it rather looks like 'internalism' is itself compatible with AIDS, and hence with mystical versions of Christianity (and, of course, with Hermetic Philosophy in general), after all.
[Hegel's Hermetic intellectual influences/roots are outlined here).]
[AIDS = Absolute Idealism.]
Contradictions Begin 'Who Knows Where?'
In addition, Rees left it entirely unclear how 'internalism' could provide the sort of explanation that CAR's linear externalism supposedly failed to deliver. Non-linear 'internalist' causal chains seem to be just as incapable of answering "how" and "why" questions as linear 'externalist' ones.
Of course, in the final analysis, that all depends on what is to be counted as an explanation. In Hegel's case, an 'explanation' had to be 'ultimate', or "rational", in order for it to count as genuinely 'philosophical'. That is partly why he took such a dislike to "bad infinities"; they seemed to him to be entirely 'irrational'.
But, if "bad" infinities are all that nature has on offer (that is, if there are no ultimate explanations to be had for anything, even if we knew what one of these could possibly look like), clearly materialists will just have to get used to it. It would be foolish of them to copy Hegel's mystical approach to knowledge and expect an ultimate account where none is to be had. We certainly cannot rule "bad infinities" out in such an a priori way, and just because they ruin Hegel's neat, 'rationalist' picture of reality -- one that Hegel himself inherited from his Hermetic predecessors anyway.
And, why should anything (let alone everything) have an ultimate explanation? Where did the expectation that there ought to be one such itself come from? In fact, did it not arise from the very same misapprehension and projection that Feuerbach located in Christianity (and religion in general) -- in alienated thought?
[In Essay Twelve and Fourteen, these perplexing questions will be answered in a way that sink dialectics even quicker than that iceberg sank the Titanic. Summaries here and here.]
If so, this entire issue needs to be approached by Marxists with a little more circumspection -- if not materialist consistency -- than has hitherto been the case. Rather than simply up-ending Hegel (in order to put his theory 'on its feet', or otherwise), revolutionaries should long ago have given him the material boot.
Moreover, if "explanation" here means giving a HEX-like account of everything then DM fails even in this regard. As we have already seen, HEX-type theories are impossible to construct -- being infinitary at both ends.11 In which case, it rather looks like dialectics cannot answer "how" or "why" questions, either.
Indeed, as we shall see throughout this site, beyond trivialities, DM cannot answer any questions at all.
So, there appears to be a serious problem with Lenin's claim that change is internally-motivated, and that things can move themselves.
But, on the other hand there also seem to be several ways this problem could be defused, and in favour of Lenin. Consider the following options:
(1) Lenin and other DM-theorists were speaking non-literally.
(2) They did not mean what they said.
(3) 'Internalism' does not rule out external causation; the two are 'dialectically' interconnected. The important point is to concentrate on the system within which things change.
(4) Lenin's words can be re-interpreted so that they apply only to self-moving objects (if there are any), but to nothing else.
I will not consider options (1) and (2); anyone desperate enough to opt for these two should find reconciling Genesis with modern science relatively easy in comparison.
The most promising line of defence seems to be that offered by (3) -- with (4) held in reserve, just in case.
Indeed, Rees himself seems to have opted for (3). Hence, on the one hand he argued that:
"The cause of change [lies] within the system…and it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect…. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself." [Rees (1998), p.7.]
"[T]he natural and social world [form] a single totality developing over time as a result of its internal contradictions." [Ibid., p.285.]
But, on the other, he reminded us of Lenin's claim that:
"Development is the 'struggle' of opposites." [Ibid., p.186; quoting Lenin (1962), p.358.]
At first sight it looks like the apparent disparity here (between the claim that change is internally-generated and the idea that change is induced by opposites external to a system, process or body) can be reconciled by noting that the Totality is a "mediated" whole in which the parts mutually condition one another as UOs -- with these interpreted, perhaps, as "antagonistic forces".12
In that case, such opposites would not in fact simply be 'external' (to a particular system), since the relation between them would be 'internal' to the wider system of which they formed a part. Or so the argument might go.
[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
Nevertheless, this response still fails to resolve a number of serious difficulties.
From what Rees says, all change is internally-driven. But if that were so, no object could have any effect on any other. Conversely, if objects did have an effect on each other, all change could not be internally-driven.
In fact, if Lenin were correct, and all change were the result of a "struggle of opposites", then those opposites would have to be internal to bodies or processes, and not external to either. We met this very problem in Essay Seven (here).
But, if such opposites are external to the relevant bodies and/or processes, then, clearly, it would not be correct to say that all change is internally-driven. On the other hand, if these opposites are internal to systems, then, plainly, different systems could have no effect on one another -- unless these systems were both internal and external to each other at the same time (but how?) -- and perhaps also internal to some other (third) system, which also contained everything relevant.13
[At this point, it is worth pointing out that when Hegelians speak of "internal relations", they are not talking about spatial relations, but dialectical-logic ones. Hence, it could be objected that the discussion above seems to ignore this. However, that is because dialecticians do the same -- or, at least, they appear to. That is, of course, what lies behind all that dialectical talk about "external pushes", which dialecticians locate in mechanical materialism, and which doctrine they say implies there must be an external cause of the universe. That certainly looks spatial.
Nevertheless, this serious defect will be rectified as this Essay proceeds (particularly here), and also in Essay Eight Part Two, Essay Eleven Parts One and Two -- but more fully in Essay Four Part Two (when it is written).]
Now, this overall problem seems to have arisen because of the stark, un-dialectical contrast drawn above between what is internal to an object, process or system, and what is external to it. And yet, according to DM, objects, processes and systems in nature are all part of a mediated Totality; in this set-up, mediation seems to blur the distinction between what is internal and what is external to any or all of these. [That is the point of the reference to "misperception" in D4, a few paragraphs below.]
But even so, and once again, there would seem to be little point making such a fuss about the internal cause of change if in the end causes dialectically-external to a given system also mediate it, and contribute to its development. In that case, Rees might just as well have said:
"The cause of change [lies] both within the system and without…and it can and it can't be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect…. If change is internally and externally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development of internal and external properties of the system itself." [Edited misquotation of Rees (1998), p.7. Italic emphases added.]
And Lenin should have said:
"Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' and in movement by external forces (as Hegel nowhere puts it)…." [Edited misquotation of Lenin (1921), p.90. Bold emphases in the original.]
Which rather ruins the point, one feels.
Worse still, if change is externally-driven, that would leave the universe open to external influence, too, allowing 'God' to sneak back in through a side door. What is there now to stop a non-Marxist 'Dialectical Mystic' from claiming that 'God' created all the UOs in nature, and started the whole thing off with a Big 'outside' push/Bang?14
On the other hand, and once more, if objects and processes, systems and sub-systems are all internally-driven, then they can have no effect on each other. And if that is so, equally, there seems to be no point in stressing the mediated nature of the Totality.
Whichever way we turn here, we seem to hit a dialectically unfriendly brick wall.
But, once again, perhaps even this is too quick?
To begin afresh: the DM-Totality seems to be a Mega-system that contains many sub-systems. I say "seems" here because, as we will find out in Essay Eleven Part One and Part Two, it is far from easy to decide what dialecticians themselves think their 'Totality' either is or contains.15
If so, and as we are about to see, DM-theorists face a serious dilemma: either everything in the universe is made of simple but eternally changeless objects, or it is composed of sub-systems that cannot interact.
However, before I substantiate the above, a couple of preliminary points need making first:
(1) I shall count a system as any object or process that is made of simpler interconnected parts itself. For example, an atom is made of a nucleus and 'orbiting' electrons; the solar system, of a centrally-placed sun and orbiting planets, and so on.
(2) A simple object is one that has no parts, and hence is not a system. Apparently, electrons and photons are elementary particles, but whether they are metaphysically simple is unclear. [On this, see Castellani (1998).]
This means that nature is composed of at most two sorts of 'entities': systems and simple objects (or, to use the jargon: complexes and simples). We need not assume that these are mutually exclusive categories, nor that there actually are any simple objects (which are not further divisible), only that there might be. [The reader should also note that I am not expressing my own opinions here, merely trying to make sense of DM.]
Now, the reasons for saying this (i.e., that either everything in the universe is made of simple but eternally changeless objects, or it is composed of sub-systems that cannot interact) can be summarised in the following series of connected propositions (which list all the available relevant possibilities appertaining to systems, objects, change and interaction):
D1: Change is internal to a system. Objects and processes in each system mutually condition one another (as UOs).
D2: Change to objects and processes is internally-driven -- not externally-motivated.
D3: Objects within systems change because of their internal relations/contradictions.
D4: Objects in a particular system do not have external relations with one another. What appear to be external links are in fact misperceived or misidentified internal relations.16
D5: Systems themselves cannot affect each other except by their own internal inter-systemic relations of the above (D4) sort.
D6: On the other hand, individual and separate systems cannot have such an effect on one another, otherwise change would not be wholly internal to a particular system.
D7: Hence, single objects and/or processes cannot be systems, otherwise they could not influence each other (by D6).
D8: On the other hand, once more, objects and processes must be sub-systems (and hence systems in their own right), since they are composed of an indefinite (possibly infinite) number of their own sub-units (molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, etc.). But even then, as systems themselves, objects and processes could not influence one another (again, by D6).
D9: This means that at some point there must be simple units of 'matter' that are not themselves systems; otherwise, if everything were system-like (or if all that exists are sub-sub-sub-…systems, to infinity) nothing could have any effect on anything else (by D6) -- that is, if all change is internally-motivated.
D10: But, if there were such simple units (i.e., if they had no 'parts', and were thus not systems themselves) they would be changeless. If that weren't the case, these simple units would be UOs themselves (and thus not simple, after all), subject to their own internally-driven development. Indeed,, if they are changeless they can have no effect on one another (or they would not be changeless).
D11: Hence, reality is either composed of a (possibly) infinite hierarchy of systems that have no influence on each other, or it is made out of fundamental (non-system-like) particles that are changeless and have no effect on anything.
Clearly, both horns of this dilemma contradict all we know about nature. Is there any way to avoid this fatal conclusion? Could there be a 'dialectical' way out of this Hermetic hole?
Perhaps we should start again with a consideration of the following propositions (wherein "T" stands for the Totality):
D12: Change is a result of "internal contradictions".
D13: Objects within T change only because of this internal dynamic.
D14: Reality is a mediated T; change is a consequence of a 'struggle' between opposites.
D15: No element of reality can be considered in isolation; all mutually condition one another.
However, D12 is ambiguous, The word "change" could mean:
(1) "Systematic change" (that is, it could mean "change internal to a particular system"); or it could mean:
(2) "Change internal to an object" -- as it does in D13 -– leaving it unclear whether or not this sort of change is wider-ranging, involving inter-objective or trans-systematic change.
Nevertheless, D13 seems clear enough, though:
D13: Objects within T change only because of this internal dynamic.
This states that change arises only as a result of a dynamic internal to objects.
But if that were so, it would once again be difficult to see what influence objects could have on each other. If change is internal to an object, then the relations it supposedly enjoyed with other objects would be irrelevant in this respect -- ex hypothesi, they could have no impact on the changes the latter undergo. This seems to imply that objects must be self-caused/motivated beings (as Lenin alleged).
Once more however, whatever changes an object undergoes -- since these are exclusively internally-generated -- they can't be a function of the relations which that object enjoys with other objects, otherwise the cause of change would not be internal to the said object, but external, after all -- and thus not the least bit 'rational' (since this would imply a "bad infinity").17
On the other hand, if change is internal to a system of mediated objects or processes, then it would not be the sole result of a dynamic internal to the objects in that system, but would be a function both of the intra-systematic relations between systems and bodies and of the 'internal contradictions' within those systems or bodies themselves.
Furthermore, if change is system-specific (that is, if it is internal, and solely confined to systems), then the relations between those systems would become problematic, once more. Clearly, change cannot be exclusively system-specific if different systems have an actual effect on one another.
The question is, which of these is the correct account? Is change (A) the result of a dynamic internal to systems, or (B) is it internal to objects, or (C) is it a consequence of the external effects bodies have on each other? [Option (C) in fact allows change to be internal to systems even while it remains external to the bodies forming that system.]
Is therefore change body-specific, system-specific, or is it inter-systematic? Or, is it (D) a complex combination of all three of these?
But, yet again: if (D) were the case, what would be the point of saying that change is motivated internally (in bodies, processes or systems) -- if it is also externally-driven?
On the other hand, why say that everything is interconnected if change is exclusively internally-generated, and the alleged interconnections between systems or bodies have no part to play in this respect?
Up until now, DM-theorists appear not to have noticed these serious difficulties implied by their 'theory' of change. Since DM is supposed to be the philosophy of change, clearly this is not a minor flaw, one that can easily be ignored.18
It could be argued that it is possible to resolve these problems by referring to the 'dialectical' interplay between objects and processes (i.e., between 'internal' and 'external' contradictions'), or that within or between systems.
But, this vastly overworked response does not actually provide any clear answers to the above questions -- not, that is, unless it turns out that objects themselves are in fact disguised systems. This would mean that objects are not really simple, but are composed of their own interconnected parts.
But, as noted above, if that were so, the contrast between external and internal causation would disappear, and DM-'internalism' would become either an empty notion or a meaningless mantra.
There seems to be little point in emphasising that change is internally-generated if it is externally-motivated, too (no matter how much this is fluffed-up with the usual 'dialectical' jargon) -- still less any point in arguing for the internal development of objects if they are in fact systems themselves and subject to external constraints.
One might just as well try to defend theism by claiming on the one hand that the universe is self-caused and needs no creator, but, on the other, that Divine Logic "insists" that it does indeed possess its own external cause, and that 'He/She/It' (i.e., 'God') is 'dialectically related' to the world (with that particular phrase left conveniently obscure). If such a theist then played the "Nixon" card,19 and claimed that Divine Logic enables its adepts to "grasp" this 'explanation' as a 'dialectical solution' to the "Mystery of creation", we would rightly be unimpressed.
Well, what is sauce for the Deist, is surely sauce for the DM-ist, too. If we would not be inclined to accept the word of a theological mystic who claimed he/she could 'solve' the 'contradiction' between the universe having an internal (but no external) cause, and it actually having an external cause, then we should be no less reluctant to do so when DM-theorists concoct a similarly obscure 'explanation' couched in dialectical jargon.
However, there is another obvious way of responding to the above: i.e., interpret one particular strand of this DM-conundrum as committing believers to the view that only systematic change is driven by "internal contradictions".
But, that would immediately prompt the question: Of what are these systems composed? If they are composed of objects then plainly the above dilemma would simply reappear.
Alternatively, if objects are going to be edited out on the grounds that they are really systems themselves (i.e., that they are composed of (possibly) infinite sets of further sub-systems -- meaning that there is nothing fundamentally simple or object-like in reality), the entire edifice would collapse for want of bricks. If there are no objects, only systems, then there would seem to be nothing 'deep down' to condition anything else internal to any given system.20
D6: On the other hand, individual and separate systems cannot have such an effect on one another, otherwise change would not be wholly internal to a particular system.
But, if change is system-specific, according to D6 -- i.e., if it is internal (and confined) to each sub-system --, then, once more: none of these sub-systems could interact, otherwise change would not be system-specific.
Conversely, if there are fundamental objects internal to systems, but which are not themselves sub-systems (that is, if they are simple), even if they condition each other externally, they would have no inner contradictory lives themselves (since, ex hypothesi, they would have no parts). But, as we have seen, this would then imply that these objects were eternally changeless.21
On the other hand, again, if these supposedly fundamental objects conditioned each other externally, that would imply they had parts and were not fundamental after all.22
So, unless the existence of simple objects -- which aren't systems themselves -- is countenanced, systems as such would have no 'bricks'. Alternatively, if they are comprised of such 'bricks', reality would be fundamentally discrete. In which case, change would be externally-motivated since such 'objects' would possess no internal contradictions of their own (although, as Note 22 established, simple objects cannot interact externally, either!). So, if objects aren't systems, they wouldn't have an internal structure and wouldn't UOs. Unfortunately, once more, this option would rule out interaction, for reasons outlined earlier (and in Notes 17, 21, 22, and 23).
Alternatively again, if there are no such 'bricks', and nature is system-like 'all the way down', as it were, then these systems could not interact, unless change were externally-motivated, after all.
This means that the dilemma that faced classical Ontology now confronts DM; the fundamental constituents of reality must be either:
(1) Extensionally significant intervals of matter (or energy); this option preserves the systematic nature of reality (since it allows for the indefinite divisibility of parts, treating them as infinitary systems themselves subject to endless sub-division). Or:
(2) Fundamentally changeless atoms (or extensionless points); this alternative safeguards the objects at the expense of the 'unity of nature'.
In the second case, reality would be composed of finitely (or 'infinitely'?) small but eternal 'billiard balls'; in the first instance, everything would be made of an infinitely thin/abstract sort of 'gas'/'plasma' (not itself made out of anything else). Either way, causation would disappear for nothing could have an effect on anything else in either set-up.23
Of course, as noted above, the DM-'solution' to this (Kantian) antinomy -- following Hegel -- is to "grasp" this 'paradox' as a contradiction. This handy logical trick clearly 'solves' everything by Nixoning it, which is a handy escape route that DM-advocates reserve for their own exclusive use; no one else is permitted to employ this convenient dodge.
However, this dishonest approach to philosophical problems does not succeed in achieving what it was set up to evade (i.e., the glaring contradictions in DM itself). This is because it is still unclear how anything can be fundamentally atomic -- and hence maximally causally isolated from the rest of nature -- while at the same time being thoroughly systematic and interconnected with everything in existence. The DM-account of causation seems to imply both!
Instead of wanting to 'grasp' serious confusion of this order of magnitude, DM-theorists should perhaps want to disown it.
At any rate, this "grasped" non-solution means that yet another serious difficulty DM-theorists face must be resolved on their behalf. To this end, we need to re-consider D12-D15 (in particular D14) in more detail.
D12: Change is a result of "internal contradictions".
D13: Objects within T change only because of this internal dynamic.
D14: Reality is a mediated T; change is a consequence of a 'struggle' between opposites.
D15: No element of reality can be considered in isolation; all mutually condition one another.
Unfortunately, D15 looks like it rules D14 out, for if change is systematic then the contradictions inherent in any sub-system of T couldn't contribute to the larger picture. As noted above the influence of any of these does not stretch beyond its own boundary, as it were. In the end, it all depends on how inclusive systematic change is taken to be -- and how the internal dynamic of each sub-system of T is conceived. Consider the following possibilities:
D16: Let T comprise n disjoint sub-systems S1 to Sn.24
D17: Also, let change to any Sk-th sub-system of T be a result of its "internal contradictions".
D16 and D17 seem to be essential moves for DM-theorists to make, otherwise, the yawning chasm of HEX (see Note 25) might imply remote causation -- which we have good reason to question (see Essays Seven and Eleven Part One). Anyway, change to any Sk-th item must be internally-driven (according to D12 and D13); if not, the following infinite inflation
would result:
D18: Change in any Sk-th element is a result both of its "internal contradictions" and of its relations with m other elements or sub-systems within T (where m < n).
D19: Change to these m elements or sub-systems of T is a result of their own "internal contradictions" and of their relations with p other elements or sub-systems of T (where p < n), and so on.
As will readily be appreciated, D19 threatens to expand rapidly into another HEX-like proposition (if the sub-systems of T are held to be disjoint), at the same time as undermining D12 and D13.25
This explains why the compartmentalisation of T -– noted in D17 -- was so important. Without it, D14 and D15 would support some rather odd ideas, such as the following: the latest (2005) UK New Labour majority in Parliament was partly caused by insignificant changes in the density of minute pockets of Hydrogen gas in the large Magellanic Cloud precisely:
601.345266789309865789024354685612345277268565723
years ago, and vice versa. Moreover, this would also be true at every other moment in universal history (past, present, or future)! Similarly, and even more bizarrely, this would implicate every other event in universal history (at every moment, past or present) with the aforementioned Labour majority, and vice versa.26
While New Labour supporters may be permitted the view that their recent victory was historic, even they might balk at the cosmic significance it appears to assume given this overly-inflated view of interconnectedness. Even if anyone was credulous enough to believe this unlikely scenario, there is no way it could be verified; it would thus have to be imposed on reality.
And it will not do to argue that dialecticians assent only to the 'relative' interconnectedness of objects and processes in reality, not their absolute inter-relatedness, as the above seems to allege. That dodge has been neutralised here.
Clearly, the difficulty in this case revolves around the problem of specifying the dimensions, boundaries and sphere of influence of each Sk. But, how do we decide the extent to which T should be partitioned into non-interacting sub-systems? And, where do we stop? Unless we are careful this attempt to forestall HEX is in danger of collapsing back into CAR, as the permissible sub-elements of T become increasingly microscopic. Is there any way of preventing this collapse? Well, in the absence of 'objective' criteria, any partitioning of T, it seems, must be arbitrary. If we partition T into n elements, why not 2n, or even 10n?
In that case, it rather looks like DM has its own "bad infinity" -- which stops (and starts) "who knows where?"
The choice before DM-fans now appears to lie between one or more of the following options:
(a) Full-blown HEX with its incipient scepticism and its destructive implications for science.
(b) The partitioning of T to avoid HEX, accompanied by an attempt to scratch around for an ad hoc principle that limits the size of n to avoid a collapse back into CAR.
(c) A compartmentalisation of T that rules out universal "mediation".
(d) An admission that DM has its own "bad infinity", but in both directions (i.e., down the CAR-brick road and along the HEX-certificate route).
(e) The concession that change is not internal to bodies or systems.
Of course, the adoption of (d) would remove whatever motivation there might once have been for rejecting CAR in the first place.
Retreat Into The Concrete Bunker?
Admittedly, D12-D19 are abstract in form, whereas dialecticians in general make it perfectly clear that it is only as a result of examining concrete examples that the precise details of systematic change may be understood and verified. Perhaps that is the problem with the above criticisms?
As TAR notes:
"Contradiction is, therefore, the form of the explanation…. [This is] because the explanation itself will depend on the concrete, empirical conditions that obtain…. The exact contradictions and the working out of those contradictions will vary accordingly." [Rees (1998), p.7.]
Nevertheless, this caveat fails to neutralise the difficulties outlined above. According to DM, the material world is independent of our knowledge of it. In that case, whether we are aware of it or not -- given this view -- one or other, or more, of D12-D15, or of (a) to (e) above, must obtain.
Anyway, the same 'abstract' analysis applied to T can be adapted and extended to any "concrete situation" depicting actual events. Consider, therefore, the following:
D20: Let C be a concrete situation comprising n disjoint elements or sub-systems C1 to Cn.
D21: Also, let change to any Ck-th sub-system or element of C be a result of its "internal contradictions".
D22: Hence, change in Ck is not a consequence of its relations with any other Ci.
But, once again, D22 means that T cannot be a mediated whole; if D22 were true, T's concrete sub-systems would exist in permanent causal isolation. This implies that D22 should perhaps be replaced by one or other of the following:
D23: Change in any Ck-th sub-system is a result of its relations with m other elements or sub-systems of C. Or
D24: Change to C is not a consequence of its relations with any other concrete sub-systems of T.
Unfortunately, D24 would still mean that each C is a hermetically-sealed sub-unit of T, and D23 itself threatens to inflate into HEX if each C is extended widely enough --, and the mediationally-air-tight seals around it loosened, even slightly.
We need not labour the point any further; D20-D24 can easily be adapted so that they mirror the problems created by D16-D19, above.
So, any attempt to retreat into this concrete bunker cannot save the theory. This entire approach either collapses DM back into CAR (resulting in the postulation of what are in effect 'elementary particles', which do not interact and do not change), or it threatens to expand uncontrollably into HEX, contradicting D12 and D13. Therefore, one or more of options (a) to (e) above still appear to be unavoidable.
Of course, these problems arose because DM-theorists, in traditional fashion, sought to provide an a priori metaphysical theory of causation (and one that does not seem to have been thought-through with sufficient care), which they then peremptorily imposed on reality. Indeed, Rees himself appears happy to derive substantive truths about the world (as part of a formal -- or possibly as a permanently un-cashed 'concrete' -- promissory note) from the meaning of a few conveniently vague terms:
"…[T]he cause of change [lies] within the system…and it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect…. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself." [Ibid., p.7. Bold emphasis added.]
Rees nowhere explains why change has to result from "internal contradictions" (or even why it has to arise from external conflict and/or tension, or a mixture of both), or just from "contradictions" simpliciter. Nor does he explain how a contradiction could possibly make anything change.
[Since this entire topic was discussed at length in an earlier Essay (here) --, where, among other things, examples were given of things that remained the same even while they changed --, no more will be said about that particular topic in the present Essay.]
Other DM-theorists have attempted to derive similar results using their own brand of shaky, a priori reasoning (examined in Part Two of this Essay, and in Essay Seven); these were linked to the supposed logical concomitants of change, wherein objects change because they turn into 'what-they-are-not', or because they already contain 'what-they-are-not'.27
However, suitably attentive readers will have noticed once again the dearth of "careful empirical" work offered in support of these bold DM-theses. Not only that, they will also have observed how substantive theses like these have yet again been derived from the supposed meanings of a handful of words (such as, "opposite", "change", "contradiction" and "unity").
Plus ça change….
It now looks like TAR's conclusions (and those of other dialecticians) are based only what words like "Totality", "abstract", "concrete", "opposite", and "change" (etc.) seem to mean.
In the first case, since the word "Totality" appears to mean "everything in the universe" (or "everything in existence") it then seems obvious (to DM-fans, but not on the basis of any evidence -- it just looks 'self-evident') that the Totality cannot be caused by anything 'outside' itself, otherwise such a cause would be part of the original whole, by definition. Consequently, simply because of what the word "Totality" appears to mean, Rees and other DM-theorists conclude that causation must be internal (to whatever they have severally or collectively decided it must be internal to).
This can be seen from the way the way that Rees uses modal words like "cannot" and "must":
"…[T]he cause of change [lies] within the system…and it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect…. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself." [Ibid., p.7. Bold emphasis added.]
If this thesis were empirically-based, such modal terms would not be needed.
Furthermore, since change involves an object or property becoming what-it-is-not (again, this too is assumed to be the case because of what certain words associated with change appear to mean), change through contradiction is thought to have universal applicability. So, once more, from words alone, another branch of 'Superscience' has sprung forth. Now, to most people, this might not seem such a huge crime, but as we will see in Essay Twelve (summary here), this tactic depends on an Idealist view of reality: specifically that nature is Mind -- or 'condensed language' --, and is governed by a priori linguistic truths/laws, accessible to 'thought' alone.28
The fact that certain truths about fundamental aspects of reality have been inferred from the meanings of words alone can be seen if we direct our attention to the answers that might be given to the following questions: How do DM-theorists know that the cause of change is always and only internal? How can they be so sure that change universally results only from contradictions? How do they know that the Totality is a mediated whole?
As seems clear, the only possible answer to such questions is that this sort of knowledge is based on what words like "Totality", "abstract", "concrete", "opposite", and "change" (etc.) really mean -- or, perhaps, that they are predicated on whatever these concepts are said to imply, etc.29
These (and other terms) are then used as interpretative devices to sift and colour whatever evidence is produced in their support, which means, of course, that these concepts could not have been derived from experience or from a consideration of concrete events. They are far too general for that; but more importantly they are not even phrased as if they depended on experience. And we have already seen that all those "insistences", "demands", "musts" and "requires" in DM-writings rule out the defence that DM is based on a tentative review of the available evidence.30
[AIDS = Absolute Idealism.]
The ease with which theses like these have been regularly knitted-together by dialecticians -- and almost exclusively from linguistic material -- in its own way reflects on the totalising influence of AIDS: it is only because the world is considered to be Rational that a systematic DM-explanation of reality is possible. The alleged inversion of the Hegelian Absolute -- with its associated 'logical' connections left in place, but which then morphed into the DM-"Totality" -- accounts for the absolute confidence with which dialecticians think they can derive so much from so little. Because Hegel's system has not actually been up-ended, but left the same way up (with a few 'materialist-sounding' phrases tacked on), dialecticians have issued themselves with an Ideal licence to impose every single one of their concepts on reality.31
If all that is real is rational, and all that is rational is real, a priori thesis-mongering like this makes sense. The rest is just window dressing, sold to the unwary with just enough 'dialectical spin'.
However, as DM-writers would also have us believe, not only is our present state of knowledge partial and relative, all future knowledge will always remain similarly incomplete.
But, in the face of that admission, they are still quite happy to inform us what must be true of every atom in the entire Universe, and for all of time; i.e., that everything must change because of its "internal contradictions" -- based on such eternally incomplete evidence.
This alone indicates their theory is not dependent on evidence but has its source elsewhere: in mystical Hermetic Philosophy.
Putting the above difficulties to one side for the moment, I propose to take D12-D15 at face value, and concentrate on D13-D15 once again (since they seem more closely to represent the DM-consensus) in order to try to rescue this part of 'Materialist Dialectics' from oblivion.
D12: Change is a result of "internal contradictions".
D13: Objects within T change only because of this internal dynamic.
D14: Reality is a mediated T; change is a consequence of a 'struggle' between opposites.
D15: No element of reality can be considered in isolation; all mutually condition one another.
However, D13 looks unnecessarily vague, so I will alter it to the following:
D25: Change within T is caused solely by 'internal contradictions'.
The difficulty with this version of D13 is that it is unclear what it might mean to say that contradictions cause change (and thus motion) -- we have already seen that there are good reasons to question this idea (cf., Essay Five).
However, in this connection Rees notes that Marx's criticism of Hegel's use of the term "contradiction" in effect involved replacing it with a consideration of the antagonistic relation between real material forces:
"Marx was, however, obliged to transform completely the terms of the dialectic when he altered its starting point from abstract concepts to real material forces. Mediation is no longer a peaceful process of reconciliation…. Contradictions are no longer between concepts but between real, material forces…. [Marx and Engels's analysis] starts out from real, material, empirically verifiable contradictions. The forces involved are not merely ideas or even ideologies, though these are also present, but real economic and political institutions, classes, and parties." [Rees (1998), pp.68-69, 83.]
As we shall see later (i.e., in Part Two of this Essay), this is the generally accepted view within DM-circles: that material forces either represent, embody, or actually are contradictions.
Hence, on that basis, it could be argued that the discussion above is thoroughly misguided; indeed, it could even be maintained that the identification of contradictions with real material forces provides DM with a scientific and concrete interpretation -- one that identifies the material analogues of causation --, which completely refutes the objections made so far in this Essay, and elsewhere at this site.
In which case, D25 should perhaps be re-written as:
D26: Change within T is caused solely by internally-opposed material forces.
But, D26 is not obviously true. Nature is full of forces of attraction, which do not even look oppositional. Of course, DM-theorists would be the first to admit that there are dynamic equilibria/disequilibria between attractive and repulsive forces in nature. D26, therefore, needs further adjustment:
D27: Change within T is caused solely by internal forces of attraction and repulsion.
However, it will be shown (in detail) in Part Two of this Essay that there is no interpretation of D27 that makes it equivalent to D25. It is not even plausible to suppose that "forces of attraction and repulsion" could serve either to explicate or replace "contradictions".32
In advance of this, the question whether or not DM-theorists are right to claim that contradictions find their material analogue in material forces does not in fact affect the point at issue -- which is whether change is internal to each system, whatever causes it. Even if forces could be represented in the way dialecticians suppose, the very same difficulties would still afflict DM.
In that case, if change is indeed internal to each system then one of the following would have to be true (take your pick):
(A) There is only one system -- the Totality --, the contents of which are (potentially or actually) infinitely interconnected. All the objects internal to it are subject to the operation of external causes only. This is because the entire nature of the part is determined by its relation to the whole and to other parts, but not by a relation that any part has with itself, and hence not by processes internal to each object. Or:
(B) There is only one system -- the Totality --, which is (potentially or actually) infinitely interconnected. But, change is exclusively internal to each object or process (because everything is a UO) in this Totality. In that case, nothing is interconnected with anything else. Or:
(C) Change is internal to all systems, and nature forms an infinite 'ascending' and 'descending' hierarchy of systems and sub-systems ('all the way up'/'down', as it were). In such a set-up, ultimately, there is nothing that could be or could become the opposite of anything else. This is because, either:
(1) The fundamental parts of reality are extensionless 'points' -- which, because they can be mapped onto or modelled by the real numbers, have no 'size' at all. This means that such objects can have no internal connection with anything else; they are therefore eternal and changeless. If they were subject to change then they would be systems themselves and hence would not be extensionless points. As extensionless points they can have no effect on each other or on anything else, or they would change. Hence, if systems are infinitely divisible change cannot be internally-motivated -- or rather, the only change possible would be that which arises from the rearrangement of these eternally changeless 'point masses'.
(2) The fundamental parts of reality are systems. But, they cannot have opposites that cause change. This is because those opposites would have to be external to each system, and that would mean that change would not be internally-driven. Moreover, these opposites cannot be internal to that system either. If they were, that system could not change into that opposite, since that opposite would already exist. Or:
(D) Everything is a sub-system of some sort no matter how much it is sub-divided. In that case, there are no point masses, since all sub-systems are infinitely divisible. In this arrangement, while change is internal to the Totality it is not internal to its sub-systems, but external. This is because if change were exclusively internal to such sub-systems they could have no effect on one another. But, if no sub-system had any effect on any other, there would be no change in the Totality over and above, perhaps, the rearrangement of these sub-systems. Hence, if the Totality changes, its sub-systems cannot.
In that case, given this option, change would be internal to the Totality but external to its sub-systems. Moreover, even if the latter are UOs, that fact would have no influence on whether they changed or not. If it did, change would be internal to each sub-system, contrary to the supposition. So, if (D) is to stand, change would not be the result of instability internal to such sub-systems because the latter are, on this supposition, externally-motivated.
However, a moment's thought will show that this option cannot work in the way described -- if change is merely the re-arranging of subsystems, then any larger system containing these subsystems would itself change internally, contrary to the hypothesis. Or:
(E) Change is not only internal to the Totality, but it is also internal and external to its sub-systems (as they 'mediate' one another, or 'dialectically' interact). In that case, change to these sub-systems would not be the sole result of their own internal instabilities or 'inner contradictions', as dialecticians maintain.
Unfortunately, this would have profound implications for HM and the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism, for example. The contradictions inside the latter would thus be insufficient to lead to its demise. External causes over and above the class struggle and the falling rate of profit (etc.) would be needed --, including perhaps bad weather, meteorite impact, or alien intervention (etc.).
Naturally, no one believes the class struggle is hermetically sealed against the rest of nature, but since these influences stretch off into infinity this would present HM with its own "bad infinity", which would end "who knows where?"
Not only that, if change is also external to each system, then the Totality (as a system itself) must be susceptible to just such external influences.
Any attempt to forestall that untoward implication would prompt the same sort of objection that stumps naive supporters of the Cosmological Argument [henceforth, COMA] for the existence of God: if everything has a cause, then what caused God?
Hence, if every system is subject to external causation, he question becomes: What caused the Totality?
Clearly, this challenge can only be neutralised by an appeal to the alleged 'definition' of the Totality (or by an appeal to an infinite set of causes, which stretch off to "who knows where?") -- in the way that theists respond to similar objections to the COMA. [This is not surprising, given the mystical origin of DM.]
However, as Kant noted, the COMA has to be buttressed by a surreptitious appeal to the Ontological Argument [henceforth, ONAN]. So, from the supposed definition of the word "God" (as "that than which nothing greater can be conceived"), 'His' necessary and actual existence are 'derivable'. In that way, questions about 'His' origin are supposedly rendered meaningless.
In like manner, but in this case based on the meaning of "Totality" (i.e., "all that there is" or, maybe, "that than which there is nothing else", or "that outwith which nothing else can be conceived"), it could be argued that there is nothing outside the Totality that could cause it to exist.
So, the only way that dialecticians could defend this fall-back position (should they chose to adopt it) would be to use an 'atheistical' version of the ONAN, on the lines that the Totality is "that than which there is nothing else".
Of course, such a defence would make plain the Linguistic Idealism in DM, for from the meaning of a few words again substantive truths about reality will have been derived.
But, more importantly, if change is caused by the interplay of opposites, and objects and systems turn into their opposites, then, whether or not it is internally- or externally-induced, change would be impossible. As we saw here, if the opposite of a body or system exists, it cannot change into it, for it already exists!
On the other hand, if it doesn't already exist it can play no part in helping to change that object or system!
In view of their unwise commitment to 'inverted' Hegelian 'logic', there seem to be no other options open to DM-enthusiasts.
Moreover, if the last of these options is correct then (as we will also see here) the similarities between DM and Mystical Christianity would become even more apparent. For if there is a force external to the Universe that conditions it, then the Totality will have an external cause after all, and the DM-search for "how" and "why" will have run into the Ground Of All Being -- which ends "we know where...".
The choice of title for such an ultimate cause does not affect any of the above points -- nor does it resolve the problems they expose -- since a Deity by any other name is still a Deity.
Is There A Dialectical Way Out Of This Contradictory Whole?
There are other alternatives that could be added to this complex set of difficulties (several of which have been alluded to above), but those considered here should suffice. All seem inimical to any DM-account of change. Some even undermine HM.
In that case, DM faces yet another material brick wall in its endeavour to explain change -- the material world itself.
Everyday language, derived from interaction with that world, resists such idealist impertinences. It is thus no surprise that DM collapses into incoherence yet again.
In their characterization of CAR, the authors of DB speak about the "intrinsic properties" that objects must possess if CAR were the case. Contrary to CAR-theorists, dialecticians appear to believe that objects and processes have what may only be called an 'extrinsic' nature -- that is, one which is a consequence of the relations each object or process has with other unspecified objects (or sets of objects) and/or processes in reality.33
[DB = Dialectical Biologist; HEX = Hegelian Expansionism; CAR = Cartesian Reductionism.]
Unfortunately, as we will soon see, this option rapidly inflates into HEX. Consider the following example:
D28: Sodium has the properties it has as a result of its atomic structure.
But, because D28 is expressed in what seem to be reductionist, CAR-like terms, it might not be entirely acceptable to DM-theorists. The following therefore should be more in line with their CAR-free agenda:
D29: Sodium has the properties it has as a result of its interconnections with other atoms.
However, even this seems to get things wrong since Sodium appears to have the relations it has with other atoms because of its properties or dispositions, and the latter in turn seem to be based on Sodium's sub-atomic structure. It is surely a truism that unless there were other atoms, Sodium would not behave the way it does. But, the unique atomic structure of each element must surely have some bearing on its nature and properties (otherwise, much of modern Chemistry would need to be binned).
This seems to indicate that even though D29 looks anti-reductive, it has in fact omitted the mediated nature of Sodium -- that is, D29 fails to express Sodium's transient nature as a complex of processes in dialectical tension with its surroundings, reflected in and by its inner structure as that too interacts with other atoms (etc.). Perhaps then the following is closer to the truth?
D30: Sodium has the properties it has because of its mediated nature and its interconnections with other atoms.
Moreover, in D30, the word "nature" could be understood to mean "atomic structure" (with there being no implication that there was anything static about Sodium), as in the following amended version of D30:
D31: Sodium has the properties it has because of its mediated atomic structure and its interconnections with other atoms.
But, whatever is true of Sodium must be true of these other atoms, too:
D32: Sodium has the properties it has because of its mediated atomic structure and its interconnections with other atoms, which in turn have the properties they have because of their mediated atomic structures and their relations with still other atoms.
But, as seems clear, D32 is another incipient HEX-type sentence. In which case, it is not easy to see how the following implication could be avoided:
D33: Sodium has the properties it has because of its mediated atomic structure and its interconnections with the entire universe, for all of time, and vice versa.
Put like this, D33 looks like another example of Hegel's idea that "the truth is the whole", itself an eminently mystical notion. [Hegel (1977), p.11; Preface, paragraph 20.]
But, D33 is implausible. It is not just that there are no credible causal interconnections (that we are aware of) between the atoms of Sodium that are currently on or near the earth's surface and events on the other side of the universe (today, or billions of years ago), but, even if this were believable, it would be difficult to see how these could possibly explain its properties as opposed to merely re-describing them in a rather complicated, infinitary sort of way.34
Of course this is why metaphysicians like Hegel (and his Hermetic friends) had to appeal to a Mind, or to Mind-like principles, to provide a rationale for existent beings -– dressed up in suitably important-looking a priori finery. Hence, if there were no logical or conceptual connections between objects and events, no rational explanation of anything could be given -- just infinitary re-descriptions -- "bad infinities" -- and, of course, those nasty, unreliable working-class material facts and 'appearances'.
This is the insurmountable barrier that constantly confronts DM-theorists; by avowedly inverting Hegel's system, they have forfeited the right to call on the principles Hegel could employ to give his system its pseudo-explanatory bite. And yet, they have no choice: they have to appeal to his mystical principles to give their theory its 'rational' core.
So, DM-theorists find at every stage they have to re-introduce fetishised (teleological) concepts through the back door (via the sophisticated reflection theory (on this, see Essay Three Part Three, and Essays Twelve and Thirteen), spruced-up with just enough abstractions to satisfy all but the most fastidious of traditional of thinkers --, and with no little word-magic, to boot --, in order to supply the necessary rationale for their supposedly non-Ideal Universe.35
Unfortunately, these shiny new DM-concepts are now no longer the ultimate principles upon which Hegel himself relied. They are just yet more 'brute facts'.
This is plainly because material reality cannot supply its own rationale -- since it is not Mind.
Brute facts are all it has to offer.
In that case, just like Hegel's system, DM is at best merely a re-descriptive 'theory', and not the least bit explanatory. In seeking to use the class-compromised concepts they found in Hegel, all that DM-adepts find they are left with are yet more brute facts, only now couched in Ideal terminology, obscured behind hopelessly impenetrable prose.36
Anyway, all this is quite apart from the infinitely thin evidential support there is -- or could ever be -- for such recklessly bold claims. No wonder DM-theorists resort to "insisting" that reality is as they say, and that things "must" be thus and so; they have to, since the facts do no 'speak for themselves'.37
Furthermore, since the properties of Sodium are not particularly unique in this respect, whatever applies to Sodium must apply to 'opposing forces', regardless of their nature -- i.e., whether they are continuous (and are thus the result of a field), or are ultimately particulate (and can be expressed as the exchange of momentum).
Hence, even if DM-theorists were correct in their interpretation of contradictions as 'opposing forces', their theory would still amount to little more than a re-description of nature, and not an explanation. This is because even a thoroughly comprehensive listing of all the interconnections that exist between objects and processes (whether these include forces or not) would be no less of a re-description than any reductive CAR-like competitor ever was. Without a set of Ideal/mind-like principles to lend it some rationality, an explanation that captures the 'why' of things will always escape dialecticians
And yet, even then, all we would have would be a set of mind-like 'brute facts'.38
But, as was also noted above (in Note 25, but in more detail in Essay Three Part Three), whereas a reductive description can at least begin somewhere, a DM-account can neither begin nor end.
This shows that DM itself cannot account for the "why" of things any more successfully than could CAR.
No better perhaps, but certainly much worse.39
Well, are we? Are we any clearer about whether dialecticians believe that things change because of their 'internal contradictions', because of their 'internal'/external relations with the rest of the "Totality", or because of something else?
It seems not.
In that case, are we any clearer about how and why 'contradictions' (internal or otherwise) are capable of actually causing change?
Once more, it looks like the answer is in the negative.
It is now time to clutch at the last straw available to supporters of this drowning theory, and examine opposing forces. Perhaps they can provide DM with an urgently needed life-line?
It is to this question that I turn in the next Part of this Essay.
1. Some might feel that this is unfair, in that dialecticians themselves account for motion and change in a much more sophisticated way than this caricature would have us believe.
This 'more sophisticated' account (if such it may be called) -- involving the interplay between opposing forces, and the dialectical interaction within the 'mediated Totality' -- will be examined throughout the rest of this Essay, and in detail in Part Two. The "Totality" itself will be the subject of Essay Eleven Parts One and Two.
2. As Hegel himself declared:
"[B]ut contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity." [Hegel (1999), p.439. Bold emphasis added.]
Apparently, Hegel just happened to be 'using' a pen when 'his' books in fact wrote themselves (because of their obvious (and literal) internal contradictions).
There is an apparent way out of this quandary, but it is not one that should recommend itself to many DM-fans. This spurious escape route will be examined presently.
3. Not much room here for doubt. And this is not just my rancid view of this murky area of DM-'physics'; as the quotations below show, this is how Lenin and Hegel (above in Note 2 -- mark the word highlighted in bold) have been interpreted before and since.
Here is a greatly shortened compendium of quotations taken from the writings of lesser DM-luminaries who declared (perhaps unwisely) that things do indeed change/move themselves; beginning with David Hayden-Guest (who sneaks in a reference to "external relations", a topic that will be examined later in this Essay):
"The second dialectical law, that of the 'unity, interpenetration or identity of opposites'…asserts the essentially contradictory character of reality -– at the same time asserts that these 'opposites' which are everywhere to be found do not remain in stark, metaphysical opposition, but also exist in unity. This law was known to the early Greeks. It was classically expressed by Hegel over a hundred years ago….
"The importance of understanding this contradictory character of things, is that it gives the clue to the inner process of their development which takes place through the conflict of the opposites....
"[F]rom the standpoint of the developing universe as a whole, what is vital is…motion and change which follows from the conflict of the opposite....
"Development is always the result of internal conflict as well as of external relations, themselves including conflict. It can only be explained and rationally grasped to the extent that the internal contradictions of the thing have been investigated…." [Guest (1963), pp.40-45. Bold emphases added.]
And here is comrade Thalheimer (who directly links this doctrine with ideas he dredged from Hegel's 'Master Deduction', analysed in Essay Twelve -- summarised here):
"The most general and the most inclusive fundamental law of dialectics from which all others are deduced is the law of permeation of opposites. This law has a two-fold meaning: first, that all things, all processes, all concepts merge in the last analysis into an absolute unity, or, in other words, that there are no opposites, no differences which cannot ultimately be comprehended into a unity. Second, and just as unconditionally valid, that all things are at the same time absolutely different and absolutely or unqualifiedly opposed. The law may also be referred to as the law of the polar unity of opposites. This law applies to every single thing, every phenomenon, and to the world as a whole. Viewing thought and its method alone, it can be put this way: The human mind is capable of infinite condensation of things into unities, even the sharpest contradictions and opposites, and, on the other hand, it is capable of infinite differentiation and analysis of things into opposites. The human mind can establish this unlimited unity and unlimited differentiation because this unlimited unity and differentiation is present in reality....
"...[I]t is more difficult with such opposites as true and false and still more difficult with the concepts of being and non-being, which are the most general of all, the most inclusive, and, at the same time the poorest in content. The average person will say: how can one unite such absolute opposites as being and non-being? Either a thing is or it is not. There can be no bridge or common ground between them. In the treatment of Heraclitus I have already shown how the concepts of being and non-being actually permeate each other in everything that changes, how they are contained in changing things at the same time and in the same way; for a thing which is developing is something and at the same time it is not that something. For example: a child which is developing into a man is a child and at the same time not a child (sic). So far as it is becoming a man it ceases to be a child. But it is not yet a man, because it has not yet developed into a man. The concept of becoming contains the concepts of being and non-being. In this concept they permeate each other....
"We shall now take up the second main proposition of dialectics...the law of development through opposites.... Not until Hegel was this law completely developed.
"This law applies to all motion and change of things, to real things as well as to their images in our minds....
"...[This law] states, in the first place, that all motion, development, or change, takes place through opposites or contradictions, or through the negation of a thing.
"...The negation of a thing from which the change proceeds, however, is in turn subject to law of the transformation of things into their opposites...." [Thalheimer (1936), pp.161, 165-66, 170-71. Bold emphases added.]
Novack adds his repetitive ha'penny's worth (here, at first, writing about plants and seeds, but all the while seeming to lose his grip on reality):
"Each phase of the plant's manifestation appears as a reality and then is transformed in the course of development into an unreality or an appearance. This movement, triadic in this particular case, from unreality to reality and then back again to unreality, constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind all appearance....
"In this dialectical movement, in this passage out of and into opposition, resides the secret to the movement of all real things.... Dialectics is the logic of matter in motion and thereby the logic of contradictions, because development is inherently self-contradictory. Everything generates within itself that force which leads to its negation, its passing away into some other and higher form of being....
"This dialectical activity is universal. There is no escape from its unremitting and relentless embrace...." [Novack (1971), pp.87, 94. Bold emphases added.]
And, as if that were not enough, here is Cornforth:
""The second dogmatic assumption of mechanism is the assumption that no change can ever happen except by the action of some external cause.
"Just as no part of a machine moves unless another part acts on it and makes it move, so mechanism sees matter as being inert -- without motion, or rather without self-motion. For mechanism, nothing ever moves unless something else pushes or pulls is, it never changes unless something else interferes with it.
"No wonder that, regarding matter in this way, the mechanists had to believe in a Supreme Being to give the "initial push"....
"So in studying the causes of change, we should not merely seek for external causes of change, but should above all seek for the source of change within the process itself, in its own self-movement, in the inner impulses to development contained in things themselves...."
"...'[S]truggle' is not external and accidental. It is not adequately understood if we suppose that it is a question of forces or tendencies arising quite independently the one of the other, which happen to meet, to bump up against each other and come into conflict.
"No. The struggle is internal and necessary; for it arises and follows from the nature of the process as a whole. The opposite tendencies are not independent the one of the other, but are inseparably connected as parts or aspects of a single whole. And they operate and come into conflict on the basis of the contradiction inherent in the process as a whole.
"Movement and change result from causes inherent in things and processes, from internal contradictions.
"Thus, for example, the old mechanist conception of movement was that it only happened when one body bumped into another: there were no internal causes of movement, that is, no 'self-movement', but only external causes. But on the contrary, the opposed tendencies which operate in the course of the change of state of a body operate on the basis of the contradictory unity of attractive and repulsive forces inherent in all physical phenomena....
"Why should we say that contradiction is the driving force of change? It is because it is only the presence of contradictions in a process which provides the internal conditions making change necessary.... It is the presence of contradictions, that is of contradictory tendencies of movement, or of a unity and struggle of opposites, which brings about changes of movement in the course of a process. [Cornforth (1976), pp.40-43; 90, 94. Italic emphases in the original. Bold emphases added.]
And Baghavan:
"Hegel pointed out that the co-existence, the unity, the interpenetration of opposites constitutes an inner and inherent contradiction, a basic instability in all things which leads to development and change....
The existence of contradictions in all things gives rise to self-movement." [Baghavan (1987), p.90. Bold emphasis added.]
And Mandel:
"All motion has a cause....
"A fundamental cause of all motion, all change, is the internal contradictions of the changing object. In the final analysis, every object, every phenomenon, changes, moves, is transformed and modified under the influence of its internal contradictions...." [Mandel (1979), p.162. Bold emphases added.]
Here are our old friends, Woods and Grant:
"Dialectics explains that change and motion involve contradiction and can only take place through contradictions.... Dialectics is the logic of contradiction....
"So fundamental is this idea to dialectics that Marx and Engels considered motion to be the most basic characteristic of matter.... [And, referring to a quote from Aristotle, they add (RL)] [t]his is not the mechanical conception of motion as something imparted to an inert mass by an external 'force' but an entirely different notion of matter as self-moving....
"The essential point of dialectical thought is not that it is based on the idea of change and motion but that it views motion and change as phenomena based on contradiction.... Contradiction is an essential feature of all being. It lies at the heart of matter itself. It is the source of all motion, change, life and development. The dialectical law which expresses this idea is the unity and interpenetration of opposites....
"The universal phenomena of the unity of opposites is, in reality, the motor-force of all motion and development in nature. It is the reason why it is not necessary to introduce the concept of external impulse to explain movement and change -- the fundamental weakness of all mechanistic theories. Movement, which itself involves a contradiction, is only possible as a result of the conflicting tendencies and inner tensions which lie at the heart of all forms of matter....
"...Matter is self-moving and self-organising." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.43-45, 47, 68, 72. Bold emphases added.]
And now, a few Communist Party hacks:
"The essence of the dialectical contradiction may be defined as an interrelationship and interconnection between opposites in which they mutually assert and deny each other (sic), and the struggle between them serves as the motive force, the source of development. This is why the law in question is known as the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.
"This law explains one of the most important features of dialectical development: motion, development takes place as self-motion, self-development. This concept is highly relevant to materialism. It means that the world develops not as a result of any external causes but by virtue of its own laws, the laws of motion of matter itself. It has dialectical meaning because it indicates that the source, the motive force of development of phenomena is to be found in their internal contradictions. In the past some materialists who rejected any supernatural force as a constant factor influencing natural processes nevertheless had to fall back on the mysterious 'first impulse' that was supposed to have set matter in motion.
"The dialectical doctrine that the motion or development of nature is in fact self-motion, self-development, explains why many contemporary bourgeois philosophers are so vehement in their attacks on the proposition of the contradictory essence of things. Development understood in this way leaves no room for a 'transcendental', mystical 'creative force' external to nature....
"Postulating that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and processes and comprise the motive force of the self-development of nature and society, materialist dialectics explains how this process takes place." [Konstantinov, et al. (1974), pp.144-45. Italic emphases in the original. Bold emphases added.]
"Contradiction also expresses this feature of the relation of opposition, i.e., the mutual exclusion and mutual presupposing of its formative aspects. It can therefore be briefly defined as the unity of opposites which mutually exclude one another and are in struggle. The law of dialectics that demonstrates the driving force of contradictions is formulated as the law of the unity and struggle of opposites.
"According to this law, contradictions are the inner impetus of development, the source of the self-movement and change of things. If things were a constant identity in themselves, and lacked differences and contradictions, they would be absolutely immutable.... Contradiction is a dynamic relation of opposites.... The determining element in contradiction is therefore the struggle of opposites." [Kharin (1981), p.125.]
"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. To be means to be in motion.... Like matter, motion is uncreatable and indestructible. It is not introduced from outside but is included in matter, which is not inert but active. Motion is self-motion in the sense that the tendency, the impulse to change of state is inherent in matter itself: it is its own cause." [Spirkin (1983), p.75. Bold emphasis added.]
"The development of the most diverse objects and phenomena shows that opposite aspects cannot exist peacefully side by side; the contradictory, mutually exclusive character of opposites necessarily causes a struggle between them. The old and the new, the emergent and the obsolete must come into contradiction, must clash. It is contradiction, the struggle of opposites that comprises the main source of development of matter and consciousness....
"...The struggle of opposites is the inner content, the source of the development of reality.
"Such is the essence of the dialectical law of the unity and struggle of opposites.
"...Motion, as understood by Marxist dialectics, is the self-motion of matter, internal motion, whose driving forces or impulses are contained within the developing objects and phenomena themselves." [Afanasyev (1968), pp. 95, 97-98. Italic emphases in the original. Bold emphasis added.]
Incidentally, the above author, and one or two other Stalinists, have included in their remarks a discussion of the relation between external and internal contradictions, which seems to answer some of the objections made in this Essay. This complication will be examined later in this Essay. On this, see Note 28.
However, we will see in Essay Nine Part Two that it is plain that these theorists introduced such notions in order to rationalise political decisions taken for other reasons.
4. DM-theorists are surely aware of these patent truths; indeed, they have an answer to such impertinences. [Again, see Note 28 and the rest of this Essay.]
However, this theory of motion actually predates Aristotle; indeed it can be found in Plato's dialogue, The Laws:
"Athenian. Then we
must say that self-motion being the origin of all motions, and the first which
arises among things at rest as well as among things in motion, is the eldest and
mightiest principle of change, and that which is changed by another and yet
moves the other is second." [Plato (1997b), p.1552. I have in fact used the
online
Jowett translation here.]
On this, see Gregory (2000), Jammer (1999), and Skemp (1967).
As Plato indicates, this theory derives from earlier mystical/animistic notions; these are traced in Essay Fourteen (summary here).
5. Several items from this dialectical menagerie were discussed at length in earlier Essays. The Totality itself is the main topic of Essay Eleven Parts One and Two. HEX is outlined below, in Note 25.
6. This is a very odd claim, too. I will attempt to provide some rationale for it in Note 28, below. Other dialecticians also argue that their 'internalist' account subverts appeals to a supernatural explanation for the origin of the universe.
Here is a selection of quotations (greatly shortened once more -- it would not be difficult to extend it indefinitely) illustrating this line of thought.
First, we have already seen Lenin argue this way:
"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites. The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).
"In the first conception of motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of 'self-movement'.
"The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.
"The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Italic emphases in the original. Bold emphasis added.]
But, Engels himself had already set the pattern:
"The philosophy of nature offered us a cosmogony whose starting point is a "self-identical state of matter", a state which can only be conceived by means of the most hopeless confusion over the relation between matter and motion, and which, moreover, can only be conceived on the assumption of an extramundane personal God who alone can get it in motion...." [Engels (1976, p.183.]
Cornforth once more elaborates as follows:
"The second dogmatic assumption of mechanism is the assumption that no change can ever happen except by the action of some external cause.
"Just as no part of a machine moves unless another part acts on it and makes it move, so mechanism sees matter as being inert -- without motion, or rather without self-motion. For mechanism, nothing ever moves unless something else pushes or pulls is, it never changes unless something else interferes with it.
"No wonder that, regarding matter in this way, the mechanists had to believe in a Supreme Being to give the "initial push"....
"No, the world was not created by a Supreme Being. Any particular organisation of matter, any particular process of matter in motion, has an origin and a beginning.... But matter in motion had no origin, no beginning....
"So in studying the causes of change, we should not merely seek for external causes of change, but should above all seek for the source of change within the process itself, in its own self-movement, in the inner impulses to development contained in things themselves." [Cornforth (1976), pp.40-43.]
And, referring to the struggle of opposites, the following author proceed to argue that:
"This law explains one of the most important features of dialectical development: motion, development takes place as self-motion, self-development. This concept is highly relevant to materialism. It means that the world develops not as a result of any external causes but by virtue of its own laws, the laws of motion of matter itself. It has dialectical meaning because it indicates that the source, the motive force of development of phenomena is to be found in their internal contradictions. In the past some materialists who rejected any supernatural force as a constant factor influencing natural processes nevertheless had to fall back on the mysterious 'first impulse' that was supposed to have set matter in motion.
"The dialectical doctrine that the motion or development of nature is in fact self-motion, self-development, explains why many contemporary bourgeois philosophers are so vehement in their attacks on the proposition of the contradictory essence of things. Development understood in this way leaves no room for a 'transcendental', mystical 'creative force' external to nature...." [Konstantinov, et al. (1974), pp.144-45. Italic emphases in the original. Bold emphases added.]
And here are two more communist theoreticians:
"...[Previous philosophers] did not recognise the contradictoriness of being and were compelled, therefore, either to reject motion, or turn to God, declaring Him the final cause of all changes in the world. Heraclitus was the first to propose that contradiction is the source of motion. Hegel, however, developed the idea on an idealist basis, with respect to pure thought, but only dialectical materialism substantiated this proposition on a truly scientific basis...." [Sheptulin (1978), p.266.]
"The source of the internal activity of matter lies within it.... Motion is absolute, for it is unrelated to anything external that could determine it. There is nothing else in the world except eternally moving matter, its forms, properties and manifestations.
"Any way of constructing [construing? RL] rest as absolute is as intolerable in the conception of motion, as it is in the relativist interpretation of the latter. Many philosophers, however, adhered precisely to such views since they regarded substance as something inert and immutable, and explained the motion of natural bodies through the action of an outside force. Logically this gave rise to the following question: if one body sets another in motion, the latter a third, etc., how then did they start to move? Who wound up the clock of the mechanism of nature? Those who reasoned this way had to recognise the existence of something that provided the initial impulse. Relative to seemingly motionless nature such an entity could only be God...." [Kharin (1981), pp.63-64.]
However, if it should turn out that dialecticians also appeal to external causes to account for the initiation of change (as we will see that they do), then the superiority of DM over mechanical materialism simply disappears --, at least in this regard. On that, see Note 28.
7. It's not clear from what Rees says whether or not he believes the universe is infinite -- in the sense that (1) it had no beginning, or that (2) it is infinite in extent (bounded or unbounded), or even that (3) it is infinitely divisible. Clearly, if the universe had an origin -- and unless we suppose it caused itself before it existed! -- it must have had an external cause. Of course, if space and time began with the origin of the universe then that alternative would seem to be unavailable. [Although, it is not too clear what it could mean to say that space and time had a beginning; on this, see Rundle (2004).]
On the other hand, if the universe were infinite (in every respect) and had no origin (as many DM-theorists still believe, despite the BBT), our grasp of the idea that everything is interconnected would become even less secure, if not threateningly precarious -- and this is not just because there would be no "everything" to grasp (if the universe were infinite). On this, see Robinson (2003) and Rundle (2004), and Essay Eleven Part One.
[BBT = Big Bang Theory.]
Certainly, Lenin spoke as if he believed nature was infinite. [Lenin (1972), p.314]. Recently, two comrades, who have written on this topic, declare that they also believe that the universe is infinite, and in both 'directions', as it were -- macroscopically and microscopically; cf., Woods and Grant (1995), pp.183-226. [Their ideas will be examined in other Essays posted at this site.]
However, it looks like the failure of scientists to substantiate key areas of the Standard Model (such as the existence of the Higgs Boson and Dark Matter) has given an apparently growing body of other scientists the confidence to question the BBT.
On this, see Chown (2003, 2004, 2005), Lerner (1992) and Mitchell (1995, 2002).
Also worth consulting is Eric Lerner's site.
Clearly, this is something for scientists themselves to sort out; it is not up to dialecticians or philosophers to tell them what to think. I am therefore taking no position on this.
8. Idealism Rears Its Ugly Head
Rees's requirement here echoes an approach to the foundations of empirical knowledge that has been adopted by most metaphysicians since Greek times (and this includes Hegel): which is that only necessary or conceptual truths are capable of explaining the "how" and the "why" of things. Mixed in with this is the parallel belief that empirical evidence is an inferior, if not a flawed basis on which to build such knowledge.
In Hegel's case, this Platonic contempt for the world appeared in many guises; in this particular case, as part of his dismissal of so-called "bad" infinities, his disdain for ordinary human "understanding" and the dichotomy he drew between appearance and reality -- all of which ancient aristocratic prejudices have since been appropriated by DM-theorists. In other thinkers, this class-conscious contempt surfaces as part of an almost universal disparagement of the material language of the working-class -- the vernacular --, which is then confused (perhaps deliberately) with 'commonsense'.
This mind-set trades on an ancient aristocratic view of material reality, which held that the physical contingencies of the material world -- the latter of which is fit only for working people, "engineers", "technicians" and slaves to slum about in -- is incapable of providing a solid foundation for any truly philosophical explanation of "Being".
There is an excellent outline of this dismissive attitude to ordinary, empirical knowledge --, i.e., that which was discovered by, and is only of concern to, the 'lower classes' -- and the lives and experiences of ordinary people, in Conner (2005), chapters 2 and 3. On this, see also Eamon (1994).
This tone was given its classical form in Plato; his 'Gods and Giants' image was examined briefly in Essay Three Part Two, where it was pointed out that in this regard at least, dialecticians are clearly on the side of the 'Gods'.
The political motivation behind this disdain for the world of appearances, material language and empirical reality is discussed in detail in Essays Nine Part One, Twelve and Fourteen. [Summaries can be accessed here.]
A passage from Baker and Hacker (1988) underlines the futility of this "aristocratic" approach to knowledge (although they do not use that particular word, and are not making this particular political point) -- which, incidentally, also reveals why dialecticians (like Rees, and the others quoted here) have become fixated on a search for a metaphysical (and ultimate/rational) "why" of things:
"Empirical, contingent truths have always struck philosophers as being, in some sense, ultimately unintelligible. It is not that none can be known with certainty…; nor is it that some cannot be explained…. Rather is it that all explanation of empirical truths rests ultimately on brute contingency -- that is how the world is! Where science comes to rest in explaining empirical facts varies from epoch to epoch, but it is in the nature of empirical explanation that it will hit the bedrock of contingency somewhere, e.g., in atomic theory in the nineteenth century or in quantum mechanics today. One feature that explains philosophers' fascination with truths of Reason is that they seem, in a deep sense, to be fully intelligible. To understand a necessary proposition is to see why things must be so, it is to gain an insight into the nature of things and to apprehend not only how things are, but also why they cannot be otherwise. It is striking how pervasive visual metaphors are in philosophical discussions of these issues. We see the universal in the particular (by Aristotelian intuitive induction); by the Light of Reason we see the essential relations of Simple Natures; mathematical truths are apprehended by Intellectual Intuition, or by a priori insight. Yet instead of examining the use of these arresting pictures or metaphors to determine their aptness as pictures, we build upon them mythological structures.
"We think of necessary propositions as being true or false, as objective and independent of our minds or will. We conceive of them as being about various entities, about numbers even about extraordinary numbers that the mind seems barely able to grasp…, or about universals, such as colours, shapes, tones; or about logical entities, such as the truth-functions or (in Frege's case) the truth-values. We naturally think of necessary propositions as describing the features of these entities, their essential characteristics. So we take mathematical propositions to describe mathematical objects…. Hence investigation into the domain of necessary propositions is conceived as a process of discovery. Empirical scientists make discoveries about the empirical domain, uncovering contingent truths; metaphysicians, logicians and mathematicians appear to make discoveries of necessary truths about a supra-empirical domain (a 'third realm'). Mathematics seems to be the 'natural history of mathematical objects' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.137], 'the physics of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1976), p.138; however these authors have recorded this erroneously as p.139, RL] or the 'mineralogy of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.229]. The mathematician, e.g., Pascal, admires the beauty of a theorem as though it were a kind of crystal. Numbers seem to him to have wonderful properties; it is as if he were confronting a beautiful natural phenomenon [Wittgenstein (1998), p.47; again, these authors have recorded this erroneously as p.41, RL]. Logic seems to investigate the laws governing logical objects…. Metaphysics looks as if it is a description of the essential structure of the world. Hence we think that a reality corresponds to our (true) necessary propositions. Our logic is correct because it corresponds to the laws of logic….
"In our eagerness to ensure the objectivity of truths of reason, their sempiternality and mind-independence, we slowly but surely transform them into truths that are no less 'brutish' than empirical, contingent truths. Why must red exclude being green? To be told that this is the essential nature of red and green merely reiterates the brutish necessity. A proof in arithmetic or geometry seems to provide an explanation, but ultimately the structure of proofs rests on axioms. Their truth is held to be self-evident, something we apprehend by means of our faculty of intuition; we must simply see that they are necessarily true…. We may analyse such ultimate truths into their constituent 'indefinables'. Yet if 'the discussion of indefinables…is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of a pineapple' [Russell (1937), p.xv; again these authors have recorded this erroneously as p.v, RL], then the mere intellectual vision does not penetrate the logical or metaphysical that to the why or wherefore…. For if we construe necessary propositions as truths about logical, mathematical or metaphysical entities which describe their essential properties, then, of course, the final products of our analyses will be as impenetrable to reason as the final products of physical theorising, such as Planck's constant." [Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.273-75. Referencing conventions in the original have been altered to conform to those adopted here.]
As should now be clear from all that has gone before, DM-theorists have bought into this view of 'necessary truths' (even if few of them use that particular phrase, although Lenin and Dietzgen seem to have been rather fond of it; more on this in Essay Thirteen).
For example, dialecticians in general regard change as the result of the relation between internally-linked opposite (logical?) properties of objects and processes. But, why this should cause change is simply left entirely unexamined (indeed, it is left as a brute fact, as the above passage suggests it must); in reality this account of change is a consequence merely of a certain way of describing things (and a fetishised way, at that), as we will see.
Nevertheless, as we have already seen, there is no reason why contradictory states of affairs should cause change any more than there is a reason to suppose that non-contradictory states should. Both of these options rely on descriptions of the alleged relations between objects and processes (not on evidence since (as we saw earlier) it is not possible materially to verify their existence); they supposedly capture or picture processes in nature that are held to make other objects or processes alter/'develop'.
Even an appeal to forces here to account for why things change merely implicates yet more objects and processes -- more brute facts -- none of which adds anything to the 'necessitation' that such an account supposedly promised, and now requires. In the end, forces depend on descriptions being translated into the vocabulary of QM (or some other branch of Physics), and hence into another set propositions expressing yet more brute facts. When asked why forces do what they do (or why even a field, say, is capable of making anything move) the only response possible is: "It's just a fact...". But, as seems plain, Differential equations, Hamiltonians, and the Kronecker Delta cannot actually move things about the place.
Moreover, the infinite regress (or "bad infinity") dialecticians hoped to avoid by appealing to 'internal contradictions' now simply reappears elsewhere in their theory. When it is fleshed-out, this theory just relates objects and processes to yet more objects and processes, as well as to 'negations', 'opposites', and 'interpenetrations', and the like (i.e., just more "brute facts").
In all this, the necessitation that was originally sought simply disappears in an impenetrable mist of jargon (which leads "who knows where?"). In this regard, the logical/rational foundation for knowledge constructed by DM-advocates turns out to be no different from that concocted by traditional metaphysicians. In the place of reasons (i.e., the "why and the how" of things), we just find more DM-objects and processes -- except that these have been shunted off into a mysterious, abstract realm, fluffed-up with a handful of jargonised terms-of-art (like, "mediation", "unity in difference", "internally related", "thing-in-itself"), of convenient and unrelieved obscurity, all of which possess impressive idealist credentials.
While DM-theorists promised the world a brand new set of explanations, all they have served up is a batch of shop-soiled goods borrowed from traditional philosophy: more jargonised descriptions, masking the 'brute facts' underneath.
9. Clearly, Rees forgot several other possible options here. For example, even if something were to exist outside the universe, it could be still be non-natural -- it does not have to be supernatural.
And, it's worth asking what the word "supernatural" means anyway. Knee-jerk atheists seem to think that the term "supernatural" is readily comprehensible; but if it isn't then P2 doesn't even count as a definition.
P2: Anything external to the universe is supernatural.
However, if "supernatural" itself means something like "external to nature" then it seems that the word "external" must either lose its own sense (in such a context -- if there is or can be nothing external to the universe, then 'it' cannot be anything in particular, let alone 'supernatural'), or it ought to take on a new sense -- rather like the way that the word "number" alters its meaning as we flip through the different sets: ℕ, ℤ, ℚ, ℝ and ℂ. So, anything 'external' to the currently defined set of all numbers is not a number (that is, until new sets are defined).
[ℕ is the set of natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, ...); ℤ is the set of integers (..., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ...); ℚ is the set of rational numbers (impossible to list, but this set includes all previous sets, but also incorporates all those numbers that can be expressed as a ratio of two integers -- i.e., factions, terminating and recurring decimals); ℝ is the set of real numbers (this includes the previous set, and the so-called 'irrationals' -- numbers that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers, such as the square root of two, or Pi); ℂ is the set of complex numbers (of the form "a + bi", where "i" is the square root of -1, and "a" and "b" are real numbers).]
Is it the same with "supernatural"? If we extend our definitions, will it one day make sense? [Clearly not, but that fact would be impossible to substantiate using the Stone Age Logic and rusty conceptual tools that DM supplies its adepts.
But, if there is nothing external to the universe (not even space), then that claim must itself lack a clear sense (as must its denial). On this, see Rundle (2004), again.
10. Modern-day Thomists (or even quasi-Thomists) are more sophisticated in their defence of the COMA than many Marxists realise; and 'internalist' ideas are alive and well, too, unfortunately.
More details on these and other Mystical systems and their connection with DM will be given in Essay Fourteen (summary here).
[COMA = Cosmological Argument.]
[However, my objections to this pernicious brand of Mysticism will not be aired here.]
11. This is discussed in more detail in Essay Ten Part One, and in Essay Three Part Three. More details can be found in Note 25, below.
12. Naturally, the use of the phrase "antagonistic forces" makes sense when it is employed in HM. This is because it is human beings (i.e., agents) who shape history under the action of economic, social and class forces (where the word "force" is interpreted in its ordinary sense), not as a result of impersonal 'forces' (except, of course, those implicated in the "forces of production").
Moreover, language gives human actors the capacity to form intra-, and inter-contradictory beliefs about both their own circumstances and their material interests (which are, albeit, not always clearly perceived). Certainly, social and economic factors condition these factors, and are conditioned in return. Hence, in general, the aims and interests of agents drawn from one class cannot but be inconsistent with those of other classes. Such aims and interests are thus rightly said to be "contradictory" because they represent outcomes not all of which can be realised by all parties at once, and not all of which cannot (without one or more ceasing to exist), in these circumstances.
To be sure, this interpretation lets all the metaphysical hot air out of this particular a priori DM-balloon -- which over-inflated system would have us believe that impersonal 'contradictions' have the capacity to cause change (as if they were agents of some sort themselves).
The view (briefly) outlined here has at least this going for it: it restricts contradictions to what human beings can say, think and do -- as one should expect to the case with a term that only sensibly relates to human practice -- while it rightly denies it of things that cannot speak or think for themselves.
Admittedly, these comments are sketchy in the extreme, but further elaboration would take us too far afield into HM.
In addition, I do not want to get sidetracked into a discussion of the meaning of that rather obscure term "mediated". As this word features in Hegelian Metaphysics, it is far from clear whether it can be transposed into a scientific context without suffering major distortion (always assuming it has got a meaning to begin with). Cf., Inwood (1992), pp.205-08.
13. Of course, there could be a hierarchy of systems, all of which contain the sub-systems below it in the ontological pecking order. This option will be considered presently.
14. This is discussed briefly in Note 10, above, and again later.
However, it is a moot point exactly what could count as an external cause/contradiction in a dialectical system. If everything is interconnected and is part of a mediated Totality, there would seem to be no room for external causation at all -- and hence no room for "external contradictions". It is by confusing (what is meant to be) a logical relation with a spatial one that some dialecticians have allowed themselves to imagine there could be external contradictions to begin with. We will return to this theme later where we will see that it is mainly STDs and MISTs who have fallen into this trap -- just as we will see in Essay Nine Part Two that this theoretical segue also presented them with an ideological rational for arguing that socialism could be built in one country, with all the disastrous consequences that implied for Marxism.
[STD = Stalinist Dialectician; MIST = Maoist Dialectician.]
15. In what follows, it is assumed that a system is any collection of bodies and/or processes (perhaps 'dialectically' inter-linked), which in turn can be made up of countless other systems/sub-systems. It is also assumed that any sub-system is a system in its own right.
16. This appears to be the view at least of Ollman (in Ollman (1976, 1993, 2003)); more on this in Essay Three Part Three, where 'internal relations' will be destructively analysed.
Nevertheless, this caveat is required in order to harmonise the claim made by other dialecticians (who are mostly Stalinists) that change is induced externally, as well as to allow the incorporation of forces as surrogate 'internal' relations. On this view, even though forces would appear to act as external causes, they actually operate internally on bodies, causing change. [Here, external relations are merely mis-perceived internal ones, it seems.]
This avenue of escape will be exposed as a dead end in Part Two of this Essay, and partially so in Note 28, below. See also Note 17, and Note 23.
17. This was, of course, part of the reason why Leibniz opted for a 'logical' solution to the 'problem' of causation. In order to provide an ultimate, 'rational' explanation of the world, external causes had to be re-written as internal causes in disguise, which led Leibniz to postulate the existence of 'Monads'. These were 'minds' programmed to behave as if they had external effects on each other (but they were in fact all logically inter-connected by means of their 'pre-programmed predicates'), but also to act as if they were hermetically-sealed off from the rest of nature (they were thus "window-less", as he put it).
Hegel merely adapted this idea, enlarged it grotesquely in the direction of Spinoza -- re-configuring it along the way with wall-to-wall jargon -- subsequently burying the lot in the self-development of his 'Super Ego'. Hence, everything in his mystical world was self-moving, and inter-linked, as a result. Lenin and Engels simply swallowed this croc.
[The Hermetic origin of these notions will be detailed in Essay Fourteen (summary here). See also here.]
On Leibniz's early development, see Mercer (2001); on the occult influences on him, see Ross (1983, 1998); the latter paper is available here.
18. It would be rather like, say, Darwin forgetting to note the fact that the fossil record was inconsistent with his theory (which, as it turns out, he did not ignore, but attempted to explain). On the problems that this still poses, see Schwartz (1999).
19. The 'Nixon' card is based on the following events: in the run-up to the 1968 US Presidential election, Nixon announced he had a 'secret plan' to end the Vietnam War, which plan he could not reveal since that would ruin it. As things turned out, he had no plan -- except perhaps to expand that war into Cambodia!
So, in order to 'Nixon' a problem, all a theorist has to do is declare that it has been "solved", and then refuse to explain any further.
In this area of DM, this would involve a dialectician claiming both that the world is maximally interconnected -- even while all its parts are at the same time maximally isolated from one another --, and that dialectical logic allows this contradiction to be "grasped"; end of story.
However, this particular 'problem' was created entirely by DL; the 'solution' on offer helps not one jot in understanding what it could possibly mean to suggest that everything is maximally discrete and maximally interconnected all at once.
Waving a few jargonised phrases about might satisfy the ever-dwindling band of DM-fans (few of whom can come to much agreement over what these jargonised words mean, anyway), but that is about all.
20. This much was clear to Zeno. There is a useful summary of this 'paradox' in Pyle (1997).
21. Which would mean, of course, that they could have no external effect on each other. [Why this is so will be explained in Note 22, below.]
However, if these 'objects' had an internal structure or dynamic, too, they would in fact be sub-systems, not 'simple' objects -- and this infinitary fandango would take another spin around the metaphysical dance floor.
Incidentally, we met a few possible/actual candidates for such 'simple objects' in an earlier Essay, here and here.
And this much was clear to Leibniz, too.
This is how Leibniz scholar George Ross summarises this idea:
"As significant as his critique of Descartes' mechanics was Leibniz's attack on Newton's account of force. In the Principles, Newton limited himself to describing interactions between bodies in terms of general mathematical laws. This limitation was both a strength and a weakness. Newton succeeded in making the complexities of nature amenable to mathematical description only by simplifying the phenomena: by treating material particles as if they were infinitely hard yet infinitely elastic, concentrated at points, capable of exchanging any amount of force all at once, connected by forces operating instantaneously at a distance, and so on. Leibniz complained that this made Newton's system an idealised abstraction, which could not possibly be true of the real world. In reality, nothing was absolutely hard or elastic, nothing happened instantaneously, and every causal interaction was mediated by a complex mechanism. In general terms, Newton would have agreed with Leibniz's comment. He too believed in underlying mechanisms, but he refused to speculate about them in the Principles (his famous, 'I do not invent hypotheses')....
"Much later, in his Specimen of Dynamics (1695), Leibniz tried to give an account of the mechanism which mediated exchanges of force between colliding bodies. In real collisions (unlike Newton's idealisations), there had to be a finite period during which one body slowed down and the other picked up speed. This implied that bodies had a certain size, and were not absolutely hard or elastic, since the only conceivable mechanism for transfer of force was that bodies were first squashed together, and then gradually sprang back from each other once all the kinetic energy had been taken up. However, as soon as it is accepted that transfer of force between every day objects must be mediated by a mechanism, there is no point at which you stop needing smaller and smaller sub-mechanisms. At no level can you suddenly say that force is transferred directly.
"Elasticity is itself a phenomenon requiring explanation in terms of pushings of particles. At the first instant of impact, the outermost particles of each colliding body push against their neighbours, and these in turn push against their neighbours, and so on right through each body. But then each of these pushings needs to be explained by the compression of sub-particles, and so on to infinity. The conclusion Leibniz drew was that, ultimately, forces were not really transferred at all. All action was, as he put it, spontaneous. The energy required for a body's motion on the occasion of an impact, had to be drawn from its own resources, since it could not actually take up any energy from bodies impinging on it....
"An even more significant aspect of the theory was its abandonment of the traditional notion that matter was essentially inert. Leibniz saw that if the only function of matter was as a passive carrier of forces, then it had no role to play in scientific explanation. Its only role would be the metaphysical one of satisfying the prejudice that forces must inhere in something more substantial than themselves. He maintained that matter was nothing other than the receptive capacity of things, or their 'passive power', as he called it. Matter just was the capacity to slow other things down, and to be accelerated rather than penetrated (capacities which ghosts and shadows lack) -- in other words, inertia or mass, and solidity. So, taking also into account 'active powers' such as kinetic energy, Leibniz reduced matter to a complex of forces. In this he was anticipating modern field theory, which treats material particles as concentrated fields of force –- an anticipation duly recognised by its founder, the Italian mathematician Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich (1711-87)." [Ross (1984), pp.40-44.]
We will be examining some these ideas in more detail in Part Two of this Essay. On this, see Boscovich (1966), and Whyte (1961b).
The serious problems that any naïve materialist account of forces faces are spelled out in detail (with admirable clarity and engaging style) in Schelling (1995), particularly pp.161-69. Schelling is clearly writing in the tradition of Leibniz, Boscovich and the early Kant (of The Physical Monadology [reprinted in Kant (2003), pp.47-66]; even so, in the end Schelling still can't account for the interaction of forces. Why this is so will be outlined in Essay Three Part Five.
However, there is a distinct echo of all this in Nietzsche's analysis of forces (which I develop in a more consistently anti-metaphysical direction in Part Two), outlined in Poellner (2000).
Hence, external interaction between bodies implies they must have some structure (since not all of a body can interact with an impinging body at once -- unless all bodies are two-dimensional surfaces, and nothing more, and interact only 'face-to-face', as it were). But, if they possess a structure they cannot be simple. So, simple bodies cannot interact.
But, since all systems are made of simple bodies, and no simple bodies can interact externally, no systems can interact externally either.
This is a simplified version of the argument that motivated Leibniz (and it seems Schelling and Hegel). However, the problem with 'internal' interactions are if anything even greater. These will be rehearsed in Essay Three Part Three.
There is a different proof of the impossibility of interaction in Line and Matheson (1987). However, a recent article has called this into question: Smith (2007). But, Smith seems to base his objections on a view of mathematics that is not sustainable: i.e., that if we can give a mathematical description of bodies, then physical bodies must conform to that description. [However, more on this later.]
23. These days, this 'plasma' is called "atomless gunk", a phrase which was, I think, invented by the late David Lewis. "Gunk", it seems, shares some of the qualities of the complexes I introduced earlier, but not all. But, the word "gunk" apparently applies to any whole whose parts all have further proper parts (and so on, forever (whatever that means)), whereas this might not be true of complexes.
At any rate, "atomless gunk" seems to be of little use to dialecticians since it is not easy to see how it could be the bearer of any 'internal contradictions', even if we knew what these were.
Now, in order to counter this, it could be argued that even though change is internally-driven -- and supposing that objects and processes within any given system can influence other bodies or systems external to themselves -- objects and processes do not in fact causally affect one another, they "mediate" each other. In this way, change could still be seen as internal to a system (or body), nature still regarded as interconnected Totality, and objects and processes could still exert an external influence on other objects and processes, too. Several DM-theorists who seem to adopt something like this approach are listed below, in Note 28.
However, the nature of these external 'influences' is highly obscure; how, indeed, would it be possible for objects or processes to 'influence' each other and for this not to have any causal impact? What sort of 'influence' is this if it changes nothing, if things could proceed in exactly the same way whether or not such 'influences' actually operate? And what would be the point of claiming that nature formed an interconnected whole if remote objects never causally affect one another? What would we say to someone who argued that although, say, the centre of mass of the galactic group of which our galaxy forms a part had an 'influence' on the solar system, this was not a causal influence? If they couldn't explain what they meant, would we be willing to accept such an obscure account?
Naturally, this impasse serves to highlight another related difficulty: since we still have no clear idea what the DM-Totality is, it is not easy to comprehend what one of its sub-systems could possibly be, either. Nor is it easy to grasp the nature of any of its sub-systems which are causally isolated from the rest of the Totality, while at the same time being 'influenced' ('mediated') by them, and vice versa. This seems about as clear as that other pseudo-scientific idea: that stars have an 'influence' on character.
A question asked earlier is worth reviving: Are the sub-systems of the Totality "gunk", sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, clumps of matter, planets, galaxies, galactic clusters -- or something else?
Unfortunately, each putative candidate here simply creates its own problems. For example, if one of these hermetically-sealed causal systems (that is, those wherein all change is internally-generated) is, say, our own galaxy, then it could not, it seems, have been caused by, or be causally linked to, anything outside itself. That would mean that our galaxy would have no connection with the so-called "Big Bang", it would receive and transmit no radiant energy nor would it be under the influence of wider gravitational forces/geodesics, and so on. Clearly, the same problems would afflict each of the other candidates listed above, and in like manner.
Considerations like these seem to indicate that the DM-Totality must be the entire universe, and that each part must be causally-linked in some way to (and not just 'mediated' by) every other. That would further mean that all change in the universe is internally-generated. But even then, that would not solve every problem.
Several possibilities present themselves:
(1) Internally-driven change of this sort must apply solely to the whole universe. If this were not so, the whole would be fragmented in ways explored in the main body of this Essay. If this option still applies, then everything 'inside' the universe must change as a result of the inter-play between internal and external causal/dialectical factors.
The problem with this is that it would provide DM with its own set of 'bad' infinities, associated with external causation. So, if object/process, P is subject to an external causal set C1, and the latter is subject to external causes too (say, C2), and so on, this must surely end "who knows where?" In that case, the "why" that motivated Rees could not be catered for in DM.
In addition, it would expose the theory to the challenge that if everything is subject to internal and external causal influence, then why not the universe itself? The latter question could only then be neutralised by an appeal to a dogmatic stipulation that the universe is unique, saddling that response with all the weaknesses that afflict the COMA for the existence of 'God'.
[COMA = Cosmological Argument.]
(2) Assuming that change to any part of the universe is generated exclusively internally, then, while objects and processes in nature might be able to 'influence' one another, ex hypothesi, they couldn't do this causally. [Naturally, that just loops this theory back in on itself, and to where we were a few paragraphs back.]
To be sure, this not only puts much weight on the word "cause", it seems to operate with a mechanical notion of it, into the bargain. However, if this mechanical notion of causation is abandoned, would we then have a clear enough idea of causation that does not descend merely into constant conjunction, and which does not imply causal necessitation?
[In fact, as we will see in a later Essay, metaphysical accounts of causation like this either rely on constant conjunction (eliminating necessitation), or on an anthropomorphised version of human action, i.e., on a Universal Will operating in nature.
These issues are analysed with admirable clarity here, and here. The second link is to Swartz (1986), the first is to Swartz (2006). See also Russell (1917b), and the recent essays in Price and Corry (2007).]
Nevertheless, and despite this, the problem with this 'solution' is that it seems to imply that the universe is populated with infinitely small elementary particle/systems which are causally unrelated to each other --, either that, or it expands back into option (1) above (as argued in the main body of this Essay).
Another serious difficulty with this interpretation is that as soon as it is decided what constitutes a 'part' of this mysterious whole, it would conflict with scientific fact and theory, since the latter postulates that there are sections of the universe that are (perhaps) causally unrelated to everything else. [Indeed, some parts of nature are so remote that they cannot physically interact. More on this In Essay Eleven Part One.]
(3) All change everywhere is internally-generated, with "internally-generated" being interpreted along Hegelian lines.
There are several problems with this option, too:
(a) External causation would be non-existent if there were only internal links between events and processes. In that case, light bulbs would indeed be able to change themselves.
(b) It would be difficult to decide what it ruled out. Hence, for instance, what might seem to some to be an external cause would in fact be an internal one misperceived/misidentified -- and "external" would become synonymous with "internal, but obscure", and we would be no further forward.
For example, we might want to say that a billiard ball responded the way it did to the impact of another billiard ball because of its own internal dynamic (as Leibniz might have argued), not because of a supposed, but misperceived, external 'cause'.
As George Ross also points out:
"Leibniz's theory of the spontaneity of all motion is not as silly as it might seem. It is a commonplace that every force has an equal and opposite reaction. In the case of colliding bodies, the reaction is the force holding each body together. If either of the bodies has less cohesive force than the kinetic energy involved in the collision, it will shatter instead of moving as predicted by the laws of mechanics. So Leibniz was right to say that bodies can take up only as much energy as they have the capacity to absorb, even though it does not follow that they cannot absorb energy from each other at all." [Ross (1984), p.43.]
In that case, a second billiard ball would only move off after being hit if its internal energy were sufficient to maintain its integrity, otherwise it wouldn't, it would shatter. Thus, what might seem to us to be an external cause is in reality internal, brought about by the occasion of the two objects meeting.
[But even in the case where objects shatter, the particles produced would themselves move off in all directions, caused no doubt by the impact. How these particles would do that and not themselves shatter is on that account entirely obscure.]
(c) On this basis, scientists should concern themselves with the study of internal 'conceptual' links (which would be impossible to verify or detect -- since, ex hypothesi, they could have no external effect on a single instrument), and the whole enterprise could become a priori once more (science now having looped back to its idealist roots in Plato --; certain interpretations of QM seem to be well advanced in this regard already). Because the links between events and processes would be, on this view, conceptual (since they are 'internal', in a Hegelian sense) there could be no material links in nature, just abstract ones. [That would, of course, help explain why Lenin said the things he did, noted earlier.]
There thus seems to be no way out of this Dialectical Maze -- or at least none that avoid sliding back into the sort of Idealism that originally sired this dialectical runt, or none that fail to undermine materially-based science.
Bertell Ollman's 'internal relations solution' will be examined in Essay Three.
Finally, it is far from easy to square external causation/contradictions with the requirements of DL. Hence, while each of the latter might be external to some object, process or system, they must be internal to some other, wider system. Now, the latter (these contradictions internal to this wider system) must be a function of the internal relations that bodies/processes/sub-systems have with one another. In that case, since these 'external contradictions' are in fact conceptual links (understood as part of a "law of cognition", which reflects "objective reality", as revealed by DL -- according to Lenin), then 'external contradictions' are really misperceived 'internal contradictions', once more. [More on this in Note 28, below.]
Of course, this is just one more untoward consequence of up-ending Hegel's 'logic': everything that happens in nature is governed by some internal relation or other, and thus everything is logically-related to everything else. And even if such things are reflected in the human mind (in as sophisticated a manner as one could wish to find), this theory implies that reality is just the reflection of the human mind, and since it pre-dated the human mind, it must be Mind itself.
In this way we can see that putting Hegel the 'right way up' in no way affects the Idealism implicit in his 'logic'.
This argument will be spelt-out in much more detail in Essay Twelve, Part Four.
24. If they were not disjoint, then the sub-systems of T would more readily collapse into HEX (see below). This is because this interpretation of the sub-units of T would make them all interdependent, and hence interconnected.
25. HEX was a notion introduced in Essay Three Part Three (and again in Essay Ten), as the opposite of CAR, the latter being a descriptor invented by the authors of DB.
[DB = Dialectical Biologist; HEX = Hegelian Expansionism; CAR = Cartesian Reductionism.]
In advance of this material being published, here is a glimpse of the argument (which will later appear in Essay Ten, Part One); highlighted in blue:
TAR and other DM-texts almost invariably depict reductionism in negative terms, while DM-holism is offered as up an effective bulwark against it. For example, the part/whole relation is described in the following way:
"One important point to note about this approach is that it is, by its very nature, opposed to reductionism." [Rees (1998), p.5.]
This is because it:
"…presupposes the parts and the whole are not reducible to each other. The parts and the whole mutually condition, or mediate, each other. And a mediated totality cannot form part of a reductionist philosophy because, by definition, reductionism collapses one element of a totality into another without taking account of its specific characteristics." [Ibid., pp.8-9.]
The merits of Rees's arguments are not of immediate concern here (on this, however, see Essay Eleven Part Two), but his attempt to counterpose his own approach to CAR, which involves something that would be more accurate to re-name "Hegelian Expansionism" (HEX) --, something others call "Inflationism" --, is.
The following quotation from Lenin will serve as good as any to illustrate the problems HEX introduces:
"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world….
"[I]f we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity…." [Lenin (1921), pp.92-93. Bold emphases added.]
From this it is clear that HEX holds out the prospect of an infinite task ahead of anyone rash enough to take this approach seriously.... [A defence of Lenin, on the grounds of relevance will be dissected in Essay Ten Part One.]
HEX-type investigations proceed in the opposite direction to those taken by CAR-like analyses. One of the avowed aims of reductionism is to depict the properties of objects and processes in terms of their supposedly more 'basic' (perhaps elementary) parts, or to account for them with as few general laws as possible. The problem with reductionism is that while it is possible to make a start it is not possible for it to end. [Why this is so will not be entered into here.]
In contrast, the situation with HEX is far worse; while it is similarly not possible for HEX to reach a conclusion, it cannot even begin. The reason for saying this is that instead of seeking increasingly fundamental units, HEX aims at finding ever wider and more involved and inclusive connections, which must be explored before any attempt to depict the "specific characteristics" of anything can even begin.
This, of course, immediately stops the dialectical roller-coaster in its tracks because no element in this metaphysical wild goose chase is ascertainable before all the rest have been -– meaning, of course, that none ever will be. Since one half of this open-ended meander through endless epistemological space involves the completion of an infinite task, neither option is viable. Therefore, the entire process cannot end, and it cannot begin.
Even HEX-lovers admit that their approach delivers only "partial" truths (at best). To be sure, these are supposed to edge ever-closer to "absolute truth" (if tested in practice); nevertheless, the infinitary nature of the task ahead completely undermines the whole endeavour. Each element in the Totality in effect lies at the centre of a set of 'concentric circles' (or 'spheres', if we move into a metaphorical 'third dimension') with infinitely expanding regions of ever-broader 'interconnections' emanating outward from the centre.
Unfortunately, the indefinite expansion of the radii of each of these circles of "partial knowledge" would have no discernible effect on the remaining level of ignorance. This is because the difference between a large finite number of facts (representing the current status of "partial knowledge") and the infinite number of facts constituting "Absolute" knowledge is itself infinite.
If a finite cardinal of arbitrary size is subtracted from the smallest transfinite cardinal, the latter remains the same size (always assuming, of course, that post-Cantorian cardinal number theory is itself correct). Hence, the following would be true (for arbitrarily large n):
|
Ào - 10n = Ào |
So, even if humanity acquired knowledge comparable with the real number above (i.e., the power of ten), the difference between that number and the smallest infinite cardinal would still be infinite.
[Ào is the 'smallest' transfinite cardinal.]
If someone now objects that this is not possible (in that it is a contradiction), my advice to him or her would be to "grasp" it (i.e., 'Nixon', it in classic DM-style), and it should cease to be a problem.
Now, Engels's view of all this was as follows:
"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels (1954), pp.233-35. Bold emphases added.]
But, this means that no matter how far science advances, humanity would still be no nearer to "absolute" knowledge than it is at present, or than it was 20,000 years ago. In that case, clearly, the "asymptotic progress" metaphor is a highly (i.e., infinitely) misleading picture of the progress of scientific knowledge.
In the final analysis, therefore, DM possesses its own version of Kant's unknowable Noumenon -– but one that has been given a temporal twist and projected into the 'infinite' future.
To repeat a point made earlier: according to DM, since the entire nature of the part is determined by its relation to the whole -- and vice versa --, and since we do not, and never will know the whole, we cannot, and will not ever know the part. In which case, Engels should have said: "Fundamentally, we know nothing" -– i.e., "Fundamentally, we are infinitely ignorant of everything."
Hence, there seems to be little point in bragging about DM's ability to penetrate to the heart of reality -- or to grasp the "thing-in-itself" -- if it now turns out that this latest example of DM-bravado has to be postponed forever.
In that case, if the road to epistemological Nirvana is paved with such god-like intentions, human ignorance must always remain infinite.
The process of 'increasing knowledge' was also summarised by Engels in the following way:
"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically." [Engels to Schmidt (12/3/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975), p.457.]
Reading between the lines here, it is quite clear that Engels himself sort of half understood the implications of what he was saying: this approach to knowledge in fact undermines itself since human beings will forever remain infinitely ignorant of everything, and thus of anything (by the Wholist principle, outlined above), including the truth of Engels's own claims (recorded above).
In the face of this, as elsewhere, Engels's reaction is instructive: he just ignored the problem -- even though, on this view, no matter how much human beings might think they knew, it would in fact advance them not one nanometre closer to the Holy Grail of Absolute knowledge.
Nevertheless, even this way of depicting things is misleading. The idea of an asymptotic approach in mathematics is connected with the concept of a limit -- if the limit concerned can be shown to exist. But, if a series has no limit, a set of its partial sums cannot in fact "approach" anything at all. Such a series is therefore said to be divergent -- not convergent. Engels's argument depends on knowledge converging on a limit, which he manifestly neglected to show exists.
Moreover, and as far as can be ascertained, not a single DM-theorist (even those familiar with mathematics and logic) has noticed this major flaw in Engels's 'theory', let alone attempted to address it. (Objections to this analysis were answered here, and here).
Naturally, this means that the asymptotic approach metaphor is completely inappropriate. Either that, or Engels knew there was a limit, constructed it, but forgot to write the proof (a bit like Pierre Fermat, perhaps) in the margin of the above letter.
However, before anyone tries to locate 'Engels's Last Theorem', it would be much wiser to conclude that this claim was obviously motivated by yet another piece of a priori legislation -- ultimately derived from the HEX-pert himself, Hegel -- and one that has been dutifully copied by generations of the DM-faithful ever since.
In that case, another annoying dialectical inversion now confronts DM-fans: knowledge is not in fact asymptotically convergent on an absolute limit, but divergent. Worse still, in a part/whole system -- where the nature of the part is completely conditioned by the whole (and vice versa) -- what is known is qualified by what is not. If that is so, what little is 'known' indicates that human beings will forever remain trapped in a bottomless pit of infinite ignorance -- even supposing we could assert this much with any confidence (which, if HEX were correct, plainly we couldn't).
This means that the sum total of what we now 'know' about the "specific characteristics" of any part of the Whole is overwhelmingly outweighed by the black hole of infinite ignorance around which we humans must forever orbit, and whose grip we can never shake off. Given HEX, this dark pool of ignorance will neither evaporate nor dissipate.
And that is why HEX cannot begin; because we are infinitely ignorant of every element in the Totality, we can assert nothing with any confidence. Whatever is said about any object or process has an infinitely high probability of being completely wrong, given the great "cloud of unknowing" that forever surrounds everything. This is true even with respect to the humblest of objects found in this fathomless Whole -- like that tumbler (always supposing we could say even that much!).
And there is little point directing attention to what we know already, since, on this view, not only could we know nothing about anything, we would be infinitely ignorant of everything. [However, on this, see below.]
[One feels another reminder is in order, here: anyone who objects to all this should reach for another 'Nixon' card, and all will become 'clear'.]
But, if nothing said about any object is even remotely correct (indeed, is 'infinitely' incorrect), then a simple reference to 'it' must surely become problematic. In fact, given this depressing view, each putative 'it' might not in fact be an 'it', since any assertion that 'it' was an 'it' must be infinitely wide of the mark.
And yet, this is the Dialectical Mangle into which Engels happily fed Marxist theory.
It could be objected here that if we begin with the naïve beliefs of the common man or woman (as Lenin suggested in Lenin (1972), p.69), then we would have a secure basis in our search for more accurate knowledge.
But, given Engels's approach, this response could not work. Unless we possessed the entire truth about something as insignificant as a tumbler, say, we could only assert with infinite lack of confidence that there was indeed just such a set of truths about, or "mediacies" relating to, 'it' --, or to anything else, for that matter.
And as far as the asymptotic approach metaphor is concerned, we are certainly in no position to conclude that humanity is approaching a single unified limit, as opposed to countless thousands of limits, or none at all, about anything --, or, indeed, whether or not we are indeed diverging to infinity.
But, even if it could be shown that there is such an infinitary process of knowledge with respect to ordinary things, that would still be of no help.
First of all, that 'proof' itself would undermine this metaphor. This is because, at least here (in relation to the above conclusion about that infinitary process itself), a 'concept' would in fact coincide with its 'object' --, contrary to that metaphor. But, if that metaphor is faulty in this case, if one 'concept' can be shown to disobey its protocols (and 'coincide' with its 'object'), what faith could we have that it captures anything of worth?
Secondly, if we are infinitely ignorant of everything (including tumblers -- and metaphors) then we are in no position either to assert that any of the naïve beliefs of humankind are correct -- for example, that this or that 'object' is in fact a 'tumbler'.
Once again, to do so would undermine the metaphor itself, for here another 'concept' (i.e., 'tumbler') would coincide with its 'object' --, to use the Hegelian jargon.
[It is worth pointing out that this the above does not in any way express my views on this matter; it merely draws out the absurd consequences of Lenin's 'theory'.]
So, the unwise introduction of an infinitary process conditioning knowledge actually undermines naïve 'commonsense' -- and alarmingly quickly. It certainly does not confirm it. In fact, given a sufficiently large increase in 'partial knowledge', most or all of the deliverances of 'commonsense' could turn out to be completely mistaken.
Consider a few examples of 'commonsense'/'pre-scientific' beliefs that were formerly held true, but which are no longer given credence -- and this after only the finite advance in knowledge that humanity has witnessed over the last couple of thousand years:
Whales are not fish; chairs, tables and floors are not really solid; the earth is not stationary, nor is it flat or located at the centre of the universe; madness is not caused by demon-possession; isolated spinsters are not witches, and their cats are not instruments of the Devil; comets are not messengers of the gods, and neither are dreams, rainbows, diseases, earthquakes, eruptions, birth defects, tea leaves, the flight of birds, entrails, wars, famines, droughts and madness; apes and humans are not unrelated; the continents are not fixed and mountain ranges are not stationary; planets are not unblemished heavenly beings propelled along by angels, nor do they move in circles attached to crystalline spheres; terrestrial motion is not solely rectilinear; motion itself is not maintained by the constant operation of a force; there is no 'natural place' that matter seeks out (and gravity is not even a force); intelligence is not inherited; the sky is not blue; grass is not even 'objectively' green (in fact colour is not an 'objective' property of anything, and neither is heat, taste or sound); life is not a force; fossils are not 'sports of nature', nor were they planted by 'God' to test our faith; when we look at something, light does not emerge from our eyes to hit the seen object; slavery is not natural; poverty is not deserved; tobacco is not healthy; animals are not divine beings, nor are they merely 'machines'; left-handedness is not a sign of the Devil, and neither are birthmarks, defects or cleft pallets; women are not sub-human and neither are other 'races' (in fact, there are no 'races'); blood-letting does not cure disease, and disease itself is not caused by an imbalance of humours; 'flu is not caused by some sort of cosmic 'influence'; fire is not caused by a substance (Phlogiston) escaping from a body; there is no such thing as the evil eye; kings and queens are not descended from the gods and they cannot cure the sick by mere touch; birth defects are not caused by pre-natal influences; light does not travel everywhere in straight lines; parallel lines can both intersect and diverge; there are negative numbers, and 'imaginary' numbers; one is a number (Greek mathematicians denied this), and so is zero; some numbers are irrational; all four legs of a galloping horse are out of contact with the ground at some point; males can become female (after suitable surgery); hysteria is not caused by a wandering womb; bumps on the head do not reveal character; it is not the function of the brain to cool the blood; metals cannot be transformed into gold; mass is not conserved -- and it is possible that energy isn't either; velocity is not absolute, neither are space and time; atoms are not indivisible, nor are they like diminutive planetary systems; it is false that there are only five elements; heat is not a fluid, neither is magnetism; Saddam Hussein did not possess WMD, and Tony Blair is not to be trusted; and so on.
[The retailing of this list does not imply I concur with every such 'revision'.]
On galloping horses, and the pioneering work of Eadweard Muybridge, see Solnit (2004).
With such a list (here greatly truncated), and with the support of this ill-advised epistemological 'theory', who could point to a single 'commonsense' or scientific belief and claim it will remain eternally secure? Especially given the fact that for tens of thousands of years human beings believed some or all of the above (and more) -- and given the additional fact that humanity's infinite amble toward the mythical asymptotic finishing tape of 'Absolute Knowledge' has hardly yet left the epistemological starting blocks.
Indeed, if we now count the above 'journey' as having begun slightly before the advent of civilisation (approximately 10,000 years ago), -- compared with the length of time that anything recognisably human has been on the planet (i.e., approximately 1,000,000 years) --, then this epistemological expedition has been underway for about 1% of human existence. In addition, if we regard the most significant part of this journey as having begun with the scientific revolution in the 17th Century, that percentage itself would shrink to under 0.1%. Furthermore, if we assume that human beings might last until the Sun becomes unstable (in about 5 billion years time), and introduce that immense interval into the equation, then even that tiny percentage (i.e., 0.1%) would begin to look rather large in comparison. This being so -- and given the asymptotic metaphor (along with the rest of DM-epistemology) -- who could say with confidence that any of our presently held 'commonsense' beliefs will survive for all that long -- including belief in the existence of tumblers?
[Recall that this way of analysing knowledge is diametrically opposed to the approach I would normally adopt. It is manifestly unworkable, and is merely being used here as a reductio of this lamentable 'theory'.]
Admittedly, DM-theorists believe that human knowledge is relatively transient, even if dialectically cumulative. They would be among the first to admit the insecurity of 'commonsense' beliefs. Despite this, they also maintain that the connection between erroneous ideas adopted in the past and the more accurate scientific beliefs that replaced them is not accidental; the two are 'dialectically linked' by social progress and technological advance. On that basis, it could be argued that it would be wrong to conclude that the incorrect 'commonsense' beliefs of previous generations are totally without merit, and even more erroneous to saddle DM-theorists with such a view. Since such beliefs were a product of their time, they surely helped prepare the ground for the more objective theories of today -- as, indeed, the latter will in turn help create even more accurate and universal theories in the future. Furthermore, a material account of the circumstances surrounding the creation of many superstitious and mystical beliefs (but not just these) also shows how and why they are/were related to specific Modes of Production, etc.
Few of the points in the previous paragraph will be challenged here (or anywhere else for that matter) by the present author (although the language expressing them will be revised considerably); indeed, this approach to knowledge will be used to great effect in several Essays posted here to provide a novel analysis of the origins of Metaphysics, and thus of the ideological roots of DM (i.e., in Essay Nine Parts One and Two, and Essays Twelve and Thirteen).
Despite this, it is clear that DM-theorists are actually claiming something quite different about 'commonsense' beliefs. [However, a detailed analysis of this will be postponed until Essay Thirteen.]
Nevertheless, the picture painted above (even if it is highly sketchy) is in fact undermined -- not confirmed -- by DM-epistemology. To reiterate: this is because one implication of Engels and Lenin's ideas is that humanity is and always will be infinitely ignorant. This does not just compromise 'commonsense' and "naive realism", it obliterates both.
Indeed, and far worse, it throws into doubt all that has ever been written/said by dialecticians.
Given this view, we would now have no good reason to believe that there is such a thing as 'absolute truth', or that we are approaching it, or that truth is the whole, or even that Lenin wrote MEC -- and a host of other banalities.
Infinite ignorance cloaks all of these in unmitigated stygian gloom.
Conversely, we have no good reason to disbelieve the deliverances of ant theory that contradicted DM/'Materialist Dialectics' in this area. Indeed, we have good reason to believe them -- since the latter tactic would at least permit the holding of some true beliefs!
This is because, for each DM-thesis there is an infinite gap separating it from 'final truth' (if indeed there even be such a state). Hence, we will always have infinitely many reasons for rejecting DM-epistemology in favour of any theory not holding to this view -- since. once more, the opposite of DM-epistemology at least allows us to form some true beliefs.
Thus the rejection of DM-epistemology is strongly recommended by DM-epistemology itself!
Hence, we may accept DM-epistemology only if we are prepared to reject it; DM-invites its own repudiation in order to save humanity from irredeemable scepticism.
[MEC = Materialism and Empiro-Criticism (i.e., Lenin (1972); QM = Quantum Mechanics.]
Compare this sorry tale with that which is revealed by mitigated reductionist practice (in science): the latter has actually produced astounding results in every field in which it has been applied. From Genetics to QM, Organic Chemistry to Geology, Medicine to Computing, detailed descriptions and explanations of countless processes and phenomena in nature have been developed over the last few hundred years.
In stark contrast, HEX has yet to provide anyone with a single explanation of anything in the natural world. This is not meant to deny the importance of holistic explanations in science -- nor yet to endorse metaphysical reductionism --, but HEX is not the same as scientific holism. HEX postulates an infinite system of interconnections; scientific holism simply makes do with a large finite set.
In addition, it does not unwisely claim that:
"…[T]he entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts." [Rees (1998), p.5.]
As we have seen, this passage would mean that we must always remain ignorant of the nature of any part until we knew the full details of every connection it had with the whole, and vice versa. But, since the former will never happen, the latter will never take place. Indeed, in view of the fact that the Whole will forever remain unknown, human beings will never be in a position to say what the Whole's connections with its parts are, or what relationship each part has with any other, and hence what each of them actually is -- given that the entire nature of any part depends on its relation to other parts and to the whole (and vice versa).
As we have seen, this would mean that we must always remain ignorant of the nature of any part until we knew the full details of every connection it had with the whole, and vice versa. But, since the former will never happen, the latter cannot ever take place. Indeed, in view of the fact that the Whole will forever remain unknown, human beings will never be in a position even to say what its connections with its parts are, or what relationship each part has with any other, and hence what each of them actually is -- given that the entire nature of any part depends on its relation to other parts and to the whole (and vice versa). [More on that here.]
DM-theorists thus make much of their ability to explain connections, history, causation and development in nature, etc. However, when we examine the assembled article -- and ignore the brochure -- we find that given 'Materialist Dialectics', knowledge soon becomes lost in the inner recesses of their nebulous Totality -- the permanently ideal Absolute of DM's (in)version of Hegel.
26. Of course, these seemingly wild claims need adequate substantiation; this will be provided in Essay Eleven Part One, but this is not unconnected with some of the points made above in Note 25.
It could be objected here that the vast majority of the causal links mentioned in the main body of this Essay (i.e., those allegedly connecting the (UK) New Labour victory in 2005 with distant regions of space and time) are so vanishingly small that for all practical purposes they can be ignored.
Firstly, as the argument in this Essay shows, there is no question-begging way of specifying where the boundary lies between systems and/or sub-systems in the DM-Totality (even if we knew what the latter was). If all systems affect one another significantly at the boundary (which they must do), and possibly elsewhere, then any attempt to partition the Totality would smack of ad hoc subjectivism.
Secondly, as Essay Eleven Part One shows, DM-theorists have no developed theory of the 'Totality' (in fact, they have no theory of it whatsoever!), so even they would have no way of knowing whether or not these remote effects are (largely) irrelevant. In that case, one dialectician's irrelevant effect could very well turn out to be another's significant input. More on this here. [This argument is used to great effect in Note 25 to show that DM-epistemology rapidly collapses into scepticism.]
Thirdly, there seems to be little point in practically every DM-text telling us that everything is interconnected (and that the entire nature of the part is determined by its relation to the whole) if the vast bulk of these can be ignored.
Fourth, since DM-epistemology recommends its own rejection (as was established in Note 25), and since it can never be verified (how, for example, could anyone show that the entire nature of a given tumbler depended on its relation with, say, the Crab Nebula and with everything else, if, as we will see in Essay Eleven Part One, nobody has any idea what this 'everything else' is?), it would probably be wise to ignore the vast bulk of DM -- the more the better.
Finally, this objection is tackled head-on in Essay Eleven Part Two, and completely neutralised.
27. In order for objects to do this they must be UOs, and as UOs they must in turn contain contradictions. This set of ideas is examined in more detail in Note 28, below. Some of the details underlying this aspect of DM were outlined by Thalheimer, in Note 3.
It should be noted that if an object already contains 'what-it-is-not', it cannot change in at least that respect (i.e., into 'what-it-is-not', unless it turns into this part of itself!). On the other hand, if an object does not already contain 'what-it-is-not', then that 'what-it-is-not' cannot assist that object to change (for that 'what-it-is-not' will not yet exist).
The problems associated with this way of looking at change were examined in some detail in Essay Seven (here). They will be analysed in even more detail in Note 28, below. See also here, and here.
28. I have been researching this topic intensively now for eight years, and informally for well over twenty, but I have yet to find an explanation of the metaphysical ideas underlying this aspect of DM, or of why change is pictured in the way it is in dialectics. There is a hint of the rationale to be found in Thalheimer, and more of a hint in an Essay written by James Lawler. As far as I can ascertain, not even Hegel broaches this topic (even though he lays down the principles by means of which some sort of an account of change might be constructed).
Nevertheless, at a future date, I will endeavour to post here what I take to be the reasoning that motivates this part of DM. It will be an elaboration of points already made here.
Despite this, several dialecticians (mostly Stalinists) have attempted to show how 'external contradictions' can be harmonised with Lenin's claim that matter is self-moving. Afanasyev's account is one of the best I have seen (but there are analogous versions in Kharin (1981), Konstantinov (1974), Sheptulin (1978), Yurkovets (1984), and Cornforth (1976), among others -- an analysis of Mao's attempt to shed even more darkness on this murky corner of DM will be examined later); so I will focus mainly, but not exclusively, on Afanasyev's analysis.
He first notes that contradictions are not all of one type:
"The most diverse contradictions exist in the world.... We shall examine internal and external, antagonistic and non-antagonistic, basic and non-basic contradictions...." [Afanasyev (1968), p.98.]
Afanasyev then proceeds to examine the first category (external and internal contradictions), which is the only sort relevant to the present discussion (the other category will be analysed in another Essay):
"The interaction, the struggle of opposites of a given object make up its internal contradictions. The contradictory relations of a given object to its environment are its external contradictions" [Ibid., p.98. Italic emphasis in the original.]
However, exactly what constitutes an 'object' here is left entirely obscure. As we have seen in this Essay, this is not a minor detail, one that can be left unexamined. Which of these, for example, is an 'object' in this sense: an elementary particle, an atom, a molecule, a cell, a crystal, a lump of matter, an organism, a species, a population, a mountain, a continent, a planet, a galaxy? 'Contradictions' that are external to some will be internal to others in this list, and vice versa. [This point has already been made, but from a different angle, in Note 23, above.] In that case, 'contradictions' internal to galaxy might be external to a planet, those internal to a cat will be external to a dog, and those external to a mouse, might be internal to a cat (if the latter eats the former), and so on. In that case, the above distinction threatens to self-destruct when the details are filled in. Thus, it is no surprise to find the details are never filled in.
Of course, as noted above (here and here), all this trades on an equivocation between two senses of "internal": "physically internal" and "logically internal"; hence, while something could be physically external to an object, it might be logically internal to it all the same. So, for example, a husband and wife are physically external to each other (most of the time), but the fact that one of these partners is, say, a husband logically implies that another (indeed, this other) must be his wife (or he'd be a divorcee/widower), and this implication is internal to his status as a husband (which thus allows for these inferences to be made). However, it is not too clear that with respect to the writings of the DM-theorists considered here, this distinction is much use. In fact, the way they phrase things, suggests that they too have muddled these notions (which confusion should become apparent as the reader works her way through the quotations below). And this is not the least bit surprising, since in the end, this distinction is incoherent -- that claim will be substantiated in Essay Three Part Three.
Moreover, as we have also seen: if the universe is an object, then, on this view, it must have 'external contradictions', too, and hence a cause. In that case, the universe is not sufficient to itself as Afanasyev claims (on pp.53ff; see also Note 6 above).
It could be argued that 'external contradictions' are exactly what this author said they are: "the contradictory relations of a given object to its environment", and since the universe has no environment, it has no 'external contradictions'.
But, how do we know?
Appealing to the 'definition' of the universe (which 'definition' might perhaps be: "all there is") has already been shown to be a dead end --, it will further be picked apart in Essay Eleven Part One. Even so, such an appeal would amount to an a priori imposition onto nature, something dialecticians say they never do.
But even if it were true that the universe is all there is, we have seen that this view of 'contradictions' is in fact a mere re-description of nature (which neither forestalls "bad infinities" nor supplies DM-theorists with the 'why' of things). In addition, as we saw earlier, this implies the existence either of simple, changeless objects that are not conditioned by anything else, or of infinitely divisible sub-systems, the contents of which cannot support 'internal opposites', and hence cannot change (at least on DM-lines). Afanasyev failed to spot these corollaries.
Putting these difficulties to one side for the moment, we need to examine the use to which Afanasyev puts this distinction. He goes on to argue:
"Internal contradictions are the source of development because they determine the aspect or character of the object itself. If it were not for its internal contradictions the object would not be what it is. An atom, for example, could not exist without the interaction, the 'struggle' of the positively charged nucleus and the negatively charged electrons; and organism could not exist without assimilation and dissimilation, and so on." [Ibid., pp.98-99.]
However, it is clear from this that Afanasyev is confusing the nature of an object with the conditions for its existence. It may or may not be true that a certain atom will disintegrate if there is no integrity, or no cohesion to it (whatever the cause of that happens to be), but in DM, since the nature of the part is determined by its relation to the whole, the 'internal contradictions' of atoms (etc.) cannot be what make that atom what it is (i.e., what define its 'intrinsic properties'). Given the truth of DM, atoms must have 'extrinsic properties'; that is, properties defined by their relations with everything else.
Of course, if DM-Wholism has now to be rejected because of this 'difficulty', all well and good. But, it seems that these two doctrines (DM-Wholism, and the doctrine of 'intrinsic properties') cannot both be true at once (unless, that is, we Nixon this contradiction, too, and then quietly ignore it).
And it is worth noting at this point that like other dialecticians, Afanasyev has to put the word "struggle" in quotation marks to make his explanation work, since, of course, electrons and protons are not literally in struggle with one another; they are not agents. [On this, see here.]
Moreover, as we will see in Part Two, depicting forces and/or the relations between bodies in this way is certainly prejudicial; far from there being a 'struggle' going on in atoms -- as with most other things in nature -- they seem to be eminently peaceful beings. Their almost constant state of equilibrium smacks of harmony and cooperation -- or, they would do if we chose to anthropomorphise nature at every turn, in the way that dialecticians constantly do. In fact, if we have to depict nature in this way, we should call such things "dialectical tautologies", join forces with Prince Kropotkin, and see an anarchist utopia everywhere we look.
And even if the above sub-atomic particles were 'struggling', manifestly they do not turn into one another -- when was the last time an electron turned into a proton? --, which, as we have seen, is another odd claim that DM-apologists often make. In that case, this alleged 'struggle' does no work, and makes no sense even on DM-lines!
So, what exactly is the point of all this? Afanasyev has an answer:
"All outside influences exerted on an object are always refracted through its internal contradictions, which is also a manifestation of the determining role of those contradictions in development. Changes in the external environment merely give an impulse to the development of an organism, but the direction of development and its ultimate purpose depend on the organism's metabolism, i.e., on the interaction of assimilation and dissimilation that is characteristic of the particular organism." [Ibid., p.99.]
It is worth noting once again that Afanasyev can only make this work by concentrating his attention on living things (which, like the use of the word "struggle", once again, betrays the organicist origins of this aspect of DM: if everything is animate -- a Cosmic Egg, if you will --, then cells/organisms can be used analogically in this way in order to explicate the alleged relation between 'external' and 'internal contradictions' throughout nature and society; it all makes some sort of crazy Hermetic sense).
However, if we try the same sort of analysis on, say, a billiard ball, it won't work. Once it has been hit, what 'internal contradictions' make it continue to move?
More to the point, what 'internal contradictions made it move in the first place? And it won't do to appeal to Newton's Third Law, here. The "action" that causes the "reaction" is manifestly external to that ball. [And, arguably, the "reaction" is, too (it is this "reaction" which affects the first ball, and it is also external to the latter).]
Indeed, what are the 'internal contradictions' that make the planets and stars orbit whatever it is they orbit? It is no good appealing to certain forces in a desperate attempt to find the 'internal contradictions' in, say, the Moon which keep it circling the Earth; in such situations 'external' forces are what deflect bodies from their 'natural' rectilinear motion. There is no 'internal contradiction' (i.e., none internal to that planet or that star) to get hold of here.
[And, as we will see in Part Two, using forces to illustrate contradictions of any sort (external or internal) is thoroughly misconceived.]
Furthermore, as was pointed out above, Afanasyev has confused the external/internal dichotomy as spatial, not logical.
Nevertheless, the other dialectician mentioned above, Cornforth, has an answer to objections like this -- but, only if we take the word "answer" here non-literally. Referring to the qualitative changes bodies undergo when affected by external causes, he argues:
"For instance, if a piece of iron is painted black and instead we paint it red, that is merely and external alteration..., but it is not a qualitative change in the sense we are here defining. On the other hand, if the iron is heated to melting point, then this is such a qualitative change. And it comes about precisely as a change in the attraction-repulsion relationship characteristic of the internal molecular state of the metal. The metal passes from the solid to liquid state, its internal character and laws of motion become different in certain ways, it undergoes a qualitative change." [Cornforth (1976), p.99.]
We have already seen that the above change in metals (as they are heated) is smooth (they gradually soften and become molten), so this example of Cornforth's wasn't the wisest of choices; in fact, it refutes the claim that qualitative change is always nodal, for instance. [More of this in Essay Seven.]
Putting this to one side for now, what are we to say of Cornforth's response in general? We have already noted the loose way that dialecticians 'define' their use of the word "quality" (in fact, even though I have checked several times, I cannot find anywhere where Cornforth tells us what a DM-quality actually is --, but see below), and how that omission allows them to find 'qualitative' changes whenever and wherever it suits them, and ignore them whenever and wherever it does not. In this case, it is not too clear how the liquidity of a metal changes its 'quality'; it still has the same chemical (and many of the same physical) properties, its crystal structure (phase) has merely changed. Liquid Gold is still Gold.
But even supposing a case could be made for arguing that this particular change could be counted as a DM-qualitative transformation, it is not easy to see how this would be the result of 'internal contradictions' -- or, indeed, the result of any 'contradictions' that once defined the 'intrinsic nature' of a metal (as Afanasyev indicated they should).
What seems to happen here is that as the metal is heated up, the vibration of its constituent atoms increases until the inter-atomic bonds can no longer hold them in place in the old crystal structure. But where is the 'contradiction' here? Cornforth leaves this question unanswered; he seems to think we will just assume it has something to do with the inter-atomic forces operating inside the said metal. But, as we noted above, such forces are external to each atom that they operate on; as we have already seen, what is internal to one system, is external to another. [Note the muddle that was highlighted earlier.]
Moreover, as we will see in Part Two, this analogy does not work, anyway. But even if it could work, change here would be produced by a resultant force, not a set of 'contradictory' forces.
Cornforth appears to have a response ready for this too; he speaks about "dominance relations" inside objects and processes:
"The unity of opposites in a contradiction is characterised by a definite relation of superiority-inferiority, or of domination, between the opposites. For example, in a physical unity of attraction and repulsion, certain elements of attraction or repulsion may be dominant in relation to others. The unity is such that one side dominates the other -- or, in certain cases, they may be equal.
"Any qualitative state of a process corresponds to a definite relation of domination. Thus, the solid, liquid and gaseous states of bodies correspond to different domination-relationships in the unity of attraction and repulsion characteristic of the molecules of bodies....
"Domination relationships are obviously, by their very nature, impermanent and apt to change, even though in some cases they remain unchanged for a long time. If the relationship takes the form of equality or balance, such balance is by nature unstable, for their is a struggle of opposites within it which is apt to lead to the domination of one over the other....
"The outcome of the working out of contradictions is, then, a change in the domination relation characteristic of the initial unity of opposites. Such a change constitutes a change in the nature of a thing, a change from one state to another, a change from one thing to another, a change entailing not merely some external alteration but a change in the internal character and laws of motion of a thing." [Ibid., pp.97-98.]
Even so, on this view, change is still initiated externally, for the inner relations of objects and processes appear to be incapable of altering their own condition. And, howsoever dominant or submissive these relations turn out to be, the ones to which Cornforth appeals are manifestly external to atoms, as well as to sub-atomic particles. Now, these do not seem to change as a result of internal 'domination' (etc.) relations, or at least not in this case. [In fact, we saw this in an earlier Essay.]
Putting this to one side, too, it looks like these "domination" relations are what in the end define a DM-quality, at least for Cornforth. However, once more we note the anthropomorphic overtones here; for this part of DM can only be made to work if the parts of bodies and process are in some sort of dominant-submissive relation with one another. Perhaps this unfortunate metaphor (shades of S&M!) can be cashed-out in vector algebra; I will leave that for others to decide. But even if this were either possible or desirable, that would not help this beleaguered 'theory'. Vectors do not 'struggle' among themselves since they are mathematical objects. Anyone who thinks vectors can 'struggle' with one another has already confused a description of the phenomena with the phenomena themselves (in the way that someone might confuse the numbers on a metre rule with their height) --, and an anthropomorphic description, at that.
Since Cornforth's account in the end depends on the plausibility of the analogy he draws between forces and contradictions, no more will be said about it here. That will be the sole topic of Part Two of this Essay.
Finally, Cornforth's analysis bears an uncanny resemblance to that offered up by Mao (with his "primary" and "secondary" contradictions); but as we saw here, Mao's solution is no solution. For example, how can a "domination relation" change into a "submissive relation"? Is it spontaneous, or is it caused by further 'internal contradictions'?
[This argument is outlined in more detail here, and in general here; the same points are easy to adapt to apply to Cornforth's alternative.]
Nevertheless, one thing is clear, the universal conclusions derived by Afanasyev and Cornforth are based on laughably thin evidence, and on a controversial (and suspiciously animistic) interpretation of the nature of forces. But, that did not stop them both from projecting their ideas right across nature for all space and time. Here is Afanasyev:
"Lenin called the law of the unity and struggle of opposites the essence, the core of dialectics. The law reveals the sources, the real causes of the eternal motion and development of the material world....
"All objects and phenomena have contradictory aspects which are organically connected and which make up the indissoluble unity of opposites...
"The contradictoriness of objects and phenomena is thus of a general, universal nature. There is no object or phenomenon in the world which cannot be divided into opposites...." [Afanasyev (1968), pp.93-95.]
We have already had occasion (in Essay Two) to note similar a priori pronouncements originating from Cornforth's pen -- and not just his.
More a priori superscience; more Idealism. All so traditional.
We will also see that this 'analysis' allowed STD's to argue that socialism could be built in one country (as the USSR's intrinsic nature was defined by its internal relations, not the relations it held with the rest of the Capitalist world). This confusion allowed them to argue that the imperialist powers, say, were a sort of 'external contradiction' to the former USSR, and hence the real nature of their state could be defined internally (and based on its own internal, but 'non-antagonistic' contradictions). This then 'enabled' them to argue (or, rather, it allowed them to rationalise a conclusion already arrived at for other reasons) that socialism could be built in one country. Clearly, this super-plastic theory can be bent into any shape found to be convenient.
Moreover, this 'theory had catastrophic consequences for the European working class (connected with the ultra-left tactics adopted by the Communist Party between 1928 and 1933) -- in the shape of the rise of Hitler --, and later, with another 'dialectical' about turn (connected with the Popular Front) and then another (with the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression treaty of 1939), and another (connected with the 'Great Patriotic War').
In Essay Nine Part Two, these major blunders (which were partly the result of this hopeless 'theory' --, or rather such political u-turns could be sold more easily to cadres because if it) will be knitted together with analogous (but far less murderous) tactical blunders (also induced by this 'theory) in the Trotskyist movement, in order to help account for the precipitous decline in support given to Marxist parties by the European proletariat ever since. [Similar, DM-induced screw-ups (by Stalinist, Maoist and Trotskyist parties), have merely reproduced an analogous collapse world-wide.
This will form part of my explanation why Dialectical Marxism is so monumentally unsuccessful, and will continue to be such at least while it adheres to this ruling-class 'theory'.
[STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]
29. The idea that these conclusion are based on evidence has already been shown up for what it is: wishful thinking --, i.e., in Essays Two to Seven, in Essay Eight Part Two and Eleven Parts One and Two.
30. Again, this was the main theme of Essay Two.
31. The ideological motivation for this is detailed in Essay Nine Parts One and Two -- and in Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).
32. Once more, several examples of allegedly "real material contradictions" are examined elsewhere at this site, and in detail in Part Two of this Essay.
33. DM-theorists will need to be careful here, too, for if objects don't have intrinsic qualities (presumably, one's that originate from an object's inner nature as a UO -- but see Note 28 above), then the belief that change is internally-driven will be even more difficult to sustain. Anyway, as we saw in Essay Seven, the situation is not as simple as this. Surprising as it may seem, the way that "quality" is defined (that is, in those DM-texts that bother to do so, on Aristotelian lines) means that objects must indeed have 'intrinsic' (if changing) natures. And yet, given DM-Holism, they must have 'extrinsic natures', too -- natures defined by their relations with everything else in the universe.
One suspects the deployment of another 'Nixon' card is required here.
34. There is a further difficulty DM-theorists do not appear to have noticed. Let us suppose that interconnectedness is maximally true, so that each atom (or 'elementary' particle) in the entire universe is interconnected with every other particle, all the time and instantaneously (or not). Now, unless the universe is infinite, particles at the 'edge' of the universe would be subject to a set of influences that are different from those affecting objects situated at the 'centre'. These differential effects need not necessarily be quantitative, but they certainly are directional. So, any particle at the periphery would only undergo interaction with every other particle closer to the rest of the universe, radially, directed toward the centre (or at least within the confines of an ideal 'tangent' that could be drawn at the 'edge' at that point).
[This might not be the case if the universe is finite/infinite and bounded; naturally, all this depends on the details, should DM-fans ever decide to reveal them to us.]
However, particles at or near the centre would be subject to effects coming in from all directions. This represents a significant difference in terms of the vector sum operating on any particle in the Totality -- governing the total influences on that particle. [Again, always assuming that such effects can be represented as vectors.]
[MIC = Maximal Interconnectedness; NMIC = Non-MIC; LOI = Law of Identity.]
Now, such observations can be generalised: on this view, there should be differential effects on any particle anywhere in the universe -- even where a particle is compared with its nearest neighbour, situated at the 'centre' or not. Hence, if MIC (this is explained fully in Essay Eleven Part One) were correct, all the seemingly identical particles in nature (e.g., photons) would not actually be the same, no matter what or where they were located, since each and every one would be subject to these differential influences. [These differences need not be connected with the alleged difficulties associated with the LOI, nor need they be linked to the influence of UOs.] This is because, as TAR puts it:
"In a dialectical system, the entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts." [Rees (1998), p.5. Bold emphases added.]
Hence, if the "entire" nature of a particle is determined by its relations with everything else, and these are universally differential, it would mean that, for instance, all atoms of the 'same' element would have different properties depending on where and when they were situated in the universe. So, Sodium on earth today, for example, would not have the same properties as 'Sodium', say, in the most distant regions of space, or on Mars (or even as those possessed by the 'same' lump of Sodium, say, yesterday). The nature of Sodium would therefore depend on when and where it existed, and we should lose the right to categorise all 'Sodium' atoms as Sodium, at least on the basis of their 'intrinsic properties' (that is, if it has any!). In fact, we would have to time-signature properties, relativising them to a place and a time.
What then are we to say of spectrographic and other evidence that suggests otherwise? Worse, what effect would such an idea have on the 'universal laws' to which DM-theorists frequently appeal? Given their system, no law could be universal, but only maximally local.
[The same conclusions follow even if MIC were abandoned, but I will leave the details for the reader to complete. They would not follow if the relations mentioned above were 'logical'. But, that option faces even more problems, noted here.]
It seems, therefore -- and rather appropriately --, that DM-Holism has hidden within itself the seeds of its own destruction, for it looks like it implies not just extreme atomism, but ultra nonimalism (or, indeed, ultra-Tropism, as it might now be called). This is because, on this view, every particle in the universe (including even seemingly identical photons, protons and electrons) would be totally unique, being the product of differential influences depending on where and when they are/were.
Small wonder then that certain comrades argue that the universe is infinite (which would mean that everything had the same influence on it as everything else, deflating the above conclusions). [Although, I am not suggesting that they have assumed this for these purposes!]
Unfortunately, however, if the universe were infinite (and even unbounded), and if either MIC or NMIC were true, DM-Wholism would seem to mean that everything in reality should be identical. This is because each particle in the universe must be subject to the same total (i.e., infinite) number of influences and interconnections as are all the rest. That would imply that as far as Wholism is concerned (where the entire nature of the part is determined by its relation to the whole), you would not be able to distinguish one particle/object/process from any other since they would all have an infinite number of identical influences acting upon them, and hence would have identical properties. Ironically, if the universe were infinite, this would make everything identical; the LOI, instead of being refuted by dialecticians, would have found in them its strongest allies!
Naturally, because this view of nature is manifestly incorrect, dialecticians who have unwisely accept DM-Holism should now drop either the idea that the entire nature of the part is dependent on its relations with the whole, or the thesis that universe is infinite -- or both.
[It could be argued that the above contradicts the previous point? No problem; I'll just Nixon it!]
35. The few options left open to dialecticians to avoid the (Idealist) implications of using the word "rational" (meaningfully) in such contexts will be examined in Essay Twelve Part Four, and shown to be non-viable.
36. Naturally, this must be so unless dialecticians are honest enough to admit what was obvious to consistent materialists all along: that their theory (with its spurious inversion of Hegel) implies that Mind does indeed control everything, and that not only does Mind make everything move (via all those 'contradictions', and all that 'struggling'), it supplies the reason why things happen and why they change.
If so, it is now much easier to see why parts of nature and society seem to 'argue' with one another all the time (when they engage in 'contradictions'), and why dialecticians so readily slip into the use of animistic if not anthropomorphic language at the drop of a principle: in this re-enchanted DM-universe, not only is everything alive, it is intelligent and highly argumentative into the bargain -- indeed, everything argues with itself!
[In Essay Twelve Parts Five and Six (summary here), we will see that Hegel's concepts do not in fact have 'motion' built into them, so they cannot provide the motive 'logic' of reality, as Lenin claimed. The adoption of all this class-compromised Hegelian jargon, and nothing to show for it! DM-theorists have thus sold their radical souls for a mess of pottage that does not even contain any pottage!
A sneak preview of how this argument will proceed can be found here.]
37. On this, see Note 8, above.
38. This was a point made in Note 8, too. And as we will see in Part Two, such mind-like concepts have a way of sneaking in through the back door to animate the 'dead' world that confronts dialecticians.
Of course, what is needed here is another account of "explanation" that does not collapse into Idealism. One such will be provided in a later Essay.
39. These comments do not imply that I accept CAR. Recall that CAR was the creation of the authors of DB.
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