Science for Communists?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

‘Ideas’ are separate from ‘matter’, and any claim to their essential unity is pronounced to be ‘Idealism’.

Actually the opposite is true. Materialism is a claim of the essential unity of 'ideas' and 'matter'.

So why can't matter 'supervene' on ideas?Or does 'essential unity' mean 'different stuff'?

[LBird]

To the unwary, it should be pointed out that quotes from Marx can be garnered to support both sides of this debate.The real task is to get to grips with the issues, and make a decision for oneself.It's the 21st century, comrades, not the 19th.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

We've been through this dozens of times, DJP.

Yes we have, and perhaps you should consider why no-one is agreeing with you on some of this stuff…

[LBird]

Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, pp. 488-503, extracts wrote:

3. Some Patterns of Discovery ….Most geniuses responsible for the major mutations in the history of thought seem to have certain features in common; on the one hand scepticism, often carried to the point of iconoclasm, in their attitude towards traditional ideas, axioms and dogmas, towards everything that is taken for granted; on the other hand, an open-mindedness that verges on naïve credulity towards new concepts which seem to hold out some promise to their instinctive gropings. Out of this combination results that crucial capacity of perceiving a familiar object, situation, problem, or collection of data, in a sudden new light or new context: of seeing a branch not as part of a tree, but as a potential weapon or tool; of associating the fall of an apple not with its ripeness, but with the motion of the moon. The discoverer perceives relational patterns or functional analogies where nobody saw them before, as the poet perceives the image of a camel in a drifting cloud.This act of wrenching away an object or concept from its habitual associative context and seeing it in a new context is, as I have tried to show, an essential part of the creative process. 1 It is an act both of destruction and of creation, for it demands the breaking up of a mental habit, the melting down, with the blowlamp of Cartesian doubt, of the frozen structure of accepted theory, to enable the new fusion to take place. This perhaps explains the strange combination of scepticism and credulity in the creative genius. 2 Every creative act – in science, art or religion – involves a regression to a more primitive level, a new innocence of perception liberated from the cataract of accepted beliefs. It is a process of reculer pour mieux sauter, of disintegration preceding the new synthesis, comparable to the dark night of the soul through which the mystic must pass.Another pre-condition for basic discoveries to occur, and to be accepted, is what one might call the "ripeness" of the age. It is an elusive quality, for the "ripeness" of a science for a decisive change is not determined by the situation in that particular science alone, but by the general climate of the age. It was the philosophical climate of Greece after the Macedonian conquest that nipped in the bud Aristarchus' heliocentric concept of the universe; and astronomy went on happily with its impossible epicycles, because that was the type of science that the medieval climate favoured.Moreover, it worked. This ossified discipline, split off from reality, was capable of predicting eclipses and conjunctions with considerable precision, and of providing tables which were by and large adequate to the demand. On the other hand, the seventeenth century's "ripeness" for Newton, or the twentieth's for Einstein and Freud, was caused by a general mood of transition and awareness of crisis, which embraced the whole human spectrum of activities, social organization, religious beliefs, art, science, fashions.The symptom that a particular branch of science or art is ripe for a change is a feeling of frustration and malaise, not necessarily caused by any acute crisis in that specific branch – which might be doing quite well in its traditional terms of reference – but by a feeling that the whole tradition is somehow out of step, cut off from the mainstream, that the traditional criteria have become meaningless, divorced from living reality, isolated from the integral whole. This is the point where the specialist's hubris yields to philosophical soul-searching, to the painful reappraisal of his basic axioms and of the meaning of terms which he had taken for granted; in a word, to the thaw of dogma. This is the situation which provides genius with the opportunity for his creative plunge under the broken surface.….6. The Vanishing Act ….But in the two centuries that followed, the vanishing act continued. Each of the "ultimate" and "irreducible" primary qualities of the world of physics proved in its turn to be an illusion. The hard atoms of matter went up in fireworks; the concepts of substance, force, of effects determined by causes, and ultimately the very framework of space and time turned out to be as illusory as the "tastes, odours and colours" which Galileo had treated so contemptuously. Each advance in physical theory, with its rich technological harvest, was bought by a loss in intelligibility. These losses on the intellectual balance sheet, however, were much less in evidence than the spectacular gains; they were light-heartedly accepted as passing clouds which the next advance would dissolve. The seriousness of the impasse became only apparent in the second quarter of our century, and then only to the more philosophically-minded among scientists, who had retained a certain immunity against what one might call the new scholasticism of theoretical physics.Compared to the modern physicist's picture of the world, the Ptolemaic universe of epicycles and crystal spheres was a model of sanity. The chair on which I sit seems a hard fact, but I know that I sit on a nearly perfect vacuum. The wood of the chair consists of fibres, which consist of molecules, which consist of atoms, which are miniature solar systems with a central nucleus and electrons for planets. It all sounds very pretty, but it is the dimensions that matter. The space which an electron occupies is only one fifty-thousandth in diameter of its distance from the nucleus; the rest of the atomic interior is empty. If the nucleus were enlarged to the size of a dried pea, the nearest electron would circle around it at a distance of about a hundred and seventy-five yards. A room with a few specks of dust floating in the air is overcrowded compared to the emptiness which I call a chair and on which my fundaments rest.But it is doubtful whether it is permissible to say that the electron "occupies space" at all. Atoms have the capacity of swallowing energy and of spitting out energy – in the form of light rays, for instance. When a hydrogen atom, the simplest of all, with a single electron-planet, swallows energy, the planet jumps from its orbit to a larger orbit – say, from the orbit of Earth to the orbit of Mars; when it emits energy, it jumps back again into the smaller orbit. But these jumps are performed by the planet without it passing through the space that separates the two orbits. It somehow de-materializes in orbit A and rematerializes in orbit B. Moreover, since the amount of "action" performed by the hydrogen electron while going once round its orbit is the indivisibly smallest quantum of action (Planck's basic constant "h"), it is meaningless to ask at what precise point of its orbit the electron is at a given moment of time. It is equally everywhere. 15a aThe list of these paradoxa could be continued indefinitely; in fact the new quantum-mechanics consist of nothing but paradoxa, for it has become an accepted truism among physicists that the sub-atomic structure of any object, including the chair I sit on, cannot be fitted into a framework of space and time. Words like "substance" or "matter" have become void of meaning, or invested with simultaneous contradictory meanings.Thus beams of electrons, which are supposedly elementary particles of matter, behave in one type of experiment like little pellets, but in another type of experiment they behave like waves; conversely, rays of light behave sometimes like waves and at other times like bullets. Consequently, the ultimate constituents of matter are both substance and non-substance, lumps and waves. But waves in, on, of what? A wave is movement, undulation; but what is it that moves and undulates, producing my chair? It is nothing the mind can conceive of, not even empty space, for each electron requires a three-dimensional space for itself, two electrons need six dimensions, three electrons nine dimensions, to co-exist. In some sense these waves are real: we can photograph the famous dart-board pattern they produce when they pass through a diffraction grate; yet they are like the grin of the Cheshire cat.….How did this situation come about? Already in 1925, before the new quantum mechanics came into being, Whitehead wrote that "the physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus." 22 The common feature between pre-Keplerian astronomy and modern physics is that both have developed in relative isolation as "closed systems", manipulating a set of symbols according to certain rules of the game. Both systems "worked"; modern physics yielded nuclear energy, and Ptolemaic astronomy yielded predictions whose precision bowled over Tycho. The medieval astronomers manipulated their epicyclic symbols as modern physics manipulates Schroedinger's wave equations or Dirac's matrices, and it worked – though they knew nothing of gravity and elliptic orbits, believed in the dogma of circular motion, and had not the faintest idea why it worked. We are reminded of Urban VIII's famous argument which Galileo treated with scorn: that a hypothesis which works must not necessarily have anything to do with reality for there may be alternative explanations of how the Lord Almighty produces the phenomena in question. If there is a lesson in our story it is that the manipulation, according to strictly self-consistent rules, of a set of symbols representing one single aspect of the phenomena may produce correct, verifiable predictions, and yet completely ignore all other aspects whose ensemble constitutes reality:"… Science deals with but a partial aspect of reality, and … there is no faintest reason for supposing that everything science ignores is less real than what it accepts… Why is it that science forms a closed system? Why is it that the elements of reality it ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever has to do with…" 23 Modern physics is not really concerned with "things" but with the mathematical relations between certain abstractions which are the residue of the vanished things. In the Aristotelian universe, quantity was merely one attribute of things, and one of the least important. Galileo's "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics" was regarded by his contemporaries as a paradox; today it has become unquestioned dogma. For a long time the reduction of quality to quantity – of colour, sound, radiation to vibrational frequencies – was so eminently successful that it seemed to answer all questions. But when physics approached the ultimate constituents of matter, quality took its revenge: the method of reduction to quantity still worked, but we no longer know just what it is that is being thus reduced. All we do in fact know is that we read our instruments – the number of clicks in the Geiger counter, or the position of a pointer on a dial – and interpret the signs according to the rules of the game:"And so in its actual procedure physics studies not these inscrutable qualities [of the material world], but pointer readings which we can observe. The readings, it is true, reflect the fluctuations of the world-qualities; but our exact knowledge is of the readings, not of the qualities. The former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone number has to a subscriber." 24 Bertrand Russell expressed this state of affairs even more succinctly:"Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover."

https://archive.org/details/ArthurKoestler-TheSleepwalkers-AHistoryOfMansChangingVisionOfThe

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

So why can't matter 'supervene' on ideas?

Why can't cells supervene on culture?The answer to these questions is the same…

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

We've been through this dozens of times, DJP.

Yes we have, and perhaps you should consider why no-one is agreeing with you on some of this stuff…

But the fact that some are agreeing with me now on some stuff, when initially no-one agreed with me on anything whatsoever, shows that I'm making some inroads into the 'Engelsian Ideology'.Given time, when talk turns to proper philosophy of science from the 20th century (rather than outdated ideas from the 19th), I'm sure more will come to agree further.And as I've said before, the ideology I'm backing actually suits the strategy of the SPGB, with its emphasis on education and propaganda (ie. 'ideas') and opposition to Leninist party control in favour of the working class (ie. 'democracy').The ideology of science I'm attempting to build is both in tune with the latest philosophical advances of bourgeois thinkers and in tune with Marx, and it emphasises workers' control through democratic methods, and opposes elite and academic control of one of the most important aspects of the means of production, science.Engels' 19th century views were mistaken and are a 'dead dog' nowadays. The notion of 'matter' in physics has been discarded, and Critical Realism actually regards 'ideas' and 'material' as the same substance in 'reality' and subject to the same method, as opposed to paying lip service to their 'unity', but in practice insisting that 'matter' is the more 'basic', as does 'materialism/physicalism'.Come over to the 'Dark Side', DJP, you know it makes sense!

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Why call something just 'materialism'

Mainly for historical reasons to do with the development of philosophy… Certainly not because we are claiming we know or could know what "matter" actually is.Another alternative we could use that has not been mentioned before is "naturalism" but again there are shades of meaning…

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

So why can't matter 'supervene' on ideas?

Why can't cells supervene on culture?The answer to these questions is the same…

Yes, and the answer is 'they both can'!IVF is 'cells' supervening on 'culture'.It takes 'ideas' to build humans, who otherwise wouldn't exist.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

So why can't matter 'supervene' on ideas?

Why can't cells supervene on culture?The answer to these questions is the same…

Yes, and the answer is 'they both can'!IVF is 'cells' supervening on 'culture'.It takes 'ideas' to build humans, who otherwise wouldn't exist.

[facepalm]This just shows that you havn't understood what the concept "superveine" means….I can't be bothered to waste my time anymore. If anyone else is interested I might put the time in..

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

It takes 'ideas' to build humans, who otherwise wouldn't exist.

With a person coming into existence through IVF more has gone on than an "idea"..Nobody (even you?) claims that new cells can be created by people simply thinking about it and nothing else. That's what "cells supervening on ideas" would mean…Do you believe in telekinesis?

[LBird]

DJP, 'supervene' is an ideological concept within 'physicalism', so of course you can't see 'material' supervening upon 'ideal'.But that's because of your 'idea' of 'supervene', rather than anything to do with 'reality'.I thought you had the wit to recognise a piss-take!In the 'real' world, of course, IVF is an idea which creates life.That's why your ideology is useless when it comes to the 'real' world, as opposed the mythical world of 19th century 'matter'.Try reading the extract from Koestler's book, where he addresses the space between electrons and protons. 'Matter' is overwhelmingly 'nothing'.If you can be bothered. Or is learning 'wasting your time', too?

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Try reading the extract from Koestler's book, where he addresses the space between electrons and protons. 'Matter' is overwhelmingly 'nothing'.

I did read it and enjoyed reading it. But it doesn't say anything that I wasn't aware of before or is particularly new.You see you can agree with all that and still call yourself a "materialist" for the reasons I said in the post above.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

In the 'real' world, of course, IVF is an idea which creates life.

Yes, like god created light when he said "let there be light"…

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

You see you can agree with all that and still call yourself a "materialist" for the reasons I said in the post above.

But I'm not a 'materialist', but an adherent of Marx's 'theory and practice' (ie. 'idealism-materialism'), which Marx made clear in the Theses on Feuerbach was a separate position from both 'materialism' and 'idealism'. It was a new unity, encompassing both.In my opinion, Critical Realism reflects this unity of Marx's, whereas Engels' 'materialism' has been long left behind.It's best that other comrades are aware of these competing positions, because they have political implications.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

But I'm not a 'materialist', but an adherent of Marx's 'theory and practice' (ie. 'idealism-materialism'), which Marx made clear in the Theses on Feuerbach was a separate position from both 'materialism' and 'idealism'. It was a new unity, encompassing both

In 1845 Marx did make the distinction between his philosophy and "all hitherto existing materialism", but that does not mean that he still did not see himself as a type of materialist, for in 1868 he states quite clearly (when speaking about Herr Duhring – the subject of Engels Anti-Duhring) "He knows very well that my method of development is not Hegelian, since I am a materialist and Hegel is an idealist."As far as I know you are the only adherent of "idealism-materialism" in the whole world…

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