Well that is an interesting clarification. I certainly believed that you believed that Engels had the practice of refering to dialectical laws to prove things and further believed that that was OK. But no....interesting.

You have an alternative reading of the Anti Duhring which needs consideration at this point. Let me TRY to restate what that perspective is, based on your last post but one, and see if you agree that that is your suggestion. The core of your suggestion is that Engels does the reverse of what he says he does. This suggestion would be, I think, that Engels says that he never uses dialectical laws to prove things (and believes that he does not do so), but actually does use dialectical laws to prove things. Not quite sure if the last part is precise. The word you use in your post is to 'impose' dialectical laws. Your phrase is to suggest that Engels is: "happy to impose dogmatically a priori theses on nature and society."

To test this reading of Anti Duhring, we could do with just a bit more clarity on what 'impose' means. No doubt its on your website, but if you can summaraise that here, that would be helpful. Let me set the scene a bit and then you can, if you will, elaborate just a little on what 'impose' means for you in this context.

Can I refer you back to my earlier post where I sugested a distinction I thought relevant, keeping in mind that in that post of mine 'he' refers to Engels and the relevant law was the law of Q/Q. The quote from my ealier post is:

Against that background, I think it would be useful to differentiate between your concept of 'imposition' and my concept of exemplification. in order to be as precise as possible in the reading of Anti Duhring. By the way, if this helps, I am aware of your text in I think 4(b)(2) of Essay Two about 'imposition' and what that means in relation to Engels general claims linking matter and motion (something you then come back to in Essay 13), but what I dont have a handle on, from any of that that, is how this applies to the Law of Q/Q or the Law of the Negation of the Negation, as used by Engels in Anti Duhring. What would it mean to read Engels in Anti Duhring as 'imposing' the Laws of Q/Q or N/N ? Or maybe you think his use of those laws in that particular text is unproblematic and that his putative flaws lie elsewhere.

(Personal note: I had a plastic Noddy toy as a child, one of my favourite toys, which I still keep. Noddy was smarter than people think.)

Gil:

Well, when it comes to my work, you clearly live in a world of your own -- or you automatically go into 'invent' mode (just like other DM-fans).

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last.

See, here is another example:

Far from it not being 'precise', I actually told you this:

Bold added.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...8&postcount=77

Now, I await your next studied attempt to misrepresent that, too.

You might be happy with the sloppy use of words, but that does not mean you should attribute that dialectical fault to me.

As I have said to you many times already, if there were the slightest hint from you that you were prepared to engage in fair debate, or you stopped lying about me and my work, I might be inclined to respond.

And if you even so much as attempted to respond to my requests of you, I might be even more inclined to reciprocate,

However, over the last two years here you have in fact done the opposite, time and again; so why you now expect me to help you out here is a mystery.

Read it for yourself in this 71,000 word Essay:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2012_01.htm

And if you can't be bothered: frankly I do not care.

Once more, you forget where Engels got this a priori law; he did not obtain it from an exhaustive analysis of the evidence, or even from perusing a tiny fraction of it. He pinched it from Hegel, who similary imposed it on what little 'evidence' he had 'gathered'. No wonder I call dialectics 'Mickey Mouse Science'!

Had either of them examined a wider selection of evidence, this 'law' would have been stillborn:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm

Hence, it is disingenuous of you now to say Engels merely 'illustrates' this 'law'. He does no such thing -- he uses the a priori 'truth' of this 'law' to interpret a few lame examples from nature and society.

Not so, the pseudo-logical origin of N/N in Hegel's 'logic' shows that Engels has once again imported an a priori 'law' into Marxism, and imposed it on what little evidence he considered (which evidence does not 'illustrate' this 'law' anyway).

You argue as if you think Hegel had written a book of empirical science, on a par with Darwin's masterpiece, and not a book full of forced terminological dodges, word magic and a priori dogma.

Or that Engels had not uncritically lifted most of his ideas from it.

On this showing, he was certainly smarter than you...

Get the toy to do your next post; we might then see a marked improvement.

Goodness me such petulance One of the things Noddy used to learn from his many interesting experiences was how pointless it was to be so constantly annoyed and how he ended up doing himself more harm than anyone else.

The version of Marx's and Engels subjective self-awareness involved in what you propose is quite bizarre. Marx apparently believed himself a pupil of Hegel, thought he had a dialectical method but (besides certain lapses) didnt actually have one. Engel thought that the dialectical method did not involve drawing conclusions from a priori laws, but actually did do that. Engels thought he agreed with Marx....but didnt. Marx hid the fact that he disagreed with Engels. The complete absence of any principle of economy in these speculations makes this very difficult to take seriously.

However be that as it may, there are a few ideas here that I might be able to make some use of. Firstly, there is the idea that just because the intellectual origins of the idea of dialectics laws used by Marx and Engels come from Hegel that those laws are not capable of a legiitimate role. One must however trace this kind of idea through to how those ideas are used if this claim is to have any force....after all the whole issue is about how to think - if the ideas of dialectics of dialectics do not lead to bad thinking, where they come from is irrelevant.

Secondly I perceive a distinction between exemplification, as I have referred to, and what you describe as follows :

Here the use of the word 'interpret' may mean something more than 'impose'. But again, it seems to me that 'interpret' requires some conclusion. It suggests that what Engels does is to say here is an example from science, it complies with (lets say) the Law of Q/Q and then he would need to conclude ....therefore, something or other is the case.

Now this seems to be a relevant point. Engels did not seem to use the Law of Q/Q to say anything about the world, except that the law sometimes applies. So that chapter of Anti Duhring counts against this claim. Let us see if the relevant section on the Law of N/N also counts against it.

Gil:

After more than two years of your tricks (and there are some more in this latest post of yours), can you expect anything else from me other than contempt?

Marx declared himslef a pupil of Hegel in the past tense. His comments in Das Kapital tell us he no longer was.

And, of course, if you are going to try to summarise my claims in such a misleading way, as I predicted you would, then no wonder they make little sense to you. The fault is, however, in you, not me.

And here is yet another distortion (one that I have corrected here and elsewhere several times -- you wonder why I recommend Noddy over you as a debating partner!):

My argument is not the genetic fallacy, as you seem to believe. As I have said here several times (most recently in the 'Scrapping dialectics' thread), and in my Essays, my argument in fact proceeds from a demonstration that not one single dialectical idea/concept/principle makes a blind bit of sense, to the conclusion that they thus can have no application.

Then, I trace the source of the problem to the a priori dogmatics contained in ruling-class thought, of which Hegel is one of the worst offenders.

As I note in Essay Fourteen:

But, you'd know all this if you bothered to acquaint yourself with my ideas before pontificating about them.

Well, if you knew the background to my claims, you'd get the point.

But as you have decided to remain dialectically ignorant, I have a mind to leave you in the Hermetic pit of your own choosing.

And, even if I had the inclination to do so, it is not easy communicating complex ideas to one such as you, who knows about as mcuh logic as a coffee grinder.

Stick to Noddy books -- they seem more your level.

Havent time to answer your last post....just wanna move on here to bring the Lw of N/N into it.

The actual treatment of the Law of the Negation of the Negation occurs between P 125 and P. 132 of MECW 25. Let us see if Engels uses it to prove anything or interpret anything, and if so what. Engels' first example is a grain of barley which 'turns into' a plant and then more grains. He defines a meaning for 'negation' as involving ceasing to exist. But it isnt immediately clear that the concept of ceasing to exist is sufficient to grasp the concept of negation. Negation appears to involve ceasing to exist as part of process. It is clear that if a grain of barley were simply destroyed, that would not meet Engels definition. The point is clearly to have a name for a conception of the cessation which specifically conceives the cessation as part of a process. The question is whether this is a legitimate thing to do. Are we allowed to differentiate within the class of all cessations of existence between those cessations which are part of a process and those which are not.

It is already clear that the discussion of the Law of N/N goes further than the discussion of the Law of Q/Q. The discussion of the Law of Q/Q was not difficult to grasp, since the use of the terms quantity and quality were both unproblematic. When Engels talks about the addition of another quantity of an element to a carbon compound, we have little difficulty knowing what he is talking about. When he talks about two different carbon compounds as being qualitatively distinct then that is easily grasped. (Although some might want to argue - as Rosa does sometimes seems to on her site - that a change from solid to liquid and from liquid to gas is not or may not be a change of quality and that the concept of quality is not as clear as it seems.)

But we cannot say that about the concept of negation. Engels definition of negation is not quite so commonsensical. But nor is it the case that it entirely beyond understanding. It is an extension, or rather refinement, of concepts we do use more commonly. But the precise class of cessations of existence it aims to select are hard to define On the one hand we dont want to confine the class too much, or it would become a teleological concept. On the other hand, we do need to exclude those cessations whcih dont involve any process. One might say that the barley process is teleological because it has evolved to be so. Fine, but the process whereby it evolved to have those features was not teleological. Furthermore, Marx's example of the emergence of socialism is not teleological. So it is not the case tht the negation of the negation refers to those cases where something ceases as part of a process pre-determined to lead to the emergence of something else related to it. No, Engels makes it clear that he is not concerned with what happens with any absolute necessity but with those cases where the 'negation of the negation' actually occurs, irrespective of how certain it was to happen.

But what is the 'negation of the negation' ? What it appears to be is that object one actually ceases to exist, object two exists in part because object one ceased to exist and then object two ceases to exist leading to the existence of object three.

Lets see if the further examples fit this definition. I leave aside the mathematical example, because it is a thread all on its own. From history Engels takes the example of primitive common ownership/private property in land and then advanced common ownership of land. He follow that with another "example" (MECW 25. P. 128) This example is particularly interesting because it shows (as did the maths example) that for Engels the concept of the negation of the negation is not JUST a material process. He refers to the emergence of 'primitive materialism' in ancient greece. Then came idealism and its doctrine of the soul which is in turn later replaced by a new materialism. His final example is the replacement of equality by inequality and then by equality - a process he shows Duhring acknowledging.

The point he repeatedly emphasises in each of these examples is that the cessation of the second object does not lead to the reestablishment of the firrst. This seems, for him to be the key idea. He emphasises that he is saying nothing about the particular processes that lead to this outcome (MECW Vol 25. P.131) He emphasises this. Rather his point is to classify together all processes in which a cessation is so arranged that a second cessation "remains or becomes possible" (MECW Vol 25. P.131).

Now after all that we get the text in which Engels tries to explain the negation of the negation:

" Every kind of thing therefore has a peculiar way of being negated in such manner that it gives rise to a development, and it is just the same with every kind of conception or idea." MECW Vol 25 P.132

There are clearly issues with the use of the term 'negation' in the naming of this. Those arent fundamental - language is pliable and constantly evolving. Words come to mean what we designate them as meaning as long as we develop a practice of using them that way. But the key issue is whether there is a potential class of cessations of existence which share this characteristic that can usefully be differentiated from other cessations of existence. Engels believes that such processes occur "everywhere and every day" and it certainly seems true that whether in the form of historically evolved developmental processes evolutionary processes or historical processes or even geological processes, things in this world commonly cease to exist in ways which influence what happens subsequently. It seems only to involve accepting that that influence on subsequent events can happen twice in a linked sequence to have grasped what the idea of the negation of the negation means.

Why it exists is another matter, one not explored by Engels because here Engels treatment of Philosophy just ends !!! There is a short conclusion, but no more substantive claims no conclusions drawn a priori etc. What is significant about the conclusion is that it once again emphasises why Engels ever engaged in this exercise - namely to prove Duhring wrong, not to prove anything of any complexity about the world. The world has been interpreted as a place where sometimes, often, the addition of a further quantity of an element leads to the emergence of something qualitatively different and as a place where the manner in which something ceases to exist can have an influence on what happens after that (and that there can be chains of such influence). Hard to see those interpreations of the world as very problematic.

Gil:

What is the point of this? It is not directed at anything I have said, since I deny anyone can prove anything with dialectics, least of all Engels.

You have once again ignored what I had to say, and thus, once more signalled your aim not to engage in dabate.

Bold added.

And that is because you too prefer ruling-class apriorism, just like Engels.

Not trying to avoid debate at all....quite happy to debate. Just wanted to get to the end of the treatment of Philosophy in the Anti Duhring....which is after all my purpose here : just to look at the Anti Duhring and see what scope there is there for a prior dogmatic principles to be used in the discussion.

The worst things I found there a sentence which had a very general form, namely saying that negation of the negation goes on every day and all over the world and, secondly, I found a lack of clarity in the definition of what a dialectical contradiction is, but supported by an explanation as to why it was not capable of formal definition. I also found a use of the term 'negation' which is a bit hard to grasp.

SO there is a general claim that might have been used as an a priori argument and a couple of concepts which are very vague and would justify being questioned as to whether they were sufficiently clear for any purpose. None of this amounts to finding an argument ANYWHERE in the text that actually relied on an a priori principle. Indeed, there is extended argument that such a usage would be invalid (though I now understand your argument that that occurs despite the opposite practice being present).

What is most interesting, therefore, about the Anti Duhring text is that, given what Engels wants to show, he doesnt need any a priori dogmatics to prove his points, which makes it unlikely that he would fall into it.

At this point I consider your argument as follows:

as still available as an option. On the face of it, the Law of Q/Q is reasonably clear. The constituent terms are in common usage and the example of carbon compounds is hard to misunderstand. I think I understand that law.

The situation in relation to the law of N/N and with the concept of dialectical contradiction is less clearcut. I think there is a requirement for a bit more examination of the Anti Duhring before drawing any firm conclusion about those two, though on the face of what is said in the relevant pages of exposition the two concepts each seem vaguely comprehensible and may not need to be more than that to work.

But that depends on what Engels thinks they are usable for. What the exposition of those concepts has been used for is to defend Marx's usage of the Law of Q/Q and the Law of N/N.

One other possible line of confusion is in what a law means. I find it quite clear in Anti Duhring what a dialectical law is not, but I do not (so far) find it very clear what it is for and therefore what it is.

Now what points of yours am I ignoring ? I think its more or less covered.

Gil:

But you have responded to none of my arguments.

This is very disingenuous of you, for we both know where Engels got the N/N -- from an a priori principle Hegel conjured out of thin air.

You argue as if you think Engels invented this notion.

You mean, "he doesn't need any dialectics at all".

The ideas he defended in Marx are all drawn from Historical Materialism, and stand on their own two feet.

Not one bit of it; 'quality' is not defined, neither is 'node'/'leap'. The phrase 'addition of matter and energy' is left vague, and the thermodynamic boundary of the system to which energy is 'added' is also left undefined.

Any scientist producing a law this vague and ill-defined would lose all credibility.

In dialectical, Mickey Mouse Science, apparently, this is all OK.

Once more, another a priori 'law' copied from Hegel. You are continually ignoring this salient fact.

The ones you usually ignore -- those you cannot answer.

There is little point me repeating them, since you will just ignore them some more. However, a clue to your insincere question can be garnered from this comment of yours:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...1&postcount=85

This is a dodge you are continually pulling.

And we know why: you have absolutely no intention of 'debating' this -- you just want to defend the standard, dogmatic line.

OK

Well you say you dont commit the genetic fallacy (actually its not always a fallacy to my mind), but if I understand your argument correctly, the suggestion is that we must have regard to the origin of the ideas in Hegel, but we must first establish that they are too meaningless to be grasped any other way. I havent reached that point in this reading of the Anti Duhring. Im still reading the text, which is based on the view that Hegel is completely wrong BUT, Engels thinks, something has been salvaged from that. This is an argument, by Engels, against continuity with Hegel. Consequently, I agree with what I understand to be a view similar to your position (but not identical to it) that the ideas must be assessed first and only taken as continuous with Hegel if they fail to stand alone. Where he got N/N from doesnt matter if it makes sense (though reading Hegel can be useful for educational purposes, but thats a point at a different level).

You say quality is not defined. But it is a widely used term and is not used by Engels in any sense that is at variance with its ordinary usage that I can spot, so why should he have to define it more than anyone else who uses the term ? He does not define it, that is true. But what is the problem. Do you define every single word you use, I dont ? Addition is also a well understood phrase. Negation and dialectical contradiction are not in this category. Seems to me they do need some further work than is given in Engels section - he defines them, but really only in one sentence each.

Anti Duhring does not use the concept of node/leap in the section on the Law of Q/Q...unless you can show me otherwise ?

What is your issue with addition of energy to matter; where does that occur in the section on Q/Q ?

A definition of the thermodynamic boundary is not needed for Q/Q to make sense. At least I cant see why. The concept of boundary is not needed surely for the carbon compounds example.

....And by the way its true, I dont have your time for this. I am giving it far more time in the last few days than I can afford. So dont assume dishonesty just cos someone has other demands on them. doesnt follow.

Gil:

Ah, but it does matter if Hegel's argument is defective, and if the 'laws' Engels borrowed from his are entirely dogmatic and a priori.

You are not suggesting that if a fatal error were found in say Darwin's work that that would have no effect on the status of the claims of modern-day Darwinians? How can it not fail to have a knock-on effect?

Same with Engels.

But, this is meant to be cutting edge science; in no other science would such sloppy work be tolerated.

However, if you are right here, then there would be countless examples of qualitative change where no quantitative change was in evidence.

I gave several examples in the Q/Q thread and many more at my site.

The problem is that Hegel and Engels accepted this as a 'law' before they had examined an adequate body of evidence (in effect thay looked at a few badly described examples!), and what they did examine was hightly superficial --, and in the end their 'evidence' does not even support this 'law'!

Anyone who has done genuine science knows how much work and attention to detail has to go into changing even limited areas of knowledge, let alone report the discovery of a new 'law'.

So, not only does this 'law' have none of its terms defined (see below), it relies on a display of 'evidence' that would be laughed out of court even if it were presented in a High School science report.

No wonder I call it 'Mickey Mouse Science'.

Now I have covered all this in extensive detail in Essay Seven, and some of it has been posted in that earlier thread (and some in the 'Scrapping Dialectics' thread -- repeated below). I suggest you familiarise youself with the facts before you make an even bigger fool of yourself in future.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/quantity-q...709/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-mat...588/index.html

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2007.htm

Here is what I posted in the 'scrapping dialectics' thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...1&postcount=46

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...8&postcount=44

And as far a 'node' is concerned, I have argued this:

Gil:

It appears in 'Dialectics of Nature' -- but, if you are saying that it does not feature in Engles's understanding of this 'law' in Anti-Duhring, then that is even worse, for that 'law' would then have no content at all. [But see the next post for passages from Anti-Duhring.]

Oh yes it is; but I will let you find out why. [However, I given some reasons in the previous post, above.]

I make time by not wasting it on ruling-class rubbish -- you should give it a try...

Ok, in Anti-Duhring, Engels has this to say:

Bold added.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...hring/ch10.htm

Looks pretty 'nodal' to me. And his talk of 'quantitiative change in temperature' suggests the addition of energy, too.

Engels then says:

Where are these 'hundreds of facts'? Engels just makes this up. The 'law' is a priori, and Engels has simply lifted it uncritically from Hegel.

And later we find this:

Bold added.

Looks like the 'addition' of matter/energy to me.

But, I thought you were congratulating yourself for going back to this text to find out what Engels actually said.

Looks like you screwed up here too.

No indeed. Good example. There are quite serious problems with Darwin's work, but none of them are fatal. Inded darwin survives the limitations of his own view quite brilliantly, because there is a profound insight at the heart of the perspective. What I take Engels to be saying is that there are serious problems with Hegel, but that the understanding of dialectics he developed as part of his philosophy is not fatally damaged by that.

Actually I dont think it is meant to be cutting edge 'science' in the sense you mean.

I dont think Engels denies this or wishes to deny it. Rather he is interested only in those cases where quantitative change turns into qualitative change. Similarly he has no problem accepting that there are events that could be described as involving 'addition' where no qualitative change follows.

We can only say whether it applies based on our independent study of the relevant subject matter. The clarity is provided by that process of study. By that route we get to the point of placing a clearly understood (hopefully) event within a vaguely defined set of events.

As I read the text, the term nodal is used to refer to Hegel's concept, used as a name, but there is no significant reliance on it there. that said, I might be willing to defend this term, if I was to reread the relevant passages in the Dialectics of Nature, which I have long since forgotten....but Im reading anti duhring for now.

I think Engels would agree with you on this. That was indeed his constant theme in correspondence with Kautsky, Schmidt, Lavrov and others - study the facts in detail, immerse yourself in it, draw no conclusions from abstract principles, avoid all schematism.

Thats not a problem for a dialectical law, since it has no predictive role. Yes but there are countless situations where any law or general term does not apply. So what ? Unless he claims it does.....and he doesnt claim that.

Well I find that the ruling class rubbish that gets in my way is mostly working for a living....now if only I had an Engels to pay my way.....then you'd never hear the end of me defending my benefactor




A fool I was born and a fool I'll die. Thanks to relativism I never have to be anyone else. Phew !

Im off to Noddy land. zzzzzzzzzz

Gil:

You miss the point -- which was to counter a claim you made. The errors I have located in Hegel, not the ones Engels missed because he knew no logic, undermine his entire work, and this cannot fail to have a knock-on effect on Engels's use of Hegel's ideas, howsoever he modified them.

Indeed, my irony was deliberate, since dialctics is in fact Mickey Mouse Science.

Then it can't be a law, as he says.

Of course, in Dialectics of Nature, he worded this law far more strictly:

Are you suggesting he abandoned this? Dialectical Marxists since Engels day certainly hold to this stricter version of this 'law', and attribute it to Engels.

But anyway, without these strictures, why call it a 'law'?

But the examples themselves do not help (how can they help define 'quality', 'node', 'addition of energy' and the boundaries of the system?) -- and the need for 'interpretation' introduces an element of subjectivity into what is supposed to be an objective 'law'.

Well the wording indicates Engels also accepts it:

Bold added.

Engels refers to his own use of the boiling water example, and to these phase changes as 'turning points' -- these are nodal 'leaps' by any other name.

As he argued in Dialectics of Nature:

And in the other passage I quoted, the qualitative changes he refers to are certainly sudden (you are not suggesting they are gradual, I hope):

So, given the above, it is pretty clear that Engels believed there were 'leaps'/'nodes', and this is certainly how he has been interpreted down the years.

And yet the 'evidence' he gives in support of these 'laws' is a joke. So, once more, what he might have said he believed is belied by what he actually did.

Why then call it a 'law'?

Then you have my sympathy -- as Marx said, your mode of being determines your consciousness, and that explains why you dote so much on ruling-class dross.

Ah, you accept the 'law of identity', too, I see...

You never left.

Indeed, but the point I was making is merely that those conclusions you have drawn, on which you rely, are not self-evident. Others disagree with you and it is a reasonable position, right or wrong, to think that certain of Hegel's ideas could survive the rejection of his system - depending on the basis on which one rejected it. Consequently, nothing can be concluded decisively from tracing the historical origins of Engels ideas....rather they must be rejected/accepted in their own terms.

My absence of irony was also deliberate - it is particularly important in considering what Engels was doing that he was NOT engaged in cutting edge science but was merely interpolating a view at a particular point in scientific development at which the analysis of change in nature was still problematic (in the 1870s) in a way in which it actually was not even by the 1890s. (Though I can still vaguely recall reading someone....was it Velikovsky....in the 1980s when static conceptions of the planet still had an ideological hold in some areas of study.)

He may well have done so but did he need to ? Sorry to say this but the question must be looked at 'dialectically' ; it depends on what he was using the law for. If the stricter version could be stated and held to it would of course be more useful. But it is the weaker version which captures the heart of the point.

The essential point does not rest on whether they are gradual or sudden. This kind of discussion replicates the discussions years ago in evolutionary theory about gradual evolution, which were all kinda pointless - doesnt matter. Speed of change varies: its not important at this level of generality. [I used that phrase on purpose ]

I think we can show why, in the sense of showing what he meant and how it differs from what you take a 'law' to be. Then that would be the point: why cant he use the term 'law' in a different way than you, given how unclear that term is !

Human beings, constantly changing, constantly confined within the possibilities of their past, constantly themselves and never just what they always were......try and tell me the Law of Identity captures that reality.....I dont think you'll bother.

Gil:

Of course people disagree, that is why Marx said the ruling ideas are always those of the ruling class, for the boundaries of that disagreement are set to the parameters laid down by that class.

Hence, Engels slipped into this mode of thought seamlessly; he uncritically appropriated his three 'laws' from Hegel as a priori truths -- that is, he accepted dogmatic principles that were based on a style of thought that had dominated 'western' philosophy for 2400 years, and still does: a priori thesis-mongering.

And that is my point; he derived general truths about nature and society from dogma lifted from Hegel. Despite what he said, he was not interested in the scientific study of reality, but in the imposition of an a priori scheme on it.

Which is precisely how and why ruling ideas come to rule even the minds of great revolutionaries. Even they, like you, cannot see when they are doing it; it seems so natural to think this way.

Not so; if they are based on a priori dogma, much can be concluded, as Marx noted:

This ancient style of reasoning reflects the way the ruling class has always seen reality: behind appearances there is a hidden world (which, coincidentally, always seems to rationalise and justify class division), accessible to thought alone, which philosophers alone can access and delineate with their baroque schemas and specially-invented jargon, all based on systematic linguistic distortion and abstraction.

Anti-Dühring just represents the scrag end of this style of thought.

He certainly thought he was, and his epigones definitely represent him that way, That explains all the eulogies he receives as the 'greatest intellect of the age'.

Your reference to Velikovsky is amusing. He was merely challenging uniformitarianism in geology, a doctrine that dominated that branch of science from the 1830 to the 1980s, after the pioneering work of Hutton and Lyell.

But even uniformitarians believed in change, gradual change based on known laws and processes operating today.

This explains why Engels liked his nodal 'leaps' -- something you seem to deny -- it challeged uniformitarianism.

But even Velikovsky's catastrophic changes were externally induced; they weren't the result on 'internal contradiction' -- whatever those mysterious beings are.

He most certainly did; he needed a universal and modal aspect for it to be a law, and he needed to tie that in with material change.

['Modal' here, not 'nodal', note.]

It does not capture the heart, it removes it! For there is no way the weaker version is a law.

And the version in Dialectics of Nature certainly shows the way he was thinking, and why he called it a 'law', and why he was prepared to impose it on the few examples he managed to scrape together.

He clearly wanted to ape Newton's three laws of motion.

And what would we think of those laws if they had been worded in the wishy-washy way you prefer to read Engels now eviscerated 'laws'?

Not so; all of his examples reflect sudden change -- I'd like to see you try to re-describe a single one of them in terms of slow change.

And, even if you were right, he could only get away with that because he had left key terms undefined.

Darwin would have been laughed out of court if his work has been this sloppy.

But then, he was not engaged in Mickey Mouse Science; Engels was.

Well, you are floundering now. What other sense of 'law' that was in use in the latter part of the nineteenth century could he possibly have been referring to?

A vague, wishy-washy non-generalisation, with loose terminology and non-specific boundary conditions, which works only fitfully, and with no modal imperatives attached/implied?

Give me a break!

You are clearly only reaching for this straw law because every single one of your earlier claims has been shown to be wrong.

Can you show, from the writings of any other character from that period, a use of the word 'law' that is like this?

If you know your history of science (and your vague reference to Velikovsky does not inspire confidence), you will know that the use of this word at this time was Newtonian.

Even Darwin modelled his work on Newton.

The vagueness that we now see in this term was not apparent 140 years ago.

Yes it does, for one of its corollaries is that if something changes, then anything identical with it will change equally quickly. This law captures change far better than the vguae and meaningless terms one finds in Hegel.

But anyway, you seem to think you are still a fool, contradicting Lenin:

And, ironically, I think the reason you are still a fool, is that you believe all this guff.

That doesn't appear to say anything, except if something changes then it changes. No explanation. Not even any description.

CZ:

That is because you, like Trotsky, have confused identity with equality.

Eh

CZ:

It's quite straight-forward.

The 'Law of Identity' is no enemy of change, as dialecticians try to tell us (having copied this odd idea off Hegel, who simply dreamt it up), and this is so for at least two reasons.

1) If something changes, it will no longer be identical with its former self. So, far from denying change, this 'law' allows us to determine if and when it has occurred.

2) If an object changes, then anything identical to it will change equally quickly.

The latter of these two seems to have puzzled you, but it shouldn't when you read the lame-brained and repetitive things dialecticians have said about this 'law', which most confuse with the principle of equality.

There are countless sites in the internet that say the same thing (irony intended).

References to the above works can be found here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2006.htm

My comment was merely aimed at showing that this 'law' can cope with change, since if A is identical with B, it will share all the properties B has, and so will change at a rate equal to that of B (let alone at a rate equal to itself).

And there are plenty of identical particles in nature; for example, every electron is identical to every other electron (the same is true of photons).

As Steven French notes:

That quote came from his SIEP article:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-idind/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles