Oh its done alright, leaving you with the issue of whose company you are in in not having seen it....and to answer your next post: how do you know that ?

'Know' what?

Gil:

Not so, you refused to explain (after I showed that Scot Meikle's explanation could not work), and then you went off in a sulk.

So, we still do not know what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if we do, we also know they cannot exist and so cannot change anything.

I haven't studied this thread too much, but here's my two cents: you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole when trying to describe nature by dialectics.

Consider electricity: there are two charges - positive and negative. This is somehow dialectical, interpenetration of negation of negation blah blah blah. Whatever.

Now this doesn't work in general -- there are some forces with one charge! There are others with three! How do you explain this?

Gravity has one charge, strong force three.

Dialectics "breaks down" and your left with nothing...

Dialectics doesn't describe nature, correct, it describes how human beings think re nature, and finds that the two are coherent.

I don't think of nature as dialectical. Whenever I try and force things into two boxes (opposites as it were), I invariably find that there is at least one, and generally more, possibilities.

I can go up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards, etc. These things aren't in opposition or conflict.

There is no opposite of a tree either for that matter. A tree just is.

Then you don't think of things as a Marxist, who sees that nature acts in self-contradictory ways.

That's not entirely accurate. Many Marxists reject the Dialectic, as it is not inherently necessary for the rest of the Marxist theories. Also, its important to recognize that Marx himself rarely spoke of Dialectics - it was primarily Engels who focused on the concept.

Point taken; I should have said "then you don't think like Marx..."

Trivas:

But, and once again, it has already been established that Marx abandoned 'the dialectic' (as you mystics understand it) by the time he wrote Das Kapital

And yet, if that were so, one would think that you mystics could actually tell us what these "self-contradictory ways" are. But the opposite is in fact the case: not one of you can.

So, this is rather ironic, then:

It certainly describes how you mystics imagine you think about things, but when asked to explain yourselves, you lot just twist and turn, prevaricate, distract attention, but in the end you cannot actually tell us what this way of 'thinking' amounts to.

So, it seems that 'dialectical' thinking is synonymous with 'lack of critical thought' -- or perhaps: 'when asked, bottle it'.

And in your case, this way of not thinking has created a comrade who 'does not think about things he does not think about.'

[By the way, you won't know this, since he has been away for three or four months, but Comrade Red is one of the most insistent anti-dialectical Marxists you could wish to meet. He even makes me look like a shrinking violet.]

Yet you said,
I'm not a Marxist, and that should be obvious. But seriously, nature isn't "self-contradictory", that's just silly talk.

I didn't say nature is self-contradictory, I said it acts in self-contradictory ways.

Don't you mean you "believe" that it appears this way? Or are you trying to describe nature with dialectics?

Distinguish your belief in appearances from appearances themselves. And how do you describe nature with dialectics?

Ah yes, a good dialectical dodge...

I don't. Math is a far superior tool than dialectics in the realm of exact descriptions.

Dialectics allows you to be pretentious...which is good for the parties, I guess.

But there is an unreasonable effectiveness of math applied to nature. Similarly, there is an unreasonable ineffectiveness of dialectics applied to...anything!

Trivas, I did try to warn you:

Red, I am afraid, Trivas does not think, he just repeats dogma.

Now, where have we seen that before...?

Please let me know the next time math effects social revolution. Until then who cares what you find effective?

The terrible irony is that the "revolutions" that were "guided" by dialectics failed miserably

Well, scrap that excuse of a tool.

And the relevance to understanding nature is...? Oh right, none but a straw man! (Might it be noted, a crappy one at that!)

Perhaps you could try focusing on topic? Until then, who cares what you have to say?

Spoken like a true capitalist. With as miserable an understanding of the role dialectics has played in social revolution.

Yes, I see you are incapable of carrying out a discussion without resorting to red herrings.

How unsurprising for a dialectician.

And if you'd like to discuss the "success" of the Soviet Union, or any other bourgeois revolution you'd like, go to the history forum to start such a discussion...since the revolutions all sort of ended a while back in capitalism.