Burford on dialectics, complexity

[Lisa Rogers <EQDOMAIN.EQWQ.LROGERS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I also have difficulty with "necessity".  It seems to mean something
like causality or tendency, but with implications that there is only
one cause per effect, and/or one effect per cause.  Or something like
that.

It's interesting to me that you see dialectics as a model of
scientific thinking.  It may be close to what I was coming to in some
earlier list-talk of science and marxism, when several post-ers were
claiming that dialectics is different from, better than, and/or
opposed to science [or some caricature of science], but I was finding
them quite compatible.

I'm curious about what you think the complexity modelling "paradigm
shift" is.  I know we've had some talk around this too, but I'm now
better prepared by some off-list study in the intervening months.  To
me, complexity appears to be perhaps less than a paradigm shift but
more than idiom.  It is a powerful addition to the analytical tool
box, at least.

Cheers,
Lisa Rogers

>>> Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>  8/23/95, 07:14am >>>
[snip]
I have difficulty with the concept of necessity. I think more in
terms of momentum.
[snip]
I think of dialectics as the most modern model of scientific thinking
 available to the nineteenth century. I am now more interested in the
 paradigm shift that comes with taking on board non-linear dynamics
(chaos theory, complexity theory) as part of the scientific idiom.
[snip]



     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

     ------------------