Dialectics and complexity

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Lisa Wed 23 Aug:
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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.

Chris B:
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Above all for us on a marxism list we are presumably thinking of
the Hegelian dialectics of the 19th century. Obviously
I accept that scientific experimentation was building up a significant
body of data of a verifiable kind. I also accept that Hegelian dialectics
is mainly rooted in philosophy, but I still get the impression that
Marx and Engels who strove to be up to date with the latest thinking,
regarded as the leading model of scientific thought.

Why should this be?

I checked the word "dialectics" in the dictionary. It comes from
a stylised ritual of disputation in the mediaeval monasteries when
questions were illuminated by structured argument. "Devil's advocate"
comes from this, when a monk had to play the part of the devil.

Dialectics arguably by extension is an approach to philosophy and
science that looks at things from different points of view and different
angles.

Why is this useful in terms of the actual material universe as we
understand it to exist? Well if there is matter in motion, in endless
swoops and curls, forming and reforming into complex patterns, that
build up, grow, break down and die, only to provide the substance for
new patterns......then any form of analysis, must look at things from
different angles.

Something moving towards A. Something moving away from
B. Something which seems solid and durable. Something which seems on
closer examination, to be a network of atoms enmeshing mainly empty space.
Something that appears a clear complete entity: but something riddled
with internal contradictions on closer examination, contradictions that
both hold it together, and under certain circumstances may blow it apart.



Lisa:
-----

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.

Chris B:
--------

I have bought some more books on complexity theory but I have not read
them and I am slipping behind. It is nice to be able to exchange notes
with you.

Chaos theory has a reputable pedigree in maths building up over 100
years. Complexity theory, to be prudent, is less that 10 years old and
is disparaged by some as a product of opinionated people gathered in
the Santa Fe Institute "where complex people ponder complex things", as a
critical article in the June Scientific American put it. "The major
discovery to emerge from the institute so far", says one of its members,
is that "its very hard to do science on complex systems."

On the whole I thought this article was putting together a number of
probing questions in the manner of good science journalism, but it did
not breach for me my sense that the complexologists are on to something.
It is easier for me, as it is perhaps for you, coming from the life
sciences, to accept that large numbers of entities, cells, human beings,
etc, may start forming complex patterns, that then have a momentum of
their own.

This could well be true of economic phenomena under commodity exchange, and
could be very relevant to the business cycle vividly described by Marx,
even if it does not exactly always phase change into socialism at the
height of the crisis. Thus, although Steve is critical of certain aspects
of Marx, of which I am not, it feels to me that he, and many other
economists on this list, are basically describing the same animal.

I would be interested to hear what aspects of complexity theory you
feel to be most firmly based in reality, as a result of your recent
reading.

Regards,

Chris



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