RE: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His tor ical Materialism

["Brown, Martin - ARP (NCI)" <mbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Devine, James [mailto:jdevine@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:53 PM
To: 'pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
>Subject: [PEN-L:22544] RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His
torical Materialism


Martin, could you please explain these points in greater detail?

Martin Brown writes:
> Re geometry.  I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your [Justin's??]
statement. ...<

which statement? and how does Goedel do so?

I'm not great mathematician, but I think that Goedel says that geometry and
many other sub-fields of mathematics, are, in some sense, circular, because
they are not reducible to a set of primitive fundamentals that are in some
sense self evidently true. If you wish there is always some degree of
arbitrayness in these foundations.  A lot of mathematical progress has been
made by trying to get around these limitations by expanding mathematical
logic to ever wider domains. Geometry to algebraic geometry to abstract
geometry to topology, etc.

> Re physics.  I made an analogy in my earlier email.  Here is another F=ma
is subsumed by law of the conservation of energy. Physics problems that can
be solved with F=ma can all be solved much more generally and elegantly with
the Hamiltonian approach to conservation of energy, which is a much more
"macro" description of the problem.  In Marx, is the analogy the macro
conditions for the equivalence of economic aggregates.  <

by the last, do you mean the total value = total price and total
surplus-value = total profits+interest+rent conditions?

>>Yes, sorry, should have been more specific.

>>>However, these are only meant to be analogies.  I don't think there is
any kind of necessary conceptual isomorphy between physics and economics.

Jim Devine