RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: His torical Materialism

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

Yes, I guess I was supporting Jim in saying that it is not true that kind of
economic theories under discussion are any more circular than geometry.
Physics is less circular than the F=ma account Jim gave but I think good
political economy can resemble the more holistic description of physics of
my response. In the end it might be said that physics gets into some
circularity when you get to problems of how to interpret the meaning of
quantum mechanics at the microlevel and the problem of complexity at the
macro level, but my point is that there has been a tremendous expansion of
knowledge in the effort to get out from under the problem of circularity.
In the example of quantum mechanics, Bohr and others started out using the
complementary principle and energy conservation that made quantum mechanical
computations dependent on thier agreement with classical physics for high
quantum numbers. Getting out from under this circularity necessitated the
discovery by DeBroglie and Schrodinger of the wave model of matter, the wave
equation and imaginary (in the mathematical sense) quantum operators. This
worked great for explaining the electronic structure of atoms but resulted
in intractible problems of interpretation for the behavior of free
electrons. Getting out of this box necessitated the concept of Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle and wave-particle duality. This raised problems about
"quantum collapse," an issue that is still being struggle with today, etc.
But enough about physics.

-----Original Message-----
From: ravi [mailto:gadfly@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:57 PM
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [PEN-L:22545] Re: RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was
Re: His torical Materialism


Brown, Martin - ARP (NCI) wrote:
> Re geometry.  I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your statement.
>


are you talking about justin's statement that geometry does not involve
circularities and proceeds by axiomatic enumeration? if so, why do you
think gödel's theorem (i presume you are referring to the incompleteness
theorem?) refutes that statement? i fail to see why the fact that
arithmetic is not recursively axiomatizable is a demonstration of
circularity... please explain, especially since this position conflicts
with your (what i read as correct) response of pointing to the lack of
circularity claimed in jim devine's post.

	--ravi