From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Mon Nov 25 2002 - 15:33:36 EST
re 8048 > >Rakesh, > >Why do you call it a "metaphor"? I prefer to call Marx's 'carrying over' an >analogy. Dear Michael, You raise a series of challenging questions. To discuss Descartes and Newton, I would like to read the chapter "Science Without Laws of Nature" in Ronald Giere's Science Without Laws and re-read Joseph Needham's chapter "Human Law and the Laws of Nature" in The Grand Titration. > >If the law of value is interpreted in "statistical or probabilistic >terms which in >fact allow >for uncertainty at the level of individual exchanges", does that represent any >deviation from Descartes' handbook on how scientific knowledge is to >be attained, I do think the conception of determinism was shaken by the probabilistic revolution. Again I would need to make an intensive study. Perhaps Marx brought that revolution to political economy? >or any deviation from how the natural sciences themselves in fact proceeded >historically in developing statistical and probabilistic methods to >cope with more >and more complex phenomena? Are the "laws of gases" non-Newtonian or simply a >further development of Newtonian physics within the same paradigm? This is a very difficult question which I cannot answer. My guess again is that the concept of the laws of nature has been emptied of theological significance and fundamentally transformed by the mid to late 19th century despite their formally similar "quantitative" appearance to Newtonian laws. > Isn't the >epistemic drive behind the development of probability theory in mathematics >precisely to quantitatively grasp the predictable regularity in what >is empircally >given (literally: the data) despite variation in the individual instance? Well, the limits of prediction have been explored in terms of probability theory as I suppose the people at Long Term Capital Management had forgotten. > >What I am suggesting aims at questioning whether the phenomenon of commodity >exchange -- even in an aggregated state -- is graspable at all by a >mathematical or >even quantitative law which would provide a ground for this >phenomenon. (This does >not exclude in the least the possibility of finding regularities in commodity >exchange data by means of statistical and probabilistic methods. As Aristotle >already pointed out, the discovery of empirical regularities does >not of itself >amount to knowledge, _epistaemae_.) Such questioning, it seems to >me, is important >in order not to uncritically adopt the (highly successful) natural scientific >paradigm of the modern age and transfer it to social phenomena. Again I do not think there is a natural scientific paradigm either to adopt or not to adopt. The sciences are discontinuous and at odds with each other. We have not even discussed how Marx may have been influenced by Goethe's biological work as reflected in Hegel's philosophy and the biological sciences in general and thus possible non- if not anti- Newtonian influences on Marx's ideas about scientific knowledge. >Does Leibniz' "grand principle" -- nihil est sine ratio, Nothing is >without reason >-- apply to the elementary social phenomenon of exchange? I don't think so at the individual level. All the best, Rakesh > >Michael >_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ >_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ >http://www.webcom.com/artefact/ _-_-_-_-_-_- artefact@webcom.com >_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred -_-_- >_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
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