From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Fri Jan 21 2005 - 11:18:08 EST
It partly depends on the level of abstraction you use. At the level of everyday experience we think of prior events as causing future events. At a deeper level though due to the symmetry of the laws of mechanics it is as valid to think of future events constraining past ones, or past configurations constraining future ones. Another level at which one uses the notion cause is in the sense of there being an underlying process. Thus in Koch's hypothesis disease has an underlying process that involves the existence of parasitic bacteria within the body, so we would speak of bacteria as causing the disease. This relates to explanation, or the presentation of more detailed models rather than to the notion of cause as temporal evolution. In the context that I raised in the post - Sraffa's theory, this could be criticised as a-causal in the sense of being a-temporal. There is some justification in saying that it is an a-temporal theory and may be unreal in that it does not have dynamical laws. But I don't think that per-se there is anything wrong with exploring theories that involve a temporal constraints. Provided that is that one recognises that the whole system operates as a whole. If you relax one constraint you can not assume that the others hold - for instance if the rate of profit is not equal then what one can say about other things may be more limited. -----Original Message----- From: OPE-L [mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU] On Behalf Of Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM Sent: 21 January 2005 13:26 To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Hume > I would argue that what science does is not so > much uncover causes but uncover symmetries and > constraints. Paul C, Hasn't there been disagreement among scientists about this? Doesn't the sciences of medicine, bacteriology, virology, etc. often proceed by attempting to identify cause(s)? Didn't e.g. Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie attempt to identify cause(s)? It is the presence of unexplained symmetries or asymmetries or enigmas that often motivates scientific pursuits of underlying cause, no? While Marx uncovered symmetries and constraints, wasn't it part of his project within the context of the reconstruction of capitalism in thought to also identify causes? One could, for example, read Chapter One of Volume One of _Capital_ as an attempt to identify causes, no? In solidarity, Jerry
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