From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Tue Nov 06 2007 - 12:34:59 EST
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/poznan1.html I probably got this cite from this list! Paul Burkett has written an important piece on Newton and Marx on laws of motion. Marx's Method in Social Science, and its Relationship to Classical and Modern Physics and Mathematics Johannes Witt?Hansen / Copenhagen As made plausible above, Capital and its immediate forerunners give ample evidence in favour of the assumption that Marx was familiar with the analytical devices and methodological procedures developed by the founders of classical mechanics, and that he was able to employ them with great skill. He hardly shared Hegel's twisted view of Newtonian mechanics, and could not possibly sanction his rejection of the method of abstraction and idealization or his denial of the legitimacy of the thought experimental procedure. Marx's methodological approach to social phenomena had, indeed, very little in common with Hegel's so?called "dialectical method". It was rather related to the method adopted in "The Scottish Historical School", [20/21] refined by Marx's own creative appropriation of the scientific spirit inherent in classical mathematics and natural science. ________ I'll have to run this one down myself J. Witt?Hansen, "Reflections on Marxian Dialectics", Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Vol. 2 no. 4, 1976. Or if he's still alive I could email him and ask him whether he could send it to me as a pdf rb
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