Re: [OPE] Is 'dialectic' a scientific, pre-scientific or pseudo-scientific concept?

From: dogangoecmen@aol.com
Date: Tue Apr 01 2008 - 12:38:01 EDT


 Dave, we are from entirely different "planets". I do not see any easy way of solving our differences in the short term. It is perhaps not a bad idea to leave to time to solve - if at all. Below my replies.

Dogan
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 "Dialectics is the only scientific concept today".?



Dave Z:
======

Certainly this is a mistake. By extension all other concepts are 
non-scientific. 
Thus physics, biology etc., which have no need to use 
'dialectic', would be non-scientific.

Reply
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This is a mistake. Dialectics is a universal concept and applies to all sciences and humanities - of course in different forms.
Please take the terms: coldness versus and warmness; hardness versus softness; universal and particular; illness and healthiness. 

Without thinking these and many other contradictory terms we cannot explain anything.? Dialectics says we have to think these contradictory terms as unities and that they are represented in one another. The motion from one to other is a process of quantitative and qualitative processes. Let's take for example illness. Can we define what illness is if do not think of healthiness at the same time. And we fight against illness because we usually know that healthiness is immanent in illness. Similarly with all other terms.
 
Dogan
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Can you please give some reasons to justify your claim that dialectics is pre or even pseudo-scientific??
?
Dave Z
=======

There doesn't seem to be a precise meaning of 'dialectic', it means 
whatever the author wants. But most often it is used as a description of 
processes that are driven by the form "thesis, anti-thesis and 
synthesis". At other times the emphasis is shifted to describe processes 
that change quantitatively up to a point and then make a qualitative "leap".

Reply
======
It is not as arbitrary as you seem to think how one defines dialectics as a concept of the world. It is an ontological concept and must be discovered in things rather than in schematic definitions. The reasons you give prove that even natural sciences cannot do without dialectics. The concepts you refer to below are all dialectical concepts though they may be used unconsciously: "Dynamical 
systems" (was first developed against mechnic mode of thought and approach by dialecticians); 'discontinuities' (implies the concept of continuity); 'feedback signals' (implies the dialectic of action reaction); 'phase transitions' 
(highly dialectical concept because it implies changes from one characteristic to another) onanther have more precise meaning and predictive power in scientific theories. Since these concepts proves the vice versa your claims "Dialectic is at best a redundant concept",? "dialectic' is used as pseudo-scientific nonsense" and so on stand.

Regards,
Dogan



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