Jerry
-----
I am confused because in other points of your post you seem to be
suggesting that you are concerned with the "order of discovery"
(investigation) as well (e.g. your comments on investigating the
relationship between money and the state, international trade and the
state, etc).
No doubt, the state *historically* played an important role in
establishin
the functions of money and international trade and the state can not be
separated in practice when we consider the *actual* concrete process of
trade, etc. Are you suggesting that the *form* (method) of "discovery"
cannot be grasped by a logical process of investigating sequentially more
concrete topics (i.e. moving from more abstract concepts to more concrete
topics) with a dialectical method?
Paul
----
I think that the order of dscovery is often quite adventitious,
and is very unlikely to be anything as tidy as a logical process
of moving from the abstract to the concrete. The latter is a
way of ordering ones presentation. Discovery is more likely to
proceed by means of the promiscuous use of analogies from other
domains, which, thought, observation or measurement then filter.
When talking about the relationship between money and the state
etc, I was talking about the logical/causal dependencies that
exist between them - the logical order not the discovery order.