Re: The 'formalising' of dialectics.

On Jul 2, 9:43=A0am, scottpsolo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> one of the most difficult and interesting areas of number theory today
> is the study of something called Euler systems (obviously it's way
> above my head).
>
> I have a buddy who is one of the world's greatest mathematicians, and
> he's just about done with a book on this subject.
>
> This buddy of mine has never studied dialectics! =A0Can you imagine
> that! =A0He spends his life traveling to advanced mathematical think
> tanks and institutes giving lectures, wins medals, but has never
> studied dialectics!
>
> How is it possible for him to contribute intellectually at this level
> without reading crap by dead soviet philosophers? =A0I just don't get
> it! =A0Could he possibly be an "unconcious dialectician"?

Yeah, if Lenin is correct that dialectical laws are inherent in all of
nature, he's =93An Unconscious Dialecticicm=94 for sure:

"Using as his text my remark concerning Darwin, Shachtman has stated,
I have been informed, that you are an =93unconscious dialectician.=94 This
ambiguous compliment contains an iota of truth Every individual is a
dialectician to some extent or other, in most cases, unconsciously. A
housewife knows that a certain amount of salt flavors soup agreeably,
but that added salt makes the soup unpalatable. Consequently, an
illiterate peasant woman guides her self in cooking soup by the
Hegelian law of the transformation of quantity into quality. Similar
examples from daily life could be cited without end. Even animals
arrive at their practical conclusions not only on the basis of the
Aristotelian syllogism but also on the basis of the Hegelian
dialectic. Thus a fox is aware that quadrupeds and birds are
nutritious and tasty. On sighting a hare, a rabbit, or a hen, a fox
concludes: this particular creature belongs to the tasty and nutritive
type, and =96 chases after the prey. We have here a complete syllogism,
although the fox, we may suppose, never read Aristotle. When the same
fox, however, encounters the first animal which exceeds it in size,
for example, a wolf, it quickly concludes that quantity p***** into
quality, and turns to flee. Clearly, the legs of a fox are equipped
with Hegelian tendencies, even if not fully conscious ones. All this
demonstrates, in passing, that our methods of thought, both formal
logic and the dialectic, are not arbitrary constructions of our reason
but rather expressions of the actual inter-relation****ps in nature
itself. In this sense, the universe throughout is permeated with
=93unconscious=94 dialectics. But nature did not stop there. No little
development occurred before nature=92s inner relation****ps were
converted into the language of the consciousness of foxes and men, and
man was then enabled to generalize these forms of consciousness and
transform them into logical (dialectical) categories, thus creating
the possibility for probing more deeply into the world about us."
LD Trotsky: An Open Letter to Comrade Burnham (January 1940). In "In
Defence of Marxism"  New Park p.106. Transcribed MIA.