Glad you came back on Greg Nowell's teasingly cryptic note, particularly since I find myself usually in agreement with him.
With the aid of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, I now agree with the further points.
Certainly the philosophical struggle in the 4th century was a political one (between those asserting the absolute identity of authority of the members of the Trinity, and the similarity of authority between the members of the Trinity, permitting a hierarchy within it.)
But C G Estabrook is also right in a wider philosophical sense. It is the battle against idealistic hierarchical concepts of reality. It is a long time since I read Troilus and Cressida, but I am reminded that prior to the passage quoted in praise of "degree", is the argument:
"The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place. Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order."
But as the latest Scientific American and New Scientist witness, chaos theory reigns from the quantum level to the cosmological (specifically the article in the New Scientist on chaos, and quantum light effects in micro-lasers, which seem likely to further revolutionise computing.)
This is the issue of whether dialectics applies not just to the social world, but to the inanimate world. With the implosion of the Marxism-and-Sciences list when Louis Godena took it off to Embury, this battle-ground has shifted to the marxism-thaxis where Doug might not object to a few more people cross-subscribing.
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Chris Burford
London