>>> sokol at jhu.edu 12/07/00 02:57PM >>>
At 12:04 PM 12/7/00 -0500, Charles wrote:
>Necessity is , for example, the law of gravity exhibiting itself
periodically when the roof falls in.
Note, however, that the necessity of the roof falling in looses its necessary character in a different location, say, a few hundred miles above the ground. It is the contingency of the positioning and the mass of the roof that makes the necessity of the law of gravity do its work. That is even more true of "laws" pertaining to human societies.
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CB: In different circumstances, the elements of the law are not fulfilled. That is not lose of necessity.
As Engels said in discussing the dialectic of chance and necessity, the laws of necessity assert themselves through a series of accidents, in both nature and society.