----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow at rogers.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 11:14 AM Subject: Re: Science, Science & Marxism: A Last Word From me
Ian wrote:
> Well that's pure bunk because W admitted he couldn't plow
> through more than 20 pages of H when he had to stop
because
> it was an inpenetrable fog.
>
There's at least one additional unstated premise here Ian, namely that the only access Whitehead had to Hegel's concepts was Hegel's books. As Whitehead himself points out, however, he had other very good sources for Hegel's ideas e.g. Haldane and McTaggert. As I pointed out earlier, Russell acknowledged that it was Whitehead who persuaded him that he was mistaken about Hegel's idea of internal relations. Unlike Popper though, Russell (like Ian?) could never give up his ontological atomism. "I [Russell] am persuaded that the world is made up of an immense number of bits, and that, so far as logic can show, each bit might be exactly as it is even if other bits did not exist."
Ted ================
Then again Hegel was not the first to adumbrate a theory of internal relations. As ontological atomism is a metaphysical hypothesis that can't be tested or refuted via experiments, who cares if it's true or not? A formalized model/doctrine of internal relations helps alot in biology [embryology, cell permeability etc.] geometry and, possibly, plasma physics; but it pays to be careful in avoiding a reification of holism and the notion of inseparability as constitutive of the contingencies of identities in social dynamics. Popper and his ilk were pointing out the ways Hegel's doctrine unwittingly supported Nazi beliefs of "the group". A model/doctrine of internal relations that doens't make sufficient room for autonomy and separability is suffocating of *difference* and *otherness*. As I've said before, Carol Gould does a great job of navigating the very complex issues involved.
Ian