[lbo-talk] Chuck's Cassirer posts

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Jun 18 12:09:52 PDT 2008


Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> >The orderliness of nature is a reality proven by
> > > Pythagoras when he discovered that the musical scale (a fact of
> > > nature) is structured
> > > according to simple numerical ratios.
>
> What is _the_ musical scale?
>
> >Or as Aristotle put it, "Nature _is_ order."
> >
> >Joanna
>
> Didn't he also talk about things that are "contrary to nature"? That
> suggests a need to account for what falls outside a framework.

I'm paraphrasing from memory and Ted will doubtless correct and expand me. Engels in Anti-Duhring called the unity (i.e. order) of the 'universe' an empirical question, which could only be answered by the totality of the natural sciences (which of course would never be complete, hence the qustion would remain forever open). We simply do not know and cannot every know if the universe ("nature") exhibits order or "is order." I'm not sure it is even a usefuly hypothesis, though that is arguable.

Carrol



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