ALB: “I don’t see how this
ALB:
“I don’t see how this refutes the philosophical assumption of the nature of “reality” made by Dietzgen that all that “exists” is the universe as a whole and that what humans do, to understand so as to better live in it, is to name parts of it as if they were separate things, to describe these parts and form theories on the basis of this. In other words, that the world we observe and perceive is not made up of separate things but that supposedly separate things only exist as these in our minds. In reality these are only parts of a larger whole and so are inter-related in this sense.”
Of course, what I posted wasn’t meant to refute Dietzgen’s method, but what you have posted above is yet another example of a priori dogmatics, of the sort that, for example, Engels opposed:
“Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it.” [Engels (1976), Anti-Dühring, p.13. Bold emphasis added.]
“All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought.” [Engels (1954), Dialectics of Nature, p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]
“We all agree that in every field of science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.” [Ibid., p.47. Bold added.]
“The general results of the investigation of the world are obtained at the end of this investigation, hence are not principles, points of departure, but results, conclusions. To construct the latter in one’s head, take them as the basis from which to start, and then reconstruct the world from them in one’s head is ideology, an ideology which tainted every species of materialism hitherto existing…. As Dühring proceeds from ‘principles’ instead of facts he is an ideologist, and can screen his being one only by formulating his propositions in such general and vacuous terms that they appear axiomatic, flat. Moreover, nothing can be concluded from them; one can only read something into them….” [Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 25, p.597, ‘Preparatory Materials’. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphasis added.]
Now, it’s possible to show that all such dogmatic philosophical theories are non-sensical — I have summarised the argument and posted it here:
http://www.revforum.com/showthread.php?788-Why-all-Philosophical-Theories-are-Non-Sensical
“You seem to be assuming that what Dietzgen was saying is that the world is made up of separate things and that these things are inter-related as separate things.”
I am not in fact assuming anything of Dietzgen.
“But that’s not what he was saying. Quite the opposite in fact. So light cones and so-called inaccessible regions of space and time do not invalidate his basic assumption. In fact, these are descriptions, based on our observations of part of the world of phenomena, which we use to try to explain what we observe (or, rather, in these cases, of what scientists use to explain what they observe). What Dietzgen was advancing was in fact a theory of the nature of science.”
But this is inconsistent with what you claimed above:
“In other words, that the world we observe and perceive is not made up of separate things but that supposedly separate things only exist as these in our minds. In reality these are only parts of a larger whole and so are inter-related in this sense.”
The point of my comment about light cones is that if modern science is correct, Dietzgen can’t be.
Of course, Relativity was introduced long after Dietzgen had died, but that just shows how unwise it is of any theorist to try to impose a dogmatic scheme on nature.
And, if we needed a philosophical theory of the universe (which we don’t), Dietzgen’s ideas wouldn’t even make the bottom of the reserve list of viable candidates.