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For those interested, the equation given in post #160 on http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/organisation-work-and-free-access?page=15 describes the standard [quantum] model of particles and their interactions.It is the current tidied up form of the revolutionary equations developed by the “revolutionary” physicists of the 1920s [previous post]: Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac and others, as fleshed out by their “conservative” followers Feynman and others.As with Marx for historical materialism [Kuhn for scientific theory, and Gould for natural evolution], stasis is the norm.   Revolution is the exception.   That is a constraint we must comprehend.

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Observation Precedes TheoryThe following discursive account of the quantum revolution of the 1920s perfectly exemplifies Kuhn’s theory of scientific paradigm shift, and strikingly reveals just what is and isn’t possible when people consciously set out to cause an [abstract] paradigm shift entirely in the world of ideas freed from concrete empiricism.Einstein somewhere implies that he created general relativity independently of observation.   So we’ll examine Einstein in a following post.Physicist Freeman Dyson, The World on a String, New York Review [May 13, 2004].

Dyson wrote:

In the 1920s, the golden age of quantum theory, the young revolutionaries were Werner Heisenberg and Paul Dirac, making their great discoveries at the age of twenty-five, and the old conservative was Ernest Rutherford, dismissing them with his famous statement, “They play games with their [abstract] symbols but we turn out the real [objective] facts of Nature.”   Rutherford was a great scientist, left behind by the [abstract] revolution that he had helped to bring about.   That is the normal state of affairs.[In the 1950s], the revolutionaries were old and the conservatives were young.   The old revolutionaries were Albert Einstein, Dirac, Heisenberg, Max Born, and Erwin Schrödinger.   Every one of them had a crazy [abstract] theory that he thought would be the key to understanding everything.Einstein had his unified field theory, Heisenberg had his fundamental length theory, Born had a new version of quantum theory that he called reciprocity, Schrödinger had a new version of Einstein’s unified field theory that he called the Final Affine Field Laws, and Dirac had a weird version of quantum theory in which every [quantum] state had probability of either ±2.Each of the five old men believed that physics needed another [abstract] revolution as profound as the quantum revolution that they had led twenty-five years earlier.   Each of them believed that his pet [abstract] idea was the crucial first step along a road that would lead to the next big [abstract] breakthrough.Young people like me saw all these famous old men making fools of themselves, and so we became [abstract] conservatives.   The chief young players then were Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman in America and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga in Japan.Anyone who knew Feynman might be surprised to hear him labeled an [abstract] conservative, but the label is accurate.   Feynman’s style was ebullient and wonderfully original, but the substance of his [abstract] science was [abstractly] conservative.   He and Schwinger and Tomonaga understood that the [abstract] physics they had inherited from the [abstract] quantum revolution was pretty good.The [abstract] physical ideas were basically correct.   They did not need to start another [abstract] revolution.   They only needed to take the existing [abstract] physical theories and clean up the [abstract] details.The result of our [abstract] efforts was the modern [abstract] theory of quantum electrodynamics, the theory that accurately [concretely] describes the way atoms and radiation behave.This [abstract] theory was a triumph of [abstract] conservatism.   We took the [abstract] theories that Dirac and Heisenberg had invented in the 1920s, and changed as little as possible to make the [abstract] theories [abstractly] self-consistent and user-friendly.[Concrete] Nature smiled on our [abstract] efforts.   When new [concrete] experiments were done to test the [abstract] theory, the [concrete] results agreed with the [abstract] theory to eleven decimal places.But the old [abstract] revolutionaries were still not convinced.After the [concrete] results of the first experiments had been announced, I brashly accosted Dirac and asked him whether he was happy with the big success of the [abstract] theory that he had created twenty-five years earlier.   Dirac, as usual, stayed silent for a while before replying.   “I might have thought that the new [abstact] ideas were correct,” he said, “if they had not been so ugly.”   That was the end of the conversation.Einstein too was unimpressed by our [concrete] success.   During the time that the young physicists at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton were deeply engaged in developing the new [abstract] electrodynamics, Einstein was working in the same building and walking every day past our windows on his way to and from the Institute.   He never came to our seminars and never asked us about our [abstract] work.   To the end of his life, he remained faithful to his [abstract] unified field theory.Looking back on this history, I feel no shame in being an [abstract] conservative today.   I belong to a generation that saw [abstract] conservatism triumph, and I remain faithful to our [abstract] ideals just as Einstein remained [abstractly] faithful to his.

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In other words, anomaly is, in Hegelian terms, contradiction. It is the only source of dialectical change in a coherent/consistent theory. Otherwise a coherent/consistent theory remains static. Why should it change?We should welcome anomalous observation.

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In other words, the scientist must adhere to the constraint of his system — his theoretical framework [or Kuhnian paradigm].That implies that, when nature throws back anomalous evidence at the scientist — evidence he necessarily must interpret within his community's shared theoretical framework — he has no choice but to stretch that framework to incorporate the anomaly.  Such anomalies include theretrograde motion of Mars that led the ancient theoretical astronomers to stretch what were originally circles into epicycles. This found its resolution in accepting the countervailing observation and changing the theory to a Copernican universe and Kepler's ellipses.the anomalous motion of Mercury that of necessity was explained by [Newtonian] gravitational perturbation by an as-yet-to-be-discovered minor planet. This found its resolution in accepting the countervailing observation and changing the theory to Einsteinian general-relativity.In other words, despite everything, the scientist must be conscious of being trapped within his abstract framework, but must nevertheless take every concrete observation seriously.  Anomalous observation may be the germ of a new more-embracing theory.The scientist, like any human being, cannot without violating intellectual integrity just brush anomaly under the carpet. 

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Albert Einstein Falsely QuotedWikiquotes for Albert Einstein reveals that this quote is almost certainly a false attribution, along with so many pinned onto this celebrated scientist by the vulgar to shine in his reflected glory, and that lurk for innocent propagation, to the unfortunate eroding of Einstein’s reputation.

It was NOT Albert Einstein who wrote:

“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”The earliest published attribution of this quote to Einstein found on google books is the 1991 book The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis by Raj Jain (p. 507), but no source to Einstein’s original writings is given and the quote itself is older; for exampleNew Guard: Volume 5, Issue 3 from 1961 says on p. 312 ( http://books.google.com/books?id=5BbZAAAAMAAJ&q=%22fit+the+theory%22#search_anchor ) “Someone once said that if the facts do not fit the theory, then the facts must be changed”, while Product Engineering: Volume 29, Issues 9–12 from 1958 gives the slight variant on p. 9 “There is an age-old adage, ‘If the facts don't fit the theory, change the theory.’ But too often it’s easier to keep the theory and change the facts.”These quotes are themselves probably variants of an even earlier saying which used the phrasing “so much the worse for the facts”, many examples of which can be seen in this search ( http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=facts+fit+%22so+much+the+worse+for+the+facts%22&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_max:Dec%2031_2%201950&num=10); for example, the 1851 American Whig Review, Volumes 13–14 says on p. 488 (http://books.google.com/books?id=910CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA488#v=onepage&q&f=false) “However, Mr. Newhall may possibly have been of that casuist’s opinion, who, when told that the facts of the matter did not bear out his hypothesis, said ‘So much the worse for the facts’.”The German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte circa 1800 did say “If theory conflicts with the facts, so much the worse for the facts.”   The Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs in his “Tactics and Ethics” (1923) echoed the same quotation.

It’s rather appalling to find Fichte — one of the founders of German Idealism — convicted of spouting it, but no context is given.   The American Whig Review’s characterization of it as casuistry is spot on. When cited out of context, this quote can only be read as a base invitation to intellectual fraud.To stop promulgating falsehood, please repudiate it.

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Theory Decides What Can be ObservedWikiquotes gives the source for LBird’s significant Einstein quote:

Wikiquotes wrote:

“Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.”Objecting to the placing of observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg’s 1926 lecture at Berlin; related by Heisenberg, quoted in Unification of Fundamental Forces (1990) by Abdus Salam, ISBN 0521371406.

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Yes, by way of moving on, the object-oriented software cycle makes an excellent analog of Marx’s descent–ascent method.   And it works in practice.Marx’s method of descent from the concrete to the abstract corresponds to the software phase of abstraction — the writing of the program.   Here the programmer abstracts from a [concrete] domain to form [abstract] classes [Dietzgen’s abstract objects] that encapsulate [abstract] attributes [Dietzgen’s abstract predicates] and [abstract] behaviour [which, I consider analogous to abstract determinism].Marx’s method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete corresponds to the software instantiation phase — the running of the program. Here the program constructs [“concrete”] instance objects of its abstract classes, and applies them back to an instance of the concrete domain.Yes, Marx was a century ahead in a lot of things.   Except, that this was actually Hegel’s mystified method, as Marx acknowledges.   Hegel wrote his Phenomenology over 200 years ago.By the way, I think it’s clear that Dietzgen failed to adequately address the analog of [abstract] behaviour, which can only be abstract determinism — something I feel demands to be addressed eventually.   Marx consciously understood exactly what he was doing.All three of these folks are absolutely amazing.

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It ’s time now to move on.We socialists are daily confronted by fabricated truths [= blatant lies that prey upon the last surviving vestiges of our common sociability] as well as by the understandably-excusable socially constructed truths that emerge of necessity from our capitalist social being.Advocacy, or championing, of woolly truths quite naturally rings socialist alarm bells.   We’ve all been sickened by the social democratic and the soviet thriving on woolly truths to their short-term gain and to the long-term detriment of historical-materialist socialism.We’ll never forget that it was precisely you who advocated unswerving democratic agreement by the whole community upon all social truths.The sort of people you imperiously demand here agree with you without reservation inhabit a political world that contrasts starkly with the political world of enforced truths that you [apparently] just passed through.That’s one of the reasons why I pulled you up over both your pseudo-science reference and your ignorant denigration of Feuerbach’s achievement which, you no doubt failed to notice, has the unintended effect of diminishing and trivializing Marx’s astonishing critique of Feuerbach’s astonishing position.That was not nit-picking on my part.   It was keeping faith with scientific integrity — something, which you openly denigrated.   Why then should anyone trust you?I may be presumptuous but, for me, it’s time to move on to other content.

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Surely, ALB and DJP, you must acknowledge the historical materialist content of LBird’s assertion about truth.If “social being determines consciousness” then truth is socially determined like all consciousness.Truth is not a concrete object of cognition.   It is one of Dietzgen’s abstract objects of cognition.A central Earth simply was the truth for pre-Copernican society.   And all society was pre-Copernican once.Social practice, from the planting of crops, the telling of time, the calendar, the worship of gods, sacrifice, augury and divination, building of pyramids, the [Ptolemaic] science of astronomy, etc. was conceived as occurring within a pre-Copernican solar world.Copernican truth, like every social power, had to be fought for, in order to displace earlier truth.   Just as we must fight capitalist truth for our Object.LBird well knows my misgivings over his critical realism, but I support him on this.

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Why Dietzgen Is Not a Critical Realist      Because Schaff’s Subject is Transcendental

LBird, asserting the entities of cognition, wrote:

Here we have our three entities of cognition: [Object, Subject, Knowledge].

Dietzgen recognizes all three entities as objects of cognition. Schaff recognizes only the Object as an object of cognition.

LBird, revising the Object, wrote:

[#70] If the concept of the ‘universal object’ implies that the ‘object of cognition’ can only be ‘everything’, then I disagree.   A pre-selection must take place from ‘everything’…[#93] Object: concrete perpetual motion (not ‘fixed’ things to ‘discover’, once and for all);

LBird seems to revise the Object: #70 — [concrete] individual object [= mutable thing] #93 — [concrete] universal object [= ensemble of mutable things].Owing to changed context, LBird might clarify whether he thinks “concrete perpetual motion” is universal or individual.Either way, Dietzgen recognizes the universal object as well as the individual objects, which we carve out of it, as objects of cognition.

twc, asserting the universal object, wrote:

… the universal subject is a component of the universal object — exists within it — and so is not independent of the object of cognition.

Since we are part of the universe, subject [we] and object [universe] interpenetrate.   Subject and object are united through shared commonality.   As Dietzgen says “they share the same substance”, which he calls [historical materialist] matter.If they were constituted of different substances, it is impossible to understand — in materialist terms — how one could ever comprehend the other.   Their interpenetration opens up the possibility of cognition.Appearances to the contrary, the comprehending [abstract] subject and the comprehended [concrete] object both comprise [historical materialist] matter.   Comprehension is thereby possible.

LBird, denying the universal object, wrote:

Here, twc appears to deny the separateness of the entities of ‘object’ and ‘subject’. … this would undermine any tripartite theory of cognition, not just Schaff’s version.

That’s precisely why Dietzgen is not a critical realist.   He would not fetishize a tripartite model that separates, in imagination, that which he was at pains to show is united.Dietzgen openly acknowledges that the subject is very much a part of the object.   Subject and object are fundamentally entangled, and they can only be separated in imagination.Our social interpenetration with the universe is the fount and origin of dialectics — our attempt to free ourselves intellectually from that which we can never escape physically.Schaff valiantly attempts to free himself from the universe.   His transcendental subject stands above and beyond its alienated object, in imagined detachment from it.Because the critical realist thinks he transcends his object of cognition, he unconsciously fuels the following parody:The critical realist must, therefore, divide the universe into two parts, one of which [the transcendental subject] is superior to the universe [the alien object].   He is therefore the educator who stands in need of education.Schaff calls upon the magic of reflection between cognizing subject and alien object to unite these ‘fraternal twins’ that are separated at birth.   The possibility of their reunion — like the possibility of cognition — remains a mystery that must bridge an unbridgeable gulf while always preserving it.Why not simply recognize with Dietzgen that subject and object are of the same [historical materialist] substance?

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Concrete and Abstract Objects of CognitionI’ve labelled objects as “[concrete]” or “[abstract]” according to whether they inhabit the world of concrete phenomena [= appearance; immediate experience] or the world of abstract phenomena [= thought categories; mediated experience].Quotations

Dietzgen, Nature of Human Brain Work wrote:

“Every [concrete] thing has its own special [abstract] nature, and this [abstract] nature is not seen, or felt, or heard, but solely perceived by the faculty of [abstract] thought.”

Historical materialism recognizes both [concrete] things and [abstract] categories as objects of cognition.   Critical realism recognizes only [concrete] things.

Pannekoek wrote:

“Natural scientists consider the [abstract] immutable substances:  matter, energy, electricity, gravity, the Law of entropy, etc.,  as the basic elements of the world, as the [concrete] reality that has to be discovered.   From the viewpoint of Historical Materialism, they are products which creative [abstract] mental activity forms out of the substance of [concrete] natural phenomena.”

Natural scientists — in Pannekoek’s day — generally conceived the [abstract] categories and principles of physics as [concrete] reality.   Historical materialism, however, conceives them as mentally created [abstract] reality.Historical materialism recognizes the [abstract] categories and principles of theoretical physics as objects of cognition.   Critical realism does not.

Schaff, History and Truth wrote:

“Firstly the recognition of the [concrete] objective existence of the [concrete] object of [abstract] cognition, i.e. its [concrete] existence outside of any perceiving [abstract] mind and independently of it.”

Critical realism excludes [abstract] thought objects, by prior recognition, from its [concrete] objects of cognition.Challenge to LBirdI could be wrong about critical realism.Can you please show us where critical realism recognizes [abstract] thought categories as objects of cognition?Do you recognize an [abstract] thought category as an object of cognition?

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Can't you see that I'm pointing out that Schaff has got himself into a muddle. Is that really beyond your capacity?

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Why I’m Not a Critical RealistCritical realism assigns highly restrictive attributes to its object of cognition:

Schaff wrote:

“the objective existence of the object of cognition, i.e. its existence outside of any perceiving mind and independently of it.”“the objectively existing object of cognition is the external source of sensual impressions without which the process of cognition would be impossible.”

Critical realism’s perceiving mind is the universal subject — the consciousness of society at its historical stage of development.Critical realism’s object is the individual object of its starting point — naive realism.   This follows from prior recognition [1].Critical realism’s stipulation that its objects of cognition must lie outside of any perceiving mind and independently of it means that it only cognizes objects that are not theoretical and not social.By prior recognition, critical realism restricts its objects to our immediate experience of the world of appearance.Theoretical ObjectsJust like its foundation [naive realism], critical realism doesn’t cognize the objects of mediated experience — theoretical objects — since mediation is a process that is not outside of any perceiving mind and independent of it.Critical realism’s objects of cognition might be thought sufficient for natural science, whose objects are tangible and measurable.   That’s because critical realism relies on critical reflection — active science’s mediating role — to comprehend its tangible and measurable objects theoretically.However, theoretical objects introduced by the reflection process — objects such as abstract scientific categories — fall beyond critical realism’s prior-declared scope.Social ObjectsSocial objects differ in kind from the mediated theoretical objects of natural science.   Social objects are significant to socialists precisely because they mediate and express social relationships that are essential to [a given] society, e.g., money.Social objects remain purely social, no matter what tangible object performs their function, or acts as their immediate social carrier — their physical conduit. Social objects are definitely beyond the scope of critical realism.That stupidity, expressly designed to make critical realism materialist, excludes most of marxian science from being cognized by it.Materialist Monist CognitionThe critical realist object is a fossil throwback to the 18th century relative to the marxian object of materialist monist cognition.For materialist monist cognition, the object may be both immediate or mediated; concrete or abstract; theoretical or social; or just plain old 18th century mechanical   Such an object is the object of materialist monistic cognition for Marx, Engels, Dietzgen, Pannekoek, etc.The object of materialist monist cognition is important for socialists precisely because it comprises the concrete and the abstract — precisely because it comprises theoretical objects and social objects that depend critically upon perceiving social minds.Take any marxian category, e.g., value.   It is a materialist monist object that happens to be simultaneously abstract, theoretical and social. It cannot be a critical realist object of cognition.   That is a devastating socialist critique of critical realism.Take the most significant marxian category surplus value.   It does not exist outside of any perceived mind and independently of it.   Its various forms of appearance — profit, interest, rent — may at first sight appear to exist outside of any perceived mind and independently of it.Yet these various forms of appearance are of significance to us precisely because of the materialist monist way we both conceive [and mostly misconceive] them socially — not because of what they are physically.Their significance for us — their very existence for us — would vanish if society were to vanish, and they may perish when society changes to socialism.   They will do so even if the objects that bear these forms — that represent the significant social object of our materialist monist cognition — happen to persist after society abolishes the social object.Cognition of social objects of significance to socialists — capital, surplus value, exploitation, capitalism, socialism — depends precisely on the hold these objects have over our minds — the universal subject.   Cognition of their hold over us can only be materialist monist cognition.Critical Realism’s 18th Century ObjectAll social forms of appearance are entirely dependent upon the social mind — the universal subject.   So much for the futility of critical realism.What recommends a “socialist” theory of cognition that precludes the categories of thought that are significant for socialists?Critical realism makes do with the fossilized tangible objects of 18th century mechanistic materialism that are not social.Is this really the best that soviet philosophy could devise in a vain attempt to save Leninist reflection from oblivion?

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Mixed-up Schaff

LBird wrote:

Schaff … makes it very clear … the ‘subject’ is ‘social’

Schaff proclaims the universal subject but can’t free himself of the individual subject, e.g., as here:

Schaff wrote:

“Firstly, the recognition of the objective existence of the object of cognition, i.e. its existence outside of any perceiving mind and independently of it.”

Schaff’s any perceiving mind implies the individual subject — any [= individual] is not the ensemble [= universal].Here Schaff unconsciously slips out of the universal subject and into the solipsism-freed Cartesian individual subject.Where does Schaff’s individual subject come from?   I assume it comes from the individual naive realism he is trying to reconcile with universal critical realism — a task apparently beyond his ability to solve consistently.

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LBird wrote:

can you point me to the page where Schaff states the 'object of cognition' is 'individual', rather than 'universal'?

I needed a return visit to the library in order to respond with page references…Schaff states that the subject of cognition is the universal subject — sensuously-active society.Schaff makes no such statement about the object of cognition, and so his position on the object of cognition must be inferred from the attributes he assigns it.As we know, critical realism relies upon prior recognition of the object of cognition existing “outside of any perceiving mind and independently of it” [1].  [In passing, Schaff’s perceiving mind is none other than the dreaded individual subject, which we had every right to assume critical realism took no prior recognition of.   Schaff is not a consistently systematic thinker.]Prior recognition of the object’s existence outside the individual subject excludes Schaff’s object being the universal object.This is because all individual subjects are objects for each other, and are prior recognized as being dependent components of the universal subject. This is also because the universal subject is a component of the universal object — exists within it — and so is not independent of the object of cognition.That leaves us, as we arrived at previously, with the naive-realist object — refined by critical-realist reflection — as Schaff’s object of cognition.QuotesThe following indicate missed opportunities for Schaff to declare the object universal if he wanted to. He was clearly unconcerned to do so. Consequently we must assume that his object is just any old object of cognition.[p. 63] — objective cognition possesses “general and not only individual value (as opposed to the subjective)”.  Here Schaff describes objectivity, and not the object.Schaff largely ignores the general, and concentrates on the subjective, i.e. he focusses on the subject, not the object. [For Marx, who starts from the universal object, cognition is always universal and individual.][p. 71] — “the cognition of a given object … is composed of many judgements; it is a process.”Here Schaff describes cognition as a process, and not the object.[p. 72] — “The object of cognition is infinite; this assertion pertains to the object, both in the sense of total reality and of its fragments. For total reality, just like its fragments, are infinite when it comes to the quantity of their correlations and also their mutations in time. Therefore, the cognition of such an infinite object must also be infinite, must be an infinite process of accumulating partial truths.” .Here Schaff describes the object of cognition as either individual or general.I wonder if these quotes are as close as Schaff ever approached to acknowledging the centrality of the universal object.[Apologies for earlier mis-posting my library notes — now thankfully expunged — upon my being ejected from the library.]

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