Essay Eleven Part Two: DM-Wholism -- Full Of Holes
Readers should take note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final views on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'. However, this Essay depends on much that has been established in Part One and should thus be read in conjunction with it.
If you are viewing this with Mozilla Firefox you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used.
This Essay is over 46,300 words long; a summary of some of its main ideas can be found here.
Quick Links
Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections. [If your Firewall has a pop-up blocker, you will need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or these and the other links here won't work!]
(a) Part And Whole
(2) Thought Determines 'Being'?
(3) Flights Of Fancy
(4) Some Parts Are Bigger Than Wholes
(a) The Whole Truth
(b) Dialectical Medicine And Spare Part Surgery
(7) A Total Mystery?
(9) Notes
(10) References
Abbreviations Used At This Site
In Part One of this Essay, it was argued that not only have dialecticians made no attempt to tell us -- even vaguely -- what their "Totality" is (so that we might have some clue what their theory is actually about), none could in fact be initiated. This is not just because such an endeavour would be riddled with paradox and confusion itself, it's also because the defective tools dialecticians have inherited from Hegel have crippled their capacity to account for anything at all. In the end, the DM-"Totality" turns out to be no different from Nirvana, about which logically nothing could be said. [That explains the many references to the via negativa of mystical Theology in Part One.]
In this Part of Essay Eleven, we will see this fatal defect over-shadow DM-Wholism: the idea that the mysterious "Totality" forms a cosmic unity, where part and whole are interconnected by "internal relations", so that the nature of each is determined by all, and the nature of all is determined by each. [However, the doctrine of "internal relations" will be dissected in Essay Three Part Three.]
As was pointed out at the end of Part One, the belief that everything is part of an interconnected Whole is shared by most forms of ancient and modern Idealism, and all known forms of mysticism. This is particularly true of that strain of mysticism which greatly influenced Hegel, Hermeticism:
"Another parallel between Hermeticism and Hegel is the doctrine of internal relations. For the Hermeticists, the cosmos is not a loosely connected, or to use Hegelian language, externally related set of particulars. Rather, everything in the cosmos is internally related, bound up with everything else.... This principle is most clearly expressed in the so-called Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which begins with the famous lines "As above, so below." This maxim became the central tenet of Western occultism, for it laid the basis for a doctrine of the unity of the cosmos through sympathies and correspondences between its various levels. The most important implication of this doctrine is the idea that man is the microcosm, in which the whole of the macrocosm is reflected.
"...The universe is an internally related whole pervaded by cosmic energies." [Magee (2001), p.13.]
However, that particular topic will be addressed in more detail in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here); this Part of Essay Eleven will be concerned more with the inner details of this obscure doctrine -- whether any sense can be made of it --, but not so much with where this ancient idea came from.
Finally, since this entire project began as a critique of Rees (1998), I will start with his account.
Integral to John Rees's less than half-hearted 'definition' of the "Totality" is the following analysis of the relationship between parts and wholes:
"[W]hen we bring these terms [belonging to the totality] into relation with each other their meaning is transformed…. In a dialectical system, the entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts.
"In this analysis, it is not just the case that the whole is more than the sum of the parts but also that the parts become more than they are individually by being part of a whole….
"[F]or dialectical materialists the whole is more than the simple sum of its parts." [Rees (1998), pp.5, 77.]1
As usual, no evidence is given to support these universal theses. Instead, a few trite examples are paraded about that supposedly illustrate their validity (these will be examined below), but, as is the case in other areas of Dialectical Mysticism, the mere assertion of a bold thesis is supposed to command our respect, if not our acceptance. Anyone who thinks otherwise has not got the point and clearly does not "understand" dialectics.
Nevertheless, there appear to be several related claims being advanced by Rees (and others):
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
G2: The part makes the whole and the whole makes the parts.
G3: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
G4: Each part becomes more when it is part of a whole than it would otherwise have been (individually) apart from that whole.
However, given the nature of the "Totality", G4 cannot surely be correct. If all parts are already situated somewhere inside this mysterious 'container' (the "Totality"), how is it possible for them to "become more than they [were] individually" on their own? Surely, the whole point of this theory was that parts cannot exist as individuals separate from the whole? Universal interconnectedness was supposed to have established that there was an intimate and universal connection between part and whole. If so, how can parts become "more" than they were individually if they were never isolated individuals? Surely, parts are supposed to be like those who were once said to smoke Strand cigarettes, aren't they?
Greater Before Or After?
It could be argued in response to this that as parts enter into new relations with other parts or with other wholes they become more than they would have been (or had once been) otherwise.
However, if everything is already part of some whole-or-other, and all sub-wholes are parts of the Mega-Whole -- the "Totality" --, and everything is ("internally") inter-linked all the time with everything else, how is this possible?
All parts are parts of some whole-or-other, and hence, all parts are parts of the entire ensemble, and they are always and everywhere essentially conditioned by everything else, so we are told.1a
Of course, some DM-apologists might want to argue that not all things are "internally" related. But, this cannot be correct. G1 tells us that the entire nature of a part is determined by its relation to all other parts, and to the whole; external relations cannot do this. This can only come about if the interconnections any part has with all the others are "internal" (i.e., 'logical'/"essential"). If this were not so, then any agglomeration of matter would constitute an organised whole, and an organism, say, would be no different from a heap of body parts. [More on this later.]
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
G2: The part makes the whole and the whole makes the parts.
Be this as it may, parts do not enter the universe from the 'outside'. They are not stored away in a sort of 'metaphysical ante-chamber', hermetically sealed-off from the rest of nature until they join in the cosmic action.
Note what Levins and Lewontin had to say on this:
"The first principle of a dialectical view, then, is that a whole is a relation of heterogeneous parts that have no prior independent existence as parts. The second principle, which flows from the first, is that, in general, the properties of parts have no prior alienated existence but are acquired by being parts of a particular whole. [Levins and Lewontin (1985), p.273. Bold emphasis added.]
If so, how could these parts become "more" than they had been before? They stay part of the "Totality" either side of any subsequent manoeuvre; so, they should stay the same whatever happens -- if their entire nature is determined by their relation to the whole, the mega-conglomerate called the "Totality", as indicated above. Since they are interconnected at all times with everything else, where does this semi-miraculous novelty come from? How can they become "more" than they once were? Surely, the only way that they could become "more" would be if their entire nature was not determined by the Whole, by the "Totality"?
An appeal to Engels's first 'Law' at this point (i.e., the one that asserts that quantity passes over into quality, etc.) would be to no avail. As we saw in Essay Seven, this 'Law' is far too fragile to bear any weight at all, but even if this were not the case, what constitutes a quantity and what a "quality" would still be unlcear.2
Anyway, if this 'Law' could have this sort of effect here so that the mere quantitative local increase of parts could at some point "pass over" into a local "qualitative" change, introducing localised novelty, then the entire nature of the part cannot have been determined by its "internal" relations with the Whole, but would be determined by its relations with other local parts of the Whole. How the latter can alter the logical properties of a body (so that its qualitative nature changes as a result) is, therefore, something of a mystery.
In short, it is not easy to see how novelty can emerge in a dialectical universe.
[This particular topic has been discussed at length in Essay Seven, and will be explored in detail In Essay Three Part Three.]
Despite this, if we are not careful in our endeavour to identify the parts, we might end up dividing the whole -- or, alternatively, we might end up confounding the parts in our aim to identify that whole --, as we saw had been the case with general terms and particulars (as they feature in traditional Philosophy), in Essay Three Part Two.
Again, one will look in vain in the writings of DM-theorists for any guidance on this issue --, which means that this is not just Mickey Mouse Science, it's Minnie Mouse Metaphysics, too. Because of this, I am forced (once more) to consider the options available to DM-theorists which might enable them to give an account of 'dialectical' parts as and when they are incorporated into their respective 'dialectical' wholes.
Now, in order to keep track of the parts involved, they will be 'time-stamped', so to speak --, as will the relevant wholes, too.
[In what follows, "T" will be used to refer to various different "Totalities", "t" to designated temporal intervals of arbitrary duration, and "p" for a part at a specific time. In addition, a subscript "i" will be used to refer to any randomly chosen element of the set indicated; hence, "ti" refers to any such time interval. Also, "pt,r" will be used to designate the different members of the set of parts which exist at a given moment, so that "p1,1" is short for "part one at t1", "p1,2" for "part two at t1", "p2,1" for "part one at t2", and so on.]
First, let any "Totality", Ti, be the sum of all its time-stamped parts at each ti. Consider, for example, part p1,1, the entire nature of which (at t1) is determined by its relation to whole, T1. Let the 'same' part (at a later time t2) be p2,1, such that its ("essential") nature is either different from, or perhaps even the same as it had been at t1. [Let either of these be such in relation to T2, the new whole that must emerge as a result, as the case may be.]
Hence, T1 will be the mereological sum of all such time-stamped parts, p1,r, at t1 (i.e., Σp1,r); the 'new' "Totality", T2, will be those at t2 (i.e., Σp2,r), and so on.
["Σ" is a summation sign, and here stands for "the sum of...". So, "Σp1,r" means "the sum of all the parts at t1", and "Σp2,r" means "the sum of all the parts at t2". Hence, Tn will be "Σpn,r", or "the sum of all the parts at tn" --, i.e., the "Totality" at the nth time interval.]
In view of this, it's worth asking: What precisely is the "Totality" meant to be here?
There are three distinct possibilities:
(1) The "Totality" is one of T1, T2,..., or Tn; or,
(2) The "Totality" is the sum of all these time-stamped "sub-Totalities", i.e., T1 + T2 +...+ Tn (i.e., ΣTr); or
(3) The "Totality" is something else.
If (2) is the right option, then each Ti would not really be a whole simpliciter; it would be a sub-whole, since each one would be part of the bigger whole (i.e., ΣTi).
If, on the other hand, (1) is correct, that would mean that each "Totality" will have been misnamed, since, plainly, none of them would be the "Totality". Clearly, this is because, for any Ti, there would be n-1 other Tis that it excludes.
Either way, this obscure 'entity' should now perhaps be demoted, and broken to the ranks, as it were, since it too would be part of a bigger Whole -- at best it would merely be a sub-"Totality".
Plainly, option (3) takes us back to where we were in Essay Eleven Part One.
In addition, (1) would seem to imply that the duration of these sub-"Totalities" could be, and probably is, exceedingly short -- each being ephemeral in the extreme, reduced as they now are to time-sliced collections of such time-stamped parts, all of which would 'exist' for less than a nanosecond (if all things are constantly changing).
But, as we have seen here, this would also mean that in order to account for objects and events 'inside' any particular "Totality", Ti, an appeal would have to be made to events and processes that were either non-existent or were not parts of that "Totality", at that time. Naturally, this would make the original introduction of this mysterious entity (i.e., the "Totality") pointless, in view of the fact that it was meant to help DM-theorists account for just such objects and processes.
Furthermore, option (2) implies that as ΣTi grows in size (with the incorporation of each new Tk) it would either (2a) be subject to change, or it would be (2b) the four-dimensional manifold discussed in Part One of this Essay.
But, (2a) would imply that there was no such thing as the "Totality" (since it would be ever-expanding) --, but far worse, it would mean that it was 'composed' mostly of non-existent parts (i.e., those that 'exist' only in the past). (2b), of course, would imply that nothing could change. [Why that is so was also discussed in Part One of this Essay.]
Despite the above, an attempt might be made to account for the 'dialectical' passage through time of these time-specific "Totalities", as each brings into existence the next in line (because of, one presumes, their own "internal contradictions"). But this response itself faces the many serious difficulties noted in Essay Seven, where it was pointed out that in relation to development, DM-theorists are decidedly unclear as to whether (1) such "internal opposites" bring about change, or whether (2) they are created by change, or even whether (3) things/processes actually change into their opposites.
Generalising this, it would now be unclear whether or not the entire "Totality" changes because of (1) its own internal opposites, or whether (2) it creates these as it changes, or even whether (3) it turns into its opposite. [But what is the 'opposite' of a "Totality"? A Nullity? A Nothing?]2a
Again, in the first case, the origin of these 'opposites' would themselves be obscure, just as it would be unclear how they could cause change (especially if it is recalled that change actually produces them, not them it; we saw this in Essays Five, Seven Part One, and Eight Parts One, Two and Three).
[At a later date, I will try to explore the internal logic of this assumed process of dialectical-change, in order to show that not only is it inimical to change itself, it is inconsistent with other core DM-theses.]
If the above are rejected for some reason, and it's argued that opposites are not in fact produced by anything else (that is, if change does not produce opposites), then they must either be eternal or self-created beings.
Once more, it could be argued that objects and processes not only can, they actually do have many opposites. Some cause change, and some are produced by it. Either or both of these are subsequently altered in turn by their own new dialectical opposites, as the NON unfolds.
However, we saw here that Hegel postulated for each object or process its own internally-linked, unique 'other'. He had to do this to forestall the disastrous consequences of his adoption of Spinoza's 'Greedy Principle' [SGP] (and, of course, to refute Hume's criticisms of rationalist theories of causation) -- that is, that "every determination is also a negation". The problem here is that if an object or process merely turns into "what-it-is-not" (where this "what-it-is-not" is required by Hegel's 'logic' to make the nature of an object or process "determinate"), then it could in fact develop into anything whatsoever.
On that basis, but without this caveat, since Tony Blair, for example, is not Mt Everest, not Jupiter, not a Slime Mold (as far as we know), and not a socialist, he can only turn into one or more of these opposites, and countless others, as well. So, if this Hegelian 'safety feature' is removed (i.e., that each object or process has a unique "other" it turns into), anything could turn into anything else as a result of such a profligate use of negation. [We found that Hegel himself slipped up in this regard, too, since the SGP is in fact unworkable.]
[NON = Negation of the Negation.]
Of course, it could be responded that the processes mentioned above stretch back into the mists of time. Here, not only are the many states of nature connected 'dialectically' (which means that it is in fact inadmissible to separate them, one from another, as has been done in this Essay), one state ('moment') of the universe is caused (or perhaps better, 'mediated') by an earlier one, and so on indefinitely.
But, this just reproduces all the problems usually associated with Theism, specifically those connected with the question, "Who created 'God'?" In this case, if all things need a prior cause (or 'mediation'), and that itself is one of these 'internal opposites' (or is itself part of a relation with one such), the question would naturally arise: "Precisely what created/'mediated' that opposite?" Pushing this back into the indefinite (or 'infinite'?) past is no solution at all; we certainly do not accept such a cop out from theists. Either it is the case that opposites cause change (and so must be self-caused beings themselves -- minor deities, as it were), or they are brought into existence by change, and so cannot cause it.
Flowering this up with dialectical jargon would no more be acceptable here than it would be if Theists tried to do the same with respect to 'God', and 'His' assorted mysterious properties/goings-on.2b
So, it will not do to appeal to a 'dialectical' interplay between cause and effect (dragging in that even more obscure notion "mediation") -- on the lines that the comments above separate them, one from the other, when they are in fact 'internally'-connected --, since the origin of that dialectical interplay would be subject to the same unanswerable query.
This is, of course, why theists in the end had to appeal to 'logical' principles to account for the uncreated nature of 'God' -- burying 'His' existence, say, in 'His' nature, a là Anselm -- or admitting to the fact that this is all just big a 'mystery', and should simply be "grasped".
[Of course, dialecticians will have to do something similar -- indeed, they do.]
To be sure, Hegel had a 'solution' to this quandary that ran along similar 'logical' lines. This was based on obscure, Hermetic goings-on between 'Being', 'Nothing' and 'Becoming' –- which 'argument' will be destructively analysed in Essay Twelve (summary here). However, unless we can find physical evidence that these mysterious entities kicked off the Big Bang (or whatever it is that scientists finally conclude about origins), neither science nor consistent materialism will have any use for them.
Naturally, only Idealists will cavil at this point.
If, on the other hand, such opposites are produced by something else (inside the "Totality"?), that would collapse (1) into (2): these opposites would be produced by change, and not cause it. The adoption of (3), of course, would amount to the abandonment of any account of development, for it would then be unclear what makes anything change into its opposite (if anything does).
It could be objected once more that the "Totality" is in fact a dynamic whole, changing over time as a result of its 'internal contradictions'. The above comments seem to want to 'freeze-frame it', and then not only bemoan its lack of internal cohesion, but complain about the absence of change!
Or so it could be argued.
But, quite apart from the problems this reply faces (analysed in great detail in Essay Eight Parts One and Two, and Three), the first sentence of the last paragraph is of indeterminate meaning itself. This is because we have yet to be told what this nebulous entity (i.e., the "Totality") actually is. As it stands, that sentence is no clearer than this one is: "It could be objected that God is a dynamic Being...".
Hence, the word "dynamic" cannot provide this 'theory' with a secure life-line since we have as yet no idea precisely what is being called dynamic --, or no more than we would if someone called 'God' "dynamic".
In short: just as soon as the "Totality" is fragmented by the introduction of temporal constraints, it proves impossible to restore to it any sort of unity. On the other hand, if no temporal constraints are imposed on it, then either the "Totality" can't change, or the whole notion fails to relate to anything in the material world.
So, either (a) we are confronted by a new "Totality" at each instant in time, comprised of all the time-stamped parts at that moment, or (b) the 'same' "Totality" must encompass every time zone and sub-"Totality" in its over-arching domain.
However, in the latter case, the "Totality" would once again contain things that do not now exist (namely those time-stamped parts from the past (and the future?)). In the former case, there would be a potentially infinite number of "Totalities" with no links between them, explanatory of nothing at all.
Independently of this, it could be argued that since relations between the parts change, their nature must change, too. [This was in fact discussed in Note 1a.]
In answer to that (and putting aside for the moment the serious problems this attempted rebuttal faces when confronted with the other DM-thesis that change is internally-generated, not externally-motivated), let us suppose the following:
P1: Part p1 is an element that enters into a relation with whole W1, and W1 is itself part of the "Totality", T.
[For ease of reference, I have dropped the complicated labelling system introduced earlier. In that case, "p1" now merely refers to the first randomly chosen part of W1, leaving reference to time out of the equation.]
Here, p1 is clearly also part of T -- as is W1. But, by becoming part of W1, p1 does not cease to be part of T, and neither does W1. In its relation to T, neither p1 nor W1 could become "more" than they once were, since they are both still parts of T -- and not part of, say, T1, some other "Totality".
Recall that G1 and G2 assert that the entire nature of a part (like p1, or W1) is determined by its relation with other parts and with the whole. Unless we add a rider to these theses -- for example, that parts can become "more" than they were by remaining parts of the same whole (and hence that the entire nature of the part is not determined by its relation to the whole (i.e., with the "Totality"), but by its relation to a 'sub-whole' of the latter, say W1), or that a whole can alter even though it retains the same parts -- neither p1 nor W1 can change. Of course, if W1 can't change, then p1 can't either, since p1 fluctuates in line with W1, according to G1 and G2.
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
G2: The part makes the whole and the whole makes the parts.
Perhaps this set of serious initial problems can be circumvented in some way, perhaps not. I will leave that time-bomb in the lap of DM-fans to defuse.3
Independently of all this, there is an obverse difficulty concerning the "more" alluded to in G3 and G4, if it's taken at face value. This can be seen if these two are supplemented in the following way:
G3: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
G4: Each part becomes more when it is part of a whole than it would otherwise have been (individually) apart from that whole.
G5: Let whole W1 have parts pw1-pwn, and let pw1-pwn form a set, Pw.
G6: Let the 'same' parts when not parts of W1 be p1-pn, and let p1-pn form a set of parts, P.
G7: For any pwi, and any pi, let pwi > pi (where pwi and pi are the ith members of Pw and P, respectively).
G8: Let the sum of the parts that are elements of Pw be Σpwn, and the sum of the parts that are elements of P be Σpn.
G9: Either: W1 > Σpwn.
G10: Or: W1 > Σpn.
[">" means "greater than".]
In ordinary language, G9 and G10 translate out as the following:
G9a: The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts it already has.
G10a: The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts before they became its parts.
Now, there are several difficulties with this attempt to make DM-Wholism clear. The first centres on G7, and its ordinary translation, G7a:
G7: For any pwi, and any pi, let pwi > pi (where pwi and pi are the ith members of Pw and P, respectively).
G7a: Any part of a whole is greater than that part was before it was incorporated into that whole.
[G4: Each part becomes more when it is part of a whole than it would otherwise have been (individually) apart from that whole.]
At first sight it looks like G7 (or G7a) might capture the thought intended by G4, but that cannot be correct; this is because the wording of G7 (and G7a) actually permits the following (which is not what was intended by G4):
G11: pw1 > p2.
G11a: pw1 > p1.
The problem here is that G11 says that a certain part of a whole is greater than some other part, not necessarily the 'same' part it was before it became incorporated into that whole.
Now, what G4 appears to imply is G11a, where comparisons are drawn between the 'same' part either side of incorporation into the relevant whole. This, of course, assumes that a one-one relation can be set up (even in theory) between a part before and after its absorption into W1. But, the difficulty here is that if a part becomes more when it enters into an subsequent ensemble than it had been on its own, it might not be possible to specify of any part that it was the same part before and after just such an integration into some whole-or-other, and thus that it was more after incorporation than it was before. G11 brings this difficulty out by changing the subscripts.
Unfortunately, DM-Wholism appears to mean that after assimilation a part might not be the same part it had been before incorporation, because of the "greater than" descriptor it gained upon amalgamation. In fact, this comparative is much more that a mere "greater than", since the entire nature of a part is determined by its relation to the other parts and to the whole of which it's a part. So, the entire nature of the part is transformed by incorporation into the new whole of which it becomes a part.
It could be argued that it would surely be possible to identify these parts either side of incorporation, despite such changes. Consider an example here: a human heart outside the body is physically the same as it would be inside the same body, even though a functioning heart is more than just a material object when incorporated into its host. As such, it would be operating as an integrated organ, which allows it to fulfil a certain role in relation to the entire organism of which it is now a part.
This alleged counter-example will be considered in more detail later, but for present purposes it suffices to say only that a heart outside the body is not the same physical object it had been inside. Not only does it lose some matter (blood, etc.) when extracted, the electrical, hormonal and other chemical inputs cease. Moreover, the body too is not the same without a heart. So, the above description is not only inaccurate, it is prejudicial, for neither heart nor body are the same either side of removal.
Furthermore, hearts are not added to bodies as a sort of after-thought, so that it would be possible confirm or confute the above comparisons. Hearts develop alongside the rest of the organism. This means that an animal without a heart would not be identical with one that had a heart; indeed, it would be defective in the extreme, and non-viable. The same goes for hearts themselves, if they are situated outside a given body.
So, it is not too clear what can be concluded from such an inaccurate description. Certainly, a heart is not physically the same, and it is not even 'dialectically' the same, given such radical surgery. In that case, we still lack a perspicuous account of what the DM-alternatives before us really are.
The dilemma that confronts dialecticians is thus quite stark:
(1) No part could be the same before and after assimilation (since each part is not just "more" than it was before, but completely different, because its entire nature will have been changed as a result of the "internal relations" operating inside that whole); or,
(2) If each part is the same after incorporation, that would mean there can't have been any change to those parts as they entered into this new whole, since they would not now be "more" that they were before, and their entire nature won't have changed.
In the first case, it would be impossible to say of some part whether it was greater before, later, or at any time -- or not -- since, ex hypothesi, it will have entirely changed in the process, given G1, and G2.
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
G2: The part makes the whole and the whole makes the parts.
The assumed change here is so radical that it would be rather like asserting that a stadium was greater than a symphony, or perhaps, that a leg was greater than a science fiction novel -- since, according to DM-theorists, in such circumstances there will have been a logical change to the 'objects' in question (in view of the new "internal relations" enjoyed by part and whole).
Of course, it could be argued that these latest comparisons are bogus, since the parts that are of interest to dialecticians are far more similar either side of incorporation than such distantly related/totally unrelated objects are.
But, if that is so, then the entire nature of the part cannot be determined by the new whole it enters into -- and if that too is so, an important strand of DM-Wholism must go out of the window with it. In short, G1 and G4 cannot be held true together.
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
G4: Each part becomes more when it is part of a whole than it would otherwise have been (individually) apart from that whole.
G2: The part makes the whole and the whole makes the parts.
In fact, the situation is far worse: before incorporation not only will an individual part not be a part of the new whole (since it has not yet joined it!), even this new whole won't be the same whole (for the reasons given in G1 and G2) for it to join. This is because, before and after amalgamation parts and wholes must become different (entirely different!) from what they once were.
Simple comparisons like this cannot, therefore, be made for part or whole either side of any supposed union. Hence, without serious distortion, no aspect of this metaphysical fantasy is describable by anyone who seriously believes it. This is because nothing is either comparable or contrastable before or after amalgamation. In any such development, entire natures of parts and wholes must change, if G1 and G2 are to be believed. G4, therefore, is not defensible as it stands, and it is not at all clear how it might be rescued without abandoning G1, or other fundamentally important DM-theses.4
In the second case, clearly, G1 and G2 would have to be revised or abandoned. G3 is similarly ambiguous:
G3: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
G9: Either: W1 > Σpwn.
G10: Or: W1 > Σpn.
G9a: The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts it already has.
G10a: The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts before they became its parts.
As indicated above, G3 could imply either G9 or G10 (or their ordinary language counterparts, G9a and G10a).
In that case, the following question suggests itself: Is the whole greater than the sum of the parts before amalgamation (i.e., G10/10a), or after (i.e., G9/9a)?
But, G10/G10a can't be correct. This is because, before incorporation the (same) whole plainly would not exist for a comparison to be made with any new whole that might arise subsequently. This is in turn because (according to G2) the nature of the whole is determined by its relation to its parts, including this new one. Hence, before this particular part became a part of some whole or other, that whole could not have been the same as it subsequently became, for it did not exist. This means that G3 must imply G9/G9a (which option(s) I will return to consider in more detail later).
As we shall see, the problem with Metaphysical Holism (or even with DM-Wholism) is that it's not possible to identify parts separately from wholes at any time during a transaction between them, for to do so would be to sunder the organic unity supposedly governing everything, and from which both part and whole derive their entire nature.
Furthermore, it is impossible to do so even in thought, and for the same reason -- as was outlined above. Perhaps it would be better to say here that to separate the parts from the whole (even in thought) is to change their nature (in thought), and hence to misidentify or misconstrue them (according to G1). If so, this type of Holism/Wholism cannot even be described.
As we will see in Note 5, the situation is even worse if we throw in the infinitary nature of DM-epistemology.5
No wonder this 'theory' falls apart so quickly.
Returning to an earlier passage from TAR:
"[W]hen we bring these terms [belonging to the totality] into relation with each other their meaning is transformed…. In a dialectical system, the entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts.
"In this analysis, it is not just the case that the whole is more than the sum of the parts but also that the parts become more than they are individually by being part of a whole….
"[F]or dialectical materialists the whole is more than the simple sum of its parts." [Rees (1998), pp.5, 77.]
The opening sentence of this quotation seems to suggest that this entire exercise is merely methodological, that it need not imply anything about reality itself. Otherwise, what would be the point of saying: "when we bring these terms into relation with each other their meaning is transformed"? [Emphasis added.]
But, if the world is dialectically-structured before we investigate it, then whatever we do can't affect the nature of the part/whole relation in reality, surely? Of course, Rees could just be making a point about our comprehension of the part/whole relation as it features in "subjective dialectics".6
Even so, there is a further problem that Rees and others have clearly missed: if it is true that we humans are also parts of the Whole, any change we initiate -- even in thought -- must have an affect on the rest of the "Totality"!
This new twist now raises alarming possibilities dialecticians have plainly not noticed.
Indeed, at first sight it looks like DM-Wholism implies that thought in fact determines "Being" (just as "Being" determines thought), as Hegel maintained -- that is, DM-Wholism means that the nature of reality depends on our thoughts about it (and vice versa)!
How else are we to interpret G1 and G2?7
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
G2: The part makes the whole and the whole makes the parts.
The only apparent interpretation of G1 and G2 that could forestall the above conclusion would be one that declared that it is only our understanding of the parts that is altered when we adopt this viewpoint, as Rees maintained -- but nothing else.
But, if that is correct, how could G1 or G2 remain true? If our thoughts are in fact part of the 'Totality', and are determined by their own "internal relations" with it, and all parts inter-determine one another likewise -- as indeed they do to the entire nature of the whole according to G2 --, then not only must it be true that reality determines our thoughts about it, our thoughts about reality must determine reality in return. If this were not so, G1 or G2 would have to be revised or abandoned, once more. If the part makes the whole (and vice versa), then even the most insignificant thought about reality must be altered by -- and must alter in return -- all of nature, on this view. [The 'relative importance/remoteness' defence is defused here.]
The Idealist implications of DM have been reasonably clear up to now in the Essays published so far at this site; here, we find them totally confirmed by DM-Wholism.8
Theoretical considerations like these are unlikely to cut much ice with DM-fans. Hence, a discussion of the more concrete claims advanced in TAR and other DM-texts on this issue is clearly called for.
[DB = Dialectical Biologist, i.e., Levins and Lewontin (1985).]
The first problem here is that Rees and other DM-theorists provide us with few examples of what they mean -- i.e., any which purport to illustrate the rule/'law' they claim operates between parts and wholes (throughout the universe), and which suggests that everything is 'dialectically' linked in the intended manner. However, Rees does mention one particular example, which had in fact been lifted from DB. Unfortunately, even this turns out to have been a rather unhappy choice.
As we saw above, this particular explication of the part/whole relation is itself connected to the following (hackneyed) formula that Holists incant from generation to generation:
"For dialectical materialists the whole is more than the simple sum of its parts." [Rees (1998), p.77.]
To this the authors of DB added:
"The fact is that the parts have properties that are characteristic of them only as they are parts of wholes; the properties come into existence in the interactions that makes the whole. A person cannot fly by flapping her arms simultaneously. But people do fly, as a consequence of the social organisation that has created airplanes, pilots and fuel. It is not that society flies, however, but individuals in society, who have acquired a property they do not have outside society. The limitations of individual physical beings are negated by social interactions. The whole, thus, is not simply the object of interaction of the parts but is the subject of action of the parts." [Levins and Lewontin (1985), p.273.]
The general idea appears to be that novel properties "emerge" (out of nowhere, it seems; they certainly cannot be reduced to the microstructures of each part -- according to Rees (1998), pp.5-8, and other dialecticians we will meet in Essay Three Part Three), because of the new relationships that parts enter into when they become incorporated into wholes, and the new natures they acquire as a result.9
The above passage seems to be claiming that: (1) When human beings act as individuals (or, is it in less developed social wholes?) they lack certain properties --, in this case, the power of flight. Nevertheless: (2) As a result of their social organization, human beings apparently gain this new 'property' collectively -- even though as individuals they still cannot fly. The conclusion seems to be that: (3) Because of economic and social development (etc.) people acquire characteristics that they would not have had without it --, which appears to indicate that when they are appropriately socially-organised, human beings become "more" than they would have been otherwise.
But, once again, in what sense are human beings "more" than they were before flight became possible? Manifestly, they still cannot fly. They do not sprout wings, develop engines or grow sophisticated landing gear.10
Now, whatever meaning can be given to the "more" that human beings become, this can't have resulted from the part/whole relation. This is because immediately before or after flight finally became possible no new wholes or parts actually came into existence -- nor did these new parts and allegedly novel wholes become newly related, either.11
Hence, even if these hackneyed sayings (i.e., G3 and G4) were true, flight would not be one of their exemplars.
G3: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
G4: Each part becomes more when it is part of a whole than it would otherwise have been (individually) apart from that whole.
It could be objected here that the above is incorrect. The point is that as the forces and relations of production develop (and as new modes of production arise), human beings enter into new and more complex social and material links with one another. These generate/facilitate novel capacities and possibilities that were unavailable to them in earlier modes of production.
[HM = Historical Materialism.]
Now, this way of putting things will not be controverted here, but it is worth pointing out that this HM-style re-formulation of the picture only works because the part/whole metaphysic has been dropped. This can be seen by the way that the language used in the above rejoinder only becomes available (and begins to make sense) when the unhelpful metaphysical 'concepts' under review here have been discarded. There is no mystery about the details of the social organisation of production and the new capacities it makes available to human beings. But, this has nothing to do with the alleged DM-connections between parts and wholes (for reasons given in previous paragraphs and in Note 10).
Independently of this, it is worth wondering how such a scenario could be made consistent with G1.
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
G2: The part makes the whole and the whole makes the parts.
So, are we really meant to believe that the entire nature of passenger NN, say, is determined by her relationship with the aeroplane she has just boarded? [Or is it with some other whole that we must compare/inter-link her?] Conversely, is the entire nature of this new aeroplane/passenger ensemble determined by passenger NN? What if she missed the flight and passenger MM took her place? Would the entire nature of that plane, and all on board, have changed as a result?
Once more: in all this, which is part and which is whole? Is the entire nature of airline passenger MM determined by his/her relation with one or more of the following 'wholes': the aeroplane, the Airline, the Airport, the flight controller, the factory that built the aeroplane, the other passengers, the man at the check-in desk (and his sick grandmother), MM's whole life up to that point, the entire earth and its history, the cluster of galaxies of which ours is a part…?
Which one of these is the 'whole' that makes MM "more"?
Moreover, do we include in the part here passenger MM's hand luggage, her glasses, her clothes, her unborn foetus, the cells now sloughing off her skin, the air coming out of her lungs, the material she just flushed down the loo?12
So, which parts and which wholes are in the end entirely constitutive of, say, passenger NM in seat 26 -- minus his toupee, sun glasses and copy of The Da Vinci Code? What if he had forgotten any of these items?
And, would an aeroplane be more of an aeroplane if there were 100 people board it as opposed to 99? Is the airport itself greater than it would otherwise have been if passenger MN had failed to check-in last Sunday at 19:02?
But, all these would have to be the case if the entire nature of each is determined by all, as G1 and G2 assert. In that case, passenger MN is indeed greater than he would have been had he not flown last Sunday; and the same would be true of the airport. But is this the case with anything else? Is the entire nature of the universe enhanced as a result? If everything is interconnected (in order for it to be true that the nature of the whole is determined by its relation to the parts), and inter-linked by these mysterious "internal relations", then the universe must be more of a universe than it used to be because MN checked in last Sunday. To be sure, had MN's cosmic significance not escaped her on the day in question, she would surely have been much better insured.
In Essay Three Part One, we saw this DM-thesis (about parts and wholes) was a direct consequence of Lenin's reading of Hegel, and thus his derivation of super-duper, inter-galactic truths from a sentence like "John is a man":
Now, the correct 'dialectical' analysis of such propositions reveals the following deeper truth: ordinary language in fact alludes to an identity between subject and predicate names (or the objects they designate; Hegel continually mixes the two up, and so do his latter-day clones, DM-theorists). This cannot be correct, because no particular can be identical to a universal. This then leads "speculative reason" dialectically to the opposite conclusion: that the subject of such an ascription of identity is not (and cannot be) identical with the said predicate (here interpreted as a named abstract particular). So, in reality John cannot be identical with this predicate, or with what it 'names' (i.e., he is not identical with Man, or 'Manhood'). 'Thought' is thus led to the negation of this identity.
But, this too cannot be the entire truth, since John is essentially a man; in that sense he is identified by his essence. This once more leads 'thought' back to another opposite conclusion, to the negation of the former negation, yielding the final result that John is not not-identical with Manhood, all of which concepts are now understood in a new and more 'determinate' light. This astounding conclusion now expresses an 'essential' truth about John (and, indeed, about everything else in the entire universe, since a similar 'analysis' reveals that every object and process is essentially connected with its own 'other', in a negative and then in a 'doubly negative' sort of way, along similar lines), which liberating 'analysis' is not available to those who are trapped either by 'formal thinking' or 'commonsense'.
At this stage in the proceedings, Spinoza's 'principle' is sent into play, and so we are informed that every determination is also a negation. [On that, see here.]
So, not only is "thought" thus driven to opposite poles in its bid to differentiate an object like John from all others (and this necessarily involves negativity -- that is because, clearly, John is not Peter, not Fred, not Tarquin…, neither is he a mountain, a planet, a coffee mug...), it is also forced to conclude that no individual object could be identical with a universal. In that case, John is not mankind. But as we saw, a further consideration of his 'concept', his 'essence', tells us he is also not not-mankind, and thus his original identity needs revising, for in so far as Peter, Fred, Tarquin... are in the same logical boat as John, he is now not not-Peter, not not-Fred, not not-Tarquin..., just as he is not a mountain, not a planet, not a coffee mug...
John is thus made 'determinate' by negation (as is everything else). The whole here determines the part and the part determines the whole, via negativity.
Hey presto, everything in existence has negativity programmed into it (simply because dialectically-mangled language reveals this deeper truth to us), and it is this negativity which powers the universe.
The Big Bang from the Big Re-write...
Several other myth-begotten creatures of DM-lore owe their existence to this error of simple syntax, one of these being the quasi-mystical "Totality". A reading of the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity motivates the idea that everything must be inter-related.
The 'reasoning' runs something like this:
If, as in H1, John is both identical and not identical with a universal, and this universal has the infinite built into it (otherwise it would not be a universal), then John is only himself when he is viewed in infinite dialectical connection with everything else of this sort.
H1: John is a man.
If John is now put in a similar relation with all the predicates applicable to him (including all the negative ones expressed in propositions like "John is not Blair", or "John is not the Pope", "John is not an interstellar dust cloud), then he is in fact only an individual of the sort he is because of the seemingly endless and infinite connections he actually has with everything in existence, which gives him a 'determinate' nature (if we but knew what that was in all its infinite glory). Moreover, all these things are "internally related" to John -- not externally, materially, but 'logically' -- all guaranteed by that diminutive verb, "is".
John thus assumes truly cosmic significance; the whole of reality is linked to him and this makes him what he is. Not only that, but everything else is conditioned in like manner by John in return. John is now at the centre of a web of identities and differences spanning right across all that exists, and for all of time; he is now situated at the very heart the meaning universe -- and so is everyone and everything else. All of 'Being' depends on him to a small extent, and he depends on all of 'Being' in return.
All this from a simple sentence written in Indo-European grammar.
Who'd have thought it?
Even so, one small step for John is a huge step for mankind. Innovative logic of this sort cannot be restricted to just one individual; it has quite definite imperial aspirations, as humanity itself now assumes universal significance. The fate of our entire species now takes centre stage in John's meaning universe -- all guaranteed by the semi-Divine Logic built into DL. Thus, whatever happens to humanity is interconnected with everything in reality, and vice versa.
Even so, one small step for John is a huge step for mankind. Innovative logic like this cannot be restricted to just one individual; it has quite definite and imperial aspirations as humanity itself now assumes universal significance. The fate of our entire species now takes centre stage in John's meaning universe (but not just his) -- all of which is guaranteed by the semi-Divine Logic built into DL. Thus, whatever happens to John, or to humanity, is interconnected with everything in existence, and vice versa.
[DL = Dialectical Logic; LIE = Linguistic Idealism; UO = Unity of Opposites.]
Not only is John related to the Whole, he is what he is because this dialectically-'developed' diminutive verb implies he both is and is not identical (and then not not-identical) with an infinite concept. Indeed, and in this way, every person, each atom, each speck in the entire universe, and every process in nature, for all of time, has assigned to it its rightful mediated place in the Infinite Whole. Every single object and process is identical with, and not identical with, and then not not-identical with its 'other', guaranteed by a 'logic' that smuggled identity into sentences in place of boring old material predication.
This view of reality thus pictures the logical structure of sentences mirroring the logical essence of 'Being'; everything is simultaneously both at the centre of an infinite web of relations and at its periphery -- all are insignificant and all are cosmically important at the same time. Part and Whole are thus interlinked and inter-determine one another.
This (and not scientific theory) is the real source of DM-Wholism: Hegel's garbled, sub-Aristotelian 'logic'. Small wonder then that it readily falls apart on scrutiny.
It could be argued that no DM-theorist in her left mind would argue this way, and that's because the interconnections mentioned above are not all of the same order or type. Some things in nature are intimately inter-related; others more remotely so. In that case, local events will have a vanishingly small effect on distant parts of the solar system, never mind the rest of the Galaxy --, or, indeed, the universe at large (and vice versa). Fortunately, that response has been neutralised here, and in Note 14.
Indeed, it's worth asking again: What exactly are the parts and wholes in this example? For instance, is the carpet on a plane one of the parts? Is it now "more" of a carpet than it was before it was laid on the plane? What about the drink dispensers? Is a drink dispenser "more" of a drink dispenser on a plane than one in the airport? Have both carpet and dispenser acquired this new property of flight, as it were, parasitically? Is an aeroplane "more" of an aeroplane with a pencil on board than one without? But, where do we stop? Is a passenger on a 'plane "more" of a passenger if the 'plane she is on had two such dispensers, as opposed to when she is on a 'plane with only one? Does quantity affect property here?
Of course, such questions are obviously crazy -- but, this is only because they arise from concepts drawn from DM. The obscure nature of the example given in DB is a direct consequence of the unworkable, Metaphysical-Wholist ideas expressed in G1-G4.
In the above passage, the authors of DB referred to the ability to fly as a "property" that humans acquired as a result of social organisation, one they lacked earlier. But, is it correct to call this a "property"? Should we not rather want to call it a "facility", or perhaps a realisable "opportunity"? This is because no human beings can actually fly, and they cannot do so collectively, either. It's the machines we build that do all the flying!
But, if we still insist on calling it a "property", then perhaps we shouldn't be shy and declare that, for example, digital TV images are also "properties" that human beings have gained as a result of their new capacity to walk around electronics stores. Or, to change the example: by inventing printing, humanity has perhaps acquired the "property" of browsing in second-hand bookshops.
In any case, in what sense is flying a property? What if someone carried a parrot onto a plane? Would that bird now have a double property? Or, what if, say, an eagle carried off a rabbit? Would that hapless rodent thereby have acquired the new property of flight -- or, perhaps, the property of being 'kidnapped' by winged assailants? Indeed, would the new eagle/rabbit-whole be symmetrically unified (as far as part/whole determination is concerned, and as G1-G4 seem to suggest)? Do eagles, therefore, acquire anything from rabbits when they enter into such predatory part/whole ensembles? Does, for example, the eagle part of this airborne duo acquire the rabbit part's ability to wriggle excessively when carried off by predatory birds?13
Parts Bigger Than Wholes?
It could be argued that the above considerations amount to little more than pedantic nit-picking. But even if that were so, far more serious problems afflict DM-Wholism than these relatively minor quibbles. What these are may be appreciated if we consider why the following would be an illegitimate counterexample to G3:
G12: Part of a cat is bigger than the whole of a mouse.
[G3: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.]
Here a part (i.e., the cat's stomach, say) is bigger than a whole mouse, which seems to contradict G3.
Figure One: Parts Bigger Than Wholes?
Superficially, the reason why G12 would be ruled out rather quickly as a legitimate counterexample to G3 is that it confuses parts and wholes from different entities. Indeed, that might also be one of the reasons why the eagle/rabbit objection above would also be rejected (along with some or all of the rest). But if so, and since passengers and aeroplanes are as separate as rabbits and eagles, or even cats and mice, DB's own example might have to be abandoned for the same reason.
At any rate, TAR's abstract schema did not mention this aspect of the part/whole relation (and neither do other DM-theorists): i.e., that intra-systemic part/whole connections are not legitimate. And it is not easy to see how they could be ruled out without fatally damaging DM-Wholism. If everything is interconnected (and the entire nature of all that exists is determined by everything else, mediated by that mysterious, cosmic/dialectical logical glue: "internal relations"), then mice and cats' stomachs, eagles' claws and rabbits' fur, Laurel and Hardy's bowler hats, custard powder and Quasars, and a host of other things, must be interlinked as parts of The One Big Mega-Whole.
Unfortunately, Rees and other DM-theorists have so far failed to provide us with any way of deciding precisely what does and what does not constitute a legitimate system/part comparison in DM. [This merely underlines a problem we encountered earlier, and in Part One.]
Now, this brings us to something this Essay has been skirting around all along -- which is, we have ignored distinctions dialecticians clearly draw between different types of wholes, and different kinds of parts, important factors the omission of which seem to undermine much of this Essay. This response I call Spirkin's Defence [SD], and is covered in detail in Note 14.14
Anyway, rabbits and eagles, cats and mice form part of the same food chain and ecological system. So perhaps they are from the same whole, after all? How are we to decide? What are the real/'objective' boundaries of parts and wholes? Are there any, or is this aspect of DM as subjective as we have found much of the rest of it to be?
DM-theorists certainly need to decide where the boundaries of their parts and sub-"Totalities" lie so that they themselves can figure out what this terminally-vague theory of theirs commits them to, if nothing else!
[However, for reasons spelt out here, they are highly unlikely to take that piece of sound advice! Indeed, and so far, any attempt to criticise this 'scientific theory' is met with blatant fabrication and personal abuse, spiced-up with (by now de rigueur) scatological language, and no little special-pleading. A good example of the latter can be found here. Readers should note the posts of one "Gilhyle", who constantly makes this excuse.]
Of course, the problem is that because we know absolutely nothing about the "Totality" -- or what constitutes any of its sub-"Totalities" (if it has any) --, or, in fact, anything about any of its parts,15 we are in no position to reject any aspect of the entire universe as a legitimate part of some whole-or-other, and vice versa.
And neither are dialecticians!
Dialecticians do not know this either -- or if they do, they have been remarkably coy about the details.
In which case, for all anyone knows, some parts could be bigger than some wholes (several examples are given below). Who is to say? We certainly cannot rule this out on an a priori basis. The evidence from the material world -- as opposed to the vague musings drawn from an Ideal DM-world, or even from a detailed perusal of Hegel's Logic -- is quite plain: there are countless parts of animals that are bigger than wholes of other animals. And, if we throw in the plant kingdom, the evidence is pretty overwhelming.
Anyway, what happens if the said cat eats the said mouse? Has the mouse become "more" than it was before? As a new part of this cat, is it now "more" than the whole mouse it once was when not part of that cat? To be sure, it has become part of a new whole, but in what sense has the mouse become "more" (of a mouse?) than it was before? This question becomes all the more awkward when we remember that cats often dismember mice when they eat them. So, when swallowed, the hapless rodent might not even be a mouse. In that case, as far as this non-dialectical, ex-mouse is concerned, something less than a mouse would become something more than a mouse!
This is perhaps one "emergent property" that even DM-theorists might be reluctant to swallow, even if the cat saves them the trouble of having to it.16
It could be argued that the molecules making up the mouse have become "more" than they were before since they will in this case be absorbed into a higher organism. But what if the mouse is eaten by a crocodile, or consumed by a snake, or by ants -- or even by bacteria? Is the DM-emphasis on parts which become "more" when absorbed into wholes itself sensitive to some sort of evolutionary pecking order? In that case, what if the cat eats a kitten? Or, if a lion eats a monkey? Would that amount to part/whole evolutionary insubordination?
Bucking The System: Non-Dialectical Wholism
Can You Spot The Elephant In The Room?
Again, it could be objected that all this is misconceived since DM-theorists are quite clear that they mean to refer to parts that are integrated into the same system -- as G9 and G9a indicate:
G9: W1 > Σpwn.
G9a: The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts it already has.
If this is so, many of the above counter-examples could be dismissed as totally irrelevant since they patently ignore this important detail. In fact, TAR itself used an example lifted from an article on Engels (written by Sean Sayers) to make this particular point a little clearer:
"Of course, a living organism is composed of physical and chemical constituents, and nothing more. Nevertheless, it is not a mere collection of such constituents, nor even of anatomical parts. It is these parts unified, organized and acting as a whole. This unity and organization are not only features of our description: they are properties of the thing itself; they are constitutive of it as a biological organism." [Rees (1998), p.77; quoting Sayers (1996), p.162.]17
The idea here seems to be that it is the integration of certain parts into the same organism (or system, or whole) that changes them in particular ways; moreover, this particular aspect is constitutive of relevant whole/part unions. In that case, it looks like it's the organization of the parts into an integrated whole which is the key feature, and that this is not a separate (or separable) component of that whole; on the contrary, it is an expression of the inter-relation of the parts themselves that go to make that whole.
So, while there may be little outward difference between, say, a heart that has been removed from an organism and the same heart when it was operating inside its former owner, there is nonetheless a real difference not reducible to anything else applicable here. An integrated and working heart is a functioning part of an organism; in such an environment that heart is not what it would otherwise be if it were detached from the body of its owner.
This argument is examined in Note 14, and it will be picked-over again presently. But, in advance of that, a few preliminary difficulties need airing: not the least of which concerns the fact that this new twist would make the example given in DB (about the new human "property" of flight) redundant, unless we imagine human society is organic in some way, or that human beings inside aeroplanes are not the same as those waiting in the departure lounge.
Well, if so, how does this analogy help us understand class society? Is any one passenger on an aeroplane any the less of a human being if he or she goes by boat? Or, parachutes off the 'plane? Where is the organic unity we seek here?
Of course, it could be argued (indeed, it is argued by those locked into this way of seeing things) that there is an "internal" relationship at work in Capitalist society, which, for example, organically connects members of various classes to the system as a whole, and to members of other classes. This objection is also partially examined in Note 14 and Note 11.
However, since this involves issues drawn from HM, this topic will largely be ignored at this site -- except that "internal relations" will be subjected to destructive criticism in Essay Three Part Three. Consequent on that, the application of such "relations" to class society will be given an entirely new interpretation, as will the alleged organicism alluded to earlier.
[SD = Spirkin Defence; LOI = Law of Identity.]
Putting this to one side for the time being, it's worth pointing out that in general DM-apologists who are impressed with this particular point (or with those found in the SD) will have to abandon Trotsky's criticisms of the LOI in order to make this argument work. If not, we should have to admit that the following are legitimate counter-examples to the organicist ideas Sayers's argument promotes:
G13: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of an adult elephant.
G14: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of an adult elephant.
Why this is so will now be explained.
Compare G13 and G14 with G3:
G3: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
In G13 and G14, we have two examples concerning the parts/wholes of living organisms where G3 does not seem to apply. In order to neutralise these two counterexamples, G3 must be re-interpreted along lines suggested in G9, and the propositions that led up to it:
G4: Each part becomes more when it is part of a whole than it would otherwise have been (individually) apart from that whole.
G5: Let whole W1 have parts pw1-pwn, and let pw1-pwn form a set, Pw.
G6: Let the 'same' parts when not parts of W1 be p1-pn, and let p1-pn form a set of parts, P.
G7: For any pwi, and any pi, let pwi > pi (where pwi and pi are the ith members of Pw and P, respectively).
G8: Let the sum of the parts that are elements of Pw be Σpwn, and the sum of the parts that are elements of P be Σpn.
G9: Either: W1 > Σpwn.
G10: Or: W1 > Σpn.
[Recall, G9 means this:
G9a: The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts it already has.]
This means that G13 and G14 could be neutralised only if they were changed into the following falsehoods (and then rejected on that score):
G15: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of the same baby elephant.
G16: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of the same baby elephant.
[G13: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of an adult elephant.
G14: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of an adult elephant.]
G15 and G16 effectively neutralise the import of G13 and G14, but only by making a surreptitious appeal to the LOI! Hence, dialectical quibbles over whether or not the word "same" can capture the fluid nature of reality will have to be put to one side, for if the word "same" is regarded as inadequate in G15 and G16 then it must be inadequate in the following as well:
G17: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of the same elephant when it is an adult.
G18: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of the same elephant when it is an adult.
But, in G17 and G18 the use of the word "same" allows for change through continuity, and, if anything, is closer to its supposed 'dialectical' meaning than the 'same' word in G15 and G16.
Now, this adjustment transforms G17 and G18 into effective counterexamples to G9/G9a -- the only viable reading of G3 we could find. This is because the 'whole' in G9/G9a would appear to have changed (in G17, when that elephant matured into an adult) so that at a later time one of its parts will have grown and become bigger than it used to be --, and is now greater than the whole to which it once belonged, which cannot itself change since it is 'frozen' in the past. G18 makes a similar point, but the other way around.
[IED = Identity in Difference (i.e., "Improvised Explanatory Device").]
This returns us to a problem that was aired in Part One of this Essay. The obscure nature of the "Totality", or, indeed, of any of its sub-"Totalities", means that it is not now possible to neutralise this difficulty in any obvious way.
We saw in Part One (and earlier in this Essay) that unless dialecticians included the past as part of their "Totality", it would be impossible to account for development -- or even for their vague idea of 'change through continuity', using the IED ploy.
But, as soon as the past is included, and the Totality is seen as some sort of four-dimensional manifold --, where, unfortunately for dialecticians, there would be no such thing as 'objective' change -- change would be no more than our limited and 'subjective' view of things, and the entire theory would lose its Heraclitean clout.
On the other hand, if this four-dimensional view of time is rejected, dialecticians would have to admit that the "Totality" contained non-existent things as part of their now non-objective, 'objective' whole (namely, those items now locked in the past)!
Alternatively, once more, if the "Totality" does not contain the past, then in order to account for contemporary class society and/or for the state of the universe, dialecticians would have to appeal to things outside the "Totality" to account for things inside it -- defeating the whole point of introducing such an obscure idea in the first place.
And, as far as sub-"Totalities" are concerned, the same problems apply, but on a reduced scale. So, if one of these lesser obscurities is meant to be an object in 4-space too, then any 'change' it undergoes would be illusory.
Once more, if this idea (from modern Physics is rejected), then any other sub-"Totality" from which a particular sub-"Totality" had developed would no longer exist to provide an objective account of why and how this had happened. So, if these earlier non-existent sub-"Totalities" are deemed to be part of the "Totality" itself, the latter would once again contain billions of non-existents (one for each non-existent 'moment' in the past).
Alternatively, if the past is not part of the "Totality" --, and thus no past sub-"totality" is part of the "Totality" --, we would again have to appeal to things outside the "Totality" to account for things inside it.
At the very least, if the past is allowed back in, the immediate difficulties would return, for then some parts would be bigger than some wholes, and vice versa, as G13 and G14 asserted (but which are now made plain in G17 and G18):
G13: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of an adult elephant.
G14: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of an adult elephant.
G17: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of the same elephant when it is an adult.
G18: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of the same elephant when it is an adult.
In this case, some parts would be bigger than earlier wholes, and some sums of parts would less than some later wholes --, of the same animal as it develops.
Once more, if these sub-"Totalities" are not manifolds in 4-space, then these problems would simply resurface. In that case, a sub-"Totality" would be ephemeral in the extreme -- having a 'duration' in the 'specious' present (surely of shorter length than a yocto-second (i.e., less than 10-24s)), with no link to its former non-existent 'self' from which it had developed. This is because, in the present, such links to the past would not exist, either. If they did still exist, they couldn't link anything with the past, since, in order to exist they too would have to be in the present. Moreover, that former 'self' would be part neither of that sub-"Totality" (otherwise it would be part of a four-dimensional 'object', after all), nor even of the over-arching Mega-"Totality" (and for the same reason).
In that case, and once again, we should have to appeal to things outside the "Totality" to account for things inside it, and the whole point of appealing to this nebulous concept would vanish.
Recall that when translated G9 amounts to the following re-write of G9a:
G19: A whole is greater than the sum of those parts when they are assembled as parts of that whole (not as they had been before they were so assembled).
[G9: W1 > Σpwn.
G9a: The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts it already has.
G17: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of the same elephant when it is an adult.
G18: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of the same elephant when it is an adult.]
Of course, the problem is that G17 and G18 introduce the aforementioned temporal comparisons between parts and wholes (of elephants), as and when they are considered at earlier and later times.
Naturally, some readers might not regard G17 and G18 as counterexamples to G9, which does not itself include temporal constraints of this sort -- although, if it were paraphrased along the lines expressed in G19, it would contain an oblique reference to such temporal factors.18 But, if that is so, G9 and G19 could not appear in a dialectical account of reality. Quite apart from the four-dimensional problems outlined above, these options seem to freeze-frame parts and wholes, which would mean they are of no use to DM-theorists.
Maybe G9 could be altered to include a suitable temporal reference. The following might work:
G20: Let W1 and Σpwn at time t1 be Wt1 and Σpt1wn, respectively.
G21: Wt1 > Σpt1wn.
Translated, G21 reads either as G21a or G21b, depending on how abstract this option is deemed to be:
G21a: A whole at a given moment is greater than the sum of its parts at that instant.
G21b: A whole at a given moment is greater than the sum of its parts at the same time.
Re-written in this way, G21a would seem to rule out some of the counterexamples listed above. However, quite apart from its 'un-dialectical' import (it refers to the sorts of instants in time to which Trotsky took great exception, and those, too, that will surely come to grief in the four-dimensional minefield outlined earlier),19 this appearance is illusory. This is because, for some systems, at some time, the whole could in fact be less than the sum of its parts at that time. A greatly truncated list of examples illustrating this possibility is given below:
(1) A valuable diamond is dropped into molten lead. On its own the diamond is worth, say, £10,000 ($19,000). But, as part of the new diamond/lead whole, it is now almost valueless, even while at least one of its parts is worth £10,000 ($19,000).
There are countless examples that run on similar lines: a house might be worth £200,000 ($380,000), but as part of a forest fire/house whole, it would be worthless; a car might be worth £7000 ($13,500), but as part of a car/crusher whole it would be mere scrap; a "Big Mac" might be 'worth' 99p ($1.90) on its own, but as part of a rat/burger whole it would be valueless; and so on.
It could be objected that these examples do not concern the exact same moment in time. This is correct if "same moment" means "same abstract instant". However, since that would 'freeze-frame' reality once more, this response would not appear to be of much use to DM-fans. On the other hand, if it is interpreted along the lines suggested in G21b, many of the above could be correct; that depends, of course, on how we understand the phrase "same time".
G21b: A whole at a given moment is greater than the sum of its parts at the same time.
However, the obverse of this is that if "same time" is defined too tightly, or narrowly, in order to rule out the above 'difficulties', then that would impose on reality yet another abstract and a priori structure. In fact, there are no 'objective' criteria here to which we can appeal to stop this from happening -- or prevent a consequent slide into 'subjectivity/idealism' -- whatever is done. This is the permanent bind that ensnares all metaphysical theories. At some point, traditional thinkers have to use language in certain ways, thus (implicitly or explicitly) setting-up new conventions. The problem is that when this has been done, they invariably interpret these as 'objective' features of reality, and not artefacts of these new conventions.
[Why and how this is so is explained at length in Essay Twelve Part One.]
The same comments apply to the next batch of counter-examples:
(2) Consider a set of non-zero forces aligned in a couple so that their resultant at some point is zero. In this case, each part is greater than the whole (which is zero!), and the whole is equal to, but not greater than the sum of the parts.
Of course, we could always apply the SD here and argue that this is not the 'right' sort of whole, but what if these forces operate inside an organism (or indeed, inside Capitalism itself)? [This is quite apart from the fact that the SD is itself shot through with vagueness, and thus is of little use to anyone -- as we saw in Note 14.]
(3) Consider a rope made from, say, 1000 strands of material, with each strand, say, 0.5 metres long. Let these strands overlap one another for approximately 90% of their length. Collectively, because of this overlap the fibres stretch (as part of the whole rope) for only 50 metres. However, the sum of the lengths of these strands taken individually is 500 metres -- which would be (and is!) their total length at that instant had they not been woven into that rope. But the rope is still only 50 metres long. Here the whole is considerably less than the sum of the parts.
Indeed, every item of clothing is a counter-example to this trite rule, for in each case, the total length of all the strands of fibre constituting any garment is greater than the length of that garment as a whole. And what goes for garments goes for most manufactured goods, as well. Indeed, this applies to the parts of many organisms: hence, the total length of all the muscle fibres in a wombat is greater than the length of a whole wombat. And we need not stop at fury rodents: the total length of all the xylem tubes in a tree is greater than the length of that tree, and so on.
(4) Consider gases; let the volume occupied by two different gases be, say, 100 cm3. When mixed they react and now occupy only, say, 75 cm3. Here the sums of the volumes of the parts when separate is greater than the whole volume they occupy together.
(5) A familiar feature relating to the "form" of sports team players also illustrates the limitation of the Wholist-mantra. Often, when in a different team, each player can play well below "form". This happens quite often when football players, say, play for England. So, here the sum of the performances of footballers when they play for England as a whole, say, is less than that taken severally when not in that team, or in some other team. Colloquially, we would say such players play well below form, etc.20
Of course, some might try to reject or neutralise one or more of these counter-examples because of their figurative or vague use of language (even though not all of them are guilty of this, and even though this aspect of DM is itself shot through with figurative language/vagueness, so dialecticians have no room to point any fingers in this regard!), or because they are not relevant to what the part/whole relation 'really' means, as outlined in G1-G4. However, since we are never told what DM-Wholism 'really' amounts to, it's impossible to decide if even this counter-claim is itself legitimate or not.
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
G2: The part makes the whole and the whole makes the parts.
G3: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
G4: Each part becomes more when it is part of a whole than it would otherwise have been (individually) apart from that whole.
Nevertheless, the real problem facing DM-advocates is how they can consistently disallow counterexamples like G17 and G18 -- or the others listed above -- without undermining their version of the trite Wholist-mantra (recorded in G3). Naturally, one way to do this would be to declare (unconvincingly) that in the case of G17 and G18 the two organisms in question were not the same animal. Ironically, as noted above, this would mean that DM could not itself handle change over time. This is because, if on the one hand it is impossible to identify the same animal as it changes over time, then it is equally impossible to say that it (the same animal) had changed into an adult (as opposed, for example, to having died, disintegrated, disappeared, or had been eaten by that cat). But, on the other hand, if we decide these are the same organisms, then the counterexamples above (alongside G17 and G18) would become legitimate once more.
Naturally, if these are not the same animals, then the IED defence (used earlier) will have to be abandoned.
G17: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of the same elephant when it is an adult.
G18: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of the same elephant when it is an adult.
However, DM-theorists would need to make a desperate move like this -- that is, they would have to declare that the animals alluded to above were not the same -- because of the 'un-dialectical' thesis expressed by G21a:
G21a: A whole at a given moment is greater than the sum of its parts at that instant.
Of course, if G21a is acceptable to DM-theorists, it would rule out their neat formula as applicable to things that change, for, as we saw above (in G17 and G18), a whole can (and mostly does) become less than one of its parts at some later time.
As it stands, G21a is very un-dialectical since it only seems to be valid if nothing changes! Once more, G21a looks as if it relies on instantaneous comparisons, something Trotsky ruled out as abstract and inapplicable to things that exist in material reality. However, if parts can become bigger than the wholes they once were a part of, then G9 (and G3) will have to be rejected.
G9: W1 > Σpwn.
G9a: The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts it already has.
G3: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
To be sure, many of the annoying counterexamples listed above only seem to work because of their vague use of such terms as "part", "whole", sub-"Totality" and "Totality". However, if these counterexamples were to be rejected by dialecticians on that basis (that is, if they were ruled-out simply because the vague language they use creates such problems), it would once more concede the point that this thesis (about part/whole relations) can only be made to appear to work because of the imposition of yet more a priori dogmatics. That, of course, would make this part of DM conventional/metaphysical, and not at all 'objective'.
Anyway, many of the above counterexamples used words in perfectly ordinary contexts. So, it's a moot point, therefore, on what 'objective' grounds they could be rejected --, or at least rejected on a basis that still allowed for the retention of the few favourable examples of the part/whole relation DM-theorists have scraped-together over the years.
However, if we are desperate to hang onto G9, come what may, then perhaps we could try the following re-write:
G22: For any time tk, Wtk > Σptkwk.
Translated this means:
G22a: At any subsequent time a whole is greater than the sum of the parts of that (same) whole at that time.
[G21: Wt1 > Σpt1wn.
G21a: A whole at a given moment is greater than the sum of its parts at that instant.
G21b: A whole at a given moment is greater than the sum of its parts at the same time.]
G22 and G22a make G21 and G21a more like G21b, and this might indeed neutralise several of the above counterexamples, since they relate parts to wholes as they change diachronically. Suitably altered, too, G22/22a could rule out all reference to earlier/later times, as was found in, say, G18.
G18: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of the same elephant when it is an adult.
Unfortunately however, G22 (and G22a) only work because of a clear use of the LOI again (i.e., "same whole") -- and this use cannot be watered down to one of "approximate identity". This is not just because the latter term is itself parasitic on strict identity (on that, see here), but any such watering-down will sever this alternative's only life-line, collapsing it back into earlier versions which had to be rejected for reasons outlined above. G22 and G22a only work because of the strictness of the terms they employ.
Anyway, one interpretation of G22 might require time to be made of instants, as opposed to intervals, if this version of the part/whole relation is to work. Since that would make this option 'un-dialectical', it, too, must be rejected by DM-fans who are concerned with consistency.
On the other hand, if we consider the tensed variable in G22, highlighted in bold in G22a (its ordinary language equivalent):
G22a: At any subsequent time a whole is greater than the sum of the parts of that (same) whole at that time
and interpret it as referring instead to an interval, then, as noted earlier, that interval would then have to be arbitrarily restricted so that the subsequent growth of the organism in question was not allowed to refute the thesis under consideration. Otherwise any organic growth taking place in that interval (expressed in G13, G14. G17 and G18) would falsify this option, as we saw earlier.
G13: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of an adult elephant.
G14: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of an adult elephant.
G17: The whole of a baby elephant is smaller than part of the same elephant when it is an adult.
G18: The sum of the parts of a baby elephant is less than the whole of the same elephant when it is an adult.
So, it seems that whatever is done to it, this Wholist thesis is either thoroughly conventional, or patently false -- that is, if any sense can be made of it to begin with.
Again, few of the above arguments are likely to impress convinced DM-clones, let alone persuade them that their neat formula is unreliable -- or even that it is itself 'un-dialectical' in that it freeze-frames organisms and fails to consider their growth (as we saw in the previous section)!
This is perhaps because the reasoning presented here uses analytic techniques uncongenial to the 'wholistic' approach, which they prefer. However, that response itself ignores the fatal objection that DM-Wholism can only be made to seem to work if organisms do not actually grow and develop --, which is an odd sort of thing to have to say about this supposedly quintessential, developmental 'philosophy of change'!
Fortunately, however, we do not have to appeal to such tactics alone to demonstrate the weaknesses of DM-style Wholism.
Returning to the passage written by Sean Sayers (quoted earlier):
"Of course, a living organism is composed of physical and chemical constituents, and nothing more. Nevertheless, it is not a mere collection of such constituents, nor even of anatomical parts. It is these parts unified, organized and acting as a whole. This unity and organization are not only features of our description: they are properties of the thing itself; they are constitutive of it as a biological organism." [Sayers (1996), p.162.]
Now, this argument only looks plausible because it's based on a consideration of biological systems; hence, it fails to explain how a generalised sort of Wholism operates throughout non-organic nature, or indeed the rest of the universe.21
So, even if Sayers were correct, what he says would be of little use in trying to understand the vast bulk of the material world in Wholist terms. For example, what sense could be made of the idea that a mountain was only a mountain because of its relation to the whole (which whole)? Or that, the Sun was only the Sun because of its relation to…, well, what?21a
Once more, we could appeal to the SD here and claim that arbitrary collections of objects are not the sorts of wholes that dialecticians consider of prime importance. But, the Solar System is a system, and a mountain is part of a geological system. The problem here is that, as we saw in Note 14 (and in Note Three and Note Eleven), the SD cannot itself distinguish dialectically significant wholes from arbitrary conglomerations; or, at least, it cannot do so on an 'objective' basis.
[The same comments apply SD-type responses to many of the counter-examples given below. Making that particular point now will save me having to make it over and over again as they arise.]
When a wider selection of examples is considered, further fundamental weaknesses in DM-Holism soon emerge. Consider, for instance, a car. Do its parts cease to be what they once were if they are removed from that vehicle? Does a wheel, for example, cease to be a wheel if it comes off its axle? Is it any less of a wheel? Why replace it then? Indeed, does the axle cease to be an axle when it loses a wheel? Is it, too, any less of an axle? What would a replacement wheel be re-attached to then? Indeed, what happens to a lorry with four doubled-up rear wheels if it loses one while the other three remain on the axle? Would they still be wheels, and would they still be on an axle if the entire nature of a part is determined by its relation others, and to the whole?
In a similar vein, consider the following unlikely conversation in the Parts Department of a garage:
NN: "Can I have a fan belt?"
NM: "Sorry, mate, you can't because fan belts are only fan belts when they are attached to the cooling system of an engine."
Or, another in a café:
MM: "Can I have a slice of cake?"
MN: "No, but you can have a slice of non-cake, which used to be cake when it was attached to the whole cake before we sliced it up for you."
If a part is only a part -- and its nature is fully determined in the said manner when it is incorporated in a whole --, the Parts Department in the above example is surely mis-named. It should be called the "Non-Parts Department" -- or, perhaps:
|
The-Less-Than-Parts-Until-They-Are-Attached-To-The-Rest-Of-The-Vehicle Department |
Or, maybe even:
|
The-Unknown-Objects-Whose-Natures-Remain-Obscure-Until-They-Are-Later-Determined-By-Their-Attachment-To-Another-Something-Or-Other-That-Is-Itself-Indeterminate-This-Side-Of-The-Aforementioned-Union-Into-A-New-Whole Department |
Interested readers can now join in and dream up their own 'Dialectical Menu', say, for the 'Wholist-café' mentioned earlier.
It could be objected that fan belts and the like are what they are because they have been designed to fit cars, and that it is this intended role that makes them parts of the wholes they later join. But, this would make the part/whole relation impossibly vague, for in that case we would not know what was part and what was whole -- or how they were connected -- until some intention or other had been ascertained. And that difficulty would apply to the designers, too. How could they form an intention to design this or that part if they could not independently identify it first?
Worse still, this new twist might have untoward teleological implications for the parts of plants and animals, to say nothing of the rest of the Universe. Was the Sun intended to warm the earth and keep it in orbit? Are the stars there to provide gainful employment for Astrologers?22
In addition, consider cases where objects retain their identity ('designed' or not) even though they feature in a temporary/semi-permanent whole for which they were not actually 'intended'. Examples here would include instances where, say, ordinary tools (such as hammers) are used in non-standard ways -- to prop open doors, deter a rioting Policeman, or smash the windows on buses carrying scabs. Or, where a house brick might be used to weigh some papers down, frighten some more scabs, or 're-configure' a group of Nazis. In the latter case, the brick clearly remains a brick throughout; the fact that it won't lose any of its usual properties if it enters into, say, a new brick/damaged Nazi whole will be one of the reasons why it would be recommended to that end. Are Nazis any more scum-like (or brick-like) when they are in a new Nazi/brick whole than they were before? Would this brick be more of a brick when lobbed at a scab than it would be if it were thrown at the BNP? Does the said scab get a similar 'wholistic promotion' because the brick knocks him out? If parts and wholes are entirely determined (by means of "internal relations") in the way specified, all or most of these would be the case.
It could be argued once more that the above are not good counterexamples since the items in question were not designed to feature in such systematic wholes, nor do they assume wider functional roles as working units in their old or new guises. But, we have been here already. A response like this would rule out one or more of the few positive examples that Rees and other DM-fans themselves use. Moreover, it would still fail to account for the altered roles that systematically-functioning items often undergo as a result of inter-systemic exchange -- even while they retain their 'identity'.
Consider, for instance, a seat from an old car; it could still be used (when separated from that car) as a seat in a house, or as an ornament (but only because it is a seat), or as a display in a museum, or as part of a barricade, still serving as a seat for the barricaders. If the properties of parts actually changed as a result of their separation from the wholes they were 'meant' to fit (as this 'theory' implies they should) a seat would no longer be of any use in such new surroundings.
And, we do not have to think up weird and wonderful counter-examples taken from human interaction; consider cases where animals commandeer parts taken from other animals and use them in the same or nearly the same way as their former owners. For example, Hermit Crabs use the shells of other sea creatures as protection. Is such a shell more or less of a shell in this new ensemble? The same question, it seems, can be asked about octopodia. [Film here.]
What about holes in the ground (or in trees) used as 'homes' successively occupied by rabbits, foxes, moles, badgers, and assorted birds? Does a hole, therefore, become "more" of a hole whole when it is part of, say, a new mole hole whole than when it was part of a former vole hole whole? Indeed, does a mole or a vole become more or less of a mole or a vole whole in a new mole or vole hole whole?
Think, too, of wool and feathers gathered by birds to line their nests, used for warmth and padding, and so on. Again, consider the way that human beings use animal skins to keep warm, employing the latter in the same way their former owners used them. Does wool, for example, become more of an insulator when it forms part of a new child/pullover whole than when it was on the original sheep? Does it become more woollen when used as part of a scarf/worker ensemble?
What about the medical use of animal parts in human bodies? Xenotransplantation would be a non-starter if parts and wholes were "internally related" as DM-theorists would have us believe.
Dialectical Medicine And Spare Part Surgery
Admittedly, Sean Sayers's point gains whatever strength it has from a consideration of organic wholes. If Wholism can be shown to be defective here, DM-theorists would no longer have any good reason to advocate it anywhere else.
To that end -- and in addition to the examples given in the previous paragraphs -- consider cases where organic compounds retain their properties in new surroundings (or wholes): for instance, when blood and bone are used as fertiliser. The only reason such things are used in these new roles is because of the properties they have. No one would use blood in such a way if it ceased to possess all those properties once it had been put on the ground.
Similarly, think of the way we use certain organic chemicals to fulfil different tasks -- for instance, the same type of plastic can be used to wrap things, isolate or insulate them, burn or kill things. Other examples include artificial sources of insulin (from bacteria or from yeast), hormones, clotting factors (the use of Chinese Hamster Ovaries (CHO), for example), stem cells, and cell culture in general to help treat human beings (or, indeed, other organisms). The latest example of this use of medical technology (i.e., November 2008) is just another reminder that this is an empirical, not a logical issue: the growth of a woman's trachea from her own stem cells to replace a diseased wind pipe (obviating the need to use tissue rejection medication). None of this would be possible if the entire nature of the part was determined by the whole.
In addition, what about complex organic entities that seem to preserve their identity and all their properties in new contexts? For example, if an organ is kept alive outside the body on a machine, or in a freezer, not only is it still the same organ, it can be used as such in another body. Skin remains skin when grafted onto a new area of the same body, or the same area of a new body, or even a different area of a foreign body. It does not cease to be skin in between graftings. Similarly, if blood is transfused it does not cease to be blood.22a
In this connection, an argument George Moore used against Holism nearly a hundred years ago seems apt:
"…[I]f an arm be cut off from the human body, we still call it an arm. Yet an arm, when it is a part of the body, undoubtedly differs from a dead arm: and hence we may easily be led to say 'The arm which is a part of the body would not be what it is, if it were not such a part'…. But, in fact, the dead arm never was a part of the body; it is only partially identical with the living arm. Those parts [i.e., properties] of it which are identical with parts of the living arm are exactly the same, whether they belong to the body or not…. On the other hand, those properties which are possessed by the living, and not by the dead, arm, do not exist in a changed form in the latter: they simply do not exist there at all. By causal necessity their existence depends on their having that relation to the other parts of the body which we express by saying that they form part of it. Yet, most certainly, if they ever did not form part of the body, they would be exactly what they are when they do." [Moore (1959), pp.34-35; quoted in Hylton (1990), p.122.]
Hylton goes on to point out that:
"The implication of the last sentence is that if, in violation of causal necessity, a living arm could survive in isolation from the body, i.e., all its properties could continue to exist…, then it would be, in isolation from the body, exactly what it was when attached to the body. Causal dependence, Moore is saying, is not the sort of constitutive relation which the Idealists had sought, yet causal dependence is all we need in order to give an account of what the Idealists would have called an organic unity.
"The analysis just quoted is, it seems to me, by far the strongest argument that Moore has against internal relations -- it enables him to claim that they are simply unnecessary to account for the facts." [Hylton (1990), p.122.]
This point can be developed further. Consider again the facility we currently have for transplanting organs or re-attaching limbs (etc.). In such cases, few would want to say that a kidney belonging to, say, donor NN in recipient NM's body was no longer a kidney, or that it ceased to be one in the few hours it was outside the latter's body if stored, for instance, in a fridge. When attached to the new body, a whole new range of causal interactions kick in (many of which doctors not only now understand, but can manipulate, prevent, speed up or slow down -- they could hardly do this if these links were in some way logical). If handled in the right way, the new organ will function just like the old one for many years.
[DL = Dialectical Logic.]
However, if the entire nature of the part is determined by its "internal relation" to the whole, for instance, medical staff would no longer need to go to the trouble of tissue-typing donors and recipients. They would merely refer the anxious patients and/or their relatives to textbooks on DL, throw in a couple of references to "internal relations", and the latter would soon come to appreciate the logical connection that exists between their loved one's organs and the rest of his/her body, as well as the analogous relation that holds between a potential donor's organs and his/her body. Such relatives would no doubt then agree that organ donation is a non-starter because kidney K in donor NN's body ceases to be a kidney when removed and/or transplanted into anyone else's body, and let the poor sod die.
The fact that health workers do not do this (and are right not to so do) shows that the connection between an organism and its parts is not logical (in the DM-sense), but causal -- and that we all know it.23
Of course, the case for DM-style Wholism has not been strengthened by the news that scientists feel they are now on the brink of fitting whole artificial hearts into human chests. [On that, see here.] Is such a heart a heart before or after it is fitted? Admittedly, this project has still to be tested, but scientists would not bother doing that if there was an 'internal' link between a heart and the body of its owner/recipient; they'd simply ring up their local Hegelian Idealist (or their poor cousins, 'Materialist Dialecticians') for advice, or give up.
Indeed, once this entire topic is examined more closely its ridiculous consequences become increasingly apparent. If it were true that:
"…the entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts" [Rees (1998), p.5. Emphasis added.]
then medical or biological intervention would be viewed in a completely new light. For example, if the "entire" nature of a bodily part were determined by the "internal relations" it enjoyed with the other parts and with the whole of which it is a part, then any alteration to one part of a given body would automatically change all its other parts. There does not seem to be any other way of interpreting the above passage that avoids this crazy conclusion.
Does this mean, therefore, that whenever someone has a haircut -- or whenever they trim their toenails -- their brain, for example, ceases to be a brain? But, this should happen if the "entire" nature of a brain is determined by its relation to each and every other part of the body, including hairs on heads and nails on toes. If, on the other hand, we admit that a brain remains a brain either side of a trip to the barbers -- or a visit to the Chiropodists -- then the relation this organ has to the hairs and nails of whatever body they are all attached to determines neither its "entire" nature nor theirs.
[The "relatively important connection" defence (should anyone want to use it) was defused here.]
Of course, it could be objected that this challenge to DM-Wholism relies on a caricature of that theory, since no dialectician in her right mind would admit that minor changes like this have such profound implications.
Maybe not, but in that case, G1 will need to be abandoned or modified, since it clearly implies this.
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
And yet, if we consider more significant changes, the same problems arise. So, does a brain cease to be a brain if a patient's leg is amputated? What if a kidney is removed, or that patient is put on a dialysis machine? Does a brain cease to be a brain if an artificial heart is fitted, or the same unfortunate patient is put on a heart-lung machine for weeks or even months?
Now, these considerations do not present problems for consistent materialists who reject "internal relations" (a bogus notion invented by Idealists), but they do for adherents of Dialectical Mysticism.
[LOI = Law of Identity; LOC = Law of Non-Contradiction.]
We needn't labour the point; the problems we are continually facing with DM-theorists' attempts to outline their own theory arise from one source alone: (1) their reliance on the defective 'logic' Hegel inflicted on humanity and (2) their misconstrual of complex social rules we have for the use of certain words (i.e., those connected with the LOI, motion, the LOC, and now here, with the part/whole relation), as if they expressed substantive truths about the world.24
In short, dialecticians are habitual fetishisers of language -- just like traditional metaphysicians.
As both Parts of Essay Eleven have shown, the "Totality" and the part/whole relation have yet to be given a clear exposition by DM-theorists -- or one that looks even vaguely coherent.
We now know much of what the "Totality" isn't, but nothing of what it is. In that case, the allegation made at the beginning of Part One of this Essay (that the DM-"Totality" may be understood only by means of its own via negativa) looks sound. This is not the least bit surprising given the mystical source of this way of looking at nature.
Hence, as things now stand, the "Totality" appears to be so contradictory, its 'border fence' so full of genuine holes, that it might include -- for all we know, or for all DM-theorists themselves know -- the complete Hindu pantheon, all the Norse gods, the departed spirits of the entire Apache nation, and possibly even the Evil One Himself.
Figure Two: Satan -- In Or Out?
Why, it might even contain the 'real' Hamlet...
Figure Three: DM -- Tragedy Into Farce?
|
"There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out." [Hamlet, 2. 2] |
1. This also appears to be what Marx was trying to say:
"A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being. A being which is not itself an object for a third being has no being for its object, i.e., it has no objective relationships and its existence is not objective.
"A non-objective being is a non-being….
"A being which is not the object of another being therefore presupposes that no objective being exists." [Marx (1975b), p.390.]
Which is a rather more Hegelian way of making largely the same point.
Incidentally, it's worth pointing out that Aristotle also accepted something similar to this principle (that the whole is not the mere sum of the parts):
"In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something beside the parts...." [Aristotle (1984b), p.1650. I have used the on-line version, here.]
This gives the lie, I think, to comments like this:
"According to formal logic, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts." [Woods and Grant (1995), p.57.]
A "beside" is not an "equal to". Readers will note, too, that Woods and Grant do not cite a single logic text in support of their contention. Indeed, as we will see in later re-writes of this Essay, Hegel's Wholism is partly dependant on Aristotle's.
Nevertheless, John Rees is not the only dialectician who makes comments along these lines. Here are the thoughts of a card-carrying Stalinist, Sheptulin:
"When we consider a phenomenon from the point of view of its content it appears as a whole, as a totality of all the elements and aspects that make it up and of all their interactions. It is through this totality that content relates to form....
"[The content of a part], however, is conditioned not only by their specific nature, but also by the general nature of the whole. For this reason they play their specific roles not by themselves but as parts of the whole. On the other hand, the general nature of the whole...depends on the specific nature of the parts that make it up....
"The interconnection of the whole and part, expressed in the dependence of the quality of the whole on the specific nature of its component parts, on the one hand, and the qualities of the parts on the specific nature of the whole, on the other, results from the interconnection between parts within the whole, this interconnection constituting the structure of the whole....
"...[T]he properties of the elements depends on the structure of the whole they make up, whereas the structure of the whole depends on its constituent elements, their nature and quantity. In other words, the elements of an object and the structure of this object (the manner of connection of the elements) are necessarily interdependent and constitute a dialectical unity." [Sheptulin (1978), pp.227-31.]
And here is another, Cornforth:
"The last dogmatic assumption of [mechanical materialism] to be mentioned is that each of the things or particles, whose interactions are said to make up the totality of events in the universe, has its own fixed nature quite independent of everything else....
"Proceeding from this assumption it follows that all relations between things are merely external relations. That is to say, things enter into various relationships one with another, but these relationships are accidental and make no difference to the nature of the things related.
"And regarding each thing as a separate unit entering into external relations with other things, it further follows that [mechanical materialism] regards the whole as no more that the sum of its separate parts....
"Not one of these assumptions is correct. Nothing exists or can exist in splendid isolation, separate from its conditions of existence, independent of its relationships with other things.... The very nature of a thing is modified and transformed by its relationships with other things. When things enter into such relationships that they become parts of a whole, the whole cannot be regarded as nothing more than the sum of the parts.... [The] mutual relations which the parts enter into in constituting the whole modify their own properties, so that while it might be said that the whole is determined by the parts it may equally be said that the parts are determined by the whole." [Cornforth (1976), pp.46-47.]
The fact that things in general exist in wholes, of a loose or even of a tightly organised sort, in no way shows that there are "internal relations" between things, or even that the phrases "internal relation" and "external relation" make any sense at all. Cornforth has imported these terms-of-art from Idealism and traditional Philosophy, subjected them to no sort of interrogation, and has nonetheless imposed his own 'meaning' on them. [More on this later (and in Essay Three Part Three).]
It's also worth pointing out here that while Cornforth takes a dig at "mechanical materialism" for its dogmatism, he is quite happy to inflict a few dogmatic ideas of his own on reality. So, for instance, how could he possibly have known the following?
"Nothing exists or can exist in splendid isolation, separate from its conditions of existence, independent of its relationships with other things.... The very nature of a thing is modified and transformed by its relationships with other things." [Ibid.]
Of course, and with considerably more justification, Cornforth could have argued that up to now we have only encountered objects that fit this description, but he certainly cannot dogmatically assert that nothing could so exist. Nor could he legitimately conclude that any of these relations are necessarily "internal", or that the nature of anything must be transformed in the way he says. It might turn out that some of these relations are "external" (i.e., causal and mechanical), but which inflict no such radical changes on other things –- or it might not. Either way, this is surely an empirical issue.
Here are Levins and Lewontin:
"In contrast, in the dialectical world view, things are assumed from the beginning to be internally heterogeneous at every level. And this heterogeneity does not mean that the object or system is composed of fixed natural units. Rather the 'correct' division of the whole into part varies, depending upon the particular aspect of the whole that is in question.... It is a matter of simple logic that parts can be parts only when there is a whole for them to be parts of. Part implies whole, and whole implies part. Yet reductionist practice ignores this relationship, isolating parts as pre-existing units of which wholes as then composed. In the dialectical world the logical dialectical relation between part and whole is taken seriously. Part makes whole, and whole makes part....
"The first principle of a dialectical view, then, is that a whole is a relation of heterogeneous parts that have no prior independent existence as parts. The second principle, which flows from the first, is that, in general, the properties of parts have no prior alienated existence but are acquired by being parts of a particular whole. In the alienated world the intrinsic properties of alienated parts confer properties on the whole, which may in addition take on new properties which are not characteristic of the parts: the whole may be more than the sum of the parts. But the ancient debate on emergence, whether indeed wholes may have properties not intrinsic to the parts, is beside the point. The fact is that the parts have properties that are characteristic of them only as they are parts of wholes; the properties come into existence in the interactions that makes the whole. A person cannot fly by flapping her arms simultaneously. But people do fly, as a consequence of the social organisation that has created airplanes, pilots and fuel. It is not that society flies, however, but individuals in society, who have acquired a property they do not have outside society. The limitations of individual physical beings are negated by social interactions. The whole, thus, is not simply the object of interaction of the parts but is the subject of action of the parts." [Levins and Lewontin (1985), pp.272-73.]
But how can these two possibly know all this? The fact that this allegedly follows from "simple logic" (if it does) in no way justifies its imposition onto nature. Ten planet Earths added to twenty planet Earths makes thirty planet Earths, but this tells us nothing about the number of planet Earths there are in the solar system. These two authors plainly felt they could derive substantive truths about nature from what they regarded as "simple logic", but that can only mean they think logic runs the world. But, as we will see (in Essay Twelve (summary here)), this itself implies that reality is rational, and hence Mind.
Comrades who have allowed themselves to be seduced by the superficial appeal of a priori superscience of this sort will find this point not only impossible to accept, but hard to grasp, since this superscientific approach to knowledge is the way Philosophy has always been prosecuted. This approach delineates what counts as 'acceptable' theorising, just as it establishes the only 'legitimate' goals to which Philosophers should devote themselves. In contrast, the method adopted at this site makes a radical break with this tradition, as one would expect of an avowed radical.
[These comments follow from ideas outlined in Essay Two, Essay Three Part One and Essay Twelve (summary here). They will be spelt-out a little more clearly in Note 23, below.]
We will return to Levins and Lewontin later.
Alexander Spirkin had this to say (in perhaps one of the best dialectical summaries I have yet seen of these ideas -- so Trotskyist readers should avert their eyes at this point since this part of the "wooden and dogmatic" Stalinist 'dialectic' is much clearer than anything they have yet managed to cobble together):
"Nothing in the world stands by itself. Every object is a link in an endless chain and is thus connected with all the other links. And this chain of the universe has never been broken; it unites all objects and processes in a single whole and thus has a universal character. We cannot move so much as our little finger without 'disturbing' the whole universe. The life of the universe, its history lies in an infinite web of connections....
"Connections exist not only between objects within the framework of a given form of motion of matter, but also between all its forms, woven together in a kind of infinitely huge skein. Our consciousness can contain no idea that does not express either imagined or real connections, and in its turn this idea must of necessity be a link in a chain of other ideas and conceptions....
"A system is an internally organised whole where elements are so intimately connected that they operate as one in relation to external conditions and other systems. An element may be defined as the minimal unit performing a definite function in the whole. Systems may be either simple or complex. A complex system is one whose elements may also be regarded as systems or subsystems.
"All things, properties and relations that strike us as something independent are essentially parts of some system, which in its turn is part of an even bigger system, and so on ad infinitum. For example, the whole of world civilisation is no more than a large and extremely complex self-developing system, which comprises other systems of varying degrees of complexity.
"Every system is something whole. So anything that corresponds to the demands of unity and stability -- an atom, a molecule, a crystal, the solar system, the organism, society, a work of art, a theory -- may be regarded as a system. Every system forms a whole, but not every whole is a system.
"We usually call the parts of a system its elements. If in investigating a system we wish to identify its elements we should regard them as elementary objects in themselves. Once we have established them as something relatively indivisible in one system, elements may be regarded in their turn as systems (or subsystems), consisting of elements of a different order, and so on.
"...Structure is the type of connection between the elements of a whole. It has its own internal dialectic. Wholeness must be composed in a certain way, its parts are always related to the whole. It is not simply a whole but a whole with internal divisions. Structure is a composite whole, or an internally organised content.
"But structure is not enough to make a system. A system consists of something more than structure: it is a structure with certain properties. When a structure is understood from the standpoint of its properties, it is understood as a system. We speak of the 'solar system' and not the solar structure. Structure is an extremely abstract and formal concept....
"We call something a whole that embraces all its parts in such a way as to create a unity.
"The category of part expresses the object not in itself but as something in relation to what it is a part of, to that in which it realises its potentials and prospects. For example, an organ is part of an organism taken as a whole. Consequently, the categories of whole and part express a relationship between objects in which one object, being a complex and integral whole, is a unity of other objects which form its parts. A part is subject to the influence of the whole, which is present, as it were, in all its parts. Every part feels the influence of the whole, which seems to permeate the parts and exist in them. Thus, in a tragic context even a joke becomes tragic; a free atom is distinctly different from an atom that forms part of a molecule or a crystal; a word taken out of context loses much or all of its meaning.
"At the same time the parts have an influence on the whole. The organism is a whole and dysfunction of one of its organs leads to disbalance of the whole. For example, against a background of rational thinking an obsessive idea may sometimes have a very substantial effect on the general condition of the individual.
"The categories of whole and part are relative; they have meaning only in relation to each other. The whole exists thanks to its parts and in them. The parts, in their turn, cannot exist by themselves. No matter how small a particle we name, it is something whole and at the same time a part of another whole. The largest whole that we can conceive of is ultimately only a part of an infinitely greater whole. Everything in nature is a part of the universe.
"Various systems are divided into three basic types of wholeness. The simplest type is the unorganised or summative whole, an unsystematic conglomeration of objects (a herd of cattle, for example). This category also includes a mechanical grouping of heterogeneous things, for example, rock consisting of pebbles, sand, gravel, boulders, and so on.
"In such a whole the connection between the parts is external and obeys no recognisable law. We simply have a group of unsystematic formations of a purely summative character. The properties of such a whole coincide with the sum of the properties of its component parts. Moreover, when objects become part of an unorganised whole or leave such a whole, they usually undergo no qualitative change. For this type of whole the characteristic feature is the varying lifetime of its components.
"The second, more complex type of whole is the organised whole, for example, the atom, the molecule, the crystal. Such a whole may have varying degrees of organisation, depending on the peculiar features of its parts and the character of the connection between them. In an organised whole the composing elements are in a relatively stable and law-governed interrelationship. Its properties cannot be reduced to the mechanical sum of the properties of its parts. Rivers 'lose themselves' in the sea, although they are in it and it would not exist without them. Water possesses the property of being able to extinguish fire, but the parts of which it is composed, taken separately, possess quite different properties: hydrogen is itself flammable and oxygen maintains or boosts combustion. Zero in itself is nothing, but in the composition of a number its role is highly significant, and at times gigantically so, by increasing 100 into 1,000, for instance. A hydrogen atom consists of a proton and an electron. But strictly speaking, this is not true. The statement contains the same error as the phrase 'this house is built of pine'. The mass of an atom of hydrogen is not equal to the total mass of the proton and the electron. It is less than that mass because in combining into the system of the hydrogen atom the proton and the electron lose something, which escapes into space in the form of radiation.
"The third, highest and most complex type of whole is the organic whole, for example, the organism, the biological species, society, science, arts, language, and so on. The characteristic feature of the organic whole is the self-development and self-reproduction of its parts. The parts of an organism if separated from the whole organism, not only lose some of their properties but cannot even exist in the given quality that they have within the whole. The head is only a head because it is capable of thinking. And it can only think as a part not only of the organism, but also of society, history and culture.
"An organic whole is formed not (as Empedocles assumed) by joining together ready-made parts, separate organs flying around in the air, such as heads, eyes, ears, hands, legs, hair and hearts. An organic whole arises, is born, and dies together with its parts. It is an integral whole, with distinguishable parts. Sensations, perceptions, representations, concepts, memory, attention do not exist in isolation; they form the synthetic knot which we call consciousness. The elements that make up the whole possess a certain individuality and at the same time they 'work for' the whole. The whole is invisibly present, as it were, and guides the process of 'assembly' of its elements, that is to say, of its own self.
"The defining attribute of harmony is a relationship between the elements of the whole in which the development of one of them is a condition for the development of the others or vice versa. In art, harmony may be understood as a form of relationship in which each element, while retaining a relative independence, contributes greater expressiveness to the whole and, at the same time and because of this, more fully expresses its own essence. Beauty may be defined as harmony of all the parts, united by that to which they belong in such a way that nothing can be added or taken away or changed without detriment to the whole.
"The parts of a whole may have varying degrees of relative independence. In a whole, there may be parts whose excision will damage or even destroy the whole, but there may also be parts whose loss causes no organic damage. For instance, the extremities or a part of the stomach may be removed, but not the heart. The deeper and more complex the relationship between the parts, the greater is the function of the whole in relation to them and the less their relative independence.
"The various parts making up a whole may occupy by no means equal positions. Some of them are less mobile, relatively stable, others are more dynamic; some exist only for a time and are doomed soon to disappear, others have the makings of something more progressive. There are some parts without which the whole cannot be conceived and there are others without which it can carry on quite well although with some loss to itself....
"The highest form of organic whole is society and the various social formations. The general laws of the social whole determine the essence of any of its parts and the direction of its development: the part behaves in accordance with the essence of the whole.
"For scientific analysis to be able to move in the right direction, the object must constantly occupy our consciousness as something whole. When we are investigating a whole, we break it down into its parts and sort out the nature of the relation between them. We can understand a system as a whole only by discovering the nature of its parts. It is not enough to study the parts without studying the relationship between them and the whole. A person who knows only the parts does not yet know the whole. A single frame in a film can be understood only as a part of the film as a whole.
"An overabundance of particulars may obscure the whole. This is a characteristic feature of empiricism. Any singular object can be correctly understood only when it is analysed, not separately, but in its relation to the whole. Each organ is determined in its mode of operation not only by its internal structure but by the nature of the organism to which it belongs. The importance of the heart can be discovered only by considering it as part of the organism as a whole. The methodological fault characteristic of mechanistic materialism is that it understands the whole as nothing more than the sum of its parts." [Spirkin (1983), pp.82, 97-103. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
We will have occasion to return to Spirkin's intelligent discussion later.
Here, once again, are Woods and Grant:
"According to formal logic, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. On closer examination, however, this is seen not to be true. In the case of living organisms it is manifestly not the case. A rabbit cut up in a laboratory, and reduced to its constituent parts is no longer a rabbit. This fact has been grasped by the advocates of chaos theory and complexity. Whereas classical physics, with its linear systems, accepted that the whole was precisely the sum of its parts, the non-linear logic of complexity maintains the opposite proposition, in complete agreement with dialectics....
"Modern atomic theory has shown the incorrectness of this idea. While accepting that complex structures must be explained in terms of aggregates of more elementary factors, it has shown that the relations between these elements are not merely indifferent and quantitative, but dynamic and dialectical. The elementary particles which make up the atoms interact constantly, passing into each other. They are not fixed constants but are at every moment both themselves and something else at the same time. It is precisely this dynamic relationship which gives the resulting molecules their particular nature, properties and specific identity.
"In this new combination the atoms are and are not themselves. They combine in a dynamic way to produce an entirely different entity, a different relationship, which, in turn, determines the behaviour of its component parts. Thus, we are not dealing merely with a lifeless 'juxtaposition,' a mechanical aggregate, but with a process. In order to understand the nature of an entity it is therefore entirely insufficient to reduce it to its individual atomic components. It is necessary to understand its dynamic interrelations, that is, to arrive at a dialectical, not a formal, analysis....
"Life is a complex system of interactions, involving an immense number of chemical reactions which proceed continuously and rapidly. Every reaction in the heart, blood, nervous system, bones and brain interacts with every other part of the body. The workings of the simplest living body are far more complicated than the most advanced computer, permitting rapid movement, swift reactions to the slightest change in the environment, constant adjustments to changing conditions, internal and external. Here, most emphatically, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Every part of the body, every muscular and nervous reaction, depends upon all the rest. Here we have a dynamic and complex, in other words, dialectical, interrelationship which alone is capable of creating and sustaining the phenomenon we know as life....
"It is necessary to acquire a concrete understanding of the object as an integral system, not as isolated fragments; with all its necessary interconnections, not torn out of context, like a butterfly pinned to a collector's board; in its life and movement, not as something lifeless and static. Such an approach is in open conflict with the so-called 'laws' of formal logic, the most absolute expression of dogmatic thought ever conceived, representing a kind of mental rigor mortis. But nature lives and breathes, and stubbornly resists the embraces of formalistic thinking. 'A' is not equal to 'A.' Subatomic particles are and are not. Linear processes end in chaos. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Quantity changes into quality. Evolution itself is not a gradual process, but interrupted by sudden leaps and catastrophes. What can we do about it? Facts are stubborn things." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.57-60, 82-83.]
Indeed, facts are stubborn things; as we will see, they are about as unkind to DM-Wholism as the class struggle has so far been to Dialectical Trotskyism itself.
Finally, David Bohm had this to say:
"Indeed, when this interpretation is extended to field theories, not only the inter-relationships of the parts, but also their very existence is seen to flow out of the law of the whole. There is therefore nothing left of the classical scheme, in which the whole is derived from pre-existent parts related in predetermined ways. Rather, what we have is reminiscent of the relationship of whole and parts in an organism, in which each organ grows and sustains itself in a way that depends crucially on the whole." [Bohm (1984), p.x.]
It's here, perhaps, that we can see the baleful effects of far too much mysticism on the mind of a great scientist -- no wonder he went on to eulogise Uri Geller.
However, we need not labour the point, any number of DM-texts could have been quoted (several more will be below) which make similar claims.
[Q«Q = The Law of the Transformation of Quantity into Quality, and vice versa.]
1a. The idea seems to be that if the actual nature of something changes, this must be because of factors that are not merely "external" to the object or process in question. So, the mere agglomeration of objects cannot affect their nature. In order to alter the 'logical'/"essential" properties of such entities, new "internal" connections must be set up. However, it's not easy to see how these can be created by mere proximity. But what else is there in the dialectical universe that is capable of altering such 'logical'/"essential" properties?
Of course, this is where Engels's Q«Q 'Law' is supposed to come into play, since it's through the mere increase in the quantity of a certain item that novelty enters the picture. Moreover, this novelty cannot (one presumes) be predicted solely from the nature of the elements concerned, which is supposed to be what puts a block on "reductionism".
However, it's not easy to see how an "external relation" of mere quantitative increase or decrease can effect the required "internal", 'logical'/"essential" changes an object or process is supposed to undergo.
And it's little use arguing that it while might not be easy to see how this happens, the plain fact is that it does. This is because, on the basis of dialectical principles, this should not in fact be possible. If the (logical) nature of each item in the "Totality" is determined by its relation to that Whole, then the nature of any such item can only change if its "internal" relation with that Whole alters. Now, that relation with the whole, since it constitutes the logical nature of each part, cannot be one that results from of its mere position within the Whole (otherwise objects would change their nature merely by moving), nor can it be the result of other such "external" factors. This is, one presumes, why the logical nature of each part is determined by its "internal" relations with the Whole. And yet, these "internal" relations cannot themselves change. No matter what happens to an object, given these dialectical constraints, its "internal" relations with the Whole must always remain the same. In that case, nothing internal to the Whole can have its 'logical'/"essential" nature changed. Hence, a mere increase in number, or the concatenation of items in close proximity, cannot alter the nature of an object or process inside the "Totality".
On the other hand, objects and processes plainly change, but given such dialectical constraints, it is difficult to see how they could possibly do this. [This objection will be explored in more detail in Essay Three Part Three. See also Note 3, below. We have already seen how DM cannot cope with change, here.]
2. As noted above (and in the main body of this Essay), DM-fans appeal to Engels's shaky Q«Q 'Law' here to account for the "emergence" of novelty. But, what precisely is part, and what whole, here? Indeed, what is quantity and what is quality? Is the quantity the number, weight, size or age of the parts --, or the energy fed into them? Or is energy itself one of the parts? [How could this be so if energy is not a 'substance'?] And is the quality here that of the whole, or that of the parts, or something else?
"Emergence" itself will be discussed in detail in Essay Three Part Three; however, this is what Woods and Grant had to say:
"Life itself arises from a qualitative leap from inorganic to organic matter. The explanation of the processes by which this occurred constitutes one of the most important and exciting problems of present-day science....
"...Moreover, the task of deciphering the structure of a protein molecule itself was incredibly difficult. The properties of each protein depends on its exact relation to each amino acid on the molecular chain. Here too, quantity determines quality....
"The dialectical relationship between whole and part manifests itself in the different levels of complexity in nature, reflected in the different branches of science.
"a) Atomic interactions and the laws of chemistry determine the laws of biochemistry, but life itself is qualitatively different.
"b) The laws of biochemistry 'explain' all the processes of human interaction with the environment. And yet human activity and thought are qualitatively different to the biological processes that constitute them.
"c) Each individual person, in turn, is a product of his or her physical and environmental development. Yet the complex interactions of the sum total of individuals which make up a society are also qualitatively different. In each of these cases the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and obeys different laws.
"In the last analysis, all human existence and activity is based on the laws of motion of atoms. We are part of a material universe, which is a continuous whole, functioning according to its inherent laws. And yet, when we pass from a) to c), we make a series of qualitative leaps, and must operate with different laws at different 'levels'; c) is based upon b) and b) is based upon a), but nobody in their right mind would seek to explain the complex movements in human society in terms of atomic forces. For the same reason, it is absolutely futile to reduce the problem of crime to the laws of genetics." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.59-60.]
But, what if it turns out that it is a property of the parts (which they mention) that they interact this way when combined, allowing for the reduction of certain properties to those of their parts? This would make such parts more like pieces in a dynamic sort of jig-saw puzzle. On their own, each piece would thus carry only a part of the overall picture, which may only be seen when they are combined with other parts. In this way, the final product will arise from the parts merely added together, with the new whole now a sum of such parts, and no more than that. This would account for the phenomena just as well as the 'theory' Woods and Grant tried to sell us, and it does so without an ounce of mysticism (i.e., in that it would not be a mystery where the final picture/properties come from, as it is in the 'theory' these two have swallowed).
This alternative (to Woods and Grant's 'theory') may or may not be correct -- I pass no judgement on it --, but, the imposition of an a priori schema onto reality, and one based on the mystical musings of a Hermetic Idealist, backed up by an ill-defined and threadbare 'Law' (i.e., Q«Q), sits rather badly with the constant refrain that this is something dialecticians never do.
Attentive readers will note, too, how, in the last paragraph of the above passage, the "quantities" to which Woods and Grant refer have now morphed into "levels". This, of course, means that Engels should have said:
"Qualitative changes take place not just by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy), but by going up or down one level, too. Hence it is possible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion." [Edited misquotation of Engels (1954), p.63.]
Naturally, that makes this 'Law' eminently Ideal, since this sort of move between levels (resulting in an alleged qualitative transformation) cannot be consequent on a material, quantitative change anywhere else in the system. Plainly, magnification is not the addition of energy. [More on this in Essay Seven.]
2a. Those tempted to argue that the opposite of the "Totality" is "Nothing" (or even "nothing") should only be allowed to get away with that superscientific, linguistic dodge when they have told us what the "Totality" actually is. As we saw in Essay Eleven Part One, we are still in the dark on that score.
Anyway, as we will see in Essay Twelve Parts Five and Six, "Nothing" (or, indeed, "nothing") cannot act as the name of anything, let alone that of the 'opposite' of 'Everything'.
2b. Of course, some dialecticians might choose to agree with Engels:
"For that matter, Herr Dühring will never succeed in conceiving real infinity without contradiction. Infinity is a contradiction, and is full of contradictions. From the outset it is a contradiction that an infinity is composed of nothing but finites, and yet this is the case. The limitedness of the material world leads no less to contradictions than its unlimitedness, and every attempt to get over these contradictions leads, as we have seen, to new and worse contradictions. It is just because infinity is a contradiction that it is an infinite process, unrolling endlessly in time and in space. The removal of the contradiction would be the end of infinity. Hegel saw this quite correctly, and for that reason treated with well-merited contempt the gentlemen who subtilised over this contradiction." [Engels (1976), pp.63-64. Bold emphasis added.]
But, exactly why "infinity" is contradictory Engels kept to himself. Or rather, why it is a contradiction that an infinite 'collection' composed of 'finites' is contradictory. Of course, it would be if it were the case that -- or it had been defined that -- infinite 'collections' are composed only of 'infinites', but who would do such an odd thing? [Even then, it would only be an inconsistency.] However, beyond this weak argument, Engels had nothing else to say in support of his claim that infinity is 'contradictory'.
It could be argued that this follows from one of the Antinomies of Pure Reason found in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, namely, the first Antinomy: The world has a beginning in time, etc., but it has no such beginning. [Kant (1998), pp.467-75; 517-30.] This 'contradiction' appears to be based on Kant's rejection of Baumgarten's definition (I am relying on the editorial comments in Kant (1998), by Guyer and Wood, here; cf., p.743 of same), that is, that an magnitude is infinite "if none greater than it...is possible" (p.472; A430/B458). Kant argues that no such multiplicity could be the greatest, since units can always be added to it. In that case, an infinite magnitude (and thus an infinite world) is impossible. Kant thinks he can derive a contradiction here since no such infinite series is completable, hence time cannot have stretched back to infinity -- or, presumably, such an interval would have been completed in the here and now. On the other hand, time itself cannot be bounded by a first moment in time. In that case, there could be no beginning in time -- implying that time stretches back to infinity. [I omit Kant's comments about space, and greatly compress his argument, of course; pp.470-75.] However, much of Kant's discussion is intimately connected with his view of the nature of space and time as "forms" of our capacity to experience 'appearances'.
I do not want to get bogged down in a detailed critique of Kant here; anyway, accepted notions of the infinite have undergone radical change since the work of Georg Cantor. However, it is far from clear that contemporary theorists are at all clear themselves what they mean by these new concepts of the "infinite". [On this see, Moore (2001), and my comments here.] There is a useful discussion of Hegel's notion of the infinite in Houlgate (2006), pp.394-435. Even so, as noted above, Engels stated reason for regarding the infinite as 'contradictory' is defective. [I will say much more about such matters in Essay Twelve, Part Five.]
To be sure, Engels considers several of Dühring's arguments (and those of Kant), and concludes that one or more of them are "contradictory", but it is far from clear whether Engels himself is asserting these things, or merely exercising a few rhetorical flourishes of his own. [Cf., Engels (1976), pp.57-69.]
3. It could be objected here that as T's parts enter into new relations with one another, T would ipso facto alter, becoming, say, T'. This process could continue indefinitely as the "Totality" itself changes. If so, the parts of a "Totality" could become more than they once were in a new, perhaps evolved, "Totality".
However, this answer falls foul of the inability of DM-theorists to say what their "Totality" actually is. [This problem was discussed in detail in Part One of this Essay, and it is also summarised here.]
Nevertheless, and independently of that, this volunteered DM-response is difficult to square with G1:
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
If the entire nature of a part is indeed so determined, then it is not easy to see how it could change, or enter into new relations with other parts and with the whole -- all of which are likewise so constrained.
If any part, say pi, is locked in place by its relation with all the other parts, Pn (where Pn is the set of all the parts of T not including pi), and with T -- hence presumably with itself --, and the latter are equally so constrained, change would appear to be impossible. There does not seem to be any way that novelty could emerge.
In Note Two above, we have already seen that an appeal to Engels's Q«Q 'Law' is to no avail here. However, if novelty were to 'emerge' this way, in line with this 'Law', then the entire nature of any new part would not be determined by its relation with other parts and with the whole --, unless, that is, there were a law of some sort that initiated this. But, in that case, such a 'law' would allow for a reduction of these new properties to the properties of the assembled parts. [This argument will be more fully developed in Essay Three Part Three.]
Hence, it seems that if change is to be accommodated, G1 will need to be abandoned or modified. In either event, classical DM-Wholism would become unworkable.
It could be objected here that the above responses are misguided since it is quite clear that dialecticians believe the nature of any part is determined by a changing, developing "Totality", which means that the nature of each and every part, even if entirely so constituted, must change accordingly.
But, if that is so, then change to parts cannot be internally-driven (as we have been led to believe), and if that in turn is so, another core DM-thesis will have been fatally-wounded. [On this, see Essay Eight Part One.]
We will also see here that the above response only works if (1) the "Totality" incorporates the non-existent past -- paradoxically preventing change from occurring(!) --, or (2) recourse is made to events and processes that either do not exist or are outside the "Totality" in order to account for things inside it, vitiating the explanatory role that this obscure entity was supposed to fulfil in the first place.
And this is quite apart from the difficulties noted here and here, in relation to the confusion in DM-circles about what exactly causes change.
It could also be argued that even if the entire nature of each part is determined by its relation to other parts and to the whole, that does not mean that all such influences are of equal significance. In that case, parts that are separated by billions of light years, say, -- or which are not relevantly related to one another -- would have vanishingly small effects on each other, which, because of that, can safely be ignored. For instance, objects on the outer fringes of the visible universe can for all intents and purposes be ignored. Or, to take another example, the changes to certain parts of an organism (such as those to its hair or toe-nails) will have no effect on the rest of that organism (which point might seem to defuse a few of the objections made here).
Now, this would be an effective response had it been made by anyone other than a DM-fan. This is because they hold that these 'influences' are not external and/or causal, but are "internal" and 'dialectical-logical'. Remoteness has no effect on this type of inter-relation as it operates between part and part, whole and part or whole and whole.
To see this, consider an analogy: suppose that NN (who lives in New York) has a husband who unfortunately dies. This would have an immediate effect on the logical/legal status of NN whether her late partner was in New Jersey or in Tokyo at the time of his death. Distance would be irrelevant in this case. To be sure, the news of the bereavement might take longer to reach the widow if her partner had passed away, say, in East Asia, but that has nothing to do with the logical/legal point being made. Plainly, separation-distance does not mean that widowhood is governed by some sort of inverse square law, so that if the said partner were twice as far away when he died, NN would now be only one quarter of the widow she would have been had he passed away in her arms.
Consider another example: suppose that the committee which controls the standards encapsulated in SI units were to alter the definition of a metre from 100 to 120 centimetres. If so, the length of a metre in distant galaxies, billions of light years away, would immediately change. There is no inverse square law at work here, either --, so the length of this (new) metre would not decrease with the square of the distance.
[The effects of Special Relativity do not enter into this since it is assumed in this example that it is we who do the measuring, not distant aliens travelling at a greater relative velocity (to us), nor on our perception of their measuring devices. Sure, there might be a Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction involved here, but that will be detected by units that do not so alter -- for if they did, the said contraction would be undetectable. And, howsoever these remote distances were measured, any change made to our definitions will have an immediate effect on whatever we determine those remote distances to be. The bottom line here is that no one imagines that the length of a metre rod is a function of separation distance, whatever else affects it.]
Hence, the system-wide implications of the adoption of "internal relations" (which makes a crazy sort of sense in Hegel's mystical Whole), cannot be defused by pretending that they are really external relations in disguise, subject to inverse square laws, and the like.
It could be objected that dialecticians have built "relative interconnectedness" into their theory, which shows that the above comments are misguided.
Sure, they might say that this is what they have done, but until they can show how a logical link is capable of varying -- or decreasing with distance, say, -- their words will remain empty.
Once more, but with respect to a different example: consider the Prime Meridian that passes through Greenwich in South East London -- all other lines of longitude are unquestionably 'internally'-related to this Meridian (I should prefer to express this differently!). But no one supposes that longitude 180o West, say, is slightly less of a longitude than 179o West, or that 5o East is more of a longitude than 10o East.
Furthermore, using an 'internal relation' that DM-fans themselves employ: suppose that capitalist C1 goes on a trip across the globe, but all the while remains the owner of her company back in Paris, France, say. In that case, would she be any less of a capitalist with each mile she travels from her home country? Are the relations of production and ownership separation-sensitive? Would her employees be more, or less, workers as a result?
Of course, no one imagines that class or economic relations can be reduced to the links between their 'parts' taken severally (if we are ever told by DM-fans what these parts are!), but it is nevertheless the case that C1 will rightly be classified as a capitalist by her legal connection with items that are interconnected by the relations of production and ownership. In that case, distance will not affect those relations, nor her, nor her employees. Taken severally or collectively, these are not governed by inverse square laws.
It could be objected that as a matter of fact inverse square laws do operate in nature, and that because of the force of gravity, for example, distant objects have a negligible effect on one another.
But, the "internal relations" in DM are not like the force of gravity -- which is manifestly an external cause --, so it cannot be used in such an "internalist" way. [This is especially so if gravity is no longer viewed as a force. On this see Essay Eight Part Two.]
Once more, it could be argued that "internal relations" are unlike the logical relations outlined above (concerning the goings on between married partners, varying metric lengths and peripatetic capitalists); so, the above comments are irrelevant.
To be sure, the nature of the interconnections postulated by dialecticians is impenetrably obscure (as we discovered in Part One of this Essay, and as we will see in Essay Three Part Three), but that is precisely the problem. Until we are told what their nature is, not even DM-fans will know if -- or even how -- their commitment to "internal relations" affects these assumed drop-off rates.
Finally, it could be objected that DM-theorists do not claim that everything in the universe is internally-connected. Unfortunately, that seems to fly in the face of what Lenin had to say:
"Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts…. This aphorism should be expressed more popularly, without the word dialectics: approximately as follows: In the alternation, reciprocal dependence of all notions, in the identity of their opposites, in the transitions of one notion into another, in the eternal change, movement of notions, Hegel brilliantly divined precisely this relation of things to nature…. [W]hat constitutes dialectics?…. [M]utual dependence of notions all without exception…. Every notion occurs in a certain relation, in a certain connection with all the others." [Lenin (1961), pp.196-97. Bold emphasis alone added.]
This seems pretty clear; Hegel very helpfully 'divined' these 'internal relations' for us.
One thing is for certain: you will search long and hard through the highly repetitious writings of dialecticians and to no avail. You will find not one single comment on this problem. Now, that fact is internally-connected to the profound obscurity of the concepts they have inherited from Hegel. And this internal confusion will itself only dissipate if these Hermetic ideas are ditched.
4. One way to avoid this conclusion would be to argue that G1 does not have the implications that have been imputed to it in this Essay:
G1: The entire nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole.
Hence, it could be maintained that whatever G1 says, DM is not committed to the idea that the entire nature of a whole is determined by any of its parts, nor vice versa. In that case, a whole could be compared each side of the amalgamation of one or more extra parts in order to decide if it had in fact changed; this would not be something we could establish in advance. This modified view might imply the following:
G1a: The nature of a part is determined by its relation with the other parts and with the whole, and vice versa.
Nevertheless, this 'modified view' would be worse than useless since it would be unclear to what extent part and whole influenced one another. If any aspect of a part was not constrained by its relations with other parts, then that aspect could, for all intents and purposes, exist in splendid isolation (at least as far as its interconnections were concerned).
Let us suppose that there exists aspect A1 (of part P1), the nature of which was not affected by the other sub-parts of P1 or by anything else. It would seem therefore that in this respect at least A1 is hermetically sealed-off from the rest of nature. Are DM-theorists prepared to go down this route to bail their theory out? But, if we allow one exception to G1, why not two..., why not billions? And then what is to stop this option collapsing into CAR?
[CAR = Cartesian Reductionism.]
And all this is quite apart from the fact that wholes do not exist except they are made of their parts. So it is not too clear from where this additional source of novelty is supposed to have originated.
Just as it is inconsistent with this declaration of Lenin's:
"[T]he individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…. [Lenin (1961), p.359. Emphases in the original.]
"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:] [I]nternally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [E]ach thing (phenomenon, process, etc.)…is connected with every other…. [Ibid., p.221. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"Nowadays, the ideas of development…as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegel…[encompass a process] that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis ('negation of negation'), a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line; -- a development by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions; -- 'breaks in continuity'; the transformation of quantity into quality; -- the inner impulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given society; -- the interdependence and the closest, indissoluble connection of all sides of every phenomenon…, a connection that provides a uniform, law-governed, universal process of motion -– such are some of the features of dialectics as a richer (than the ordinary) doctrine of development." [Lenin (1914), pp.12-13. Bold emphasis added.]
"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world….
"[I]f we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity…." [Lenin (1921), pp.92-93. Bold emphases added.]
That looks pretty maximalist.
Moreover, and in relation to this, we have seen (in Note 1a and Note Two) that Engels's rickety Q«Q 'Law' is not much help here, either. And e
ven if it were, the alleged 'emergent' novelty would clearly have been produced by the parts so assembled; it would not 'drop in from the skies', as it were. Hence, even if Q«Q were a reliable 'Law', and even though dialecticians might claim to be able to use it to show how certain aspects of a whole had indeed been determined by its parts (but not the entire nature of that whole), it would still not be possible for them to show that the whole was more than the sum of the assembled parts, or that the qualities they claim had mysteriously 'emerged' as a result were not reducible to those parts. [On that, see below.]
Some might want to argue here that this entire line of thought is thoroughly misconceived, since dialecticians hold that as things develop, there is a "Unity in Difference", or an "Identity in Difference" [IED], at work in such changes. This means that although an object might change, there would be a clear line of continuity between its different stages so that it could be said to be the 'same object' either side of such alterations --, which object will have been transformed as a result.
Unfortunately, this runs foul of many other things that DM-classicists have also said.
Here is what Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov, Bukharin and Trotsky argued:
"Dialectics…prevails throughout nature…. [T]he motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites…determines the life of nature." [Engels (1954), p.211. Bold emphases added.]
"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:]…internally contradictory tendencies…in this [totality]…and unity of opposites…. [E]ach thing…is connected with every other…[this involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other ….
"In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics….
"The splitting of the whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts…is the essence (one of the 'essentials', one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristic features) of dialectics….
"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites.
"…The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22; 357-58. Emphases in the original.]
"According to Hegel, dialectics is the principle of all life…. [M]an has two qualities: first being alive, and secondly of also being mortal. But on closer examination it turns out that life itself bears in itself the germ of death, and that in general any phenomenon is contradictory, in the sense that it develops out of itself the elements which, sooner or later, will put an end to its existence and will transform it into its opposite. Everything flows, everything changes; and there is no force capable of holding back this constant flux, or arresting its eternal movement. There is no force capable of resisting the dialectics of phenomena….
"At a particular moment a moving body is at a particular spot, but at the same time it is outside it as well because, if it were only in that spot, it would, at least for that moment, become motionless. Every motion is a dialectical process, a living contradiction, and as there is not a single phenomenon of nature in explaining which we do not have in the long run to appeal to motion, we have to agree with Hegel, who said that dialectics is the soul of any scientific cognition. And this applies not only to cognition of nature….
"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite….
"When you apply the dialectical method to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change eternally in consequence of the 'higher development of their content'….
"In the words of Engels, Hegel's merit consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin and destruction…." [Plekhanov (1956), pp.74-77, 88, 163. Bold emphases alone added.]
"'All is flux, nothing is stationary,' said the ancient thinker from Ephesus. The combinations we call objects are in a state of constant and more or less rapid change….
"…[M]otion does not only make objects…, it is constantly changing them. It is for this reason that the logic of motion (the 'logic of contradiction') never relinquishes its rights over the objects created by motion….
"With Hegel, thinking progresses in consequence of the uncovering and resolution of the contradictions inclosed (sic) in concepts. According to our doctrine…the contradictions embodied in concepts are merely reflections, translations into the language of thought, of those contradictions that are embodied in phenomena owing to the contradictory nature of their common basis, i.e., motion….
"…[T]he overwhelming majority of phenomena that come within the compass of the natural and the social sciences are among 'objects' of this kind…[:ones in which there is a coincidence of opposites]. Diametrically opposite phenomena are united in the simplest globule of protoplasm, and the life of the most undeveloped society…." [Plekhanov (1908), pp.93-96. Bold emphases alone added.]
"There are two possible ways of regarding everything in nature and in society; in the eyes of some everything is constantly at rest, immutable…. To others, however, it appears that there is nothing unchanging in nature or in society…. This second point of view is called the dynamic point of view…; the former point of view is called static. Which is the correct position?... Even a hasty glance at nature will at once convince us that there is nothing immutable about it….
"Evidently…there is nothing immutable and rigid in the universe…. Matter in motion: such is the stuff of this world…. This dynamic point of view is also called the dialectic (sic) point of view….
"The world being in constant motion, we must consider phenomena in their mutual relations, and not as isolated cases. All portions of the universe are actually related to each other and exert an influence on each other…. All things in the universe are connected with an indissoluble bond; nothing exists as an isolated object, independent of its surroundings….
"In the first place, therefore, the dialectic (sic) method of interpretation demands that all phenomena be considered in their indissoluble relations; in the second place, that they be considered in their state of motion….
"Since everything in the world is in a state of change, and indissolubly connected with everything else, we must draw the necessary conclusions for the social sciences….
"The basis of all things is therefore the law of change, the law of constant motion. Two philosophers particularly (the ancient Heraclitus and the modern Hegel…) formulated this law of change, but they did not stop there. They also set up the question of the manner in which the process operates. The answer they discovered was that changes are produced by constant internal contradictions, internal struggle. Thus, Heraclitus declared: 'Conflict is the mother of all happenings,' while Hegel said: 'Contradiction is the power that moves things.'
"There is no doubt of the correctness of this law. A moment's thought will convince the reader. For, if there were no conflict, no clash of forces, the world would be in a condition of unchanging stable equilibrium, i.e., complete and absolute permanence, a state of rest precluding all motion…. As we already know that all things change, all things are 'in flux', it is certain that such an absolute state of rest cannot possibly exist. We must therefore reject a condition in which there is no 'contradiction between opposing and colliding forces' no disturbance of equilibrium, but only an absolute immutability….
"In other words, the world consists of forces, acting many ways, opposing each other. These forces are balanced for a moment in exceptional cases only. We then have a state of 'rest', i.e., their actual 'conflict' is concealed. But if we change only one of these forces, immediately the 'internal contradictions' will be revealed, equilibrium will be disturbed, and if a new equilibrium is again established, it will be on a new basis, i.e., with a new combination of forces, etc. It follows that the 'conflict,' the 'contradiction,' i.e., the antagonism of forces acting in various directions, determines the motion of the system…." [Bukharin (1925), pp.63-67, 72-74. Bold emphases added.]
"[A]ll bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour, etc. They are never equal to themselves…. [E]verything is always changing." [Trotsky (1971), pp.64-65. Bold emphases added.]
We saw in Essay Eleven Part One, that these comments appeared to endorse a maximalist view of change. If everything and every property is in constant flux, and this in turn is the result of the countless UOs at work everywhere, and if everything is "never equal to itself", the IED ploy can gain no grip. On this view, at no time would an object be equal to itself so that it could truly be said that is was "the same and not the same". If nothing is ever equal to itself, then of any object or process it could only ever be said that it was "not the same and not the same". On the other hand, if it could be said that an object or process was "the same and not the same", then it would not be true to say that it was "never equal to itself".
In short: it can never truly be said that anything is a UO in constant flux.
[UO = Unity of Opposites; IED = Identity in Difference (i.e., 'Improvised Explanatory Device').]
In Essay Six, I argued as follows:
Nevertheless, let us suppose that an object B has the following properties, qualities or relations: B1, B2, B3,..., Bn.
Now, according to several of the above dialectical worthies, all of these properties, qualities and relations must change all the time (into what they do not say, but presumably it is into not (B1, B2, B3,..., Bn)). [However that possibility is closed off in Essay Eleven Part One. It is also completely blocked in Essay Seven.]
Nevertheless, even as B changes it is still identical with itself. In order to see this, let us suppose that as each property Bi changes it becomes Bi*, in the first instance, and then Bi** in the next, and so on. But at any moment, B's identity will be given by its set of properties, qualities or relations (if we must view identity traditionally); in the first case, for example, this will be: {B1*, B2*, B3*,..., Bn*}. So even though B changes, it retains its changed identity, and hence, as long as it exists it is identical to itself (albeit, its changed self). Hence, when viewed this way, identity is no enemy of change.
[Dialecticians often appeal to the existence of UOs to defuse this sort of objection; these are examined in Essays Seven and Eight Parts One and Two.]
Of course, the above scenario (which is called Maximal Heracliteanism (or MAH) in Essay Eleven -- link below) might not be the option that most dialecticians would want to adopt (even though DM-classicists quoted above seem to be sold on it). If so, they should pause for thought before finally deciding. This is because, if just one of the properties, qualities or relations B enjoys (say Bk) remains the same for a few seconds then the LOI must apply to it and the dialectical game is up -- for here we would have something that remained the same, and is identical to itself even if only momentarily.
In contrast, the maximalist option (i.e., MAH) has far worse consequences for DM; these will be spelt-out in detail in Essay Eleven Part One).
Either way, Heraclitus is no friend of DM -- or, if he is, he is also its enemy....
Moreover, if everything in the "Totality", or, indeed, in each sub-"Totality", is what it is because of the "internal relations" it enjoys with everything else, and which characterise it completely, so that the "entire nature of the part is determined by its relation to other parts and to the whole", then, if its relations change as it enters a new Sub-"Totality", or sub-whole, it cannot fail to alter, and to do so essentially.
[This might seem to contradict the conclusions reached in Note 1a above, but that is not so. There, the implications of one strand of DM-Wholism were explored (i.e., those connected with the 'emergence' of novelty), based on the idea that 'internal' relations remain fixed. Here, the implications of relaxing that assumption are being examined.]
Hence, if everything is a UO, and thus is not self-identical from moment to moment, and if the entire nature of every object or process is altered upon entering a new whole, there does not seem to be anything for the IED ploy to latch onto.
[Anyway, DM-theorists might have to abandon the IED for other reasons; on that, see here.]
On the other hand, if the IED ploy is to gain any grip, then several core DM-theses (like those mentioned in the above quotations) must be wrong. Either way, dialectics takes another body blow.
Exception might be taken to this whole way of viewing things, in that it is manifestly absurd to suppose that wholes do not change when they incorporate new parts.
That is undeniable, but then this just shows how useless this dialectical 'thesis' really is: it contradicts not just common sense, but other DM-theses. It's a pity, therefore, that DM-theorists reject common sense too.
5. Some might be tempted to appeal to the process of abstraction here to neutralise this objection. That would be an unwise move, for reasons explored in Essay Three Part One and Part Two.
The problem is, of course, that it if is not easy to identify (or even distinguish) DM-parts and wholes as they appear in the real world, a retreat into the abstract would be worse than useless. This is because abstract parts and wholes are even more difficult to identify/distinguish.
For example, there would be no way of deciding whether or not Abstractor A had identified, say, abstract part 3,000,001 in the same way that Abstractor B had identified it, or if either one or both had confused it with, say, abstract part 3,000,002, or some other. Of course, in everyday life such confusions can be cleared up, but if all this philosophical chicanery takes place 'in the mind', in an abstract world, where could one even begin?
The same goes for Wholes, too: how could Abstractor A confirm that he/she had identified abstract Whole W aright from moment to moment (especially in the face of the ever-present Heraclitean flux, which, so we are told, also works on brains). Indeed, how could Abstractor A be sure he/she had included in, or had left out, the same elements as Abstractor B, and had mentally arranged them in the same way? Once more, in the real world we manage to agree over our use of words with ease, every day, but in the obscure world of 'inner' abstractions/representations, how would this be even remotely possible? Guesswork? Brain probes?
[This, of course, assumes that it makes sense to 'abstract', say, a Whole into existence to begin with. Since this topic was dealt with in detail in Essay Three Part One and Part Two, no more will be said about it here. The idea that there are such things as 'inner representations' is put under similar pressure in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]
It could be argued that such 'difficulties' aren't fatal to DM, anyway. Admittedly, this 'problem' seems paradoxical or contradictory to our ordinary ways of thinking (in that it requires us to identify parts independently of wholes when the theory says this cannot be done. If part and whole depend so intimately on each other, we would have to know both before we knew either (neither of which would be achievable in advance of the other), But this simply underlines the limitations of 'commonsense' and ordinary thought, once again. That, of course, is why we need the dialectical method to advance knowledge, since it is not stymied by ordinary ways of thinking about, and looking at reality.
Or so a response might go.
At this point, DM-theorists might be tempted to reach for the useful formula, the one that informs them that dialectics allows such contradictions (or paradoxes) to be "grasped", which means that both 'contradictory' alternatives can be accepted as 'correct', the 'conflict' mysteriously "resolved" somehow thereby. But, this handy escape route would in this case involve the idea that DM-Wholism depends on an acceptance of the fact that (1) There is complete inter-determinism between parts and wholes and that (2) Neither part nor whole can be known until both have been. As we shall see many times throughout this site, whenever dialecticians encounter a 'contradiction' in their own theory, it is casually solved by the use of this handy "grasp" ploy (or its equivalent -- which amounts to the accusation that anyone who rejects DM (because it is riddled with such contradictions) does not "understand" dialectics on the grounds no doubt that to "understand" dialectics is simply to ignore such contradictions). This is, of course, a novel use of the verb "to understand". [That's why, at this site, whenever this ploy is used to solve a 'problem', we shall say that it has been "Nixoned".]
Clearly, human knowledge would not have advanced much beyond the Stone Age had this strategy been adopted in the past. Consider a few examples: had early modern astronomers been dialecticians they would presumably have grasped the two halves of the following 'contradiction', and have accepted them both as true: the Sun revolves around the earth and the Sun does not revolve around the earth. No one would have taken an astronomer seriously who was concerned to argue that way, who "grasped" both of these as true. Would we lionise Darwin quite so much had he been a DM-fan and had argued that all species evolved from a common ancestor even while some hadn't? Indeed, had Marx argued that in Capitalism there is and there isn't a conflict between the forces and relations of production, would we just shrug our shoulders and simply "grasp" that conundrum?
In like manner should we be inclined to "understand" a theory that argued the nature of any part can only be understood when the whole of which it's a part has been (which will never actually happen), at the same time as maintaining that at least this example of partial knowledge can be trusted while the whole of which it's allegedly a part remains shrouded in impenetrably dense and infinitely extensive mist (even if we could asset that much with any confidence)?
Nixon was able to get away with this con-trick for a few years (i.e., alleging he had a 'solution' to the Vietnam War, when he hadn't); dialecticians cannot expect to be granted the same latitude.
[This topic is discussed in more detail in Essay Seven and in Part One of this Essay, where it is connected with what I have called "The Dialecticians Dilemma".]
Even so, the "grasp" ploy can't work, for no matter how strong their metaphorical grip happened to be, 'grasping dialecticians' [GDs, henceforth] would still be in no position to specify parts and wholes without also rejecting their own theory -- for to itemise any part in advance of knowing the whole would be tantamount to admitting that the entire nature of the part is not determined by its relation to the whole. And since knowledge of each part is itself a part of the whole, the entire nature of anyone's knowledge of a part should likewise be determined by the whole, and by his/her knowledge of the whole. Furthermore, since an infinite amount of knowledge separates humanity from the epistemological end-state when knowledge of wholes may be expected to emerge, at any point in history humanity would be infinitely ignorant about one or both.
[On this, see here, where this topic is linked to something I have called HEX, or "Hegelian Expansionism", the opposite of "Cartesian Reductionism", or CAR.]
This point is well-made by Michael Rosen when he refers to something he calls the "post festum paradox":
"If truth requires a system, then it only properly exists at the point of completion of the system: what precedes it is only partial, but not adequate. As critics, however, what should interest us is how that point of completion is obtained, and whether we have arrived at it legitimately or not. But, on one obvious interpretation of the quotations above [see below, RL], what they say is that, except as we attain this point of completion, we are not at the standpoint of truth, and that, therefore, we are not in a position fully to comprehend (and hence to justify or criticise) the method by which it was reached. In this way we have the paradox: to criticise Hegel is to claim that the system does not attain validly its point of completion. But to criticise from any point other than the point of completion violates crucial presuppositions of the system itself, namely, that only someone who has really attained its final point can perceive the rationality of its attainment." [Rosen (1982), pp.23-24. Italic emphasis in the original.]
Of course, Rosen uses this to show that Marxist critics of Hegel are in a bind; they cannot invert his system until it has reached its denouement, for to do so would be to adopt a partial stance toward it, an irrational stance. This, Rosen claims, is why Marxists from time to time are attracted to irrational schemes of thought (in the way that leading Bolsheviks, say, thought highly of Nietzsche, among others). [Cf., Rosen (1982) p.24.] On this, see Rosenthal (1997, 2002).
More recently, dialecticians of various sorts have gone even further: David Bohm, for example, was an admirer of Eastern religion (and of Uri Geller, and much else besides), and more recently still, Roy Bhaskar has drifted off into open mysticism (on this see Bhaskar (2002a, 2002b, 2002c) --, just to take a few examples at random. [Here, for example, is a lay-dialectician who thinks highly of Daoism (and he's not the only one), although it seems not to have affected his fondness for scatological language.] These examples are, of course, mine, not Rosen's. [See also here.]
Naturally, this helps account for the mystical predilections of those who Lenin criticised for just such moves (in MEC). [More on this In Essay Nine Part Two, where the class origin of dialecticians will be exposed as the real reason for this continual slide into mysticism, and not an incomplete understanding of Hegel -- since it is not possible to understand Hermetic non-sense, even partially.]
[MEC = Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, or Lenin (1972).]
Be this as it may, we can surely go further ourselves; consider the following quotation from Hegel (this was one of the passages to which Rosen referred above):
"The truth is the whole. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth; and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, subject, or self-becoming, self-development. Should it appear contradictory to say that the Absolute has to be conceived essentially as a result, a little consideration will set this appearance of contradiction in its true light. The beginning, the principle, or the Absolute, as at first or immediately expressed, is merely the universal. If we say 'all animals', that does not pass for zoology; for the same reason we see at once that the words absolute, divine, eternal, and so on do not express what is implied in them; and only mere words like these, in point of fact, express intuition as the immediate. Whatever is more than a word like that, even the mere transition to a proposition, is a form of mediation, contains a process towards another state from which we must return once more. It is this process of mediation, however, that is rejected with horror, as if absolute knowledge were being surrendered when more is made of mediation than merely the assertion that it is nothing absolute, and does not exist in the Absolute." [Hegel (1977), p.11; section 20. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
Hegel himself half spots the problem here, but merely brushes it aside as an apparent contradiction; however, if what he says is true, he himself will need access to the finished system to be able to advocate it as true. Hence, his claim that what he says looks contradictory, if true, would need a completed system to back it up. Short of that, it cannot be true. Indeed, it could be completely untrue. In fact, in that what it says contradicts its own content, it cannot be true.
Now, anyone who objects to that comment, or any other, while accepting this Hegelian formula (upside down or the 'right way up'), will, of course, need to climb into a time machine, fast forward to the end of existence, and access for us the complete system that backs up that recklessly bold response.
It could be argued that Hegel's claims might be 'partially' true, or 'relatively' true --, but once more, if these meta-claims themselves are true, we would also need to be standing at the end of time, on the bright morning of Epistemological Judgement Day, to be able to agree even to this minimal assertion. In that case, unless that response has itself been beamed in from the distant future, it can safely be ignored.
Finally, Rosen himself considers a number of replies that could be made to this paradox (and readers are directed to his book for more details: Rosen (1982), p.23, et seq.), but we needn't trouble ourselves with these, for if it were possible to find a way to resolve this 'difficulty', and arrive at a true account of Hegel's thought that rescued it from such self-inflicted oblivion, then consistent with Hegel's own precepts (not mine), only the Elect among Hegelians, congregated at the end of time, when the Absolute has finally got its cosmic act together, will have access to it.
And by then they will surely deserve all they get.
On the other hand, those who now think they actually have the answer to this conundrum are arrogant and presumptive blasphemers who deserve to have rabid owls set upon them.
[Yes, I know that owls cannot catch rabies; but I think I might be allowed to "grasp" at least one 'contradiction' of my own. (And, yes I know that this is not a contradiction either --, but neither are those that dialecticians claim to see everywhere.)]
6. Again, it could be argued here that Rees is merely adverting to our altered view of things once we adopt a DM-Wholist stance.
Perhaps so, but if the entire nature of a part is 'determined' by the whole and by its relationship with other parts (which would include, one presumes, that sub-grouping of matter comprising the base on which the thoughts of anyone who did not so think was founded, and out of which those thoughts had also "emerged"), then, paradoxically, the opposite thought that reality is not interconnected in the way DM-theorists allege would be equally well-founded, having been 'determined' by the whole, too. In short, the whole confirms the valid status any and all refutations of this wacky 'theory'!
On the other hand, if nature is not in fact interconnected, this contrary view would be correct, anyway.
So, either way, the idea that nature is not interconnected would have the edge, since it would be correct under both eventualities: that is, it would be correct when it wasn't and when it was.
Perhaps this is one paradox DM-theorists might not want to "grasp" too eagerly. Indeed, this one is an especially annoying conundrum, in that it undermines dialecticians' ability to grasp paradoxes! Continuing the "Nixoned" theme, we might want to say here that GDs here have been "Deep Throated".
[Readers who know the details of the Watergate affair will understand that allusion.]
[GD = Grasping Dialectician.]
An appeal to human freedom at this point would be of little help; if novelty can enter the picture here, then the entire nature of the part cannot be determined by the other parts and by the whole -- indeed, there would be many aspects of human affairs that are not so constrained. [On this, see Note 1a and Note 3, above.]
7. I return to this theme in Essay Thirteen Part One and present a much more detailed argument aimed at showing that DM implies that human thought does indeed determine 'Being', in order to highlight further the Idealist implications of DM-interconnectedness. That argument will show that the materialist flip dialecticians say they have inflicted on Hegel actually worked -- but it did so far better than even they had imagined, since it flipped his ideas through a full 360◦, not 180◦, as they had surmised.
Now, that increase in quantity has plainly failed to affect the Idealist quality of the system as a whole.
8. And these comments do not just apply to Rees's formulation; they compromise the ideas of anyone who believes that everything in the "Totality" is interconnected, that the parts determine the whole and the whole determines the part, and that they do so because of their "internal relations".
This is surely no surprise since it's a direct consequence of adopting concepts drawn from Hegel's Holism, where truth is the whole, etc. Now, in that system, this Idealist dogma makes some sort of crazy sense -- these connections and inter-relationships seem to 'work' to some extent, situated as they are in such a mystical context, inter-linked as they also are by the 'Mega-Thought' developing because of, and through them.
However, as should seem plain, we can surely see yet again another disastrous consequence of trying on the one hand to 'invert' Hegel's mystical system while on the other thinking that its Wholist/Idealist implications can be ignored/eliminated.
Plainly, they can't.
9. This is how Rees puts the point:
"One important point to note, about this approach is that it is by its very nature, opposed to reductionism. It does not abolish the role of the individual in favour of the whole….
"The principle of contradiction is a barrier to reductionism, where linear notions of causality are not, because two elements that are in contradiction cannot be dissolved into one another but only overcome by the creation of a synthesis that is not reducible to either of its constituent elements.
"Furthermore, a dialectical approach is radically opposed to any form of reductionism because it presupposes that parts and whole are not reducible to each other. The parts and the whole mutually condition, or mediate, each other. And a mediated totality cannot form part of a reductionist philosophy, because by definition, reductionism collapses one element of a totality into another without taking account of its specific characteristics." [Rees (1998), pp.5-8.]
This passage will be examined, too, in more detail in Essay Three Part Three, where DM-anti-reductionist arguments will be reduced to their own incoherent parts.
[It is important to note that this does not commit me to reductionism. Both these options (i.e., DM-'Wholism', and scientistic-reductionism) are metaphysical, hence they are non-sensical. My reasons for saying that can be found in Essay Twelve Part One.]
10. The only way that human beings would be "more" than they used to be would seem to be as a group. Hence, it could be maintained that as a group, humanity now has a property that it once lacked -- flight. Of course, human beings as a group or as individuals still can't fly; clearly it's the machines they build that do this!
So, humanity itself still lacks this 'property'.
If it is argued in response that humans can now do something they could not do before (namely, fly through space), even this is not entirely correct. Since we now know that the earth moves on its axis, as it does round the Sun, too, humanity has in fact been travelling/flying through space for hundreds of thousands of years.
Again, it could be maintained that it's only since the invention of balloons and aeroplanes that human beings can do things at will that earlier generations could not: i.e., leave the surface of the earth and move about the place, sometimes at great speed flying to destinations that would have been unimaginable, say, 250 years ago.
Once more, it's only in aeroplanes (etc.) that they can do this. And if that is so, it still seems that it isn't humanity that has this new property, but these new artefacts which have.
Alas, the properties of these machines are reducible to their parts. Try taking off without engines made of heat resistant materials; chocolate jet will not get you very far, and neither will wings made of ordinary tissue paper. In this case, human beings just hitch a ride, as it were.
So, what exactly is the new property we have gained? The ability to hitch new sorts of rides? Or, perhaps the capacity to form queues at check-in desks?
11. When powered flight was finally achieved by the Wright Brothers in December 1903, what novel parts and wholes came into existence? To be sure, there was the new 'whole' comprising the Kitty Hawk (the name of the first flying machine) and its pilot, but it's not easy to see how the entire nature of Orville Wright, say, was determined by this new Orville/Kitty Hawk 'whole', or that the entire nature of the Kitty Hawk was determined by its "internal relation" to Orville.
And when the first commercial flights began a few years later, what new wholes and parts came into existence? To be sure, new capitalist ventures were set up, but what was whole and what was part here? Was this capitalist venture/whole the workers and the bosses, the buildings, the legal documents, the lawyers who drafted the contracts, the energy fed in from the outside, the roof on the office, the waste paper basket in the corner of the room, the air circulating in and through one and all, the natural 'forces' holding everything together...?
And, as far as parts are concerned, were they any of the aforementioned items, too? Or were the parts the passengers, the freight, the paint on the aeroplane's fuselage, the rubber molecules in its wheels, the fuel in its tanks, the countless millions of small sea creatures that created that fuel millions of years ago...?
In fact, and in general, as we have repeatedly seen, the precise nature of DM-wholes and DM-parts is terminally obscure. Consider several possible alternatives:
(1) Dialecticians refer us to molecules as examples of wholes (see below, and Woods and Grant (1995), p.7), but no single molecule is an isolated unit in nature (as DM-fans are themselves quick to remind us); all share energy and particles with one another. So, what is the whole here? One molecule, two, ten million? And what is a part? The sub-atomic particles/probability waves, or combinations of the latter? But, these are notorious for not staying put, interacting and merging with one another constantly. And, according to DM-fans, all of these are interconnected with everything else in the entire universe (and not accidentally, either, but inter-linked by those mysterious "internal relations"), or at the very least in the local vicinity (if we concentrate, say, only on their "external relations", for the moment). What then is the boundary between part and part, or whole and whole, part and whole in this dialectical menagerie? If there isn't one, can they be considered physical parts/wholes at all?
To be sure, there are many different sorts of parts --, for example, part of a play, part of a cake, part of a problem, part of a plan, part of an animal, part of a strike, and so on. These are not all physically comparable; but, in material reality, it must be possible to discriminate among parts to be able to say that they are indeed such, and to count or to identify them over time.
If it isn't possible to do this, even in thought -- as seems to be the case in DM --, then a key element in this theory becomes too obscure to be of any use.
(2) DM-theorists generally refer us to organisms as excellent examples of part/whole ensembles. But, once more, what is part and what is whole here?
Once more, as dialecticians are quick to remind us, nothing in reality stands in splendid isolation. If that is true, it's difficult to see how it would be possible to identify/distinguish one from another the alleged members of either categories. For example, is a whole, therefore, an identifiable organism --, say, a cat --, or something else? But cats are continually exchanging matter and energy with their environment. Only if we freeze frame a targeted moggie would it be possible to stop this annoying seepage at its recklessly porous feline boundary. But, such an un-dialectical mammal, it seems, would be of little use to dialectical Whole-Meisters. So this cannot be the cat-whole we seek. But then, what is it?
Does this cat, therefore --, which is, according to Physicists, really a four-dimensional manifold, a sort of mathematical, furry sausage in 4-space -- comprise all its temporal parts (even if we could identify them), or only those freeze-framed at some arbitrary point in time?
Hence, do DM-objects (parts and/or wholes) endure in time, or merely perdure?
[Readers keen to find out more about the intricacies of this branch of modern Metaphysics can download this PDF. [That article is in fact Hales and Johnson (2003).] On this, see also Sider (2001), Hawley (2004a), and Hawley (2004b). While I reject this entire approach to Philosophy (for reasons explored in Essay Twelve Part One), it is incomparably superior to the trivial and superficial ideas/theses one finds in DM-Wholism.]
Of course, the same problems afflict this hapless cat's parts, too. In that case, a cat's tail, for instance, is not only extended in 3-space, it is also a manifold of a 'tail' in 4-space (with other manifolds (of mice, birds, the contents of tins of cat food, and the like) intersecting with it), if modern Physics is to be believed. This non-dialectical, ontologically-complex set of moggie parts is, one suspects, no friend of DM. Indeed, we saw in Part One of this Essay how this quintessentially reactionary mammal helped demolish several cherished DM-theses all on its own. A catabolic reaction if ever there was one.
Dialecticians who are tempted to respond impatiently to all this along the lines that the above are not a legitimate objections to their theory in view of the fact they themselves admit the existence of just such dynamic and interconnected parts and wholes (for example, cats in relation to their environment), should themselves stop to think for a moment before pushing this point too far. Unless they are careful, and agree to freeze-frame things once more, that unfortunate cat might wind up being a part that is, say, several miles wide as it dynamically interacts with is territory/environment over several years.
And if we change the example, we could easily end up with, for instance, 'whale parts' that are tens of thousands of miles across as they patrol the Pacific.
[That is to say nothing of the real size of this dialectical whale-whole if we throw in the motion of the Earth around the Sun, and then the latter's transit through the Galaxy...]
Figure Four: Only A Tiny Part Of This
Whale-Part, Or The Whole Of It?
In fact, and worse, it's not easy to see how dialecticians can prevent this (or the earlier furry) mammal expanding catastrophically (and about as quickly as HEX did) to encompass the entire universe, if this 'part' is allowed to include all that it interacts with or is "internally related" to. This Cheshire Cat In Reverse is, indeed, a sort of metaphysical time bomb purring away at the centre of this confused 'theory'.
(3) Now the whole point of DM-Holism (no pun intended) was to provide an account of class society so that it could be terminated. To that end, for example, dialecticians view capitalism as a whole, and various classes as sub-wholes/parts.
But, once more, what is whole and what is part, here? Even if we were to wave aside the insurmountable 4-space difficulties noted above (when DM is confronted with modern Physics), that's not an easy question to answer. So, is the entire capitalist class a whole, a part --, or part part, part whole? Is a single proletarian a part, a whole, or wholly part or partly whole?
[Anyone who thinks that my pointing out these 'difficulties' will make the slightest impact on the adamantine brains of the DM-fraternity (even if the latter could be bothered to read them!) knows nothing of their capacity to develop hysterical blindness when it suits them. (In fact, in Essay Nine Part Two, this handy trick will be linked with "cognitive dissonance"). Determined to stay super-glued to these ancient mystical ideas -- come what may --, such comrades soon reach for the "pedantry" button, and press it continuously, backed up, or not, by a liberal use of the 'sophistry' raspberry, and the 'special-pleading' smoke bomb (on the lines that dialectics is "different") -- on that, see here.
Clearly, benighted DM-critics (like yours truly, RL) have failed to notice that when Lenin said that no science is complete and/or un-revisable, he meant to exclude DM. Now that this has been made clear, we can surely allow DM-fans to remain in thrall to these mystical nostrums, secure in the belief that no advance in human knowledge will ever disturb their dogmatic slumber.]
12. It could be argued that these objections ignore the distinctions dialecticians make between different kinds of parts and wholes. On this, see Note 14, below, and Note 11 above.
13. This entire topic raises issues connected with the nature of 'part properties' that are dependent on, or arise out of 'whole properties'. Plainly, I cannot enter into the finer details of this topic here. Fans of this sort of Metaphysics (i.e., Mereology) might like to consult Goodman (1966), Casati (2003), Casati and Varzi (1999), and Simons (1987), or the more introductory Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1997), pp.43-149, for more details. In such work, mixed in with some rather annoying and unnecessary Metaphysics, there is much valuable logical insight, particularly in Simons (1987).
It could be objected that the points made in this Essay are entirely bogus because they ignore the different types of wholes and parts envisaged by DM-theorists. We might call this "Spirkin's Defence" [henceforth SD], after the analysis given in Spirkin (1983), quoted above.
Spirkin argues as follows:
"A system is an internally organised whole where elements are so intimately connected that they operate as one in relation to external conditions and other systems. An element may be defined as the minimal unit performing a definite function in the whole. Systems may be either simple or complex. A complex system is one whose elements may also be regarded as systems or subsystems....
"The categories of whole and part are relative; they have meaning only in relation to each other. The whole exists thanks to its parts and in them. The parts, in their turn, cannot exist by themselves. No matter how small a particle we name, it is something whole and at the same time a part of another whole. The largest whole that we can conceive of is ultimately only a part of an infinitely greater whole. Everything in nature is a part of the universe.
"Various systems are divided into three basic types of wholeness. The simplest type is the unorganised or summative whole, an unsystematic conglomeration of objects (a herd of cattle, for example). This category also includes a mechanical grouping of heterogeneous things, for example, rock consisting of pebbles, sand, gravel, boulders, and so on.
"In such a whole the connection between the parts is external and obeys no recognisable law. We simply have a group of unsystematic formations of a purely summative character. The properties of such a whole coincide with the sum of the properties of its component parts. Moreover, when objects become part of an unorganised whole or leave such a whole, they usually undergo no qualitative change. For this type of whole the characteristic feature is the varying lifetime of its components.
"The second, more complex type of whole is the organised whole, for example, the atom, the molecule, the crystal. Such a whole may have varying degrees of organisation, depending on the peculiar features of its parts and the character of the connection between them. In an organised whole the composing elements are in a relatively stable and law-governed interrelationship. Its properties cannot be reduced to the mechanical sum of the properties of its parts. Rivers 'lose themselves' in the sea, although they are in it and it would not exist without them. Water possesses the property of being able to extinguish fire, but the parts of which it is composed, taken separately, possess quite different properties: hydrogen is itself flammable and oxygen maintains or boosts combustion. Zero in itself is nothing, but in the composition of a number its role is highly significant, and at times gigantically so, by increasing 100 into 1,000, for instance. A hydrogen atom consists of a proton and an electron. But strictly speaking, this is not true. The statement contains the same error as the phrase 'this house is built of pine'. The mass of an atom of hydrogen is not equal to the total mass of the proton and the electron. It is less than that mass because in combining into the system of the hydrogen atom the proton and the electron lose something, which escapes into space in the form of radiation.
"The third, highest and most complex type of whole is the organic whole, for example, the organism, the biological species, society, science, arts, language, and so on. The characteristic feature of the organic whole is the self-development and self-reproduction of its parts. The parts of an organism if separated from the whole organism, not only lose some of their properties but cannot even exist in the given quality that they have within the whole. The head is only a head because it is capable of thinking. And it can only think as a part not only of the organism, but also of society, history and culture.
"An organic whole is formed not (as Empedocles assumed) by joining together ready-made parts, separate organs flying around in the air, such as heads, eyes, ears, hands, legs, hair and hearts. An organic whole arises, is born, and dies together with its parts. It is an integral whole, with distinguishable parts. Sensations, perceptions, representations, concepts, memory, attention do not exist in isolation; they form the synthetic knot which we call consciousness. The elements that make up the whole possess a certain individuality and at the same time they 'work for' the whole. The whole is invisibly present, as it were, and guides the process of 'assembly' of its elements, that is to say, of its own self....
"The parts of a whole may have varying degrees of relative independence. In a whole, there may be parts whose excision will damage or even destroy the whole, but there may also be parts whose loss causes no organic damage. For instance, the extremities or a part of the stomach may be removed, but not the heart. The deeper and more complex the relationship between the parts, the greater is the function of the whole in relation to them and the less their relative independence....
"The highest form of organic whole is society and the various social formations. The general laws of the social whole determine the essence of any of its parts and the direction of its development: the part behaves in accordance with the essence of the whole. [Spirkin (1983), pp.97-102.]
There are several important points that can be distilled from this analysis:
(1) Systems are organised entities. They are distinct from their environment, and are minimal units capable of performing definite functions inside the wider whole.
(2) The universe is the largest whole and contains every system.
(3) There are three types of system:
(a) Summative and unorganised; for example a herd of cattle, a rock, a pile of sand, etc. In such systems, the connection between the parts is external and obeys no set law. The whole here is merely a sum of its parts. Objects do not change qualitatively if they leave or join such systems.
(b) The second type is the organised whole (e.g., an atom, molecule or crystal). Here, not only are the elements related to one another in a law-like manner, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. As parts of the whole, (i) the elements gain properties, and/or (ii) the whole severally or collectively acquires them. These are properties that one or both would not have gained on their own. So, for example, Hydrogen and Oxygen cannot put fires out, but combined as water they can.
(c) The third type is the most complex system, the organic whole (examples include the wolf, the genus Canis, society, language, etc.). Elements of such wholes lose some of their properties when separated from the whole, and cannot exist apart from that whole. This type of whole is more than the sum of its parts, too. However, some parts can enjoy relative separation from the whole, but not all. Capitalism, it seems, is just such a whole.
Hence, it could be argued that the analysis presented in this Essay has conflated these three separate types of system, therefore the criticisms advanced here are completely misconceived.
In response it is worth underlining several points (in addition to any that have been made earlier):
(1) The distinction between these three types of system is not as clear-cut as Spirkin would like to think.
Even in a heap of sand there are forces at work that are law-governed (or, which we can depict that way, at least), and even in an organism there are parts that are heterogeneous (think of bacteria in the gut, hair on a body, dead skin its surface, etc.), that an organism can lose without it itself altering as a result, and which parts do not alter when they are lost, either.
Furthermore, it's worth asking: Is a heap of sand still a heap if it loses all its parts? In that case, these parts and that whole are intimately linked. And heaps of sand (on beaches or in deserts) do not accumulate without cause. There are physical reasons why they are where they are. Also, cattle and other herbivores congregate in herds for well-known evolutionary reasons; so they are not 'accidental' conglomerations, either. [On this see for example, Williams (1966).]
Moreover, the 'internal relations' to which DM-theorists also refer would appear to indicate that everything in reality is part of One Big Whole. Naturally, this does not just blur the distinctions Spirkin tries to draw, it obliterates them -- or, it does so unless and until DM-theorists themselves decide what they mean by such "internal relations".
Of course, it could be argued alongside Spirkin that in loose conglomerates (like heaps and herds) the elements are only externally-related. But what makes a herd a herd and a cow in a herd a cow in a herd are not external relations, whatever else they are. Moreover, given the truth of DM, what makes a grain of sand what it is (that is, whatever it is that determines its nature and properties), is "internally-connected" to something or other, for if it were not, sand couldn't change -- if, that is, change is motivated by the dialectical "internal relations" between an object or process and its dialectical "other" (as Hegel puts it).
Again, it could be countered that even if this were so, the grains in a heap are not "internally-linked" to one another. But, how are we to account for each individual grain changing from being an isolated grain to being a gregarious grain? If Hegel is correct, and things change only because of their "internally-linked" 'others', then whatever produces a heap of sand must be dialectical and governed by its 'Laws'. But, until this heap changes into --, one presumes --, "not a heap" (its 'other'?), it must be in dialectical tension with that 'other' now (or some other 'other', perhaps?), or it too will never change. After all, there is only one principle available to DM-theorists that allows them to explain change -- these 'others'.
Now this means that if (in a heap) a particular grain (say, Gi) is resting next to at least one other grain (say, Gk), and it stays next to it, then it must be in dialectical tension with this other 'other', namely "not next to Gk" (and thus "not-not next to Gk") --, one supposes, again --, so that one day it might indeed change into not being next to Gk (otherwise, such a change will not be 'internally'-generated, as had been claimed). In short, each grain would be implicated in some sort of "internal relation" with each local grain (or each not-local grain?), and by a suitable induction, with all the grains in that heap. Hence, there would be a set of "internal relations" even in a heap -- if they change in the way DM-theorists suppose.
And what goes for heaps, goes for herds, too.
Naturally, the above observations can easily be neutralised by abandoning Hegel's whacky 'theory' of change -- upside down or 'the right way up'.
[But in that case, dialecticians would, of course, be left with no theory of change.]
(2) Although Spirkin sort of half concedes that the picture he painted is not as clear-cut as he would like, he failed to notice that this 'semi-admission' affects the status of many of the examples he listed.
Consider a species like Canis lupus (The Grey Wolf); not only would the genus to which it belongs (Canis) not be affected if this species died out, the family Canidae would not be either. And nor would the species itself be affected if several wolves died. And more or less the same can be said of other social wholes -- animal or human. Hence, human society is not really affected if say few individuals were to go and live on the Moon. Nor are astronauts altered as human beings when they blast into space, either.
(3) Concerning the most plausible example Spirkin cites (that of an organism), as we have seen above and will see later, things are not quite so straight-forward, even here. Hearts remain hearts while they are being transplanted, as do other organs, and so do blood and skin. In fact, there does not to seem to be a single part of a human body of which this is not true. Even something as significant as a head can exist on its own for some time away from its original body, given the right technological surroundings.
As we will see, such wholes are not as they were imagined to be by the Natürphilosophers (from whom Hegel and Spirkin pinched these ideas), or even as they were conceived by ancient mystics (from whom all three lifted these Wholist nostrums).
Body parts (etc.) are causally linked to one another -- which explains why they can be separated and maintained alive if the right causal substitutes are found for the relevant inputs. Hence, as such, these connections are not an expression of "internal relations" (a notion which is, as we will see in Essay Three Part Three, another Idealist fantasy) at work here. If they were, there would be no such thing as transplant surgery, blood transfusions or cloning.
Indeed, in January 2007, we hear this from the BBC:
"UK scientists planning to mix human and animal cells in order to research cures for degenerative diseases fear their work will be halted....
"Ministers proposed outlawing such work after unfavourable public opinion.
"PM Tony Blair said any new law would have 'flexibility' to support scientific research that helped people.
"He said there were 'difficult' issues surrounding creating the embryos, which are more than 99% human but have a small animal component....
"The creation of hybrid human-animal embryos was first suggested as a way of addressing the shortage of human eggs available for research." [Quoted from here. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]
Naturally, had Blair asked DM-fans for advice, he could have ruled this project out much earlier -- and on sound DL-lines -- as a non-starter, and saved a lot of time and money.
Nevertheless, as will soon become apparent: the postulation of "internal relations" is little more than a 'God of the Gaps' approach to biological science, and as such is parasitic on our ignorance of all the material causes operating in nature. In that case, this is dependent on our not knowing all the material causes at work in, and on organisms, and re-labelling this gap in our knowledge an "internal relation". Hence, it's no surprise either to find that this mystical concept has gone the same way as its exemplar from theology: the genuine "'God' of the Gaps". Because of scientific advance, we are now able to view such wholes in an entirely new and more consistently materialist light. [On this, see points (4), (5) and (7), below.]
Artificial limbs, replacement hearts, pacemakers, skin and corneal grafts, dialysis, blood and bone marrow transfusions, wigs, hearing aids, glasses, and the like, would be non-starters otherwise.
(4) Spirkin's analysis bears a worrying similarity with "irreducible complexity" touted by "Intelligent Design" [ID] theorists. [Cf., Behe (2004, 2006), Behe's book, by the way, taken apart in Orr (1997), and Shanks (2004); see also here. Cf., also: Brockman (2006), Dembski and Ruse (2004), Forrest and Gross (2004), Foster, Clark and York (2008), Pennock (2000, 2001), Sober (1999) (this links to a PDF), and Young and Edis (2006). However, for a corrective view, parts of which are more in line with my argument in Essay Thirteen Parts Two and Three, see Fuller (2008). However, in what follows, I am adopting no view about the alleged parallels between ID and DM, since DM is far to vague to for a secure opinion about the meaning of its core theses. Nevertheless, both systems of thought (and, surprisingly, many aspects of modern science, too) rely on a widespread anthropomorphisation of nature in order for them to work. Those serious allegations will be substantiated in Essays Thirteen Parts One, Two and Three.]
According to ID-ers, certain aspects of organic wholes are so constructed that they cannot be reduced to their parts without fundamental features of their 'design' being lost/destroyed; e.g., the flagellum of certain bacteria, the human eye, and blood clotting factors -- just to take three of their favourite examples. They call this "irreducible complexity"; this is supposed to be:
"The main difficulty for Darwinian mechanisms is that many systems in the cell are what I termed 'irreducibly complex.' I defined an irreducibly complex system as: a single system that is necessarily composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning." [Behe (2004), p.353. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
Which is, of course, virtually indistinguishable from this comment of Spirkin's:
"A system is an internally organised whole where elements are so intimately connected that they operate as one in relation to external conditions and other systems. An element may be defined as the minimal unit performing a definite function in the whole....
"The third, highest and most complex type of whole is the organic whole, for example, the organism, the biological species, society, science, arts, language, and so on. The characteristic feature of the organic whole is the self-development and self-reproduction of its parts. The parts of an organism if separated from the whole organism, not only lose some of their properties but cannot even exist in the given quality that they have within the whole...." [Spirkin (1983), pp.97, 101.]
However, as Behe notes, this entire topic is linked to the arguments ID-ers like him direct against Darwinism, and in favour of belief in "God" (although, for legal reasons connected with the US constitution, ID-ers do not use that particular word -- but a mystical rose by any other name...) So, the idea is that organisms are "irreducibly complex" and so could not have evolved by a process of random variation, gene mutation and natural selection -- except, as some concede, these processes might produce micro-evolutionary change.
Consequently, critics of ID have targeted "irreducible complexity" for attack, and in so doing they have inadvertently undermined many of the points upon which Spirkin and other DM-Wholists rely; indeed, it is not easy to see how the latter could account for evolution with the sort of analysis they peddle.
As far as I know, Inconsistent Dialecticians (who, quite fortuitously, can also be labelled ID-ers) have not considered this fatal defect in their theory. This is possibly because ID is a new phenomenon --, but even so, it is based on the now defunct 'Design Argument' for the existence of 'God', invented thousands of years ago, which in turn depends on ideas that bear close similarities with DM-Wholism. Hence, the novelty of ID is not in fact a good explanation of why Inconsistent Dialecticians have ignored this aspect of their theory. As was pointed out here, this is probably down to the fact that they devote so little (original) thought to their theory because (1) It works as a test of orthodoxy, and, like other such unquestioned dogmas, it cannot be changed, elaborated upon or even clarified, and (2) For fear of anyone foolish enough even to try being called a "Revisionist!" as a result).
[On the ancient origins of the 'Design Argument', see Sedley (2007), and Sorabji (1983).]
Nevertheless, the kind of analysis Spirkin and other DM-theorists have propounded simply re-introduces teleology into science, and undoes much of what many had thought Darwin had achieved.
Naturally, this is a highly controversial allegation to make, since dialecticians, following Marx and Engels, hold Darwin's theory in such high regard, and see DM as a logical extension to his theory. [However, it is worth noting that Marx and Engels expressed serious reservations about Darwin's theory. On that, see Essay Thirteen Part Three.]
But, it's difficult to detect much difference between the ID-idea that there are 'irreducible' complexities in nature and the Inconsistent Dialectical claim that there are "emergent properties" not reducible to their parts. [On this, see below.]
(5) Dialecticians appeal to the sorts of points Spirkin makes in their argument against "reductionism", referring to "emergent properties" that are unique to wholes, and which cannot be derived from their parts. As we will see in Essay Three Part Three, this is another highly flawed doctrine. Suffice it to say here that this is a secular version of the "God of the Gaps" argument; in this case we might call it the "Totality of the Gaps" argument [or TOGA].
Hence, the assumed fact (if it is one) that we cannot now reduce such wholes to their parts is used to argue that it is logically impossible to do so. Thus, from alleged scientific ignorance we get necessity.
In that case, a gap in our knowledge is all that underpins this already shaky TOGA.
But, what if such parts have among their as-yet-to-be-discovered properties just those qualities Holists now deny them on an a priori basis? What if, say, it is a property of Hydrogen and a property of Oxygen that when combined they form water, which is liquid at certain temperatures, and can put fires out because of the properties inherent in the parts? In that case, the whole would be a sum of the parts, and no more.
These two elements certainly combine according to what scientists call a "law"; no one supposes this "law" is accidental and capricious, or that the new set of properties which arise is not consequence of the properties inherent in these two elements. Even DM-fans do not think that this "law" or these properties 'descend from the skies'. Thus no one supposes that the properties of water are simply 'sports of nature', which are not related somehow to the properties of their constituent atoms in a law-like manner, and thus are not connected with their atomic structure. [If they were, any two elements would do just as well!]
So, if these "emergent" properties are not to be seen as merely coincidental by-products of these two elements, as 'sports of nature', which just so happen to arise 'out of the blue' when combined, then one presumes that scientists will rightly look for the "laws" that account for such 'higher order' qualities, and which explain how they can be derived from the properties of their parts.
Now, I take no view on this matter (especially given my other comments about the status of natural 'laws' found elsewhere at this site), but one certainly cannot impose a priori TOGA-type restrictions on science, as dialecticians attempt to do --, as Spirkin does --, just to protect Hegelian Holism/Mysticism.
It might indeed be the case that this sort or reduction cannot be pushed through, it might not. But this is an empirical matter, not one over which Hermetic Philosophers should pontificate, as if they were born again ID-ers.
[Some might want to argue that this is not just an empirical issue it is also ideological -- in that reductionism is a feature of modern bourgeois science. However, this entire topic will be dealt with in Essay Three Part Three. Suffice it to say here that the threat of reductionism in the social sciences (where it does become openly ideological) can be neutralised on far more effective lines than has hitherto been the case -- if we abandon other ideas derived from a ruling-class view of reality (found in Hegelianism and in 'rotated Hegelianism' -- i.e., DM). Metaphysical Wholism is just as much a ruling-class form-of-thought as is Metaphysical Reductionism; both are the result of the imposition onto reality of an a priori schema.]
Indeed, the strategy adopted by certain anti-ID theorists (see above, here and here) has been to show that structures. processes and organs (like the human eye, bacterial flagella and blood clotting, for instance), could have arisen from small changes, accumulated over time, and thus that their 'complexity' can be reduced to their parts so assembled by natural forces.
(6) The above analogy with evolution is worth pursuing a little further. As we know, the problem for those who say they can see design in nature is that they have ignored the results of long and drawn-out process of historical development, whereby natural processes have built up complexity from the available 'simpler' parts over vast expanses of time. So, to use a hackneyed example, the human eye did not spring forth in all its glory overnight; it took hundreds of millions of years to develop, and it now has the properties it has because natural selection 'utilised' the properties of the parts available which ensured increased chances of survival (and it did this with no overall plan, or aim -- since, clearly, nature is not Mind) in certain populations of organisms.
[The employment of certain metaphors here will be analysed in more detail in a later Essay.]
So, what appear to ID-ers and Inconsistent Dialecticians to be irreducibly complex functioning wholes/organisms are really the products of a lengthy process whereby those parts were slowly put into causal/structural relationship (but not into some sort of mysterious "internal-relation") with one another, and were thus built into the complex structures we see today.
Hence, Inconsistent Dialecticians make the same sort of mistake that creationists do: they look at fully-formed organisms and see logical connections (or Ideal ones) where there are only causal ones, assembled over time. Again, this is not surprising, since Inconsistent Dialecticians obtained their ideas from Hegel, who borrowed them from assorted Mystics and Theists (the same tradition from which ID emerged). And we know that these obscurantists thought that the world was the product of Logos, by means of which all things were logically inter-linked in a mysterious "Totality/Cosmos".
To be sure, DM-fans do not copy the mistake of the creationists and deny descent with modification. etc. However, they do appeal to Engels's shaky first 'Law' to try to explain how novelty arose (or "emerged") over time. But, just like the 'miraculous' acts of 'God' (which cannot be explained), how such a 'Law' can account for novelty remains a mystery, too; it just seems to 'happen'. According to DM-theorists, novelty just "emerges", almost like magic, from certain states of matter. In a similar fashion, for Christian Fundamentalists, design just "emerged" from the 'Mind' of 'God'. [As we will see later, this explains why DM-fans like to toy with Lamarckism (and, indeed, Lysenkoism), and other scientific oddities.]
Of course, it could be replied that Inconsistent Dialecticians cannot be compared with genuine ID-ers since they are quite clear that nature, not 'God', assembled the parts of organisms over time. However, as noted above, they do argue that as the 'Law' of the transformation of quantity into quality kicked in new properties 'emerged' as a result. Quite apart from the fact that this 'Law' is the next best thing to a joke, it plainly appeals to the same sort or 'emergent' properties not reducible to their parts that ID-ers try to sell to us. While ID-ers appeal to myth and miracle, Inconsistent Dialecticians appeal to mysticism and "emergence".
Hocus Pocus by any other name...
There is an excellent summary of the two main ways theists have conceived of the relationship between 'God' and 'His' creation in Osler (2004), pp.15-35. [These neatly mirror the tensions in DM-accounts of origins, too. More on this in Essay Fourteen Part Two.]
To summarise part of Osler's thesis (with a few additions of my own): If 'God' is related to material reality by necessity, then there must be a logical connection between (1) the properties of finite beings and (2) 'God's nature. Because this link is logical, it means that language/logic actually constitutes reality (these connections are outlined here), which speculative thought alone can access. Hence, all that exists is ultimately an expression of the logical properties found in 'God', and nature is a sort of emanation (that is, material reality is logically "emergent") from 'Him'. [This idea is up-front in Plotinus and other Neo-Platonists, like Hegel.] Moreover, most human beings who cannot access this rational view of reality (i.e., the 'ill-educated') will simply misperceive these logical properties as contingent qualities (or even reducible properties!) -- and hence, for them, appearances will fail to match underlying "essences".
Now, where have we heard all that before?
These "essences" represent aspects of the 'Mind' of 'God' imprinted on matter, which all those concerned to discover true knowledge must seek out.
On the other hand, if 'God' a