한 과학기술 노동자의 잡소리들

본문

노동자와 과학철학 IV 김영식 / 연구원, 과학기술자 포퍼주의 철학의 빈곤  일부 철학자들이 말하는 것만큼 그렇게 불합리한 것은 없다.  - 키케로 Cicero, 예언에 대하여 De Divinatione 그리 심각하지 않았다면 그것은 일종에 코미디로 끝났을지도 모른다. 가장 거만하고, 상상할 수 있는 가장 비과학적인 이론들이 다른 모든 철학 사조를 밀쳐내고 그들 스스로 과학 철학이라고 선언하였다. 그들은 파티에서 불청객과 같은 지식인이었다. 때때로, 파티에 사람들이 너무 얌전하거나 떠들썩한 것을 싫어해서 문을 닫지 않고 파티를 할 수 있다. 그래서 그들은(그 불청객은) 조용히 안으로 들어왔다. 물론 만약 누군가가 안에서 ‘그래 괜찮아 그들은 내 친구야’라고 소리친다면 [그 불청객이 파티에 참여하는데] 도움이 될 것이다.  양자역학의 발전에 닐 보어와 하이젠베르크의 역할이 중요했다. 그들은 함께 일했으며, 소위 양자역학의 코펜하겐 해석을 발전시켰다. 그러나 그들의 접근에는 차이가 있다. 보어는 기본적으로 실용주의적 과학자였고, 하이젠베르크는 더 철학적으로 접근이었고 한동안 논리 실증주의 이론을 받아 들였다. 결과적으로 양자역학의 코펜하겐 해석 전체에 주관적 관념론의 정신이 스며들었다.  이러한 경향이 철학의 영역에서 ‘현대과학’을 대변한다고 주장한다. 그러나 그것으로 끝이 아니다. 그들은 과학자들에게 그들의 작업을 가르쳐야 했다. 만약 그들이 정말로 과학 철학이라면 모든 과학자들은 그것들을 중시해야 하기 때문이다! 그들은 ‘과학적 방법’으로 일을 진행했다. 그런데 그 방법은 사실 바보라도 할 수 있는 것이었다. 그런데 이제 모든 사람들이 비과학적이라는 비난을 받지 않으려면 그것을 받아들여야 한다. 그리고 혹시 농담하고 있다고 생각이 들면, 정신분석학에 그들이 한 일들을 보기 바란다. (역주)비트겐슈타인은 이천 년간 내려온 철학의 문제들을 하나의 질병으로 보고 그것을 치료해야 한다고 주장했다. 포퍼에 따르면 점성학, 형이상학, 마르크스주의 역사이론, 프로이트주의 정신분석학과 같은 사이비과학은 반증가능성의 원리에 어긋나기 때문에 경험과학이 될 수 없다고 한다. 그러나 Adolf Grünbaum는 정신분석학은 반증가능하며, 사실상 틀렸음이 증명되었다고 주장한다. 비판자들과 옹호자들 간의 논쟁은 때때로 매우 격렬해져서, 이러한 논쟁들은 프로이트 전쟁으로 불린다.(위키 백과) 문제는 이들에 의해 만들어진 소위 논리적 타당성의 기준은 실제 과학 실천 자체와는 아무런 관련이 없다는 점이다. 가장 실천적 과학자들은 과학철학자들이 세운 기준에 찬성하지 않을 뿐만 아니라 어이없어한다. 그리고 파티에 불청객이 떠들거나 말거나, 파티에 시끄러운 불청객을 피해서 부엌에 가 있는 사람처럼 과학자들은 자신의 일을 [묵묵하게] 수행한다. 물론 그 과학자들은 시끄러운 잡음을 내는 불청객을 막을 수는 없다.  가장 시끄러운 불청객 중에 한 사람이 칼 포퍼였다. 마치 스스로 황제자리에 오른 나폴레옹처럼 포퍼는 그 스스로 과학 철학자로 명명했다. 그리고 특정 주제에 대해 국민투표의 결과를 기다리지 않고 전 세계 규모의 재판을 열었다. (그가 이해하지 못한) 맑스에 반대해서 맹렬하게 논쟁하는 중에, 그는 많은 (완전히 일방적으로 해석한) 과학적 방법에 대해 글을 썼다. 이런 난센스는 그렇게 오랫동안 심각하게 받아들여졌다는 사실은 현대 철학에서 공백의 척도를 보여 준다.  귀납과 연역? 포퍼는 1934년에 당시, 비엔나에서 <과학적 발견의 논리. The Logic of Scientific Discovery>라는 책을 출판했다. 이 책에서 포퍼는 귀납적인 방법을 완전히 거부했고 모든 결론은 논리적 연역으로만 이끌어 내야 한다고 주장했다. 특히 포퍼는 관찰에 기초한 귀납적 방법을 배제하였다. 포퍼에게서 “과학적으로 가치 있다.”는 증명서를 받기 위해서, 과학 이론들은 내적으로 연속성이 있어야 하고 같은 말을 반복(동어 반복)하지 않아야 하며 실험해야 할 것들이 예측되어야 한다. 게다가 그는 논증의 결과는 이론을 증명할 수 없고 단지 거짓임을 입증(반증)할 수만 있다.  이 모든 것은 매우 참신하게 들린다. 그리고 형식논리학과 완전히 일치한다. 그러나 이것은 실제 과학에서의 실천과 관계가 거의 없다. 한 물리학자는 “포퍼의 생각은 전략적으로 튼튼해 보이지만 전술적으로 방어하기 허술하다. 바꾸어 말하면 (형식 논리학적) 이론은 정교하지만 구멍이 많은 우산처럼 의도한 목적을 위해서는 전혀 쓸모가 없다.”고 빈정거리기도 했다. 귀납(라틴으로 inducere 유도하다)은 논증하는 방법 중 하나이다. 이것은 아리스토텔레스에 의해 알려졌지만 베이컨과 갈릴레오가 지지하였고 르네상스 시대에 널리 받아들여졌다. 논증 형식으로써 귀납법은 개별 사실들로부터 일반 명제를 이끌어 내는 방법이다. 사람들은 항상 경험에 기초해서 일반화를 시킨다(이끌어낸다). 종종 올바른 결론을 이끌어 내기도 하지만 그렇지 않은 경우도 있다.  귀납적 논증의 예를 들어보자. 한 아이가 불에 손을 데였다. 그리고 경험에 따라 불에 너무 가까이 가는 것은 좋지 않다는 결론을 이끌어 낸다. “불은 (일반적으로) 탄다.” 이것이 귀납적 논증이다- 구체적인 것에서 일반적인 것을 이끌어 내는 방법. 이 경우 결론은 유용한 것이라기보다는 완전히 확실한 것이다. 그러나 다른 예를 들어 보자. 칠면조는 매일 아침 손에 옥수수를 든 친절한 숙녀의 방문을 받았다. 귀납적 논증법에 의해 칠면조는 이 친절한 숙녀의 방문은 바로 음식을 의미한다고 결론을 내릴 것이다. 이러한 결론은 수백 번-364번- 반복되는 동일한 경험으로부터 얻은 것이다. 그런데 어느 날 아침 이 농부의 아내가 도살장 칼을 쥐고 나타났다. 여기서 칠면조의 귀납적 논리는 문제가 있으며 존재의 딜레마를 명확하게 하는데 도움을 주지 못하고 있다.  과학적 귀납법은 어떤 한정된 수의 계체를 이용해서 전체 계체의 결론을 이끌어 내는 방법이다. 여기서 결론을 내릴 수 있는 근거는 특정 수의 계체를 통해 연구한 요소들에서 전체가 가지고 있는 본질적인 연관관계를 발견할 수 있다는 것이다. 이러한 필연적 연관관계를 발견하는 일은 자세한 관찰과정을 포함한다. 그래서 귀납적 방법은 물질에 대한 실험적 연구를 중요시하고 개별 사실로부터 일반화를 시키는 방법이다.  연역적 방법은 귀납적 방법에 정확하게 반대 개념이다. 연역법은 논리학의 법칙에 의해 하나 혹은 그 이상의 전제로부터 결론을 유추해 내고 증명하는 방법이다. 연역적 방법은 특별한 경험에서 시작하지 않고 소위 공리(axioms)로부터 시작한다. 공리는 처음부터 올바르다고 가장된다. 이것은 수학에서 사용하는 전형적인 방법이다. 예를 들어 고전 기하학은 유클리드 공리에 기초를 두고 있다. 이것은 수세기 동안 절대 진리, 즉 시간과 환경에 관계없이 항상 진리로 받아들여졌다. 그러므로 연역적 논증은 일반 법칙에서 구체적인 것으로 나아가는 방법이다.  귀납과 연역사이의 투쟁은 17세기, 두 명의 위대한 과학 사상가-베이컨과 데카르트로 거슬러 올라간다. 영국 사람인 베이컨은 실증주의와 귀납법의 아버지였다. 그는 관찰된 사실만으로 이론을 이끌어내었다. 그러나 베이컨은 관찰에 집착하는 것은 치명적인 오류가 있음을 스스로 증명하였다. 그는 눈으로 닭고기를 보관하는 실험과 같은 냉동기의 초기 실험 과정에서 얻은 기관지염으로 죽었다.  데카르트는 베이컨과는 대립적으로 반대되는 입장에서 과학에 접근했다. 그는 유클리드 기하학을 그의 모델로 받아들여 순수 이성으로부터, 의심스러운 감각의 증거들에 의존하지 않고 일관되고 정합적인 이론(consistent and coherent theorems)을 개발하기 시작했다. 이것은 이성주의적 방법으로 프랑스의 전통이 되었다. 베이컨의 경험주의는 운하를 건너 타 지역에서 발전하였다. 두 사람은 다른 방법으로 과학의 원인을 진보시켰고 중요한 발견을 이끌어 내었다.  그러나 연역법과 귀납법 각각으로는 전체 그림을 볼 수 없다. 베이컨의 문제는 [관찰된] 사실들이 완전히 독립적으로 선택된 것이 아니라는 점이다. 우선 무슨 관찰을 해야 하는 지를 결정하기 위해서 초기 이론(가설)이 필요하다. 게다가 귀납법의 결론은 항상 일시적인 특성을 갖는다. 예를 들어 수백 마리의 백조를 관찰한 사람이 모든 백조가 희다는 결론을 내렸다고 하자. 이것은 귀납적인 결론이다. 그러나 어떤 백조는 검은 것도 있기 때문에 이 결론은 잘못되었다. 엥겔스는 관찰에만 의존하는 실증주의는 결코 적합한 필연성을 증명할 수 없다고 지적한 바 있다. (자연변증법, p. 304.) 우리는 귀납적 논리의 한계를 지적하기 위해 칼 경(Sir Karl Popper)을 기다릴 필요도 없다. 그러나 귀납법을 부정하는 것은 프라이팬이 뜨겁다고 불길로 뛰어드는 격이 된다. 귀납법은 과학에서 그리고 모든 일상생활에서 필수적인 역할을 한다. 바다 물이 소금물이라는 것을 증명하기 위해 반드시 바닷물을 다 마셔봐야 할까? 포퍼가 과학에서 귀납적 방법을 제거하려는 시도는 연역과 귀납법 사이의 진정한 관계와 과학이 실제 삶에 어떻게 작용하는지에 대해 완전한 무지에서 비롯된 것이다.  19세기 말까지 연역적인 방법은 수학에만 거의 배타적으로 사용되었다. 20세기에는 물리학, 생물학, 언어학, 사회학 등의 영역에 적용하려는 시도가 있었다. 이러한 학문들이 대표하는 주장은 인상적이지만 공리적-연역법은 과학의 목적을 달성하는데 한계가 있음을 경험으로 알 수 있다. 귀납과 연역의 논쟁에는 핵심이 빠져 있다. 실제로 귀납법은 연역법과 항상 같이 존재한다. 어떤 것도 방법으로써 자기 완결적인 것은 없다. 그래서 변증법적 유물론에서는 연역법과 귀납법을 실재를 인식하는 과정에서 서로 다른 측면, 즉 서로 분리할 수 없게 연결되어 있고 서로가 서로를 결정하는 것으로 결합시킨다.  이미 이코노미스트지(Economist)의 한 기사에서도 포퍼가 귀납적 방법을 거부하는 것에 대해 비판들이 지속되어 왔다. “많은 철학자들 역시 포퍼가 귀납법을 거부한 것에 대해 문제 제기를 했다. 귀납법은 논리적으로 만족스럽지 못하지만 불가피하게 사용해야 하는 것이다. 실제 세계에 대해 연역적 추리는 그들이 발판으로 삼고 있는 세계에 대해 가정하는 것이다. 과학자들이 기본 가정들로부터 내린 결론을 검증하기 위해 실험결과를 해석하는 것과 같이 이러한 가정은 귀납법에 의존한다. 가설을 설정할 때 그리고 그것을 검증하고 해석할 때 모두 과학자들은 하나의 기본 가정에서 출발한다. 그것은 자연이 지금 여기에서 움직이듯 다른 장소 다른 시간에도 똑같이 움직일 것이라는 것이다. 이것은 귀납적인 가정이다. 제니퍼 트러스티드(Jennifer Trusted) 박사는 귀납법에 대해 올바른 견해(in perspective)를 밝힌 영국의 철학자이다. 그녀는 귀납법은 본질적인 것이기는 하지만 실재 세계의 지식을 얻기에는 충분하지 않다. 그리고 연역법에 대해서도 똑 같이 말할 수 있다. 고 지적한다.” 이 마지막 의견은 절대적으로 옳으며 물질의 핵심에 다가간다. 귀납법이나 연역법 중 둘 중 하나를 취하면 어떤 것도 만족스럽지 않다. 이 둘을 결합해야 하며 이것이 변증법적인 것이다. 연역법은 결론이기도 하다. 그러므로 귀납은 연역의 한 종류로 볼 수 있다. 더욱이 모든 연역은 최종 분석에서 물질적 실재로부터 유추되어야 한다. 이것은 ‘순수 이론’으로만 이루어진 것으로 생각되는 공리도 사실은 물질적 실재로부터 유추된 것이다. 예를 들어, 유클리드 공리 중 직선은 두 점을 잇는 가장 짧은 거리라는 것도 사실은 오랜 관찰과 경험의 결과이다. 엥겔스는 연역법과 귀납법 이 두 가지 방법을 서로 각각 취했을 때 그 일면성을 설명한 바 있다. 그리고 이들 사이의 변증법적 관계를 다음과 같이 설명하였다.  “귀납법과 연역법은 종합과 분석처럼 반드시 함께 해야 한다. 편파적으로 다른 하나를 희생하며 하나만을 찬미해서는 안 되고 각각을 적절하게 적용해야 한다. 또 그것들이 상호 내재되어 있고, 서로를 보충관계에 있다는 것을 명심하면서 적용해야 한다.”(자연 변증법 p. 302.) 예측할 수 있는 것만 과학인가? 모든 결론을 연역법에 의해 이끌어 내야한다는 포퍼의 주장은 실재 과학 실천 활동과 맞지 않는다. 사실 입자 물리와 우주론과 같이 연역적 방법과 추상적 추리에 지나치게 의존하는 과학 분야도 있다. 그러나 이 분야는 깊고 깊은 혼란 속으로 빠져들어 가고 있다. 포퍼가 주장했듯이 새로운 가설은 증명할 수 없다. 상당히 불충분한 한데도 단순히 가장 최선이라는 이유로 일상적으로 사용되는 많은 이론들이 있다. 예를 들어 공학자들이 물질의 스트레스와 스트레인을 측정할 때 사용하는 후크의 법칙이 그러한 예에 해당한다.  1981년 이코노미스트 지 12월호 과학 부분에 매우 통찰력 있는 글에서 (불행히도 저자명이 없다) 과학에 대한 포퍼의 견해는 탐구 분석에 있어 얼마나 부적절한지를 잘 보여 주고 있다. “결과를 ‘예’ 혹은 ‘아니오’라는 대답으로 제한할 수 없는 실험결과들이 많이 있다. 또 극단적으로 해답이 무엇인지를 해석하기 어려운 것들도 있다. 그것들은 소위 측정하고자 하는 신호에 대한 잡음비 때문이다. 만약 실험을 여섯 번 반복하여 단지 두 번만 예측된 결과가 나왔다면 그 예측은 증명되었다고 할 수 있는가? 혹은 여섯 번 중에 네 번은 실험은 잘못된 것인가? 생물학에서 이러한 결과들이 일반적이다. 자연의 변덕은 악명이 높다. 과학자들은 명확한 답을 추구하지만, 종종 덜 명확한 답에 만족해야만 한다. 그리고 만약 어떤 예측된 이론에 대해 확실히 반증된 결과를 얻었다고 하더라도 그 반증된 것이 항상 명확한 것은 아니다. 엄격하게 말하면, 완전히 격리된 가정만을 검증하는 것은 불가능하다. 의식적이든 무의식적이든 과학자들은 검증된 가정들 이외에도 지식의 피라미드로부터 훨씬 더 많이 생각을 가져온다.” (이코노미스트 12월 26일자, 1981, p. 101.) 반드시 정확하게 예측 가능해야지만 과학 방법이 되는 것은 아니다. 이 조건은 실재 과학에 전혀 적용되지 않는다. 천체 과학자는 때때로 지금부터 수백만 년 전 별의 위치를 예측할 수 있다. 그러나 다윈은 백만 년 이후에 어떤 종이 진화 할 것인지를 예측할 수 없었다. 지질학자는 지진이 발생할 정확한 시간과 장소를 예측하지 못한다. 그리고 우리는 더 이상 기상학자에게 희망을 갖지 않는다. 현대 컴퓨터와 인공위성 기술로 그들은 최대 3일 정도로 기후를 어떤 정확도내에서 예측할 수 있을 뿐이다. 덧붙이자면 천문학조차도 생각하는 만큼 그렇게 정확한 과학은 아니다. 우주론에서도 예측할 수 없는 수많은 현상들이 있다. 다음별이 태어날 장소를 정교하게 예측할 수 없다는 이유로 아무도 천문학이 과학이 아니라고 생각하지 않는다.  비록 예측의 본질과 실험적인 ‘검증’의 형식이 실험실 시험관 규모에서부터 천문학적 거리에 이르기까지 방대하고 다양하지만 실재과학은 확실히 이론을 검증하기 위해 예측과정을 포함한다. 그러나 어떤 것을 예측할 수 없고, 예측 자체가 없다는 이유로 과학적 방법이 아니라고 배제해서는 안 된다. 여러 과학이 존재하고 여러 예측들이 있다. 단순히 선형계에 속하는 예측은 매우 확실하게 예측할 수 있지만 복잡계는 정밀하게 예측하기 어렵거나 불가능하다.  모든 인공위성과 컴퓨터를 동원하더라도 정확하게 3일 이상의 날씨를 미리 예측하는 것은 불가능하다. 그렇다면 기상학은 과학일까 아닐까? 지진은 예측할 수 없다. 어떤 산뜻한 실험실의 실험도 지질학의 이론을 증명할 수는 없다. 그렇다면 지질학은 과학이 아닌가? 병원 의사의 예측은 무엇인가? 최고의 의사도 진단할 때 실수를 하고 때로는 그 실수가 치명적일 때가 있다. 그렇다면 의학은 과학인가? 확실히 그것은 물리학류와 같은 정교한 과학은 아닐 것이다.  심리학의 영역에 오면 상황은 더욱 복잡해진다. 과학으로써의 심리학은 여전히 유아적인 수준이다. 이러한 가장 복잡한 영역에서는, 사람들의 생각을 추동하는 기본적인 힘을 포함해서 일반적으로 받아들여지는 완성되고 정리된 생각들(body of ideas)을 아직 이야기할 수 있는 수준이 아니다. 그래서 인간 대중들의 복잡한 행동을 다루는 사회학에 까지 오면 어마어마한 양의 변수들로 인해 예측이 이중 삼중으로 어려워진다. 물론 이 경우 예측은 어렵지만 불가능하지 않다. 인간사회에서 행위에는 어떤 패턴이 있고 어떤 과정이 있다. 그리고 그것을 명확하게 할 수 있고 설명할 수 있다. 일반적인 결론을 이끌어 낼 수도 있고 실천에 의해 검증되어야 하지만 예측도 할 수 있다. 단지 실험실에서와 같이 정교한 실험으로 정확하게 예측할 수 없을 뿐이다.  사회에서 가장 일반적인 경향은 예측할 수 있다. 그리고 이 예측은 경험에 비추어 수정되고 부가되어야 하며 경우에 따라서는 개정되어야 한다. 결국 이 이론들은 어떤 사건들에 의해 수많은 이유들로 반증될 수도 있을 것이다. 이것은 마치 유능한 의사의 진단이 오진으로 판단하는 것과 같다. 그렇다고 의사의 진단을 일반적으로 비과학적인 업무이며 시간 낭비라는 결론을 내려야할까? 아니면 다시 오진의 원인을 분석하여 그것으로부터 다시 배워야 할까? 다음과 같은 실제적인 질문이 제기되어야 한다. 사회적 진화를 지배하고 있는 일반 법칙이 있고, 그 법칙들을 이성적으로 이해 가능하다고 믿는가? 만약 아니라고 대답한다면 그러면 더 논의를 진행하는 것은 무의미하다. 만약 인간의 역사가 본질적으로 무의미한 우연의 연속이라고 본다면 그러면 그것을 이해하려고 할 이유가 없는 것이다. 그러나 만약 과학이 아주 작은 양의 귀중한 화석으로 아주 오랜 과거에 인류발전을 지배하는 법칙을 발견하는데 성공했다는 사실을 인정한다면 그러면 왜 지난 10,000년 동인 우리 종족의 진화를 결정하는 법칙을 발견하는 것이 불가능하다는 것인가? 그러나 불가능하다는 주장은 포퍼 교수에 게서 나왔다. 포퍼는 이러한 시도들을 모두 가증스러운 역사주의라고 비난한다. 그래서 우리는 멀리 떨어진 은하계에 대해 그리고 가장 작은 입자 물질에 대해서는 질문할 수 있지만, 만약 우리가 사회에 대한, 역사에 대한 -우리가 누구이며 어디서부터 왔는지에 대한- 이성적인 판단을 시도 한다면 그것은 허용되지 않는다. 이러한 포퍼의 논리가 정말 과학과 관련이 있을까? 그렇지 않다면 우리가 살고 있는 사회 형태의 과거와 현재에 대한 수많은 질문을 하는 것을 원치 않는 어떤 기득권 이익과 관련된 것이 아닐까. 그래서 미래 우리가 살기를 원하는 사회 형태에 대해 혹시 그들에게 잘못된 결론을 이끌어 낼지 모른다는 두려움 때문은 아닐까?  그들은 과학과 무관하다. 연역법과 특히 형식논리학을 부각시키려는 포퍼의 시도는 아리스토텔레스에 대해 일면적이고 경직된 풍자를 하는 중세시대 독재적인 교회의 21세기판과 같다. 다시 한 번 과학을 엄격하고 편견에 사로잡힌 관념론자들의 도식으로 구속시키려는 시도를 하고 있는 것이다. 그것은 모든 사람을 무릎 꿇게 하는 절대 진리의 권위를 주장하려는 것이다. 불행히도, 통제되지 않고 반항적이며 모순적인 자연은 그러한 처분에 맥없이 당하지 않을 것이다. 그러나 자기모순이 없는 논리학은 그 속에서 해답을 줄지 모르지만, 세상에 대해서는 꼭 맞는 해답을 주지는 못한다. 사실 우리가 봐왔듯이 21세기 논리학과 수학은 그것 내부의 [논리적] 모순조차 해결할 수 없다는 사실이 밝혀졌다. (예를 들어 다음 문장은 참인가 거짓인가?) “다음 문장은 거짓이다. 앞 문장은 참이다.” 논리학자들 사이에서도 이와 같은 여러 ‘변칙’들이 해결되고 있는지 합의가 이루어지지 않고 있다. 이러한 사실에도 불구하고 칼 포퍼의 아류들은 아무런 걸림돌 없이 자신들의 철학이 인간의 사상 전체 영역에 대한 법칙이라고 주장하고 있다. 문제는 천연 그대로의 물질세계에 과학이 있다는 점이다. 그 속에는 모순을 포함하고 있고 대부분 비선형적 특징을 보이고 있다. 이 점은 과학과 과학철학이 서로 맞을 수 없다는 점을 시사한다. 칼 포퍼는 이러한 불일치에 대해 조금도 괴로워하지 않았다. 만약 과학이 엄격한 검증의 원칙에 만족하지 못한다면 그만큼 과학을 위해 더 불행할 뿐이다! 이 위대한 사람이 이것에 대해 무엇이라고 했는지 들어 보자.  “과학은 확실하거나 잘 정립된 진술로 이루어진 시스템도 아니며, 최종 상태를 향해 착실하게 진보하는 시스템도 아니다. 우리의 과학은 지식(episteme)이 아니다. 그것은 진실을 얻을 수 있다고 주장할 수도 없고 심지어 확률처럼 진실을 대체할 수도 없다.  그러나 과학은 단순한 생물학적 생존 가치보다 더 큰 가치가 있다. 그것은 단지 유용한 도구이기 때문만은 아니다. 그것이 진리와 가능성 어느 것도 얻을 수 없지만 지식에 대한 노력과 진리 추구는 과학 발전의 가장 강력한 동기이다. 우리는 알지 못한다. 우리는 단지 추측만할 수 있을 뿐이다. 그리고 우리의 추측은 우리가 어떤 규칙성과 법칙을 밝혀내거나 발견할 수 있다는 비과학적이며 형이상학적인 (생물학적으로는 설명할 수 있지만) 믿음에 따른다. 베이컨처럼 현재의 과학에는- ‘사람이 지금 일상적으로 자연에 적용해서 추론할 수 있는 방법’에는- ‘예감, 성급함 그리고 미성숙 그리고 편견’으로 구성되어 있다고 말할 수 있을 것이다.” (페리스 Ferris 인용, pp. 797-8, 강조는 저자.) 1936년 옥스퍼드 아리스토텔레스 학회에서는 듀링(Herr Duhring)의 전통을 이어 받아 전형적인 온순한 스타일로 강의가 진행되었다. 이 강의를 본 사람은 적었지만 이후 강사는 이 강의를 회상하며 화를 내며 말한 적이 있다. “청중들은 [칼 포퍼의 철학을] 농담이나 역설로 받아들이며 웃으며 박수를 치더군요.” 확실히 그 청중들은 칼 포퍼를 알지 못했다! 강사는 의도된 농담을 한 것이 아니라 진심을 말한 것이었다. 포퍼와 그의 제자들에게 과학의 목적은 세계에 대한 진실을 발견하는 것이 아니라 단시 체스나 교체 단어 퍼즐과 같이 형식 논리학의 연습과 같은 것일 뿐이었다.  이 모든 것에 대해 무엇이라 말해야 할까? 그들은 과학의 발전이 전대미문의 정상을 도달한 21세기 초에 과학은 실제로 아무것도 알 수 없다고 말하고 있다. 이 주제에 대해 우리의 견해는 다음의 판단과 같다.  “이론과 사실사이에 차이는 존재해야 한다. 과학자들은 이론을 가정한다. 그 사실들도 받아들일 수 있는 한계 내에서 확실히 진실임을 안다. 시간이 지남에 따라 한 이론은 다른 이론으로 대체되는데, 논쟁을 통해 더 나은 것으로 대체된다. 논쟁할 것 없이 명확한 것은 알려진 사실들이 누적되고 있다는 점뿐이다.  대체적으로 과학은 ‘진리’이다. 사람이 중세시대보다 자연에 대해 더 많이 알고 있다는 사실을 부정하는 것은 명백한 오류이다. 물론 어떤 과학적 발견은 거짓이며 과학자들은 그들이 발견한 것을 알려낼 때 종종 약간씩 비이성적일 때도 있음을 부인할 수는 없다. 그러나 과학에 진실에 대한 강력한 척도가 있다는 것을 부정하면 남은 대안은 소가 아플 때 마녀를 탓하는 시절로 돌아가는 것이다.” (이코노미스트, 같은 책, p. 103.) 일반적으로 포퍼주의와 논리실증주의에 대한 결정적인 반론은 그들이 자랑하는 모든 주장들이 실재 과학과 없다는 점이다. 이러한 것은 과학자들의 태도에서 간접적으로 확인할 수 있는데, 그것에 동정적이라고 기대했던 과학자들도 포함된다. 코펜하겐에서 과학자들과 논리실증주의자들이 양자역학의 철학적 의미에 대해 회의를 마친 후 닐 보어는 다음과 같이 말했다. “나로서는 실증주의자들이 원하는 것에 대해서 동의할 수 있다. 그러나 그들이 거부한 것에 대해서는 동의할 수 없다. 모든 실증주의자들이 하려고 하는 것은 현대과학의 과정에 철학적 편견을, 정당화라는 단어를 좋아한다면 정당화를 제공하는 것이다. 그들은 예전 철학 개념에 과학적 개념이 부족하다고 지적한다. 그리고 그들은 일반 철학자들이 논쟁하는 많은 문제들에 대해 전혀 의미가 없는 것으로, 무시해야 하는 가짜 문제로 생각한다. 개념이 명확해야 한다는 실증주의자 주장은 확실히 인정할 수 있지만, 단순히 깨끗하고 명료한 개념이 부족하다는 이유로 폭넓은 이슈들에 대한 모든 토론들을 의미 없다고 하는 것은 그리 유용해 보이지 않는다. 이와 같은 태도는 양자 이론을 이해하는 것에도 방해된다.” (페리스 인용, p. 822) 유명한 물리학자 볼프강 파울리(Wolfgang Pauli)는 논리 실증주의자들을 단지 형이상학이라는 용어를 욕설과 같은 것, 잘해야 비과학적 사상에 대한 완곡한 표현으로 사용하고 있음을 지적하였다.  “예전 철학자들이 정교한 언어로 표현할 수 없었다는 이유만으로 그들의 사상과 고민들에 대해 관심을 갖지 말아야 된다는 것은 매우 불합리해 보인다. - 이 점은 닐 (보어) 역시 동의했다. 사실 종종 이들 사상이 의미하는 바를 이해하기는 어렵지만, 이해해야 할 일이 생겼을 때 그것들을 항상 현대 언어로 변역하고, 새로운 해답을 던져주는지를 발견하려고 노력한다.” (페리스 인용, p. 824.) 마지막으로 실형을 구형하기에 앞서 논리실증주의 측을 열광적으로 지지하는 증인-하이젠베르크-를 불러 보자. 사실 그는 처음부터 원자 수준이하에서 ‘불확실성(비결정성)’을 주장하였고, 이 이론을 바탕으로 관찰을 통해서는 물리적 진실을 얻을 수 있다는 것을 부정하였다. 한마디로 논리실증주의를 잘 따르고 있었다. 그러나 심오한 연구를 수행하는 과학자로써 하이젠베르크는 물리세계의 객관적 진실과 타협을 해야만 했다. 결국 자칭 과학 철학자의 불합리한 주장은 그도 더 이상 동의할 수 없었다.  그에 다음과 같이 쓰고 있다.  “실증주의자들은 단순한 해법을 가지고 있다. 세상은 명확하게 말할 수 있는 것과 말하지 않고 무시하는 것이 더 나은 것으로 나눌 수 있다. 확실히 아무것도 아닌 것이라고 말할 수 있는 것이 있다고 해보자, 그렇다면 누군가 더 핵심이 없는 철학을 발견할 수 있지 않을까? 만약 우리가 불확실한 모든 것을 생략해 버린다면 아마 완전히 관련이 없는 것이나 그러나 하찮은 동어 반복적인 것들만 남게 될 것이다.”(같은 책, p. 826.) 건조한 사막에서 수십 년 동안 방황 후, 마침내 가장 전향적인 과학자들은 자연이 어떤 식으로 작동하는지 그리고 그것을 어떻게 이해할 수 있는 지에 대해 아무것도 가르쳐주지 않는 철학에 등을 돌리기 시작했다. 카오스와 복잡성 이론의 출현은 과학철학의 협소함에 깨부수는데 결정적인 요인을 제공해 주었고 자연의 변증법적 견해에 접근했다. 생물학자 스튜터트 카우프만(Stuart Kaufmann)이 왜 그가 철학을 거부했는지에 대한 그의 결론에서 현 철학 사상에 대한 신세대 과학자들의 태도를 엿볼 수 있다.  “내가 철학을 사랑하지 않는 것은 아니다. 나는 그것 속에 어떤 경솔함을 믿지 않는다. 현 철학자들은, 적어도 1950년대에서 1960년대의 철학자들은, 세상속의 사실들이 아니라 어떤 개념과 그 개념이 의미하는 것들에 초점을 맞추고 있다. 그것을 통해 당신이 말한 것이 설득력이 있고 적절하고 통일성이 있는지는 알 수 있지만 그것이 옳은지는 알 수 없다.” (마첼 월드롭, M. Waldrop, 복잡성 Complexity, p. 105.) 영국속담에 “소인은 하찮은 것을 좋아한다.”는 것이 있다. 이들은 과학에 대해 불가능한 것을 요구하고 그 요구가 받아들여지지 않았을 때, 과학은 과학에 대해 ‘진정으로’ 아무 말도 할 수 없다는 결론을 내버린다. 단지 복잡한 질문을 단순하게 대답하는 방법에 대해서는 많은 이야기를 하고 있고, 그렇게 되지 않았을 때 불평을 한다. 이렇듯 과학철학을 대표하는 이러한 낡은 주장은 문에 박힌 못처럼 쓸모없는 것이다. 맑스가 매튜 아놀드(Matthew Arnold)에게 말한 것을 바꿔 써보면, 과학철학은 이 세상에 있기에는 너무 과분하다.  실존주의  실존주의는 니체(Nietzsche)와 키에르케고르 (Kierkegaard)로 대표되는 19세기 비-합리주의자에 근거하고 있으며, 아주 다양한 형태와 정치적 색체를 띄고 있다. 종교적인 경향(마르셀(Marcel), 야스퍼스(Jaspers), 베르다예프 (Berdyayev)와 부버(Buber))과 무신론적 경향(하이데거 (Heidigger), 사르트르 (Sartre), 까뮈 (Camus))이 있다. 그러나 가장 일반적인 특징으로 볼 수 있는 것은 극단적인 주관주의이다. 이러한 경향은 그들이 선호하는 단어-슬로건에 의해 반영되어 있다. 예들 들면 ‘세상에서 인간의 존재’, ‘공포’ ‘걱정’ ‘죽음을 향한 존재’ 등이 그러하다.  독일 수학자였다가 철학자로 바꾼 에드문트 후설(Edmund Husserl)에 의해 주관주의 경향은 이미 예견되었다. 그의 ‘현상학’은 중심에 자아를 갖는 개인, 직접 경험된 것으로 개인세계에 기초를 둔 주관적 관념론이다.  칼 야스퍼스(Karl Jaspers)도 확실히 종교적이며 신비주의적이었다. 그는 철학의 목적이 ‘존재의 계시(revelation)’라고 하였다. 장-폴 사르트르는 ‘존재와 무(nothingness)의 두려움’, ‘선택의 자유’, ‘의무’” 등에 대해 이야기 했다.  이것은 1차 세계대전 이후 독일과 프랑스의 일부 지식인층에서 나타난 분위기를 표현한 것으로 ‘대 전쟁’이후 자유주의의 심각한 위기, 그 결과로 나타나는 대 격동을 반영하고 있다. 그들은 사회가 직면한 문제를 직시하지만 대안을 찾을 수 없었다. 그리고 개인에 의존해서 대안을 찾으려고 시도하기 때문에 그로 인해 수반되는 절박한 숙명적인 느낌과 무력감 그리고 ‘공포’들이 그들의 글을 채우고 있다.  실존주의는 독일고전철학과 계몽운동의 합리주의- 미쳐가는 세상 속에 잘못 놓인 합리주의에 반작용으로 비이성적인 것을 옹호하였다. 실존주의자들은 독일 고전철학자들이 세상을 주체와 객체(대상)로 나누는 것을 비판한다. 그들에 따르면 주체와 객체의 통일이 바로 존재이다. 존재를 알기 위해서 중요한 임계 상황, 예를 들어 죽음에 직면해서 자신을 발견하는 것이 필요하다. 결과적으로 세계는 사람에 “직접적으로 가까이”있다. 그래서 존재는 이성을 통해서가 아니라 직관을 통해서 알 수 있다는 것이다. 실존주의의 중심에는 선택의 자유에 대한 문제가 있다. 여기서 자유란 무한히 많은 가능성들 중에서 하나를 선택할 수 있는 말 그대로 개인의 ‘선택의 자유’이다. 그리고 자유는 필연과 반대되는 대립물로써 완전히 추상적인 개념에 도달하게 된다.  이러한 주장은 주의주의(voluntarism)로 귀결된다. 이것에 따르면 개인은 객관적인 주위 환경에 관계없이 자유롭게 선택할 수 있다. 이것은 결국 사회로부터 격리된 개인들의 ‘자유’를 의미하며, 바로 로빈슨 크루소의 ‘자유’이다. 이것은 자유가 아니다. 결과적으로 그들은 자유의 문제를 추상적인 도덕(윤리)의 문제로 돌려 버린다. 그러나 실천적으로 자유는 아주 구체적인 문제이다. 현실에서 사람이 그들을 구속하고 있는 속박을 무시하고 자유롭게 되는 것은 불가능하다. 그것은 중력의 법칙을 무시하고 낭떠러지로 뛰어 오르는 것이 불가능한 것과 같은 이치이다.  실존주의에서 현대 철학을 완전하게 통합(융해)하려는 움직임을 볼 수 있다. 장-폴 사르트르는 실존주의를 맑스주의와의 통일을 시도하지만 실패한다. 물과 기름은 썩기지 않는 법이다. 더욱이 사르트르의 사상을 철학사상의 결정체라고 말할 수 없다. 그의 철학은 다른 여러 철학 특히 데카르트와 헤겔로부터 빌려 온 개념들을 무질서하게 혼합해 놓고 있다. 결국 앞뒤가 맞지 않고 총체적으로 불일치를 보이며 허무주의와 비관주의 정신으로 가득 차 있다.  이해할 수 없고 불합리한 존재의 본질 때문에, 사르트르에게 근본적인 철학적 경험은 혐오감, 매스꺼움으로 여겨졌다. 그래서 모든 것은 무(nothingness)로 용해되어 버린다. (역주) 인간의 일반적 본질보다도 개개의 인간의 실존, 특히 타자(他者)와 대치(代置)할 수 없는 자기 독자의 실존을 강조한다. 사르트르의 실존주의는 ‘우연성(偶然性)’과 ‘무상성(無償性)’으로 대표된다. 인간은 아무런 목적도, 이유도 없이 이 세상에 태어난 존재라는 것이다.  이것은 헤겔의 풍자이다 (역주) 실존주의는 헤겔이 주장하는 보편적 정신의 존재를 부정하고, 인간 정신을 어디까지나 개별적인 것으로 보아 개인의 주체성이 진리임을 주장한다. 사르트르의 실존주의는 헤겔의 「정신 현상학」을 출발점으로 삼고 있다. . 헤겔은 확실히 세상은 이해할 수 없다고 생각하지 않았다. 사르트르의 저서에서 헤겔 주의적 특수용어는 헤겔의 가장 불명료한 문장조차도 명료한 모델로 보이게 하는 식으로 사용된다.  모든 것에 우선하는 것은 세상을 이해할 수 없다고 여기는 지식인, 적대적인 세계에 직면해서 격리된 지식인의 무력감이다. 사악한 세상으로부터 개인주의로 탈출을 시도하는 것은 사르트르의 유명한(악명 높은) 문장으로 요약된다. “지옥 그것은 다른 사람들이다(L’enfer, c’est les Autres).” 어떻게 이러한 전망이 변증법적 유물론의 혁명적 낙관주의와 일치할 수 있는지는 상상하기 힘들다.  그러나 어느 누구도 사르트르의 일관성에 대해 비난한 적이 없다. 물론 그것은 베트남과 프랑스 1968 학생과 노동자들의 운동에 연대하는 등 진보적 운동을 지지에 대한 그의 명성 때문이다. 그러나 철학적이며 심리학적인 견해에서 사르트르는 맑스주의에는 완전히 낯선 것이다.(끝)

 

본문

워크스 

1. 로봇, 디지털 경제와 자본주의의 미래 - 홍석만(참세상 연구소)  워크스 

2. 4차 산업혁명과 일자리, 그리고 기본소득 이광석(서울과학기술대 교수) 워크스 

3. 기술주의의 역사적 반복과 최면 효과 이광석(서울과학기술대)  워크스 

 4. . 가짜 구호, 네 번째 산업혁명과 노동  -김상민(서울대 강사, 문화과학 편집위원) 워크스

 

한겨레 

1, [세상 읽기] 로보칼립스 혹은 4차 산업혁명 / 이강국
2. 왜 4차 산업혁명은 한국에서 유난히 요란할까? 구본권의 디지털 프리즘

 

오마이 뉴스 

1. '4차산업혁명', 잔치는 이미 끝났다 

기타
1.  4차 산업혁명, 세계 각국과 기업은 어떻게 준비하고 있을까?  -삼성  
2.   4차 산업혁명, 무엇을 대비해야 하나  -Pressian   
3.  4차 산업혁명 - 산업통상자원부 자료 

본문

본문

여기에 이런 글을 쓰는것이 맞을까? 

언제 부터인지 모르겠지만, 내가 통제하 수 없는 것이 나를 통제하고 있다.

열심히 5개월 노력의 결과는 별로다. 재발일 수도 있단다.. 아닐 수도 있고..  

갑자기 무기력해진다. 

지금 난 무엇을 해야 할까? 

후회없이 시간을 보내고 싶은데, 시간은 마냥 그냥 지나가 버린다. 

본문

다시 글 쓰기를 시작해 볼까 합니다. 여전히 아는 것이 부족해 글쓰기를 거부해보기도 하지만, 글 안쓴다고 따로 내공이 더 쌓이는 것도 아니고.. 오히려 글 쓸때 가장 많은 고민을 하는 군요.. 이것이라도 해야하기에..

 

 

 

본문

시간날때 찬찬히..

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/4688

~Science

Quantum mechanics and dialectical materialism

26/12/2010

Marxism, materialism and particle physics

Pete Mason, Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales)

The following article is based on a talk given by Pete Mason during the 2010 CWI Summer School, held in Belgium, last July. In a personal contribution, Pete looks at quantum mechanics and its place in the history of science. Pete examines the debates amongst scientists, such as Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg, surrounding quantum mechanics, and the contribution of Marxists, including Engels and Lenin, on aspects of dialectical materialism and science. 

Socialistworld.net

Atoms and their history in science

Quantum mechanics is the study of energy and atoms, of the very smallest particles. The discovery of the atom, 2,500 years ago, was just one of the astonishing achievements of the ancient Greeks who lived in Ionia, in great cities on the coast of present-day Turkey. Another was a materialist dialectic.

How did the Ionian philosophers, who were merchants and explorers living a hundred years or more before the famous Athenian philosophers such Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, arrive at the conclusion that the world was made of atoms?

Above all, they observed nature. These philosophers tended to run into trouble with the authorities for denying the gods and looking for material explanations for things – they were materialists. They asked how the stone statues could be worn over time, or how two different coloured liquids mix together – surely, these things must be made up of tiny particles, too small for the eye to see, which wear off statues and mix together.

The ancient Ionian city-state of Miletus experienced revolutions for two generations. The aristocracy were overthrown by the rising merchant class and a succession of revolutions followed. Power passed between the masses – the “demos” (“people”) – and the “people of property”.

“At first the people prevailed and, after they had thrown the rich out, they assembled… the fugitives on the threshing-floors, and had oxen trample on them and destroyed them in the most terrible manner. Thereupon the rich, again getting control, tarred and burned to death all whom they could get hold of…” (Athenaios, quoted by C J Emlyn-Jones, The Ionians and Hellenism, p. 31)

Dialectics: Nothing is fixed

In another amazing achievement, the philosophers of this time developed what Socrates later called his ‘dialectics’. Naturally reflecting the upheavals in society around them, they believed that nothing was fixed – all things that come into being must pass away. Their philosophy embraced the entire sweep of nature and society as one organic whole, perhaps reflecting the way a genuine social revolution sweeps everything into its turmoil, leaving nothing untouched. Dialectics is a holistic philosophy which always considers things in their relations and their development, as Lenin said.

Anaximander of Miletus argued that the world came into being in a ball of fire and that people evolved from fishes. It took science 2500 years to reveal the kernel of truth in these observations – the theory of the big bang origins of the universe and the theory of evolution. The ancient Ionian philosophers were the first to study the world using a materialist dialectic, a dialectic which insisted that all things were in the course of development. This development emerged from internal conflict, a war of opposing forces within all things, a “unity of opposites” as Lenin called it, an “interpenetration of opposites” as Engels termed it. These warring opposites were what drove the eternal flux of change. Dialectics is a philosophy born of revolution.

Gold and silver coins were minted in Ionia, perhaps the first western coins in history. The Marxist archaeologist, Vere Gordon Childe (1892 –1957), observed that the Ionian philosophers Democritus and Leucippus, who are considered the founders of the ancient Greek theory of atoms, “set out to resolve external nature into discrete indivisible bits or particles (atoms), just as the new currency resolved wealth into discontinuous particles – coins.” (Vere Gordon Childe, What Happened in History, p 215)

Opposing the philosophy of dialectics was a wealthy Greek law-maker and philosopher who lived in Italy. Parmenides argued that “thought and being are the same”, revealing himself to be an idealist, rather than a materialist who distinguishes thought from being. Perhaps Parmenides did not want his laws to be broken by revolution – he and his famous pupil, Zeno, argued that movement was impossible. He denied all change, in extreme opposition to the Ionian dialectics. All that exists, he claimed, is the ‘One’, a single spherical plenum, timeless, uniform and unchanging. Only an idealist could reach such an absurd conclusion.

Parmenides and Zeno had laid down a challenge to the Ionian philosophers – to explain the nature of change. Democritus and Leucippus suggested that rather than the world consisting of one single unchanging plenum, perhaps the world is entirely composed of tiny, indivisible, unchanging plenums, or atoms (the word ‘atom’ comes from the Greek word ‘uncuttable’). Then the world could undergo infinite change while, at the same time, the constituent parts are unchanging.

This is how they solved the philosophical riddle. But, in doing so, they opened the way for a new philosophy which rejected dialectics for a mechanical, individual, myopic, reductionist outlook which mistakenly examines things entirely in isolation, abandoning any notion of the interpenetration of opposites, and disregarding the wider relations and development. This outlook forms the basis of the philosophy of positivism.

Unity of opposites

In reality, the atom is not unchanging. It is a unity of opposites in various simple ways, such as between the positive nucleus and the negative electron cloud around it, and these opposing forces cement the building blocks of the natural world. But quantum mechanics reveals a more complex and challenging aspect of the subatomic world.

The materialist dialectic exposes the shortcomings of all fixed formulas, the Marxist George Novack writes:

“The materialist dialectic is based upon the existence of conflicting movements, forces and relations in history, whose contradictions as they develop expose the shortcomings of all fixed formulas. As Trotsky wrote in 1906 in Results and Prospects, ‘Marxism is above all a method of analysis – not analysis of texts, but analysis of social relations.’” (Leon Trotsky on Dialectical Materialism, in George Novack, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, p. 309)

For this reason, Marxism does not approach sciences such as quantum mechanics as if it must consist of fixed formulas which must be either true for all time or false. Nor does it insist that the processes that quantum mechanics has discovered conform to dialectical formulas or laws. Quantum mechanics demonstrates stunning examples of dialectical transformations, quantum leaps, which we will not have time to discuss.

But Novack is wrong when he insists that Marxism teaches that all natural processes must “conform” to the various dialectical laws (ibid p. 161). On the contrary, Engels explains the mistake of the idealist philosophers such as GWF Hegel: “The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deducted from them.” (Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 83) Why should dialectics have fixed formulas to which nature should conform?

Quantum mechanics

The June 2010 Scientific American carries a feature entitled, ‘Does time really exist?’ and carries a news item on a ‘Quantum Microphone’, the width of a human hair, which “acts as if it appears in two places at once”, a type of “quantum weirdness” previously only seen at the molecular level. Another news item in the same issue quotes a theoretical physicist at Oxford university: “The idea of points of space-time as being primary objects is artificial”, commenting “Indeed, the concept of distinct positions [in space] and times breaks down” because of Albert Einstein’s relativity and “the notoriously spooky connections between quantum particles.”

Thus recently the old philosophical orthodoxy principally associated with Danish physicist Niels Bohr at Copenhagen, termed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which restricted quantum phenomena to a realm unknowable in principle and that no other interpretation was possible, has been exploded by experiments like this. A neo-Copenhagen view has arisen in which there is no point at which quantum waves ‘collapse’ into the normal ‘macroscopic’ world – the quantum world is the normal world.

People find much of what is reported about quantum mechanics quite bizarre. They wonder whether scientists have lost all touch with reality. Various Marxist trends take the view that the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics is not materialist. Even Einstein argued that quantum mechanics lacks what he called “elements of reality”, including objectivity and causality.

I hope to give some insight into how scientists have begun to voice the claims made in the Scientific American about space and time. How quantum ‘weirdness’ is based on genuine research. The correct Marxist approach towards science is very important. In rejecting the claims of the Marxist trends that criticise quantum mechanics, I hope to open a discussion on where Marxists stand on these questions.

Materialism and idealism

There are various definitions of ‘materialism’ in philosophy. Marxists have a unique definition. For Marxists, in this context, materialism can be described as the philosophy that the world exists independently of the human mind. Ultimately, the material world is primary, and thought is secondary. Engels wrote that “those who regard Nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism”. (Quoted by Georgi Plekhanov in Bernstein and Materialism, July 1898)

Defending quantum mechanics against a raft of philosophers, Bernard d’Espagnat, one of the leading French particle physicists, argues for what he calls “mind-independent reality”, describing the idea of a reality which exists prior to and independent of the existence of thinking beings. This is fundamentally a materialist outlook.

Another essential example of a materialist outlook comes from Einstein himself:

"The elements of physical reality cannot be determined by a priori philosophical considerations, but must be found by an appeal to the results of experiments and measurements". (Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, Physical Review, 15 May 1935)

By contrast, idealism argues that there can be a thinking mind – whether it be the mind of a god or of humans – before (or instead of) the existence of the material world. The German idealist philosopher GWF Hegel, for instance, says that the world is nothing but thought. Discussing the ancient Ionian philosopher Anaxagoras, Hegel writes,

“Anaxagoras is praised as the man who first declared that Nous – thought - is the principle of the world, that the essence of the world is to be defined as thought. In so doing he laid the foundation for an intellectual view of the universe, the pure form of which must be logic.” (Hegel, Science of Logic, section § 54)

Anaxagoras, a Greek Ionian philosopher living from about 500 to 428 BCE, rejected the gods of the ancient Greeks and developed a theory of an expanding universe, which Nous or Mind first set in its various revolutions “from a small beginning”. He also developed a theory of atoms, arguing that everything in the world was made of “seeds”.

Marxist trends

An understanding of Marxism does not provide a short-cut to understanding science. Dialectical materialism is not a magic philosophical key which unlocks the mysteries of science, allowing the dialectician to make judgements and criticisms on scientific matters. On the contrary, it arose from very definite material circumstances, as we have shown. The dialectics of the ancient Greeks was developed further by the German Idealists philosophers, particularly Hegel, to the drumbeat of the French Revolution of 1789, and a materialist dialectic was developed by Marx and Engels just before the European-wide revolutions of 1848.

To understand a science enough to make meaningful criticisms of it, a concrete, thorough, and indeed exhaustive understanding of the science in question is required. Yet various trends within the Marxist tradition, particularly Communist Party trends, have attacked quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity, which they believe is not materialist. These attacks continue today.

In 2008, the UK writer and journalist Manjit Kumar wrote a widely reviewed study on the debate between Einstein, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg (who won the Nobel prize for founding quantum mechanics) about the nature of reality at the quantum level. Kumar argues that the way quantum mechanics is usually interpreted lacks what he terms ‘realism’, and lapses, instead, into ‘solipsism’.

‘Realism’ is the philosophy which holds that the world exists independently of us. This is a basic premise of the Marxist philosophy of materialism.

‘Solipsism’, on the other hand, is the view that the only thing we can know for sure is the existence of our own mind – that everything else is unknowable, even our own bodies. Elsewhere Kumar uses the term ‘subjective idealism’ to describe the philosophy of quantum mechanics, the view that there is no objective reality, only the mind and mental objects.

Of course, most particle physicists reject these accusations. We will come to Kumar’s most recent claims shortly. But previously in 1995, Kumar had written:

“From Copenhagen, Denmark, to Princeton, New Jersey, the interpretation put on quantum mechanics was and remains a subjective one. Indeed, it often lapses into outright solipsism.” (Science and the Retreat from Reason, by Gillott and Kumar, p. 81)

Kumar asserts that this all comes down to the outlook of the influential nineteenth century Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach.

Within the Trotskyist tradition, the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) makes similar mistaken accusations against quantum mechanics, and takes a similar swipe at Ernst Mach. In 1995, IMT leaders, Ted Grant and Alan Woods, argued: “The subjective idealist nature of Heisenberg’s method is quite explicit”, and that “Einstein, under the influence of Ernst Mach, treated time as something subjective”. Lenin, Woods asserts, comprehensively answered the subjective idealism of quantum mechanics in his book, Materialism and Empirio-criticism. (Woods and Grant, Reason in Revolt, p. 118, p. 168)

Lenin

It is no coincidence that both trends attack Ernst Mach. Both the Communist Party and Trotskyists trends which criticise modern science misunderstand Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-criticism. Lenin launched a sustained attack on Ernst Mach, whose philosophy and physics, Lenin believed, were subjective idealist, lapsing into solipsism.

In 1908, Lenin was forced to write a book about Mach, the most popular representative of the philosophy of empirio-criticism at the time, because the leading Bolsheviks in Russia had abandoned dialectical materialism for Mach’s crude positivist philosophy. The Russian revolution of 1905 had led to defeat, and by 1908 leading Bolsheviks like Bogdanov and Lunacharsky had participated in a “veritable campaign against the philosophy of Marxism”, Lenin writes.

Lenin, living in exile and visiting the same radical café that Einstein had earlier frequented, could hardly aim his response directly at the Bolshevik leaders in Russia – which would inflict a terrible blow to the Bolshevik leadership. So he fired angry, devastating volleys at Ernst Mach, over the heads of the Bolshevik leaders (for the most part), his bullets cracking round their ears. But while much of the book is only of historical interest today, and written with great urgency (Lenin was in a great hurry to abort the errors of the Bolshevik party in Russia) and not without errors, nevertheless we can still learn from it the correct Marxist approach to the sciences, and sharpen our understanding of what dialectical materialism means for Marxists.

But Lenin has been completely misinterpreted by the Communist Party commentators, fellow travellers and the IMT.

Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-criticism was used by Stalin’s henchmen to launch a devastating attack against USSR scientists in the 1950s. They called physicists who supported Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics, “Machists”, solipsists, and subjective idealists. They used phrases from Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio Criticism without understanding Lenin’s meaning or method, thereby making Lenin appear to have attacked the science of his day.

So let’s put the record straight.

In 1905, the year of the revolution in Russia, Einstein was writing ground-breaking papers while an amateur scientist working at the Swiss patent office. Einstein’s papers launched quantum mechanics and relativity. Lenin peers through the idealist distortions of the period and specifically says that Einstein’s relativity is a materialist model of reality. It appears that neither Stalin’s henchmen nor Ted Grant and Alan Woods were aware of this fact.

Lenin’s insight is astonishing, since many physicists and philosophers of the time were themselves expressing an idealist viewpoint, particularly after Mach and Einstein showed that space and time are relative.

For instance, Lenin writes:

“Anyone in the least acquainted with philosophical literature must know that scarcely a single contemporary professor of philosophy (or of theology) can be found who is not directly or indirectly engaged in refuting materialism.” (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, opening sentence)

Philipp Frank, the Vienna physicists and founder of the (mistaken) philosophical school of logical positivism, correctly pointed out a decade or so later that:

“Many scholars have a deep dislike for mechanistic physics and… derive a malicious pleasure from every difficulty that the latter encountered… one can hardly open a periodical or book dealing with the development of our general scientific ideas without meeting such expressions as ‘the end of the age of Galileo,’ ‘the failure of mechanistic physics,’ ‘the end of the hostility of science towards the spirit,’ ‘the reconciliation between religion and science.’” (Is There a Trend Today Towards Idealism in Physics? Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy, p. 127)

James Jeans and Arthur Eddington can be described as the founders of British cosmology before the second world war. Jeans wrote:

“… the law and order which we find in the universe are most easily described—and also, I think, most easily explained—in the language of idealism. Thus, subject to the reservations already mentioned, we may say that present‑day science is favourable to idealism.” (James Jeans, The New Background of Science, Cambridge University Press, p. 296)

On his speaking tours, Eddington associated relativity and quantum mechanics with personal religious experience and religious mysticism.

In the section of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism entitled ’"Matter Has Disappeared"’, Lenin gives a long quote from the French philosopher Abel Rey. This quote unmistakably describes key aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which shows that at very high velocities, close to the speed of light, mass increases and space and time are warped. Rey does not name Einstein, still an obscure clerk who only resigned from the Swiss patent office in 1909.

Lenin comments:

“But however much both Rey and the physicists of whom he speaks abjure materialism, it is nevertheless beyond question that mechanics was a copy of [i.e. a model of ] real motions of moderate velocity, while the new physics is a copy of real motions of enormous velocity. The recognition of theory as a copy, as an approximate copy of objective reality, is materialism.” (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 253)

While today, scientists would use the term ‘model’ rather than ‘copy’, Lenin correctly identified as materialist a theory that was to revolutionise physics and lead to the atom bomb.

Scientific models

Einstein questioned the way quantum mechanics was understood or interpreted. This has made quantum mechanics a legitimate subject for discussion among scientists and philosophers for the last eighty years. It forms the subject of Manjit Kumar’s 2008 book, Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality.

Einstein felt that the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics lacked what he called “elements of reality”.

In his paper, Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? written with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, (Physical Review, 15 May 1935) Einstein asked whether or not quantum mechanics was the final word on the subject. Most, if not all, physicists today would answer “No”.

There will be a new model of reality at the atomic level at some point. But this immediately provokes the common question - What then is the value of the current quantum mechanical model? If one model merely replaces another, each new model negating the previous model, what can science tell us about reality? Science certainly does not proceed gradually and steadily towards revealing the exact nature of reality, as was once thought. Post-modernist philosophers therefore challenge the validity of all scientific models.

Post-modernist philosophy arose in the 1980s as an essentially right-wing philosophy, which (among other things) states that science tells us nothing about reality at all, but merely reflects the various political and cultural trends of the day.

But this philosophy can be traced back, through the philosophies of post-structuralism and structuralism to the US physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn. It was Kuhn who overthrew the idea that science advances gradually and smoothly towards some kind of final truth in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, written in 1962.

Kuhn showed that science advances through scientific revolutions which break through the essentially conservative restraints of culture and society. Science tends to be funnelled within well-established scientific theories or ‘paradigms’ until a scientific revolution overturns our views of the natural world. This new world-view completely destroys the old paradigm. Kuhn’s concrete historical study presented a new dialectical understanding of the nature of the development of scientific models, describing the clash of opposites within science and the scientific community.

But Marxism has always understood the approximate nature of scientific models and rejected the idea of a final truth. Back in 1908, Lenin wrote:

“But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate, relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties.”

Engels stated over 100 years ago that “absolute truth” is unobtainable by philosophy or any other means. Instead, he wrote,

“one pursues attainable relative truths along the path of the [natural] sciences”

Almost two hundred years ago, Hegel addressed what he called “the true meaning of a much misunderstood phenomenon in the history of philosophy — the refutation of one system by another.” Hegel considers scientific development as merely part of this history of philosophy. Does the negation of one system by another mean that there has been nothing but a meaningless cycle of different philosophical (or scientific) systems? "If that was the case, the history of philosophy [including science] would be, of all studies, most saddening, displaying, as it does, the refutation of every system which time has brought forth." (Part One of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic, para 86)

But this is not so. Hegel explains that elements of the old negated ideas are “preserved in the later: but subordinated and submerged”.

In science, successful new theories may be very different to the old ones they have overthrown, but they are far more powerful at predicting what nature will do under definite circumstances, so that scientists can manipulate nature ever more precisely, producing the vast and often destructive leaps science has made over many decades. Scientific interpretations (such as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the usual, most commonly used interpretation for the last half century or so) arise to help with scientific predictions. Models may be approximate and temporary in the great scheme of things, but they nevertheless can be said to reflect reality (using the term ‘reflect’ in a natural, common and non-technical sense). Not the ultimate reality, just a reflection of reality.

What is absent in modern philosophical discussions of science is the understanding of the role of capitalism. This is precisely because post-modernism in its various forms arose to deny the validity of scientific Marxist descriptions of historical processes as well as the prevailing social democratic concepts of society – “there is no such thing as society”, former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher once mistakenly declared.

How ever much capitalism distorts the functioning and usefulness of science, capitalists and capitalist countries need scientists who successfully understand nature to the extent that they can develop new products, so that their capitalist owners and capitalist nations can compete more successfully. In this way science does not and cannot tend towards mysticism, solipsism or subjective idealism, despite what any philosopher or scientist says, but instead, must always tend towards a materialist approach. As Lenin repeatedly says, scientists are instinctively materialist, (e.g. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 147, p. 153), and as Engels said, they discover relative truths.

Metaphysical and dialectical materialism

Einstein made a major contribution to the development of quantum mechanics through his paper on quantum leaps in 1905, for which he won the Nobel prize. As Kumar explains, an electron can appear to be in one place in an atom and then, “as if by magic, reappear in another without ever being anywhere in between”. It was like a tree disappearing in London and suddenly reappearing in Paris or New York.

In the 1930s, Einstein began a famous debate with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, two founders of quantum mechanics. Bohr and Heisenberg realised that their discoveries meant the need for a new interpretation of reality. Heisenberg argues that quantum mechanics had “led physicists far away from the simplistic materialist views that prevailed in the natural sciences of the 19th century”.

Bernard d’Espagnat says, “Having vanquished materialism thanks to physics, shall we surrender to radical idealism?” But the point is, he answers No. (Bernard D’Espagnat, On Physics and Philosophy, p. 452)

Kumar sides with Einstein because quantum mechanics appears to defy materialism. In fact, Kumar is not defending genuine dialectical materialism, but rather the simplistic, 19th century interpretation of materialism which Heisenberg rejects. Kumar defends what Lenin termed “metaphysical” materialism, not dialectical materialism. Lenin said:

“The recognition of immutable elements, ’of the immutable substance of things,’ and so forth, is not materialism, but metaphysical, i.e., anti-dialectical, materialism.” (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Chapter Five, section “Matter Has Disappeared” p. 249)

Kumar defends an abstract philosophy of metaphysical materialism against modern scientific theory.

So what method did Lenin use, which led to him to correctly assess Einstein’s theory? Lenin argued that the latest scientific discoveries have not refuted dialectical materialism at all. Lenin showed this, not by defending what Heisenberg called the simplistic 19th century’s materialist views, but by revising them. In other words, by recognising that for the philosophy of dialectical materialism, what it means to recognise a scientific theory as materialist must change as science develops.

Materialism (as opposed to dialectical materialism) may take various forms, as upheld by various scientists and philosophers, over the centuries, but dialectical materialism is free from any particular epoch’s scientific fixations.

Lenin wrote:

“Engels says explicitly that ‘with each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science … materialism has to change its form’. Hence a revision of the “form” of Engels’ materialism, a revision of his natural-philosophical [i.e. scientific] propositions is not only not “revisionism”, in the accepted meaning of the term, but, on the contrary, is an essential requirement of Marxism.” (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Chapter Five, p. 239)

Lenin therefore revised what had previously been considered to be the basic tenets of materialism for Marxists. And in point of fact, Lenin threw out all of Engels’ purely scientific materialist statements (his natural-philosophical propositions), such as ‘matter in motion’, an observation particularly insufficient after Einstein showed that mass and energy could be transformed one into the other. What was left was simply a return to Engels’ assertion that “those who regard Nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism” – an insistence that dialectical materialism recognises that the facets of a simple scientific, materialist outlook of a particular epoch are never fixed for all time, but “approximate” and “relative”.

Today, quantum mechanics seems to challenge our most basic assumptions about things like space and time – about things appearing to be in two places at once. In the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, the cat is both alive and dead until it is observed.

But in Lenin’s day, also, science appeared to overturn the way the material world was conceived. In the chapter entitled “The Crisis in Modern Physics” Lenin writes:

“The entire mass of the electrons… proves to be totally and exclusively electrodynamic in its origin. Mass disappears. The foundations of mechanics are undermined. Newton’s principle, the equality of action and reaction, is undermined, and so on.

We are faced, says Poincare, with the ruins of the old principles of physics, ‘a general debacle of principles.’” (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, p. 241)

This led the Bolshevik leaders, against whom Lenin directed his book, to argue that Engels’ views had become “antiquated”. They believed “materialism thus appears to be refuted by … the ‘modern theory of knowledge’”, Lenin reports. Moreover, they argued, that Engels’ dialectics is “mysticism”. (Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Preface)

The error the Bolshevik leaders made was outlined by Engels in a comment in his Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy:

“Feuerbach lumps together ... materialism ... and the special form in which this world outlook was expressed at a definite historical stage, namely, in the eighteenth century.”

The Bolshevik leaders under attack were mistaking materialism as expressed by Engels at a “definite historical stage” for Marxist materialism. What they lacked was a dialectical approach to materialism.

“Matter in motion” or "Energy"

A late twentieth century example of the same error can be found in the ossified use of Engels’ phrase “matter in motion” in the works of writers such as George Novack. In Dialectics of Nature, Engels celebrated the recent discoveries in science that broke down supposedly timeless and unchanging physical appearances into a flux of transformations:

“…physical energy, mechanical energy, heat, light, electricity magnetism, indeed even so-called chemical energy, become transformed into one another under definite conditions without any loss of energy occurring, and so proved post factum along physical lines Descartes’ principle that the quantity of motion present in the world is constant. With that the special physical energies, the as it were immutable "species" of physics, were resolved into variously differentiated forms of the motion of matter, convertible into one another according to definite laws. The fortuitousness of the existence of a number of physical energies was abolished from science by the proof of their interconnections and transitions. Physics, like astronomy before it, had arrived at a result that necessarily pointed to the eternal cycle of matter in motion as the ultimate reality.” (Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Introduction)

This is a scientific assessment rooted in the now forgotten physics of the mid-19th century. “It was argued for some years whether energy was a substance (the caloric) or merely a physical quantity, such as momentum.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy) Momentum is matter in motion. This debate over matter in motion tends to be obscured because, as Thomas Kuhn explained, scientific history is re-written to emphasise the paths taken to the current scientific theories, relegating those that have been abandoned to the footnotes, at best.

Science moves on. During the years that Engels was composing Dialectics of Nature, science leant to quantify “energy” in general, replacing the “special physical energies” Engels refers to. This was particularly through the work of James Joule and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) which gave us the joule and the kelvin. The momentarily fashionable term, “matter in motion” was dropped by commentators and the scientific community. Engels abandoned the Dialectics of Nature manuscript unfinished. And of course, subsequently, Einstein showed that matter can be transformed into energy.

Yet we find the distinctly out-of-date term ‘matter in motion’ in common use in some Marxist literature almost a century later. For instance, in his excellent condemnation of the Hungarian philosopher George Lukács, Novack writes: “The dialectical method of Marxism is not present … as a logical instrument for analysing matter in motion in the physical, social and intellectual realms.” (Lukács as a Marxist philosopher in George Novack, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, p. 142, my emphasis) It is ironic that Novack does not recognise his “metaphysical” materialism.

"Objective law in nature"?

Lenin also assumed certain basic concepts that at the time were materialist, but which have been subsequently challenged by sciences such as quantum mechanics. Lenin attacks Ernst Mach over the question of causality, writing, “the recognition of objective law in nature and the recognition that this law is reflected with approximate fidelity in the mind of man is materialism.” (p. 142) But the revolutionary development of quantum mechanics and chaos theory ensured that science no longer can speak of “objective law in nature” common, if not almost universal, at the time of Lenin. Rather, physical laws are human attempts to approximate our formulas to reality. Reality is not now thought to be ultimately reducible to any laws. In his latest book, for instance, the mathematician Ian Stewart writes:

“We use formulas to model physical reality, but that’s just a technique, it’s how we like to think… mathematical models are always approximations to physical reality.” (Ian Stewart , Taming the infinite: The story of Mathematics from the first numbers to chaos theory, p. 198)

Causality is part of Lenin’s materialist outlook. Lenin attacks Mach for arguing, “In nature, there is neither cause nor effect.” Einstein also felt that the quantum mechanics lacks an element of reality because it appears to deny causality. We will look at this shortly. Mach, in fact, is partly arguing here that all apparently causal laws in nature are in fact human attempts to impose approximate laws on nature, which is correct.

Trotsky’s materialist outlook includes definite statements about space and time which are currently being questioned by scientists. Trotsky points out that in certain idealist, philosophical books, “you can read that time and space are categories of our minds, that they result from the requirements of our thinking, and that nothing corresponds to them in reality.” (Leon Trotsky on Dialectical Materialism in George Novack, Polemics in Marxist Philosophy, p. 307)

Today, you can read something which sounds similar (but is not the same) in the June 2010 edition of Scientific American: “The idea of points of space-time as being primary objects is artificial” (Scientific American, June 2010, p. 10) Time and space do not exist at the atomic level in the same way they do for us. One could argue that scientists (who, as a whole, are only exploring this issue at this stage), are defining reality in terms of what exists at the atomic level, whereas reality is what we experience ourselves. As Trotsky writes, “if any idealist philosopher, instead of arriving in time to catch the nine p.m. train, should turn up two minutes late, he would see the tail of the departing train and would be convinced by his own eyes that time and space are inseparable from material reality.”

But this becomes merely an anthropomorphic view if, as we shall shortly see, time and space do not exist in some real sense at the atomic level. Why define reality only by what we humans commonly experience? Scientists do not deny that time and space emerge so that we can experience them, as some kind of “emergent property of whatever the basic ingredients of the world are” as the Scientific American article, “Is Time an Illusion” puts it. (Scientific American, June 2010, p. 42) They do not assert, as idealists do, that nothing corresponds to time and space in reality. Another emergent property is life, which is real enough also – but do not expect to see life in individual atoms of carbon, though every living thing is composed entirely of atoms of carbon and other inorganic material.

What this all means is that when we approach quantum mechanics, we cannot simply insist that it bases itself on the old materialist presuppositions of the past. And when, shortly, we examine Einstein’s qualms about missing “elements of reality”, we shall see that these essentially out-dated materialist concerns have indeed been thrown into question.

Lenin’s theory of knowledge

Just as Lenin insisted it is a essential requirement of Marxism to revise Engels’ scientific propositions, so it is our duty very briefly to revise Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism where required.

Unfortunately, Lenin was misled by the belief that the term “relative to the observer” meant “subjective”, an almost universal misunderstanding at the time. This means that his attacks on Ernst Mach on the question of space and time are incorrect.

However, Lenin is correct to attack Mach’s philosophical approach. Several chapters of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism deal with the theory of knowledge – what do we really know about the world? Since, with every great scientific revolution, science seems to throw everything we thought we knew into question, this subject pops up a lot in philosophy.

Positivists, like Mach, try to make sense of the world by starting with the individual’s sensations and hope to build from there a coherent view of the world, devoid of philosophical presuppositions. These attempts fail, just as we fail to detect life at the level of the atom. Equally, the more sophisticated attempts of the logical positivists failed. All that can really be discovered by this classical philosophical method, which is the antithesis of the dialectical approach, is what Descartes had already stated: “I think, therefore I am”. But nothing more. As Lenin correctly argues, this leads nowhere but the standpoint of solipsism.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, who heavily influenced the school of logical positivism, concluded his seminal work, the grandly named Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, with the words:

“My propositions are elucidatory in this way; he who understands me finally recognises them as nonsensical … Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

And, silently, Wittgenstein gave up philosophy to train as a primary school teacher. (He returned to philosophy later in life, refuting his former views.)

Writing in 1908, when positivism was (once again) an exciting new fashion, Lenin did not have access to Marx and Engels’ early writings, (e.g. the chapter on Feuerbach in the German Ideology) and had not yet studied Hegel closely. For this reason, in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin makes too many concessions to the positivist approach he is criticising. He writes, for instance, “The first premise of the theory of knowledge undoubtedly is that the source of our knowledge is sensation.” But contrast this with his treatment of Feuerbach:

“Feuerbach makes the sum-total of human practice the basis of the theory of knowledge… Before we perceive, we breathe; we cannot exist without air, food and drink. (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 128)

Lenin quotes Feuerbach:

“Does this mean then that we must deal with questions of food and drink when examining the problem of the ideality or reality of the world?—exclaims the indignant idealist. How vile! What an offence against good manners soundly to trounce materialism in the scientific sense from the chair of philosophy and the pulpit of theology, only to practice materialism with all one’s heart and soul in the rudest form at the table d’hôte.”

Lenin summarises thus:

“The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge.” (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, pp. 128-9)

When the philosopher asks how, given the latest quantum mechanical discoveries, we can know that anything outside of our immediate sensations really exists, Marxists do not examine the sensations involved and work from the individual, but we ask, instead, in what historical context did this question arise? What is the context of the question, who is asking the question and why? What is the significance of the language in which it is being asked?

Philosophers and theologians who ask philosophical questions about what we can know about the world (epistemology) arise only once humankind has raised productivity high enough to sustain scholars, administrators and clerics. The language in which the question is expressed, as the later Wittgenstein showed, develops historically in communities who carry its shared meanings. Language has no strictly logical structure – it is a shared heritage. Questions about epistemology can only arise in certain concrete circumstances.

Rather than starting from the individual, the historical materialist method insists that we start from the “origin and development of knowledge” as Lenin later surmised. If philosophers consider this reply to questions on the theory of knowledge an offence against good manners, that is too bad. For philosophers of dialectics, it is impermissible to consider things in isolation. Dialectical materialism is a monist, all-embracing philosophy which always examines things in their relations and development and does not allow the philosopher to rule out of order the context in which a question is being asked.

In 1914, Lenin turned to Hegel’s Science of Logic after the devastating defeat the international Marxist movement suffered when the Social Democratic parties decided to support their own capitalist class in the first world war (1914-1918). It was then that Lenin wrote Karl Marx, A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism, for publication in one of Russia’s most popular encyclopaedias. Lenin writes that the theory of knowledge “must regard its subject matter historically”:

“Dialectical materialism ‘does not need any philosophy standing above the other sciences.’ From previous philosophy there remains ‘the science of thought and its laws—formal logic and dialectics.’ Dialectics, as understood by Marx, and also in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, which, too, must regard its subject matter historically, studying and generalizing the origin and development of knowledge, the transition from non-knowledge to knowledge.” (Lenin, Karl Marx, A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism, 1914)

Einstein’s elements of reality: Locality

As Kumar correctly explains, Einstein championed three basic propositions which he called elements of reality, and which he felt were undermined by quantum mechanics. We will terms these Locality, Causality and Objectivity, aware that this is a vast simplification of issues we can only extremely briefly indicate.

Locality is the belief that things in separate localities cannot be in instantaneous touch with each other in the way quantum mechanics appeared to suggest. Einstein derided this "spooky action at a distance" of quantum mechanics, yet it has since been proved experimentally.

Experiments in the 1980s to the present day demonstrated that if two photons are simultaneously emitted from an atom they are ‘entangled’ or in instantaneous touch with each other. Even though they each travel speed of light away from each other, they are somehow still part of the same entity. It was Erwin Schrödinger who first used the term “entangled” when devising his Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment.

The latest experiment to test quantum entanglement was conducted by physicists from the University of Geneva in June 2008. Making pairs of entangled photons, they sent one of each pair from Geneva in Switzerland to the Swiss town of Satigny, while the other was sent to Jussy, 18 kilometres away, using optical fibres. (Spacelike Separation in a Bell Test Assuming Gravitationally Induced Collapses, Nature, 14 August, 2008). The experiment even took into account how the rotation of the earth might affect the experimental results. The scientists found, as expected, that the pairs of photons sent to the different Swiss towns seemed to ‘know’, in some sense, how their partner was being manipulated by the scientists, or more precisely by their equipment, more or less instantaneously. Compared to previous experiments, the distance between the two Swiss towns was so great that, if the particles had communicated with each other at the time of the experiment, communication between the entangled pair of photons would have taken place at ten thousand times the speed of light. It seems just as likely (if not more so), that entangled objects have a connection outside of time and space in some unknown way.

Just like the quantum leap of electrons which Einstein helped define in 1905, which appear to defy our concepts of space and time by disappearing from one place and reappearing in another without passing in between, these entangled objects appear to disregard space and time. They act as if they do not acknowledge the existence of separate localities.

Causality

Examining Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Kumar compares the random radioactive decay of atoms to an apple falling from a tree. Once the apple is ripe, Kumar writes, it falls to the ground, caused by gravity. However, in the quantum world, Kumar asserts, there is no causality, and the apple would hover for an unknown period of time in the air before falling.

But this is misleading. In an apple orchard, the apples fall in autumn and we know the causes. Similarly, quantum mechanics has revealed the causes of atomic decay. Yet we do not know, precisely, when each apple will fall, just as we do not know, precisely, when each atom will decay. The wind blowing the apples down is chaotic and cannot be predicted precisely, nor can the atrophy of the cells in the stems of individual apples which connects the apple to the tree branch be precisely known..

It is not at all clear that there is a difference between causality in the example of the apple orchard, and causality at the atomic or subatomic level as understood by quantum mechanics. It appears that quantum mechanics has revealed that we had an idealised notion of causality. The most idealised notion of causality (determinism) was expressed by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 –1827)

“We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.” (Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities)

Yet in reality, as the French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré (1854 –1912) showed, even if only three physical bodies are in motion around each other, let alone more, whether they are atoms attracted by electrical forces or planets or stars attracted by gravity, their motion is chaotic and hence can never be calculated exactly. Differences in the initial conditions, discovered, for instance, merely by calculating the initial position or motion to a greater degree of accuracy, leads to completely different outcomes, rather than an increasingly accurate result. Poincaré’s ideas laid the basis for modern chaos theory.

The economy under capitalism is equally chaotic. This does not challenge the Marxist view that in the final analysis the economic conditions in a society determine its political structure. Trotsky writes, “Although economics determines politics not directly or immediately, but only in the last analysis, nevertheless economics does determine politics.”

We know, due to our Marxist analysis, the means by which economic circumstances will determine the political superstructure, but we cannot precisely determine the pace of events or in many cases even the precise order of events. And we are aware, as Marxists, that there may be a sudden interruption of the old order by a revolution which renders all previous theories invalid. Capitalist economics is chaotic like the world’s weather – the economy falls into repeating cycles of prosperity or slump, but given the right conditions, a hurricane can suddenly develop, permanently transforming the landscape.

Objectivity

In 1958, Heisenberg wrote that Einstein wished to return to "the idea of an objective, real world", where subatomic particles "exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them". (Physics and Philosophy, pp. 82-83)

Sounds reasonable, until you consider that it was Einstein who had discovered that space and time were relative to an observer or, more precisely, relative to a particular body of reference. Time and space are objective, of course, but you get different values for time and space depending on what your frame of reference is.

Einstein wrote:

“… there is no such thing as an independently existing trajectory, only a trajectory relative to a particular body of reference” or, using the common terms, relative to an observer. (Einstein, Relativity, (1916), p. 10)

Toss a coin in the air. It rises a metre and falls again. How far has it travelled? Two metres, one up one down? It depends. And it depends on the observer, or more precisely, on the place you measure from – the “body of reference”, to use Einstein’s more exact language.

Einstein gives the example of a train. If you tossed the coin in a train, it has travelled two metres as measured inside the train. But if we imagine the train is going 30 kilometres an hour from London to Manchester, you will readily accept that in the two second it took the coin to rise and fall, the coin has also travelled with the train some distance north – a little over 8 metres. You might be inclined to say your measurement on the train is incorrect and that the measurement of someone on the embankment watching the train go by is correct. That would be a scientific error.

Consider that the earth is going at some 30 kilometres a second round the sun. What about the space-traveller who is stationary with respect to the sun, who watches the coin, through some very powerful binoculars, as the earth thunders past? For her, the coin has travelled some 60 kilometres, plus the other movements. And the sun is going round the galaxy, and the galaxy is speeding at some 1000s of kilometres away from other galaxies… whose observation (measurement) is correct?

The answer is, there is no independently existing trajectory for the coin, only a trajectory relative to a particular body of reference, as Einstein said. And he learnt this from Ernst Mach and Henri Poincaré. You may decide, for a matter of convenience or policy, which measurement is to be accepted as the only correct one, but no amount of scientific measurements can show the difference – this is something which Galileo proved when he argued that the earth goes round the sun, without our being able to feel the effects of the motion.

“In the first place,” Einstein writes, “we entirely shun the vague word ‘space’ of which, we must honestly acknowledge, we cannot form the slightest conception, and we replace it by ‘motion relative to a … body of reference.’” (Einstein, Relativity, (1916), p. 9)

We return, then, once more, to the problem of space.

Subatomic particles may appear to be waves or particles, depending on how we set up our apparatus – that is, how we observe them. They even seem to change their behaviour retrospectively, as if they can go back in time and start again, if we change our method of measurement. Their behaviour indicates that somehow time is not what it seems, or does not exist.

Subatomic particles seem to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. The US physicist Nick Herbert pointed out that insisting that subatomic particles have an independent existence is like insisting that rainbows are solid objects and have some definite place in space irrespective of the observer. We know that rainbows appear to be different in appearance and in different places depending on the position of the observer. They are objectively real yet relative to the observer. A rainbow is not a single object but a complex combination of natural processes.

Supporting Einstein, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger also wanted to discover a physics which was deterministic rather than probabilistic and dependent on an observer. In 1935, he devised the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, in which a cat is both dead and alive until observed. But at issue here is the notion of observation, and it is true that the issue has not been resolved.

Einstein wanted science to be able to say precisely what the state of something was without disturbing it with an observation. But when you next use a thermometer to take the temperature of something, ask yourself what the temperature of the thermometer is. If it is hotter than the body you are testing, it will heat it up. If it is colder, it will cool it down. So how do you accurately take the temperature of something? In practice, the idea that the scientist lives in a bubble outside of nature and can experiment on it without disturbing it is an idealised notion.

It remains a fact that subatomic particles do not exist objectively, “in the same sense as stones or trees exist”, independently of whether or not we observe them, as Heisenberg explained, but are more like rainbows. Perhaps Einstein and Schrödinger were making an error of judgement similar to someone trying to find the origins of life by examining carbon atoms.

Conclusion

One day, a new theory will overthrow quantum mechanics and reveal the deeper reality behind subatomic particles, in the same way as the discovery of electromagnetic radiation helped us understand the transient nature of rainbows.

It might demonstrate that at the atomic level there is only “a single dimension of highly warped space” and none of time, which is merely a reflection of our own living experience. At least, that is what the ‘hottest’ physics on the planet is suggesting at the time of writing. (Scientific American, June 2010, p.10)

When the next revolution in science occurs, we must keep in mind Hegel’s “true meaning of the refutation of one system by another”.

Undoubtedly another cherished tenet of material reality will be demolished, with the usual cries of bewilderment from the media and philosophers of metaphysical materialism.

But as Marxists, as dialectical materialists, we cannot be found attempting to defend outmoded views on what constitutes reality, but must face up to the new results of experiments and measurements.

Bibliography

Quotes from Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism are from the edition first published in 1947 by Progress publishers, Moscow.

본문

http://www.marxist.com/quantum-society.htm
이 동네는 그래도 끊임없이 과학기사를 내고 있다. 부럽~
요즘 이런 "앵겔스"적 작업들이 조금 위험해 보이긴 하지만
그래도 많은 고민거리를 던져주고 있다. 이런 시도들은 계속되었으면 하는 바램~(일단 스크랩)

 

Quantum physics, dialectics and society: from Marx and Engels to Khrennikov and Haven

  Quantum physics occupies a fascinating place at the cutting edge of modern scientific research. First developed in the early 20^th Century, quantum theory is allowing today’s scientists to plumb new depths when it comes to matter and motion. A new book, Quantum Social Science, by Andrei Khrennikov and Emmanuel Haven argues that applying the logic of quantum theory to social systems can take our understanding of human society to a whole new level.

Seemingly without realising it, these scientists are following in the footsteps of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, who developed the logic of dialectical materialism out of philosophical enquiry into the natural world. On this basis, by applying scientific logic to society, they developed the theory of scientific socialism.

The logic of quantum physics

Quantum mechanics is complex and, occupying as it does a place at the frontier of human knowledge, arguments still rage amongst scientists as to the correct interpretations and explanations of quantum theory. It all began with the observation that light can be measured as both a particle and a wave.

Niels Bohr, famous for his series of thought experiments that sought to explain quantum physics, hypothesised that by trying to measure light (or any other particle) we inevitably change its behaviour. His argument was that the measuring device itself delivers random kicks to the particles that cause a fundamental change in its behaviour. For this reason, he argued, light can appear to be both a particle and a wave, but as soon as you try to measure that light it inevitably becomes EITHER a particle OR a wave depending on your method of measurement – it cannot be measured as both at the same time.

This approach, based on Heisenberg’s ‘Uncertainty Principle’, brings out an interesting point in relation to the logic of quantum physics. In order to accurately explain what was happening Bohr noted that the more accurate the measurement of the location of a particle, the less accurate the measurement of its movement and vice versa. In other words there is a contradiction between the particle and its movement, between matter and motion.

This contradiction is at the heart of our understanding of the universe because it is impossible to conceive of matter without. All matter is in motion; the particles that make up everything are constantly vibrating, moving and changing. The planet itself is in constant motion around the sun, and our solar system is in constant motion with the spinning of the Milky Way, which in turn is constantly moving in relation to other galaxies.

What is dialectics?

Heraclitus, the ancient Greek philosopher, famously said that “everything changes and nothing remains the same” and that “you can never step twice into the same stream”. It is the ideas of ceaseless change, motion, interconnectedness and contradiction that define dialectical thought.

The philosopher Zeno famously tried to illustrate how essential dialectical thinking is to our understanding of the world by using thought experiments. He poses the following:

Imagine an arrow in flight. At any one durationless instant in time (like the freeze-frame in a film) the arrow is not moving to where it is going to, nor is it moving to where it already is. Thus, at every conceivable instant in time, there is no motion occurring, so how does the arrow move?

To answer this we are forced to embrace what appears on the surface to be a contradictory idea – that the arrow is, at any one time, in more than one place at once. This thought experiment serves to highlight the contradictory nature of the movement of matter in the world.

The German philosopher Hegel further developed the dialectical in a systematic form. Instead trying to discard contradictions Hegel saw in them the real impulse for all development. In fact Hegel saw the interpenetration of opposites as one of the fundamental characters of all phenomena. Hegel’s philosophy is one of interconnectedness where the means and the end, the cause and the effect, are constantly changing place. It explains progress in terms of struggle and contradiction, not a straight line or an inevitable triumphal march forward. Hegel’s main mistake though was to see all of this development as essentially reflecting the movement of a mystical Idea or World Spirit.

Marx based his dialectical understanding of society on Hegel’s teachings, but he went further and combined dialectics the Materialist view of the world which sees the real objective world as the only existing one. Marx discovered that the dialectical laws where nothing more than the general underlying laws of nature and human society. The result is an understanding of the contradictions and ceaseless change in society and the economy. It is this dialectical understanding of society, ultimately, that gives Marxist thought its revolutionary character.

Formal logic

However, not all scientists are willing to accept that the discoveries of quantum physics are best explained using the logic of dialectics. Bohr himself was one of these scientists who saw the acceptance of contradiction in science or nature as an acceptance of failure as a scientist. For scientists like Bohr, the rigid doctrines of formal logic and an abhorrence of contradiction are the foundations of their approach to scientific study.

As a result Bohr interpreted the Uncertainty Principle, not as confirmation of the contradictory nature of matter, but instead as proof that we can never know about the objectively real world. The fact that the nature of matter changes as it is measured proves, according to Bohr, that our experience of the world is subjective and that any attempt at measuring the objective world will be thwarted by the very act of trying to measure it.

This is problematic because this leaves Bohr and his supporters defending a very unscientific position. The history of Science has been the expansion of the collective knowledge of the world and its processes. This endeavour is rendered impossible if there is no objective world to be discovered. The discoveries of one individual would apply only to the world as experienced by that individual and would have no general scientific application. In fact the only existence that would be left for any person to prove would be the existence of their own thoughts.

Ironically, by rejecting the dialectical ideas of contradiction and the unity of opposites, Bohr placed himself in the contradictory position of being a scientist arguing against science.

As well as Bohr’s ideas other attempts have been made to explain quantum phenomena on the basis of formal logic. One hypothesis is the existence of multiple parallel universes which would then allow the light we see as a wave to exist as a particle in another universe. It explains what’s happening without rejecting the idea of objective reality but it avoids accepting a contradiction between matter and motion. The problem with this “multiverse” theory is that there is no evidence for it – the best that physicists have been able to come up with are abstract mathematical proofs that have yet to be supported by any physical evidence. This is the result of a formally logical position that will do anything to avoid contradiction in nature – the rejection of the results of real experiments in favour of a theoretical hypothesis that, despite numerous attempts, does not seem to be backed up by hard evidence.

Quantum dialectics

In opposition to these formally logical theorists a number of other quantum physicists have been busy proving that it is only through contradiction that the discoveries of quantum physics can be explained. An experiment carried out by physicist Shahriar Afshar suggests that we are able to measure light as a wave and a particle at the same time. Furthermore, the development of quantum computers is based upon matter being held in more than one state at the same time. While classical computers rely on electrical current to create bits that can either be on (1) or off (0), quantum computers will be able to create “qubits” that can store both 1 and 0 at the same time thus giving these computers vastly increased processing power. Finally, a phenomenon known as entanglement or ‘action at a distance’ suggests that particles that have interacted with each other become linked such that changing one invariably affects the other, no matter how far apart they are. The nature of and explanation for this effect are still not fully known.

Without accepting that constant change, movement and contradiction is at the heart of all things, and that these things are interconnected, we cannot explain the workings of quantum computers or the phenomenon of entanglement. The discoveries of quantum physics can only be explained using the logic of dialectics.

Quantum logic and society

In their new book Khrennikov and Haven argue that “quantum-like” models can be applied to areas outside the natural remit of quantum physics. Quantum theory is normally used to explain the movement of particles at the sub-atomic level and the authors do not seek to map these theories onto complex social systems in a mechanical way. Instead they take the logic underpinning quantum physics and apply it to society.

One area they particularly highlight is decision-making, a field particularly relevant to modern economics. Many economic theories rely on the assumption that humans are rational and will make rational, self-interested decisions. This is known as the basic law of total probability – a model to calculate the probability of a particular outcome. Yet this basic law is regularly violated by real life experiences. One experiment shows that people who make decisions in a two-stage gamble are influenced in the second stage by whether or not they are told how they did in the first gamble, even though the outcome of the second doesn’t depend on the first.

The reason why this so-called “law” of economics seems to be inadequate when explaining the real world is because it rests on formal logic. Modern economics too frequently ignores the interconnectedness of factors such as superstition, tradition, sentiment and other things that, in addition to rational thinking, make up decision-making processes.

Khrennikov and Haven point out that the wave-particle duality of matter also violates the basic law of total probability. The contradictory nature of matter in motion means that it is impossible for quantum scientists to pin down the exact location of a particle at any one moment in time. Applying the law of total probability does not accurately describe the location of particles. All that physicists can do is give an estimate of the probability that a particle will be in any one place at a given time. In order to explain these probability values in wave-particle experiments a mathematical factor known as the “interference term” is introduced.

What Khrennikov and Haven show is that this interference term, when applied to economics, also explains the seemingly illogical probability values for economic decision-making. What they show is that the same mathematical tools that are required to explain the contradictory processes taking place at a sub-atomic level are also required to explain the contradictory processes in society. In other words, the dialectical understanding of quantum particles also applies to economics.

The authors don’t stop there. They also explain how quantum thinking can give us a deeper understanding of a plethora of scientific and social institutions, from neuroscience to voting patterns. They argue that the strength of a quantum-like approach to social science is that it can take into account the complex blend of physical, social, environmental, financial and other factors that influence society to a much greater extent than classical models have been able to do.

In short, these scientists argue that we should understand quantum physics in a dialectical way (although they don’t use the term “dialectics”) and that using dialectical logic to understand the world can open up the possibility of creating new advances, not only in the fields of science and technology, but also in almost every aspect of society.

Marx and Engels on dialectics

Khrennikov and Haven state that “the idea of applying quantum mechanics to social science is still quite new”. It’s true that the practice has never been formulated in these terms before, but the idea of deriving dialectical principles from an observation of nature and applying them to society was first developed by Marx and Engels over 160 years ago.

Engels sums up his own position in the book ‘Dialectics of Nature’ by saying:

“It is, therefore, from the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself.”

In other words Engels is saying that dialectical logic can be used to explain both nature and human society – exactly the same claim as is being made by Khrennikov and Haven.

In the book, ‘Dialectics of Nature’, Engels examines the most advanced scientific information available at the time of writing (1883) in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, geology, mathematics and astronomy and explains the discoveries using dialectics. On this basis he is able to make a number of suggestions for future avenues of scientific study and even attempts some predictions of what scientists will find. The most famous of these predictions is contained in his essay ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man’ which argues, contrary to the prevailing thinking at the time, that the development of the human brain was a consequence of the development of the hand and the use of tools and not the other way around.

This view of the development of humans is a dialectical one that views evolution and change as the product of a complex interaction between different parts of the body, and of the interaction between humans and the environment. This was not a mainstream idea at the time it was put forward by Engels because it did not conform to a clear mechanical formula for evolution. However, as modern anthropologists gather more and more evidence of pre-historic humans, they are finding that their discoveries cannot be explained by a basic model that sees the brain develop first and as a result of that humans produced tools and developed society. In fact the process of development seems to have been much more complex than that and requires an explanation based on change, contradiction and interconnectedness, just as Engels predicted.

Engels’ ability to make such a prediction shows the same thing that Khrennikov and Haven are suggesting – that understanding the world as being always in the process of contradictory change gives us a more accurate scientific picture of things than to view the world as static and mechanical.

In his “textbook of Marxism” (as Lenin described it), ‘Anti-Duhring’, Engels even provides a dialectical explanation for the apparent conundrum represented by the qubits of quantum computers that are able to store both 1 and 0 at the same time. He says:

“...in mathematics it is necessary to start from definite, finite terms...or they cannot be used for calculation. The abstract requirements of a mathematician are, however, very far from being a compulsory law for the world of reality.”

In other words, although the concept of storing the figures “1” and “0” at the same time seems illogical because they are two different definite finite terms, when we consider that these figures are nothing more than abstractions of processes occurring in the real world, the apparent problem disappears. The numbers themselves are not the concrete reality; it is the real processes that they represent which concern us. Thus, if we develop a new process that cannot be expressed using the classical system of binary digits we do not reject that discovery because it doesn’t conform to the mathematical abstractions used to define the old process, we simply have to accept that the new process can only be described by introducing the concept of contradiction into our abstract understanding. In short, to take our understanding of science and our capacity for technological development further, we must apply the logic of dialectics.

Engels thoroughly develops his understanding of dialectics as applicable to nature and society in the short pamphlet ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’ where he says:

“When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes comes into being and passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine and are connected.”

This passage was written in 1878, long before the concept of quantum theory had been conceived. And yet this description of dialectics could very easily apply to the central argument made by Khrennikov and Haven in ‘Quantum Social Science’. Questions of entanglement, contradiction and change are the defining characteristics both of quantum mechanics and economics, history and human consciousness.

The dialectical method so clearly explained by Engels permeates all the writings of Karl Marx. In his economic writings Marx is able to explain the workings of the capitalist system by highlighting its contradictions and the interconnectedness of all of its parts. The best example of this is the Marxist theory of economic crisis, or “overproduction”. Marx explained that workers are paid less than the value of the goods that they produce which means that at some point more commodities will be being produced than can be absorbed by the market, leading to an economic crisis.

This theory highlights the contradiction in capitalism between wages and prices and it explains how this contradictory state can continue for a long period before crisis occurs. It also demonstrates the interconnectedness of all sectors of the economy such that when one country or industry is affected, the rest begin to experience the same effects. Just as Engels’ application of dialectics to evolutionary theory led him to make predictions that are being proved correct today, Marx’s application of dialectics to economic theory is being vindicated by the current economic crisis – a crisis that can only be explained with the Marxist theory of overproduction.

Marx, like Khrennikov and Haven, applied dialectics to every aspect of human society. It was from this rigorous application of dialectical logic that Marx understood the relationship between different classes in society, their contradictions and interconnectedness. Based on this dialectical study of history and economics, summed up in the ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, Marx and Engels developed the perspective of revolutionary socialism.

The future of quantum social science

It is clear that Khrennikov and Haven are not Marxists, nor even are they necessarily conscious dialecticians. Nevertheless, consciously or not, they are using modern scientific ideas and concepts that inevitably lead to the same conclusions that Marx and Engels reached many years ago. In applying their particular understanding of the complex interconnectedness at the heart of quantum physics to society as a whole, they are – albeit unconsciously – following the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

However, Khrennikov and Haven do not draw the same revolutionary conclusions as Marx and Engels. They are only interested in individual social phenomena such as voting or decision-making, but they stop short of applying their logic to class society as a whole, its history and future development as such they are defying their own principles inter-connectedness of phenomena.

This is not to say that such conclusions could not be drawn by scientists in the future because, as the authors point out, there are a lot of research grants available in the field of quantum social science (although we can bet that these grants from governments and prestigious institutes will quickly dry up if scientists start drawing revolutionary conclusions). However, for Marxist conclusions to be drawn from quantum social science what is most clearly needed are scientists who recognise the revolutionary potential of dialectical thinking. The continued study of quantum physics and the development of quantum computers and methods of encryption are likely to hail progress in the development of dialectical thinking and as a result develop the school of thought that seeks to apply these ideas to society in general.

We should also note, however, that further study of quantum physics will not automatically equal clear dialectical thinking. For example, Bohr’s idea that there is no reality beyond what we observe ourselves is a popular interpretation of quantum phenomena and is much more mainstream in academic circles than that put forward by Krennikov and Haven. Bohr’s interpretation of quantum physics, based on formal logic, is not just scientifically problematic, but it also has pernicious philosophical underpinnings. It is the same philosophy that props up the myth of the ‘self-made man’ in capitalist society. The idea that a person’s experience of the world is whatever he makes of it is entirely subjective. This idea holds that there are no objective factors really holding the individual back and that success or failure is determined by subjective factors such as how hard a person works or how lazy he or she is. Such a denial of objective reality is echoed in Margaret Thatcher’s claim that “there is no such thing as society, only families and individuals”. These ideas are false and dangerous and must be challenged at every turn, including in theoretical physics.

All genuine Marxists take an interest in scientific development. The ability of scientists to come up with new ideas, new technology and new discoveries that are capable of taking society forwards is a reflection of the ability of that society to invest in its future. It is also a reflection of the prevailing philosophical outlook of society and so explanations of scientific ideas can find an echo in explanations for the rest of society.

We have written elsewhere about the decline of innovation in the recent period, a reflection of the decline and crisis of the capitalist system as a whole and the poverty of the prevailing philosophical thought in modern times.

For this reason the work of Khrennikov and Haven is interesting and encouraging because of it confirms once again the validity of dialectical materialist philosophy – the philosophy of Marxism. It seems that these scientists are confirming that the way to make the best use of modern discoveries is to revolutionise the way we think about them. If we think about these things in terms of dialectics we can not only understand the science, but economics, history and society as well. Khrennikov and Haven’s work provides proof of the scientific basis of Marxist thought, of the radical and revolutionary potential of Marxist ideas, and of the relevance of Marxism today.

본문

[읽을 꺼리]가 나온 시절이 언제였던가? 기억이 까마득하다. 1990년대 중반으로 기억하는데..

당시,  이 글을 읽었던 기억이 나지만.. 기억이 가물가물.....~~~  이 글이 "비판적 실재론"에 대한 것이었다는 것을 지금(2013년 11월)에 발견하고 놀라고 있다.  [읽을꺼리], 당시 이런 머찐 작업들이 계속 이어 지지 않고 있다는 것이 아쉽다. 암튼... 다시 꼼꼼하게 읽어 보고 있다.

 

근본주의도 ‘신 실재론’도 아닌

- 사회주의 이론의 현재 조류들에 관한 비판적 실재론의 조망

http://www.google.co.kr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcopyle.jinbo.net%2Freader%2FLr1-41.hwp&ei=GeiAUsKXBqeIiQe61oHgCg&usg=AFQjCNHJaNP29mnF2cZWSwZmzH3rgUR--A&bvm=bv.56146854,d.aGc

 

본문

"과학같은 소리하고 하네"의 5-1, 5-2편에서 핵에너지와 대안에너지에 대해

강양구기자의 자세한 talkshow가 있습니다.

그간 있어온 논쟁들이나 대안에너지 정책에 대한 의견이 명료하게 잘 설명되고 있습니다.

좌파(특히 현시점의 사회주의자)들에게도 에너지 정책이 있어야 하지 않을까 하는 바램입니다.

"http://www.podbbang.com/ch/6205"

 

본문

 

과학에 관심있으신분들께 재미있는 사이트 하나 소개합니다.

"파토의 과학하고 앉아 있네"

mp3로 다운 받아서도 들을 수 있습니다.

최근 과학소식은 물론이고, 뉴튼 역학, 아인슈타인의 상대성 이론 등을

대중들에게 쉽게 알리기 위한 과감한 시도를 경쾌하고 소프트하게 진행하고 있고,

무엇보다도 넘~ 재미있습니다. 출퇴근 하면서 듣고 있는데, 시간 가는 줄 모르겠네요.

"http://www.podbbang.com/ch/6205"