Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:40:27.553Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Dialetical Materialism: A Further Discussion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Hans Freistadt*
Affiliation:
Newark College of Engineering

Extract

The present article is a continuation of an earlier paper, entitled “Dialectical Materialism: A Friendly Interpretation” (hereafter quoted as “Friendly Interpretation”), which appeared in this journal. In the “Friendly Interpretation”, the emphasis was on formal and systematic exposition. Here, familiarity with the basic tenets of dialectical materialism is presumed, and some peripheral topics, which were deleted from the “Friendly Interpretation” lest they interrupt its continuity, are treated in five essay-type sections. First, an interpretation of dialectical materialism proposed by Rosenfeld, according to which the usual acausal interpretation of quantum mechanics is consistent with, and even an instructive illustration of dialectical materialism, is criticized. In the second section, the connection between positivism and Orwell's “doublethink” is pointed out. This is done in order to exhibit certain difficulties to which consistent positivism leads, but which are avoided by both materialism and objective idealism; in particular, the language of positivism, lacking the concept of “existence”, is inadequate to distinguish by any absolute criterion between reality and a dream world. In the last three sections, two acausal philosophies are compared and contrasted to dialectical materialism. First, in the third section, Landé‘s argument, showing the incompatibility of the principles of complete causality and of continuity of cause and effect, is summarized. It is shown that Landé‘s choice, in favor of continuity of cause and effect, is not the only consistent one, and that if one accepts the outlook of dialectical materialism, the opposite choice can and should be made. In the fourth section, Margenau's interpretation of quantum mechanics is criticized, both in terms of the criteria proposed by Margenau, and from the point of view of the doctrine of rationalism, which, in the “Friendly Interpretation”, was included as part of dialectical materialism. The interpretation of Bohm, de Broglie, and Takabayasi is preferred to that of Margenau, which is akin to the usual Bohr-Heisenberg interpretation of quantum mechanics. Margenau's sharp distinction between concepts applicable to the microcosm, and those useful in macroscopic considerations, is criticized. In the fifth (and last) section, Margenau's use of the term “historical reality” in connection with the microcosm is criticized. It is argued that the reality of historical concepts is not intrinsically different from the reality of physical concepts. This leads to a further discussion of “free will”.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1957, The Williams & Wilkins Company

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References∗

Costa de Beauregard, O., lecture at the Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris, February, 1955 (available in mimeographed form only).Google Scholar
de Brogue, L. and Vigier, J.-P., La Mecanique Ondulatoire Restera-t-elle Indeterministe? (Paris, 1953).Google Scholar
Frank, P. G., Scientific Monthly 79, 139 (1954).Google Scholar
Freistadt, H., Philosophy of Science 23, 97 (1956); Science & Society 17, 211 (1953).Google Scholar
Janossy, L., Acta Physica Hungarica 1, 391 (1952).Google Scholar
Landé, A., article in Scientific Papers Presented to Marx Born (Hafner, New York, 1953); Foundations of Quantum Mechanics—a Study in Continuity and Symmetry (New Haven, 1955).Google Scholar
Margenau, H., Philosophy of Science 19, 193 (1952); Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 44, 265 (1954), reprinted in Physics Today 7, No. 10 (October, 1954).Google Scholar
Orwell, G., Nineteen Eighty-Four (New York, 1949).Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, L., Science Progress No. 163, p. 393; also in the collective volume Louis de Broglie, Physicien et Penseur (Paris, 1953).Google Scholar
Takabayasi, T., Progress of Theoretical Physics (Japan) 8, 143 (1952); 9, 187 (1953).Google Scholar
ter Haar, D., Reviews of Modern Physics 27, 289 (1955).Google Scholar
Wiener, N. and Siegel, A., Physical Review 91, 1551 (1953).Google Scholar