Is Professor Haldane's Account of Evolution Dialectical

Professor J. B. S. Haldane's article Dialectical Account of Evolution the Summer number of science 8c society is not only by far the most interesting paper purporting to deal with dialectics that I have ever read, but has the unusual quality of showing scientist using dialectic his own field of work instead of recommending it to scientists other branches. Professor Haldane claims that dialectical materialism is a very powerful weapon for the interpretation of biological facts and that in biology, at any rate, it makes for clear thinking (p. 486) . A closer examination of Professor Haldane's fascinating account of evolution shows, however, that his scheme dialectics is not used as weapon or method of scientific research or discovery as is usually claimed for it but as kind of pigeon-hole into which, with much ingenuity (and little pressure) he fits the biological principles discovered by scientists who were the main quite innocent of dialectics. Some time ago I performed similar feat (although I cannot claim to have accomplished it as elegantly as Professor Haldane) discussion with Mr. M. H. Dobb on the development of the theory of pricing socialist state.1 I found it convenient to arrange the successive points of view that had been put forward system of triads of theses, antitheses and syntheses. I did not use the dialectic as method of discovering the truth about the world; I did not apply it to the phenomena of the world, but only to theories about the world; I did not suggest that it superseded or rendered invalid the normal principles of bourgeois logic; and I did not suggest that the arrangement of three points of view which might plausibly be considered to fit into the triad gave any cogency to the derivation of the synthesis from the thesis and the antithesis the sort of way which one definite conclusion follows from major and minor premise bourgeois syllogism. Mr. Dobb immediately exposed my use of the dialectic merely as

Dialectic · Dialectical materialism · Epistemology · Ingenuity · Interpretation (philosophy · Materialism · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science

• Is The Dialectical Biologist Dialectical? Reexamining the Legacy of 20th Century ‘Marxist’ Biology

  Open Access•Nils Deeg•Junctions Graduate Journal of the…•2023

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