This is all quite so.  Marx's knowledge of developments in the calculus was
also behind the times, but Van Heijenoort absolves Marx of narrow-minded
dogmatism.

I still need to acquire a copy of that obscure bulletin containing Van H's
arguments against Novack.  For some reason, I can't find a copy of his
essay "The Algebra of Revolution" that appeared in NEW INTERNATIONAL, which
I once combed pretty thoroughly.

As for critiques of Engels and diamat, there's little original left to
say.  Two sources that immediately come to mind are:

James Scanlan, Marxism in the USSR (1985)

Richard Norman (good) and Sean Sayers (bad), HEGEL, MARX, AND DIALECTIC.

It is quite important to understand the origins of Engels' interest in
these philosophical questions in critiques of contemporaneous metaphysical,
evolutionary pseudo-science.  Historical materialism may well have required
some logical discussion in terms of emergent properties as well as its
underlying categorial structure, as it does today when confronting the
nonsense purveyed by sociobiology.  Most of Engels' examples drawn from
mathematics and natural science are trivial nonsense; what dialectics is
about is the underlying structure of categorial thinking.

As for the irrelevance of 'academic Marxism', there are sound historical
reasons for what today has become academic, whether from the politically
engaged Lukacs and Gramsci or from the politically disengaged
(instrumentally) Frankfurt School.  Analytical philosophy is ignorant and
incompetent with respect to these matters.

As it happens, I am now reading an excellent book on the Frankfurt School,
which I have added to my bibliography on theory and practice.  See Dubiel
on my web page:

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THEORY AND PRACTICE:
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/praxis1.html


At 03:28 PM 3/1/2006 -0500, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>...........
>
>Engels was almost a century behind the times in terms
>of his understanding of the foundations of the calculus.
>His remarks concerning calculus adhered to the
>older approaches that were based on infinitesimals
>rather than on the then recently developed approach
>based on the theory of limits that people like Cauchy
>pioneered.  I have read people who have said that
>Marx had a more up to date understanding of that
>subject than did Engels. Engels also said some
>silly things about imaginary numbers in his
>*Dialectics of Nature* as well.
>
>On the other hand, Engels seems to have a very
>good understanding of the natural science of his
>day. Hilary Putnam used to call Engels the "most
>learned man of the nineteenth century." His essay,
>"The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man,"
>is deservedly revered, despite the fact that Engels
>cast of his reasoning in Lamarckian terms.
>Stephen Jay Gould in his book, *Ever Since Darwin*, wrote:
>
>"Indeed, the nineteenth century produced a brilliant exposé from a source
>that will no doubt surprise most readers - Frederick Engels. (A bit of
>reflection should diminish surprise. Engels had a keen interest in the
>natural sciences and sought to base his general philosophy of dialectical
>materialism upon a 'positive' foundation. He did not live to complete his
>'dialectics of nature', but he included long commentaries on science in
>such treatises as the Anti-Dühring.) In 1876, Engels wrote an essay
>entitled, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. It
>was published posthumously in 1896 and, unfortunately, had no visible
>impact upon Western science.
>
>"Engels considers three essential features of human evolution: speech, a
>large brain, and upright posture. He argues that the first step must have
>been a descent from the trees with subsequent evolution to upright
>posture
>by our ground-dwelling ancestors. 'These apes when moving on level ground
>began to drop the habit of using their hands and to adopt a more and more
>erect gait. This was the decisive step in the transition from ape to
>man.'
>Upright posture freed the hand for using tools (labour, in Engels'
>terminology); increased intelligence and speech came later."
>
>............
>Quite so.  Lenin to some extent continued that project in
>his *Materialism and Empirio-criticism*, especially in
>chapter 5, where he wrote concerning "The Recent Revolution
>in Natural Science and Philosophical Idealism,"
>polemicizing against scientists and other writers who
>attempted to use the then recent discoveries in physics
>to support idealism and theism.
>
>Other writers who are not necessarily orthodox
>Marxists have been concerned with as well.
>For example, the logical empiricist Philipp Frank
>took aim at efforts to
>promulgate metaphysical interpretations of
>science, in his *Modern Science and It's Philosophy*,
>and his *Philosophy of Science*. And British
>philosopher, Susan Stebbing, in her book,
>*Philosophy and the Physicists*, which took
>aim at the efforts of physicists, James Jeans
>and Arthur Eddington to use modern physics
>(i.e. relativity and quantum mechanics) to
>support theism, idealist metaphysics,
>contra-causal free will and so forth.
...........


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