PaRCha – JNU – AISA material – 2007 ID-20487
Image by PaRChA project
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"In studying the critical numbers that pop up in the critical states for different phase transitions, Kadanoff found that the basic physical dimension of the thing in question, of the very space in which it lives, is one of the factors that matters. He also found that only one other detail seems to matter, this being the general shape of the individual elements. In a gas of xenon, for example, each atom is like a tiny billiard ball. It can move around, but it can’t point. In a magnet, the atoms are like arrows, and can do’ more since they can potentially point in lots of directions. When the individual elements have more options, you can imagine that it is harder for order to propagate from one place to another. Sure enough, this detail also affects the precise form of the self-similarity in the critical state. .
"Incredibly, however, Kadanoff found that nothing else whatsoever seemed to matter. So forget the atomic masses and the electrical charges of the particles involved. Forget whether those particles are atoms of oxygen, nitrogen, krypton or iron. Forget even whether they are made of single atoms or are more complicated molecules made of several or even a hundred atoms. Forget everything, in fact, about the kinds of particles and how strongly or weakly they interact with one another. None of these details affects the organisation of the critical state even a tiny bit. Physicists refer to this considerable miracle as critical state universality, and it has now been supported by thousands of experiments and computer simulations. .
"In the critical state, the forces of order and chaos battle to an uneasy balance, neither ever fully winning or losing. And the character of the battle, and the perpetually shifting and changing strife to which it leads, is the same regardless of almost every last detail of the things involved." (16) .
Not surprisingly, other branches of science have also come very close to the concepts of dialectical materialism. Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge both came forward with the revolutionary theory of "punctuated equilibria", which explained evolution not as some slow, steady, gradual change for the better, as outlined by orthodox Darwinism, but a process full of leaps, breaks and transformations. This challenged the dominant Darwinian view of gradualism. Although Gould and Eldredge are not Marxists, they were certainly influence by materialist dialectics. "I am no Marxist", wrote Niles Eldredge, "and neither for that matter is Steve; learning and adoption are two different things." (17) .
Eldredge went on to explain that new dialectical models on the lines of punctuated equilibria have turned up throughout science: "I am still not quite sure what to make of the zeitgeist of our own times, in which, quite apart from Marxism (or so I believe), paradigms similar to punctuated equilibria have shown up in a wide range of academic pursuits. Before us, there was the celebrated case of Thomas Kuhn, whose Structure of Scientific Revolutions became a best-seller in the early 1970s. His central thesis was essentially that science proceeds as status quo paradigms in stasis, integrated by rapid events that finally throw out the old paradigm in favour of a new one that handles all the anomalies swept under the table by its predecessor. Catastrophe theory, similarly, became a hot topic in mathematics as the 1970s wore on. Archaeology and political science have also seen new theories emerging along similar lines (some, I am happy to report, explicitly derived from punctuated equilibria). There may well be a general reaction against models stressing smooth, .
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