Slater, Eamonn (2017) As ‘Nature Works Dialectically’, Explicating how Engels and Marx Analysed Climate and Climate Change Dialectically. (MUSSI Working Paper No. 1). Working Paper. Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute (MUSSI).
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Abstract
The premise of this article is based on the assertion that Engels made which he suggested that ‘nature works dialectically’. Consequently, concrete organic reality is not a solid thing-like entity but a complex matrix of interconnecting processes that form an organic totality. The existence of a dialectical reality has profound implications for how we can conceptualise that reality and even more critically how we physically relate to and eng age with that dialectical reality, especially when that reality is also organic. The organic processes of nature, according to Engels and Marx, are dominated by the climatic process, that ‘life-awakening force’ of soil fertility. However, what determines the form of the local weather system (the local manifestation of the climatic process) is how that system interconnects with the other organic processes of nature – geological structures, vegetation and the soil processes and they all are subsequently moments of that overall climatic process. The presence of interconnecting processes determining concrete reality, questions the validity of linear cause and effect formulation to account for the determination of that dialectical reality. This one-sided form of causation has to be replaced by a many-sided formulation as expressed in Marx’s famous proposal that the ‘concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations. Hence the unity of the diverse’. The new epoch of planning our relation ships with nature, has to include the adoption of the dialectical framework, conceptually within the sciences and practically in the processes of cultivation.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | climate system; dialectical nature; interconnecting processes; deforestation; desertification; immediate and remote consequences; Ireland; MUSSI; MUSSI Working Paper Series; |
| Academic Unit: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, MUSSI Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology |
| Item ID: | 9341 |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Eamonn Slater |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Apr 2018 13:37 |
| Publisher: | Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute (MUSSI) |
| URI: | |
| Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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