Dialectics of Force
In this book for the first time in world scientific literature the category of force is presented as an attribute of matter along with motion, space and time. This enabled the author to develop a different approach to solving the problem of the Big Bang, to give a new definition of the border between life and the inorganic world, and to offer his own interpretation in the disputes around the body-and-mind problem. The category of ontological force, formulated by the author, enabled him to reach a new definition of the concept of progress, which creates a methodological basis for fruitful research use in the fields of social sciences and international relations.
This book is intended for instructors and students of philosophy and natural sciences, as well as for all those interested in the problems of the Universe, life and Man.
© Alex Battler, 2005
© Guerman Aliev
© Translated from the Russian by Pavel V. Sorokin
Dedicated to my wife Valentina
Listed below is a Table of Contents of this book.
Contents
Chapter I. The phenomenology of force
2. Ancient Greek philosophers on force
3. Philosophy of force in the works of European philosophers of the 15th-19th centuries
Nicholas of Cusa
Leonardo da Vinci
Bernardino Telesio and Francis Bacon
René Descartes and Isaac Newton
Benedict Spinoza
John Locke
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Julien Ofray de La Mettrie, Etienne Bonneau de Condillac and Denis Diderot
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Ludwig Buchner and Joseph Dietzgen
4. Philosophy of force in the works of Western philosophers of the 20th century
Energy and quanta according to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Arthur Young
5. Ontological force, or ontóbia
Chapter II. Forces in the Universe: essence and manifestations
1. Force and/or energy
2. The Big Bang, or the Theory of Everything
3. Singularity vs. vacuum
4. Universe and laws
5. Cosmobia and the cause of the Big Bang
6. From the Big Bang of the Crumb to the Big Crackle
8. The second law of thermodynamics, or the law of entropy growth
Chapter III. The origin of the organic world as a manifestation of the organic force, or orgagenesis as a manifestation of orgábia
1. The causes of the emergence of life on Earth
Creationism
Neovitalism
Panspermia
The conception of self-conception of life
2. Biogenesis and entropy
Evolution = entropy
Evolution vs. entropy
Evolution plus entropy
The second law of thermodynamics and biological information
Evolution and entropy
3. Other conceptions of evolution
Sheldrake's New Science of Life
Beginning of life: accident, purpose or way?
Darwin and Stephen J. Gould's model of intermittent equilibrium
4. The triumph of Karl Popper
Life: necessity or accident?
Progress and complexity
What is life, or where is its beginning
Laws of the organic world
5. Philosophy of orgagenesis
Orgagenesis as a manifestation of orgábia
Some conclusions
Chapter IV. Man: force and progress
1. Western currents and schools
2. Physics of the mind and the physicist's mind: which will prevail?
3. Neo-Berkeleanism, or transcendental consciousness
4. The New Jersey nihilists, Daniel Dennett and John Taylor
5. Ken Wilber's conception of the complex approach
6. Arthur Young's conception
7. From materialism to cosmism, or Soviet-Russian approaches to the problem of consciousness and thinking
8. Consciousness - thought - force - progress
Two words about reductionism
Consciousness + thought = mind
Knowledge = force
Information and knowledge
Information - entropy - knowledge
Life and progress
Conclusion
Glossary of scientific terms
Appendices
Bibliography
Index of names