The law of the transition of quantity into quality: the main provisions of the law, features, examples

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:41

The law of the transition of quantity into quality is associated with the dialectic of famous philosophers who have discovered different concepts of being for society. The connection with nature and man is a truth that must be comprehended through the transformation of quantity into a qualitative form of life. Dialectics is a method of thinking and interpreting the world, both nature and society. This is a way of looking at the universe, which from the axiom indicates that everything is in a constant state of change and flux. But not only that. Dialectics explains that change and movement are associated with contradiction and can only take place through contrasting interpretations of thoughts. So instead of a smooth continuous line of progress, we have a line that is interrupted by sudden periods when slow, cumulative changes (quantitative change) undergo a rapid acceleration in which quantity is transformed into quality. Dialectic is the logic of contradiction.

The law of the transition of quantity into quality: the philosophy of life and being

The laws of dialectics were analyzed in detail by Hegel, in whose writings they appear in a mystified, idealistic form. It was Marx and Engels who first introduced the scientific dialectic, that is, the materialistic basis. “Thanks to the powerful impetus given to the thought of the French Revolution, Hegel anticipated the general movement of science, but since it was only an expectation, he received an idealistic character from Hegel.”

Hegel acted with ideological shadows because Marx demonstrated that the movement of these ideological shadows reflects nothing but the movement of material bodies. In the writings of Hegel there are many vivid examples of the law of dialectics taken from history and nature. But Hegel's idealism necessarily gave his dialectic a very abstract and arbitrary character. In order for the dialectic to serve as the "Absolute Idea", Hegel was forced to impose a schema on nature and society in flat contradiction to the dialectical method itself, which requires that we deduce the laws of a given phenomenon from a scrupulously objective study of the subject.

Thus, speaking briefly about the law of the transition of quantity into quality, it is far from easy to smooth out Hegel's idealistic dialectic, arbitrarily imposed on history and society, as his critics often claim. Marx's method was just the opposite.

The ABC of philosophy as a method of artificial knowledge

When we first think about the world around us, we see a huge and surprisingly complex seriesphenomena, the web, endless change, cause and effect, action and reaction. The driving force behind scientific research is the desire to gain a reasonable understanding of this marvelous labyrinth, to understand it in order to overcome it. We are looking for laws that can separate the necessary from the concrete, the contingent from the necessary, and allow us to understand the forces that give rise to the phenomena that oppose us. The law of the transition of quantity into quality, according to the physicist and philosopher David Bohm, is a state of transformation. He counted:

In nature, nothing remains constant, everything is in a state of transformation and change. However, we find that nothing spills out of nothing without prior events that existed before. Likewise, nothing ever disappears without a trace. There is a feeling that in later times it does not generate absolutely nothing. This general characterization of the world can be expressed in terms of a principle which sums up a vast range of different kinds of experience and which has so far not been contradicted by any observation or experiment.

What is the dialectical orientation based on?

The basic proposition of dialectics is that everything is in a constant process of change, movement and development. Even when it seems to us that nothing is happening, in fact, matter is always changing. Molecules, atoms and subatomic particles are constantly changing, always in motion.

Thus, dialectics is, in essence, a dynamic interpretation of phenomena and processes occurring at all levels as organic,and inorganic matter. This is not a mechanical concept of motion as something brought to an inert mass by an external "force", but a completely different concept of matter as a self-propelled force. For philosophers, matter and motion (energy) were one and the same, two ways of expressing the same idea. This idea was brilliantly confirmed by Einstein's theory of the equivalence of mass and energy.

Streams in the self-consciousness of being

Everything is in constant motion, from neutrinos to superclusters. The earth itself is constantly moving, revolving around the sun once a year and on its own axis once a day. The sun, in turn, rotates on its axis once every 26 days and, along with all the other stars in our galaxy, travels around the galaxy once every 230 million years. Probably even larger structures (clusters of galaxies) also have some kind of general rotational motion. This seems to be true of matter down to the atomic level, where the atoms that make up the molecules rotate relative to each other at different speeds. This is the law of the transition of quantity into quality, examples of which in nature can be given in total everywhere. Inside an atom, electrons revolve around the nucleus at tremendous speeds.

1. An electron has a quality known as intrinsic spin.
2. It sort of rotates around its own axis at a fixed speed and cannot be stopped or changed except by destroying the electron itself.
3. Philosophical law of transitionquantity into quality can be interpreted otherwise, as an accumulation of the material, which forms a quantitative force. That is, to give a reverse understanding and action to the law.
4. If the spin of an electron increases, it changes its properties so dramatically that it leads to a qualitative change, creating a completely different particle.

A quantity known as angular momentum, a combined measure of the mass, size and speed of a rotating system, is used to measure the spin of elementary particles. The principle of spin quantization is fundamental at the subatomic level, but also exists in the macroscopic world. However, its effect is so infinitesimal that it can be taken for granted. The world of subatomic particles is in a state of constant movement and fermentation, in which nothing coincides with itself.

Particles are constantly changing into their opposites, so it is impossible to even assert their identity at any given time. Neutrons turn into protons and protons into neutrons in a continuous exchange of identities. This is the law of the mutual transition of quantity into quality.

Philosophy according to Engels as a law on the general movement of material values

Engels defines dialectics as "the science of the general laws of motion and the development of nature, human society and thought." Previously, he also conducted experiments on natural phenomena, but then he decided to take up observation in order to know the truth. He talks about the laws of dialectics, starting with three main ones:

1. The law of the transition of quantity into quality and back to the original form.
2. The law of the interpenetration of opposites.
3. The law of negation of negation.

At first glance, such a requirement may seem overly ambitious. Is it really possible to develop laws that have such general application? Could there be a basic pattern that repeats itself in the workings of not only society and thought, but nature itself? Despite all such objections, it is becoming more and more obvious that such models do exist and constantly appear at all levels in various ways. And there are a growing number of examples, taken from fields as diverse as subatomic particles for population studies, that lend more weight to the theory of dialectical materialism.

Dialectical thought and its role in life

The essential point of dialectical thought is not that it is based on the idea of change and movement, but that it regards movement and change as phenomena based on contradiction. While traditional formal logic seeks to banish contradiction, dialectical thought embraces it. Contradiction is an important feature of all being, as stated in Hegel's law of the transition of quantity into quality at the substantive level. It lies at the core of matter itself. It is the source of all movement, change, life and development. Dialectical law expressing this idea:

• This is the law of unity and interpenetrationopposites.
• The third law of dialectics, the negation of negation, expresses the concept of development.
• Instead of a vicious circle where processes are constantly repeated, this law indicates that the movement through successive contradictions actually leads to development, from simple to complex, from lower to higher.
• Processes do not repeat in exactly the same way, despite appearances to the contrary.
• These, very schematically, are the three most fundamental dialectic laws.
• From these arise a whole series of additional propositions related to the relationship between whole and part, form and content, finite and infinite, attraction and repulsion.

This we will try to solve. Let's start with quantity and quality. The law of the dialectic of the transition of quantity into quality and its transformation has an extremely wide range of applications - from the smallest particles of matter at the subatomic level to the most famous phenomena known to man. It can be seen in all kinds of manifestations and at many levels. But this very important law has yet to receive the recognition it deserves.

Ancient philosophy - instinctively used in nature

The transformation of quantity into quality was already known to the Megaran Greeks, who used it to demonstrate certain paradoxes, sometimes in the form of jokes. For example: "The straw that broke the camel's back", "Many hands do the light work", "Constant dripping wears out the stone"(water wears away the stone), etc.

In many laws of philosophy, the transition of quantity into quality has penetrated the people's consciousness, as Trotsky wittily remarked:

Every person is a dialectician to some extent, in most cases, unconsciously. A housewife knows that a certain amount of s alt flavors in a soup is pleasant, but this added s alt makes the soup unappealing. Consequently, an illiterate peasant woman behaves in the preparation of soup according to the Hegelian law of the transformation of quantity into quality. Similar examples from everyday life could be given endlessly.

Therefore, we can safely say that everything in the world happens like self-consciousness, in a natural way. If someone gets tired, the body, as an element of obtaining quantitative fatigue, is going to rest. The next biological day, the quality of the work will be better, otherwise the quantity will backfire on the quality deeds. The same will happen in the reverse scenario - nature is involved here as a mechanism of influence from the outside.

Instincts or the dialectic of survival?

Even animals come to their practical conclusions not only on the basis of the Aristotelian syllogism, but also on the basis of the Hegelian dialectic. In this way, the fox realizes that quadrupeds and birds are nutritious and tasty. Upon seeing a hare, rabbit, or chicken, the fox thinks, "This particular creature belongs to the tasty and nutritious type." We have a complete syllogism here, even though the fox has never read Aristotle. However, when the same fox encounters the first animal that is larger than it is,for example, a wolf, she quickly comes to the conclusion that quantity is turning into quality, and takes flight. It is clear that the fox's paws are equipped with "Hegelian tendencies", even if the latter are not fully conscious.

Based on this, we can conclude that the law of the transition of quantity into quality is the internal relations of nature with a living being, which were transformed into the language of consciousness, and then a person was able to generalize these forms of consciousness and turn them into logical ones (dialectical) categories, thereby creating an opportunity to penetrate deeper into the world of flora and fauna.

Edge of Chaos Per Bak – self-organization of criticality

Despite the seemingly trivial nature of these examples, they reveal a profound truth about how the world works. Take the example of a pile of corn. Some of the latest research related to chaos theory has focused on the critical point, where a series of small variations results in a massive change in state (in modern terminology, this is called the "chaos edge".) The work of Danish physicist Per Bak and others on "self-organized criticality" used just the example of a sand-heap to illustrate the deep processes that take place on many levels of nature and correspond exactly to the law of the transition of quantity into quality. Sometimes these matters are simply invisible, and a person does not notice a simple quantitative change.

Examples of the law of transition of quantity into quality - what is the last link?

One example of this is a pile of sand, an exact analogy to a pile of megavar grain. We drop grains of sand one at a time onto a flat surface. The experiment was carried out many times, both with real sand and in computer simulations, in order to understand the law of transformation of quantity into quality. For a while they just build up on top of each other until they make a little pyramid. Once this is achieved, any additional grains will either find room on the pile or unbalance one side of the pile so much that some other grains will fall down.

Depending on how the other grains are balanced, the slide can be very small or destructive, taking a large number of grains with it. When a heap reaches this critical point, even one grain can greatly affect everything around. This seemingly trivial example provides an excellent "extreme chaos model" with examples ranging from earthquakes to evolution; from stock market crises to wars. An example of the law of the transition of quantity into quality is demonstrated on a heap of sand. It grows, but at the same time, excess sand slides along the sides. When all of the excess sand falls, the resulting sand pile is said to be "self-organizing". It "organizes itself" according to its own laws until it reaches a state of criticality, where grains of sand become extremely vulnerable at the top.