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Vanguard Variorum, May 1946
7
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VANGUARD VARIORUM 7 mailings, you are making an equally spurious, geographical judgment?... I protest your ringing-in of Germany at the tail end of yout objection, since as you well know from our last year's discussion with Kidd, I consider the war against Germany justifiable upon the basis of the "significant fraction" - that I believe the number of lives lost by fighting Germany to be less than the number of lives which would have been lost had we chosen some other form of resistance or not resisted Nazi policy at all. My point to Danner depends upon my correlative belief that no such justification can be found for the war with Japan, a war which we invited upon no better grounds than that some American financial interests in CHina were being devalued be Japanese military interference... Remember who asked for it; remember also the resuts - vicious, every one. Thanks for the various comments on SFOHR. I had intended a replt in the next TUMBRILS, along with treatment of a number of subjects raised by Vanguardifs in 1945 which I didn't then have space to mention; but an advance look over damon's shoulder informs me that he is relieving me of most of the work. Therefore, just a few minor matters: "Dialectics may be 'outdated,' but they're still running the show." The dialectic is a procedural method and never ran any show but the Marxian vaudeville. My own statement was that whatever was useful in the dialectic has been outdated by the calculus of statement, another procedural method. The newer way of thinking-by-symbols shows every sign of producing more accurate results with fewer operations than the older. Stanley might print to this fact in answering Judy's asseveration than we all think we're using scientific methods; for part of the scientific method is the law of parsinony, which rules that the simplest methods which satisfy the given conditions are the most valid. The use of the dialectic as a procedural method has thus become outdated upon the basis of this law, and can't any longer be considered as "scientific." Of course dialectics will nevertheless continue to be used, like many another outmoded institution, but my essay did not pretend to treat that problem. The essay presents what seems to me to be a rational way of viewing the historical problem, and non-rational ways of all kinds do not fall within its scope except by definition. In other words, I did not deny the existance of nan-rational procedure, I simply defined it as irrational. For this reason your phrase about "Historical Realism" is simply a noise; for this phrase is oriented toward the politic, and has no bearing upon my writing, which is oriented toward the meta- physical . "I can safely predict that were this hypothetical pattern discovered tomorrow, scarsely two adherents of it cd/ agree on what actions it predicated as meaningful and that time and time again their predictions wd/ be discovered to be pure fantasy. This is like 6 eying that scarsely two people could agree upon actions fantasy . You can't interprete a pattern, doc. It's either there or it isn't. Motivation and semantics cannot effect actions and predictions unless they are based on an incomplete pattern - one with, say, a 6% error. Men had plenty of motivation, on the basis of incomplete patterns, to cling to theories involving no more than eight planets, in a certani definite arrangement. When Bode's Iaw was formulated, motivation left the picture; it became evident at once that this was the way things actually were, like it or lump it, because predictions made upon it were never wrong except by accidental error - which accidental error was immediately correctable because the pattern predicated invariably meaningful actions to catch and correct such accidents. The absence of basic Marxian texts in SFOHR's bibliography requires the reader to remember what he has read over a space of about 5 pages. Those who are unable to do this have my condolences. I have at this point entirely lost my patience with the attitude, first expressed in VAPA by DAW, that no one has read a book unless he has, somewhere, listed it publically. The attitude makes one suspect that its promulgators may feel that, on the other hand, listing a book consti-
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VANGUARD VARIORUM 7 mailings, you are making an equally spurious, geographical judgment?... I protest your ringing-in of Germany at the tail end of yout objection, since as you well know from our last year's discussion with Kidd, I consider the war against Germany justifiable upon the basis of the "significant fraction" - that I believe the number of lives lost by fighting Germany to be less than the number of lives which would have been lost had we chosen some other form of resistance or not resisted Nazi policy at all. My point to Danner depends upon my correlative belief that no such justification can be found for the war with Japan, a war which we invited upon no better grounds than that some American financial interests in CHina were being devalued be Japanese military interference... Remember who asked for it; remember also the resuts - vicious, every one. Thanks for the various comments on SFOHR. I had intended a replt in the next TUMBRILS, along with treatment of a number of subjects raised by Vanguardifs in 1945 which I didn't then have space to mention; but an advance look over damon's shoulder informs me that he is relieving me of most of the work. Therefore, just a few minor matters: "Dialectics may be 'outdated,' but they're still running the show." The dialectic is a procedural method and never ran any show but the Marxian vaudeville. My own statement was that whatever was useful in the dialectic has been outdated by the calculus of statement, another procedural method. The newer way of thinking-by-symbols shows every sign of producing more accurate results with fewer operations than the older. Stanley might print to this fact in answering Judy's asseveration than we all think we're using scientific methods; for part of the scientific method is the law of parsinony, which rules that the simplest methods which satisfy the given conditions are the most valid. The use of the dialectic as a procedural method has thus become outdated upon the basis of this law, and can't any longer be considered as "scientific." Of course dialectics will nevertheless continue to be used, like many another outmoded institution, but my essay did not pretend to treat that problem. The essay presents what seems to me to be a rational way of viewing the historical problem, and non-rational ways of all kinds do not fall within its scope except by definition. In other words, I did not deny the existance of nan-rational procedure, I simply defined it as irrational. For this reason your phrase about "Historical Realism" is simply a noise; for this phrase is oriented toward the politic, and has no bearing upon my writing, which is oriented toward the meta- physical . "I can safely predict that were this hypothetical pattern discovered tomorrow, scarsely two adherents of it cd/ agree on what actions it predicated as meaningful and that time and time again their predictions wd/ be discovered to be pure fantasy. This is like 6 eying that scarsely two people could agree upon actions fantasy . You can't interprete a pattern, doc. It's either there or it isn't. Motivation and semantics cannot effect actions and predictions unless they are based on an incomplete pattern - one with, say, a 6% error. Men had plenty of motivation, on the basis of incomplete patterns, to cling to theories involving no more than eight planets, in a certani definite arrangement. When Bode's Iaw was formulated, motivation left the picture; it became evident at once that this was the way things actually were, like it or lump it, because predictions made upon it were never wrong except by accidental error - which accidental error was immediately correctable because the pattern predicated invariably meaningful actions to catch and correct such accidents. The absence of basic Marxian texts in SFOHR's bibliography requires the reader to remember what he has read over a space of about 5 pages. Those who are unable to do this have my condolences. I have at this point entirely lost my patience with the attitude, first expressed in VAPA by DAW, that no one has read a book unless he has, somewhere, listed it publically. The attitude makes one suspect that its promulgators may feel that, on the other hand, listing a book consti-
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