Abstract
The three classical principles of Hegelian and Marxist dialectics, (1) the transformation of quantity into quality, (2) the unity and struggle of opposites, and (3) the negation of negation, can be modeled with the Catastrophe Theory of Renép Thorn and E. C. Zeeman, especially with the ‘elementary catastrophes’ known as the cusp and the butterfly.
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References
R. Thorn, Structural Stability and Morphogenesis (Reading Massachusetts, W. A. Benjamin, 1975); Zeeman’s “Catastrophe Theory,” Scientific American (April 1976) pp. 65-83, is an excellent introduction.
The literature on dialectics is, of course, immense, but an essay which gives a clear, brief, and orthodox Marxist presentation of the dialectical principles, in terms which exhibit striking similarities to catastrophe theory, is Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method (New York, International Publishers, 1975).
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© 1978 The World Organisation of General Systems and Cybernetics
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Zwick, M. (1978). Dialectics and Catastrophe. In: Rose, J. (eds) Current Topics in Cybernetics and Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-93104-8_189
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-93104-8_189
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