2.1 What’s Dialectics?

2.1.1 Engel's three laws of Dialectics

2.1.2 Quantity and Quality

The ancient dialectic

The ancient use of the dialectic was essentially defined by Socrates and Plato and continued by the
scholastic tradition. However, the idea of dialectical movement appeared earlier in the thought
of Heraclitus, where it carried a very different meaning.
Heraclitus represents what could be called the prehistory of the dialectic. Though he never used
the term to refer to his own philosophy, he was credited for pioneering the way of the dialectic
by Hegel and Engels. In fact, Heraclitus was an earlier pre-Socratic, and his thought is proof that
the dialectical frame of mind has been with Western philosophy from the very beginning.
Heraclitus’ thought was dialectical in the sense that he believed everything to have originated from
fire, the symbol of movement and development through self-consumption. His best-known
statements are that “all is in a state of flux” and that “war is the father of all things.”

Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to European
and Indian philosophy since antiquity. The dialectical method is discourse between two or more
people holding different points of view about a subject, who wish to establish the truth of the matter
guided by reasoned arguments.

The purpose of the dialectic method of reasoning is resolution of disagreement through rational
discussion, and, ultimately, the search for truth. One way to proceed to show that a given
hypothesis leads to a contradiction; thus, forcing the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate
for truth. Another dialectical resolution of disagreement is by denying a presupposition of the
contending thesis and antithesis; thereby, proceeding to sublation to synthesis, a third thesis.

2.1.1ENGEL’S THREE LAWS OF DIALECTIC

Engels postulated three laws of dialectics from his reading of Hegel's Science of Logic Engels
elucidated these laws in his work Dialectics of Nature:

THE LAW OF THE UNITY AND CONFLICT OF OPPOSITES

This law occupies a central position in materialist dialectics and is of universal methodological
significance. No phenomena exist in the world outside the process of infinite development, the
process of the formation of opposing aspects and their mutual transformation within each whole,
and outside the process of their contradictory interrelationships. It enables us to understand any
whole as a complex and divided system, containing elements or tendencies that are directly
incompatible. The law of the unity and struggle of opposites removes the illusion of finality from an
organic form of existence in nature and society.

THE LAW OF THE PASSAGE OF QUANTITATIVE CHANGES INTO QUALITATIVE CHANGES

A basic law of materialist dialectics, according to which a change in the quality of an object occurs
when the accumulation of quantitative changes reaches a certain limit. The law reveals the most
general mechanism of development.
The law is objective and universal in character. Its content is revealed by all the categories of
dialectics, especially the categories of quality, quantity, and measure. Any quantitative change
appears as a change in the elements of a system. The degree of difference between the old quality
and the new one depends on the quantitative changes in the object under investigation.

THE LAW OF THE NEGATION OF THE NEGATION

In materialist dialectics, the law of the negation of the negation is considered a law of the
development of nature, society, and thought. If the law of the unity and struggle of opposites
discloses the source of development, and the law of the transition of quantitative changes into
qualitative changes reveals the mechanism of development, the law of the negation of the
negation expresses the direction, form, and result of development. The effect of the law of the
negation of the negation is fully revealed only in an integral, relatively complete process of
development through a chain of interconnected transitions, when it is possible to specify a more or
less finished result of the process (from the point of view of the direction of development). At each
particular stage, the law of the negation of the negation is usually revealed only as a tendency.

QUANTITY AND QUALITY

Quality is the basic character or nature of something. Quantity is a variable amount of a thing,
where the amount does not affect the quality (the basic nature) of what that thing is.
When the quantity of something changes, i.e. if a book has 100 pages as opposed to 50 pages, a
quantitative change has occurred. There are times however, when the amount of change in a thing
changes its very character. For example, if the book was reduced to one page, it is no longer a
book. When change affects the very character of the thing, a qualitative change has occurred.

The category of quality is an integral definition of the functional unity of an object's essential
properties, its internal and external definiteness, its relative stability, its distinction from and
resemblance to other objects. Quality is an existing definiteness, as distinct from other
definitenesses. It is the expression of the stable unity of an object's elements and structure. Quality
is at the same time the limits of an object within which it exists as that object and no other. This
means that quality is inseparable from the object. In losing its quality any object ceases to exist as
such.
The quality of the object is revealed in the sum-total of its properties. The unity of properties is, in
fact, quality. Thus an overall definition of the quality of a thing or phenomenon is a definition of the
thing as a system with a certain structure. The nature of a thing is revealed in its properties, which
constitute the mode of the object's relationship with other things. It is thanks to their properties that
things interact. A thing has the property of evoking one or another action in something else and of
manifesting itself in its own way in relation to other things.

GLOSARY
• Dialectic
• Scholastic
• Hypotesis
• Materialist
• Divided System
• Categories
• Development
• Resemblance
• Phenomenon
• Evoking