On the Dialectic of a Photon
In the work on Quantum Mechanics of 20th century physicists like Niels Bohr, we find (if we read it right) experimental scientific validation of the philosophical principles of Dialectical Materialism. Beneath the apparent logic and rigid ideals and forms of idealist philosophers, like Plato, or the “god” and godly laws of earlier physicists like Einstein or Newton¹, lies a material universe which can be described only by principles of paradox and which exists as paradox, as a single material One (monad) of an entire universe divided into Many aspects interacting in contradiction. This Material universe can only be accurately described by the fundamental concept(s) of Dialectical Materialist philosophy, the Law of Contradiction, exactly as Marxist philosophers (like Mao in On Contradiction) have said.
We can observe the dialectical and dialectically-describable nature of real Material reality at the most fundamental physical levels: the photon, the basic unit of light or of electromagnetic incidence, is identifiable as both particle and wave, two contradicting aspects, and in fact it is precisely the contradiction of the two aspects and the evolving interaction of the two that defines what a photon is — Bohr’s term was “complementarity²,”; we can view this dual-aspected existence, this process of being evolving over time through contradicted aspects, as the dialectic of a photon.
A star is held together by the contradicting aspects of the outward expansive power of energy from fusile reactions and the inward pull of gravity. The nuclear fusion reactions occurring within the star are themselves defined by the contradiction and evolving interaction between the contradicting aspects of the incidence of gravity that draws nuclei to smash together and the incidence of nuclear force that draws them to remain discrete units. So we can see the dialectics of a star as the accurate description or shape of its existence and how we understand.
And we can do the same thing with human society — bringing us to Historical Materialism and the conclusion that class dialectics necessarily show us the way to a communist future.
☙FOOTNOTES❧
- In the time of Leibniz or Newton, it was unquestioned assumed fact that physics described the laws or principles which God had set into the universe as it’s grand technician, as reflected in the theology and philosophy of Deism. And Einstein’s retort to the role of probability in some views on QM, famously and as shown in the recent film Oppenheimer, was “God does not play dice.”
- This is the term in the “Copenhagen Interpretation” of Quantum Mechanics, the broad philosophy-of-physics viewpoint that Bohr is generally associated with, which has philosophical aspects to critique and embrace and other aspects to critique and reject.
