Logic of Evolution

Abstract

Dialectics is the logic of development. It examines the world—completely without exception—not as a result of creation, of a sudden beginning, the realisation of a plan, but as a result of motion, of transformation. Everything that is became the way it is as a result of lawlike development.11 L. Trotsky, Trotsky's Notebooks, 1933–1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 96.This essay investigates the relationship between a dialectical analysis of change and the laws of motion that drive a systemic whole. The essay will compare and contrast the viewpoints of Trotsky and Lenin as to what particular dialectical law is the primary nomological dynamic dominating this process. My own emphasis on this question is placed on the need to understand the systemic nature of the ‘general form of working’ of dialectics that underpins the nomological account of the qualitative changes inherent in all substantial and systemically active entities. The fuller materialist analysis and critique of Hegel's systemic account of the laws of dialectics is therefore necessary if we are to more comprehensively develop an evolutionary account of the laws of motion that underpin all substantial forms of systemic change and qualitative alteration.