Return-Path: <mryder@carbon.cudenver.edu>
Delivered-To: andy@mira.net
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 1998 07:38:26 -0700 (MST)
From: Martin Ryder <mryder@carbon.cudenver.edu>
To: Andy Blunden <andy@mira.net>
Subject: Re: dialectics of nature

Andy,

Don't take it personally.  While most of us value the 
discourse that takes place in these spaces, many of us 
have other priorities in our mundane lives of work and
family and life in general.  It is on my agenda to
tackle the Piaget piece you posted months ago.  I just
haven't gotten to it yet.  This piece on the dialectics
of nature also applies to some of my own work, so I
intend to give it proper attention in due course.

As you know, it takes a good deal of intellectual 
labor to consume a text and to respond to it with any
degree of added value.  It is easier to scan the text,
then to say "that is a valuable piece...I must get 
back to it when the opportunity presents itself."
By posting your work on the web, we know it will
be there when we are ready to properly consume it.
The web is transforming the peer review process, 
allowing for dramatically quicker response than
the prior medium of print.  Nevertheless, readers
are still not as instant as computers.  Valuable 
peer review still takes time.

all the best,
Martin Ryder

On Wed, 4 Feb 1998, Andy Blunden wrote:

> Mmmm. A few days have gone by and dead silence after my contribution on the
> vexed question of the Dialectics of Nature, despite the encouraging flair-up
> of interest in the question previously. Seriously, is the silence because:
> (1) People are considering the question and writing up serious contributions
> (2) My attachment is hard to open and no-one has been able to read it
> (3) My contribution is too long and wordy to bother with
> (4) People don't understand it
> (5) It's just so dogamtic and old-fashioned people can't be bothered
> (6) I didn't follow Engels' lead and attempt to prove the case with lots of
> examples taken from "recent scietific discoveries"?
> Seriously, I want to respond on the question of the relative merits of
> Volume 14 and Volume 38 of Lenin's Works or "Did Lenin discover dialectics
> in 1915?", and also make a modest comment on James' Notes on Dialectics, but
> I am wondering if I am failing to communicate in some way.
> Andy