This is a culmination of a lot of ideas I've had over the years that constitute my world view and understanding of our reality.
Some key realizations I've had are that there are many parallels between concepts of energy gradients driving evolution of dynamic systems, emergence, and self-organization with the core concepts of Dialectical Materialism rooted in contradictions, transformation of quantity into quality, and the negation of the negation.
Dialectical Materialism describes the cyclical process of development where an initial thesis is countered by an antithesis, leading to a synthesis that retains aspects of both but transcends them to a new level. This directly mirrors the idea of energy gradients driving systems towards higher levels of complexity and organization. In both cases, emergent properties arise from the interactions within the system driven by the selection pressures.
I see nature as having a fractal quality to it where environmental pressures to optimize space and energy use drive the emergence of similar patterns at different scales. I argue that our social structures are a direct extension of the physical reality and simply constitute a higher level of abstraction and organization that directly builds on the layers beneath.
If you're simply interested in a standalone introduction to dialectics can skip to chapter 8, which is largely self-contained. The preceding chapters build a foundation by illustrating how self-organization leads to the emergence of minds and social structures.
One of the goals I have here is to provide an introduction to diamat for people in STEM who may be coming from the liberal mainstream by demonstrating a clear connection between materialist understanding of physical reality and human societies.
Feedback and critique are both very welcome.
This was just what I was looking for. As a former biology stemlord my first introduction to dialectics was through Paul Cockshotts YouTube videos that attempt at tying the two together, which really appealed to me. And eventually I was able to apply dialectics after a few years to my own thinking, which more or less in tandem with historical materialism rewired my brain I think at a fundamental level (or in other words it sublimated to a new model for looking at the world).
So I think you've got something pretty cool/important going on here that can help a lot of people cross the event horizon of historical materialism so they can reach real Marxism-Leninism that is rooted in these concepts. That is to say in a bottom up intuitive understanding where you can "feel" the direction of history pull*1. And like time and history, when you cross that event horizon in your brain, you cannot go backwards.
Good luck to you and your research.
*1. as opposed to the "top down" way...which is still good and a huge step can only take us so far and one can still abandon Marxism. How can we say it accurately (idk)? It's the ML or Marxist version of trying on politics like clothes? Whilst that's good and where basically all of us start because ML positions best explain the BS in capitalism domestically and abroad (and offer solutions), we want people to reach that event horizon of intuitively feeling Hmat because when it "clicks", the doors suddenly blow open, and you cannot go back.
Thanks, it's great to see that the text resonates. My original goal was to write an intro that would be accessible to people in the mainstream, and particularly those who have STEM background. I intentionally try to avoid using any words like communism or Marxism so that people don't get triggered, and bury the political side of discussion all the way in chapter 8. My thinking is that if people get that far, and mostly agree with the argument I'm setting up, then at that point they're likely to entertain the political argument as well. It also becomes a holistic framework for understanding reality as opposed to simply being a political ideology.
And given that Marxism is a materialist philosophy, it seems to make sense to connect it to the physical world in a direct way. I find that we often end up getting stuck in silos in our particular fields, and new ideas often come out from connecting different fields of study together.