Lenin y Einstein : lecciones de dos revoluciones

Colaborador

Hidalgo, Cecilia

Spatial Coverage

Idioma

spa

Extent

285 p.

Derechos

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 2.0 Genérica (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Formato

application/pdf

Cobertura

ARG

Abstract

On the basis of Kuhn’s thesis about the parallel between scientific revolutions and political revolutions, this thesis expounds the links between the theoretical and philosophical experiences of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) and Albert Einstein, both embedded in a common worldview which has as its foundation the determinist conception of the world and the spirit of modernity, clearly defined by Montesquieu in the 18th century. The determinist conception held by Einstein and Lenin is analyzed within the new physical and political framework of the world, which is at odds with the classical mechanistic Physics and the classical liberal Politics. Mechanicism and liberalism both correspond to experiences set in a physical and political framework where sciences occupied a key role in collecting and arranging data, facts and phenomena. The new physical and political framework of the world develops as a procedural totality which changes in the universe of matter as well as in the core of a new society. Physics must deal with a devilish world emerging from the inner layers of matter; Politics with the effervescent world that rises from the depths of a new social class: those fabulous atoms that make factories work and, with them, the world as a whole. Lenin and Einstein endeavor to remain within a modern Weltanschauung, which choses to trust the discernible power of reason to unveil the multiple causes that allow for the predictability of all phenomena, according to the laws governing their behavior. To that extent, they are Newtonians but not mechanistics, because they no longer consider, as determining elements, the bodies, their mass and the interaction -in Newton's mechanistic fashion- nor the individuals as units of political analysis as in the Liberal conception, but rather that they must discover the forces that govern their motion. Marx’s false consciousness, Freud’s unconscious, as so many other phenomena that have arisen in so many other aspects of life, illustrate the coming on stage of these hidden forces. In summary, the following thesis is held: Behind the theoretical experiences of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th, there is a hidden common conceptual framework in the field of Politics and in the domain of Physics, which allows for the understanding, explanation and foreshadowing of phenomena linked to time and movement. This theoretical-philosophical universe defines, in perspective, a ‘new physical and political framework of the world’. Just as Einstein could predict the forces that would bend the light when “crossing the tangent of the sun”, Lenin managed to anticipate the forces that “would surround the Winter Palace” and the downfall of the Czar, using an analogous conceptual structure. Here we analyze the consequences of the First World War on this structure of ideas, when ‘science’ and ‘politics’ are held responsible of the collapse, Germany above all, thus affecting the main principles of determinism in the world of the laboratory as well as in the social universe, giving birth to a cycle marked by skepticism. This cycle is conceive of as structured in three phases of apogee, decline and vanishing of the core ideas of modernity, emphasizing the leading role of Lenin and Einstein in defining a new physical and political framework of the world. The original linking of Einstein and Lenin rests both on their historical and theoretical bonds. The two of them share more than ten years of residence in Switzerland and they endeavor to find answers to their questions, using the very same documental sources and a similar theoretical and conceptual structure, to be applied the disparate reality of their ‘objects’ of study. Both protagonists –for not so different reasons- are deprived of what Einstein called his “lab multitudes”, where sciences related to ‘matter’ so that praxis manages to ‘tame’ the forms of real life.

Título obtenido

Doctor de la Universidad de Buenos Aires en Ciencias Sociales

Institución otorgante

Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales

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