On Althusser's Philosophy of the Encounter

Notes

1. The paradox about whether the class of all classes that are not members of themselves is a member of itself in Chapter X of Russell (1903).

2. For a clear and readable explanation of these issues you can do worse than consult Chaitin (1999).

3. When you grasp the contemporary skepticism towards atomism it is easier to make sense of Lenin's (1908) foray into philosophy. Lenin showed considerable foresight in coming down firmly against Mach's then fashionable views.

4. He means Epicurus.

5. The idea of entropy already existed in classical thermodynamics but the latter had no causal explanation for it.

6. An English translation is available as Einstein (1965).

7. Technically they are complex numbers which means that different states can interfere with one another.

8. A matrix mechanics expressed directly in probabilities could not do this.

9. I created the text using a Markov model of the World English Bible. The transition probabilities to print a new word are determined by states made up of the last three words printed. The probabilities are obtained from a computer generated Bible concordance using the algorithms described in Cockshott and Koliousis (2011).

10. I cannot resist the chance to say here that Allin Cottrell and I provide a theoretical explanation for mercantile surplus value in the chapter on foreign trade of Cockshott and Cottrell (1992).