[Marxism] Hegel on Mathematics (re: Badiou)

[Anthony Hartin]

"Ah, so he's talking about how when what you called step (usually called h 
I think) goes to zero the operation involves subtracting one thing from
itself. Ok, that makes some sense, I suppose it's all the stuff about
negation of the negation that I find completely impenetrable."

Yes its usually called h and yes, "negation of the negation" is a bit 
mystifying. Except that the difference quotients (let me write it again:
[f(x+h)-f(x)]/h ) is interesting in that the numerator would go to zero 
except that you keep dividing by a smaller and smaller number. And the 
operation itself becomes undefined at the limit itself - which may be 
what Marx is referring to when he wants to replace it with a thorough 
going dialectical relation (leaving aside if that were possible).

The difference quotients are also wrong when f(x) is a constant, as you 
get 1, whereas we know the derivative of a constant is zero. But you could 
argue that a constant is not really a function of x. And if you plug in a 
real function like x^3 and do some algebra, you can take the limit without 
contradiction.