| This question <43|39> overall <45|53> Hans: <35|60>. |
| Question 31: Can you think of an example in which the quantity of something affects its quality, for instance some physical matter two litres of which are qualitatively different from one litre of it? |
| [46] Hans: The example I was thinking about is enriched Uranium, which is a radioactive yet stable metal in small quantities, but explodes when it is present in larger quantities. |
| Such critical mass considerations can probably also help explain the character of popular movements and uprisings, which are notoriously difficult to predict. Some people are always dissatisfied, but if the percentage of dissatisfied people gets beyond a critical point, then they reinforce each other and this can lead to powerful mass movements. |
| Marx predicted capitalism to approach such critical mass because a larger and larger fraction of the population is hurled into the working class. He said somewhere that the only weapon of the working class is their numbers. |
|
|
|||||