On rupture, closure and dialectic
pp. 165-168
in: Gary Browning (ed), Hegel's phenomenology of spirit, Berlin, Springer, 1997Abstract
It is said: There are no leaps in nature: and ordinary thinking, when it has to grasp a coming-to-be or a ceasing-to-be, fancies it has done so by representing it as a gradual emergence or disappearance. But we have seen that the alterations of being are in general not only the transition of one magnitude into another, but a transition from quality into quantity and vice versa, a becoming-other which is an interruption (Abbrechen) of gradualness and the production of something qualitatively different from the reality. Water in cooling does not become hard little by little, gradually reaching the consistency of ice after having passed through the consistency of paste, but is hard all at once. It can remain quite fluid even at freezing point if it is standing undisturbed, and then a slight shock will bring it into the solid state.1