The *ordinary assumption* is that being is the absolutely other of nothing, and that there is nothing as clear as this absolute distinction; indeed, nothing seems easier than being able to state it. But it is just as easy to convince oneself that this is impossible, that the distinction is *unsayable*. *Let those who insist on the distinction of being and nothing, let them just try to state in what the distinction consists*. If being and nothing had any determinateness differentiating them, then, as we said, they would be determinate being and determinate nothing, not the pure being and the pure nothing which they still are at this point. Their distinction is therefore completely empty, each is as indeterminate as the other; the distinction depends, therefore, not on them but on a third element, on *intention*. But intention is a form of subjectivity, and subjectivity does not belong to the present order of exposition. The third element in which being and nothing have their subsistence must however also be present here; and it is present indeed, it is *becoming*. In becoming, they are present as distinct; becoming only occurs to the extent that they are distinguished. This third is an other than they – they subsist only in an other, which is equivalent to saying that they do not subsist on their own. Becoming equally is the subsistence of being and of non-being; or their subsistence is only their being in a *one*; precisely this, their subsistence in a *one*, is that which equally sublates their distinction.
The one thing needed to *achieve scientific progress* – and it is essential to make an effort at gaining this quite *simple* insight into it – is the recognition of the logical principle that negation is equally positive, or that what is self-contradictory does not resolve itself into a nullity, into abstract nothingness, but essentially only into the negation of its *particular* content; or that such a negation is not just negation, but is *the negation of the determined fact* which is resolved, and is therefore determinate negation; that in the result there is therefore contained in essence that from which the result derives – a tautology indeed, since the result would otherwise be something immediate and not a result. Because the result, the negation, is a *determinate* negation, it has a *content*. It is a new concept but one higher and richer than the preceding – richer because it negates or opposes the preceding and therefore contains it, and it contains even more than that, for it is the unity of itself and its opposite. – It is above all in this way that the system of concepts is to be to erected – and it has to come to completion in an unstoppable and pure progression that admits of nothing extraneous.
G. W. F. Hegel 1816 Science of Logic
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i believe: determinate negation = entropy , content = set of instances
This restriction to the simple allows free play to the arbitrariness of thought which will not itself remain simple but brings in its own reflections on the subject. Having good right to occupy itself at first *only* with the principle and therefore not to let itself be involved in *anything else*, this industrious thoroughness in fact does the very opposite, for it *does* bring in the “else,” that is, other categories besides just the principle, extra presuppositions and prejudices. Such presuppositions as that infinity is different from finitude, content something else than form, the inner something else than the outer, likewise that mediation is not immediacy (as if anyone did not know these things), are didactically presented, narrated and affirmed, rather than demonstrated. There is something stupid – I have no other word for it – about this didactic mannerism; at a deeper level, there is the illegitimacy of simply presupposing and straight away accepting such propositions; still more, there is the failure to recognize that the requirement and the business of logical thinking is to investigate precisely this, whether apart from infinity a finite would be by itself something true; likewise, whether such an abstracted infinity, or whether a content without form or a form without content, an inner by itself without further externalization, an externality without inwardness, whether any of this would be *something true* or *something actual*. – But this culture and discipline of thought by which the latter acquires plasticity and overcomes the impatience of incidental reflection is procured solely by pressing onward, by study, and by carrying out to its conclusion the entire development.
