ABSTRACT
The key concept of dialectical critical realism, which necessitates its formation as a distinct, systematic structure of concepts, is that of absence. What this concept makes possible is the understanding and analysis of change. One of the initial motivations for basic critical realism was precisely to ground the possibility of change. It is important to differentiate absence and negativity at the level of the intransitive dimension from absence and negativity at the level of the transitive dimension; that is, to distinguish clearly negativity in the world from negativity in our understanding and description of the world. The Western philosophical tradition has been prepared to countenance transitive change, as of course it must do if it is to talk about our changing beliefs or knowledge or to situate the possibility that some claims to knowledge are false. Critical realism must under labour for a science that deals with changing subject matters.
