soviet_technopolitics.md

========== The origin of the philosophic schools of materialism and idealism is to be found in two basie questions: What is the world made of? How do people leam about the world? These questions are among’ the most important ones that philosophers and scientists ask. They have been posed by thinkers for at least twenty-five hundredyears, from the time of such pre-Socratie philosophers as Thales and Anaximenes. Materialisrr, and idealism were two of the schools of thought that developed as attempts to answer these questions. Materialists emphasized the existence of an extemal reality, defined as “matter,” as the ultimate substance of being and the source of human knowledge; idealists emphasized the mind as the organizing source of knowledge, and often found ultimate meaning in religious values. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Forced to rely upon that portion of the constantly developing knowledge accepted by science at any one point in time, materialists have frequently posed hypotheses that were later properly judged to be simplistic. Examples of such simplifications-materialists’ description of man as a machine in the eighteenth century, or their defense of spontaneous generation in the mid-nineteenth century-are often taken by readers of a later age as no more than amusing naivetés. But the oversimplicity of these explanations, now evident, should not cause us to forget that the accepted science of today, from which we look back upon these episodes, does not contradict the initial materialistic assumption upon which these exaggerations were constructed. It is this continuity of initial assumption that continues to sustain the materialist view. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The core of dialectical materialism consists of two parts: an assumption of the independent and sole existence of matterenergy, and an assumption of a continuing pro cess in nature in accordance with dialectical laws. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The possibility of unusual con troIs over intellectual life was heightened soon after the revolution by the elimination of aIl political parties other than that of the Boisheviks, later renamed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Party soon developed a structure paralleling the government’s on every level and controlling the population in almost every field of activity. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Important leaders often combine ideological and power factors in their decisions; the history of the popes of the Catholic church, of many crowned rulers of Europe, and of leaders of modem capitalist countries illustra tes this interplay of power and idea. In Stalin the ideological and power-oriented factors combined; moreover, the actual political power he possessed was truly extraordinary, and he used it with increasing arbitrariness. The traumatic break that occurred in the years 1927-29, the abrupt shock of an industrial, agricultural, and cultural revolution, will always be causally linked with Stalin. True, it was not only Stalin but almost aIl of the Soviet leaders who had declared the need to industrialize rapidly and to reform cultural institutions. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== As is often the case with underdeveloped nations that nonetheless possess a small highly educated stratum, Russia’s past scientific tradition had been excessively theoretical. The emphasis on industrial and agrieultural concerns in the thirties was a needed correction to this tradition. At its root, the high priority given to practice had a positive moral content, since the ultimate results of a growing economy were a higher standard of living, greater educational opportunities, and better social welfare. So long as the value of theoretical science was also recognized, a relative shift toward applied science was a helpful temporary stage. The new priority was carried to an extreme, however, and had results that were philistine and anti-intellectual. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Stalin ca11ed for a maximum effort by a11 Soviet workers, induding scientists, to achieve the nearly impossible-to make the Soviet Union a great industrial and military power in ten or fifteen years. An intrinsic part of this effort, Soviet nationalism, gradua11y gained strength in the thirties as the possibility of a military confrontation with Nazi Germany grew. During World War II, as a result of stress upon patriotism and heroism, the nationalist element in Soviet attitudes emerged a11 the more dearly. In science, this emphasis on national achievement had many effects. Into controversies over scientific interpretation it introduced an element, national pride, that was totally absent from the dialectical materialism derived from Marx, Engels, and Lenin. It resulted in daims for national priority in many fields of science and technology. Many of these daims have now been abandoned in the Soviet Union, where they are regarded as consequences of the “cult of the personality.” Others have been retained. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== But unless one remembers that there existed before the forties a category of Soviet scholars who took dialectical materialism seriously, it will be difficult to understand why, after the passing of the worst features of Stalinism, scientists reemerged in the Soviet Union who combined a dialectical materialist interpretation of nature with normal standards of scientific integrity. Immediately after World War II many intellectuals in the Soviet Union hoped for a relaxation of· the system of controls that had developed during the strenuous industrialization and military mobilizations. Instead, there followed the darkest period of state interference in artistic and scientific realms. This postwar tightening of ideological con troIs spread rather quickly from the fields of literature and art to philosophy, then finally to science itself Causal factors already mentioned include the prewar suspicion of bourgeois science, the extremely centralized Soviet political system, and the personal role of Stalin. But there was another condition that exacerbated the ideological tension: the cold war between the Soviet Union and certain Western nations, particularly the United States. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== When Lysenko’s views of biology were officially approved in August 1948-an event to be reviewed in some detail in my analysis of the genetics controversy-a shock wave ran through the entire Soviet scientific community. No longer could it be hoped that Party organs would distinguish between science and philosophical interpretations of science. Evidently Stalin had no intention of making such distinctions, and he was in control of the Party. It soon became clear that other scientific fields, such as physics and physiology, were also objects of ideological attack, and Soviet scientists were genuinely fearful that each field would pro duce its own particular Lysenko. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== thlS defense of science from the position of dialectical materialism was not merely a tactic or an intellectuai deceit; the leaders of this movement-whose names will be mentioned many times in this book-were sincere in their defense of materialism. As Soviet observers frequently say, “their dialectical materialism was internaL” Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The scientists of the immediate postWorld War II period began reading Marx and Engels on philosophical materialism in order better to answer their ideological critics. They developed arguments more incisive than those of their Stalinist opponents; they constructed defenses that exposed the fallacies of their official critics yet were in accord with philosophical materialism and-most important of all-?reserved the cores of their sciences. They were ev en willing to examIne the methodological principles and terminological frameworks of their sciences, revising them if necessary. As scientists they now had a stake of self-interest in the philosophy of science. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Sin ce the scientists were frequently people of genuine intellectual distinction and deep knowledge of their fields, and sin ce science does contain serious and legitimate problems of philosophical interpretation, it was only natural that the entrance of the scientists into the debates would result in discussions important in their own right. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== It is worth noticing that the worst threats to Soviet science in the late forties and early fifties did not come, as is often thougl’tt, from professionai philosophers, but from third-rate scientists who tried to win Stalin’s favor. These people inc1uded T. D. Lysenko in genetics, G. V. Chelintsev in chemistry, A. A. Maksimov and R. la. Shteinman in physics, and O. B. Lepeshinskaia in cytology.19 These persons were criticized by both scientists and philosophers whenever poli tic al conditions permitted. What was going on in the worst period of the ideological invasion of science was not primarily a struggle between philosophers and scientists. It was a struggle, crossing these academic lines on both sides, between genuine scholars on the one hand and ignorant careerists and ideological zealots on the other. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Soviet philosophy of science in the seventies and eighties was increasingly divided into two schools of thought, called in the Soviet Union “the epistemologists” and “the ontologists.” Although these philosophical terms give the controversy an academic sound, the underlying issue was highly political. The epistemologists were those philosophers who made a distinction between philosophical and scientific issues, and criticized the older generation of Soviet philosophers and scientists for confusing those two kinds of questions. To the epistemologists, the proper concems for philosophers of science were such questions as cognition, logic, methodology, and theory of knowledge. They believed it quite improper for philosophers of science to discuss su ch issues as whether various theories of the creation of the universe were reconcilable with Marxism, believing that by taking stands on such topics the philosophers not only got involved in judging scientific theories-something they thought should be left to the natural scientists-but also risked damaging Marxism by linking it to scientific theories later judged wrong by the scientists. The ontologists, on the other hand, continued to defend the view that dialectical materialism was the “most general science of nature and society” and therefore that dialecticallaws could be seen operating in the inorganic and organic matter studied by chemists, physicists, and biologists. To the ontologists it was not only proper, but essential, to find evidence of the validity of dialectical materialism in the research findings and theories of natural scientists. The ontologists were usually willing to admit that the issues studied by the epistemologists were also legitimate on es for Marxist philosophers, but their real interest lay in dialectics of nature. This dispute is currently a major one in Soviet philosophy. It is discussed in detail in subsequent chapters. While the controversy is discounted as inteIlectuaIly not interesting by sorne of the leading research philosophers, it is crucially important from a political standpoint. The main issue is therelationship between natural science and philosophy, one of the critical questions in Soviet intellectual life for more than half a century. The outcome is still not clear. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Contemporary Soviet dialectical materialism as a philosophy of science is an effort to explain the world by combining these principles: AlI that exists is real; this real world consists of matterenergy; and this matterenergy develops in accordance with universal regularities or laws. A professional philosopher would say, therefore, that dialectical materialism combines a realist epistemology, an ontology based on matterenergy, and a process philosophy stated in terms of dialectical laws. Dialectical materialism incorpora tes features of both absoluteness and relativity, of both an Aristotelian commitment to the immutable and independent and a Herac1itean belief in flux. To its defenders, this combination of opposite tendencies is a source of flexibility, strength, and truth; to its detractors, it is evidence of ambiguity, vagueness, and falseness. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Although the primary interests of Marx and Engels were always in economics, politics, and history, they both devoted a surprisingly large segment of their time to the scrutiny of scientific theory, and èooperated in publishing their views on science. Engels described their background in the sciences: Marx and l were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history…. But a knowledge of mathematics and natural science is essential to a conception of nature which is dialectical and at the same time materialist. Marx was weIl versed in mathematics, but we could only partially, intermittently and sporadically keep up with the natural sciences. For this reason, when l retired from business and transferred my home to London, thus enabling myself to give the necessary time to it, l went through as complete as possible a “moulting” as Liebig calls it, in mathematics and natural sciences, and spent the best part of eight years on it. 5 Engels was much more important in elaborating the Marxist philosophy of nature than was Marx. This commitment to the study of the natural sciences as weIl as the social sciences was, in Engels’ min d, a necessary consequence of the fact that man is, in the final analysis, a part of nature; the most general principles of nature must, therefore, be applicable to man. The search for these most general principles, based on knowledge of science itself, was a philosophie enterprise. Engels believed that by me ans of a knowledge of a philosophy that was materialistic, dialectical, and grounded in the sciences, both natural scientists and social scientists would be aided in their work. Those natural scientists who maintained that they worked without relying on philosophical principles were deluded; better to form consciously a philosophy of science, Engels thought, than to pretend to avoid one: Natural scientists may adopt whatever attitude they please, they will still be under the domination of philosophy. It is oruy a question whether they want ta be dominated by a bad, fashionable philosophy or by a form of theoretical thought which rests on acquaintance with the history of thought and its achievements. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Engels’ interest in the philosophy of science was so much more evident than Marx’s that many scholars have maintained that it was Engels, not Marx, who was responsible for the concept of dialectical materialism; and that in bringing the natural sciences into the Marxist system, Engels violated original Marxism. Among the scholars holding this view are those who emphasize the young Marx as a the orist interested, not in universal systems, but specifically in man and his sufferings, a person whose first achievement was to present an explanation of the role of the proletariat in the modem world through the concept of alienated labor. Examples of exponents of this view are George Lichtheim, who wrote that dialectical materialism is a “concept not present in the original Marxian version, and indeed essentially foreign to it, since for the early Marx the only nature relevant to the understanding of history is human nature,“7 and Z. A. Jordan, who maintained that dialectical materialism was a “conception essentially alien to the philosophy of Marx.“s Scholars such as Lichtheim and Jordan have correctly emphasized the humanitarian ethic of the young Marx and the anthropological nature of his analysis, but they have erred in saying or implying that the idealistic young Marx was interested only in human nature, not physieal nature. Marx’s doctoral dissertation, written in 1839-1841, several years before the now noted “Economie and Philosophieal Manuscripts,” was suffused with the realization that an understanding of man must begin with an understanding of nature. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Entitled “The Difference Between the Nature Philosophy of Democritus and the Nature Philosophy of Epieurus,” the dissertation was a long discussion of the physies of the ancients, of the deviations from straight line descent in the atomic theory of Epieurus, of the nature of elementary substances, and of elementary concepts such as time. Marx’s attention to physieal nature for an understanding of philosophy as a whole was entirely within the context of much of European thought; it was, further, an advantage rather than a disadvantage of his approach. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== one of the points of Marx’s dissertation was to show that Epicurus, although like Democritus a believer in atoms and the void, was not a strict determinist. The twenty-three-year-old Marx saw the atom as an abstract concept containing a Hegelian contradiction between essence and existence. lO Marx would later discard the philosophie idealism underlying this formulation, but there is no evidence that he ever abandoned his interest in physieal nature itself. As a young student of philosophy, Marx was affected by the metaphysieal aspirations of almost aIl great philosophical systems prior to his time and accepted the necessity of making certain epistemological and ontological assumptions. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The definition of “law” is a very controversial and difficult topic within the philosophy of science,15 and I shaH not pursue it beyond nating that Engels’ concept of dialectical laws was quite broad, embracing very different kinds of explanations. Indeed, he referred to the dialectical relationships not only as “laws,” but aiso as “tendencies,” “forms of motion,” “regularities,” and “principles.” Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== If one turns from Engels’ works on the philosophy of science to a consideration of his knowledge of science itself, one is likely to condude that although essentially a dilettante, he was a dilettante in the best sense. For a person of his· background he possessed a remarkable knowledge of the natural sciences. Engels’ .formaI education never went beyond the gymnasium, but he immersed himself in the study of science at certain periods of his life; he was able, for example, to write a long chapter on the electrolysis of chemical solutions, induding computations of energy transformations. 21 He was familiar with the research of Darwin, Haeckel, Liebig, LyeIl, Helmholtz, and many other prominent nineteenthcentury scientists. In retrospect his errors do not draw so much attention as his unlimited energy and audacity in approaching any subject and the high degree of understanding that he usuaIly achieved. Even if one is not willing to accept J. B. S. Haldarie’s observation that Engels was “probably the most widely educated man of his day,” he was, indeed, a man of impressive knowledge. 22 Elements of naivete and literalness are easily found, but they are less significant than his conviction that an approach to aIl of knowledge, and not just one portion, was necessary for a new understanding of man. lndeed, a reevaluation of Engels by historians of science is overdue. Engels’ “errors” in science, as seen from the vantage of today-his quaint descriptions of electricity, his discussions of cosmogony, his descriptions of the structure of the earth, and his assertion that mental habits can be inherited-were usually the “errors” of the science of Engels’ time. Engels was a materialist, and suffered from the tendency toward simplification that has plagued many materialists, but he was far more sophisticated than the popularizers of materialism of his day, who were usually scientists, such as Büchner and Moleschott. Those recent writers who have dismissed Engels’ writings on science have usually forgotten the context of nineteenthcentury materialism in which they were written. Against the background of this materialism Engels appears as a thinker with a genuine appreciation of complexity and an awareness of the dangers of enthusiastie reductionism. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The Philosophical Notebooks, whieh consist of abstracts, fragments, and marginal notes, were not published until the end of the twenties, and did not appear in English until 1961. Consequently, they have been neglected by Anglo-American students of Leninism. Yet to the extent that Lenin achieved sophistication in philosophy, that stage is revealed in the Philosophical Notebooks, where we have his comments on Hegel, Aristotle, Feuerbach, and other writers. As two editors of Marxist philosophy commented: His main concem was to reconstruct the Hegelian dialectics on a thoroughly materialist foundation Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== While Lenin was always the enemy of idealism, he opposed the offhand disrnissal of thistype of philosophy. As against vulgar materialism, he insisted that philosophical idealism has its sources in the very pro cess of cognition itself. His conclusion was that “intelligent idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism.” Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The material world is always in the pro cess of change, and all parts of it are inextrieably connected. AlI matter is in motion. Furthermore, Engels agreed with Descartes’ assertion that the quantity of motion in the world is constant. Both motion and matter are uncreatable, indestructible, and mutually dependent: “Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter.“27 It is important to note that Engels did not think of matter as a substratum, a materia prima. Matter is not something that can be identified or defined as a unique and most primitive substance that enters into an infinite number of combinations resulting in the diversity of nature. Rather, matter is an abstraction, a product of a material mind referring to the “totality of things.” Engels commented: Matter as such is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction. We leave out of account the qualitative difference of things in comprehending them as corporeallY existing things under the concept matter. Hence matter as such, as distinct from definite existing pieces of matter, is not anything sensuously existing. If natural science directs its efforts to seeking out uniforrn matter as such, to reducing qualitative differences to merely quantitative clifferences in combining identical smallest particles, it would be doing the same thing as demanding to see fruit as such instead of cherries, pears, apples, or the mammal as such instead of cats, dogs, sheep, etc., … According to Engels, abstractions such as matter are parts of thought and consciousness, the emergent products of a material brain. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== As Engels said, “The great basic question of aIl philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that of the relation of thinking and being.“30 Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== In describing how man cornes to know, one can emphasize the role of objective reality (realism); the role of matter (materialism); the role of the mind (idealism); or one can main tain that it is impossible to know how man comes to know (agnosticism). Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== for Engels the ontological principle that aIl that exists is matter came before aIl others. Therefore, for him a God who could be objectively real to a person in terms of epistemology but nonmaterial in terms of ontology was nonsense. The key to the Marxist philosophy of science is not its position on cognition, which contains considerable flexibility, as evidenced not only by Lenin’s writings in the Philosophical Notebooksbut even more so by subsequent developments (particularly in countries su ch as Yugoslavia in the 1960s), but its position on matter itself. What justification do we have for assuming that an ill-defined “matter” (later “matter” was equated with “energy”) alone exists? The more thoughtful Russian Marxists such as Plekhanov (and perhaps Lenin at moments) have veered toward the position that the principle of the sole existence of matter is a simplifying assumption necessary for subsequent scientific analysis. Other Marxists, such as Engels, the Lenin of Materialism and EmpirioCriticism, and many Soviet philosophers, have maintained that the principle of materialism is a fact presented by scientific investigation. But as a result of the sensitivity of the subject, the issue of the justification for the belief in materialism has not been thoroughly investigated by philosophers in the Soviet Union. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Contrary to idealism, which asserts that only our mind really exists, and that the material world, being, Nature, exists only in our mind, in our sensations, ideas and perceptions, the Marxist materialist philosophy holds that matter; Nature, being, is an objective reality existing outside and independent .of our mind; that matter is primary, since it is the source of sensation, ideas, mind, and that mind is secondary, derivative, since it is a reflection of matter, a reflection of being…. Engels’ last phrase, “mind … is a reflection of matter,” strikes to the heart of the mindmatter relationship. In Russian Marxist philosophy the description of this relationship has been a major issue. Engels’ term “reflection” was followed by Plekhanov’s “hieroglyphs,” Bogdanov’s “socially-organized experience,” and Lenin’s “copytheory.” Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The relationship between man’s knowledge and truth, according to Engels, is asymptotic (knowledge approaches truth ever more closely, but will never reach its goal).34 It is not correct to say that Engels believed in the attainability of absolute truth. Only at the unattainable point of infinity in the relationship between man’s knowledge and truth do es an intersection obtain. Nonetheless, Engels believed in a cumulative, almost linear, relationship of knowledge to truth. Lenin, on the contrary, saw many more temporary aberrations in the upward march, and used the image of a “spiral movement” to describe the process. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Plekhanov wrote: Our sensations are sorts of hieroglyphs informing us what is happening in reality. These hieroglypns are not similar to those events conveyed by them. But they can completely truthfu11y convey both the events themselves and-and this is important-also those relationships existing between them. The analysis presented by Plekhanov was an attempt to go beyond the common-sense realism implied by Engels’ writings to a recognition of the difference between objects-in-themselves and our sensations of them. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Thus, Plekhanov went from a “presentational” theory of perception to a “representational” one. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== It was important to Plekhanov that to each of man’s sensations in the pro cess of perceiving an object there be a materialistic correlate, and to each of the changes in a material object there be a sensational correlate. He said that one should imagine situation in whieh a cube is casting a shadow on the surface of a cylinder: This shadow is not at a11 sirnilar to the cube: The straight lines of the cube are broken; its fiat surfaces are bulged. Nevertheless for each change of the cube there will be a corresponding change of the shadow. We may assume that something similar occurs in the process of the formation of ideas}7 Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== In Analysis of Sensations Mach defended the view, already ancient among philosophers but now made particularly relevant to modem science, that the “world consists only of our sensations.“39 According to Mach, space and time were as much sensations as color or sound. 40 A physical object was merely a constant sensation (or “perception,” taken as a group of sensations). Mach followed Berkeley, then, in denying the dualism of sense perceptions and physical objects. But while Berkeley was a realist in the sense of assuming the reality of mental images and of an external God, Mach endeavored to introduce no elements into his system that were not scientifically verifiable. Therefore, he made no pronouncements about ultimate reality. According to his “principle of economy,” scientists should select the simplest means of arriving at results and should exdude all elements except empirical data. 41 Mach’s approach employed on the practical scientific level, where he intended it to be utilized, would mean that a scientist would cease worrying about the “real” or “actual” nature of matter and would merely accept his sense-perceptions, working as carefully and thoroughly as he could. A theory that found a pattern in the data would be judged entirely on the basis of its usefulness rather than its plausibility in terms of other existing considerations. There might even be more than one “correct” way of describing matter (a concept that would have influence later in discussions of quantum mechanics). Two explanations, working from opposite directions, could both be useful and could supplement each other, even if there seemed to be a contradiction between the two approaches. 42 Mach hadshifted the emphasis from matter reflecting in the mind to the mind organizing the perceptions of matter. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== In 1908 Lenin set himself the task of writing a major work on philosophy in order, as he put il, “to find out what was the stumbling block to these people who under the guise of Marxism are offering something incredibly muddled, confused, and reactionary.“46 The stumbling block, he found, was the influence of the latest developments of science upon philosophers, induding Marxist philosophers such as Bogdanov. By the early twentieth century many people believed that the foundations of materialism were being undermined by scientists themselvesY The relative confidence of scientists of Marx’s and Engels’ time in their knowledge of nature had been replaced by perplexity. The investigation of the radiations of radium and uranium, resulting in the identification of alpha rays (helium nudei) and beta rays (high-speed electrons), had discredited the concept of nondivisible atoms. Su ch scientists as L. Houllevigue remarded that “the atom dematerialises, matter disappears.“48 Henri Poincaré observed that physics was faced with “a debacle of principles.“49 The rise of philosophical schools such as empiriocriticism on the continent and phenomenalism in England was largely a response to these and other developments in science. In Lenin’s opinion, the philosophers following these trends were subordinating the search for truth about matter to attempts to provide convenient explanations of isolated perceptions. Idealism was again a threat, and Bishop Berkeley’s theories were rebom, in the name of science rather than God. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Lenin stressed two tenets of his interpretation of dialectical materialism: the copytheory of the mindmatter relationship and the principle that nature is infinite. It seems clear that Lenin regarded these principles as minimum requirements in order for dialectical materialism to have philosophical consistency or significance. He was not attempting to impose philosophy upon science, but to locate the bedrock of the materialist philosophy of science; he believed it impossible for science to contradict these principles. By the “copytheory” of matter Lenin meant that materialism is based on recognition of “objects-in-themselves” or “without the mind.” According to him, “ide as and sensations are copies or images of these objects.” Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The noted American biologist Hermann J. Muller recognized and approved the assumptive origin of Lenin’s materialism in an article that he wrote in 1934. To Muller, Lenin’s assumption could be defended, further, on the basis of inductive judgment: To those scientists who would protest that we should not make such prejudgements regarding scientific possibilities, on the basis of a prior “philosophical” assumption of materialism, but should rather foIlow in any direction in which empirical facts of the case seem to be leading, we may retort, with Lenin, that aIl the facts of daily life, as weIl as those of science, together form an overwhelming body of evidence for the materialistic point of view … and that therefore we are justifie d, in our further scientific work, in taking this principle as our foundation for our higher constructions. It too is ultimately empirical, in the better sense of the word, and it has the overwhelming advantage of being founded upon the evidence of the whole, rather than upon just sorne restricted portion of the latter. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Lenin believed that the expression “matter disappears” was an indication of philosophical immaturity by scientists and philosophers who did not understand that science will constantly discover new forms of matter and new principles of motion. Lenin believed that philosophies opposing science were based either on idealism or simple materialism, not dialectical materialism. He attempted to make dialectical materialism less vulnerable to criticism and less likely to retard science by drawing a line between it and simple materialism. Yet, if one judges by Materialism and EmpirioCriticism, one must conclude that this line was not drawn with any degree of clarity. Lenin did not even discuss in this work the laws of the dialectic, the principles that distinguish dialectical materialism from simple materialism. He merely maintained that dialectical materialism, a philosophical viewpoint, cannot be affected by the vacillations of scientific theory. Lenin labored to reforge the bond between the theory of dialectical materialism and the practice of science. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The are a where the distinction between idealism and materialism became nearly imperceptible was that of mental abstraction; in order to understand nature it is necessary for man not only to perceive matter but to construct a series of concepts that “embrace conditionally” eternally moving and developing nature. And these abstractions may include elements of fantasy: The approach of the (human) mind to a particular thing, the taking of a copy (= concept) of it is not a simple, immediate act, a dead mirroring, but one which is complex, split in two, zigzag like, which includes in it the possibility of the flight of fantasy from life; more than that: The possibility of the transformation (moreover, an unnoticeable transformation, of which man is unaware) of the abstract concept, idea, into a fantasy (in the final analysis = God). For even in the simplest generalization, in the most elementary general ide a (“table” in general), there is a certain bit of fantasy. (Vice versa, it would be stupid to deny the role of fantasy, even in the strictest science … ,)“56 The Lenin who is revealed in the above passage is not the one who is known to most students of Leninism; this Lenin recognizes the painful, halting, indirect path of knowledge, a path that inc!udes clear reversaIs. He grants the useful role of fantasy “even in the stricte st science.” He sees this fantasy as an inherent possibility in scientific thought and is aware that in the final analysis it can Iead to a beliefin God. In his statement that the possibility of fantasy is included in the approach of the human mind to nature, he, like Plekhanov before, seemed to recognize that the rejection of idealism is not a matter of scientific proof but philosophie choice. And Lenin continue d, of course, to choose materialism. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Quine wrote in his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”: As an empiricist l continue to think of the conceptuai scheme of science as a too}, uItimateIy, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part l do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and l consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities énter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for. working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The discussion of dialectical materilaism has so far centered on the latter half of the term: materialism. The other half, the dialectic, concems the characteristics of the development and movement of matter. There are two rather different views of the dialectic that Soviet thinkers have, at different moments, taken; one is the belief not only that matterenergy obeys laws of a very general type, but that these laws have been identified in the three laws of the dialectic to be discussed below. This view has numerous adherents and has also been officially expressed in Soviet textbooks on dialectical materialism. The other view is that matterenergy does indeed obey general laws, but that the three laws of the dialectic are provision al statements to be modified or replaced, if necessary, as science provides more evidence. This unofficial view has appeared in the Soviet Union from time to time, particularly among professional philosophers and younger scientists. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The dialectic as applied by Engels to the natural sciences was based on his ii1terpretation of Hegelian philosophy. This interpretation involved not only the well-known conversion of Hegelian philosophy from idealism to materialism, but also the reduction of Hegel’s thought to a simple scheme of dialectical laws and triads. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The very fact that Engels sought to simplify Hegel is not surprising-many men, including Goethe, have condemned the great Prussian philosopher for being unnecessarily complex-but Engels’ centering of attention upon the laws of the dialectic had the unfortunate effect of tying Marxism to three codified laws of nature rather than simply to the principle, that nature does conform to laws more general than those of any one science, laws that may, with varying degrees of success, be identified. To Engels the material world was an interconnected whole governed by certain general principles. The great march of science in the last several centuries ha d, as a regrettable by-product, so compartmentalized knowledge that the important general principles were being overlooked. As he observed, the scientific “method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and pro cesses in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constants, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life.“64 By “dialectics” Engels said that he meant the laws of aIl motion, in nature, history, and thought. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The very fact that Engels sought to simplify Hegel is not surprising-many men, including Goethe, have condemned the great Prussian philosopher for being unnecessarily complex-but Engels’ centering of attention upon the laws of the dialectic had the unfortunate effect of tying Marxism to three codified laws of nature rather than simply to the principle, that nature does conform to laws more general than those of any one science, laws that may, with varying degrees of success, be identified. To Engels the material world was an interconnected whole governed by certain general principles. The great march of science in the last several centuries ha d, as a regrettable by-product, so compartmentalized knowledge that the important general principles were being overlooked. As he observed, the scientific “method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and pro cesses in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constants, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life.“64 By “dialectics” Engels said that he meant the laws of aIl motion, in nature, history, and thought. He named three such laws: the Law of the Transformation of Quantity into Quality, the Law of the Mutual Interpenetration of Opposites, and the Law of the Negation of the Negation. These dialectical principles or laws were supposed to represent the most general patterns of matter in motion. Like Heraclitus, dialectical materialists believe that nothing in nature is totally static; the dialectical laws are efforts to describe the most general uniformities in the pro cesses of change that occur in nature. The concept of the evolution or development of nature is, therefore, basic to dialectical materialism. The dialectical laws are the principles by which complex substances and concepts evolve from simple ones. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== To Marx and Engels, Darwin’s theory of evolution was an important illustration of the principle of the transition of quantity into quality. This tenet as a part of the Hegelian dialectic preceded Darwin, of course, but Marx and Engels considered Darwinism a vindication of the dialectical process. In the course of natural selection, different species developed from common ancestors; this transition could be considered an example of accumulated quantitative changes resulting in a qualitative change, the latter change being marked by the moment when the diverging groups could no longer interbreed. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== In the interpretation of science, the principle of the transition of quantity into quality has been important in the Soviet Union as a warning against reductionism. Reductionism here means the belief that aIl complex phenomena can be explained in terrns of combinations of simple or elemental ones. A reductionist would main tain t::at if a scientist wishes to understand a complex pro cess (growth of crystals, stellar evolution, life, thought), he must build up from the most elemental level. Reductionism tends to emphasize physics at the expense of aIl other sciences. It is a view that was often supported by nineteenthcentury materialists and· today continues to have much strength among “hard” scientists around the world. Reductionism is highly criticized by Soviet dialectical materialists, who carefully distinguish themselves from earlier materialists. In the biological sciences· in particular, the quantity-quality relationship has been interpreted in the Soviet Union as foreclosing the possibility of explaining life processes-most of aIl, thought-in elementary physicochemical terrns. Soviet philosophers see the development of matter from the simplest nonliving forms up through life and eventually to human beings and their social organizations as a series of quantitative transitions involving correlative qualitative changes. Thus, there are “dialectical levels” of natural laws. 7o Social laws cannot be reduced to biological laws, and biological !aws cannot be reduced to physico-chernical laws. In dialectical materialism the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== The principle of the transition of quantity into quality distinguishes dialectical materialism from mechanistic materialism. A materialist, similar to Democritus, would say, for example, that the human brain is essentially the same as an animal’s brain but is organized in a more efficient manner. According to this line of thinking, then, the difference is merely quantitative. The Marxist materialist, however, would say that the human brain is distinctly different from that of an animal and that this difference is a qualitative change resulting from accumulated quantitative changes during the course of the evolution of man from lower primates. Therefore, human mental pro cesses cannot be reduced to those of other animaIs. lndeed, life pro cesses in general cannot be totally reduced to physical and chemical pro cesses if the latter are defined in contemporary terrns. This emphasis on the qualitative distinctiveness of complex entities from simple on es has led dialectical materialists in recent years to become interested-although cautiously-in such concepts as “integrative levels” and “organismic biology,” approaches widely discussed in Europe and America in the thirties and forties and displaying new vigor with the advent of cybernetics. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== In dialectical materialism the term “categories” is employed to refer to those basic concepts that are necessary in order to express the forms of interconnection of nature. In other words, while the laws of the dialectic just discussed are attempts to identify the most general uniforrnities of nature, the categories are those concepts that must bé employed in expressing these uniformities. Examples of categories given in the past in Soviet discussions of the dialectic have been concepts such as matter, motion, space, time, quantity, and quality. Nowhere does dialectical materialism reveal Hs affinities with traditional philosophy more clearly than in its emphasis on categories, although dialectical materialists have given the classical categories a new formation and meaning. The word “category” was first used as a part of a philosophical system by Aristotle. In his treatise Categories Aristotle divided aIl entities into the following ten classes: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, state, action, and passion. Objects or phenomena that belonged to different categories were considered to have nothing in common and, therefore, could not be compared. In his writings Aristotle frequently listed only some of the above ten categories, with no indication that others had been ornitted. Aristotle apparently considered the exact number of categories and the terrninology best suited for describing them open questions. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Since, according to Marxism, being determines consciousness and not consciousness being, the material world, as reflected in human consciousness, determines the very concepts by which people think-that is, the categories. Thus, “in order for the materialist dialectic to be a method of scientific cognition, to direct human thought in search of new results, its categories must always be located at a level with modern science, with its sum total of achievements and needs” (p. 120). Since man’s knowledge of the material world changes with time, 50 then will his definition of the categories. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Another aspect of dialectical materialism that has relevance for science is not so much an integral part of the intellectual structure of the system as it is a methodological principle; this aspect is the unity of theory and practice. During a considerable portion of Soviet history the unity of theory and practice meant for scientists that they should give their research a clear social purpose by tying it to the needs of Soviet society. The strength of this recommendation has varied greatly in different fields and at different times. The unity of theory and practice can be traced back to Marx’s opposition to speculative philosophy; he hoped to transcend philosophy by “actualizing” it. One of his best-known sentences referred to this effort to build a conceptual theory that would result in concrete achievements: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.“8S Engels believed that the unity of theory and practice was connected with the problem of cognition. The most telling evidence, he believed, against idealistic epistemologies was that man’s knowledo-e of nature ’” resulted in practical benefits; man’s theories of matter “worked” in the sense that they yielded products for his use. As Engels commented, “If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural pro cess by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and using it for our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end of the Kantian in comprehensible ‘thing-in-itself.’ “86 Thus, practice becomes the criterion of truth. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== In the 1970s Chudinov published a number of works that demonstrated his deep knowledge of philosophy of science in both the Soviet Union and Western countries. Perhaps his best work (he died in 1980) was The Nature of Scientific Truth, published in 1977, in which he tried to work out a sophisticated Marxist epistemology.88 In the book he discussed intelligently a whole array of Western authors, including O’Connor, Rescher, Popper, Kuhn, Lakéltos, Russell, Feyerabend, Bunge, Hempel, Carnap, Musgrave, Quine, Grünbaum, and Godel. . Chudinov described dialectical materialism as a further and supenor development of the classical conception, originally undertaken by Plato and Aristotle, in which “truth” is seen as correspondence between ide as and reality. But dialectical materialism differs from this traditional view, he continue d, by introducing such concepts as “relative truth,” and by emphasizing that the major criterion of truth is practice. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Looking back over the system of Soviet dialectical materialism, we see, on the most general level, that it represents a natural philosophy based on the following quite reasonable principles and opinions: The world is material, and is made up of what current science would describe as matterenergy. . The material world forms an interconnected whole. Man’s knowledge is derived from objectively existing reality, both natural and social; being deterrnines consciousness. The world is constantly changing, and, indeed, there are no truly static entities in the world. The changes in matter occur in accordance with certain overall regularities or laws. The laws of the development of matter exist on different levels corresponding to the different subject matters of the sciences, and therefore one should not expect in every case to be able to explain such complex entities as biological organisms in terrns of the most elementary physicochemical.laws. Matter is infinite in its properties, and therefore man’s knowledge will never be complete. The motion present in the world is explained by internaI factors, and therefore no external moyer is needed. Man’s knowledge grows with time, as is illustrated by his increasing success in applying it to practice, but this growth occurs through the accumulation of relative-not absolute-truths. The history of thought clearly shows that no one of the above principles or opinions is original to dialectical materialism, although the total is. Many of the above opinions date from the classical period and have been held by various thinkers over a period of more than two thousand years. Today many working scientists operate, implicitly or explicitly, on fue basis of assumptions similar to the above principles Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Materialism has never been a philosophy of the majority of philosophers at any point in the history of Western philosophy; its most ardent advocates have not usually been professional philosophers. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== In sum, dialectical rnaterialisrndespite what sorne observers regard as the unobjectionable character of its most géneral principles-is still a controversial world view, one that enjoys the explicit support of only a small minority of philosophers and scientists in the world. When one adds to these intellectual obstacles the political liability deriving from diaIectical materiaIism’s support by the bureaucracy of an authoritarian and repressive state, it is not surprising that dialectical materialism has won reIativeIy few supporters outside the Soviet Union. Yet it should benoticed that in intellectual terms diaIectical materialism is a legitimate and valu able point of view, far more interesting than non-Soviet scientists and philosophers have usually assumed. Soviet dialectical materialism as a philosophy of science draws upon both Russian sources and traditional European philosophy. The Soviet contribution has been primarily one of emphasis on the natural sciences as determining elements of philosophy. In the opinion of Soviet philosophers, dialectieal materialism both helps scientists in their research and, in turn, is ultimately affected by the results of that research. Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Exactly what meaning is carried in the statement “Philosophy influences science and is, in turn, influenced by it”? An answer that accurately weighs the mutual influence of philosophy and science is difficult, but it is clearly true that such a mutual influence exists. Furthermore, that interaction is an important element in the genesis and elaboration of scientific schemes. Questions may revolve around the degree of influence of philosophy upon science, or the mechanisms by whieh such influence is transmitted, but the existence of the interaction can not be questioned. Throughout the history of science, philosophy has significantly affected the development of scientific explanations of nature, and, in turn, science has influenced philosophy. Scientists inevitably go beyond empirieal data and proceed, . implicitly or explicitly, on the basis of one or another philosophy. Philosophers, on the other hand, have been forced by the evolution of science to revise basie concepts underlying their philosophie systems, such as the concepts of matter, space, time, and causality. Momentswhen philosophy has importantly influenced science can be found from the earliest points in the history of science, Introduction and Historical Overview

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========== Soviet science is a part of world science, and the type of interaction of philosophy and science that can be found in Soviet scholarly writings (those of intellectuals, not of Party activists) is not essentially different from the interaction of science and philosophy elsewhere. But since the philosophical tradition in the Soviet Union is different from the tradition in Western Europe and the United States, the results of that interaction have not been identical with the results of similar interactions in other geographical are as. Thus, the significance of dialectical materialism is not so much its insistence on this mutual interaction of philosophy and science-many of its critics would readily grant such a relation-but the way in which this interaction has actually occurred in the Soviet setting. Introduction and Historical Overview

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