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Dialectical Materialism and Science SERES,, ED]TED BY PROFESSOR BEN'AMIN FARRINGTON, M.A. ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE &WNHARtrU@ DIATECTICAL MATERIALISM AND SG! ENGE By Maurice Cornforth MARXISM TODAY SERIES EDITED BY PROFESS'OR BENJAMIN FARRINGTON, M.A. I 949 LAWRENCE & WISHART LTD LONDON :',;_;lir;rll ; ii: ._. i,.; lj; , :, CONTENTS PAGE I. THE CRISIS OF BOURGEOIS SCIENCE Basic Conceptions 5 Successive Development of the Sciences - - 6 N O -['E Achievements of Analysis 7 Tnrs sooKl-rr is based on a rePort given to a conference of Two Kinds of Analysis - 8 British Marxist scientists in London in June 1949. The original The Tendency of Analysis to Become Metaphysical - l0 report has been amplified and corrected in the light of the Evolution - 12 discussion which there took place, and additional materiatr has Dialectical Materialism, a Scientific Generalisation 14 been added. What follows is to a great extent a collective efiort. The Revolutionary Character of Dialectical Materialism - 14 I am alone responsible for the forrn in which it here appears; Frustration of Science - i8 and, in particular, for any mistakes that may be found in it; Crisis of Ideas 19 but it could not possibly have been written without the help Two Trends in Science - 22 of a number of comrades and it represents the surnrnary of many discussions. II. MATERIALISM VERSUS IDEALISM Meunrcr ConNlonrrr Against Idealism and Mechanism -23 Londom, August 1949 Mechanical Materialism in the Fight Against klealisrn -25 Three Types of Idealism _29 The Doctrine of Limitation - 3l Positivism _32 The Materialist Theory of Knowledge -34 TII. DIALECTICS VERSUS METAPHYSICS Meohanism as a Form of Metaphysics . - 39 Deterministic and Statistical Regularities 4t Criticism of Mechanism 42 Dialectical Contradiction, Basic Concept of Materialist Dialectics 45 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Cqntradiction and Interaction - 45 ' Dialectical Contradiction Illustrated by the Basic Contradic- Printed in England at tion of Capitalism 47 Farleigh Press Ltd. The Discovery of Contradictions: Michurinist Biology 49 Beeohwood Rise, Watford Dialectics and Physics 54 (T.U. all departments) Levels of Organisation of Matter 56 Forms of Movement of Matter 58 Science in the Struggle for Socialism 6l FOREWORD DtAtECI|GAt. MATERTAUSM AilD SGtEl{CE Turs urrr,n EssAY, so masterly in its grasp of its subject so lucid and vigorous in expression, clears uP one of the major problems of our time. When we Marxists have fully assimilated it we shall be so much the more fit to carry the burden of I leadership which history must soon lay upon our shoulders. THE CRISIS OF BOURGEOIS SCIENCE No history of philosophy, no history of science, can be suc- Moonnx scrENCE is the creation of the bourgeoisie. It is one cessfully written independently of the history of society, for of the most typical products of bourgeois society. And it carries the basic categories of science are in the last analysis deter- the rnark of its bourgeois origin in its methods and in its ideas. is the means mined by the structure of society. In a class-divided society no It for understanding and controlling the processes of nature and society created under the conditions the ruling class has ever pushed its thought to the point which of development of capitalism. undermine own position. Social categories thus would its To say this is at once to imply a method of criticism of penetrate essential feature the natural sciences, explaining an of science. It is to say that the science of the past and present is their constitution and explaining also the causes of their distor- not pure science but the science of a class, and to be criticised tion and decay. as such. But it is not to deny the achievements of science. From this it also follows that the development of science, not the most intimate recesses of only in its applications but in BASIC CONCEPTIONS theory, is a political question. To speak like Aristotle: its TnB cnsar development of modern science took its origin in science is by nature a political matter. the sixteenth and seventeenth. centuries. At the foundatiou of This is a burning question of our day, one that is in itself this dev which h difficult to understand and where understanding is clouded by whole p essay combining passion. For this reason one welcomes an coveries urgency the serenity science. Short works topical with of or Harvey, all proceeded frorn this basis, which was expressed written in this mood have befote now exerted a powerful action philosophically in Bacon's first aphorism: t'Man, on events. One cannot suppress the hope that this booklet may as the minister and interpreter of nature, does and be found useful not only in our own country but beyond. understands as much as his observations on the order of nature --either_ with regard to things or the mind-permit him, and BrNlanarN FennrNcroN neither knows nor is capable of more.,,l 1 Francir Bacon, Notum Arganum, Bk. I, l. 5 their differentiation one from another as distinct disciplines The experimental method was not the creation of modern " ". t'Apart from rnathematics, astronomy, and mechanics, which science. On the contrary, it had been employed by the Greeks' But with modern science it was first used on a wide scale, were already in existence ", writes Engels, " physics becomes definitely separated from chemistry .). intensively developed, applied in all spheres of investigation as (Torricelli, Galileo Boyle put chemistry on a stable basis as a science. Harvey the fundamental method of scientific investigation-replacing did the sarne for physiology. Zoology and botany remain at mere obseryation and spe'culation about the causes of observed . collecting sciences, palaontology appeared the facts. first until on afterwards came And (c) there was rapidly built up a mechanistic conception scene-Cuvier-and shortly the discovery of the cell and the development organic chemistry. of nature, as a system of bodies eternally, or since the creation of Therewith of the world, going through the same cycle of movements comparative morphology and physiology became possible. Geology was founded at the end of the eighteenth ."1 according to fixed laws. century. This mechanistic conception reached its zenith in the New- In this process, which, as Engels says, must be " studied further detail tonian mechanics. The application of the bourgeois conceptions in ", the successes scored in one field of science of mechanism-and their power and fruitfulness-is likewise create the possibility for the establishment of the scientific investigation shown, for example, in Harvey's discovery, which overthrows of new fields. The whole process exhibits its own internal logic the old Galenic ideas by regarding the heart as essentially a of developmen! which unfolds on the basis of the purnp, which pumps the blood around the body.l development of tle productive forces of capitalist society, which at one and the same time present new problems for SUCCESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENCES ssience to tackle and provide tJle technical means for tackling Wnar, THEN, has been t-he character of the achievements of them. bourgeois science in the period of its rapid and flourishing This successive development and difierentiation of the development since the seventeenth century? These achievements sciences, which proceeds right to our own day, and will con- can be sumrnarised under three heads. tinue, has, however, its negative side. This is shown in the (a) There has been achieved what Engels called " the succes- tendenry to the separation of the sciences and to over- sive development of the separate branches of natural science "z specialisation, which continues to operate despite the es'tablish- --the evolution of the different sciences ment sciences, such as physical-chemistry, bio- """J;:T"T;"":I:.;.T1 chami which today results in ,, the unity of ideas were revived in scienc as a rnajor unsolved problem by bourgeois as formed in the liver philos along the same ohan- ACHIEVEMENTS OF ANALYSIS (&) IN er,r. the successive fields of science the major achieve- rnents have been achievements of analysis-the analysis of the phenornena of nature into their parts or elements. This essen- tially means the demonstration of how things work, in the sense of the demonstration of how the action of the parts{produces the action of the whole, ism of the circulation of tthe blood. 1 2 Engels, Di.alectics of Nature, p, 2t4. ibid, p. 215. 6 7 One of the greatest'achiwements of scientific analysis is the Thus the atomic theo,ry investigates the fundamental pro- atomic theory, which regards all bodies as made up of atoms. cesses taking place in and determining the course of physical On this basis it was demonstrated, for example, how chernical and chemical changes. The cell theory in biology shows how cornpounds are formed-as when atoms of oxygen and hydro- the growth of the organism is a process of the multiplication gen combine in tJre proportions of one atom of orygen to two and differentiation of cells, and investigates in the cell the basic of hydrogen to form water. Again, the basis of the solid, liquid, processes of metabolism. Again, Marx's Capitat affords an and gaseous states of matter was demonstrated: the differences example of the same kind of analysis in the sphere of econo- between these states depend on nothing else but a change in rnics. It was on the basis of an analysis which reyealed the the distances separating the atoms or molecules of the sub. fundamental, elementary economic processes of the circulation stance in question. Again, it was shown that heat is nothing of commodities in capitalist society that Marx was able to but the movement of the atoms, which increases as the demonstrate the laws of motion of capitalist society.
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