dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world c ...
– to nature.
History and contents
Engels wrote most of the manuscript between 1872 and 1882, which was a melange of German,
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
and English notations on the contemporary development of science and technology; however, it was not published within his lifetime. In later times,
Eduard Bernstein
Eduard Bernstein (; 6 January 1850 – 18 December 1932) was a German Social democracy, social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl ...
passed the manuscripts to
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...
, who thought the science confused (particularly the mathematics and
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...
) but the overall work worthy of a broader readership. After that in 1925, the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
published the manuscripts (a bilingual German/Russian edition).
The biologist J. B. S. Haldane wrote a preface for the work in 1939, "Hence it is often hard to follow if one does not know the history of the scientific practice of that time. The idea of what is now called the
conservation of energy
In physics and chemistry, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be ''conserved'' over time. This law, first proposed and tested by Émilie du Châtelet, means tha ...
was beginning to permeate physics, chemistry and biology, but it was still very incompletely realised, and still more incompletely applied. Words such as 'force', 'motion', and 'vis viva' were used where we should now speak of energy".
Some then controversial topics of Engels' day, pertaining to incomplete or faulty theories, are now settled, making some of Engels' essays dated. "Their interest lies not so much in their detailed criticism of theories, but in showing how Engels grappled with intellectual problems".
One "law" proposed in the ''Dialectics of Nature'' is the "law of the transformation of quantity into quality and ''vice versa''". Probably the most commonly cited example of this is the change of water from a liquid to a gas, by increasing its temperature (although Engels also describes other examples from chemistry). In contemporary science, this process is known as a
phase transition
In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states ...
. There has also been an effort to apply this mechanism to social phenomena, whereby increases in population result in changes in social structure.Carneiro, R.L. (2000). The transition from quantity to quality: A neglected causal mechanism in accounting for social evolution ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'', Vol. 97, No. 23, pp. 12926–12931. See for a discussion of the historical development of dialectics. See Lincoln, Charle The Dialectical Path of Law 2021 Rowman & Littlefield.
Dialectics and its study was derived from the philosopher and author of '' Science of Logic'', G. W. F. Hegel, who, in turn, had studied the Greek philosopher
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (; grc-gre, Ἡράκλειτος , "Glory of Hera"; ) was an ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. I ...
. Heraclitus taught that everything was constantly changing and that all things consisted of two opposite elements which changed into each other as night changes into day, light into darkness, life into death etc.
Engels's work develops from the comments he had made about science in '' Anti-Dühring''. It includes the famous " The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man", which has also been published separately as a pamphlet. Engels argues that the hand and brain grew together, an idea supported by later fossil discoveries (see Australopithecus afarensis#Bipedalism).
Most of the work is fragmentary and in the form of rough notes, as shown in this quotation from the section entitled "Biology":
See also
*
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science.
From the ancient wor ...
Progress Publishers
Progress Publishers was a Moscow-based Soviet publisher founded in 1931.
Publishing program
Progress Publishers published books in a variety of languages: Russian, English, and many other European and Asian languages. They issued many scientific ...