314 MARXISM TODAY, OCTOBER, 1977

Debate on Dialectics:

The Dialectics of Nature

This is a contribution of an applied scientist to this distinction is not hard and fast; the study of
a debate between philosophers on the dialectics of the moon, Mars, and Venus is moving from
nature. It is a reply to Richard Gunn's paper in observatory to laboratory.
February's Marxism Today. Reading that paper I
find myself a child in philosophy, but perhaps a Dialectics
child is needed to cry out: "The Emperor is Dialectics comprises essentially the general laws
naked." of change that are all that is common to things
that have in common only that they change. The
Nature and Man affirmation of the dialectics of nature is the
It is not clear whether or not Gunn agrees that affirmative answer not to Gunn's question "Is
"the world is in a continuous dynamic flux", nature dialectical?" but to the question "are the
whether the parenthesis "Heraclitean" is intended laws of change, which were first enunciated for
to be derogatory or which philosophical pejora- the evolution of concepts and the developments of
tive is incurred by Engels for maintaining that human history, particular cases of general laws
"this is borne out by modern natural science". For valid for all changes, motion and developments
a materialist "nature" must mean matter in irrespective of the extent of man's intervention?"
motion, or rather, in view of Einstein's equation Gunn avoids both the unequivocal negative reply
e = mc 2 (interchangeability of mass and energy), and the positive affirmation of an alternative
matter-motion. While I would agree with Gunn proposition. This is the classical stand-point of
that concepts such as "the conflict of man with agnosticism.
nature" are poetic or romantic, throughout his Gunn devotes three of his 16 columns to what
paper there runs the concept of an opposition of he calls one of the most controversial questions in
man to nature. Man in all his activities and social Marxian scholarship, but which is artificial and
organisations is part of, and cannot stand in irrelevant. It is artificial because it is created by
opposition to or be a detached or external observer those who want to discredit Engels, but still to be
of nature. considered Marxists and are therefore forced to
Interaction there certainly is; but it is between postulate disagreement between Engels and Marx.
man and the rest of nature just as the different Thus, against one positive statement of accord is
parts of nature interact with each other. As for set a list of conjectures headed by the agnostic
'technical mastery" it is at most incomplete and argument that there is no evidence of disagree-
extends over only a part of external nature. ment but it cannot be proved that there was none.
Successful moon landings do not preclude the The question is irrelevant because it is propositions
possibility of "unforeseen accidents" in the future; and not their proponents that are important.
organisms inimical to man evolve new resistant
strains. Moreover, in the subdivisions of nature Semantics and Science
and society there are no hard and fast lines (cf. Several of Gunn's arguments are in essence
Dialectics of Nature, p. 212); there are only semantic. That is that the use of a word is confined
differences in the degree to which mans' con- to a certain meaning or connotation as, for
scious or unconscious activities participate, with a example, in his passages on 'negation' and 'con-
graduation from almost nil (cosmology) to almost tradiction', but his arguments are semantic abso-
100 per cent (human society). lutism. Scientists have to use the words of every-
Even in the natural sciences there is a distinc- day currency, but are never constrained by their
tion between the observatory and the laboratory, etymological derivations. Our ever-expanding com-
between observing light from a distant star which prehension of the things and processes of nature
set out on its journey before the Earth existed and entails a continuous enlargement of the scope and
the controlled purposive experiment. And even enrichment of the content of the concepts
MARXISM TODAY, OCTOBER, 1977 315

embodied in the words. Thus, the atom, from analysing it into space and time. Spatial relation-
Democritus to Dalton was a concept, with little ships have a temporal content (e.g. the Fitzgerald
more content than the indivisibility implied by the contraction, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle,
etymology of the word. distances measured in light-years).
Today, atoms can be seen, counted, weighed
and measured, and are no longer purely con- Reflectionism
ceptual. These modern developments began with I do not like Gunn's terminology but will use it
the abolition, i.e. the negation, of the indivisibility in order to concentrate on the main issue. He is
of atoms, not conceptually, but first by observing opposed to reflectionism according to which
them split spontaneously and then by splitting "Concepts and perception are reflections, copies,
then using man-made devices. But we still call or mirror images of the external world", but
them atoms. agrees that "a connection exists". To say that a
Again, since the time when the concept of cart and a horse are connected is to be neutral as
number first arose out of counting, there has been to which comes first.
a series of developments in each of which mathe- The historic fundamental overriding issue of
matical operations previously considered to be materialism versus idealism is the question of
illicit became legitimised. The whole history of primacy in the relationship between perception or
these developments is summarised in one remark- concept and the material (i.e. 'external') world.
able equation, Once new scientific Words such as 'reflection' or 'image', whatever
facts or practices achieve general currency, new semantic objection may be raised, represent an
meanings or extensions of meanings of words are unequivocally materialist stand-point. With 'anti-
accepted without dissent because scientists recog- reflectionism' we come once again to agnosticism.
nise the futility of semantic arguments.
Transformation of Quantity into Quality
'Historicity' and Time Gunn correctly requires the law to be testable
It was the section on historicity of nature in and proceeds to test not the law but its converse
particular that prompted the last sentence in my and not in any real situation but in a hypothetical
opening remarks. Here Gunn sallies forth bravely one of his own creation, an X. Even accepting the
to demolish Engels in new clothes tailored by converse formulation one has to say "produce an
Kojeve. The statement "Nature has its history in X". It is hard to envisage a physical situation in
time" would appear to be the truism that the which a quantifiable parameter can increase in-
world was not always in the past, and will not definitely without a critical condition (dialectical
always be in the future, the same as it is today, leap) occurring.
and is the denial, as Engels puts it, of the "absolute The whole trend of modern science runs counter
immutability of Nature" (Dialectics of Nature, to the discovery of Xs; on the contrary, limiting
p. 24). values have been established for what might have
But Gunn deems it unacceptable to a materialist been previously considered to be Xs, e.g. the upper
on the authority of Kojeve's propositions about bound to velocity set by the speed of light. In any
time. These are that "as opposed to biological or case an X or a number of Xs could only establish
cosmic time there is historical time, characterised a domain or domains of non-applicability leaving
by the primacy of the Future, with the specific a wide and extensive domain where the law does
structure Future -> Past-> Present, i.e. structured apply, such as will justify the description general,
in terms of the teleological purposive character of confirming, incidentally, Engels's views on "eternal
human practice. In nature without mag there truths" (cf. Anti-Duhring, p. 100).
would be not time but only space of four That scientists, often "Monsieur Jourdain's", of
dimensions." dialectics, as observed by Engels (Dialectics of
In so far as anything intelligible can be dis- Nature, p. 68), accept this as a law of nature is
cerned in all this, it appears to be wrapping in borne out by the following quotation from a text-
obscurity what was stated with simple lucidity by book on the strength of materials by a lecturer at
Karl Pearson and quoted in Materialism and the Royal Naval College: "We must recognise
Empirio-Criticism (p. 234) by Lenin, who charac- that we have here another instance of that univer-
terised it as "idealism pure and simple". Time, not sal quality of the world whereby a continuous
divisible into species and structureless, is the con- quantitative change results in a sudden qualitative
stituent which is common to all motions, changes change." (Strength of Materials (p. 290), by John
and developments and appears in their mathe- Case, Edward Arnold, 3rd ed., 1938.)
matical models as the universal independent Still we have yet to satisfy Gunn's requirement
variable. Many misconceptions arise from proposi- that "the conditions under which the law comes
tions which synthesise motion out of instead of into operation must be specified". Yes, but not in
316 MARXISM TODAY, OCTOBER, 1977

some abstract, formalistic manner, but in relation do not in fact advance the thesis of the dialectics
to real situations. That is to say, each individual of nature.
application has its own mechanism whereby the In order, therefore, to do so I give two
transformation is effected. Thus the boiling point examples. The first is the phenomenon of catalysis
of water and the breaking stress of a particular in an inorganic chemical reaction. (Unfortunately
grade of steel are well defined, but no one for Gunn's philosophical categories, chemists call
imagines that they have anything in common the 'happenings' which are their concern 'actions'
other than being examples of the dialectical leap. and 'reactions'.) Many reactions cannot proceed
Let us now see how Engels actually formulated without the presence of a substance called the
the law. In the Dialectics of Nature (p. 63) he catalyst which nevertheless remains unchanged at
writes "in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for the end of the process. But the catalyst is first
each individual case, qualitative changes can only broken up into its constituent parts (ions), i.e. it
occur by quantitative addition, or quantitative is negated. The ions then enter into a series of
subtraction of matter or motion (so-called reactions with those of the primary substances. At
energy)". the end, the primary substances having been trans-
The dialectical leap is but one manifestation of formed, the ions of the catalyst re-emerge and
this law; I will end this paragraph by asking what recombine (the negation of the negation).
could be more evocative of the word 'qualitative' The second example is the crystallisation of an
than colour, musical pitch and timbre? Who is amorphous solid which is first dissolved or fused,
unaware of the relationship, in precise numerical i.e. its solidity is negated; the liquid is then
terms, of colour and pitch to wave frequency and resolidified, the negation is negated, and the sub-
timbre to number and intensity of harmonics? stance emerges in a higher, i.e. crystalline, form.
That precisely determined conditions are neces-
Negation of the Negation sary is attested to by the rarity of diamonds amidst
The 'objection' to this law, discussed by Engels an abundance of carbon.
in Anti-Duhring is naturally deemed by Gunn to
be "very cogent" for it is, as before, a substitution Interpenetration of Opposites
of the converse for the law. Even more absurd is Here Gunn provides me with no targets, except
Gunn's implication that Engels in his reply to the perhaps his brief reference to the term 'contradic-
objection discusses the application of the law to a tion', which has already been considered. But a
process of nature. It is obvious that throughout positive affirmation needs vindication of all the
this passage he is dealing with human actions as, three main laws. I call to mind another Monsieur
in Anti-Duhring, he had every right to do. The Jourdain of Dialectics, a Professor of Civil
passage is written in the first person, active voice. Engineering who used to refer to the 'Natural
In the penultimate paragraph (p. 159) he calls the Law of Cussedness'. By this he meant, and illus-
negation of negation which is a simple doing and trated with several examples, that whenever forces
undoing a "childish pastime". or effects tending to change a system come into
When he does refer to nature he reverts to the operation, forces or effects opposing that change
third person and writes: "Each class of things are automatically engendered. Despite the animism
therefore has its appropriate form of being of his terminology, he was affirming the operation
negated in such a way that it gives rise to a of the law of interpenetration of opposites in
development." However, it would be as well to natural science.
dispose of this 'objection', invalid though it is, by The most familiar example is that of mechanical
considering events in which even Gunn will not be frictional resistance to motion. If a gradually
able to detect teleological or animistic nuances. If increasing tractive force is applied to a body it will
solidification and liquefaction are considered to not move at first because an equal frictional force
negate each other, then the freezing and sub- in the opposite direction is set up. However, at a
sequent thawing of a pond will provide an certain stage a dialectic leap occurs, the frictional
example. But what we have here is a pair of force cannot exceed a certain critical value, and
natural processes in each of which, although they motion ensues which depends on both the tractive
cancel one another, the laws of dialectics operate. and the frictional forces. Yet many people over-
Engels's example from mathematics is indeed look the fact which is most significant for the
inept and arbitrary: valid illustrations can be dialectics of nature: the contradiction that the
found particularly where one would expect most friction that opposes the motion is at the same
to find them, i.e. in the mathematics of change, time a necessary condition for the motion to
the differential and integral calculus. But mathe- occur, as anyone whose car has skidded or who
matics is not nature, and all the most beautiful has tried to drive off on soft ground after heavy
examples enunciated in the most exemplary way rain can testify.
MARXISM TODAY, OCTOBER, 1977 317

Summary
1
The case against Engels and later Marxists, of References to Engels and Lenin are taken from
whom the most notable is Lenin, is agnosticism in editions given below, which are different from those
new clothes. The fabric out of which these new used by Gunn. Anti-Duhring: Marxist-Leninist
clothes have been woven is a mixture of semantic Library, Vol. I, 1942, Lawrence and Wishart;
Dialectics of Nature: Progress Publishers, Moscow,
rigidity, substitution of converse for proposition, 2nd Edition, 1954; Materialism and Empirio-criticism:
false targets, mystical nonsense, and non-sequiturs. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. XI, 1943, Lawrence and
The wearer of clothes made from such fabric, like Wishart.
the Emperor, is naked. 1