Landmarks of Scientific Socialism · Friedrich Engels
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
Fortunately we are informed that the nebular hypothesis of Kant "is far from showing a fully distinct condition of the world-medium or of explaining how matter arrived at a similar state." This is really very fortunate for Kant who is to be congratulated on having been able to trace the existing celestial bodies to the nebular condition, and who yet does not allow himself to dream of the self-contained unchanged condition of matter. It is to be remarked by the way that although the nebular condition of Kant is supposed to be the original vapor-form of matter, this is to be understood merely relatively. It is to be understood on the one hand as the original vapor form of the heavenly bodies, as they are at present, and on the other hand as the earliest form of matter to which we have been able to trace our way backwards. The fact that matter passed through an endless series of other forms before arriving at the nebular state is not excluded from this conception but is on the other hand rather included in it. Herr Duehring is at an advantage here. Whereas science comes to a halt at the existence of the nebulous state his quack science carries him back to that "Condition of the development of the world which cannot be called actually static in the present sense of the word but most emphatically cannot be called dynamic. The unity of matter and mechanical force which we call the world is, so to speak, a formula of pure logic, to signify the self-contained condition of matter as the point of departure of all enumerable stages of material progress."
We have obviously not yet got away from the original self-contained condition of matter. Here it is explained as consisting of mechanical force and matter, and this as a formula of pure logic, etc. As soon then as the unity of matter and mechanical force is at an end evolution proceeds. The formula of pure logic is nothing but a lame attempt to make the Hegelian categories "an Sich and fuer Sich" of use in a philosophy of realism. In "an Sich" according to Hegel the original unity of a thing consists; in "fuer Sich" begins the differentiation and movement of the concealed elements, the active antithesis. We shall therefore depict the original condition as one in which there is a unity of matter and mechanical force and the transition to movement as the separation and antithesis of these two elements. But we have not thereby established the proof of the real existence of the fantastic original condition but only this much that it exists according to the Hegelian category "an Sich" and just as fantastically disappears according to the Hegelian category "fuer Sich." Matter, says Duehring, implies all that is real, therefore there is no mechanical force outside of matter. Mechanical force is furthermore a condition of matter. In the original condition where no change occurred matter and its mechanical force were a unity. Afterwards when the change commenced there was a differentiation from matter. Thus we are obliged to be satisfied with these mystical phrases and with the assurance that the self contained original state was neither static nor dynamic, neither in a state of rest nor of motion. We are still without information with regard to the whereabouts of mechanical force at that period and how we arrived at a condition of motion from one of rest without a push from the outside, that is without God.
Before the time of Herr Duehring materialists were wont to speak of matter and motion. He reduces motion to mechanical force as its necessary original form and so renders incomprehensible the real connection between matter and motion which was also not evident to the earlier materialists. Yet the thing is easy enough. Matter has never existed without motion, neither can it. Motion in space, the mechanical motion of smaller particles to single worlds, the motion of molecules as in the case of heat, or as electric or magnetic currents, chemical analysis or synthesis, organic life, each single atom of the matter of the world--they all discover themselves in one or other of the forms of motion or in several of them together at any given moment. All quiescence, all rest, is only significant in relation to this or that given form of motion. A body for example may be upon the ground in mechanical quiescence, in mechanical rest. This does not prevent its participation in the movements of the earth and of the whole solar system, just as little does it prevent its smallest component parts from completing the movements conditioned by the temperature or its atoms from going through a chemical process. Matter without motion is just as unthinkable as motion without matter. Motion is just as uncreatable or indestructible as matter itself, the older philosophy of Descartes proclaimed precisely that the quantity of motion in the world has been fixed from the beginning. Motion cannot be generated therefore it can only be transferred. If motion is transferred from one body to another, one may as far as it is regarded as transferring itself, as active, consider it as the original cause of motion, but so far as it is transferred, as passive. This active motion we call force; the passive, expression of force. It is therefore just as clear as noon that force is just as great as its expression because the same motion fulfils itself in both.
A motionless condition of matter is therefore one of the hollowest and most absurd notions, a mere delirium. In order to arrive at it one is obliged to consider the relative absence of motion in the case of a body lying on the ground, as absolute rest, and then to transfer this idea to the entire universe. This is made easier by the reduction of motion in general to mere mechanical force. By the limitation of motion to mere mechanical force we can conceive of a force as at rest, as confined, as momentarily ineffective. If for example in the transference of motion which transference is very frequently a somewhat complicated process in the carrying out of which various intermediate steps are necessary, one may stay the actual transference at a chosen point and stop the process, as for example if one loads a gun and delays the moment when the charge shall be set at liberty by the pull of the trigger, through the firing of powder. Therefore one may conceive of matter as being loaded with force in the unprogressive static period, and this Herr Duehring appears to mean by his unity of matter and force if indeed he means anything at all. This notion is absurd, since it pictures as absolute for the entire universe a condition which is by nature only relative and to which therefore only a portion of matter can be subjected at one and the same time. Let us look at it from this point of view and we do not escape the difficulty of explaining first how the universe came to be loaded and in the second place, whose finger drew the trigger. We may revolve all we please but under the guidance of Herr Duehring we always come back over and over again to the finger of God.
From astronomy our realist philosopher passes on to mechanics and physics and complains that the mechanical theory of heat has brought us no further in the course of a generation than the point which Robert Mayer reached by his own efforts. Moreover the whole thing is very obscure. We must "always remember that with conditions of the movement of matter statical conditions are also given and that these last are not measured in mechanical work. If we have earlier typified nature as a great workwoman, and we still hold to the statement, we must now add that the static condition, the condition of rest, does not imply any mechanical labor. We are again without the bridge from the static to the dynamic and if latent heat, so called, is up to the present a stumbling block to the theory we can recognise a lack which may be denied in the cosmic process." This whole oracular utterance is again merely an outpouring of bad science which very clearly perceives that it has got itself into a place from which it cannot be saved by creating motion from a state of absolute freedom from motion, and is ashamed to call upon its only saviour, the Creator of heaven and earth. If in mechanics, heat included, there is no bridge to be found from statics to dynamics, from equipoise to motion, why should Herr Duehring be obliged to find a bridge from his condition of absence of motion to motion? Thus he would have the luck to escape from his dilemma.
In ordinary mechanics the bridge from statics to dynamics is--the push from the outside. If a stone of the weight of a hundred grammes be lifted ten meters high and then flung free so that it should remain hanging in a self-contained condition and in a state of rest, you would have to appeal to a public of sucking infants to declare that the existing condition of that body represents no mechanical labor and that its removal from its earlier condition has no measure in mechanical work. Any passerby would tell Herr Duehring that the stone did not come on the string by its own efforts and the first good hand book in mechanics would inform him that if he let the stone fall again, the latter in its fall does just as much mechanical work as is necessary to lift it to the height of ten meters. The very simple fact that the stone is suspended represents mechanical force in itself, since if it remain long enough, the string breaks, as soon as it, as a result of its chemical constitution, is no longer strong enough to hold the stone. All mechanical phenomena, may, we must inform Herr Duehring, be reduced to just such simple fundamental forms, and the engineer is still unborn who cannot discover the bridge from statics to dynamics as long as he has sufficient initial force at his disposal.
It is quite a hard nut and bitter pill for our metaphysician that motion should find its measure in its opposite rest. It is such a glaring contradiction, and every contradiction is an absurdity in the eyes of Herr Duehring. It is nevertheless true that the hanging stone by reason of its weight and its distance from the ground represents a means of mechanical movement sufficiently easily measured in different ways, as for example through gravity direct, through glancing on an incline or through the undulation of a wave--and it is just the same with a loaded gun. The expression of motion in terms of its opposite rest presents no difficulty at all to the dialectic philosophy. The whole contradiction in its eyes is merely relative, for absolute rest, complete equipose does not exist. The movement of the particles strives towards equipose, the movement of the mass in turn destroys the equipose, so that rest and equipose where they occur are the results of arrested motion, and it is evident that this motion is capable of being measured in respect of its results, of being expressed in itself and of being restored in some form or other external to itself. But Herr Duehring would never be satisfied with such a simple explanation of the matter. Like a good metaphysician he creates a yawning gulf between motion and equipose which does not really exist and then wonders if he can find no bridge across the self-created chasm. He might just as well bestride his metaphysical Rosinante and hunt the "Ding an Sich" of Kant since it is in the last analysis nothing else than this which stands behind the undiscoverable bridge.
But what about the mechanical theory of heat and of latent heat which is a "stumbling block" in the path of the theory? If one convert a pound of ice at freezing point under normal atmospheric pressure into a pound of water of the same temperature by means of heat there vanishes a quantity of heat which could heat the same pound of water from 0 deg. centigrade to 79 deg. centigrade, or seventy-nine pounds of water one degree centigrade. If one heat this pound of water to boiling point, that is, to one hundred degrees centigrade and change it into steam of the heat of one hundred degrees centigrade there vanishes up to the time when the last of the water is changed into steam a seven fold greater quantity of heat, capable of raising the temperature of 537.2 pounds of water one degree. This dissipated heat is called latent. It is transformed, by cooling the steam, into water again, and the water into ice, so the same mass of heat which was formerly latent, is again set free, that is, as heat capable of being felt and measured. This setting free of heat by the condensation of steam and the freezing of water is the reason that steam if it is cooled off at 100 deg. transforms itself little by little into water, and that a mass of water at freezing point is but slowly transformed into ice. These are the facts. The question is what becomes of the heat while it is latent?
The mechanical theory of heat according to which the heat of a body at a certain temperature is dependent upon the greater or less vibration of the smallest physical parts (molecules) a vibration which can, under certain conditions, be transformed into some other form of motion, shows the whole thing completely, that the latent heat has performed work, has been expended in work. By the melting of the ice the close connection of the separate particles is broken asunder and changed into a loose relationship; by the conversion of water into steam at boiling point a condition is entered where the separate molecules exercise no noticeable influence upon each other, and under the influence of heat fly from one another in all directions. It is now evident that the separate molecules of a body in the gaseous state are endowed with much greater energy than in the fluid state, and in the fluid state than in the solid. Latent heat is therefore not dissipated, it is merely transformed and has taken on the form of molecular elasticity.
As soon as conditions are at an end under which the molecules can exercise this relative freedom with regard to each other as soon namely as the temperature falls below one hundred degrees to zero, this elasticity becomes released and the molecules come together with the same force with which they formerly flew apart, but only to appear again as heat, as exactly the same quantity of heat as was latent before. This explanation is of course a hypothesis, as is the whole mechanical theory of heat, in so far as no one has yet seen a molecule, much less a molecule in motion. Like all recent theories, this hypothesis is full of flaws but it can at least offer an explanation which does not conflict with the uncreatability and indestructibility of motion and it is able to give an account of the whereabouts of the heat in the transformation. Latent heat is therefore by no means an obstacle in the way of the mechanical theory of heat. On the contrary this theory for the first time provides a rational explanation of the subject and an obstacle arises from the fact in particular that the physicists make use of the old and ineffective expression "latent heat" to signify the heat transformed into some other shape by molecular energy.
The static conditions of the solid, liquid and gaseous states therefore represent mechanical work in so far as mechanical work is a measure of heat. Thus the solid crust of the earth, like the water of the ocean, represents in its present form a certain quantity of heat set free which implies the same quantity of mechanical force. By the passing of the vaporous state which was the original form of the earth into the fluid state and later into a condition, for the most part solid, a certain quantity of molecular energy was set free in space, the difficulty of which Herr Duehring whispers does not therefore exist. We are frequently brought to a stop in our cosmic observations by lack of knowledge, but nowhere by insuperable theoretical difficulties. The bridge from statics to dynamics is therefore the push from the outside caused by the cooling or heating occasioned by other bodies which influence certain objects in equipoise. The further we explore Herr Duehring's philosophy, the more impossible appear all his attempts to explain rotation from absence of rotation, or to discover the bridge by which that which is purely static, self-contained, can without disturbance come to be the dynamic, in motion. We should here be glad to get rid of the whole self-contained condition business. Herr Duehring, however, goes to chemistry and gives us three permanent natural laws established by the philosophy of realism as follows, 1. The constant amount of matter in the universe. 2. The simple chemical elements, and 3. The mechanical forces are unchangeable.
Therefore the impossibility of creating or destroying matter, the simple forms of its existence as far as they exist, and motion, these old, well known facts, inadequately expressed, that is the only positive thing which Herr Duehring is in a position to offer us as a result of his real philosophy of the inorganic world. All these things we have long known. But what we have not known is that they are permanent laws and as such natural properties of the system of things. It is just the same thing over again as in the case of Kant. Herr Duehring takes some universally known expressions, pastes the Duehring label on them and calls them "fundamentally original results and views, system shaping thoughts, profound science." We have not long to hesitate on this account. Whatever deficiencies the most profound science and the best contrived social theories may have, for once Herr Duehring can say precisely "The quantity of gold in the universe must always remain the same and cannot be increased or diminished any more than matter in general. But unfortunately Herr Duehring does not tell us what we may buy with this gold." _The Organic World._
"From mechanics in rest and motion to the relation of sensation and thought there is a uniform progression of interruptions." With this assurance Herr Duehring spares himself from saying anything further about the origin of life, though one might reasonably expect that a thinker who has followed the development of the world from its self-contained condition, and who is so much at home with the other heavenly bodies would be here at home also. Besides this assurance is only half true in so far as it is not yet completed by means of the log line of Hegel, of which mention has been made already. In all its gradations the transition from one form of evolution to another remains a leap, a differentiating movement. So in the transition from the mechanics of the worlds to those of the smaller amounts of matter in each single world, just so also in that from the mechanics of the mass to that of the molecule--the motion which we examine particularly in physics, so-called, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, just in the same way also the transition from the physics of the molecule to the physics of the chemical atom is completed by a differentiating leap, and it is just the same with the transition from ordinary chemical action to the chemistry of albumen which we call life. Within the sphere of life the changes become less frequent and less remarkable. Therefore Hegel must again correct Herr Duehring.
The idea of purpose furnishes Herr Duehring with his conception of the transition to the organic world. This is again borrowed from Hegel, who in his "logic"--teachings of the concept--mingled with teachings of teleology or of purpose, passes over from chemistry to life. Whichever way we look we discover Herr Duehring to be in possession of Hegelian lore which he gives forth without any embarrassment as his own fundamental philosophy. It would be too long a task to find out here just how far the application of the ideas of purpose is correctly stated and applied to the organic world. The application of the Hegelian "inner purpose" at all events is evident, that is, of a purpose which is imported into nature not through a consciously acting third party, like the wisdom of Providence, but which is inherent in matter itself, which among people who are not well versed in philosophy proceeds to the unthinking supposition of a conscious and all-wise agent; the same Herr Duehring who breaks out into unmeasured moral indignation at the least tendency towards spiritism on the part of other people, tells us that "sex sensations are certainly mainly directed towards the gratification which is bound up in their exercise." He tells us moreover that "poor Nature must always hold the objective world in order" and it has besides to perform acts which require more subtlety from Nature than we usually attribute to her. But nature knows not only why she does this and that. She has not only her housemaid's duties to perform, she has not only subtlety, which is a very pretty accomplishment, in subjective conscious thought, she has also a will, for "we must regard the additional natural desires which occur, such as feeding and propagation, not as directly but as indirectly willed." We now arrive at a consciously thinking and acting nature, and we therefore stand right at the bridge, not indeed between the static and dynamic but between pantheism and deism, or perhaps Herr Duehring is pleased to indulge himself in a little "natural-philosophical half-poetry."
Impossible. All that the realistic philosophy has to say on organic nature is limited to a war against this natural philosophical half-poesy against "Charlatanism with its wanton superficialities and pseudo-scientific mysticism, against the poetic features of Darwinism." Darwin comes in for a share of blame chiefly because he transferred the Malthusian theory of population from political economy to natural science, because he is entangled by his notions of breeding, so that his work is a sort of unscientific half-poetic attack against design in creation, and that the whole of Darwinism, after what he has borrowed from Lamark has been deducted, is a piece of brutality aimed against humanity. Darwin had brought home with him as the result of his scientific journeys the conclusion that species of plants and animals are not fixed but are subject to variations. In order to pursue this idea he entered upon experiments in the breeding of plants and animals. Just for this reason England has become a classic land. The scientists of other countries, Germany, for example, have nothing to offer comparable with England in this respect. Moreover, most of the conclusions belong to the last century so that the establishment of the facts presented few difficulties. Darwin found that this artificial breeding produced differences in the species of plants and animals greater than occur among those which are universally recognised as belonging to different species. Therefore it was, up to a certain point, proved that species can change and furthermore there was established the possibility of a common ancestry for organisms which partake of the characteristics of different species.
Darwin now examined the question whether there were not in nature causes--which without the conscious intention of the breeder--might in the course of time, by means of heredity, produce changes in the living animal analogous to those produced by scientific breeding. These causes he found in the disproportion between the enormous number of germs made by nature and the small number of beings which actually come to maturity. But as the germ struggles for its own development there is of necessity a consequent struggle for existence, which not only shows itself directly in the wear and tear of the body, but also as a struggle for space and light, as in the case of plants. And it is evident that in this fight those individuals have the best prospect of coming to maturity and reproducing themselves which possess certain qualities, perhaps insignificant, but advantageous in their fight for existence. There is a tendency towards the inheritance of these individual properties, and if they occur in several individuals of the same species towards development in the direction once taken, by virtue of the accumulated heredity, while the individuals which are not possessed of these qualities succumb more easily and little by little disappear in the struggle for existence. Thus a species naturally changes by the survival of the fittest.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.