Dialectics of Nature

An unfinished work by Engels studying the question of the dialectics of nature and the natural sciences. Written in 1873–1882, unpublished during Engels’ lifetime. In 1925, the first full manuscript was published in the Arkhiv K. Marksa i F. Engelsa, Moscow, Vol. 2. In 1932, the Shanghai Shenzhou Guoguang Society published a Chinese translation by Du Fenzhi.

After the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, the bourgeoisie not only suppressed the working class politically and plunged the European workers’ movement into a low ebb, but also tried to discredit and dismantle Marxism from the ideological-theoretical aspect. In terms of the conception of nature, they distorted the latest achievements of natural sciences and put forth a series of anti-scientific fallacies. Engels wrote this work in order to respond to and counter this attack of the bourgeoisie, to overcome the confusion in the natural sciences, to help the working class raise its ideological and theoretical level and to defend Marxism, as well as to perfect the Marxist theoretical system. Dialectics of Nature is composed of articles, notes, and fragments. Its main contents include:

First, it expounded on the natural-scientific foundation of the dialectical materialist conception of nature as well as its fundamental features. Engels held that the conception of nature developed with the development of natural sciences. The level of development of ancient natural sciences determined that its guiding idea was the ancient naïve dialectical conception of nature. In the first half of the 18th century, natural sciences were, as a whole, at the stage of collecting material, and in line with this, a metaphysical conception of nature was formed. However, from the second half of the 18th century onwards, great achievements were made in natural sciences, such as the the law of conservation and transformation of energy, the cell theory and the theory of evolution, which marked that the development of natural sciences entered the stage of systematizing and inducing from material, which has made it impossible for the metaphysical and idealist conception of nature at that time to be adapted to the actual development of natural science. In this way, it became an inevitable trend for the dialectical materialist conception of nature to replace the metaphysical and idealist conception of nature. It can be said that the then dialectical materialist conception of nature “was complete in its main features; all rigidity was dissolved, all fixity dissipated, all particularity that had been regarded as eternal became transient, the whole of nature shown as moving in eternal flux and cyclical course”.

Second, it expounded the relationship between philosophy and natural sciences and elaborated on the basic laws and categories of materialist dialectics. Engels held that, the history of the development of natural sciences revealed the necessity and scientificity of the replacement of the metaphysical and idealist conception of nature by the materialist-dialectical conception of nature, and showed that philosophy and natural sciences have an inner connection: The former provides the scientific method for the latter, and the latter provides the scientific basis for the former. In order to illustrate the basic views of the materialistic-dialectical conception of nature, Engels outlined the fundamental laws of dialectics, i.e., “the law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa, the law of the interpenetration of opposites, and the law of the negation of the negation”. He also classified dialectics from objective and subjective perspectives and inquired into some important categories of dialectics, such as necessity and chance, cause and effect from the viewpoint of the unity of opposites, and illustrated the relationship between the finite and the infinite.

Third, it systematically elaborated on the Marxist conception of science. In the work, Engels explained the objects of inquiry and classification of natural sciences, the relationship between various natural sciences, and made an explanation on the question of the driving forces of the development of natural sciences, so that the Marxist conception of science received a systematic elucidation. Regarding the object of inquiry of natural sciences, Engels held that the natural sciences study the moving matter in nature and its forms of movement. He held that matter and its forms of motion are manifold, especially, “motion in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking.” He went on to elaborate on dialectical materialist conception of matter and motion, the distinction and connection between the basic forms of motion of matter, and criticized the mechanistic viewpoint that reduced all forms of motion to mechanical motion. On this basis, he divided the natural sciences since modern times into four categories: mechanics, physics, chemistry and biology. As for the relationship of various natural sciences, Engels held that there is an inherent dialectical relationship among the natural sciences, and that the natural sciences contain and permeate each other. The emergence of cross-disciplines between two or more disciplines is a concentrated embodiment of this dialectical relationship. And the interaction between the various disciplines is the intrinsic driving force for the development of natural sciences.

Fourth, it revealed the origin and development of man and the relationship between man and nature. In the work, Engels clearly pointed out that labor is “the primary basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.” From this, he analyzed in detail the stages of development from ape to man, pointing out that the hand, which is capable of making tools, is both an organ of labor and a product of labor. Labor created man and also language in the intercourse of labor, thus contributing to the development of human consciousness and the ability to think abstractly. Moreover, in labor, men formed society. In this way, man and human society gradually differentiated themselves from nature. It can be said that a history of mankind is a history of the development of productive practices, i.e., labor. At the same time, Engels emphasized that people must handle the relationship between men and nature well. To change nature, man must first know and obey the laws of nature. But by knowing the laws of nature, there exists only the possibility of changing nature, and whether this possibility can be put into practice depends on how well one knows and applies the laws of society.

Dialectics of Nature, for the first time, systematically expounded the fundamental principles of Marxist conception of nature and science, enriched the contents of Marxist philosophy, opened up a new field for Marxist philosophical research, achieved the unity of Marxist conception of nature and history, laid the theoretical foundation for the study of the Marxist conception of nature, science, methodology, etc. and became a correct theory and method to guide the development of natural sciences at that time. Although many natural-scientific materials and individual principles mentioned in the Dialectics of Nature have become outdated or insufficient from the perspective of contemporary scientific development, this has not prevented this work from becoming one of the major works of Marxism and it still plays an important role in guiding current theoretical research in the natural sciences.