What Is Truth?

Truth, error and faith. Any idea, no matter how far-fetched, contains some objective content. Then are mermaids, witches and devils images of truth? The metaphysically-minded materialists, who interpret reflection one-sidedly, deny that there is any reflection of reality in error. Religious conscious ness, for example, is regarded as completely void of any objective content.

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Matter as the Substance of Everything That Exists

The general concept of matter. The first thing that strikes the imagination when a person observes the world around him is the amazing variety of objects, processes, qualities and relationships. We are surrounded by forests, mountains, rivers, seas. We observe stars and planets, we admire the beauties of the Aurora Borealis, the flight of comets. There is no end to the diversity of this world, and to save themselves from drowning in this ocean of diversity people have from time immemorial sought something uniform.

In observing the phenomena of growth and decay, integration and disintegration, the ancient thinkers noticed that certain properties and states survived all transformations. They called this constantly surviving basis of things the primordium. This was the first attempt to achieve philosophical monism. Some philosophers believed that all things consisted of liquid matter (water), others thought it was fire, still others, water, fire, earth and air. This natural view of the origin of the diversity of the world was the starting-point for the scientific explanation of many phenomena of nature and society. The idea of the atomic structure of matter arose in 500 B.C.

At the end of the 19th century the atomistic conception of the structure of matter surprised scientists by reaching beyond the boundaries of its mechanistic interpretation. The atom turned out to be divisible and made up of electrically charged particles. In the atom scientists discovered a whole world of nuclei, electrons, and electromagnetic fields. This marked a huge step forward in the study of matter. Physicists concluded that "matter, of which we and all things around us are made, is not solid and indestructible, but unstable and explosive. Quite literally, we are sitting on a powder keg. To be sure, this keg has rather strong walls, and we required a few thousand years to drill a hole in it. But today we have done it, and we may at any moment blow ourselves sky-high."

The discovery of the electron was followed by other discoveries, one of the most crucial being the idea of the electrical nature of matter. The age of electricity had dawned. Maxwell's theory of electro-magnetism developed the conception of the physical field.

While applied science continued its triumphant march, philosophy and natural science sought further clues to the structure of matter.

Taken together, these new discoveries were dialectical in character. The revolution in natural science called for a radical review of former theories and scientific facts, particularly the connection between matter, motion, space and time. The scientific picture of the world that gradually came into focus showed that it was change, transition, transformation and development that required explanation. But scientific thinking was still in bondage to mechanistic tradition. Scientists still tended to think that the particles of the atom, if only their motion could be observed in detail, must obey the same laws of mechanics as the planets, whose position could be predicted for thousands of years ahead. But as research into the structure of the atom advanced, it became increasing ly clear that the behaviour of electrons did not obey the classical laws of mechanics.

The new forms of reality were described in mathematical formulae. The age of mechanical models was over. However, thinking possesses a certain inertia: new facts were squeezed into the framework of old concepts. For two centuries Newton's classical mechanics had been considered a perfect picture of the universe. Its limitations, however, were revealed by Einstein's relativity theory and this launched an agonising process of breaking up the old, habitual notions. A good many eminent physicists who had only a mechanistic view of the world, which they identified with materialism in general, were influenced to some degree by idealism. Some physicists and philosophers believed that only sensuously palpable phenomena, things that could be seen, touched, and smelled were material. But microphenomena are beyond the range of direct perception. In this strange world matter appeared in a new light, without colour, smell, solidity, without any of the properties with which people had come to associate the concept of the material. On the basis of the new data of science, new concepts were evolved that contradicted the "obvious" but corresponded to the latest experimental results and scientific thinking. On the other hand, the impossibility of perceiving microphenomena directly suggested that these phenomena were non-material. Matter came to be regarded either as an aggregate of electrons or as a form of energy, or even as any stable set of sensations. Some scientists and philosophers found it difficult to understand that out there in the infinite depths of this world that was diminishing into invisibility there could be any vehicle or measure of materiality.

In the old days, mass had been considered the measure of the quantity of matter. The discovery of the inconstancy of mass, its variability depending on the velocity of bodies, was taken to mean that matter had disappeared and materialism was bankrupt. Forgetting the earthy roots of all mathematical constructions, some scientists began to claim that these constructions were the result of pure thought. "Matter has disappeared and there is nothing left but equations," they declared.

Lenin described the situation in physics as a methodological crisis and called the scientists who had taken up the positions of idealism "physical" idealists.

Philosophers and natural scientists in some countries today tend to identify the concept of matter with that of substance. In this way, while appearing to criticise vulgar materialism, they actually criticise dialectical materialism. Some of them believe, for example, that atoms may be deprived of the status of physical reality on the grounds that no one has ever seen an atom and what cannot be perceived does not exist.

It should not be assumed that such scientists deny the existence of the world. They do not, of course, doubt its empirical reality. The expressions "matter has disappeared" and "matter may be reduced to electricity" are merely philosophically inept expressions of the truth that new forms and types of motion of matter have been discovered.

Matter is everything that surrounds us, that exists outside our consciousness, that does not depend on our consciousness, and that is or may be reflected directly or indirectly in consciousness. All the sciences study certain properties and relations of specific forms of matter, but not matter in its most general sense. The philosophical understanding of matter retains its significance whatever the discoveries of natural science. The concept of matter does not epistemologically mean anything except objective reality existing independently of human consciousness. Moreover, matter is the only existing objective reality: the cause, foundation, content and substance of all the diversity of the world.

It is the substratum, that is to say, the vehicle, the bearer of all properties and relationships of everything that exists. In all the visible changes that occur in things, in all processes, in their properties and relationships there must be some underlying vehicle of these transformations and changes. That which passes into something else and assumes a different form remains unchanged and this underlying, most general vehicle, that is, the substance, of all that exists, is matter. Every new scientific discovery—of elementary particles, fields, their transmutations, and so on—means another step forward in concretising the concept of matter.

Matter manifests itself in innumerable properties. The most important are objective existence, structure, indestructibility, motion, space, time, reflection and information. These are the attributes of matter, that is to say, its universal, intransient properties without which it could not exist.

According to Lenin's definition, "matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them."[2] This definition of matter is opposed to both objective and to subjective idealism, which believes that all the objects around us are nothing but aggregate states of consciousness, "sets of sensations".

The oversimplified definition of matter as substance made it impossible to apply the category of matter in explaining the life of society. But the dialectical interpretation of matter embraces not only the natural forms of its existence but also the social forms, human society being the highest form of the motion of intellectualised matter.

One quite often hears people say "all things consist of matter". They do not consist of matter. They are the specific, concrete forms of its manifestation. Matter as such is an abstraction. Looking for a uniform matter as the principle of everything is like wanting to eat not cherries but fruit in general. But fruit is also an abstraction. Matter cannot be contrasted to separate things as something immutable to something mutable. Matter in general cannot be seen, touched or tasted. What people see, touch or taste is only a certain form of matter. Matter is not something that exists side by side with other things, inside them or at their basis. All existing formations are matter in its various forms, kinds, properties and relations. There is no such thing as "unspecific" matter. Matter is not simply the real possibility of all material forms, it is their actual existence. The only property that is relatively separate from matter is consciousness as an ideal and not material phenomenon.

The material unity of the world. Any to some extent consistent philosophical theory can infer the unity of the world either from matter or from the spiritual principle. Consequently, the principle of monism is also consistent with idealism. In the first case we are dealing with materialist monism and in the second, with idealist. Fichte, for example, insisted that one of the two must be got rid off: [sic] spirit or nature. From this standpoint the combining of the two is totally impossible and their "apparent" unity is, he alleged, partly hypocrisy, partly a lie, and partly subjective inconsistency.

Some philosophical theories have maintained positions of dualism—acknowledging two parallel but independent worlds, the world of the spirit and the world of matter.

Some philosophers see the unity of objects and processes in their reality, that is, in the fact that they exist. This is indeed the general principle that unites everything in the world. But can the very fact of existence be regarded as a basis for the unity of the world? This depends on how reality itself is interpreted, what is meant by reality: existence may be material or spiritual, imaginary. The theologians, for example, believe that God is real, that he exists but does not possess objective reality. He is unimaginable. Our feelings, thoughts, aspirations and aims are also real—they exist. Yet this is not objective but subjective existence. If existence is the basis of the unity of the world, then it is so only if we are talking about not subjective hut objective existence.

The actual unity of the world lies in its materiality. There can be nothing in the world that does not fit into the concept of matter and its multiform properties and relations. The principle of the material unity of the world signifies not an empirical similarity or identity of concrete material systems, elements and laws, but the universality of matter as sub stance, as the carrier of multiform properties and relations. There is no mountain supposedly towering above the world that science can climb and from its peak see the world as a whole. It is against logic to simply transfer the principles of the known part of the world to the world as a whole. "Being, indeed, is always an open question beyond the point where our sphere of observation ends."[3] At the same time the world is one and indivisible and there is not and cannot be anything supernatural in that sphere of being that is so far beyond our knowledge. The part of the world that we see is interconnected and in a state of continuous interaction with other parts of the world. The known part of the universe is, at least to some extent, related to the universe as a whole; since it is part of this whole, it is not something alien to it.

The unity of the world is expressed in the classification of the sciences, which records the connections between them that have objective content. The infinite universe, both in great things and in small, in the material and the spiritual spheres consistently obeys universal laws that connect every thing in the world and make it a single whole.

The principle of materialist monism also applies to society. Social being determines social consciousness. Materialist monism rejects views that single out consciousness and reason as a special substance contrasted to nature and society. Consciousness is, in fact, cognition of reality and a part of that reality. There is no gulf between the laws that govern the motion of the world, and human consciousness. Consciousness belongs not to any transcendental world but to the material world. It is not a supernatural unicum but a natural attribute of highly organised matter.

Matter is the cause and basis of all the world's diversity. It holds all the secrets of existence and all the ways of knowing them. The category of matter is reality rich in colours and forms. Its cognition begins when we state that an object exists without yet knowing its attributes.

Acknowledgement of matter as the substance of everything that exists is a crucial methodological principle. To the extent that they have any objective content all fields of knowledge and culture rest entirely on the assumptions of the materialist world-view, although by no means all scientists and artists are aware of this indisputable fact. Science is materialist to the core. Anything in it that is not materialist is not scientific either. All creative activity is based on the one axiomatic proposition concerning the reality of the object of study, the reality of the world. No one can think creatively without recognising this proposition. Consistent application of the principle of materialism presupposes that one is able in any inquiry to separate the objective from the subjective, actual processes from their interpretations, the target of research from the means and forms of its cognition.

The structure and indestructibility of matter. Matter has a heterogeneous, "granular", discontinuous structure. It consists of bits that vary in size and quality: elementary particles, atoms, molecules, macromolecules, stars and their systems, galaxies, and so on.

The "discontinuous" forms of matter are indissolubly connected with the "continuous" forms. The latter are different types of fields—gravitation, electromagnetic and nuclear. Some physicists want to retain the concept of ether but at a new level of comprehension, in the form of an all-pervasive vibrating cosmic medium possessing no mass. Physical fields connect the particles of matter, allow them to interact and thus exist. So without the field of gravitation nothing would connect the stars in the galaxies or substance itself in stars. There would be no solar system, no sun, no planets. All bodies in general would cease to exist. Without electrical and magnetic fields nothing would connect atoms into molecules and electrons and nuclei into atoms.

This universal connection and interaction forms an attributive definition of substance and presupposes the mutual reflection and circulation of information in the universe. The concept of information has gradually expanded to embrace not only human communication but also the communication between living organisms and the various systems in each organism, the mechanisms of heredity, and finally, the physical objects, the entire surrounding world. The phenomenon of information may today be regarded as an all-embracing attribute of matter in motion, as the definition of all the interactions in the world.

The orderliness of matter has its levels, each of which is characterised by a special system of laws and by its own vehicle. This is the submicro-elementary level—the hypothetical form of existence of the matter of fields from which elementary particles are born (micro-elementary level); the next stage is the nucleus (nuclear level), from nuclei and electrons there come atoms (atomic level), and from them molecules (molecular level), from molecules there are aggregates—gaseous, liquid, and solid bodies (macroscopic level). The bodies thus formed make up the stars and their satellites, the planets and their satellites, the stellar systems and the metagalaxies that embrace them, and so on to infinity (cosmic level).

Besides the substance condensed in the form of celestial bodies, there is also diffused matter in the universe. This exists in the form of detached atoms and molecules and also gigantic clouds of gas and dust of varying density. All this taken together with irradiation constitutes the boundless universal ocean of rarefied substance in which the celestial bodies appear to float. The cosmic bodies and systems have not existed since time began in their present form. They take shape as a result of condensation of nebulae that formerly occupied vast spaces. Consequently, cosmic bodies arise from a material environment as a result of the intrinsic laws of the motion of matter itself.

After the material formations had risen from the atomic level to the higher, molecular level, there followed a process of complication of chemical substances that lasted for billions of years. The gradual complication of the molecules of carbon compounds led to the formation of organic compounds (organic level). Little by little increasingly complex organic compounds were formed. And finally came life (biological level). Life was the necessary, law-governed outcome of the development of all chemical and geological processes on the Earth's crust. The evolution of life proceeded from primitive, pre-cellular forms of protein existence to cellular organisation, to the formation first of the unicellular, and then multicellular organism with increasingly complex structures — the invertebrates, the vertebrates, the mammals, and the primates. The primates were the final stage in the evolution of organic nature and the starting-point for the origin of man. We thus find ourselves standing on the last rung of the majestic ladder of the progressive development of matter (social level). It is also conceivable that there may be gigantic cosmic civilisations created by rational beings (metasocial level) beyond the range of terrestrial civilisation.

It may be assumed that in the present age Earth is the only habitation of conscious life in the Galaxy and perhaps in much larger space-time scales of the universe. Do life and mind exist in outer space? If so, what attribute of what material organisation can they be? If we assume that the universe is infinite, it is scarcely conceivable that life is a pure accident, the possession only of overfavoured Earth. At any rate we have no grounds to feel oppressed by a sense of loneliness in the infinite vastness of the universe.

The concept of structure is applicable not only to the various levels of matter, but to matter as a whole. The stability of the basic structural forms of matter is predicated on the existence of an integral structural organisation of matter, which stems from the close interconnection of all the levels of structural organisation known to us today.

In this sense we can say that every element of matter bears the imprint of the universal whole. The various kinds of particles are not only "elements" of the discontinuous structure of matter, but also "stages", "key points" in its development.

The dialectical conception of matter contests any absolutising of the specific, concrete forms and properties of matter; it orients science on a search for new, as yet unknown forms and properties of the real world. Science, if it is objective, proceeds along this path: discovery of the laws of the structure of the atom, of elementary particles, including electrically neutral particles, investigation of various nuclear reactions. Quite recently science penetrated the structure of elementary particles and came to grips with research into the physical vacuum—a special kind of field that may be regarded as a reservoir, from which elementary particles are born and into which they are transformed. Lenin's philosophical prediction that the electron is as inexhaustible as the atom, that nature is infinite, is coming true.

The impossibility of reducing one structural level of matter to another. Any object or process in the world arises only from other objects and cannot disappear without giving rise to some other object. This is a fundamental proposition of all forms of materialism. What distinguishes the dialectical conception of matter is its denial of the possibility of reducing matter to one or a few simple forms, as mechanistic materialism does. Physics cannot be reduced to mechanics, chemistry to physics, and biology cannot be reduced to an aggregate of mechanical, physical and chemical phenomena. Nor can society be reduced to all the other forms of organisation of matter. Thus biological organisation has a special meaning which cannot be explained in the framework of the physical picture of the world. In the realm of the animate we are concerned with such specific phenomena as adaptation, metabolism, growth and procreation, the struggle for existence, mutation and heredity. There is none of this in non-organic nature. In the living organism even the purely physical and chemical processes are subordinated to certain biological tasks. We cannot explain by purely physical or chemical laws why the ape can sacrifice its life to save its young, or why a bird will sit for weeks to hatch out its eggs.

While stressing the need to take into consideration the specifics of each structural level of matter, we must at the same time remember certain general laws inherent in all levels and also the connection and interaction between the various levels. This connection shows itself mainly in the fact that simple forms of organisation always go hand in hand with complex forms. The higher level includes the lower as one of its genetic preconditions and at the same time as one of its own elements. The physics of elementary particles has not only "conquered" chemistry. It has begun to tackle living substance—biology. Humanity today stands on the threshold of completely new, extraordinary discoveries which will hand us the master microkeys to processes occurring in animate matter, including man. Biologists have proved that heredity is conditioned by the nucleus of the cell, the chromosomes, which transmit hereditary characteristics. It turns out that the answer to one of the most intimate questions of biology depends to a great extent on chemistry, and that life is the chemistry not only of protein bodies but also of chemical components, particularly the nucleic acids.

Scientific development has shown that progress in physiology and biology depends to a large extent on progress in the physics and chemistry of organisms, including the physico-chemical investigation of nervous activity.

If we try to reduce the more complex forms of motion to the simple forms we may backtrack into mechanism. Ignoring the unity and connection of the various forms of the motion of matter may lead to attempts to regard motion in isolation from its vehicle, for example, heredity without its material substratum. It is precisely on the molecular level that our ideas of the subtle mechanisms of heredity have materialised.

However, the higher forms of organisation are not included in the lower forms. Life is a form of organisation inherent in protein bodies. There is no life in non-organic bodies. The chemical form of organisation is inherent in chemical elements and their compounds, but it does not exist in such material objects as photons, electrons, and other similar particles.

Since the complex forms of the organisation of matter include the lower forms as subordinate elements, we must take this into consideration and in studying animals and plants, for example, apply not only the leading biological methods but also physico-chemical methods in a secondary capacity.

At the same time the study of biological phenomena enriches chemistry and physics. Knowledge of the lower levels as components of the higher levels helps us to get a deeper insight into the highest level of organisation of matter. Thus, chemistry in studying structures at the molecular level has achieved considerable successes thanks to the appearance of quantum mechanics, which has revealed certain peculiarities in the structure of the atomic level. This is understandable because chemical reactions at the molecular level are connected with intra-atomic processes.

The uncreatability and indestructibility of matter. One of the attributes of matter is its indestructibility, which is displayed in a set of specific laws of the conservation of matter in the process of its transformation. In studying the foundation of matter modern physics has demonstrated the universal transformability of elementary particles. In the continuous process of interchangeability matter is conserved as substance, that is to say, as the base of all change. The cessation of mechanical motion owing to friction leads to an accumulation of internal energy in the body in question and intensification of the heat motion of its molecules. Heat motion in its turn may become chemical or electromagnetic motion. In the microcosm the particles of matter are transformed into radiation. The law of the conservation and transformation of energy states that no matter what processes of transformation occur in the world, the general quantity of mass and energy remains unchanged. Any material object can exist only in connection with others and through them it is connected with the rest of the world. The destruction of a concrete thing means only that it has turned into something else. The birth of a concrete thing means that it has arisen from something else. For nature the "destruction of the particular" is the performance of the same necessity in the global play of life forces as its emergence. The world as a whole continues to exist only thanks to the continuous and partial destruction of itself. That matter is conserved becomes apparent only in the process of mutation of its forms.

The principle of the indestructibility and uncreatability of matter is of great importance in forming a world-view and a methodology. Guided by this principle science has discovered the laws of the conservation of mass, energy, charge, parity and other fundamental laws that have enabled us to reach a deeper and fuller understanding of the processes at work in various fields of nature. The crucial laws of scientific cognition also aim us against idealist views, such as creationism. Some scientists maintain, for instance, that atoms are from time to time "created" out of nothing, that is to say, at a certain moment certain atoms comprising matter allegedly do not exist but the next moment they exist, having appeared out of nothing.

The indestructibility of matter cannot be understood only in terms of quantity. The laws of conservation also presuppose qualitative indestructibility. Ignoring this aspect of the laws of conservation inevitably leads to mistakes, an example of which is the idea of the heat death of the universe. This theory alleges that all forms of motion must turn into heat, which will ultimately disperse in universal space. The temperature of all bodies will be equalised and all motion will cease. There will be neither light nor heat. Everything will die. And this will be the end of the world! According to this conception the universe lives its life and follows the path from birth to death like all the rest of us; science knows no other change except the transition to senility, and no other process but motion towards final oblivion. We see the stars constantly turning into radiation just as eternally and unceasingly as mountains of ice melt in a warm ocean. Today's sun weighs many billions of tons less than the sun of a month ago. Since other stars are melting in the same way, the universe as a whole is now less substantial. Not only the quantity of matter in the universe is diminishing, but even what is left is constantly escaping into the icy cold of outer space at colossal and ominously increasing speeds. The universe seems to be running away from us and dissolving like a vision into oblivion.

Research has shown, however, that heat death is impossible. The ceaseless process of conversion of all forms of motion into heat is accompanied by an equally unceasing process of the conversion of heat into other forms of motion. The stars are not only cooling; other stars are being born and growing brighter. There is nowhere for matter to appear from and nowhere for it to go. It is the source, the cause, and the consequence of itself. It owes nothing to anything or anyone for its existence.

Notes

	Max Born, My Life and My Views. Introduced by I. Bernard Cohen Charles Scribners' Sons, N.Y., 1968, p. 67.
	V. I. Lenin, "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism", Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 130.
	Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 58.

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The Categories of Dialectics

Dialectics and metaphysics. Dialectics is a theory of the most general connections of the universe and its cognition and also the method of thinking based on this theory. Anyone who wants to find a rational orientation in the world and change the world must have a knowledge of the dialectics of life and thought. Dialectical thinking has its roots far back in the past. The most striking example was Heraclitus, who saw the world as being in constant flux, intrinsically contradictory, an eternally living fire blazing up and dying down according to certain laws. The ideas of dialectics run right through the history of the development of human thought. They were profoundly expressed in such great thinkers as Kant and Hegel. In Hegel, dialectics embraces the whole sphere of reality and the life of the mind. Dialectical thought reached its highest peak in the philosophy of Marxism, in which materialist dialectics is expressed in a system of philosophical principles, categories and laws.

Dialectics arose and develops historically in a struggle against the metaphysical method, which is characteristically one-sided and abstract and inclined to absolutise certain elements within the whole. Metaphysical views have taken various historical forms. While Heraclitus stressed one aspect of existence—the changeability of things, which the Sophists extended to complete relativism, the Eleatic philosophers in their criticism of the Heraclitean principle of flux, concentrated on another aspect, on the stability of existence and went to another extreme in supposing that everything was changeless. Thus, some philosophers dissolved the world in a fiery flux while others crystallised it into immovable rock.

In modern times metaphysics has taken the form of an absolutising of the analysis and classification techniques in the cognition of nature. Because they are constantly repeated in scientific research, the techniques of analysis, experimental isolation and classification have gradually imparted to scientific thinking certain general ideas suggesting that in nature's "workshop" objects exist in isolation, as it were, apart from one another. As philosophy and the specialised sciences have developed the focus of the struggle between dialectics and metaphysics has shifted from attempts to explain the connection of things to interpretation of the principle of development. Here metaphysical thought emerged at first in the form of simple evolutionism, and then in various concepts of "creative evolution". While the former hypertrophies quantitative and gradual changes, ignoring qualitative transitions and breaks in gradualness, the latter absolutise the qualitative, essential changes without perceiving the gradual quantitative "preparatory" processes leading up to them. So metaphysical thought is inclined to "jump" to extremes, to exaggerate some aspect of the object: its stability, recurrence, relative independence, and so on. In cognition this leads to idealism or dogmatism and, in practice, to the justification of stagnation and reaction. The only antidote to metaphysics and dogmatism, which is metaphysics in another form, is dialectics, which will not tolerate stagnation and sets no limits to cognition and its scope. Dissatisfaction with what has been achieved is the element of dialectics, and revolutionary activity is its essence.

Categories. In philosophy, categories are extremely general, fundamental concepts reflecting the most essential, law-governed connections and relationships of reality. Categories are the forms and stable organising principles of the thought process and, as such, they reproduce the properties and relations of existence in global and most concentrated form. Categories are the result of generalisation, of the intellectual synthesis of the achievements of science and socio-historical practice and are, therefore, the key points of cognition, the moments when thought grasps the essence of things. This is the starting-point for the analysis of the diversity (individual and particular, part and whole, form and content, etc.).

The categories are universal and lasting because they reflect what is most stable in the universe. Moreover, in the process of history the content, role and status of the categories change and new categories (system, structure, for example) arise.

In the present age the rapid and overall development of scientific knowledge goes hand in hand with a process of identification of fundamental concepts which acquire the significance of categories inasmuch as they perform in relation to specific fields of knowledge a function comparable to that of philosophical categories, for example, information, self-regulation, symmetry, and so on, and also constitute the subject-matter of a specific science, that is to say, they are universal and non-variable in relation to a great number of special concepts of such a science (for example, the categories of organism or species in biology, the categories of image, action, motive in psychology, the categories of element in chemistry, of particles and fields in physics, and of commodities and value in political economy). This prompts us to investigate the system of scientific categories as something with its own specifics, something that does not coincide with the system of philosophical categories, although it is closely connected with that system. By tracing the system of scientific categories we can uncover the logic of development of any given science, the law-governed transformation of its conceptual build-up. The categories of philosophy, which constantly accumulate the results of the development of the specialised sciences, help us to identify and synthesise the elements of world-view and methodology in scientific thought.

The categories bear a certain relation to one another and constitute a system. They are so interconnected that each can only be understood as an element of the whole. The initial categories for the whole system are those of matter and consciousness. They provide the trunk from which all the various branches of the other categories stem.

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Philosophy and Art

Philosophy, science and art differ principally according to their subject-matter and also the means by which they reflect, transform and express it. In a certain sense, art, like philosophy, reflects reality in its relation to man, and depicts man, his spiritual world, and the relations between individuals in their interaction with the world.

We live not in a primevally pure world, but in a world that is known and has been transformed, a world where everything has, as it were, been given a "human angle", a world permeated with our attitudes towards it, our needs, ideas, aims, ideals, joys and sufferings, a world that is part of the vortex of our existence. If we were to remove this "human factor" from the world, its sometimes inexpressible, profoundly intimate relationship with man, we should be confronted by a desert of grey infinity, where everything was indifferent to everything else. Nature, considered in isolation from man, is for man simply nothing, an empty abstraction existing in the shadowy world of dehumanised thought. The whole infinite range of our relationships to the world stems from the sum-total of our interactions with it. We are able to consider our environment rationally through the gigantic historical prism of science, philosophy and art, which are capable of expressing life as a tempestuous flood of contradictions that come into being, develop, are resolved and negated in order to generate new contradictions.

No scientifically, let alone artistically, thinking person can remain deaf to the wise voice of true philosophy, can fail to study it as a vitally necessary sphere of culture, as the source of world-view and method. Equally true is the fact that no thinking and emotionally developed person can remain indifferent to literature, poetry, music, painting, sculpture and architecture. Obviously, one may be to some extent indifferent to some highly specialised science, but it is impossible to live an intellectually full life if one rejects philosophy and art. The person who is indifferent to these spheres deliberately condemns himself to a depressing narrowness of outlook.

Does not the artistic principle in philosophical thought deserve the attention of, and do credit to, the thinking mind, and vice versa? In a certain generalised sense the true philosopher is like the poet. He, too, must possess the aesthetic gift of free associative thinking in integral images. And in general one cannot achieve true perfection of creative thought in any field without developing the ability to perceive reality from the aesthetic standpoint. Without this precious intellectual prism through which people view the world everything that goes beyond the empirical description of facts, beyond formulae and graphs may look dim and indistinct.

Scientists who lack an aesthetic element in their makeup are dry-as-dust pedants, and artists who have no knowledge of philosophy and science are not very interesting people either, for they have little to offer above elementary common sense. The true artist, on the other hand, constantly refreshes himself with the discoveries of the sciences and philosophy. While philosophy and science tend to draw us into "the forest of abstractions", art smiles upon everything, endowing it with its integrating, colourful imagery.

Life is so structured that for a man to be fully conscious of it he needs all these forms of intellectual activity, which complement each other and build up an integral perception of the world and versatile orientation in it.

The biographies of many scientists and philosophers indicate that the great minds, despite their total dedication to research, were deeply interested in art and themselves wrote poetry and novels, painted pictures, played musical instruments and moulded sculpture. How did Einstein live, for example? He thought, wrote, and also played the violin, from which he was seldom parted no matter where he went or whom he visited. Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, wrote novels, Darwin was deeply interested in Shakespeare, Milton and Shelley. Niels Bohr venerated Goethe and Shakespeare; Hegel made an exhaustive study of world art and the science of his day. The formation of Marx's philosophical and scientific views was deeply influenced by literature. Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Milton, Goethe, Balzac and Heine were his favourite authors. He responded sensitively to the appearance of significant works of art and himself wrote poetry and fairy-tales. The radiance of a broad culture shines forth from the work of this genius. Lenin was not only acquainted with art but also wrote specialised articles about it. His philosophical, sociological and economic works are studded with apt literary references. And what a delight he took in music!

In short, the great men of theory were by no means dry rationalists. They were gifted with an aesthetic appreciation of the world. And no wonder, for art is a powerful catalyst for such abilities as power of imagination, keen intuition and the knack of association, abilities needed by both scientists and philosophers.

If we take the history of Oriental culture, we find that its characteristic feature is the organic synthesis of an artistic comprehension of the world with its philosophical and scientific perception. This blending of the philosophical and the artistic is inherent in all peoples, as can be seen from their sayings, proverbs, aphorisms, tales and legends, which abound in vividly expressed wisdom.

If we are to develop effective thinking, we must not exclude any specifically human feature from participation in creative activity. The gift of perception, penetrating observation of reality, mathematical and physical precision, depth of analysis, a free, forward-looking imagination, a joyful love of life—these are all necessary to be able to grasp, comprehend and express phenomena, and this is the only way a true work of art can appear, no matter what its subject may be.

Can one imagine our culture without the jewels of philosophical thought that were contributed to it by human genius? Or without its artistic values? Can one conceive of the development of contemporary culture without the life-giving rays of meditative art embodied in the works of such people as Dante, Goethe, Leo Tolstoy, Balzac, Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven? Culture would have had a very different history but for the brilliant minds that gave us their masterpieces of painting, music, poetry and prose. The whole world of our thoughts and feelings would have been different, and incomparably poorer. And we, as individuals, would also have been flawed. The intellectual atmosphere that surrounds us from childhood, the style of thinking that permeates folk sayings, tales and songs, the books we have read, the paintings and sculptures we have admired, the music we have heard, the view of the world and humanity that we have absorbed thanks to our contact with the treasures of art, has not all this contributed to the formation of our individual self? Did it not teach us to think philosophically and perceive and transform the world aesthetically?

An indispensable feature of art is its ability to convey information in an evaluative aspect. Art is a combination of man's cognitive and evaluative attitudes to reality recorded in words, colours, plastic forms or melodically arranged sounds. Like philosophy, art also has a profoundly communicative function. Through it people communicate to one another their feelings, their most intimate and infinitely varied and poignant thoughts. A common feature of art and philosophy is the wealth they both contain of cognitive, moral and social substance. Science is responsible to society for a true reflection of the world and no more. Its function is to predict events. On the basis of scientific discoveries one can build various technical devices, control production and social processes, cure the sick and educate the ignorant. The main responsibility of art to society is the formation of a view of the world, a true and large-scale assessment of events, a rational, reasoning orientation of man in the world around him, a true assessment of his own self. But why does art have this function? Because in its great productions it is not only consummately artistic but also profoundly philosophical. How deeply philosophical, for instance, are the verses of Shake speare, Goethe, Lermontov, Verhaeren! And indeed all the great writers, poets, composers, sculptors, architects, painters, in short, all the most outstanding and brilliant exponents of art were imbued with a sense of the exceptional importance of progressive philosophy and not only kept abreast of but were often responsible for its achievements. How profound were Tolstoy's artistically expressed meditations on the role of the individual and the people in the historical process (for example, Napoleon and Kutuzov, or the Russian people in the war of liberation of 1812, as portrayed in War and Peace), on freedom and necessity, on the conscious and the unconscious in human behaviour. Consider the psychological and philosophical depth and the artistic power with which Balzac revealed the social types in the society of his day in all their diversity (the idea of greed and acquisitiveness in the character of Gobseck!). How philosophical are the artistic and publicistic works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Thomas Mann, Heine, Herzen, Chernyshevsky and many others. If we turn to science fiction, we find that it is full of scientific and philosophical reflections, of varying visions of the future of science, technology and human existence in general. Quite often its plot is a series of mental experiments. However, neither the scientific nor the philosophical content, no matter how fully expressed in a work of art, constitutes its specific element. We never speak of any work of art, no matter how powerful, as a study, whereas creative work in philosophy is a study, an inquiry, and it is characterised above all not by its artistic but by its scientific qualities, although its artistic aspect is highly valued and has more than purely aesthetic significance. The crown of philosophical inquiry is truth and prediction, whereas in art it is artistic truth, not accuracy of reproduction, in the sense of a copy of what exists, but a lifelike portrayal of typically possible phenomena in either their developed or potential form. If art produced only truths similar to scientific truths, there would be no masterpieces of world art. The immortality of great masterpieces lies in the power of their artistic generalisation, generalisation of the most complex phenomenon in the world—man and his relations with his fellow men.

Some people believe that the specific feature of art is that the artist expresses his own intellectual world, his own intrinsic individuality. But this is not quite true. In any active creativity, any act that reflects and transforms life, a person also expresses himself. And the higher the level of creativity, in this case artistic, the higher the level of generalisation, and hence the universal, despite all the individuality of the form. "Man's individuality or singularity is not a barrier to the universality of the will, but is subordinated to it. A just or moral, in other words, a fine action, although performed by one individual, is nevertheless approved by all. Everyone recognises himself or his own will in this act. Here there occurs the same thing as in a work of art. Even those who could not create such a work find their own essence expressed therein. Such a work is therefore truly universal. The more its individual creator dissolves in it, the more approval it earns."[1]

The aesthetic principle is not the specific element in philosophy although it is present there. Naturally, philosophy is distinguished from the other sciences by its being related far more closely to the aesthetic principle, to art. It synthesises the everyday experience of the people and something from the other sciences, and also something from art without confining itself to any of them. The aesthetic element is also present in any science. By some scientists it is even regarded as a criterion of truth: the true is elegant and highly refined in its structure. The beauty, the elegance of an experiment, or of any theoretical construction, especially if it sparkles with wit, does credit to scientific thought, evokes our legitimate admiration and affords us intellectual and aesthetic pleasure. Quite often this elegance shows itself in a meaningful brevity, for genius is usually simply expressed, without superfluous words. So truth and beauty are sisters, although not always.

In philosophy this aesthetic principle is expressed more powerfully and fully. It is not only more synthetic and integrated than science. In its very social purpose it is, or should be, closer and more understandable to the masses of the people. It should not be separated from them by the "barbed wire" of a formalised, let alone a mathematised language.

A considerable number of philosophical works have been written in poetic and artistic form. Actually they are not poetry but philosophical thoughts expressed as poetry. Many brilliant works of philosophy are couched in such fine language that they read like great works of both science and art. Inspired by their genius, the great philosophers clothed their profound thoughts in images of astonishing aptness.

Many people draw attention to the fact that the achievements of science, no matter how significant they once were, are constantly being reviewed, whereas the masterpieces of art survive the centuries in all the splendour of their individuality. But have you noticed that something similar happens in philosophy too? The works of the great philosophers retain their inimitable value through the centuries. So in philosophy, just as in art, history is of special importance. Whereas the works of the classical natural scientists are expounded in textbooks and few people read them in the original, the classical works of philosophy must be read in the original in order to gain a full appreciation of philosophical culture. Every great philosopher is unique in his intellectual and moral value; he teaches us to perceive the world and ourselves profoundly and in their most subtle aspects.

What has been said does not, of course, imply that philosophy may ultimately be reduced to a form of art. Philosophical treatises do not become works of art even when they are expressed in the colourful and deeply symbolical language of poetry, as was often the case in ancient times, in the philosophy of the Renaissance and the New Age. Take Plato, for example. He had a colourful world-view, its very form evokes admiration. He is aesthetic all the way through. Or take the philosophical views of the French materialists of the 18th century. They are simultaneously splendid works of art, full of humour, satire and barbed witticisms aimed at religion, scholasticism, and so on. Their works still delight us with the brilliance of their form, which clothes subtle and profound thoughts. Or again, take the philosophical ideas of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, in which their masterpieces are steeped. We began by dealing with the aesthetic principle in philosophy. But to a no less degree one can speak also of the philosophical principle in art. Probably the closest thing to philosophy is poetry, which has the power to make laconic but profound generalisations about both social and individual life, moral phenomena, and the relationship between man and the universe.

The metaphorical language of art, far from being alien to philosophy and other sciences, is an essential condition for every new step into the unknown.

The similar and the specific in philosophy and art can also be seen in the nature of generalisation. Philosophy uses generalisations and its generalisations are of an extremely broad, virtually universal character. Its categories of the general, the particular and the unique are both interconnected and yet separate concepts. In art, on the other hand, the general, the particular and the unique are alloyed in the very fabric of the artistic image. Philosophy is theoretical from beginning to end, whereas art is sensuous and imaginal. Philosophical thought reflects its subject-matter in concepts, in categories; art is characterised, on the other hand, by emotional and imaginal reflection and by transformation of reality. This is not to say, of course, that art, particularly in its verbal form, in belles lettres, and even more so in the intellectual type of novel, contains no concepts. Dostoyevsky's novels are three-quarters philosophical. The same applies to the works of Goethe, for example, for whom feeling and a philosophical understanding of nature, expressed in both artistic form and scientific analysis, were his life's work. The scientific, philosophical and artistic approaches were organic in Goethe. His work as a thinker is inseparable from that of the artist. When composing his works of art, he is at the same time a philosopher. He achieves the greatest aesthetic power in those very works (Prometheus and Faust) where the unity of artist and philosopher is most organic. Can we distinguish clearly between the philosophical and aesthetic principles in Faust? All that can be said is that no genius could have created such a work without a synthesis of the philosophical, aesthetic and the scientific.

Without a certain degree of intellect there can be no subtle feelings and from this it follows that art, which aesthetically expresses man's emotional-intellectual world in his relationship to the environment, is bound to feel the impact of philosophy and the other sciences. A world-view may come into art but not as an intrinsic part of it. We can speak of the philosophical content of art, just as we can speak of the philosophical content of science, when the scientist begins to consider the essential nature of his science, its moral value, social responsibility, and so on. These are actually philosophical questions and they do not form part of the specific nature of the given science. Rather they are the self-awareness of the science, just as the artist's reflections on the nature of art, its social meaning, and so on, are the self-awareness of art. And this is in fact philosophy, whose categories permeate all forms of thought, including that of the artist. Without them no artist could generalise, identify the typical in the particular fact, assess the quality of his subject-matter, preserve proportion, the most vital element in aesthetic imagination, or comprehend the contradictions of life in such a way as to give them full expression.

The work of the artist is not spontaneous. It always follows some kind of plan and it is most effective when talent is guided by a world-view, when the artist has something to tell people, much more rarely is it effective when it comes about as a result of the accidental associative play of the imagination, and never is it effective when it is a result of blind instinct. The keen attention that is given to the problems of method is a sign of progress in both modern science and art, a sign of the increasing interaction of all aspects of intellectual life—science, philosophy, and art.

Notes

Georg Wilhelm F. Hegel, Sämtliche Werke, Dritter Band, "Philosophische Propädeutik, Gymnasialreden und Gutachten über den Philosophie-Unterricht", Fr. Frommans Verlag, Stuttgart, 1927, S. 46.

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Philosophy and Science

Philosophy and Science

The touchstone of the value of philosophy as a world-view and methodology is the degree to which it is interconnected with life. This interconnection may be both direct and indirect, through the whole system of culture, through science, art, morality, religion, law, and politics. As a special form of social consciousness, constantly interacting with all its other forms, philosophy is their general theoretical substantiation and interpretation.

Can philosophy develop by itself, without the support of science? Can science "work" without philosophy? Some people think that the sciences can stand apart from philosophy, that the scientist should actually avoid philosophising, the latter often being understood as groundless and generally vague theorising. If the term philosophy is given such a poor interpretation, then of course anyone would agree with the warning "Physics, beware of metaphysics!" But no such warning applies to philosophy in the higher sense of the term. The specific sciences cannot and should not break their connections with true philosophy.

Science and philosophy have always learned from each other. Philosophy tirelessly draws from scientific discoveries fresh strength, material for broad generalisations, while to the sciences it imparts the world-view and methodological im pulses of its universal principles. Many general guiding ideas that lie at the foundation of modern science were first enunciated by the perceptive force of philosophical thought. One example is the idea of the atomic structure of things voiced by Democritus. Certain conjectures about natural selection were made in ancient times by the philosopher Lucretius and later by the French thinker Diderot. Hypothetically he anticipated what became a scientific fact two centuries later. We may also recall the Cartesian reflex and the philosopher's proposition on the conservation of motion in the universe. On the general philosophical plane Spinoza gave grounds for the universal principle of determinism. The idea of the existence of molecules as complex particles consisting of atoms was developed in the works of the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi and also Russia's Mikhail Lomonosov. Philosophy nurtured the hypothesis of the cellular structure of animal and vegetable organisms and formulated the idea of the development and universal connection of phenomena and the principle of the material unity of the world. Lenin formulated one of the fundamental ideas of contemporary natural science—the principle of the inexhaustibility of matter—upon which scientists rely as a firm methodological foundation.

The latest theories of the unity of matter, motion, space and time, the unity of the discontinuous and continuous, the principles of the conservation of matter and motion, the ideas of the infinity and inexhaustibility of matter were stated in a general form in philosophy.

Besides influencing the development of the specialised fields of knowledge, philosophy itself has been substantially enriched by progress in the concrete sciences. Every major scientific discovery is at the same time a step forward in the development of the philosophical world-view and methodology. Philosophical statements are based on sets of facts studied by the sciences and also on the system of propositions, principles, concepts and laws discovered through the generalisation of these facts. The achievements of the specialised sciences are summed up in philosophical statements. Euclidian geometry, the mechanics of Galileo and Newton, which have influenced men's minds for centuries, were great achievements of human reason which played 'a significant role in forming world-views and methodology. And what an intellectual revolution was produced by Copernicus' heliocentric system, which changed the whole conception of the structure of the universe, or by Darwin's theory of evolution, which had a profound impact on biological science in general and our whole conception of man's place in nature. Mendeleyev's brilliant system of chemical elements deepened our understanding of the structure of matter. Einstein's theory of relativity changed our notion of the relationship between matter, motion, space and time. Quantum mechanics revealed hitherto unknown world of microparticles of matter. The theory of higher nervous activity evolved by Sechenov and Pavlov deepened our understanding of the material foundations of mental activity, of consciousness. Cybernetics revealed new horizons for an understanding of the phenomena of information interactions, the principles of control in living systems, in technological devices and in society, and also the principles of feedback, the man-machine system, and so on. And what philosophically significant pictures have been presented to us by genetics, which deepened our understanding of the relationship between the biological and the social in man, a relationship that has revealed the subtle mechanisms of heredity.

The creation and development by Marx, Engels and Lenin of the science of the laws of development of human society, which has changed people's view of their place in the natural and social vortex of events, holds a special place in this constellation of achievements of human reason.

If we trace the whole history of natural and social science, we cannot fail to notice that scientists in their specific researches, in constructing hypotheses and theories have constantly applied, sometimes unconsciously, world-views and methodological principles, categories and logical systems evolved by philosophers and absorbed by scientists in the process of their training and self-education. All scientists who think in terms of theory constantly speak of this with a deep feeling of gratitude both in their works and at regional and international conferences and congresses.

So the connection between philosophy and science is mutual and characterised by their ever deepening interaction.

Some people think that science has reached such a level of theoretical thought that it no longer needs philosophy. But any scientist, particularly the theoretician, knows in his heart that his creative activity is closely linked with philosophy and that without serious knowledge of philosophical culture the results of that activity cannot become theoretically effective. All the outstanding theoreticians have themselves been guided by philosophical thought and tried to inspire their pupils with its beneficent influence in order to make them specialists capable of comprehensively and critically analysing all the principles and systems known to science, discovering their internal contradictions and overcoming them by means of new concepts. Real scientists, and by this we usually mean scientists with a powerful theoretical grasp, have never turned their backs on philosophy. Truly scientific thought is philosophical to the core, just as truly philosophical thought is profoundly scientific, rooted in the sum-total of scientific achievements Philosophical training gives the scientist a breadth and penetration, a wider scope in posing and resolving problems. Sometimes these qualities are brilliantly expressed, as in the work of Marx, particularly in his Capital, or in Einstein's wide-ranging natural scientific conceptions.

The common ground of a substantial part of the content of science, its facts and laws has always related it to philosophy, particularly in the field of the theory of knowl edge, and today this common ground links it with the problems of the moral and social aspects of scientific discoveries and technical inventions. This is understandable enough. Today too many gifted minds are oriented on destructive goals. In ancient times, as we have seen, nearly every notable scientist was at the same time a philosopher and every philosopher was to some extent a scientist. The connection between science and philosophy has endured for thousands of years. In present-day conditions it has not only been preserved but is also growing substantially stronger. The scale of the scientific work and the social significance of research have acquired huge proportions. For example, philosophy and physics were at first organically interconnected, particularly in the work of Galileo, Descartes, Kepler, Newton, Lomonosov, Mendeleyev and Einstein, and generally in the work of all scientists with a broad outlook. At one time it was commonly held that philosophy was the science of sciences, their supreme ruler. Today physics is regarded as the queen of sciences. Both views contain a certain measure of truth. Physics with its tradition, the specific objects of study and vast range of exact methods of observation and experiment exerts an exceptionally fruitful influence on all or nearly all spheres of knowledge. Philosophy may be called the "science of sciences" probably in the sense that it is, in effect, the self-awareness of the sciences and the source from which all the sciences draw their world-view and methodological principles, which in the course of centuries have been honed down into concise forms. As a whole, philosophy and the sciences are equal partners assisting creative thought in its explorations to attain generalising truth. Philosophy does not replace the specialised sciences and does not command them, but it does arm them with general principles of theoretical thinking, with a method of cognition and world-view. In this sense scientific philosophy legitimately holds one of the key positions in the system of the sciences.

To artificially isolate the specialised sciences from philosophy amounts to condemning scientists to finding for themselves world-view and methodological guidelines for their researches. Ignorance of philosophical culture is bound to have a negative effect on any general theoretical conclusions from a given set of scientific facts. One cannot achieve any real theoretical comprehension, particularly of the global problems of a specialised science, without a broad grasp of inter-disciplinary and philosophical views. The specialised scientists who ignore philosophical problems sometimes turn out to be in thrall to completely obsolete or makeshift philosophical ideas without even knowing it themselves. The desire to ignore philosophy is particularly characteristic of such a trend in bourgeois thought as positivism, whose advocates have claimed that science has no need of philosophy. Their ill-considered principle is that "science is in itself philosophy". They work on the assumption that scientific knowledge has developed widely enough to provide answers to all philosophical problems without resorting to any actual philosophical system. But the "cunning" of philosophy lies in the fact that any form of contempt for it, any rejection of philosophy is in itself a kind of philosophy. It is as impossible to get rid of philosophy as it is to rid oneself of all convictions. Philosophy is the regulative nucleus of the theoretically-minded individual. Philosophy takes its revenge on those who dissociate themselves from it. This can be seen from the example of a number of scientists who after maintaining the positions of crude empiricism and scorning philosophy have eventually fallen into mysticism. So, calls for freedom from any philosophical assumptions are a sign of intellectual narrowness. The positivists, while denying philosophy in words, actually preach the flawed philosophy of agnosticism and deny the possibility of knowing the laws of existence, particularly those of the development of society. This is also a philosophy, but one that is totally misguided and also socially harmful.

It may appear to some scientists that they are using the logical and methodological means evolved strictly within the framework of their particular speciality. But this is a profound delusion. In reality every scientist, whether he realises it or not, even in simple acts of theoretical thought, makes use of the overall results of the development of mankind's cognitive activity enshrined mainly in the philosophical categories, which we absorb as we are absorbing our own natural that no man can put together any theoretical statement language, and later, the special language of theoretical thought. Oversimplifying the question a little, one may say without such concepts as property, cause, law or accident. But these are, in fact, philosophical categories evolved by the whole history of human thought and particularly in the system of philosophical, logical culture based on the experience of all fields of knowledge and practice.

Knowledge of the course and results of the historical development of cognition, of the philosophical views that have been held at various times of the world's universal objective connections is also essential for theoretical thinking because it gives the scientist a reliable yardstick for assessing the hypotheses and theories that he himself produces. Everything is known through comparison. Philosophy plays a tremendous integrating role in scientific knowledge, particular ly in the present age, when knowledge has formed an extremely ramified system. Suffice it to say, for example, that medicine alone comprises some 300 specialised branches. Medicine has "scalpelled" man into hundreds of little parts, which have become the targets of independent investigation and treatment.

Sciences have become so ramified that no brain, however versatile can master all their branches, or even one chosen field. No one nowadays can say that he knows the whole of medicine or biology or mathematics, as some people could have said in the past. Like Goethe's Faust, scientists realise that they cannot know everything about everything. So they are trying to know as much as possible about as little as possible and becoming like people digging deeper and deeper into a well and seeing less and less of what is going on around them, or like a chorus of the deaf, in which each member sings his own tune without hearing anyone else. Such narrow specialisation may lead, and has in some cases already led, to professional narrow-mindedness. Here we have a paradox. This process is both harmful and historically necessary and justified. Without narrow specialisation we cannot make progress and at the same time such specialisation must be constantly filled out by a broad inter-disciplinary approach, by the integrative power of philosophical reason. Otherwise a situation may arise when the common front of developing science will move ahead more and more rapidly and humanity's total knowledge will increase while the individual, the scientist, for example, will lag farther and farther behind the general flood of information and become more and more limited as the years go by. Aristotle knew nearly everything that was known to his epoch and constituted the substance of ancient science, but today by the time he leaves school the pupil is expected to know far more than Aristotle. And it would be a lifetime's work even for a gifted person with a phenomenal memory to learn the fundamentals of all the sciences.

What is more, narrow specialisation, deprived of any breadth of vision, inevitably leads to a creeping empiricism, to the endless description of particulars.

What are we to do about assembling integral knowledge? Such an assembly can nevertheless be built by the integrative power of philosophy, which is the highest form of generalisation of all human knowledge and life experience, the sum-total of the development of world history. By means of philosophy the human reason synthesises the results of human knowledge of nature, society, man and his self-awareness, which gives people a sense of freedom, an open-ended view of the world, an understanding of what is to be found beyond the limits of his usual occupation and narrow professional interests. If we take not the hacks of science but scientists on the big scale, with a truly creative cast of mind, who honestly, wisely and responsibly consider what their hands and minds are doing, we find that they do ultimately realise that to get their bearings in their own field they must take into consideration the results and methods of other fields of knowledge; such scientists range as widely as possible over the history and theory of cognition, building a scientific picture of the world, and absorb philosophical culture through its historically formed system of categories by consciously mastering all the subtleties of logical thought. Max Born, one of the creators of quantum mechanics, provides us with a vivid example of this process. Born had a profound grasp of physical thought illumined by philosophical understanding of his subject. He was the author of many philosophical works and he himself admitted that the philosophical implications of science had always interested him more than narrow specialised results. After Einstein he was one of the first of the world's leading scientists to realise the futility of positivism's attempts to act as a basis for understanding the external world and science and to deny this role to philosophy.

The philosophical approach enables us to overcome the one-sidedness in research which has a negative effect in modern highly specialised scientific work. For example, natural science today is strongly influenced by integrative trends. It is seeking new generalising theories, such as a unitary field theory, a general theory of elementary particles, a general theory of systems, a general theory of control, information, and so on. Generalisations at such a high level presuppose a high degree of general scientific, natural-humanitarian and also philosophical culture. It is philosophy that safeguards the unity and interconnection of all aspects of knowledge of the vast and diversified world whose substance is matter. As Werner Heisenberg once observed, for our senses the world consists of an infinite variety of things and events, colours and sounds. But in order to understand it we have to introduce some kind of order, and order means to recognise what is equal, it means some sort of unity. From this springs the belief that there is one fundamental principle, and at the same time the difficulty to derive from it the infinite variety of things. The natural point of departure is that there exists a material prime cause of things since the world consists of matter.

The intensive development of modern science, which by its brilliance has tended to eclipse other forms of intellectual activity, the process of its differentiation and integration, gives rise to a vast number of new problems involving world-view and methodology. For example, do any extra terrestrial civilisations exist and is there life in other galaxies? How did the universe arise in its given qualitative determinacy? What is meant by the infinity of space and time? Certain fields of knowledge constantly run into difficulties of a methodological nature. How can one judge the degree to which physical or chemical methods are applicable to the investigation of animate nature without oversimplifying it? In modern science not only has there been an unusually rapid accumulation of new knowledge; the techniques, methods and style of thinking have also substantially changed and continue to change. The very methods of research attract the scientist's growing interest, as discussion at national and international symposiums and congresses shows. Hence the higher demands on philosophy, on theoretical thought in general. The further scientific knowledge in various fields develops, the stronger is the tendency to study the logical system by which we obtain knowledge, the nature of theory and how it is constructed, to analyse the empirical and theoretical levels of cognition, the initial concepts of science and methods of arriving at the truth. In short, the sciences show an increasing desire to know themselves, the mind is becoming more and more reflective.

Not only are the subject-matter of this or that science and the methods of studying it being verified. We are trying to define the exact social and moral role that this or that science plays or may play in the life of society, what it implies or may imply for the future of mankind—benefit or destruction? This trend towards self-knowledge, of which much is said both by scientists and philosophers, is bound to show itself and should show itself in the relationship between philosophy and science.

The methodological significance of the philosophical principles, categories and laws should not be oversimplified. It is wrong to suggest that not a single specific problem can be solved without them. When we think of the place and role of philosophy in the system of scientific cognition, we have in mind not separate experiments or calculations but the development of science as a whole, the making and substantiation of hypotheses, the battle of opinions, the creation of theory, the solving of inner contradictions in a given theory, the examination in depth of the initial concepts of science, the comprehension of new, pivotal facts and assessment of the conclusions drawn from them, the methods of scientific research, and so on.

Karl Jaspers, the German psychiatrist and philosopher, once made the point that students who became dissatisfied with philosophy often entered the natural scientific faculties to get to grips with "real things", which they then studied enthusiastically. But later, when they began to seek a basis for their own lives in science, the general ruling principles of their actions, they were again disappointed and their search led them back to philosophy. Philosophy, besides all its other functions, goes deep into the personal side of human life. The destiny of the individual, his inner emotions and desires, in a word, his life and death, have from time immemorial constituted one of the cardinal philosophical problems. The indifference to this "human" set of problems, which is a characteristic feature of neopositivism, is rightly regarded as one-sided scientism, the essence of which is primitively simple: philosophy must be a science like natural science, and strive to reach the same ideal of mathematical precision and authenticity. But while many scientific researchers look only outwards, philosophers look both outwards and inwards, that is to say, at the world around man and man's place in that world. Philosophical consciousness is reflective in its very essence. The degree of precision and the very character of precision and authenticity in science and philosophy must therefore differ. Who, for instance, reflects man's inner world with all its pathological aberrations "more precisely"—the natural scientist with his experimental techniques, mathematical formulae and graphs or, for example, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, in their immortal works that are so highly charged with philosophical meaning?

At this point a huge philosophical problem arises. How are we to overcome the yawning gap between mathematised natural-scientific and technological thinking, on the one hand, and humanitarian, social thought, on the other? How are we to resolve the intense and continuing argument between the so-called "lyricists and physicists", who symbolise these two diverging styles of thought? This is something that has a harmful effect on the human personality, dragged in opposite directions by the two principles. This morbid dichotomy may have negative consequences for the present and future of both the individual and collective human reason. So it is an educational, philosophical, moral and profoundly social problem.

Philosophy, as we have said, is not simply an abstract science. It also possesses an evaluative aspect, its moral principles. Science has given man a lot of things, but ethics or, to put it more bluntly, conscience, is not one of them. The evaluative, axiological and aesthetic aspects are also important for science. And they are not part of it either.

Philosophy helps us to achieve a deeper understanding of the social significance and general prospects of scientific discoveries and their technical applications. The impressive achievements of the scientific and technological revolution, the contradictions and social consequences it has evoked, raise profound philosophical problems. Contemporary philosophical irrationalism gives a pessimistic appraisal of scientific and technological advance and predicts worldwide disaster. But this raises the question of the responsibility of philosophy, since philosophy seeks to understand the essence of things and here we are dealing with the activity of human reason and its "unreasonable" consequences. Thus the question of the nature of philosophy in our day grows into a question of the historic destinies of humanity and becomes a vitally important social problem. To what extent can society comprehend itself, rationally control its own development, be the master of its own destiny, command the consequences of its own cognitive and practical activity?

There are many questions that the epoch poses before humanity and these questions can be answered by philosophy. For example, what does the future hold for the contesting social systems in the modern world? What are the rational ways of removing the threat of universal annihilation?

In present-day conditions the role not only of natural science and technology, but also of the humane sciences that study "human affairs", the laws of life and development of society, has grown enormously and will continue to do so as time goes on. The results of social research have today assumed not only exceptional theoretical but also exceptional applied, social and political importance. The very structure of social life is becoming more complex, new forms of human activity are appearing, the scientific and technological revolution continues its advance, the role of social and political problems in the life of society, in the development of culture is steadily increasing.

Revolutionary changes have today invaded all spheres of life: the productive forces, science with its gigantic field of practical application, technology, politics, ethnic relationships, intellectual life in general. Man himself is changing. What is the essence, the cause of these changes that are spreading across the world and affecting the most diverse aspects of human life? In what way do the various aspects of the revolutionary process that has gripped the planet interdepend? What consequences will the scientific and technological revolution have for the nations of the world? Are we not witnessing and participating in a profound crisis of our whole civilisation? What are we to do about elevated human ideals when we are confronted with a threat to the very existence of life on earth?

For several centuries people hopefully observed the development of technology on the assumption that taming the forces of nature would bring them happiness and plenty, and that this would be enough to allow human life to be arranged on rational principles. Mankind has achieved a great deal, but we have also made "a great deal of mess". For how long and on what scale can we go on accumulating the waste products among which modern man has to live? Here we need a clear and philosophical view of history. Why, because of what contradictions, do the forces created and activated by human brains and hands turn against man himself and his mind? Why is the world so constructed that more of its gifted minds are bent on destruction instead of creation? Is this not a profound social and philosophical problem? The advent of the atomic age was marked by horrifying annihilation and mass murder. For how long will the menacing shadow of the atomic bomb hang over all human joys and hopes?

These and other great questions of our time cannot be answered by the supreme science of physics, by mathematics, cybernetics, chemistry, biology, or by natural science as a whole, great though their discoveries have been. These questions, which exercise the minds of all mankind and relate to life today and in the future, must be answered by scientific philosophy.

Naturally, the solution of all the pressing problems of our time depends not only on a rational philosophical orientation. It also depends on the political orientation of nations and statesmen, which in turn is related to the nature of the social structure.

Scientific activity is not only logical, it also has moral and socio-political implications. Knowledge arms man with the means to achieve his ends. There can be no doubt that modern natural science is a powerful "motor" of technical advance.

In a fierce ideological struggle the specialised scientists who lack any scientific world-view or methodology sometimes turn out to be helpless grown-up children in the face of reactionary ideology and some of them fall into its clutches.

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