PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW
[1]Translated from the Russian
Edited by Robert Daglish
Designed by V. Trushchov
__FIX__ Next paragraph will not be injected into HTML; how to get it into FOREWARD chunk?The present collection, prepared jointly by the Soviet Academy of Sciences Editorial Board of Social Sciences Today and Progress Publishers, deals with the social aspects and prospects of the current revolution in science and technology. The collection contains articles by prominent Soviet scholars specialising both in social and natural sciences. They deal with problems of current interest, such as the role of science in society today, the impact of scientific and technological progress on the development of social relationships, and in different social formations. The book is a completely up-to-date review of the key tendencies of research being carried on in the Soviet Union, where all-round application of the results of the technological revolution is a matter of major importance for the state, the Communist Party and other mass organisations. Some articles of a comparative nature show the effect of the scientific and technological revolution on the development of socialist society and on socio-political processes in the capitalist world and the developing countries as well. Several special contributions are devoted to a critical analysis of the Western latest conceptions of social development.
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__COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1972The current scientific and technological revolution, its social aspects and prospects, already command world-wide interest. Its problems are of concern not only to scientists but to the public at large. It is actively invading the social, economic and other spheres, affecting all classes, government systems and mass organisations. It is exerting an ever greater influence on the destinies of nations, an influence that will ultimately be felt by every human being on this planet.
This is in no way surprising, for the current rate of technological advance betokens a qualitative leap in our understanding of the laws of objective reality and in the development and use of the means of production, a leap which is attended by sweeping economic and social change. The progress of science and technology and their practical applications have become a major field of competition between the two world systems. In the course of the scientific and technological revolution the fundamental distinctions between socialism and capitalism stand out yet more clearly and the present age is revealed as one of a world-wide movement from capitalism to communism.
In the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, the introduction of science in diverse spheres of social life and the increasing utilisation of scientific and technological progress to provide for rapid economic development and a 5 higher standard of living for the people is an objective law of social development. Such harmonious and purposeful use of science and technology in the socialist countries for the sake of general prosperity is in contrast to the acute social conflicts that technological advance breeds in the capitalist world. One cannot but agree with Academician M. Millionshchikov who observes in one of the contributions to this book that ``in the final analysis, the scientific and technological revolution is incompatible with social injustice; it will emerge as the crucial test in the great school of human history which, in our profound belief, socialism alone is able to pass" (p. 28).
Soviet social scientists are deeply involved in the study of various problems advanced by the current scientific and technological revolution. What are the general theoretical and methodological problems that it raises? What are its specific features? Its social aspects? The prospects of its development in the socialist, capitalist and developing countries? From what, and how accurately, is it possible to forecast its direction and results through different social formations? What general and specific social conditions work in its favour? How and with what intensity does it effect the development of social relationships, social progress? What effect does it have on culture, on the development of the individual? What factors determine the increasing social role of science under contemporary conditions? Examination of these and similar problems is a most urgent task for Soviet scientists. And this task has not only theoretical but practical implications, since the building of communist society in the Soviet Union is based on all-round utilisation of the latest achievements of science and technology.
The present book, prepared jointly by the Soviet Academy of Sciences Editorial Board Social Sciences Today and Progress Publishers, is designed to show how Soviet scientists 6 are going about this task. The articles have been contributed by a representative team of experts, including philosophers, economists, historians and sociologists, thus providing a comprehensive discussion of the issues involved, and presenting a full-scale picture of the social effects of the advance of technology and science as a whole.
This collection purports to show, above all, how Soviet scholars understand the interrelation between technological and social progress, the social and political headsprings of the scientific and technological revolution. The authors proceed from the fact that this vast process is a natural outcome of the development of the productive forces and international social development in the present historical epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism. The class struggle, the race between the two socio-economic world systems are, as Soviet scientists see it, the social groundwork which has caused, and which explains, the distinctive features of the rapidly developing scientific and technological revolution. It engenders essentially different processes in socialist society, on the one hand, whose social progress is integrally linked with the progress of science and technology, and in capitalist society, on the other, in which such progress results in a polarisation of society, intensification of the class struggle, extension of the social base of the antimonopoly movement and, in the long run, precipitates the necessary and inevitable revolutionary transition to communism.
For this reason the book includes works of a general theoretical nature, such as ``The Crucial Test for Mankind'', by Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences M. Millionshchikov and ``Leninism and the Scientific and Technological Revolution" by S. Trapeznikov, D. Sc. (Hist.). The former discloses the basic and specific features of the scientific and technological revolution, throwing light on the interaction between applied and basic research. It 7 stresses the decisive significance of Marxist-Leninist methodology in dealing with acute problems of the development of science and sets forth the outstanding achievements of Soviet scientists and the singularly favourable conditions that socialism provides for advancing science and promoting its role in every sphere of the life of society. The article by S. Trapeznikov describes the fundamental changes in the relation between science and production, the relation between technological and social progress, and the role of progressive social science in the revolutionary transformation of the world. This article substantiates the essential idea that the scientific and technological revolution sharpens all social collisions in bourgeois society, and shows that scientific analysis of the problems advanced by this revolution bears out the conclusions of Marxism-Leninism on the inevitable change from capitalism to socialism.
Like any other new major development, the scientific and technological revolution, its nature, its social effects and future prospects has become an object of acute ideological struggle. The critics of Marxism strive to use this complex, contradictory phenomenon to indulge in all kinds of theoretical speculations glamourising capitalism, veiling its antagonistic contradictions, belittling the decisive historic role of the working class, and denying the need for a revolutionary remoulding of capitalist society. Trapeznikov emphasises that the heightened activity of the bourgeois theorists charges all Marxists-Leninists with new responsible tasks.
Professor Y. Chekharin investigates the acute ideological struggle being waged over the vital problems raised by the technological leap forward. In his article ``The Scientific and Technological Revolution and Social Progress'', he explains the fundamental idea that the accelerated progress of science and technology is a major objective law of the development of socialist society, the condition and basis of 8 further development of socialist democracy. This article shows the unsoundness of a number of contemporary bourgeois ideological conceptions, such as the theories of `` convergence'', ``technological determinism'', and ``end of ideology''.
In a general methodological article ``Marxist Dialectics and Scientific Discovery" Academician N. Semyonov takes the example of a discovery in chemicophysics to show the definitive role of dialectical-materialist epistemology in exploring nature and its objective laws, thus demonstrating the part played by Marxist epistemology in the development of the natural sciences which form one of the components of the current scientific and technological revolution. Another such article is ``The Scientific and Technological Revolution and Guidance of Social Development" by A. Akhiezer, C. Sc. (Phil.) which throws light on some of the philosophical problems in this field arising from the rapid progress of science and technology.
The social role of science in the context of the present day is discussed in the article ``Specific Features and Social Consequences of the Scientific and Technological Revolution" by V. Marakhov, C. Sc. (Phil.) and Y. Meleshchenko, D. Sc. (Phil.). The authors emphasise that the current revolution embodies two revolutions, one in science and one in technology, taking place concurrently. Is this a ``second industrial revolution'', as some people maintain? The authors come to the conclusion that this is the final burst of speed in a process of socialisation of production that began with the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. Their article also sheds light on the mounting conflict between the biosphere and technosphere under the onslaught of technological innovation.
The role of the scientific and technological revolution in socialist society and the prospects of a further impressive economic upswing of the world socialist system are dealt 9 with in the article by State Planning Committee Chairman N. Baibakov, D. Sc. (Techn.), entitled ``Socialist Planning and Soviet Economic Development'', and in the articles ``Socialist International Division of Labour" by G. Sorokin, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and ``New Horizons of Scientific and Technological Progress in the CMEA Countries" by K. Mikulsky, C. Sc. (Econ.). Using varied past and current data, N. Baibakov shows how socialist planning in the Soviet Union has come to be a major factor in accelerating its economic, scientific, technological and social progress. The article supplies detailed information on the Soviet economy, its urgent problems and the ways of handling them, on further improvement of planning and on the role of scientific forecasting. Proceeding from Marx's definition of the ``division of labour'', G. Sorokin considers the current social situation, pointing out the essentially new features of the division of labour that have emerged in the process of building socialism on an international scale. G. Sorokin's article is supplemented by K. Mikulsky's article, which turns to the prospects of extending economic, scientific and technological co-operation between the socialist countries.
The articles ``The Scientific and Technological Revolution and Aggravation of the Contradictions of Capitalism" by S. Dalin, D. Sc. (Econ.), and ``The Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Social Structure of Capitalist Society" by N. Gausner, D. Sc. (Econ.), deal with the concomitants of the scientific and technological revolution in the capitalist world, demonstrating, among other things, that this revolution runs counter to the very nature of the exploiting system of society. Dalin and Gausner show that, far from being swept away by the scientific and technological progress, social conflicts and class contradictions become sharper under state-monopoly capitalism. They analyse the new forms which such conflicts assume owing to the 10 increasing involvement of diverse sections of society in the anti-monopoly movement.
In discussing the effect of the scientific and technological revolution on the developing countries V. Kollontai, D. Sc. (Econ.), comes to the conclusion that it tends to aggravate the developing countries' social and economic problems. He examines the solutions that may be found in the present changed conditions, citing the experience of the socialist countries and showing that the non-capitalist path has every prospect of success because it is consistent with the new revolutionary tempo of scientific and technological progress.
The three concluding articles take issue with the latest Western bourgeois theories of social development. I. Dvorkin, D. Sc. (Econ.), in his article ``The Scientific and Technological Revolution and Bourgeois Economic Theories of Socialism'', shows how bourgeois political economists are using the scientific and technological revolution to justify capitalism. He examines and lays bare the essence of various technological conceptions, dwelling especially on that of the ``industrial state" theory. In his article ``Two Economic Systems: Theory of Convergence" E. Bregel, D. Sc. (Econ.), demonstrates that this theory reflects some actual features of the modern capitalist economy. Is the capitalist system coming nearer to socialism? Indeed, it is. But not as the proponents of the convergence theory allege. In the situation created by the scientific and technological revolution, capitalism, its technology and organisation of production bring nearer the revolutionary transition to socialism. This does not mean, however, that capitalist society is developing any socialist features within its own framework. The author, facts in hand, successfully refutes assertions to the effect that socialism, in its turn, is moving in the direction of capitalism.
The concluding article in this collection, ``Man in the `Industrial Society'~" by Y. Zamoshkin, D. Sc., and N. 11 Motroshilova, C. Sc., deals with H. Marcuse's conception. The authors come to the conclusion that this conception fails, in effect, to give any scientific substantiation to the future of radical social reform.
The articles presented here do not claim to be exhaustive. Besides confronting scholars with many new and complicated problems, objective reality calls for reassessment of traditional problems, such as the relation between society and nature, between man and technology, between the individual and the collective, and so on. Soviet scientists study all such problems and phenomena in the context of the cardinal social processes developing in our times, subjecting them to comprehensive examination in co-operation with natural scientists and technologists and drawing on the rich experience of building communism.
The present collection does not claim to be a comprehensive and systematic account of all the social problems of the scientific and technological revolution. Its primary aim is to show the main trends and scope of studies being conducted in the Soviet Union by the combined efforts of practical as well as theoretical workers at all levels. In making their selection the editors have given priority to general comparative studies, discussing the impact of the scientific and technological revolution on the development of socialist society and on the socio-political processes taking place in the capitalist world.
[12] __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE CRUCIAL TEST FOR MANKIND Academician Mikhail Millianshchikov,
Vice-President, USSR Academy of Sciences
``In order to build communism we must take technology and science and make them available to wider circles.''
V. I. Lenin
Present-day scientific and technological development, which is now proceeding at a pace that has no parallel in history, is a social and economic factor of the utmost importance. This scientific and technological revolution is no mere background to the struggle being waged to make the world a better place for man to live in; it is more and more becoming a means of that struggle, an effective instrument of social progress.
Therefore, as was stated in the Main Document passed by the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow in 1969, ``An important requisite for the development of socialist society is to give full scope to the scientific and technological revolution, which has become one of the main sectors of the historic competition between capitalism and socialism."^^1^^
The practical task set down in the Directives on the FiveYear Economic Development Plan of the USSR for 1971--75, adopted by the 24th CPSU Congress, is ``to make broader use of the potentialities, created by the scientific and technological revolution in order to accelerate the development of the productive forces".^^2^^
To comprehend the tremendous historic significance of this revolution, the great importance of the problems it _-_-_
~^^1^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, Moscow 1969, Prague, 1969, p. 22.
~^^2^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Documents, Moscow, 1971, p. 248.
13 raises in the technological, economic and social fields, we must first take into account the relative historical novelty of this phenomenon and its rapidly increasing role in all spheres of life. This feature of the scientific and technological revolution is directly observable because the changes it brings about are now occurring within periods shorter than the average human lifespan.Social studies and detailed statistics bear out this intuitive impression of ours. Thus, we learn that 90 per cent of all scientists known to history are our contemporaries. Expenditures on science and technology, the volume of scientific information and other parameters of scientific and technological advance are growing at an even faster rate. This enormous burgeoning strikes us as the more amazing because it has begun in relatively recent times, a mere 30 or perhaps 50 years ago.
How did it all begin? From what origins? A full reply to this question will probably be provided only by the future philosophers and historians of science; yet even now we can take stock of a number of causes that have given rise to this phenomenon.
The most outstanding feature of present-day scientific and technological progress is the establishment of much closer ties and much more rapid interaction between man's activity in getting to know the deeper laws of nature and his activity in producing socially useful goods, that is, between science and industry. In the past, these two areas of human activity were completely or almost completely independent of each other. It took so long for links between them to be formed that many decades would elapse between the appearance of a scientific idea and its industrial application. As a result, science was at times regarded merely as a means of satisfying man's curiosity, as something beyond society's vital interests.
Driven on by their immediate needs engineering and industry developed, for the most part, independently of science and amassed a vast store of experimental data, practical devices and inventions which formed the basis for a gradual improvement in methods of production. The specific methods and even the language of engineers, technicians and technologists who were guided mainly by experience, intuition and tradition, had, it would seem, little in 14 common with the purely logical, abstract methods and phraseology of the science of earlier days.
It was only when each of these two spheres gradually proved its ability to exert a positive influence on the other, and when the tremendous benefit of that influence was realised, that the rapid process of interpenetration of science and industry began and the common language and common methods which we witness today were established.
The further development of science and the inclusion of industry in the general process of the technological revolution have in great measure been linked with the emergence and extraordinarily wide adoption of a new type of scientific research designed to close the gap that existed between science and industry in the past. This new type of purposeful research, which has come to be known as ``applied research'', plays a tremendous part in technological advance, converting the new ideas and fresh knowledge about nature provided by science into the projects and designs for new technical devices, which are then realised in industry, transport, communications and other branches of the economy.
Applied research is also exerting an enormous influence on science as a whole, through the development of new measuring and technical devices that scientists now stand in ever greater need of. The steadily mounting role of applied research in science is reflected in the fact that it now accounts for about half of all research being conducted.
This in no way belittles the role of so-called basic research, i.e., research directed towards gaining new knowledge of nature and new forms of the organisation of matter. On the contrary, the history of science has proved beyond dispute that progress in all other scientific research, in technology and industry as a whole, stems in ever greater degree from basic research, providing, as it does, the theoretical foundation of all scientific and technological progress. This is where new ideas and principles are brought forth from which all lines of scientific and technological advance draw strength.
It is now recognised that the farther we penetrate into the structure of matter, and learn, at all levels, the laws of its organisation, the greater the practical results we obtain. Thus, basic research is among the leading areas of human 15 activity and a source of future radical changes in the life of the world.
Although individual scientific discoveries frequently do not occur just where they are expected, it may be safely said, that at present the most revolutionary advances in our ideas of nature are to be expected in such fields of science as astrophysics, the physics of elementary particles, and biology. Basic regularities as yet unknown to us lie concealed in the vast concentrations of matter located millions and thousands of millions of light years away from us, in the world of elementary particles that are infinitesimaUy minute in scale and lifespan, and in the marvellously intricate organisation of biological systems.
Of course, nobody can foretell exactly when decisive discoveries in these sciences will be made. However, the rates at which new facts that do not fit into the framework of existing theories are being amassed along with the concentrated efforts of a huge army of scientists using unique equipment---all provide ground for optimistic hopes.
In the last few decades tremendous progress has been made in the development of astronomy and astrophysics, and discoveries of fundamental significance have taken place under the influence of new concepts of the structure of matter obtained in the study of elementary particles, the atomic nucleus and plasma, and also thanks to the creation of powerful means of astronomic observation such as radio telescopes. Thus, a few years ago radio telescopes helped to register intensive sources of cosmic radiation which scientists managed to link up with rather faint stars. A thorough examination of the nature of such radiation led to the conclusion that the objects discovered are located almost at the boundary of the observable region of the Universe, at a distance of 5,000 million light years, and the radiation power exceeds anything hitherto known. To explain the gigantic energies radiated by them from the standpoint of thermonuclear synthesis---the most powerful energy-producing mechanism yet known---it would be necessary to assume that its source must be a synchronous thermonuclear explosion of a hundred million stars, each equal to our Sun in size. Other explanations of this phenomenon lead to even bolder surmises that contradict all existing concepts. This provokes the thought that here we 16 encounter certain new laws of the behaviour of matter under exceptional conditions.
Another outstanding event in the world of astronomy was the discovery of pulsars, stars that emit radio impulses, light and X-rays. The importance of this discovery lies in the fact that pulsars have a very short period of impulse repetition, which means that their dimensions are minute as compared with the energies they radiate. Astronomy has never had to deal with objects possessing such an immense concentration of energy. The most generally accepted explanation of this paradox is that pulsars are what is known as neutron stars, i.e., each of them is made up entirely of a huge atomic nucleus. The degree to which the physical conditions in such a star differ from anything hitherto known to science can be seen from the fact that a single cubic centimetre of a neutron star on earth would weigh ] ,000 million tons. Research into such phenomena, which are linked with insufficiently studied processes of the emission of huge energies, holds out promise of ample new material for an understanding of as yet unperceived basic laws ol nature and their possible future application.
In recent decades the world has witnessed an impressive demonstration of the global significance of nuclear-physical research and its profound influence on technological progress. Nuclear physics has served as the starting point of many radical changes that have taken place as a result of harnessing nuclear energy, not only in science and technology but even in international relations.
The results of nuclear research have found application in controlling and automating various industrial processes, in prospecting minerals and in finding new supersensitive methods of analysis, and in other areas of science and technology. Entirely new scientific branches have emerged and developed on the basis of nuclear research, such as radiation chemistry and radiation genetics.
All the past achievements in nuclear physics---advances made at the stage of semi-quantitative ideas of the properties of the atomic nucleus---were merely results of the first discoveries in the study of elementary particles and their interaction. A striving to attain greater accuracy in this approximated picture of nuclear structure and to explain the nature of nuclear forces has brought in its train such a __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---1284 17 series of new problems and discoveries in the field of elementary particles that their significance has far exceeded the framework of the targets originally set.
It is generally accepted by experts that the solution of problems which have accumulated since the development of the physics of elementary particles must be accompanied by a revolution in the fundamental views concerning the structure of matter, a revolution whose significance will be commensurable with the appearance of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. However, each new step in this field requires highly complex experiments which call for heavy expenditures. In the first place, progress in nuclear physics is now determined by the available giant accelerators of elementary particles (like the proton accelerator in Serpukhov, with a power of 70,000 million electron-volts), many miles long, whose power consumption runs into dozens of megawatts.
The impending revolution in biology is becoming more and more tangible, especially in one of its main lines, dealing with uncovering the mystery of life mechanics, heredity and evolution. The characteristic thing about the presentday condition of science is that the greatest advance towards the solution of these problems, which are of vital importance to all people, is linked with the utilisation of quantitative methods based on the achievements of physics and chemistry and with the penetration into the very structure of living cells and the processes in them. Such major achievements in this field as the cracking of the DNA code, the elucidation of the role played by desoxyribonucleic and ribonucleic acids in transmitting heredity features, and a number of other outstanding discoveries, give reason for hoping that the time is not far off when biologists will find the key to controlling life processes and purposeful changing of living nature. All this holds out a promise of unparalleled opportunities in the fight against disease and hunger in the world.
Of special significance to progress in the main areas of natural science and to all present-day scientific and technological development as a whole are the achievements in cybernetics, which works out the general methods of analysing the logical processes and nexuses existing in nature and society. A great stimulus to the development of cybernetics 18 was provided by the appearance of computers, which have marked a new stage in raising labour productivity in many spheres of human endeavour. Various functions which were once considered the prerogative of the human brain may now be entrusted to electronic machines. Today no country can successfully develop its economy, technology or science unless it possesses up-to-date computers for purposes of management, information, and so on. Owing to this new branch of science mankind is entering a new stage in controlling a variety of processes.
The overall trend in scientific and technological progress reflects a kind of division of labour between the stages of basic and applied research, technical development and industry. Each stage must ensure continuity and speed in the general scientific and technological advance---from the discovery of new laws and phenomena in nature to technological and industrial innovations.
The sharp decrease in the time required for circulation of the stream of ideas and methods of production has greatly increased the dependence of the general rate of scientific and technological progress on improvements in the entire system of its lines of advance and the rapidity with which work is carried out at each stage. Indeed, since the links between the individual components of this process are becoming the decisive factor, their development should be studied in total. This approach reveals a number of characteristic and qualitatively new features that arise as a result of the greater complexity and the mutual influence of science, technology and industry. The development of each of the components of scientific and technological progress stimulates the development of many other components and, at the same time, is stimulated by the other components.
Thus, research into the structure of solids, which among other things has led to the discovery of superconductivity, has recently made it possible to build magnets with windings made of superconductive alloys which completely eliminate heat losses. It is now practicable to obtain magnetic fields of tremendous tensions in small devices. The creation of such superconductive magnets has given an impetus to many branches of science and technology, including solid state physics.
Other conditions being equal, the overall rate of __PRINTERS_P_20_COMMENT__ 2* 19 development in individual branches of scientific and technological progress hinges, in considerable measure, on reduction of the time spent on the achievement or introduction of any new advance in each of these fields. The avalanching, geometrically progressive nature of this factor's influence is of great significance. It is this feature that gives such great importance to the optimum planning of scientific and technological development, since within a very short period any substantial errors may cost far more to rectify than modifications introduced at the proper time.
Hence another characteristic of scientific and technological progress---the need for advance along the entire front and the elimination of blank spots on the map of scientific and technological progress.
The highly ramified nature of the connections between individual branches of present-day science, technology and industry, as well as the unexpectedness of new and promising discoveries, means that all branches of science and technology must be maintained in a condition conducive to the acceptance, development and utilisation of new ideas and discoveries.
There have been many instances of new discoveries converting areas of science previously regarded as unpromising, and even forgotten, into arenas of intensive progress.
Thus, the discovery of the principle of coherent radiation generation within the radio and optical bands with the aid of masers and lasers has led to rapid progress in creating perfect crystals, and also in the wave theory of light, although the latter was considered a completed science in the early years of this century; and in a number of other traditional fields. The same discovery has also provided a powerful impetus to further application of the wave theory of light which, for instance, has found expression in such a splendid achievement as holography, i.e., genuinely threedimensional photography, which is leading up to the threedimensional films and television of the future.
Although, at each stage of scientific advance, the efforts of scientists and industrial personnel are concentrated on certain major fields, an analysis of scientific development over a lengthy period shows that no concentration of forces and means in individual spheres can substitute for a general 20 high level of a country's scientific and technological potential, for overall and deep-going progress in science and technology.
Consequently, it is a vital condition for the rapid development both of science and industry that harmonious development be achieved along the entire front of scientific and technological progress---ranging from basic research to production.
Mention may be made of a number of fields where the influence of science has had maximum effect, and where its technological application has been of great practical significance. The complex of scientific research connected with the development of power engineering, for example, provides a vivid example of extensive and deep-going research applied to practical purposes.
The development of power resources, characteristic of most countries and expressed, in particular, in the ever mounting consumption of electrical energy, has created favourable preconditions for progress in large-scale nuclear power engineering. Here the efforts of technologists to design sufficiently advanced, safe and economical types of nuclear reactors and develop sources of fuel for nuclear power installations should provide a solution to the major problem of nuclear power engineering---making nuclear electric power stations economically competitive with conventional power stations. The most promising solution of this problem at present is work on the so-called breeder reactors that reproduce or extensively reproduce nuclear fuel. The use of such reactors will multiply the natural reserves of nuclear fuel about a hundred times, reducing its cost to a fraction of the value of the electricity produced.
The development of effective methods of transforming heat energy into electrical energy is of considerable significance to the future of power engineering. Here the greatest prospect is held out by the magneto-hydrodynamic method of transformation, which is based on a current being excited in hot ionised gas moving across a magnetic field. The successful solution of this problem will be of tremendous importance both in the creation of a fundamentally new type of generator and in increasing the efficiency of conventional power stations. As higher working-gas temperatures 21 and ever more heat-proof materials are created, the role of this method of obtaining electrical energy will grow continuously, and it may be expected that in future a large share of electric power will be provided by MHD-- generators.
The special significance of research in solid state physics is connected with the demands of technological progress and, in particular, the problem of creating new materials required by numerous branches of engineering and industry. The fundamental task in the development of new and advanced construction materials is the achievement of a whole range of properties, such as strength, corrosion resistance, plasticity and so on. The solution of these problems calls for profound theoretical research into the structure of the electron, defects in crystals, the influence of admixtures and the like. Thus, research into superrefined ideal monocrystals has already produced materials with unprecedentedly high mechanical properties which give them many advantages over metals.
No country today can exist without a variety of means and devices for communications and navigation such as radio, television, radar and telemetry. This branch of technology, perhaps, most vividly reflects the latest scientific achievements, particularly in solid state physics. The revolution in radio engineering brought about by the discovery of semi-conductor devices, which have replaced electron valves, is developing towards the utilisation of film elements, entailing further miniaturisation, higher operating speeds, reliability and efficiency in electronic circuits.
These improvements are especially important in computer technology since, when applied to each of the thousands of components, they signify a qualitatively new level of development. The role of computers in science, technology, industry and other spheres of human activity is common knowledge. Hardly a single important scientific experiment or theoretical calculation is conceivable today without the use of computers. Space studies, gas- and hydrodynamic calculations, meteorological research and economico-- mathematical studies now depend to a considerable degree on progress in computerisation. It would be hard to find any branch of the economy in which computers were not being used.
22In our times of breath-taking scientific and technological progress, due heed should also be given to the rational exploitation and restoration of the natural wealth which is the foundation of mankind's future development. Great attention is now being paid to working out the fundamental principles for the economic and geographical assessment of the development and complex utilisation of natural resources in various parts of the world, including the seas and oceans. One of the main problems, on whose solution advance in agriculture hinges, is that of the study of the soil resources, of increasing fertility on the basis of irrigation, land reclamation and employment of scientifically grounded methods of tilling and fertilising the soil.
The need for biological resources to be more rationally utilised demands further work on the problem of the conservation and reproduction of natural animal and plant populations. Research now being conducted into their number and dynamics, as well as the interrelations between various species of animals and plants, makes it possible to evolve effective measures to counter agricultural pests and carriers of diseases.
When considering the tremendous socio-economic role played by science in human progress, we cannot but take pride in the fact that in the Soviet Union---the first land of victorious socialism---scientific development has become a matter of state importance.
This turning point in the development of Soviet science is closely bound up with the name of Lenin, who constantly insisted that communism and science must go hand in hand, and that communism can be built only on the basis of scientific knowledge. Lenin's confidence in the boundless possibilities of discovering the laws of nature, in the unlimited possibilities of science, is expressed in his words written as far back as 1909 in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: ``The electron is as inexhaustible as the atom."^^1^^ This confidence exerted a tremendous influence on the shaping of the CPSU's policy towards science.
Lenin considered technological progress and the reorganisation of the country's entire social and economic life on a scientific basis as one of the main conditions for the _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow, Vol. 14, p. 262,
23 triumph of socialism. He thought it essential that ``learning shall really become part of our very being, that it shall actually and fully become a constituent element of our social life".^^1^^A utilitarian approach to the significance of science was alien to Lenin, who did not restrict his attention only to those fields of science that could make an immediate contribution to the development of the economy and to improving the working people's well-being. He showed concern and gave support to all other lines of scientific advance even at a time that was most difficult for the Soviet republic.
This profound understanding of the role of science has ensured the development in the Soviet Union of a broad front of scientific research, ranging from the most abstract fields to concrete technical projects. This approach to scientific development has shown itself to be the only correct one and is in accord with the objective development of the productive forces and of science, which is drawing ever closer to them. It is thanks to such a policy that the Soviet Union has become a pioneer in technological progress, with scientific research attaining an unparalleled sweep. In the USSR today there are almost 5,000 scientific institutions possessing such unique equipment as powerful accelerators of charged particles, nuclear reactors, optical and radio telescopes, ocean research vessels, and highly complex experimental installations for the study of technological processes.
A first-class basis for research into the physics of elementary particles, including the world's largest proton accelerator in Serpukhov, has been established in the USSR. Work is approaching completion on the world's largest, six-metre optical telescope; unique radio telescopes are being built and extra-atmospheric astronomy is developing. The basis for research into all the fundamental areas of physicomathematical, chemical and biological sciences, and sciences that study the Earth and the Universe is being ever more rapidly improved. The intimate links between science and the life of the country---a characteristic feature of Soviet science--- have led to the establishment of new branches of technology _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Moscow. Vol. 33. p. 489.
24 and industry, which are playing an important part in today's scientific and technological revolution and have exerted a beneficial influence on the development of science itself.Soviet scientific achievements in a number of fields of aerodynamics and other departments of mechanics, and also in the theory of combustion and explosion made it possible to lay the theoretical foundation for the development of present-day aviation and rocketry. Successful definition of the theoretical fundamentals of chemistry, petrochemistry, and non-organic and element-organic chemistry had provided the theoretical basis for advances in various branches of the chemical industry and metallurgy. Theoretical research conducted by geologists has provided the groundwork for what can indeed be described as a fantastic extension of the country's mineral and raw material resources---one of the essentials of rapid progress in industry.
Work done by Soviet scientists in radiophysics and electronics, optics, solid state physics, the physics of cryogenics, the theory of automatic control and other branches has paved the way for the solution of major scientific and technical problems.
The results of biological research have helped to raise the level of agricultural production and the food industry and have provided the theoretical basis for solving public health problems.
Research by Soviet physicists, chemists and mathematicians has created the necessary preconditions for the speediest harnessing of nuclear energy. A powerful atomic power industry has been established in the USSR, and nuclear weapons that are vitally necessary for the defence of the Soviet Union and other socialist states have been built. The USSR pioneered the peaceful use of nuclear energy and initiated research into the problem of controlled thermonuclear synthesis.
The alliance between science and industry has found splendid embodiment in Soviet successes in rocketry and in one of the most outstanding achievements of our era---man's penetration into outer space. Space studies have not only opened up vast opportunities for research in geophysics, astronomy and other sciences, and enriched our knowledge of the Earth and the Sun, but have also made it possible to solve many important problems of telecommunications, 25 navigation and meteorology. They have opened up a real prospect of human flight to other planets.
The enormous attention paid in the Soviet Union to the natural sciences and their technological application is in keeping with the rapid growth of their role in society's development which we have been witnessing during recent decades. This in no way belittles the significance of sciences that study society, the individual and various forms of social consciousness. Marxist-Leninist theory is the guideline in the development of socialist society and a powerful instrument for cognising and transforming the world.
The front of research is exceptionally wide in the Soviet Union---from the study of nature's profound laws and phenomena to the work that is directly linked with the concrete tasks of the national economy. Each of these areas is ultimately directed towards getting the knowledge of nature and subordinating it to man, consolidating the economic and defensive might of the Soviet state and enhancing the wellbeing and culture of the people.
The scientific and technological revolution is making a vital contribution to the world-wide triumph of socialism, a scientifically grounded social system. Its role stems from the dialectical nature of the changes in the material life of society. Indeed, on the one hand, the results of the scientific and technological revolution are too attractive not to be sought after. On the other hand, participation in scientific and technological progress inevitably brings in its train a conflict between all-pervading scientific ideas of the world and the unreasonable, outmoded and unjust social institutions of a society based on exploitation.
Our faith in the future and our confidence in the ultimate victory of socialism and communism are based on the major scientific conclusion drawn by Marxism-Leninism: technological and social progress is incompatible with the system of exploitation of man by man and the principle of private ownership of the means of production, which inevitably give rise to antagonistic contradictions in society. The historical experience of the Soviet Union as well as that of a number of other countries whose economies are organised on socialist lines have fully borne out this proposition. The balanced and purposeful utilisation of the results of scientific and technological progress for the benefit of the people's 26 welfare in the socialist countries leads to a continuous growth of their economic power and to the improvement of social and cultural life.
In bourgeois countries, however, the scientific and technological revolution runs counter to the very nature of the capitalist system, which hampers the establishment of a planned and co-ordinated economy. The course of this revolution will undoubtedly exacerbate such contradictions and increasingly expose the historical obsoleteness of the principle of private enterprise in the age of nuclear energy, electronics and cybernetics.
In the developed capitalist countries, the process of the scientific and technological revolution prepares, on the one hand, the material and technical basis of the socialist society of the future in the form of large-scale industry based on automation. On the other hand, capitalism increasingly discredits itself in the eyes of the working people, since the activities of huge monopolies, dictated by the drive for maximum profits, come more and more into conflict with the national interests, thereby creating the fundamental pre-conditions for the triumph of socialism in the countries concerned. Of course, the concrete forms of that transition depend on a number of causes and cannot be foretold in detail.
At present, the swiftly growing gap between the developed capitalist countries and the developing countries stands out among the contradictions resulting from the domination of the capitalist mode of production. In view of the rapid rate of scientific and technological progress, this gap is growing at the technical, economic and social levels, thus fostering greater exploitation of the developing countries by the big capitalist powers. The natural and legitimate striving of the developing countries to escape the fate of becoming new colonies and to protect their economies from domination by foreign monopolies makes them realise the unacceptability of the capitalist road of development and broadens the basis of socialism in the world.
Although in capitalist countries the scientific and technological revolution is developing in conditions of ever mounting contradictions, it has not ceased to stimulate progress in technology, industry, transport, communications and 27 other branches of the economy. This fact should not be neglected.
As L. I. Brezhnev said in his speech at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow in 1969, ``We have no desire to underrate the strength of those with whom we have to compete in the field of science and technology."^^1^^
The attainment in a socialist state of a level of labour productivity higher than capitalism's (which is impossible without the all-round development of science and technology) is an important condition of the new system's uninterrupted progress.
The socialist countries still have very much to do for the development of science and technology, for the greater application of their achievements in these spheres.
In the final analysis, the scientific and technological revolution is incompatible with social injustice; it will emerge as the crucial test in the great school of human history which, in our profound belief, socialism alone is able to pass.
_-_-_~^^1^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow 1969, p. 142.
[28] __ALPHA_LVL1__ MARXIST DIALECTICS Nikolai Semyonov,
Member of the Presidium, USSR Academy of Sciences
Marx enriched science by his discovery and elaboration of materialist dialectics. Since it is a method of cognition, a method of reasoning, materialist dialectics is equally applicable to the development of all sciences, whether social or natural. Dialectical materialism is fundamental to any conscious attempt to change society, its industry and culture.
Engels was instrumental in developing and applying the Marxist dialectical method to the problems of natural science.
Lenin made an original contribution to Marxist theory by relating it to the new conditions of social life, that is to say, by putting Marx's concepts into practice.
Lenin's behest that we should establish and consolidate an alliance between philosophy and natural science, an alliance equally necessary for both sciences, calls for a clear conception of how they can and must enrich each other.
Further reflection upon this question inevitably suggests the conclusion that the Marxist dialectical method of reasoning is philosophy's most valuable achievement, an achievement it can and must share with natural science. It is from this standpoint that philosophy appears above all as Logic with a capital L, as a theory of knowledge that corresponds with the present level of development of the 20th century natural and socio-historical sciences and their current needs.
Lenin regarded this as the main principle of dialectical materialism. Agreeing with Engels, he stated this concept most emphatically in the following words: ``Dialectical materialism 'does not need any philosophy standing above 29 the other sciences'. From previous philosophy there remains 'the science of thought and its laws---formal logic and dialectics'. Dialectics, as understood by Marx, and also in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology."^^1^^
Obviously, only such a conception of philosophy can justify the notion of an alliance, of voluntary and fruitful co-operation between philosophy and natural science for the purpose of understanding and transforming the world. Indeed, all the unfavourable tendencies which have variously overshadowed the relations between philosophers and natural scientists may well have been due to the abandonment of Lenin's conception of philosophy, of what philosophy's subject-matter and, consequently, its role in developing a scientific world outlook should be.
Philosophy can play an active role in developing a scientific world outlook only if it is treated like all the other sciences, that is, as a distinct science with its own clearly defined subject-matter, to be studied in the same thorough and specific way as the subject-matter of any other science.
It is quite clear that, contrary to the assertions of some philosophers, philosophy's subject-matter cannot be the ``universe'', because the universe is cognised by the entire system of natural and social sciences. Such an approach virtually deprives philosophy of its subject-matter.
The conception of philosophy as a distinct science concerned with the ``universe'' was understandable and justifiable at a time when the natural and social sciences were in their infancy, and had not yet produced, or even tried to produce, any definite view of the world and of man himself. Under those conditions, philosophy was forced to find means to compensate for the inadequate development of the specific sciences, and to construct a special, ``philosophical'' world outlook which stood side by side with specific scientific knowledge and even above it. That time, however, is long since past.
During the second half of the 19th century the natural and social sciences matured to a point where they could, with their own resources, produce an integral, coherent concept of the universe and man's role therein.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 54.
30Some philosophers occasionally voice the apprehension that if Marxist-Leninist philosophy is identified with Logic and with the theory of knowledge it may lose its significance as a world outlook and come to play a lesser role, and that a break may even result between philosophy and natural science.
No such consequences need be feared if we take a truly Leninist view of Logic. On the contrary, our sciences, our entire culture are being developed through reasoning based on human practice, and the science of reasoning, therefore, retains its universal significance and primary role in the development of a scientific understanding of the world.
The categories of materialist dialectics are meaningful; they reflect the objective world with all its contradictions and interrelations. They are not stagnant concepts, but continue to develop and acquire greater meaning. That is why the application of the system of dialectical categories, dialectics as a method of cognition, to various spheres of science stimulates and develops thinking in these sciences and thus leads to the practical transformation of objective reality.
The proletariat's revolutionary class struggle became meaningful and purposeful only after Karl Marx laid the foundation of scientific communism by applying the method of dialectical materialism to the economic sciences and thus initiating the scientifically grounded ideology of the revolutionary movement.
The concept of the ``universe'' as the subject of philosophy has impelled some philosophers to invent universal abstract schemes and to produce a slightly renovated natural philosophy. This, as Engels pointed out in his day, is an absolutely useless and in certain circumstances even harmful occupation, because it occasionally leads to attempts to impose upon natural science not only a preconceived pattern of development but even conclusions.
I have no wish to accuse Soviet philosophers, most of whom adopted sound views. Some of them, however, and some others who were not philosophers, rejected, and rather strongly as a matter of fact, the principle of relativity, cybernetics, and the concept of resonance in chemistry. There were also attempts to provide philosophical substantiation for the erroneous general biological theory 31 propounded by Lysenko, Prezent and others, who wished to dictate to science.
I think this was due to a misunderstanding on their part not only of natural science, but of the very essence of Marxist-Leninist dialectics.
Scientists can finally shake off their superficial positivist interpretation of the results of their own work and the rubbish of nature philosophy and its influence only by accepting dialectics in the Leninist sense of modern materialist logic and the theory of knowledge.
Some natural scientists reason as follows. Our task is to observe and describe empirical facts and to establish their interrelationships, formulating these in the language of mathematics. The important thing is to construct a formally non-contradictory system of equations; how that system is interpreted in respect of a world outlook is entirely immaterial and can well be left to the philosophers, who love ``pseudo-problems''. Such positivist attitudes are sometimes the result of philosophical naivete, sometimes of lack of faith in the power of dialectical thinking and man's ability to understand the external world.
But natural science itself has to pay a high price for this attitude. Already at the dawn of the 20th century, the positivist orientation of Mach and Ostwald had begun to interfere with the promising trend in science towards studying the basic causes of phenomena, their intrinsic essence, and their common basis, which is connected primarily with the structure and properties of the atom. It will be recalled that in the 19th century Boltzmann's great discovery of the nature of entropy and its connection with probability evoked a sharply unfavourable reaction from positivist thinkers.
Logic with a capital L (which is, as I have said, Lenin's definition of logic, dialectics and the theory of knowledge as a unity) takes account of the legitimate rights of formal logic. But dialectics, like logic and the theory of knowledge, brings out the true role of formal logic in the development of scientific cognition. The role of formal logic in the advance of cognition is most clearly revealed in mathematics, especially when applied to the processing of data supplied by the other sciences. That is why the relation between logic and mathematics has attracted the attention of both mathematicians and philosophers specialising in logic.
32It is rather widely accepted that mathematics is in general identical with formal logic: both mathematics and logic are regarded as a purely formal apparatus of reasoning, as a ``language of science" (its ``vocabulary'' and ``syntax''). This view was given its most consistent expression in Bertrand Russell's dictum that logic is the youth of mathematics, and mathematics the maturity of logic. This would be an incorrect view of mathematics, taken as a whole, as a distinct science in its development. But of this more below.
However, in the application of the available mathematical apparatus to the processing of data supplied by other sciences mathematics is indeed a formal-logical apparatus. The apparatus of mathematical logic---precisely because of its purely formal character---has served as the theoretical basis for the creation of modern computing techniques. In principle, all the automated and strictly formalised operations of the human brain without exception can be transferred to a machine, thereby relieving man of a mass of work which requires time rather than intelligence and creative ability. Thus, despite (and, to some extent, thanks to) the circumscribed character of formal logic, its application has had tremendous consequences, which are already engulfing the social sphere as well.
But it is already safe to say that machines will prove powerless in every case involving contradictions which cannot be resolved by purely formal means.
For all the importance of formal logic, it is, however, by no means the main part of Logic with a capital L. Here is the opinion of a group of French mathematicians: ``The mode of reasoning which consists in building a chain of syllogisms, is only a transforming mechanism which can be applied regardless of premises. ... In other words, it is only the external form ... a language, you might say, which is proper to mathematics and no more. To regulate the vocabulary of this language, to make its syntax more precise, is to do a very useful thing.. .. But---and we insist---this is only one side and the least interesting one at that."^^1^^
The limited role of formal logic in the development of the sciences springs from its ``indifference'' both to initial _-_-_
~^^1^^ Nicolas Bourbaki, ``L'Architecture des mathematiques. Les grands courants de la Pens6e mathematique'', Cahiers du Sud, 1948, pp. 35--47.
__PRINTERS_P_34_COMMENT__ 3---1284 33 premises and to the composition of the ``concepts'' subjected to demonstrative exposition (that is, to the ``content'' side of the matter in general, to the ``extralinguistic factors''), and this allows it to be used for the most diverse purposes, some unscientific and essentially retrograde. Let us recall, for instance, that the scholastic interpretation of Aristotle's logic has served theologists as a formal apparatus of reasoning and has been used by them for their unscientific purposes (especially in the Middle Ages). One need give no other examples than the scholastics' struggle against the concepts of Giordano Bruno and Galileo.These premises, and the concepts of the natural and social sciences which reflect them, arise through the interpretation of experiments, the experience of real human activity, and the practice of transforming nature. In certain cases this becomes quite obvious even in mathematics.
Euclid's famous Elements, which laid the foundations of geometry, rest on premises (axioms or postulates) which are clearly non-formal. Euclid's axioms are based on reality, that is to say, on the practice of surveying, architecture, road-building, shipbuilding, military science and other similar branches of material culture in antiquity. In other cases it is not so easy to trace the roots of theoretical premises and concepts in mathematics, and it is therefore no accident that the neo-positivists appeal to modern mathematics in their effort to prove that our knowledge has in general nothing in common with objective reality and is purely a mental contrivance. It would be highly important for Marxist philosophers, working in close contact with mathematicians, to elaborate this important epistemological and ideological problem.
__*_*_*__The natural sciences study the properties of matter and set themselves the immediate task of helping man to understand the material world. In the past, this entailed improving the active, purposeful, and clearly reproducible contact between man's thinking and the objects of the surrounding world. Only such contact could lead to formation of the basic postulates and concepts in theoretical mechanics, physics and chemistry, and determine the advance of natural 34 science as a whole. By the close of the Renaissance conscious, purposeful contact between thinking and the surrounding world, expressed in the shape of experiment, had developed into the definitive instrument of scientific cognition.
Experiment differs essentially from the contemplation and observation of nature to which the thinkers of ancient Greece mostly confined themselves. Experiment must be purposeful, if it is to wrest from nature the answer to a question formulated according to strict theoretical principles. (The result, admittedly, is sometimes quite unexpected, and instead of an answer, nature sets the scientist another problem.) This means that experiment can play a revolutionaiy role only where it is closely linked with the development of theoretical thinking. It was this close contact between the development of theoretical thinking and the development of scientific experiment that marked the birth of the natural sciences in the modern meaning of the word. Experimentally verified premises were systematically put into the basis of scientific knowledge. And the subsequent development of science assumed the form of a dramatic dialogue between the existing system of concepts and the data yielded by new experiments.
Theory usually develops in such a manner that a new experiment (or more precisely, the old one, now interpreted) causes, or, rather, brings out and reveals the contradictory situation inherent in the existing system of concepts. This necessitates creative thinking of a kind that formal logic no longer provides, namely, dialectical thinking.
Experiments are usually staged to clarify some particular aspects of theory within the framework of the existing concepts. Such inquiries are very useful for the verification and expansion of theory, and for establishing the conditions for its application in practice. However, they do not go beyond the framework of existing concepts; nor do they lead to revolutionary advances in science. Substantial advances in science follow discoveries that come into conflict with existing systems of concepts. The resolution of such contradictions leads to the emergence of new scientific concepts, which are sometimes epoch-making and revolutionise science as a whole. But much more often experiments are of limited significance, ensuring a substantial advance only with reference to some particular scientific question. Nevertheless, __PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 3* 35 taken together, all these discoveries, major or minor, do in the main determine the revolutionary advance of scientific knowledge.
The Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge objectively reflects the process of creative scientific endeavour even when that endeavour is spontaneous. When this theory is applied consciously by the scientist, natural science tends to develop at a more rapid rate. This relationship between the scientist's work and the theory of knowledge is much more clearly expressed in the brilliant, though rare works of epoch-making significance.
At the moment, however, I should like to go into this matter with reference to some of the very common ``minor'' discoveries, confining myself, of course, to those that entail the emergence of a new, albeit specific concept. I intend to cite a concrete example from the history of those ``minor'' discoveries, and to follow closely the train of thought that leads from the contradiction brought out in the experiment to the emergence of a new concept. As a rule, scientists, in their treatises, never deal with this preliminary process of reasoning. Purely because of this (and not because I attach any special importance to the experiment), I have chosen as an example one of our early studies, namely, the discovery, between 1925 and 1928, of what is known as limiting phenomena in chemical kinetics and the establishment of the concept of branched chain reactions. This discovery was made by myself and my closest pupils, then very young (among them are the present Academicians Y. Khariton and V. Kondratyev and Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences A. Kovalsky and A. Shalnikov).
We were to study the phenomenon of chemiluminescence that occurs during the oxidation of phosphorus vapour by oxygen. To detect optimal light emission, the experiments were carried out under low oxygen pressures. Quite unexpectedly we discovered that with the reduction of the initial pressure of the gas mixture down to a certain pressure PI (we called this pressure the lower limit), the mixture completely failed to react and, therefore, to emit any light. In that state it could be kept for days without any signs of a reaction. When the pressure was slightly above this limit, the reaction was very rapid, with intensive emission of light. 36 The rapid reaction at pressure above the limit came to a complete halt as soon as the pressure of the reactive mixture fell to a certain residual level, slightly below the lower limit.
We observed the same phenomena with various other mixtures of oxygen and various combustible gases. The value of the lower limit proved to be dependent on a number of other parameters besides pressure, such as temperature, the radius of the vessel, dilution of the combustible mixture with the inert gas argon, and the number of active admixtures slowing down the reaction. Each of these parameters, when varied smoothly under constant pressure and constant other parameters, has its own limiting value, separating the region of the very rapid reaction from that of chemical inertness.
A phenomenon outwardly similar to our discovery was already known. This is the spontaneous explosion of combustible gases when the temperature rises above a certain critical point. We found it necessary to make a special study of this phenomenon. It turned out that the mixture reacted mildly at a slow, but entirely measurable speed, which increased with a rise in temperature. When the temperature reached a certain critical value an explosion followed. It was found that at a constant temperature there is a critical pressure and even a critical vessel size. In other words, everything looked very much like the discovery I have described.
Our group then began to study the causes of this phenomenon and so arrived at the theory of thermal explosion. It showed that this type of explosion had nothing in common with the limiting phenomena we had observed in the phosphorus oxidation type of reaction. An attempt to dismiss our phenomenon as a thermal avalanche failed (although the thermal explosion theory paved the way for the general theory of combustion and explosion).
Consequently, in our work on phosphorus oxidation we had discovered some absolutely new and unusual phenomena in chemical kinetics which could be called ``all-- or-nothing" phenomena, with a marked boundary between them. These phenomena were in basic contradiction to all the fundamental propositions of chemical kinetics of the time, which held above all that the rates of all chemical 37 reactions varied smoothly with temperature and pressure, in accordance with certain universal regularities.
Our first report, published in early 1926, was sharply criticised by the eminent German Professor Bodenstein, then the doyen of chemical kinetics. He wrote that our results were impossible theoretically and contained gross methodological errors experimentally.
We had to go back to our experiment and eliminate all the methodological errors pointed out by Bodenstein. In 1927, we published another and longer article which confirmed and enlarged on the 1925 experiments. Bodenstein thereupon withdrew all his objections, first in a private letter, and then in a public statement. The new facts could be considered well established. The contradiction between them and the existing concepts in chemical kinetics stood out with ample clarity.
Since we had no idea how to resolve this contradiction, we turned to experiment once again to establish with the utmost precision the empirical regularities of limiting phenomena, mathematically expressed. We discovered that all these regularities fitted into the rather simple formula ®S =1, where 8 is the value characteristic of each type of reaction, and O is any given, fairly simple combination of the parameters mentioned above (pressure, temperature, vessel radius, etc.). At first, this provided no explanation of the phenomenon in question.
In our case, the molecules of oxygen and phosphorus below the given pressure limit were inert in respect of each other. This could naturally be attributed to the high energy of activation and the low temperature of the experiment. But this implied that such a reaction ought not to occur even above the limit. Consequently, the rapid reaction above the limit, which we had actually observed, had an entirely different mechanism. At this point, we recalled Bodenstein's remarkable discovery, made between 1913 and 1916 in his study of the photochemical reaction producing HC1 from the gaseous H2 and C12. He had demonstrated that for each quantum of light absorbed by a C12 molecule there was produced up to one million HCl molecules (known as the quantum yield), instead of a pair of molecules, as Einstein's formula had suggested and as had frequently been confirmed in experiments with other photochemical reactions. 38 Bodenstein had called this remarkable phenomenon a ``chain reaction''. After three years of search and failure, Nernst and Bodenstein produced a correct reaction mechanism, which was a brilliant description of all the experimentally discovered kinetic regularities. It introduced into chemical kinetics for the first time the concept of particles with a high reactivity---free atoms and radicals---which are produced when one of the bonds of a molecule is ruptured.
Mechanism of H2 -t- C12 Reaction C12 + quantum of ligM Cl + Cl}g-eneration of chain chain propagation chain termination H, ---------- HCl + H HCt + Cl HCl -t- H H +C12 Cl + H2 etc. Ct+CI------------ C12 Cl + active admixture H2 + C12 = 2 HCl
From the kinetic regularities developed by Bodenstein, it is easy to determine the length of the chain v, i.e., the value proportional to the rate of the reaction, which is made up of the number of elementary reactions in the chain from its generation to its termination. Both experimentally and theoretically, this value varies smoothly with the variations of all the parameters, and that is why it was of no direct assistance to us in explaining our limiting phenomena, which were characterised by a sharp difference in reaction rates. Nevertheless, we were haunted by the idea or rather, a vague feeling, that the phosphorus oxidation reaction was somehow connected with the concept of Bodenstein's chain reaction.
In our experiments, we were amazed by the fact that the limiting pressure depended on such parameters as the vessel diameter or the pressure of the inert gas admixture, which, seemingly, should have nothing to do with the elementary 39 steps of reactions. According to our experiments, the limiting pressure PI was inversely proportional to the square of the vessel diameter. Here one could make the purely mental experiment of enlarging the vessel ad infinitum. In that case the limiting pressure would tend towards zero. In other words, the limiting pressure would disappear, and the rapid reaction would occur under negligible pressures. This meant that the development of the reaction was hindered by the walls of the vessel. It then occurred to us that the vessel diameter might exert a similar effect on Bodenstein's chain reaction as well. If Bodenstein's chains could be terminated as a result of the capture of atoms and radicals by active admixtures, there was the probability---greater or lesser--- that they would be captured by the vessel's walls, through chemosorption. This type of termination of Bodenstein's chains should naturally appear under reduced pressures, when termination in the gas phase was less intensive. This called for an experiment to study the dependence of the rate of the photochemical reaction of hydrogen and chlorine on vessel diameter and pressure. In 1928, these experiments fully bore out our hypothesis. The termination of chains on walls later turned out to be common for all chain reactions.
Towards the end of 1927 we adopted our hypothesis as a basis, without waiting for the results of these experiments. Under this assumption it was not hard to find a mathematical expression for Bodenstein's length of chain. It was at this point that we unexpectedly realised that the combination of parameters ® in our empirical expression for limiting phenomena was identical with the expression v, provided the chains were terminated on the vessel walls. A connection between our discovery and Bodenstein's chain reactions became increasingly probable. Our empirical equation v8 = l could thus be rewritten as v8=l. This, as I have said, did not, of course, directly lead us to the solution of the main question. For the length of chain in the Bodenstein-type reaction varied quite smoothly with the diameter, whereas we had a critical diameter di (Pi remaining constant) below which the reaction did not occur at all, while developing very rapidly above it.
Psychologically, the benefits, however, were very great. The contradiction had become even more precise and acute. If earlier we had had to discover the reason why the 40 reaction could reveal limiting phenomena, we were now faced with the question: why was it possible for a chain reaction, capable of termination at the vessel wall, to show limiting phenomena? The sum of our reasoning and experimenting suggested a one-way path at the end of which, and nowhere else, lay the answer.
At this point, we had a flash of inspiration, seemingly intuitive, though in the light of what had gone before we cannot call it a revelation, for it had been prepared by everything I have described above. When a scientist writes about his discovery he is usually hesitant about revealing the personal aspects of the quest which led to the emergence of a new basic concept. He usually begins with that concept. Hence the myth about intuition, in which he himself may later come to believe.
The really important thing in epistemology, however, is the description of the scientist's preparatory mental work, for that is based on a study of the whole history of thought, beginning with the ancient Greeks. But the Greeks were much less inhibited about describing their process of reasoning than our modern scientists are. Perhaps we should change this; at least, I shall now try to do so. What interests me particularly is the meaning of the vague concept of intuition in the light of dialectics.
I wish I could recall what I was thinking just before that flash of inspiration. I may have been thinking that the properties of the free atoms and radicals in Bodenstein's chains were analogous to the actions of bacteria, which, so to speak, swallow up the original molecules, turning them into the products of the reaction. Suddenly it occurred to me that bacteria were able not only to eat but also to multiply. Just a minute, I said to myself. What if the free atoms and radicals were also capable of multiplying? There it was: there was the answer!
This culminating point set me arguing with myself. Why, I asked myself, should they be capable of multiplying at all? That would call for the appearance of more than one radical in the given elementary act of development of Bodenstein's chain. There should be at least one more or, rather, two more, because in the final count the whole thing comes to dissociation of a molecule into two free radicals. But dissociation requires sufficient energy. Where does that 41 come from? Well, coincident with the elementary reaction there could be a release of a large amount of energy which some time later, a very short time later, it is true, is diffused into heat. But before that happens it could be used, like a quantum of light, to dissociate a molecule of the initial substance, thereby causing a branching of the chain. But how, precisely? That, I decided, could wait. I was sure that the answer to the contradiction lay in the possibility of the chain's branching.
I do not recall exactly how it was; it may have actually been by analogy with bacteria. In Newton's case we are told it was a falling apple. In other cases it was something else. That is not so important. If a gun is loaded and you play about with it long enough, something will cause it to go off. What mattered was the long train of thought that came before, which clearly brought out and sharpened the contradictions, and not what actually triggered that flash of inspiration.
Now that we had our answer, the task was to formulate our hypothesis properly. Let us assume, then, that each link of Bodenstein's chain may produce with probability 8 a branching, giving a secondary Bodenstein chain. In that case, over the whole length of the Bodenstein chain, consisting of v links, there will appear v8 new chains. This will apply not only to the primary but also to the secondary chains generated in the branching. The expression v8 =1 which determines the limit, means that each Bodenstein chain with a length v, when terminated, produces an average of one branching which starts a secondary chain, etc. Every termination of the chain is compensated by one branching, making the chain as a whole infinite, so to speak.
Let us assume that we inject into each cubic centimetre of gas one primary free radical to start such an infinite chain. Taking T to designate the time of the radical's entry into each elementary reaction, we find that we have ~~ reactions a second. In t seconds we shall have X=---= molecules of the initial substances reacting. Owing to the great reactivity of atoms and radicals, Y is usually small.
Let us take, for example, T = 10-- 5 sec. Assuming further that the pressure P4 = 1/100 atm., i.e., 3-10 17 initial molecules in a cubic centimetre, let us calculate the time it will take to bring the reaction X=---; t=10 sec P= 1/lOOatm-3-10 17 rnolecules/cm 3 3 niln years etc.
42
Let us now assume the initial gas pressure to be above the limiting pressure. In that case, more than one branching will arise on each section of Bodenstein's chain. More chains will originate than are destroyed. As a result, one primary free radical admitted into the gas will produce a chain avalanche, in accordance with the Ae?1 law, where the reproduction coefficient cp is proportional to the difference 8v---1 and inversely proportional to the length of Bodenstein's chain v and time t.
Even with a minor change in the initial pressure of the mixture, say, by 1 per cent, above the limit and respectively with v3---1 = 0.01, the avalanche wiil develop so rapidly, that 30 per cent of the substance will react in roughly 4 minutes (see Fig. 3).
t3o%~4min
Fig. 3
up to
30% -- = 10 14 sec fa 3 million years (see Fig. 2).
10 17 = 10 3 t; hence,
130%
Naturally enough, below the limit, when v3<l, and the number of terminations is in excess of the number of branchings, the admission of one radical cannot result in a 43 reaction at all and the incipient chain will quickly be extinguished.
However, in most cases, the reaction above the limit proceeds even faster. After all, the majority of rapid branching chain reactions proceed quite differently from the long Bodenstein chains with rare branchings. The branchings take place virtually on every link of the chain; the chains turn out to be almost continuously branched (see Fig. 4).
etc.
Fig. 4
In fact, the concept of Bodenstein's chain disappears altogether. The amazing thrhg is that this concept, which was such a great help in solving the contradiction we had discovered, turned out in the end to be irrelevant.
In the continuously branching chain reaction the propagation of the chain is automatically connected with its branching. Each free atom or radical is capable either of disappearing (termination of chain) or propagating the chain, as it enters the reaction. This being so, it is simple to find the conditions for the limits and the rate of the chain avalanche development, both above and below the limit, where pressure varies by + 1 per cent.
We find that here again there arises at the limit something like a single infinite chain (see Fig. 5), so that the time t300/o continues to be 3 million years. The reaction above the limit will develop in accordance with the avalanche law ecft, but here cp will be higher than for chains with rare branchings.
, t30%^3 mln years
etc.
Fig. 5
44If in this case we increase the initial pressure by 1 per cent above the limit PI, the admission of one primary free atom or radical into one cubic centimetre of gas will produce a reaction which takes not 4 minutes, as we have seen above, but roughly 3 seconds, instead of millions of years at the limit.
We have examined an ideal case, where the spontaneous origination of free atoms in a reactive gas does not take place at all, or takes place very rarely, and where the reaction is started by admitting at least one free radical from outside.
If r[o such primary free radicals appear in each cubic centimetre in a second, it is easy to produce an expression for the rate of the branched chain reaction, and the quantity of molecules X which have reacted in time t, as has been done above. The results are shown in the following table.
i!0=1free radical/sec, cm 3 r(0=100 free radical/sec, cm 3 P = Pl t30^1year t30?t ^ 2 weeKs P = 1.01P1 t305,^4sec t ~ *^ SPf* P=0.99P, tso%~~ 3 °i°0° years tm^ 300 yearsConsequently, our hypothesis furnishes a good explanation why some chemical reactions are based on the ``all-- or-nothing" principle.
It would be wrong to assume that once the hypothesis was clearly formulated our work was over. On the contrary, that was when it really began. And it is still going on, in a measure. Step by step the theory has been given increasing precision and clarity, becoming a quantitative theory that has predictive power.
So it was that we succeeded in establishing the occurrence of two types of avalanche-like chemical processes which, in certain conditions, lead to explosion: the thermal explosion, which arises as a result of the build-up of the thermal avalanche, which I have dealt with here in brief, and the chain explosion, which results from the avalanche-like 45 reproduction of active chemical particles and free atoms and radicals, whose concentration in the development of the chain avalanche attains, theoretically and experimentally, tremendous values comparable with the concentrations of primary molecules. It later turned out that only these two types of explosion occur in nature. Even in atomic physics, blasts can be only of the chain type (atomic explosion) or of the thermal type (thermonuclear explosion).
I should like to add another remark in connection with my analysis of this discovery. Experiments have shown that the general regularities governing branched chain reactions, notably the ``all-or-nothing'' limit itself, and the development of chains in time depend very little on the actual mechanism of these reactions. The important fact is that they branch out and that chains terminate. Quantitatively, these regularities also depend on certain constants which can be determined, to their first approximation, from experiments according to the optimal values.
This applies not only to chemical branched chain reactions but also to physical reactions, which include nuclear fission chain reactions and also, iji essence, the reactions of multiplication of light quanta in lasers and masers. In the former, the active particles of the chain are the excited compound-nuclei, which arise in the capture of neutrons by the atomic nuclei of active substances, and the neutrons emitted, numbering three for every act of fission of the compoundnucleus. The termination of the chain takes place through the emergence of neutrons beyond the limits of the active body (similar to the termination of the chain on the wall) or the capture of neutrons by certain admixtures. In density, dimensions, admixtures of active substances, dilution with U-238, etc., limiting phenomena are identical with those which are observed in chemistry. The formation of vast quantities of neutrons in the course of the reaction, the exponential growth of the rate of reaction in time during an atomic blast are similar to the corresponding phenomena in chemical branched chain reactions. The ``all-or-nothing'' principle is here manifested in an especially clear-cut form, and in essence provides the sole basis on which one can build atomic bombs and piles without fear of explosion, and set off an explosion through the insignificant alteration of one of the parameters. The formal relations in our 46 insignificant-scale chemical phenomena remain true even for these powerful reactions. From the analysis of this discovery it can be seen that it is not so much the confirmation of existing concepts that is of especial importance to scientific cognition as the emergence of concepts contradicting the former. These contradictions are the main stimulus in the development of science. It is a gift of fortune for a scientist to come up against a contradiction, major or minor, and he should seize upon it. Yet, it is so easy to overlook it, to brush it off, especially when a deadline looms for the publication of an article or the presentation ol a thesis.
__*_*_*__Let us now pass from ``minor'' to ``major'' contradictions, which reveal much more strikingly the principal logical components of scientific discoveries at the time of decisive scientific revolutions. When it comes to changes in the basic scientific concepts supporting the whole edifice of a theoretical system, not only the concepts themselves change but also the logic of thinking itself, the very understanding of what is ``logical'' and what is ``illogical''. Here is what Max Born says about it: ``The situation here (in quantum mechanics---N.S.) is so confused that the only option is this: either to rest content with the feeble adaptation of concepts to the system of formulas ... or to modify the rules of thinking, of logic itself."^^1^^
At such moments, the theoretical physicist begins to work as a pure logician, as a transformer of Logic. He has to work in the sphere of such contradictory concepts as continuity and discontinuity, interconnection and establishment, time and space, probability and necessity; for the specific purposes of natural science he must modify, develop and review the primary logical categories. This is a subtle business and in the absence of sufficient erudition and philosophical training it is very easy to repeat former mistakes. Engels used to say that materialism changes its form with every great new discovery in science. This is where a developed and properly mastered logic of historico-philosophical thinking ceases to be luxury, a mere pleasant supplement _-_-_
~^^1^^ Max Born, ``Bemerkungen zur statistischen Deutung der Quantenmechanik'', Werner Heisenbcrg und die Pltysik unscrer Zeit, Braunschweig, 1961, S. 106.
47 to a training in natural science, and becomes a matter of primary and most acute necessity. One such revolutionary logician was Einstein when he worked out his theory of relativity (revising the concept of time as a logical concept). Another leading revolutionary in logic was Niels Bohr, who, to all intents and purposes, was the founder of the modern quantum theory. His quantum theory of the atom emerged as a result of a bold resolution of the contradiction between Rutherford's planetary model of the atom, introduced virtually straight from the experiment, and classical electrodynamics.Bohr's principle of complementarity went even further in revolutionising the logic of physical cognition, for it tacitly introduced into the very structure of physical theory the idea of contradiction; at the same time, Bohr's conception of the fundamental epistemological importance of the ``instrument-object'' relationship to some extent corresponded to Marx's conception of the active epistemological role of the instrument in the cognition of things.
The dualism of wave and corpuscular concepts, discovered by Planck and Einstein in fespect of light, was taken by de Broglie to be a universal contradiction of microobjects and applied to a description of the motion of electrons (which was shortly confirmed experimentally). De Broglie's conception was one of the sources that gave rise to quantum mechanics.
Our last example is Dirac's anticipation of the positron. Attempts to unite quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativistic mechanics had run into the difficulty of having to recognise the existence (because there were expressions containing a square root) of particles carrying a plus and a minus sign, i.e., positive and negative energy. But particles with negative energy seemed to be an absurdity, pure nonsense. It was, therefore, necessary to invent a principle which would rule out their existence in nature and which at the same time would admit the possibility of their existence. The contradiction was formulated with the utmost logical incision. Using Pauli's exclusion principle, Dirac introduced his ``holes in a vacuum" concept (a vacuum filled with a vast number of what were virtually electrons in a state of negative energy). This somewhat obscure concept, literally invented on the basis of a most strictly formulated 48 antinomy, was then concentrated into the rational concept of a fully material particle, ``the electron with a positive charge'', i.e., the positron. But the initial vague and even logically contradictory concept was in fact the nutrient medium, so to speak, which produced not only the concept of the positron but modern relativistic quantum mechanics as a whole in its new and even more striking but, I regret to say, not so stringently formulated antinomies.
The example of Dirac's discovery is a very characteristic one and provides a summing up, as it were, of the creative process of theoretical thinking. From this example, or, rather, this food for thought, one can obtain the clearest possible picture of some of the primary concepts of dialectical logic.
As for the significance of these concepts, let us see whether it is possible to define the actual process of scientific endeavour (say, in the aspects dealt with above) as a process subject to the laws of Logic with a capital L. Every scientist knows that theoretical work is anything but a smooth movement forward and only forward. It may appear to be so from afar, just as the Earth, for example, appears to be an ideal geometric sphere when viewed from outer space, but certainly not to a mountaineer climbing Mount Everest.
The harder a scientist tries to recall ``how it all actually happened'', the stronger is his impression that it is in general quite impossible to discover any ``rational'' principle or logic in the development of scientific knowledge and that this development is governed by nothing more than the whims of unrestrained will with its ``mad notions''. Thus Louis de Broglie writes in his Paths of Science: ``Human science, essentially rational in its principles and in its methods, cannot achieve its most remarkable conquests except by executing sudden and perilous leaps of the mind, involving the play of faculties called imagination, intuition and perception, released from the hard constraints of rigorous reasoning. Let us perhaps say that the scientist carries out the rational analysis and goes over link by link of the chain of his deductions; he is bound by this chain up to a point where he suddenly escapes from it, and the liberty of his imagination, once recaptured, enables him to look out onto new horizons."^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Louis dc Broglie, Sur les sentiers de la science, = Paris, 1960, p. 354.
__PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---1284 49This, one might say, makes it clear that formal mathematical logic, while being an effective and invaluable instrument for the solution of tasks of a definite type, proves to be powerless when it comes to explaining the actual process of scientific work leading to the production of new concepts.
If we assume that scientific thinking is ``logical'' and ``rational'' only insofar as it proceeds in strict accord with the axioms, postulates and theorems of formal mathematical logic, the scientific thinking that actually takes place inevitably seems to be irrational, so that science itself appears to be a madhouse where only superficial order is maintained by the logician-attendants but by no means by the inmates, whose sole aim is to disrupt it.
If this were so, the whole theory of scientific knowledge would prove to be a purely outward and absolutely inexplicable fusion of two different and irreconcilable sciences--- formal mathematical logic and the purely psychological description of intuition.
It would appear that there ought to be trends in science that would provide an exact and specific description of certain universal laws governing the process of scientific reasoning. From the viewpoint of dialectics it is clear that these so-called ``mad notions" are essential, logical processes of reasoning.
In fact, whenever the result of a new experiment (or a more thorough analysis of a previous experiment) leads to a basic contradiction within the system of existing concepts, that very contradiction constitutes a determination of the conditions engendering a hypothesis; that is to say, the contradiction prescribes a vector of reasoning in the formation of the hypothesis.
In short, in any given case we may expect to find the following ``mechanism''. At first the contradiction within the old theory appears to be rather generalised and vague. Clearly, the new experimental fact, if and insofar as it is understood, contradicts the old theory and the old concepts in general; but it is far from clear where the apex of the contradiction is located and exactly what old key principle has to be modified. Gradually, as a result of further experiments and of the refinement of the old concepts themselves (no such refinement had been needed before), the contradiction is sharpened and narrowed down until it becomes 50 apparent exactly which old concept must be modified first. The contradiction acquires the acuteness of an antinomy formulated with the utmost stringency. But this is also a formulation, although only implied, of a negative definition, as it were, of the new concept. It then remains to understand the positive content of the new concept, to define it not only as a clearly formulated question, but also as an answer, as a new concept. The new concept is usually a qualitative and basic reformulation of the old initial concept, though it is simultaneously the embryonic form of a new theoretical system. Such is the origin of a hypothesis.
At this point the following new logical cycle begins. Parallel with the verification and confirmation of the hypothesis in the course of countless experimental variations and mathematical concretisation (let us assume that our hypothesis is correct) there follows an examination and enrichment, as it were, of the initial concept alone, and its articulation into a series of interrelated, more specific auxiliary concepts, with the result that the hypothesis develops into a detailed, experimentally verified theory.
From the concrete material I have introduced into this article it will be seen that this logical picture is a legitimate idealisation of the specific process of creative reasoning.
The initial contradiction which destroys the old theory is thereby resolved (``removed'') within the new, more profound and specific theoretical understanding which includes the old theory as a particular limiting case. Intuition, thus understood, emerges as nothing else but the form in which a perfectly rational process of reasoning takes effect. The contradiction, therefore, destroys not the theory in general, but only the old, limited theory, or, to be more precise, the illusion that the old theory was a final, complete and concrete (``absolutely true'') reflection of objective reality. The contradiction brings out the nodal points within the system of the old theory, in which its growth points are concentrated and in which its ability to ``grow through contradiction" becomes apparent. Moreover, it is the strictest and most formally perfect movement of thought that arrives at those growth points in which the basic (dialectical) contradiction begins to show, a contradiction which confronts intuition with the task of constructing a hypothesis, that is, reaching __PRINTERS_P_51_COMMENT__ 4* 51 a point beyond which any purely formal movement becomes impossible.
We have tried, by analysing the process of scientific discovery, to show how dialectical logic works and how it helps the scientist understand and refine the actual process of creative scientific thinking.
__*_*_*__The birth of dialectical logic is connected with the names of Kant and Hegel. Kant had already demonstrated that the appearance of a contradiction within a scientific concept was not the result of some regrettable error of reasoning, logical carelessness or imprecision, but a very natural state of the human mind at which the mind arrives because it has observed most painstakingly all the postulates and demands of strict formal logic, or definiteness of concepts. Developing this point of view, Hegel began to examine the logical contradiction as an internal motive force of development, as the ``motor'' of man's cultural development, in the spiritual and theoretical sphere above all.
Marx purged Hegel's dialectics of its idealistic bias and gave it a materialistic interpretation, thereby laying the foundation of materialist dialectics.
For obvious reasons arising out of his life and struggle, Marx did not have time to refute Hegel's dialectics by an equally systematic exposition of dialectics on the new, materialist basis. Lenin wrote: ``If Marx did not leave behind him a `Logic' (with a capital letter), he did leave the logic of Capital, and this ought to be utilised to the full in this question. In Capital, Marx applied to a single science logic, dialectics and the theory of knowledge of materialism [three words are not needed: it is one and the same thing] which has taken everything valuable in Hegel and developed it further."^^1^^ In Capital, Marx did, indeed, demonstrate to the scientific world, using very concrete material, the tremendous methodological power which materialistic dialectics carries within itself.
It was materialist dialectics that enabled Marx to arrive at a scientific resolution of the fatal contradictions which _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 319.
52 were inherent in the classic labour theory of value, and, notably, one of the central paradoxes of that theory: the contradiction between the concept (and law) of value and the concept of profit (surplus value and all its derivative forms).A strictly scientific formulation of this contradiction suggested a scientific way of solving it, made it possible to formulate a hypothesis, discover its confirmation within the system of economic relations and thereby turn the hypothesis into a strictly demonstrated theory, the theory of surplus value. That was the basis on which a theoretical conception was achieved, which embraced not only the whole of the economy of capitalism but also all the remote consequences of its contradictory evolution, including its inevitable collapse.
We find that, on the whole, Marx's theoretical thinking ran on the same lines that we observe in the development of natural science, with the one difference that Marx reasoned quite consciously, whereas in natural science the dialectical movement of thought is still mainly spontaneous. Hence the fact that natural scientists very often have an inadequate conception of the true logic of their own reasoning. Not having mastered the system of concepts of dialectical logic, they consider their own actions in terms of inadequate concepts, and this hampers, at the critical points in the development of natural science, their quest for a way out of the blind-alley of contradictions.
Marx pointed out that already in capitalist society science becomes an immediate productive force. At the same time Engels noted that under capitalism the development of the productive forces is a menace to society.
In 1918, Lenin stressed that by unleashing the First World War with powerful modern scientific and technical achievements being used for the purpose of destroying millions of human lives, monopoly capital had created a situation which could ``undermine the very foundations of human society".^^1^^
The last few decades have seen qualitative changes in science which vastly increase both its creative and its destructive potential. In former times, science, by analysing production processes and facilitating their improvement,
_-_-_~^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 422.
53 served production directly. Today, it has another and much more important function. As a result of the experimental and theoretical probing of the mysteries of matter and penetration into the original causes of macroscopic phenomena, modern science has begun to produce basically different, unprecedented means of production and new technologies which surpass man's boldest flights of fancy. Over the last few decades, there has been a steady growth in the pace of development and application of science, offering real prospects of providing for the well-being of the world's population in a relatively short time-span. On the other hand, this development of science, this scientific and technological revolution gives rise to basically new types of weapons of unprecedented destructive force.If science is to serve the interests of mankind, society and the state must make the welfare of all the working people their main aim and do their utmost to attain it. But the capitalist system is fundamentally incapable of setting, let alone achieving such an aim, because it is an aim that clashes with the very basis and essence of the capitalist relations of production.
Capitalism and chauvinism hold the menace of another world war, which with the existence of modern weapons would, as Lenin warned, be disastrous for mankind.
The transition from capitalism to socialism on a worldwide scale must resolve the profound contradiction between the vast productive forces, including modern science with its two different uses, and the relations of production under monopoly capitalism, which breeds the aforesaid potentially catastrophic phenomena.
Capitalism and chauvinism are currently in contradiction not only with the productive forces; they are actually inimical to human existence itself. Sooner or later, the nations of the world will come to see the objective necessity for the transition to socialism and communism. The ideals of scientific communism, substantiated and developed in the brilliant works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, have already won the hearts and minds of a great part of humanity. Eventually, they will be shared by all.
[54] __ALPHA_LVL1__ LENINISM AND THE SCIENTIFICSergei Trapeznikov, D. Sc. (Hist.)
The amazing progress of science, which has its material roots in the growth of the forces of production, is one of the salient features of our times. It has enormously expanded man's horizons, offering him new opportunities of discovering the secrets of nature and penetrating deeper into the objective laws of society's development. Indisputably, this is the age of a great scientific and technological revolution accompanied by profound upheavals both in industry and social life. Every new triumph of science further increases its influence on the life of society and accelerates technical and social progress.
The purpose to which progressive forces throughout the world bend their will and reason is to master the laws of nature and use them to further social progress, thus preventing reaction from turning them to evil ends.
In the conditions of socialism the scientific and technological revolution concerns the whole people and is an object of constant attention of the Communist Party and the Soviet government as a decisive sector of communist construction. Today one cannot ensure adequate economic growth rates without conducting large-scale research and applying its results promptly to production. The outcome of the economic competition between the socialist and capitalist systems depends in great measure on the most effective development of the forces of production and full utilisation of the achievements of science in the productive and intellectual spheres alike.
55 __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1. The Present Is an Age of Great ScientificToday the scientific and technological revolution has reached an important stage of its development. In the titanic scientific and technological competition against capitalism, the world socialist system must not only maintain its positions but win a victory in the name of progress and prosperity for the peoples. What is likely to contribute to the victory of socialism in this contest?
First and foremost, all-round development of fundamental science, on whose results depend qualitative, epochmaking changes in production and intellectual life. Fundamental or ``pure'' science, as Marx called it, is a mighty, if unostentatious, force which, when it emerges from the stillness of the laboratories, wields its potent sway with undisputed authority. Applied science, on the other hand, is always in the public eye, always in action, yielding resujts that are obvious and tangible. It is the force that directly promotes technological progress. Yet, primacy belongs to fundamental science.
It is fundamental science that paves the way for the scientific and technological revolution and gives scope to its development. This is the case today as was the case before. To gain victory over the capitalist world in the scientific and technological race, one must carry on with the general line of further advancing basic research, and building up its material and technical basis.
Soviet science has won leading world positions in a number of major fields. Thanks to its achievements, many branches of the Soviet economy have in their turn reached a high level. Extensive investigation of mineral resources has made available every kind of mineral raw material. The founders of scientific communism foresaw that after the revolutionary forces had broken the chains of capitalism and thus destroyed class antagonism, mankind would concentrate its efforts on conquering the spontaneous forces of nature and placing its resources at man's service. It is generally acknowledged in the USSR that science is becoming increasingly part of the labour process as a major productive force. ``If the productive process comes to be a field of applied science" Marx wrote, ``then, conversely, science comes to be a factor, a 56 function, so to speak, of the productive process."^^1^^ Marx's scientific insight is being confirmed as remarkably accurate. Present-day research is increasingly aimed at tapping fresh sources of technological progress, finding new ways whereby to expand production, step up efficiency and provide for a steady improvement of the people's material and cultural standards.
The modern scientific and technological revolution has fundamentally altered the relationship between science and industry.
First, recent scientific discoveries have given birth to more advanced technological processes, new branches of industry and new lines of material production. Thus, nuclear research has launched nuclear power engineering, while solid-state physics and high-pressure physics have given us semi-conductors, synthetic diamonds and other new materials that are revolutionising radio-engineering, radioelectronics and instrument-making. As other industries are re-equipped, the character of work changes and workmanship and efficiency increase.
The pattern and scope of modern science call for an enormous development of research facilities. A ``science industry" has come into being that uses complex installations and highly sophisticated plant and instruments. Advancing industry, on its part, is forever confronting science with fresh practical problems to tackle. This mutual enrichment of science and technology is becoming an indispensable aspect of man's conquest of nature and is a characteristic of the current scientific and technological revolution.
Second, at the present advanced level of applied and technological sciences the industrial development of scientific discoveries has become a highly intensive process. The interval between discovery and its practical introduction is rapidly shrinking. Thus it took 112 years (1727--1839) for the principle on which photography is based to be put into effect; 56 years (1820--76) for the telephone to emerge; 35 years (1867--1902) for radio communication; 15 years (1925-- 40) for radar; 12 years (1922--34) for television; six years (1939--45) for the A-bomb; five years (1948--53) for the _-_-_
~^^1^^ From the manuscripts of K. Marx, Kommunist No. 7, 1958, p. 22.
57 transistor; and three years (1958--61) for the integrating circuit to go into production. To this we can add the pungent observation of Sam Lilley, who wrote: ``When the world learned in 1945 about the atomic bomb, eminent scientists and eminent politicians were nearly unanimous in telling us that it would take at least fifty years to discover how to 'tame the atom' to the peaceful use of producing power. Yet a 5,000 kw nuclear power station started work near Moscow in June 1954...."^^1^^ And still the distance between research and production goes on shrinking. Prompt practical application of scientific achievements is an essential condition of economic and social progress.Third, science is rapidly developing within the domain of production as such. More laboratories and research centres appear; an increasing proportion of researchers and graduate specialists are employed in industry, agriculture and other parts of the economy. Science is exerting an ever greater effect on the character and organisation of human labour, society's chief productive force. As science and production draw closer together, scientific and technological progress gathers speed. The results of theoretical research pursued along the main lines of science make it possible to increase the efficiency of every means of production, build up the intellectual potential of industry and provide optimal conditions for new, more progressive scientific trends. The forces and resources of nature may thus be used more and more rationally, by altering the environment, reclaiming land, controlling the water regime, and managing plant and animal life and, ultimately, the climate.
Fourth, there is growing co-operation between different sciences, especially those that had previously little connection with each other. The interaction and interpenetration of many lines of science in the course of research and its practical application are determined by the unity and community of natural phenomena that are fundamental to both living and inorganic matter. For illustration one can quote the example of such ``end-to-end'' sciences as biophysics, biochemistry, and so on. We find a concentrated expression of contact between numerous sciences in cybernetics, which uses mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, economics _-_-_
~^^1^^ Sam Lilley, Automation and Social Progress, London, 1957, p. 92.
58 and also computers, etc., to develop the theory of control in diverse spheres of human activity. Because of the continuous differentiation and integration of knowledge now taking place, development of science depends on teamwork rather than individual effort, especially when complex problems have to be tackled.Fifth, science is moving into every sphere of state administration and economic management. In its work of guiding the state and society the Communist Party of the Soviet Union puts'the regulation of social processes on a firm scientific foundation. In doing so, it is obeying one of the principal objective laws of social development under socialism. The need for intensive development and extensive employment of scientific methods in national economic management makes the scientists' responsibility all the greater. Elaboration of the theoretical principles of management of the economic, social and intellectual life of socialist society becomes a major task of science. Individual industries and the economy at large have reached a level where it is possible to manage them only on a strictly scientific basis. Simultaneously it has become urgently necessary to train a special force of scientists to manage science itself.
Sixth, under socialist conditions the scientific and technological revolution turns science into an active element of modern material and spiritual culture. Besides altering the nature of production, it exerts an ever greater effect on social relationships. This implies, above all, a change in the nature of social labour, which, owing to all-round mechanisation and automation, takes on the form of technological process control, thus becoming more and more a matter of the intellect, whether in industry or agriculture. Practical solutions are today available for such major problems of social development as the obliteration of any essential distinctions between town and country, between mental and physical work, and complete obliteration of distinctions between the working class and the peasants, which will turn all citizens of this socialist country into workers of a classless, communist society. This is the direction in which Soviet socialist society is advancing.
In a society rent by class antagonisms and based on human exploitation the scientific and technological revolution 59 produces jarring results, making the negative features of capitalist production many times worse.^^1^^ Under socialism, however, the progress of science and technology is consciously planned and controlled with the aim of benefiting society as a whole and providing for all-round development of each of its members. History has confirmed Lenin's prediction that ``socialism alone will liberate science from its bourgeois fetters, from its enslavement to capital, from its slavery to the interests of dirty capitalist greed".^^2^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2. Scientific and Technological ProgressThe steady advance of science and technology is but one side of the matter. The other is that now as before it does not proceed in isolation from social progress but is closely bound up with it. In socialist countries, scientific and technological progress is not an end in itself but is pursued to assert and further optimal social relations, to bring profound social progress which rids man of all forms of class oppression and makes him independent of the spontaneous forces of nature; it is pursued for the benefit of society and the individual.
Ever since science emerged as a distinctive sphere of social activity, society and science have usually marched shoulder to shoulder, even through conflicts, cataclysms and wars. European capitalism sprang up with the great geographic discoveries and strides in astronomy, celestial and terrestrial mechanics, hydrostatics and hydrodynamics, which made it possible to summarise and comprehend world experience of scientific and technological development. It was then that the foundations of modern natural science were laid and it became solidly linked with production.
The growth of science in those days went hand in hand with the technical reorganisation of capitalist production _-_-_
~^^1^^ The prominent West German sociologist Ren\'e K\"onig states that ``not only does the development of technology tinge human labour with compulsion. It also gives social relationships a much more material character''. (R. Konig, ``Der Einflu&Bgerman; der technischen Entwicklung auf Gesellschaft und Beruf'', VDI-Zeitschrift No. 10, 1968, p. 383.)
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 411.
60 and paved the way for rapid development of the productive forces. This was conclusively demonstrated by the industrial revolution in Britain, which finally established the capitalist mode of production. Since then science had advanced much more rapidly because it has become a profitable sphere of investment. Engels observed that Watt's steam engine alone paid off in fifty years everything the world had ever spent on the development of science. Even so, later on experience was to show that the chief obstacle to scientific progress lay in capitalist social relations.Let us now consider some of the characteristic features of the scientific and technological revolution and its connection with the social processes going on in the world at present.
First, it is developing in the epoch of revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism. As one of the most significant factors in revolutionising the modern historical process, it ultimately tends to consolidate the positions of socialism and contributes to its triumph on a world scale.
Second, it is the pivot of the struggle being waged between the two worlds, the two different systems, socialist and capitalist. It thus presents a double-edged weapon which can be used equally by the progressive forces in the name of civilisation and future prosperity, and by the reactionary forces, for the sinister purposes of suppression and destruction. This polarity of results knocks the bottom out of the conjectures of the advocates of the ``convergence theory" and the ``one industrial society''. The titanic contest of the two systems is sharpened by their rivalry in the sphere of science and technology. It is natural, therefore, that each system and country should be eager to lead and prove the strongest. That is what makes the struggle over questions of the scientific and technological revolution so tense and emphasises the close connection between technological and social progress.
The third characteristic of the scientific and technological revolution is its universality. Whereas earlier revolutionary changes were effected in individual fields of science or technology, the present revolution is all-inclusive, embracing the entire productive and economic life of society, each fresh discovery speeding the progress of science and 61 technology on its way.^^1^^ And at the same time, the revolution in science organically merges with the revolution in industry and society into one revolutionary process whereby science exerts a mounting influence on every aspect of socio-economic development.
As the social results of the scientific and technological revolution grow more tangible, the significance of MarxistLeninist theor