Emacs-Time-stamp: "2009-07-24 14:50:55" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2009.07.23) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_SEQUENCE__ continuous [BEGIN] __TITLE__ SCIENCE
AT THE
CROSS ROADS __TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2009-07-23T15:46:27-0700 __TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov" __SUBTITLE__ PAPERS PRESENTED to the
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS
of the
HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
held in
LONDON
from June 29th to July 3rd, 1931 by the
DELEGATES OF THE U.S.S.R.

G

KNIGA (ENGLAND) LTD.

BUSH HOUSE, ALDWYCH, LONDON, W.C.2 1931

[1] __COPYRIGHT__ Printed by
B. SIMS & Co. (Printers) Ltd.
66 Lant Street, Borough. S.E.I
for
KNIGA (England) Ltd. [2] __ALPHA_LVL1__ FOREWORD.

THIS BOOK is a collection of the papers presented to the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology by the Delegation of Soviet Scientists. In Soviet Russia absolutely new prospects are opening before science. The planned economy of Socialism, the enormous extent of the constructive activity---in town and village, in the chief centres and in the remotest parts---demand that science should advance at an exceptional pace. The whole world is divided into two economic systems, two systems of social relationship, two types of culture. In the capitalist world the profound economic decline is reflected in the paralysing crisis of scientific thought and philosophy generally. In the Socialist section of the world we observe an entirely new phenomenon : a new conjunction of theory and practice, the collective organisation of scientific research planned on the scale of an enormous country, the ever-increasing penetration of a single method---the method of Dialectical Materialism---into all scientific disciplines. Thus the new type of intellectual culture, which dominates the mental activity of millions of workers, is becoming the greatest force of the present day. The papers here presented to the reader reflect to some extent this great process of social transformation which is taking place in our time. Consequently it is to be hoped that they will be of interest to all who are pondering over the vexed question of the immediate future in the development of human society.

[3] ~ [4] __ALPHA_LVL1__ CONTENTS.

THEORY AND PRACTICE FROM THE STANDPOINT OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM.

N. I. BUKHARIN, Member of the Academy of Sciences, Director of the Industrial Research Department of the Supreme Economic Council, President of the Commission of the Academy of Sciences for the History of Knowledge.

PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY.

A. F. JOFFE, Member of the Academy of Sciences, Director of the Physico-Technical Institute, Leningrad.

RELATIONS OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND ECONOMICS UNDER CAPITALISM AND IN THE SOVIET UNION.

M. RUBINSTEIN, Professor at the Institute of Economics, Moscow; Member of the Presidium of the Communist Academy, Moscow; Member of the Presidium of the State Planning Commission (Gosplan).

THE ``PHYSICAL'' AND ``BIOLOGICAL'' IN THE PROCESS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION.

B. ZAVADOVSKY, Director of the Institute of Neuro-Humoral Physiology, K. A. Timiriaseff, Director of the Biological Museum.

DYNAMIC AND STATISTICAL REGULARITY IN PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY.

E. CoLMAN, President of the Association of the Scientific Institute of Natural Science, Professor of the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics, Moscow; Member of the Presidium of the State Scientific Council.

[5]

THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD'S AGRICULTURE IN THE LIGHT OF THE LATEST INVESTIGATIONS.

N. I. VAVILOV, Member of the Academy of Sciences, President of the Lenin Agricultural Academy.

THE WORK OF FARADAY AND MODERN DEVELOPMENTS IN THE APPLICATION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY.

W. TH. MlTKEWICH, Member of the Academy of Sciences.

ELECTRIFICATION AS THE BASIS OF TECHNICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOVIET UNION.

M. RUBINSTEIN.

THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ROOTS OF NEWTON'S

' PRINCIPIA.'

B. HESSEN, Director of the Moscow Institute of Physics, Member of the Presidium of the State Scientific Council.

THE PRESENT CRISIS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES AND GENERAL OUTLINE FOR THEIR RECONSTRUCTION.

E. COLMAN.

SHORT COMMUNICATION ON THE UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS OF KARL MARX DEALING WITH MATHEMATICS, THE NATURAL SCIENCES, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE HISTORY OF THESE SUBJECTS.

E. COLMAN.

[6] __NOTE__ Why this title page to an article with exact same title at top of first paragraph? NOTE: "N. I." vs. "N." __ALPHA_LVL1__ THEORY AND PRACTICE FROM THE
STANDPOINT OF DIALECTICAL
MATERIALISM.
By N. I. BUKHARIN. [7] ~ [8]

THEORY AND PRACTICE FROM
THE STANDPOINT OF DIALECTICAL
MATERIALISM.
By N. BUKHARIN.

The crisis of present-day capitalist economy has produced a most profound crisis in the whole of capitalist culture; a crisis in individual branches of science, a crisis in epistemology, a crisis in world outlook, a crisis in world feeling. In such historical circumstances the question of the interrelations between theory and practice has also become one of the most acute problems, and, moreover, as a question both of theory and of practice simultaneously. Therefore we have to examine problems from various aspects : (a) as a problem of epistemology, (b) as a problem of sociology, (c) as a problem of history,

(d) as a problem of modern culture. Lastly, it is interesting

(e) to verify the corresponding theoretical conceptions from the gigantic experience of the revolution, and (/) to give a certain forecast.

__ALPHA_LVL2__ 1.---The epistemological importance of the problem.

The crisis in modern physics---and equally in the whole of natural science, plus the so-called mental sciences ( Geisteswissenschaften)---has raised as an urgent problem, and with renewed violence, the fundamental questions of philosophy : the question of the objective reality of the external world, independent of the subject perceiving it, and the question of its cognisability (or, alternatively, non-cognisability). Nearly all the schools of philosophy, from theologising metaphysics to the Avenarian-Machist philosophy of "pure description" and renovated "~pragmatism," with the exception of dialectical materialism (Marxism), start from the thesis, considered irrefutable, that ``I'' have been ``given'' only ``my'' own "sensations.''^^1^^

_-_-_

~^^1^^ Cf. Ernst Mach: "Analyse der Empfindungen," and his "Erkenntnis und I. Irrtum; K. Pearson: "The Grammar of Science," Lond. 1900. H. Bergson: ``L'evolution creatrice," Paris, F. Alcan, 1907. W. James: "Pragmatism," N. York, 1908, and his "The Varieties of Religious Experience," Lond. 1909. H. Vaihinger: "Die Philosophic des Als Ob," Berlin, 1911. H. Poincare: "La Science et 1' Hypothese," Paris, E. Flammarion, 1908. In the same circle of ideas there moves the ``logistics'' of B. Russell. The latest literature on this subject includes the work of Ph. Frank, M. Schlick, R. Carnap, et al. Even the almost materialist Study takes his stand on the principle quoted: cf. his "~Die realistische Weltansicht und die Lehre vom Raume," 2, ungearbeitete Aufl. I. Teil: Das Problem der Aussenwelt, Vieweg & Sohn, 1923.

1

This statement, the most brilliant exponent of which was Bishop Berkeley,^^2^^ is quite unnecessarily exalted into a new gospel of epistemology. When, for example, M. Schlick^^3^^ on this^basis builds up a completely ``final'' ("durchaus endgiiltige") turning point in philosophy, it sounds quite naive. Even R. Avenarius^^4^^ thought it necessary to emphasise all the instability of this initial "~axiom." Yet at the present time Berkeley's thesis is strolling up and down all the highways of modern philosophy, and has become rooted in the communis doctorum opinio with the tenacity of a popular prejudice. Nevertheless, it is not only vulnerable, but will not stand the test of serious criticism. It is defective in various respects; to the extent that it contains ``I'' and ``my''; to the extent that it contains the conception of ``given''; and lastly to the extent that it speaks " only of sensations.''

In point of fact, it is only in the case of the first-created Adam, just manufactured out of clay and for the first time seeing, again with eyes opened for the first time, the landscape of paradise with all its attributes, that such a statement could be made. Any empirical subject always goes beyond the bounds of ``pure'' sensual "raw material"; his experience, representing the result of the influence of the external world on the knowing subject in the process of his practice, stands on the shoulders of the experience of other people. In his ``I'' there is always contained "~we." In the pores of his sensations there already sit the products of transmitted knowledge (the external expression of this are speech, language and conceptions adequate to words). In his individual experience there are included beforehand society, external nature and history--- i.e., social history. Consequently, epistemological Robinson Crusoes are just as much out of place as Robinson Crusoes were in the ``atomistic'' social science of the eighteenth century.

But the thesis criticised is defective not only from the standpoint of "I," "~my," "~only sensations." It is defective also from the standpoint of "~given." Examining the work of A. Wagner, Marx wrote : "The doctrinaire professor represents the relations of man and nature from the very outset not as practical relations---i.e., those founded on action, but as theoretical . . . but people never begin under any circumstances with 'standing in theoretical relationship with objects outside the _-_-_

^^2^^ George Berkeley: "Treatise concerning the Principles of Human
Knowledge," vol. i. of Works, ed. Frazer, Oxf., 1871.

~^^3^^ Morits Schlick: "Die Wende der Philosophic" in "Erkenntnis," vol. i.,
No. 1. "~Ich bin namlich tiberzeugt, dass wir sachlich berechtigt sind, den unfruchtbaren Streit der System als beendigt (N.B.) anzuzehen" (p. 5).

^^4^^ R. Avenarius: "Kritik der reinen Erfahrung," v. I., Leipzig, 1888,
pp. vii. and viii.

2 World.' Like other animals, they begin by eating, drinking, etc.

__i.e., they do not 'stand ' in any relationship, but function

actively, with the help of their actions take possession of certain objects of the outside world, and in this way satisfy their requirements. (Consequently they begin with production.)"^^5^^

Thus the thesis criticised is incorrect also because it expresses a calmly passive, contemplative point, of view, and not an active, functioning point of view, that of human practice, which also corresponds to objective reality. Thus, the farfamed ``irrefutable'' epistemological ``axiom'' must fall to the ground. For it is in categorical contradiction to objective reality. And it is in just as categorical contradiction to the whole of human practice; (1) it is individualistic and leads directly to solipsism; (2) it is anti-historical; (3) it is quietist. Therefore it must be rejected with all decisiveness.

Lest there should be any misunderstanding : we entirely adopt the standpoint that sensuality, sensual experience, etc., having as their source the material world existing outside our consciousness, constitute the point of departure and beginning of cognition. It was just from this that began the philosophical rebellion of Feuerbach against the yoke of the idealistic abstractions and panlogism of Hegel. Of course, individual sensations are a fact. But historically there is no absolutely unmixed individual sensation, beyond the influence of external nature, beyond the influence of other people, beyond the elements of mediated knowledge, beyond historical development, beyond the individual as the product of society---and society in active struggle against nature. And in the ``axiom'' under consideration, what is important is its logical 'purity." If the latter disappears, the whole ``axiom'' disappears. For this reason the arguments which we put forward are actual arguments.

From the above it can already be seen what a vast role the problem of theory and practice plays from the standpoint of epistemology.

We pass now to the consideration of this theme.

First of all, it should be noted that both theory and practice are the activity of social man. If we examine theory not as petrified "~systems," and practice not as finished products--- i.e., not as ``dead'' labour petrified in things, but in action, we shall have before us two forms of labour activity, the bifurcation of labour into intellectual and physical labour, "mental and material," theoretical cognition and practical action. Theory is accumulated and condensed practice. To the extent that it

_-_-_

~^^5^^ K, Marx: "On the book of Adolph Wagner." First published in Marx and Engels Archiv, vol. v., pp. 387-388, Moscow, 1930. Marx'.s italics.

3 generalises the practice of material labour, and is qualitatively a particular and specific continuation of material labour, it is itself qualitatively a special, theoretical practice, to the extent that it is active (cf. e.g., the experiment)---practice fashioned by thought. On the other hand, practical activity utilises theory, and to this extent practice itself is theoretical. In actual fact we have in every class society divided labour and, consequently, a contradiction between intellectual and physical labour---i.e., a contradiction between theory and practice. But, like every division of labour, here too it is a living unity of opposites. Action passes into cognition. Cognition passes into action. Practice drives forward cognition. Cognition fertilises practice.^^6^^ Both theory and practice are steps in the joint process of "the reproduction of social life." It is extremely characteristic that from of old the question has been asked : "How is cognition possible?" But the question is not asked : "How is action possible?" There is "epistemology." But no learned men have yet thought of inventing some special "praxeology." Yet one passes into the other, and Bacon himself quite justifiably spoke of the coincidence of knowledge and power, and of the interdependence of the laws of nature and norms of practice.^^7^^ In this way practice breaks into the theory of cognition, theory includes practice, and real epistemology, i.e., epistemology which bases itself upon the unity (not the identity !) of theory and practice, includes the practical criterion, which becomes the criterion of the truthfulness of cognition.

The relative social disruption of theory and practice is a basis for a break between the theory of cognition and practical action, or for the construction of a super-experimental _-_-_

~^^6^^ "Theoretical capacity begins with the presently existing, given, external and transforms it into its conception. Practical capacity, on the contrary, begins with internal definition. The latter is called decision, intention, task. It then trasfonns the internal into the real and external---i.e., gives it present existence. This transition from internal definition to externality is called activity." "Activity generally is the union of the internal and the external. The internal definition with which it begins, as a purely internal phenomenon, must be removed in its form and become purely external. . . . On the contrary, activity is also the removal of the external, as it is given directly. . . . The form of the external is changed. . . ." (G. V. F. Hegel: "Introduction to Philosophy," sections 8 and 9.)

~^^7^^ Francis Bacon: "Philosophical Works," ed. J. M. Robertson, London, 1905. "Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for when the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule" (p. 259.) Franc. Baconis dc Verulamio • "~Novum Organum Sdcntiarum." Apud Adrianum Wijngaerum et Franriscum Moiardum, 1645, p. 31. "Scientia et Potentia Humana in idem coincidunt, qttia ignoratio causse destituit effectum. Natura enim non nisi parendo vincitur; et quod in Contemplatione instar causes est, id in Operatione instar Regulae est.''

4 theory as a skilled free supplement to the usual and earthly forms of human knowledge.^^8^^ Hegel has the unity of theory and practice in a particularly idealistic form (unity of the theoretical and practical idea as cognition),^^9^^ unity which overcomes the onesidedness (Einseitigkeit) of theory and practice, taken separately, unity "precisely in the theory of cognition.''^^10^^ In Marx we find the materialistic (and simultaneously dialectical) teaching of the unity of theory and practice, of the primacy of practice and of the practical criterion of truth in the theory of cognition. In this way Marx gave a striking philosophical synthesis, in face of which the laboured efforts of modern pragmatism, with its theological and idealistic contortions, its superartificial and laborious constructions of fictionalism, etc., seem but childish babble.

The interaction between theory and practice, their unity, develops on the basis of the primacy of practice. (1) Historically : the sciences ``grow'' out of practice, the "production of ideas" differentiates out of the "production of things"r (2) sociologically : "social being determines social consciousness," the practice of material labour is the constant "force motrice" of the whole of social development; (3) epistemologically : the practice of influence on the outside world is the primary "given quality." From this follow extremely important consequences. In the exceptionally gifted ``theses'' of Marx on Feuerbach, we read :

``Die Frage, ob dem menschlischen Denken gegenstandliche Wahrheit zukomme-ist keine Frage der Theorie, sonden eine praktische Frage. In der Praxis muss der Mensch die Wahrheit, d.h. Wirklichkeit und Macht, Diesseitigkeit seines Denkens beweisen. Der Streit iiber die Wirklichkeit oder Nichtwirklichkeit des Denkens, das von der Praxis isoliert ist---ist eine rein scholastiche Frage." (2nd Thesis.)

``Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden _-_-_

~^^8^^ Cf. Marx and Engels: "Feuerbach (Idealistic and Materialist Standpoint)," Marx and Engels Archives, vol. i., p. 221: "Division of labour becomes a real division of labour only when a division of material and spiritual labour begins. From that moment consciousness may in reality imagine that it is something other than the consciousness of existing practice. From the moment that consciousness begins really to imagine something, without imagining something real, from that time onwards it finds itself in a position to emancipate itself from the world and proceed to the formation of ' pure theory,' theology, philosophy, morality, etc.''

~^^9^^ "Die Idee als Erkennen, welches in der gedoppelten Gestalt der theoretischen und der praktischen Idee erscheint." (Hegel: " Wissenschaft der Logik," 391 (vi., sec. 215).

^^10^^ Lenin: Abstract of "The Science of Logic," Lenin Review, vol. ix., 6. 270.

5 interpretiert; es kommst darauf an, sie zu verandern." (llth Thesis.)

The problem of the external world is here put as the problem of its transformation : the problem of the cognition of the external world as an integral part of the problem of transformation : the problem of theory as a practical problem.

Practically---and, consequently, epistemologically---the external world is ``given'' as the object of active influence on the part of social, historically developing man. The external world has its history. The relations growing up between subject and object are historical. The forms of these relations are historical. Practice itself and theory, the forms of active influence and the forms of cognition, the "modes of production" and the "modes of conception," are historical. The question of the existence of the external world is categorically superfluous, since the reply is already evident, since the external world is given," just as practice itself is "~given." Just for this reason in practical life there are no seekers after solipsism, there are no agnostics, no subjective idealists. Consequently epistemology, including praxiology, epistemology which is praxiology, must have its point of departure in the reality of the external world : not as a fiction, not as an illusion, not as a hypothesis, but as a basic fact. And just for this reason Boltzmann^^11^^ " declared with every justification that the premise about the unreality of the external world is "die grosste Narrheit, die je ein Menschengehirn ausgebriiter hat" : it is in contradiction to all the practice of humanity. Whereas E. Mach, in his "Analysis of Sensations," considers that from the scientific (and not the practical) standpoint the question of the reality of the world (whether it exists in reality, or whether it is an illusion, a dream) to be impermissible, since "even the most incongruous dream is a fact no worse than any other.''^^12^^ This "theory of cognition" acquired from Vaihinger^^13^^ a demonstrative character, as he erected fiction into a principle and ``system'' of cognition. This peculiar somnambulistic epistemology was foreseen in his day by Calderon :^^14^^

i Que es la vida ? Un frenesf :
¿ Que es la vida ? Una illusion,
~ ~ ~ Una sombra, una ficcion, _-_-_

~^^11^^ Boltemann: "Populare Schriften," 90S.

~^^12^^E. Mach: "Analyse der Empfindungen.''

^^13^^ R. Vaihinger • "Die Philosophic des Als Ob. System der theoretischen, praktischen und religiosen Fiktionen der Menscheit auf Grund eines idealistischen Ppsitivismus," Berlin, 1911, p. 91. "Das die Materie eine solche Fiktion sei, ist heutzutage eine allgemeine Ueberzeugung der denkenden Kopfe.''

~^^14^^ Calderon: "La Vida es Suefio." Las Comedias del celebre poeta espanol Don Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Zuickavia, Libreria de los hermanos Schumann, 1819.

6 Y el mayor bien es pequeno,
Que toda la vida es sueno,
Y los suenos suefio son,

Practice is an active break-through into reality, egress beyond .the limits of the subject, penetration into the object, the ``humanising'' of nature, its alteration. Practice is the refutation of agnosticism, the process of transforming "things in themselves" into "things for us," the best proof of the adequacy of thought, and of its truth---understood historically, as a process. For, if the objective world is changed through practice and according to practice, which includes theory, this means, that practice verifies the truth of theory; and this means that we l^now to a certain extent (and come to know more and more) objective reality, its qualities, its attributes, its regularities.

Therefore the fact of technology, as Engels already remarked in "Anti-Diihring,"^^15^^ confutes Kantian agnosticism--- that "paltry doctrine," in the words of Hegel.^^16^^ If K. Pearson in a "Grammar of Science" modernises the well-known cave of Plato, replacing it by a telephone exchange, and the pale shades of the Platonic ideas by telephone signals, he thereby demonstrates his own conception of the passively-contemplative character of cognition. The real subject---i.e., social and historical man---is not in the least like either Karl Pearson's telephonist or the observer of the Platonic shades. He likewise does not in the least resemble that stenographer, inventing ``convenient'' signs in shorthand, into whom the philosophising mathematicians and physicists desire to transform him (B. Russell, Wittgenstein, Frank., Schlick, and others). For he is actively transforming the world. He has changed the face of the whole of the earth. Living and working in the biosphere,^^17^^ social man has radically remoulded the surface of the planet. The physical landscape is ever more becoming the seat of some branch of industry or agriculture, an artificial material medium has filled space, gigantic successes of technique and natural science confront us, the radius of cognition, with the progress of exact apparatus of measurement and new methods of research, has grown extremely wide : we already weigh planets, study their chemical composition, photograph invisible rays, etc. We foretell objective changes in the world, and we change the world. But this is unthinkable without real knowledge. Pure symbolism, stenography, a system of signs, of fictions, _-_-_

~^^15^^ F. Engels: Herrn Eugen Diihrings Umwalzung der Wissenschaft.''

~^^16^^ "That we do not know realities, and that it has been granted us to know only accidental and passing---i.e., paltry phenomena---that is the paltry doctrine, which has made and is making the loudest noise, and which now predominates in philosophy." Hegel: " Encyclopaedia of Philosophic Sciences," Part I , Speech of Oct. 22, 1818.)

^^17^^ See V. Vcrnadsky, Member of Academy: The Biosphere. Leningrad, 1926. (Russian.)

7 cannot serve as an instrument of objective changes, carried out by the subject.^^18^^

Cognition, considered historically, is the more and more adequate reflection of objective reality. The fundamental criterion of the correctness of cognition is therefore the criterion of its adequateness, its degree of correspondence to objective reality. The instrumental criterion of truth is not in contradiciton to this criterion, but coincides with it, if it is only a question of an instrument for the practice of social man, transforming the objective world (Marx's "revolutionare Praxis," Engels' "umwalzende Praxis"), and not of the individual ``practice'' of any philistine in a beershop. Therefore the "instrumental criterion" of pragmatism (Bergson, close to pragmaticism; W. James and others) must be rejected with all decisiveness. James includes as practice, prayer, the ``experience'' of religious ecstasy, etc.; doubting the existence of the material world, he does not doubt at all the existence of God, like, by the way, many other adherents of so-called "scientific thought" (A. S. Eddington, R. A. Millikan, etc.).^^19^^ The criterion of economy of thought can in no way serve as a criterion, since the economy itself can only be established post jactum : while taken in isolation, as a bare principle of cognition in itself, it means the a priori liquidation of the complexity of thought---i.e., its deliberate incorrectness. In this way ``economy'' is transformed into its very opposite. "Man's thinking is only `economic' when it correctly reflects objective reality, and the criterion of this correctness is practice, experiment, industry.''^^20^^

_-_-_

^^18^^ Characteristic of the modern physicists and mathematicians is the following opinion of Ph. Frank: "Wir sehen: bei keiner Art von solchen Problemen handclt es sich darum, eine ' Uebereinstimmung zwischen gedanken und Objekt," wie die Schulphilosophie sagt, hervorzubringen, sondern immer nur um die Erfindung sines Verfahrens, das geignet ist, mit Hilfe eines geschickt gewahlten Zeichensystems Ordnung in unsere Erlcbnisse zu bringen und dadurch uns ihre Beherrschung zu erleichtcrn." (Ph. Frank: "Was bedeuten die gegenwartigen physikalischen Theorien fiir die allgemeine Erkenntnislehre?" in "Erkenntnis," vol. i., pp. 2-4; pp. 134-135).

~^^19^^ "God is real, since he produces real effects" (517). "I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. . . . What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, I know not. . . . But the overbelief on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist" (519). William James: "The Varieties of Religious Experience," London, 1909. Cf. also "Pragmatism," p. 76. Study (Joe. cit. 65, footnote) rightly observes: "Er (Vaihinger, N.B.), verurteilt den Pragmatismus meretrix theologorum. Ich hatte den Pragmatismus 'die Leib---und Magenphilosophie des banalen Nutzlichkeitsmenschen genannt'.''

~^^20^^ V. I. Lenin: = "Materialism and Empiriocriticism," Works, Eng. ed., vol. xiii.

8

We see, consequently, that modern capitalist theories of cognition either do not deal with the question of practice altogether (Kantianism: cf. H. Cohen: "Logik der reinen Erkenntnis," 1902, p. 12." Wir fangen mit dem Denken an. Das Denken darf keinen Ursprung haben ausserhalb seiner selbst"), or treat of practice in the Pickwickian sense, tearing it away from the material world or from "the highest" forms of cognition (pragmatism, conventionalism, fictionalism, etc.). The only true position is held by dialectical materialism, which rejects all species of idealism and agnosticism, and overcomes the narrowness of mechanical materialism (its ahistorism, its anti-- dialectical character, its failure to understand problems of quality, its contemplative "objectivism," etc.).

__ALPHA_LVL2__ II.---Theory and Practice from the Sociological Standpoint.
Historical Forms of Society and the Connection of Theory
and Practice.

Dialectical materialism, as a method of cognition applied to social development, has created the theory of historical materialism. The usual conception of Marxism is that of a variety of the mechanical, natural-scientific materialism typical of the teachings of the French encyclopaedists of the xviii. century or Biichner-Moleschott. This is fundamentally wrong. For Marxism is built up entirely on the idea of historical development, foreign to the hypertrophied rationalism of the encyclopaedists.^^21^^ The question of theory in general must be put as follows from what is said above---from the standpoint of social theory---i.e., the standpoint of sociology and history.

At the present time all scientists more or less acquainted with the facts, and all research workers, recognise that genetically theory grew up out of practice, and that any branch of _-_-_

~^^21^^ It is characteristic that, in spite of this, the numerous ``refutations'' of Marxism systematically begin with the premise of the mechanical character of dialectical materialism and its sociological side (the theory of historical materialism). Cf. N. N.Alexeyiv. "The Social and Natural Sciences in the Historical Interrelation of their Methods. Part I. The Mechanical Theory, of Society. Historical Materialism." Moscow, 1912. Other attempts at a deeper criticism are founded on a poor acquaintance with the subject, though their name is legion.

9 science has, in the long run, its practical roots.^^22^^ From the~ standpoint of social development, science or theory is the continuation of practice, but---to adapt the well-known remark of Clausewitz---"by other means." The function of science, in the sum total of the process of reproduction of social life, is the function of orientation in the external world and in society, the function of extending and deepening practice, increasing its effectiveness, the function of a peculiar struggle with nature, with the elemental progress of social development, with the classes hostile to the given socio-historical order. The idea of the self-sufficient character of science ("science for science's sake") is naive : it confuses the subjective passions of the professional scientist, working in a system of profound division of labour, in conditions of a disjointed society, in which individual social functions are crystallised in a diversity of types, psychologies, passions (as Schiller says : "Science is a goddess, not a milch cow"), with the objective social role of this kind of activity, as an activity of vast practical importance. The fetishising of science, as of other phenomena of social life, and the deification of the corresponding categories is a perverted ideological reflex of a society in which the division of labour has destroyed the visible connection between social function, separating them out in the consciousness of their agents as absolute and sovereign values. Yet any---even the most abstract ---branch of science has a quite definite vital importance in the course of historical development. Naturally, it is not a question of the direct practical importance of any individual principle--- e.g., in the sphere of the theory of numbers, or the doctrine of quantities, or the theory of conditioned reflexes. It is a question of systems as a whole, of appropriate activity, of chains of scientific truths, representing in the long run the theoretical _-_-_

~^^22^^ Cf. on mathematics among the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Indians, etc. M. Kant or* "Vorlesungen liber die Geschichte der Mathematik." Leipzig. Trubner, 1903, vol. i., 3rd ed. Cf. also F. J. Moore: "History of Chemistry." Otto Wiener: " Physics and the Development of Culture." R. Eisler: "Geschichte der Wissenschaften." A. Bordeaux: "Histoirc des sciences physiques, chimiques, et geologiques au xix. siecle," Paris et Liege, 1920. "It is necessary to study the successive development of individual branches of natural science. First astronomy---already from year to year absolutely necessary for pastoral and agricultural peoples. Astronomy can develop only with the help of mathematics. Consec[uently, it became necessary to study the latter, too. Further, at a certain stage of development and in certain countries (the raising of the water level for irrigation purposes in Egypt), and particularly together with the origin of towns, large buildings, and the development of handicrafts, there developed mechanics also. Soon it also became necessary for shipping and the art of war. . . . Thus from the very beginning the origin and development of Sciences are conditioned by production." (F. Engels: "Dialectics of Nature. Dialectics and Natural Science." Marx and Engels Archives, II., p. 69.)

10 expression of the "struggle with nature" and the social struggle. Active relationship with the external world, which at the purely animal stage of human development presupposes the natural organs of man, as a variety of hominis sapientis, is replaced by relationship through the medium and with the help of the " continuation of those organs," i.e., with the help of the " productive organs of social man" (Marx), the implements of labour, and systems of social technique. At first this system is really the ``continuation'' of the organs of the human body.^^23^^ Later it becomes complicated, and acquires its own principles of movement (e.g., the circular motions of modern machinery). But at the same time there develops historically also orientation in the external world, again with the help of artificial instruments of cognition, instruments of ``spiritual'' labour, extending a gigantic number of times the sphere of action of the natural organs of the body and the instruments of orientation. Microbalances, the water-level, seismographs, the telephone, the telescope, the microscope, the ultra-microscope, the chronoscope, the Michelson grating, electrical thermometers, bolometers, the photo-electrical element of Elster and Geitel, galvanoscopes and galvanometers, electrometers, the apparatus of Ehrenhaft and Millikan, etc., etc.---all these immeasurably widen our natural sensual capacities, open new worlds, render possible the victorious advance of technique. It is a piece of historic irony, at the expense of the greatly multiplied agnostics who completely fail to understand the value of transmitted knowledge,^^24^^ and reduce the whole process of cognition to the production of tautology, that precisely the electrical nature of matter is the "last word" of science : since it is just the " electrical feeling" which we lack. "Yet the whole world of electricity was discovered to us none the less by means of the application of artificial organs of sensation.''^^25^^ Thus there have proved to be historically Variable both the "organs of sensation" and the so-called "picture of the world," verified by the gigantic practice of modern humanity as a whole, a "picture of _-_-_

~^^23^^ Cf. Marx: "~Capital," Eng. ed., vol. i., p. 158: "Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible." Cf. also Ernst Kapp: "Grundlinien einer Philosophic der Technik." Braunschweig, 1877, pp. 42 et scq.

~^^24^^ ". . . Vielmehr glauben wir, dass nur die Beobachtung tins Kenntnis vermittelt von den Tatsachen, die die Welt bilden, wahrend alles Denken nichts ist als tautologisches Umformen." (Hans Hahn: "Die Bedeutung der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung, ^insbesondere filr Mathematik und Physik" in "~Erkenntnis," I., Nos. 2-4, p. 97, 1930. The group of empiriocritics fail to understand that the product of perceptive activity is qualitatively different from sensual "raw material," just as the completed locomotive is qualitatively different from its metallic parts, even though `made' out of them.

~^^25^^ 0. Wiener, Op. cit., p. 41.

11 the world" much more adequate to reality than all its predecessors, and therefore so fruitful for practice.

__b_b_b__

And so man is historically given as social man (in contradistinction to the enlightened Robinsons of Rousseau, `` founding'' society and history like a chess club, and with the help of a "~contract." This social man, i.e., human society, in order to live, must produce. Am Anjang war die Tat (in contrast to the Christian Logos : "In the beginning was the Word"). Production is the real starting point of social development.^^26^^ In the process of production there takes place a ``metabolism'' (Marx) between society and nature. In this process, active on the part of historical and social man, a material process, people are in definite relationship one with another and with the means of labour. These relations are historical, their totality constitutes the economic structure of society. It is also a historic variable (in contradistinction to the theories of "society generally," "eternal society," "ideal society," etc.). The economic structure of society (the "~mode of production ") includes, above all, the relationship between classes. On this basis there grows up the ``superstructure'' : political organisations and State power, moral norms, scientific theories, art, religion, philosophy, etc. The "mode of production" determines also the "~mode of conception~" : theoretical activity is a step in the reproduction of social life; its material is furnished by experience, the breadth of which depends on the degree of power over the forces of nature, which is determined, in the long run, by the development of productive forces, the productivity of social labour, the level of technical development. Stimuli proceed from the tasks set by practice; the forming principles, the "mode of conception" in the literal sense, reflect the "~mode of production," the socio-class structure of society and its complex requirements (the idea of rank, authority, the hierarchy and the personal God in feudal society; the idea of the impersonal force of fate, of the elemental process, of the impersonal God in capitalist commodity-society," etc.). The prevailing conceptions are those of the ruling class, which _-_-_

~^^26^^ This is not a secret for some modern physicists either. "The physical conditions of existence are more fundamental than the aesthetic, moral, or intellectual. A child must be fed before it can be taught. A certain standard of living above that of animals is a preliminary condition for the development of any of the special qualities of human beings." (Frederic Soddy: "Science and Life," London, J. Murray, 1920, p. 3.)

12 is the bearer of the given mode of production.^^27^^

But, just as development in natural history changes the forms of biological species, the historical development of society, with the movement of productive forces at its foundation, changes the socio-historic forms of labour, "social structures," "~modes of production," together with which there changes the whole ideological superstructure, up to and including the ``highest'' forms of theoretical cognition and reflective illusions. The movement of productive forces, the contradiction between them and the historic forms of social labour are, consequently, the cause of the change in these forms, realised through class struggle (to the extent that we are speaking of class societies) and the blowing up of the out-of-date social structure, transformed from "a form of development" to "fetters on development." In this way the practice of material labour is the basic motive force of the entire process as a whole, the practice of the class struggle is the critical-- revolutionary practice of social transformation ("criticism by _-_-_

^^27^^ The fashionable German philosopher and author of "Christian-- prophetic" "~Socialism," Max Scheler, while carrying on a desperate struggle against Marxism, borrows from the latter a number of basic principles, producing as a consequence a perfectly intolerable cacophony of motifs. To illustrate the influence of Marxism on this Catholic philosopher, we quote the following passage from his large work, "Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft" (Leipzig, mcmxxvi), pp. 204-205: "So ist es nicht unrichtig, dass selbst sehr formalc Arten des Denkcns und der Wertnehmung klassenmassig verschieden geartet sind---freilich nur in Gcsctzen der grossen Zahl der Falle, da ja jeder die Binrlung seiner Klassenlage prinzipiell iiberwinden kann. Zu solchcn '.Inssemnassig bestimmten formalen Denkarten rechne ich beispk-'v\ it;e folgcnde:---

1. Wert-prospektivismus des Zeitbewussteins---Uiiterklasse ; Wertretrospektivismus-Oberklasse.

2. Werdensbetrachtung-Unterklasse: Seinsbetrachtung-Oberklasse.

3. Mechanische Weltbetrachtung-Unterklasse; teleologische Weltbetrachtung-Oberklasse.

4. Realismus (Welt vorwiegend als `Widerstand')-Unterklasse; Idealismus-Oberklasse (Welt vorwiegend als `Ideenreich')-

5. Materialismus-Unterklasse; Spiritualismus-Oberklasse.

6. Induktion, Empirismus-Unterklassc ; Aprioriwissen, RationalismusOberklasse.

7. Pragmatismus-Unterklasse; Intellektualismus-Oberklasse.

8. Optimistische Zukunftsansicht und pessimistische RetrospektionUnterklassc. Pessimistische Zukunftsaussicht und Optimistische Retrospektion, 'die gute alte Zeit'-Oberklasse.

9. Widerspriiche suchende Denkart oder ' dialektische' Denkart-- Untcrklasse; identitatssuchende Denkart-Oberklasse.

10. Milieu-theoretisches Denken-Unterklasse ; nativistisches Denken-- Oberklasse.''

This original table is extremely schematic and unhistorical, but it contains individual elements of truth. However, this truth does not prevent Scheler from standing pat on the side of the ``Oberklasse'' and launching into the wilds of appropriate religious metaphysics.

13 weapons" which takes the place of the "weapon of criticism"), the practice of scientific cognition is the practice of material labour continued in particular forms (natural science), of administration and the class struggle (the social sciences). The ''class subjectivism" of the forms of cognition in no way excludes the objective ``significance'' of cognition: in a certain measure cognition of the external world and social laws is possessed by every class, but the specific methods of conception, in their historical progress, variously condition the process of the development of the adequateneSs of cognition, and the advance of history may lead to such a "method of conception" as will become a fetter upon cognition itself. This occurs on the eve of the destruction of the given mode of production and its class promoters.

It is from this historico-materialist angle that we should also approach the exceptionally complicated question of the interrelations between the theoretical (``pure'') and applied sciences. Here there is a considerable number of various solutions : (a) to take as a criterion the difference between causal theoretical series ("Naturgesetz," law) and ideological, normative series (rule, System of rules, prescriptions);^^28^^ (b) to take as a criterion distinction according to objects---the ``pure'' sciences study the natural surroundings given to man : the applied sciences the artificial surroundings (machines, transport technique, apparatus, raw materials, etc.);^^29^^ (c) to take as criterion time (the ``pure'' sciences work with a long period in view, forestalling developments, the applied serve "the needs of the moment");^^30^^ (d) to take as criterion, lastly, the degree of generality (``abstractness'') of the particular science.

On this subject it is necessary to remark (a) on the first criterion : ``sciences'' ideologically set forth at bottom are not sciences, but arts (Kiinste). However, any system of norms (we have not here in mind ethics and the like) depends upon a system of objective laws, which are either covertly understood or directly set forth as such. On the other hand, the sciences in the particular sense of the word ("pure sciences") are not " pure," since the selection of an object is determined by aims which are practical in the long run---and this, in its turn, can and must be considered from the standpoint of the causal regularity of social development.^^31^^

_-_-_

^^28^^ Cf. E. Husserl: "Logical Researches." Cf. M. Lomonosov: "On the Value of Chemistry," Works (St. Petersburg, 1840), iii., p. 1.

^^29^^ Cf. Paul Niggli; Reine und angewandte Natunvisscnschaft. "Die Naturwisscnschaften." 19 Jahrgang, Heft I.

~^^30^^ Cf. W. Ostwald: "~Der energetische Imperativ," I. Reihe, Leipzig 1912, pp. 46, S3.

~^^31^^ The attempts, recently still fashionable, of the school of H. Rickert to dig an impassable abyss between the social and natural sciences logically rely upon the naive conception that in the natural sciences, as opposed to the social, there is no "relation to values." This __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 15. 14

(b)On the second criterion : engineering, for example, may be set forth as a ``pure'' study---i.e., theoretically, without norms, without constructive rules; however, usually in its enunciation we also have a ideological and normative element. The same has to be said, e.g., of the resistance of materials, the science of staple commodities, and so forth. This is not an accident, for here the object itself (" the artificial surroundings") is material practice.

(c)On the third criterion : a vividly practical task may also be ``protracted'' (e.g., the problem of aeronautics, as it stood for a number of centuries, or---at the present time---the transmission of energy from a distance), a task which always has its "purely theoretical" equivalent as well.

(d)On the fourth criterion : a very concrete science may also be "purely theoretical," since knowledge has broken up into a number of rivulets, and has become extremely specialised. It would hardly come into anyone's head, for example, to classify the Japhetic theory of language among the applied sciences, although it also, of course, is bound up with a number of the most important practical tasks. (Here we should also note the relativity of the conceptions of concrete and abstract.)

And so, apparently, all the definitions are defective. The most accurate definition is the division according to the characteristic of causal and teleological series. However, here too we see obvious defects from the standpoint of actual _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 14. ``relation to values" exists in the natural sciences as well, so far as selection of an object is concerned. However, teleology must be driven out of science, as a system of theoretical principles discovering objective regularities, and this applies equally to the social and the natural sciences. The raison-d'etre of the Rikkertian view for the bourgeoisie, however, is that its social science is rapidly declining to scientific non-existence, changing more and more into the simple apology of the capitalist system, which for the Rickerts undoubtedly has a most outstanding "~value." As for the other distinction of ``principle'' made by Rickert (the historical character of the social sciences and the non-historical character of the natural), it relies upon an extreme narrowness of outlook, which takes note of the historical evolution of some social phenomena, but does not see the history of nature. At the present time a new school is arising in place of Rickert-Dilthey---M. Weber, O. Spann, W. Sombart---which proclaims the impossibility of the perception of external nature ("the essence of things") and the full possibility of the perception of the ``sense'' of social phenomena, Sombart moreover maintaining that the natural sciences have practical value, while the social sciences cannot have any practical application. Truly modern bourgeois science is beginning to walk on its head! Cf- Sombart: Die drei Nationalokonomien v. Geschichte und System der Lehre von der Wirtschaft. Duncker und Humblot, 1930.

15 relationship. But all these defects of logical definition reveal the objective dialectics of reality: contradictions arise here because ' there is an objective contradiction between theory and practice, and at the same time their unity; there is their difference, as opposite poles of human activity, and at the same time their interpretation; there is their separate existence as functions, as branches of divided social labour, and at the same time their unitary existence, as steps in the joint "~production of social life." Under the cover of the difficulty of the exact demarcation of the applied and theoretical sciences beats the dialectics of the relationship between theory and practice, the passing of one into the other : which does not fit---and cannot fit---into the framework of school-logic and academical-pedantic definitions. In reality we have a whole chain of various theoretical sciences, linked up by internal connections ("the classification of sciences, of which each analyses a separate form of motion or a number of interconnected forms of motion which pass into one another, is also a classification or hierarchy of these very forms of motion according to the order inherent in them : and just in this lies its significance.")^^32^^ These sciences are born out of practice, which first sets itself ``technical'' tasks : the latter require, in their turn, the solution of ``theoretical'' problems, problems of the first, second, etc., order, a special ( relative) logic of motion being thereby created. Practice in this way grows into theory : the sought-for rule of action is transformed into the search for the law of objective relationship : there arise innumerable knots and interlacings of problems with their solutions : these, in their turn, sometimes fertilise a number of hierarchically lower branches of science, and through technology penetrate into technique---consequently, into the direct practice of material labour, transforming the world. Here law becomes transformed into a rule of action, the percipient decision is verified by that action, orientation in the Surroundings becomes the alteration of those surroundings, the intellect is immersed in the will, theory once again reverts to the form of practice. But this metamorphosis has as its final result by no means a simple repetition of the previous cycle of practice, since practice becomes practice on a more powerful and qualitatively altered basis.

The problem of the ``pure'' and ``applied'' sciences, reflecting and expressing the problem of theory and practice, is not however a purely logical problem. It is itself a problem of history, and a problem of transforming historical practice. The acuteness of the problem in the innermost recesses of the _-_-_

^^32^^ F. Engels: "Dialectics of Nature," pp. 31-33. See also Hegel: " Phenomenology of the Spirit" (St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 112): " Symptoms must not only bear an essential relationship to cognition, but must also be essential definitions of things, so that the artificial system must be in conformity with the system of nature itself, and express only that system.''

16 capitalist order, and even the posing of the problem itself, is the theoretical expression of the real separation, fixed in terms of profession and class, and rupture between theory and practice---a rupture, naturally, relative and not absolute. This rupture, consequently, is a historical phenomenon : it is bound up with a definite historico-economic formation, with a definite historically transitory "mode of production," with the bifurcation of labour into intellectual and physical labour, with the polarisation of classes. It may therefore be said with every justification that socio-economic formations ("modes of production," "economic structures") differ from one another also in the particular character of the relationship between theory and practice. And in fact, in the theocratic state of Ancient Egypt there were elements of a natural centralised planned economy; knowledge (theory) was most closely connected with practice, since it was expediently directed towards practice. But this connection was of a special type. Knowledge was inaccessible to the mass of workers : their practice for them was blind, and knowledge was surrounded with an aureole of dread mystery. In this sense there was a vast rupture between theory and practice. If we take for comparison the epoch of industrial capitalism, the epoch of the flourishing of "economic man," of boundless individualism, of "laissez faire," we see a different picture. On a social scale no one puts forward in an organised fashion either problems of cognition or problems of application of acquired knowledge. The division of labour creates a group of scientists and ideologues, bound up with the ruling class, which in its turn is broken to pieces by competition. The connection between theory and practice is to a considerable extent built up "privately." But the bifurcation of intellectual and physical labour does not disappear : it receives a different expression---a certain degree of "democratisation of knowledge," necessary from the standpoint of technique : the formation of a large stratum of technical and other intelligentsia : the specialisation of science : the creation of high theoretical generalisations, completely remote from the consciousness of the mass of practical workers (wage-workers). This is another type of connection.^^33^^ Its inevitable consequence is the _-_-_

^^33^^ A number of other examples might be quoted. Moore, in his " History of Chemistry," already quoted, writes of the Greek philosophers : "They lacked direct acquaintance with chemical transmutations. Owing to their social position they were deprived of direct contact with those who might have communicated practical information to them, while the general spirit of the age forced them to despise experiment, equally with physical work. Only pure thought was considered worthy of a philosopher" (p. 2). "The slow progress of science in antiquity is explained by the dissociation of theory from practice. There existed no contact between those who worked and those who thought" (pp. 9, 10). Cf. also Hermann Diels: "Wissenschaft und Technik bei den Hellenen" in "Antike Technik." (Trubner, Leipzig & Berlin, 1920), pp. 21 et seq. Cf. with this observation Marx on Aristotle in "~Capital," vol. I.

17 abstract and impersonal fetishism of science (science for science's sake), the disappearance of the social self-- consciousness of science, etc. Modern capitalism reproduces this anarchy on the new and more powerful basis of trustified industrial complexes and the corresponding scientific organisations. But it cannot either discover a scientific synthesis, or attain the self-knowledge of science, or achieve its organisation, or its fusion with practice. These problems, which are poignantly felt, lead already beyond the boundaries of capitalism.

__ALPHA_LVL2__ III.---Theory and Practice of the U.S.S.R. and the Empirical
Test of Historical Materialism.

It follows from all the foregoing that the question of theory and practice is simultaneously both a theoretical and a practical question : that both theory and practice, and likewise the forms of combination of theory and practice, are bound up with a definite historical order of society, its development, its motion." Therefore it is beyond all doubt that a particularly stormy course of social life (a revolution) and a new Social order (Socialism im Werden) are of exceptional interest from the standpoint of the problem we are considering.

All knowledge is tested in practice, by experience. The same has to be said of the systematised knowledge, of theory, theoretical tendency, "doctrine." It is relevant here to record, first of all, that Marxism, weighed in the balance of history, has been verified therein in the most varied directions. Marxism foretold the war; Marxism foretold the period of revolutions and the whole character of the epoch we are going through; Marxism foretold the dictatorship of the proletariat and the rise of a Socialist order; even earlier had been brilliantly justified the theory of the concentration and centralisation of capital, etc. The Revolution has proved the great destroyer of fetishes, laying bare the fundamental links and interdependences of society in their real significance. The State appeared to bourgeois science now as a distinct organism (even up to the point of determining its sex), now as a fantasy, now as an expression of the "~Absolute Spirit," now as the universal organisation of the popular will, etc. The Revolution has destroyed one State and built up another : it has practically invaded this sphere of reality, and has ascertained the component parts of the State, and its functions, and its personnel, and its " material appendages," and its class significance, and its significance from the standpoint of economics. The Revolution has completely confirmed the theoretical teaching of Marx on the State. The same has happened to the norms of law, with ``law'' itself: juridical fetishism has burst into atoms. Morality, which found its "theoretical justification" in the categorical 18 imperative of Kant, and which reached its highest stage of deification, disclosed itself to be a system of relative historical norms, with a quite earthly, quite social, and quite historical origin. Religion, which is revered as the highest product of human thought, proved to be a cast taken from a society of lords and slaves, a construction on the model of a dualist society, on the model of a hierarchical ladder of domination and exploitation. For this very reason it began rapidly to die out.

But the revolution in reflective categories, which was the inevitable result of the material revolution, has not yet concluded. We are patently viewing its first phase. Here it is necessary to dwell on some problems in this connection, related to the question of theory and practice.

The capitalist economic order is a system of unorganised elementally developing, and as a whole irrational economic life ("anarchy of production," competition, crises, etc.). The Socialist economic order is a system of organised, planned, and anti-exploiter economy, in which little by little there disappears the division between town and country, intellectual and physical labour. Hence follow vast consequences. First of all, it is necessary to note the changes in the character of social regularity. The regularity of capitalism is an elemental regularity, coming into existence irrespective of (and sometimes against) the will of man (typical examples are the regularity of the industrial cycle, of crisis, etc.). This regularity shows itself in the shape of a compulsory law, ' 'like the law of gravity when a house falls on your head.''^^34^^.

In relation to the actions of individual persons this regularity is irrational, even though every one of them should act according to all the rules of rational calculation. This irrational current of life is the consequence of the anarchic character of the capitalist structure. The regularity in organised Socialist society is of a different type. It loses (if we are speaking of a process, it begins to lose) its elemental character : the future lies ahead as a plan, an aim : causal connection is realised through social teleology : regularity shows itself not post factum, not unforeseen, incomprehensible, blind : it shows itself as "recognised necessity" ("freedom is recognised necessity"), realised through action organised on a social scale. Consequently, here is present a different type of regularity, a different relationship between the individual and society, a different relationship between causal and ideological series. In capitalist sociejy the theoretical foreknowledge of the general course of events does not provide the instrument for taking direct control of that course (and there is no subject to set himself such _-_-_

^^34^^ K. Marx: "~Capital," vol. i. Cf. also Engels: "Ludwig Feuerbach," &c.

19 a task : society itself is subjectless, blind, unorganised). In Socialist society the theoretical foreknowledge of the necessity can at once become a norm of action on the scale of the whole of society---i.e., on the scale of "~the whole." Thereby is afforded the possibility of the fusion of theory and practice, their gigantic social synthesis, historically more and more realised in the measure of the elimination of the rupture between intellectual and physical labour.

In the economic life of capitalism the elementary social necessity of definite proportions between the branches of production is achieved by means of an elemental fluctuation of prices, in which the law of value expresses itself as the elemental regulator of socio-productive life. In the economic life of Socialism the distribution of resources (means of production and labour power) takes place as a constructive task of a plan. But the^plan does not fall from the sky: it is itself the expres sion of "recognised necessity." Consequently, here (a) the tasks of cognition expand to a colossal degree; (b) this cognition must embrace a huge quantity of problems, and express itself in the work of all branches of science; (c) this cognition must become synthetic, for a plan is a synthesis, and a scientifically elaborated plan can rely only on a synthesis; (J) this cognition is directly bound up with practice : it relies on practice, it serves it, it passes into it, for the plan is active : it is at one and the same time a product of scientific thought, laying bare causal regularities, and a system of purposes, an instrument of action, the direct regulator of practice and its component part. But the plan of Socialist construction is not only a plan of economy : the process of the rationalisation of life, beginning with the suppression of irrationality in the economic sphere, wins away from it one position after another : the principle of planning invades the sphere of "~mental production," the sphere of science, the sphere of theory. Thus there arises here a new and much more complex problem : the problem of the rationalisation not only of the material-economic basis of society, but also of the relations between the sphere of material labour and "spiritual labour," and of relations within the latter---the most striking expression of this is the question of the planning of science.^^35^^

In the ideological life of capitalism a certain social necessity of definite proportions (much less definite than in economic life!) between the various branches of ideological labour is regulated to an extremely small extent by the State (the only sphere which is completely regulated is the production and diffusion of religious ideas through the organisation of the _-_-_

^^35^^ For this see: "Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Planning of Scientific Research Work," Moscow, 1931.

20 State Church.) The regularities of development are here also elemental. Those basic principles which the theory of historical materialism puts forward cannot serve as a standard of action for the ruling class, on the social scale of that action, for the same reason that a capitalist ``plan'' is unrealisable : a plan is in contradiction to the very structure of capitalism, the prime dominants of its structure and its development. Here, too, the building of Socialism puts the whole problem in a new way. The elemental regularity of interdependences between economy and ideology, between collective economic practice and the multifarious branches of theoretical labour, yield place to a considerable degree to the principle of planning. At the same time, all the basic proportions of the theory of historical materialism are confirmed : one can feel with one's hands, as it were, how the requirements of the rapid and intensive growth of the U.S.S.R. imperiously dictate the solution of a number of technical problems, how the solution of these problems, in its turn, dictates the posing of the greatest theoretical problems, including the general problems of physics and chemistry. One can feel with one's hands how the development of Socialist agriculture pushes forward the development of genetics, biology generally, and so on. It can be observed how the exceptionally insistent need for the study of the natural wealth of the Union broadens the field of geological research, pushes forward geology, geochemistry, etc. And all the poverty of the idea that the ``utility'' of science means its degradation, the narrowing of its scope, etc., becomes crystal clear and apparent. Great practice requires great theory. The building of science in the U.S.S.R. is proceeding as the conscious construction of the scientific ``superstructures'' : the plan of scientific works is determined in the first instance by the technical and economic plan, the perspectives of technical and economic development. But this means that thereby we are arriving not only at a synthesis of science, but at a social synthesis of science and practice. The relative disconnection between theory and practice characteristic of capitalism is being eliminated. The fetishism of science is being abolished. Science is reaching the summit of its social self-cognition.

But the Socialist unification of theory and practice is their most radical unification. For, gradually destroying the division between intellectual and physical labour, extending the socalled "higher education" to the whole mass of workers, Socialism fuses theory and practice in the heads of millions. Therefore the synthesis of theory and practice signifies here a quite exceptional increase in the effectiveness of scientific work and of the effectiveness of Socialist economy as a whole. The unification of theory and practice, of science and labour, is the entry of the masses into the arena of cultural creative work, and 21 the transformation of the proletariat from an object of culture into its subject, organiser and creator. This revolution in the very foundations of cultural existence is accompanied necessarily by a revolution in the methods of science : synthesis presupposes the unity of scientific method: and this method is dialectical materialism, objectively representing the highest achievement of human thought. Correspondingly is being also built up the organisation of scientific work : together with concentrated planned economy there is growing the organisation of scientific institutions, which is being transformed into a vast association of workers.^^36^^

In this way is arising a new society, growing rapidly, rapidly overtaking its capitalist antagonists, more and more unfolding the hidden possibilities of its internal structure. From the standpoint of World history the whole of humanity, the whole oroi's terrarum, has fallen apart into two worlds, two economic and cultural-historic systems. A great world-historic antithesis has arisen : there is taking place before our very eyes the polarisation of economic systems, the polarisation of classes, the polarisation of the methods of combining theory and practice, the polarisation of the "modes of conception," the polarisation of cultures. The crisis of bourgeois consciousness goes deep, and traces out marked furrows : on the whole front of science and philosophy we have gigantic dislocations which have been excellently formulated (from the standpoint of their basic orientation) by O. Sfiann : the main thing is a war of destruction against materialism. This is the great task of culture,^^37^^ in the opinion of the warlike professor, who protests against knowledge without God and knowledge without virtue (Wissen _-_-_

^^36^^ Otto Neurath: "Wege dcr wissenschaftliclienAuffassung" (`` Erkenntnis'' vol. i., No. 2-4, p. 124): "In grosstem Stil planrrtassig gedankliche Gcmeinschaftsarbeit ist als Allgemeinerschciniing wohl nur moglich in einer planmassig durchorganisierten Gcsellschaft, die mit Hilfe irdisch begrlindeter Mittel, straff und bewusst die Lebensordnung in Hinblick auf irdisches Gluck gestaltet, Soziale Wandlungen sind Prager geistiger Wandlungen." The same author pays a tribute to the materialist conception of history (p. 121), recognising the fact of the true prognoses drawn up by the Marxists. Quite otherwise has been the philosophic evolution of W. Sombart, who in his last book writes that Marxism owes its ``monstrous'' powe_r "ausschlusslich den in Mystik auslaufenden geschichts-- philosophischen Konstruktionen dieser Heilslehre" (Werner Sombart: "Die drei Nationalokonomien," p. 32). This charge of mysticism levelled against Marxism is just as stupid as the previously mentioned ``essence'' and ``sense'' of the latest "sociology of sense." And bourgeois science is patently beginning to wander in its accusations against the theory of the revolutionary proletariat!

~^^37^^ Dr. Othtnar Spann: "Die Krisis in der Volkswirtschaftlehre," p. 10--- ::. . . so finden wir . . ., dass ein . . . auf yernichtung hinzielender Kampf gegen . . .sagen wir zuletzt Materialismus jeden Schlages, gefiihrt wurde. Seit der Aufklarung gibt es keine lebenswichtigere Angelegenheit der Kultur.''

22 ohne Gott und Wissen ohne Tugend). In economic ideology, under the influence of the crisis of the capitalist system, there has begun the direct preaching of a return "to the pick and the hoe," to pre-machine methods of production. In the sphere of "spiritual culture" the return to religion, the substitution of intuition, "inward feeling," "contemplation of the whole," for rational cognition. The turn from individualist forms of consciousness is patent. It is universal---the idea of "the whole," ``wholeness'' ("das Ganze," ``Ganzheit'') in philosophy; in biology (Driesch and the Vitalists), in physics, in psychology (Gestaltpsychologie), in economic geography (territorial complexes), in zoology and botany (the doctrine of heterogeneous ``societies'' of plants and animals), in political economy (the collapse of the school of "marginal utility," ``social'' theories, the ``universalism'' of Spann), and so on, and so forth. But this turn to the ``whole'' takes place on the basis of the absolute breaking-away of the whole from its parts, on the basis of idealistic understanding of the "whole," on the basis of a sharp turn to religion, on the basis of the methods of supersensual "~cognition." It is not surprising, therefore, that from any scientific hypothesis quasi-philosophic (essentially religious) conclusions are being drawn, and on the extreme and most consistent wing there is openly being advanced the watchword of a new medievalism.^^38^^

In complete opposition to this comprehensible development, young Socialism is arising---its economic principle the maximum of technical economic power, planfulness, development of all human capacities and requirements : its culturalhistorical approach determined by the Marxist outlook : against religious metaphysics advancing dialectical materialism : against enfeebled intuitive contemplation, cognitive and practical activism : against flight into non-existent metempirical heavens, the sociological self-cognition of all ideologies : against the ideology of pessimism, despair, "~fate," fatum, the revolutionary optimism which overturns the whole world : against the complete disruption of theory and practice, their greatest synthesis: against the crystallisation of an "elite," the uniting of the millions. It is not only a new economic system which has been born. A new culture has been born. A new science has been born. A new style of life has been born. This is the greatest antithesis in human history, which both theoretically and practically will be overcome by the forces of the proletariat---the last class aspiring to power, in order in the long run to put an end to all power whatsoever.

_-_-_

~^^38^^ Cf. E. Morselli:

npaTTeiv, Troiew, Qeupelv in "Rivista di filosofia," vol. xxi., No. 2, "e un ritorno a un nuovo Medio evo che in forme varie agita oggi il pensiero della `elite' europea" (p. 134). Cf. also Berdiaeff: "Un nouveau Moyen Age." Paris, 1927.

23 ~ [24] __ALPHA_LVL1__ PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY.
By A. F. JOFFE. [25] ~ [26]

PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY

By A. JOFFE, Sc. D., LL.D.

There is a very close relationship between physics and industry. The truth is that all forms of industry are nothing but various sections of physics or chemistry applied and exploited on a large scale. But it is also true that most conceptions of physics are discovered as the result of consideration of technical problems. The realm of technique is grateful enough to remember the origin of the methods employed by engineers, but the pure scientist usually forgets the manner in which any particular problem found its way into the primers of physics. He begins the history of any problem at the stage where it is already formulated as a scientific problem.

Everybody knows that dynamos and motors owe their existence to Faraday's fundamental discovery of induction, that Maxwell's ideas and Hertz' experiments with electromagnetic waves led to wireless. It is also well known that Lord Kelvin's and R. Clausius' work on thermodynamics laid the basis for the development of thermal technique. The technical bases of the energy and entropy-law clearly formulated by Carnot are often referred to, but the development of thermodynamics since Kelvin is represented as though the thermal technique, metallurgy, and especially the working of steel and alloys, had no influence upon and were independent of the scientific conception of thermodynamic potentials, the theory of phases, and of the surface state.

It is instructive to see how the scientific investigation of spark discharge was stimulated by the spark generators in wireless technique, how the wireless valves reacted on the development of our ideas on electrical emission, on surface structure, on the theory of atoms, their excitation and ionisation, and led finally to a new theory of metallic states. The growing importance of vacuum techniques and the various applications of photoelements opened up a wide field of investigation which appears to be in a fair way to becoming highly important to our ideas on molecular forces and the mechanism of the transmission of electric charges.

We also note that the most fundamental of problems pass into oblivion when they cease to have technical importance. Electrification by friction was dropped when galvanic cells were invented.

1

No new types of cell were invented once industry had replaced them by dynamos, despite the fact that the principles of both the friction and the galvanic cells were not fully understood.

Such mutual stimulation is undoubtedly of great benefit both to science and to industry. The unfortunate fact is that it is neither admitted nor even generally desired by scientists. The number of facts we investigate and speculate upon is in reality very limited. Ever since physics made a choice of problems worth studying and continues to bring them within the orbit of a general theory. This limitation has had some unfortunate results. We do not choose the correct theory applicable to a large field of heterogeneous phenomena, but choose the phenomena from the aspect provided by our current theory. We could perhaps avoid many difficulties and disappointments in the theory of light and matter, in statistical mechanics, in the conception of ether, if we adopted both methods for the progress of science.

The physical phenomena presented by the large industries and agriculture are especially adapted to an enlargement of the field of scientific investigations. The great benefit resulting from the smallest improvement, even by a newmethod of presentation, on the one hand, and the precisely defined conditions and the large scale of the resulting processes on the other hand, are highly favourable to scientific study. Millions of workers, who are familiar with these processes, could be employed in such investigations, and these could be connected up with education and controlled by the scientists of colleges and scientific institutions. We come up against a problem which seems to promise to open up new roads to the progress of science, but those roads cannot be pursued except in a land of Socialism, such as we are trying to build in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

If the relation between science and industry were clearly understood we could expect that science would consciously prepare a basis for the development of technique. There is however no sign of investigations being directed to a solution of the fundamental difficulties of technique. I shall specify a few of the problems forgotten by physicists yet of importance to technique.

1. A reversible oxydation of coal could three or four times increase the energy available for technical purposes.

2. The primary source of all energy, the sun, is exploited only to a ridiculous extent, to a small number of waterfalls. We should develop photochemistry and photoelectricity much more than it is at present. We should also 2 use the energy of sun rays both for the raising of low temperatures and for high temperatures, concentrating the light. The energy store of the soil should be not only studied but also controlled, using the great difference in wave-length between the rays of the sun and the radiation of the earth.

3. Physics could not account for the lack of interest in the study of thermo-electricity by its restriction to metals only. As a direct method of deriving electrical energy from thermal sources the thermo-electrical phenomena have to be studied far more closely.

4. New methods of heating buildings are neglected. The idea of using a kind of refrigerator as a heating system propounded by Lord Kelvin could have far more successful application now that the efficiency of our centrals has been raised from 15 to 30 and more per cent. Buildings with few outside walls and with a majority of rooms inside without windows might be discussed and have some application.

5. The problem of illumination. Our windows are a very unfortunate method of using the light coming from beyond the earth. We chiefly use the diffused light reflected by the house opposite, which is far from satisfactory. The brilliant reflector signs used in advertising, which are illuminated by light falling from above, show clearly what we lose in our living rooms. We still use glass in our windows and electric lamps which cut off the highly important ultraviolet rays.

6. Powerful beams of high-speed electrons or protons and concentrated electro-magnetic waves could find considerable application within the chemical and electrical industries.

7. The limiting stresses which a physical body can stand were found to be much in excess of the limits actually reached. For instance, we are able to state that an electrical breakdown could be prevented up to a field of over one hundred million volts per centimeter, while we still use a field of forty thousand volts. We have also increased the mechanical strength of crystals many hundreds of times. We have succeeded in discovering substances with an electric constant of over 20,000, while no more than ten are used. An extensive field of investigations is awaiting exploration in order to make the results available to technique.

8. The sensitiveness of the methods developed by physics and chemistry is very striking. We can detect a single electron and proton, and less than one hundred photons of ultra-violet and even visible light. X-Rays and electron rays analysis reveal the finest details of structure. Wireless waves can be detected after they have travelled a hundred 3 thousand miles. Why have we not adapted these methods to use in everyday life ?

There are innumerable other such problems. I am convinced physicists are wrong in neglecting them. Not only would their investigations be of practical use, but they would lead to the development of new problems, would lay bare new features of phenomena known to us only under one aspect. Thus set to work, our interest would lead to a further theory and thence to further experiments, all regarded from one aspect supplied by its origin. New light would be thrown on the old problems and new points of view could be expected as the result of an independent course of research.

We are glad that in our own country we have removed all obstacles to an undisturbed development of science closely bound up with the building of a new future. We have some two thousand physicists. We hope to have the co-operation of millions of workers who are enthusiastic about improvement in their industry and about_ learning. We do not pursue the policy of keeping the population from science by giving them alcohol, by keeping them 75 per cent, illiterate, by working them so hard that they have no reserve force, as was the case in pre-war days. The more we proceed with improvements in the standard of living, in shortening the hours of work, in increasing the interest in science and art, the more real will become the co-operation of millions of workers in science and technique. By building up the industry of to-day science will simultaneously be working on the great problems of the future. We do not have to fear any resistance from the contradictory inter-play of private interest. All means leading to a higher culture, to better technique, to new knowledge, will be used in order to create a life free from all the burdens of sadness and injustice, borne to-day by the majority of mankind. Science could have no nobler task than that of co-operation in this work.

4 __ALPHA_LVL1__ RELATIONS of SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
AND ECONOMICS UNDER CAPITALISM
AND IN THE SOVIET UNION.
By M. RUBINSTEIN __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.] [-2] ~ [-1]

RELATIONS OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,
AND ECONOMICS UNDER CAPITALISM
AND IN THE SOVIET UNION.

Summary of the Report of Prof. M. RUBINSTEIN.

The relations between science, technology, and economics under the conditions of capitalist society and under the socialist system that is being- built up in the Soviet Union, are distinctly different, and in many respects, diametrically opposite.

The capitalist system of production and social relations is antagonistic by its very nature. Along' with its growth and development there goes on the development and growth of the profoundest intrinsic contradictions that are manifested in all branches of human existence without exception. The purpose of this report is to trace the development of these contradictions in the domain of scientific and technical -work and to show how these contradictions vanish and fade away under the conditions of the new system of social relations that is now being- built up in the Soviet Union.

It would be useless to describe before this audience the colossal achievements of science and technology during the last century. The report refers only to the basic stages of this development, to its most important present results.

The progress of technical development and the triumph of man over the forces of nature is accelerated with each decade that passes. Substantially speaking, for modern science and technology there are no insoluble problems, and it was quite proper for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers to adopt for their 50th jubilee the slogan : "~What is not, may be !''

The development of technology in the epoch of capitalism has proceeded upon the basis of great achievements and growth of the practical application of science. The place of art, of empirics, was taken by exact science, by the application of mathematics, of the laws of mechanics, by investigation into the chemical and physical transformations of substances, by penetrating into the essence of the organic processes of the vegetable and animal world.

Each discovery, each step forward in natural science, has opened new possibilities of industrial development, new conquests for technology. The report adduces a number of instances of modern influences of this kind, which are manifested with particular prominence in the domain of chemistry and electro-technics.

Large scale machine production, constituting- the fullest and most striking embodiment of the tendencies of technical 1 development, as Marx said, by its very nature "~postulates the replacement of human power by the forces of nature, and of the empirical routine methods by conscious application of science." At the same time the most characteristic feature of all these changes is their fluctuating" character, a constant state of motion, revolutionary changes in the technical basis of production, as well as in the functions of the workers and in the social combinations of the process of labour.

Yet, while the technical development was determined to the highest degree by the achievements of science, on the other hand even far more important was the reverse effect. The development of science, including such branches of scientific investigation as would seem to be the most abstract, has gone on chiefly under the influence and requirements of technology. The correctness of this proposition may be demonstrated by thousands of examples from all branches of science.

The report adduces a series of characteristic examples of such kind of effect at the present time, when each of the maturing technological requirements of humanity lends an impetus to profound scientific analysis of natural phenomena, demanding an answer from science to a number of cardinal questions.

It is necessary also to observe that extensive scientific research in the domain of science at the present time cannot be carried on by those individual craft methods which prevailed in this respect even in the 19th century. It requires powerful laboratory equipment, intricate, expensive appliances and instruments, experiments upon a semi-factory scale, a considerable staff for systematic study of the immense literature growing up on each subject.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, it requires the collective organization of labour, the sub-division of the work, and the complex forms of co-operation in this work among specialists in various branches of science, and of various qualifications. Even when carried on by a large collective body, the treatment of many scientific-technical problems takes sometimes years, and even tens of years, calling in many cases for tens and hundreds of thousands of systematic experiments, tests, and observations. In other words, scientific investigation becomes itself a sort of large scale production organized after the type of industrial plants. And, however great the obstacles raised in this domain by the particularly lingering traditions of mediaevalism, the development of scientific research work in the advanced capitalist countries has followed precisely this course. For instance, the powerful laboratories of the world's leading chemical and electrical trusts (IG, General Electric, Westing-house, etc.) have not only become centres where a number of highly important technical discoveries and inventions has been worked out, but they have also been instrumental in creating a series of new scientific theories. In 2 those laboratories there is intense activity going on upon the study of questions which would seem to be most abstract and theoretical.

It seems to me, it would, be quite futile here to debate the point as to which came first, the fowl or the egg, science or technology.

As is always the case in life and nature, which develop in dialectical manner, the cause becomes here the effect, and the effect, in its turn, the cause. Moreover, this very distinction becomes more and more conventional, vague, and questionable.

A number of discoveries and theories of the close of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century have fully undermined, and partly overthrown the rigid system of the division of the sciences in classical science.

Einstein has overthrown the traditional notions about gravity, space, and time. The quanta of the theory has dealt the knockout blow to the old metaphysical notions about power. Radium, work of Cavendish Laboratory, etc., has turned upside down the old views as to immobile and immutable elements. The study of the laws of electro-magnetic phenomena has enabled us to subject to them the most diverse natural phenomena, having turned upside down thousands of former habitual, deep-rooted notions and theories.

The old, immutable boundaries of the sciences are being obliterated, vanishing just as has vanished the Linneean system, as has vanished the craft specialization of artisan production.

We are witnessing the progressive development of the socalled. "~contiguous sciences," such as physical chemistry, bio-chemistry and bio-physics, techno-economic disciplines, etc.

We see how each new economic problem, each new requirement of technology, calls for the collective work of'a number of sciences for its solution.

We see how, upon the basis of dialectical materialism, all the sciences are showing a tendency to become transformed into a single system of science (yet permitting of sub-division), into the single science about nature and society spoken of by Marx.

Genuine science studies all phenomena in their state of motion, in the antithesis, and in the development which eliminates the contradictions.

And in this new dialectical unity and sub-division of the sciences, technology occupies its place of equality and honour. It is not merely an "~applied~" science which used to be scorned by the high-priests of "~pure~" science and of caste exclusiveness. It is the domain in which man shows primarily his active attitude towards nature, in which he not only explains, but also modifies the world, at the same time modifying himself, too. 3 While the development of technology would have been impossible without science, on the other hand, it is only technology, only industrial practice that can give the incontrovertible answer to a number of cardinal theoretical problems.

While to the priests of pure science it seems a profanation that Marx, in the debate of idealism versus materialism, has appealed to ... alisarine, and other synthetic dyestuffs, to us, the very division of science into "~pure~" and "~impure" seems monstrous metaphysics.

As was written by Marx in his great theses on Feuerbach, " only by practice should man demonstrate the truth, i.e., the reality and force of his thinking, in his world outlook." It is from this angle of vision that we examine the interdependence of theory and practice, of science and technology, of research work and industrial development.

Approaching^^1^^ the subject in this manner, we at once become confronted with the fact that the development of both science and technology is taking place not in super-terrestrial space, not high up in the clouds, not in the walls of laboratories and scientific studies hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world, but in a distinct social environment, under the conditions of a distinct social system.

__ALPHA_LVL2__ Technology and the Contradictions of Capitalist Society.

The social system during- the last century was capitalism. And one cannot understand anything as regards the development and the interdependence of science and technology if one tries to examine them apart from a scientific analysis of the rise and decay of the capitalist social relations, apart from the scientific analysis that is furnished by the study of Marx.

The social system for one-sixth of the world has now become Socialism. And one cannot understand anything about the future perspectives of science and technology as well as about the perspectives of their interdependance, without the study of the laws of development, of the struggle and growth of the new socialist system of social relations.

Let us first deal with the first part.

Modern science and modern technology are the offspring of capitalism, and since the latter, by its very nature, is an antagonistic system, there is bound to be equal antagonism undercapitalism in the forms of the development and interrelations of science and technology. To begin with, what are the problems of technical progress, and of the scientific development catering for this progress, under the conditions of capitalism?

The purpose and the motive power of capitalist production is the derivation of profits. Whatever the priests of pure science say about profanation, we must observe that under the conditions of capitalism, science as well as technology, whether consciously or unconsciously, serve the interests of capitalist profit.

4

In outlining' the development of the first stages of machine production, Marx quotes a remark by John Stuart Mill to the effect that "it is doubtful whether the mechanical inventions so so far made have rendered labour easier even for a single human, being "•; Marx replies to this : "~Neither is this the purpose of machinery used in a capitalist manner. In common with all other methods of development in the productivity of labour, their purpose is to cheapen the price of commodities, to shorten that part of the working day which the worker uses for himself, and thus to lengthen the other part of the day which he gives away gratuitously to the capitalist. Machines are a means for the production of surplus value.''^^*^^

In this remark by Karl Marx is the whole crux of the question. Capitalism, in developing machine production, pursues the purpose not of developing- the forces of production, but of increasing- the profits. Therefore, capitalism introduces a new machine only when the difference, between the price of this machine and the cost of labour-power that it replaces is sufficiently large to secure an average profit and successful competition in the market. Already at the commencement of capitalist development we find a number of cases when inventions or improvements in machinery were either entirely held in abeyance or they were utilized not in the country where they were originated, because labour in that country happened to be so cheap that the adoption of the machine was unprofitable and undesirable to the capitalists. Marx adduces the example of how a stone-crushing machine invented by Englishmen was not adopted in England because the labourers doing that work were paid such a miserable pittance that the introduction of the machine would have rendered stone-crushing more expensive to the capitalists. A large number of other English inventions was first applied in America for the reason that labour was too cheap in England. For scores of years the European Association of Bottle Manufacturers deliberately blocked on the Continent the adoption of the American machine of Owen for the mechanical manufacturing- of bottles. Even the famous Diesel motor was for a long time prevented from being- put into use owing to the opposition of coal mine owners whose domination it threatened.

The report contains a minute analysis of the basic contradictions of technical progress and mechanization under the conditions of capitalism, which are demonstrated with particular fullness on the question of unemployment.

Unemployment, under capitalism, is the inevitable consequence of technical progress, and in its turn, it checks the further development of technical progress, the introduction of new machines, and the application of new scientific methods in industrial practice.

_-_-_

^^*^^ " Capital~" Volume I, p. 361, Russian Edition, 1920.

5

These tendencies to check and obstruct technical, and consequently also scientific development, become particularly pronounced in the final monopoly stage of capitalism.

We can demonstrate a thousand examples of how the powerful capitalist monopolies that have monopolized also the motive forces of technical progress (the apparatus of scientific research work, the laboratories, the patents, and the inventors and scientists themselves) are taking advantage of this monopqly, in the first place, to artificially check the technical progress.

A number of bourgeois scientists and economists, attentively studying the surrounding realities, were bound to admit the rapid growth of these tendencies.

Buying out patents, supporting obsolete plants, fixing cartel prices according to manufacturing costs of the worst plants, secrecy in scientific research work, fear of innovations that threaten depreciation of the old capital stock, etc.---such are everyday facts of industrial reality in the epoch of monopoly capitalism.

Under capitalism, the adoption of technical achievements is always considerably below the extent possible under a given level of scientific and technical development.

As a result we find that in the most advanced capitalist countries the utilization of the achievements of modern technology is limited to a relatively small proportion of plants while allowing the continued existence of obsolete plants in which human labour is wantonly squandered. That the real application of technical discoveries lags far behind the already possible development of the forces of production, is attested by a number of bourgeois economists. Glaring examples of this kind were furnished by the Hoover Commission which investigated the question of waste in industry.

According to calculation by "~Iron Age," by putting all the industrial plants in the United States upon the level of modern technique, it would be possible to shorten the working day to one-third of the present, while at the same time doubling the output.

Under the conditions of monopoly capitalism, this discrepancy between technical possibilities and their industrial application becomes particularly great.

Naturally, all these facts and tendencies have a most direct bearing upon the development of scientific research work.

To begin with, these tendencies of monopoly capitalism, by hindering the growth of the forces of production, clip the wings of scientific creative activity, technical initiative, and inventiveness. A huge portion of scientific work, the labour of many years, is practically wasted finding no application in industry, in life, in reality.

As we shall presently see, even a greater portion of scientific 6 thought and activity is squandered upon direct destruction, upon wars and preparations for wars.

Even those scientific achievements which are carried into effect are resulting only in worsening the conditions of millions of toilers, hence the latter are bound to treat them with indifference and hostility. As was written by Marx, "~Under capitalism, to be a worker engaged in production is not a blessing, but a curse," and therefore "~the worker considers the development of the productivity of his own labour as something inimical to him, and he is right.''

This creates for scientific activity an atmosphere of isolation from the overwhelming majority of the population in which, naturally, real scientific creative work cannot be developed to its full extent. Such an extent can be created only under the conditions of the utmost sympathy, support, direct participation of the masses feeling that each forward step in science and technology means improvement in their conditions, relief in their labour, their emancipation. But such a situation we have only in the Soviet Union.

All these contradictions are manifested with particular force in times of capitalist crises.

Under the present world crisis of capitalism, the largest hitherto recorded, which has clearly destroyed all the hopes that were entertained for the possibility of a lengthy period of prosperity without crisis, these effects of capitalist economy on the development of science and technology have manifested themselves with quite unprecedented force.

The report alludes to a number of instances of the colossal waste of forces of production during the period of crisis, the deliberate curtailment of production, the direct destruction of foodstuffs and raw materials, machines and implements.

Science in many cases deliberately and systematically places itself in the service of reducing the food stocks of humanity (e.g., eosination and gasification of rye and wheat in Germany) and the supplies of raw materials. The reduced use of the industrial equipment of the basic capitalist countries to £-$ of its capacity leads to the losing of all the advantages of mass production, to increased manufacturing costs, to the transformation of all the achievements of modern technique into hindrance for the capitalists and a source of poverty and destitution for millions of toilers.

No wonder that a number of influential representatives of capitalist industry, technology, science, and of the press, are expressing themselves for slackening the "~jazz band of modern industry," for the discontinuance of technical rationalization, for " subordinating technique to the dictates of the merchant," and so forth. The report cites a number of utterances of this kind, as well as a number of attempts at carrying- out these ideas in 7 practice (e.g., the "~pick and shovel plan~" that is being" carried out by a number of municipalities in America).

All these theories and plans clearly demonstrate how the conditions of modern capitalism have become an obstacle to the development of the forces of production, of science and technology.

The most stupendous kind of waste of the forces of production under the conditions of modern capitalism is presented by the unemployment crisis.

The fact of there being- upwards of 15 million unemployed in the summer of 1930 and of upwards of 20-25 million in the summer of 1931, at the very height of the building and agricultural seasons, the exclusion of over a quarter, and in some countries over half of the working class from the process of production, and the sharp reduction in the consuming capacity of 80-100 million people, implies de-qualification, poverty, starvation, and consequently, emaciation, and partly physical destruction of the basis of the forces of production. This wasting of the most essential of the forces of production by far outweighs the results of all the technical changes, of all the achievements in the organization of production. Tens of millions have to starve and be deprived of sheer necessities for the alleged reason of over-production of commodities. At the same time this becomes no longer a temporary or partial situation, but is more and more becoming universal, lasting and constant for a considerable portion of the population. Just as modern capitalism---in some, although more and more frequent cases---• burns or dumps into the sea stocks of food because they cannot be sold with a profit, so it; is now "~burning " labour power upon an unprecedented scale, not in the process of labour and exploitation, but because it cannot exploit these workers with a profit. The American journalist, Chase, calls this situation the "~economics of a madhouse," but Marx has already long before Chase demonstrated that this "~ madhouse~" must inevitably become the basis of capitalist economy. Bearing in mind the deliberate curtailment of the production of raw materials and foodstuffs, the shortage of work for the staff of employees in production (calculated on the basis of one shift per diem) to the extent of 25 per cent, in "~good years~" of stabilization, and of almost 50 per cent, at the very commencement of the development of the crisis, the unemployment of a quarter to a third of the workers; taking into account the millions of money that are paid to defray the cost of the last war, the expenditures on current "~little~" wars, and the incalculable expenditures that are being made in the preparations for future wars, we arrive then at the conclusion that modern capitalism does not utilize even one-hundredth part of the capacity and possibilities of production of the present available production apparatus and man-power. Yet, even in countries of powerful 8 capitalist development, this production apparatus is composed of a motley mixture of modern plants with even larger remains of obsolete, backward production units that are artificially supported by monopoly capitalism, this being done on a particularly large scale in the old capitalist countries.

Bearing in mind, further, the artificial frequently forcible retention of the economic backwardness of the colonies, the enforced backwardness and wanton waste of labour in agriculture ; the reparations, the tariff walls, and other numerous obstacles and barriers to the development of the forces of production, we see that in reality, the "~co-efficient of useful action~" of the modern capitalist machine is even still lower.

If the technical achievements already existing in some of the industrial plants were to be extended, at the present level of technical development, to the whole of industry, transport, and agriculture, then this alone would extend by several times the volume of the forces of production. All this, apart from the unquestionable fact that the further development foes on at an ever increasing pace. Emancipated from the brakes of capitalism, it may yield in the shortest historical periods an unheard of progress in economic development.

A further reflection of the crisis of scientific research work is that in the race for retrenchment, there is a constant diminution in the funds granted towards the upkeep of universities, scientific institutes, laboratories, stipends, etc. Unemployment involving tens of millions of workers, does not spare also the scientific workers, engineers, and technicians. The former Chairman of the German Society of Engineers, Prof. Matschos, draws in the Society's Journal a harrowing picture of the effect of the crisis.

`` In the higher technical schools (of Germany) there are about 40,000 students of whom 8,000 annually graduate. Among the graduates there is terrific unemployment. On an average, only 20 per cent, secure jobs, 10 per cent, continue studying, 20 per cent, take on any work outside of their profession, and the remainder, about 50 per cent., are left without any occupation. It is no longer a rare sight to see engineers with diplomas sleeping in doss-houses that open their doors at 10 p.m., who do not enjoy a square meal, who consider themselves lucky if they manage to earn a few marks on any odd job, e.g., as dish-washers, cigarette-vendors, hired dancing partners, etc. Charity tries to take care of most acute cases of distress, but it cannot do the most essential thing---to give these specialists jobs. The mental equipment secured at the price of many sacrifices finds no application.

`` They dream of quitting the street, but when asked what they have been doing since having obtained the diploma, they can only reply, ' Looking for a job.' The situation is such that the personnel is everywhere being reduced.

`` Yet, thousands of young people flock to the universities. Everybody still believes the profession of an engineer to be rich in promise. At the same time, we find that the societies of engineers are warning more and more about the profession being overcrowded beyond all proportion, warning against all expectations, and demanding a rigid selection. What is going to be the outcome of all this? They are now figuring on 15,000 graduates, but we are told that there are going to be 40,000 of them by 1934. Provision is at 9 present made for about 13,000 academic graduates to be employed in 1934, while there are now 30,000 of them unemployed. Can we afford to contemplate such a situation with folded arms? Is it not high time to put a stop to this mass striving after a diploma and higher learning?"---" V. D. I. Nachrichten," 1931.

The organ of the German industrials, "~Deutsche Bergwerkszeitung," commenting on this article (April 21st, 1931), gives a ``reassuring'' reply to the rhetorical question put by Prof. Matschos, pointing out that in a certain city in Western Germany a group of graduates were generously given jobs as . . . tramway workers. However, the newspaper goes on to say (quite reasonably) that "~the warning against academic professions would be far more effective if the warners would at the same time mention professions that are not overcrowded and hold out better promises. This is not done because there are no such professions." Quite so! The newspaper notes also the fact that to a graduate technician the lack of employment implies the end of his career, as there is almost no possibility of adaptation to some other kind of work.

Quite identical is the situation in regard to various groups of intellectuals. As a rule, the conditions of scientific workers engaged directly in scientific research are not any better, but rather worse.

The only way out seen by the professor is to- close further admission to the higher schools. These facts show how modern capitalism not only blindly destroys the material forces of production in periods of crisis, not only throws millions of workers out of the process of production, but also^^1^^ tries to^^1^^ cut the roots of future scientific and technical development.

Finally, the crisis introduces into the midst of scientific workers a mass of ideological incoherence and confusion. Unable to fathom the causes of the terrific economic concussions, to g"ive a really scientific analysis of the phenomena taking! place around them, and to indicate a way out (all this the Marxian method alone can give), the overwhelming portion of them fall into despondency and pessimism, looking for a wav out in mysticism, spiritism, religious superstition, etc. Scientific workers are spending more and more of their time in scholastic exercises, in vain and fruitless attempts at reconciling science with a belief in the supernatural; entrapped in the maze of capitalist contradictions, in the anarchy of the capitalist system, their minds vainly seek salvation in the intercession of those transcendental powers.

The most appalling and ignominious part in the effect of capitalism on scientific and technical development is the r61e played by modern science and technique in the preparations for Wars.

The report gives an analysis of the causes which prompt the modern capitalist states to prepare for new military collisions, and the basic technical features of future wars.

The report deals minutely with the incessant systematic activity going on in scientific institutions and laboratories on the preparation of new deadly weapons of warfare destined by their very nature for use not only against foreign armies, but also against the entire civil population of the country.

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The greatest achievements of synthetic chemistry, aviation, bacteriology, etc., which serve the needs of humanity, are being adapted to the purpose of wholesale destruction eclipsing all the historic examples of barbarism and savagery. Suffice it to quote the following statement by Mr. Winston Churchill on the character of modern warfare :---

'' It was not until the dawn of the twentieth century of the Christian era that War actually began to enter its kingdom as the potential destroyer of the human race. The organization of mankind into great States and Empires and the rise of nations to full collective consciousness enabled enterprises of slaughter to be planned and executed upon a scale, with a perseverance, never before imagined. All the noblest virtues of individuals were gathered together to strengthen the destructive capacity of the mass . . . Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character.''

After reviewing the great battles of the past, lie goes on to describe what he believes the future war would look like :---

`` All that happened in the four years of the Great War was only a prelude to what was preparing for the fifth year ... In 1919, thousands of aeroplanes would have shattered their (German) cities. Scores of thousands of cannon would have blasted their front . . . Poison gases of incredible ingenuity, against which only a secret mask . . . was proof, would have stifled all resistance and paralyzed all life on the hostile front . . .

'' These projects were put aside unfinished, unexecuted ; but their knowledge was preserved; their data, calculations and discoveries were hastily bundled together and docketed ' for future reference ' by the War Offices in every country. The campaign of 1919 was never fought; but its ideas go marching along. In every army they are being explored, elaborated, refined under the surface of peace . . . Death stands at attention ;. obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples en masse; ready, if called on, to pulverize without hope of repair, what is left of civilization' He awaits only the command."---Winston Churchill, "~The World Crisis. The Aftermath," London, 1929, pp. 452-455.

After describing the role of chemical science in this respect, and the pseudo-scientific attempts of some scientists to demonstrate the "~humanitarianism~" of chemical warfare, the report demonstrates how the war policy exercises the strongest effect on the whole character and trend of scientific research work. Thus, capitalism endeavours in a "~planned~" manner to subordinate science and technique, the apparatus of production, and the whole population to the task of organized wholesale destruction and extermination. In this respect, the contradictions of scientific and technical development are revealed with particular force, scope, and acuteness.

Already the present state of science and technique secures such a gigantic growth of the forces of production as modern capitalism is unable to realize.

Scores of millions of workers are shut out from the process of production; they are eager to work but they cannot find it.

Other scores of millions are engaged in non-productive labour, in serving the incredibly swollen apparatus of trade, advertizing, the gigantic machinery for suppressing the masses, the manufacturing of public opinion, and, lastly, catering to the luxuries and whims of the upper crust of the bourgeoisie.

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Hundreds of millions work: from morn till night in factories, mines, plantations, burning away their stamina in a few years, turning old at 40; nevertheless, the social productivity of their labour is relatively negligible as the result of capitalist waste.

Hundreds of millions in agriculture are tied to their miserable plots of land, labouring in the sweat of their brow, under conditions which exclude the application of science and modern technique, not always eking out even the most miserable existence.

Lastly, many millions of workers are still spending all their strength to pay for the consequences of the world war of 1914-18, and the costs of preparations for new wars.

Huge reserves of fuel and metals are waiting in the bowels of the; earth to be brought up to the surface.

Waterfalls and rivers are waiting to be harnessed by dams, for the streams of water to set turbines and generators in motion, dispensing the vitalizing current of electricity.

Thousands of technical problems, quite realizable with the present state of technique are still held in abeyance.

Already the present state of science and technology permits, with relatively negligible expenditure of labour effort, the subjection of the elements, erection of new cities, the automatising of a number of production processes, the rendering of labour a -3 joyYet modern capitalism cannot make use of all of these possibilities.

Each attempt on the part of capitalism at the development of the forces of production creates ever new antagonism, leads to ever new and more appalling waste, destruction, crises, and wars. Capitalism cannot help it. No scientific forces can alter these laws which govern the rise and decline of the capitalist society, just as they cannot alter the laws of growth and decay of the human organism. And there is but one science which shows a way out---it is the Marxist scientific analysis of social development.

__ALPHA_LVL2__ II. THE SOVIET UNION.

The Soviet Union constitutes the first experiment in human history of the application of this scientific analysis and scientific methods for the conscious construction of social relations, for planned guidance of the economic life, for directing the course of cultural, scientific, and technical development. The very existence and the whole course of development of the Soviet Union is thus connected with genuine scientific theory.

This year the Soviet State is in the thirteenth year of its existence. During the current year has been accomplished more than one-half of the greaf Five Year Plan of socialist reconstruction.

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This makes it necessary for scientific analysis lo sum up results, to compare the experiences of two systems, to ascertain their respective tendencies of development. This analysis shows:

Firstly, the unquestionable fact that the appalling- world economic crisis engulfing with unprecedented force all the capitalist countries without exception, and all the branches of world economy, is halting at the borders of the Soviet Union. Not only does the Soviet Union not experience a crisis, but on the contrary, during the last two years it has shown a tremendous upward trend of economic development.

Secondly, this comparison shows that while the anarchy of capitalist economy throws millions of workers out of employment, the Soviet Union has disposed of the problem of unemployment, annually attracting millions of new workers into industry, and carrying out a great plan of mechanization to obviate the growing shortage of man-power.

Thirdly, this comparison shows that the tempo of economic development in the Soviet Union is many times faster than in all the capitalist countries, including the United States of America, during their best periods of development.

Fourthly, this comparison shows that while the anarchy of capitalist economy increases year by year and no successes of capital concentration, no efforts of scientific prognostication can soften the spasmodic fits of this fever; in the Soviet Union we see the constantly growing and enduring successes of deliberate planning of the entire economic life : the quarterly, annual, and the Five Year Plans are being- carried out with a margin; work is now proceeding on the drafting of the second Five Year Plan during which this country is to overtake the leading capitalist countries and gain the mastery of the most advanced modern technique.

Fifthly, this comparison shows that while agriculture throughout the world has been suffering from a crisis for many years already, showing its total inadaptability to reorganization upon the basis of modern science and technique; the agriculture of the Soviet Union, for the\ first time in the history of mankind, is being remodelled into large-scale collective farming with the most advanced technical methods and new social relations.

Sixthly, this comparison shows that while the conditions of modern capitalism are aggravating more and more the antagonism between city and country, between physical and mental labour, the Soviet Union is taking decisive steps along the road of eliminating these ancient antagonisms upon the basis of drawing the millions of the toilers into the wave of cultural evolution, education, and enlightenment.

Lastly, this comparison shows that while the development of the capitalist antagonisms leads to a distinct intensification of the tendency to check the progress of technology and science; in the Soviet Union science and technology are findino- an absolutely 13 unlimited arena for development, quite new possibilities of practical application and of decisive effect upon all branches of life.

All these deductions are based upon facts which no objective, really scientific observer can dispute. These facts may be tested by anyone, and the Soviet Government is prepared to afford to any scientific and* technical worker all the possibilities for testing and investigating these facts on the spot.

Notably, the report adduces a number of facts relating to the economic construction now developing in the Soviet Union in all branches of industry, transport, and agriculture. This construction, by its scope, is without precedent in history.

A number of statistical data cited in the report from official capitalist sources (the League of Nations, etc.) show the results of this development in comparison with the development of other countries.

These data, which have already been surpassed in actual life, indicate the results of the contest between the two systems more than volumes of arguments. Suffice it to observe that the index of industrial production of 1930 in all the capitalist countries has sunk below the level of 1925, whereas lin the U.S.S.R. it has been tripled.

Moreover, the planned utilization of the immense natural wealth of the Soviet Union, and of the even greater reserves of enthusiasm, energy, and creative initiative of the masses, are

really only beginning; to unfold to their full extent. A declining r&le in this unfoldment is now attached to science and technology.

__ALPHA_LVL2__ SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE SOVIET UNION.

The Soviet Union has set before itself the task of technically and economically overtaking and outstripping the advanced capitalist countries within the shortest historical period. The teeming millions of our country are at the present time animated by enthusiasm unknown in history for the mastering of modern science and technique, for the gaining of knowledge which would enable them to remodel the whole of life, to subjugate the forces of nature to the collective will of the toilers. This alone shows the colossal importance attached in the Soviet Union to scientific and technological creative activity, to research work, to the spreading of knowledge among the masses. This, however, does not and cannot limit the r61e and tasks of science in the Soviet Union.

The endeavour to overtake the technique of the advanced capitalist countries does not imply that we can content ourselves with merely copying all the aspects of this technique.

Already in the history of the capitalist world we see that, for instance, the United States, having overtaken and outstripped 14 the technique of the old European countries in the last few decades, was forced to raise and solve a number of quite new technical and scientific problems connected with the requirements of mass production, with the gigantic scope of industrialization in that country.

This applies to an incomparably greater extent to the problems which are at present raised and solved by the Soviet Union, that is carrying out industrialization upon an entirely new basis and at a pace and on a scale unknown even to the United States.

Here it has neither previous experience nor examples. Already in the very process of this work it has to solve scientific and technical problems which have not yet been solved anywhere at all.

As a case in point, let us take the domain of agriculture.

Already last year the average annual working of tractors in the United States was 400-600 hours, whereas in the Soviet Unk>n it was no less than 2,500 hours. The Soviet Union already now has thousands of mechanized grain farms surpassing all the records of the United States. In the current year the Soviet Union organizes cattle rearing ranches on a scale unprecedented in the world. It sets before itself the problem of mechanizing all the processes of agriculture in grain growing, commercial crops, gardening, etc. It carries out planned, scientifically thought out specialization of agriculture over vast territories, each of which is equal to the big European countries by its area.

All these tasks call for the creation of new types of machines and implements, for the working out of new forms of connection between the motor and the hitching appliances, for new forms of labour organization, plant selection, etc.

. Thus, the technical reconstruction of agriculture involves thousands of new problems in economics, agronomy, chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, energetics, machine construction.

The solving of these problems is unthinkable without the unfolding of scientific research work upon a gigantic scale. And along with the utilization of all the achievements of science and technique of the advanced capitalist countries, utilization in many cases far more complete and effective than in those very countries, the economic practice of the U.S.S.R. already now demands from science and agricultural technique a reply to a number of questions which have not yet been solved, the blazing of new trials, new discoveries and inventions, new scientific theories.

The same relates in equal measure to the problems of electrification of the Soviet Union and to a number of other problems relating to economic and cultural construction.

The completion of the Five Year Plan by next year (i.e., in four years) confronts the Soviet Union with the problem of 15 __FIX__ working- working- out a new, second Five Year Plan. This plan, accompanied by the gigantic quantitative growth of economy, should also afford the most profound qualitative readjustment of the technical basis of the national economy. It stands to reason that the deciding role in the elaboration and execution of this plan should belong to science and technology outlining the course of future development.

What is the scientific-technical apparatus possessed by the Soviet Union for this purpose? What are the dynamics of its development, its organizational structure, its relations with other organs of the Soviet State?

The legacy inherited from tzarist Russia in this domain is even more miserable than it is in the domain of industry. Prerevolutionary Russia had individual great scientists---- mathematicians, physicists, chemists, biologists.

They gave a number of important discoveries and inventions, a number of profound, scientific theories, but all those theories and discoveries were in the overwhelming majority utilized only abroad, since neither the feeble industry nor the general atmosphere of the tzarist autocracy---that "~prison of nations "--- allowed the development and utilization of those discoveries in practice.

Suffice it to observe that in pre-revolutionary Russia there was not really a single scientific research institute worthy of the name. The whole of the scientific activity was concentrated in a few poorly equipped university laboratories that were detached from industry and completely isolated from the masses of the people. In order to furnish an idea of the growth of the network of scientific research organizations under Soviet rule, suffice it to mention that in industry alone there were :---

In 1928.---24 scientific research institutes with 8 branches.

In 1930.---72 scientific research institutes with 83 branches. (Included among these are such gigantic institutions like the Thermo-Technical Institute, the Physico-Technical Institute, etc., which have no equal in Europe).

Agriculture in the current year was served by 47 Institutes, transport---by 10, popular education---by 44, public health--- by 34, and so on. The total number of scientific research institutes in the beginning of 1929 was 789.

The number of factory laboratories runs now into' thousands. The scientific staffs of industrial institutes (exclusive of factory laboratories, as well as of administrative and service personnel) have reached the number of 11,000. In 1931 there were about 40,000 workers engaged exclusively in scientific research work in this country.

The financing of the network of scientific research institutions in industry alone (again exclusive of the factory laboratories) has reached the amount of about 250,000,000 roubles, as against 12,000,000 in 1925-26 and 58,000,000 in 1928-29.

16

These fragmentary data testify to a tremendous constant growth year by year.

Nevertheless, even this growth is quite inadequate to satisfy the evergrowing requirements.

The Soviet Government is taking a series of measures to accelerate further the pace of this growth, of the unfolding of the network of scientific research institutions, of the training of the necessary staffs.

The enrolment of students in the universities and technical colleges, which numbered less than 100,000 in 1929, grew into 157,000 in 1931, and has to be further raised to 230,000 for 1932.

Already in 1931 should be achieved the doubling of the number of our engineering and technical personnel, and the full completion of the Five-Year Plan in this respect. Enrolment in the technical schools under the 1932 plan calls for the admission of 420,000 students, of 350,000 students to the workers' faculties (as compared with 166,000 in 1931), and of 1,000,000 pupils in the factory apprenticeship schools as compared with 700,000 in 1931. The proportion of graduates of the workers' faculties in the higher schools should reach 75-80 per cent. This at a time when, according to official German data, among the students of all the higher schools in Germany there are only 2-3 per cent, of proletarian descent, and even in the intermediate schools in Prussia only 5.4 per cent, of the boys and 3.4 per cent, of the girls are of proletarian descent. A bourgeois journal, commenting on these data, observes that "~the privilege of higher education is exceedingly rarely won by the sons of the workers. Even if a young worker should pass the examination for matriculation, he would have to work to earn his living. Of the 1,110 lucky ones who got a stipend in 1928 there were only 12 per cent, workers.''

In the Soviet Union all the students are assured stipends and board. There is a steady increase in the numbers of proletarian students taking up scientific work upon graduating- from the higher school.

Prospective plans for 1932 provide for a 40 per cent, increase in the total number of scientific workers.

One of the most essential features of the organization of scientific research work in the Soviet Union is the principle of planning.

At one time there were debates as to whether it was generally possible to plan scientific activity; those debates are now substantially concluded. The socialist plan, which has so brilliantly demonstrated its advantages in the guiding of economy, has been unanimously recognized as the leading principle in the domain of scientific work.

The whole network of research activity in industry is working in conformity with a single summary plan worked out by the 17 Scientific Research Sector of the Supreme Council of Natfonal Economy with the assistance of the Institutes and of prominent workers in various branches of science. The same thing happens in agriculture, transport, and other branches.

In place of isolated individuals whose character and atmosphere of activity is really in the nature of petty craft: in place of the isolated scientific research organs of capitalism that are directly or indirectly subordinated to financial capital, we have here a planned, organized network of scientific research bodies united by the common task of raising the forces of production upon a socialist basis. Recently a new step was taken in the Soviet Union for the planning of the whole of the scientific research work of the country at large. The first Scientific Research Planning Conference, which was attended by over a thousand delegates from scientific organizations in all branches of science and technology, investigated the most essential problems confronting the research workers, outlined the methodology of planning in this domain, appealed to all scientists and scientific workers to join in the working out of this plan. The Conference went on amid tremendous enthusiasm and has demonstrated what inexhaustible reserves of thought and creative activity may become available by doing away with unplanned wastefulness in the domain of scientific work.

The decisions of that Conference may serve to scientific and technical workers of the capitalist countries as an example of the possibilities opened by the Soviet system to scientific thought. For instance, let us allude to the decision to impose the obligation upon all planning and operative economic organs to include in their industrial reconstruction plans, as an organic part thereof, the realization of the achievements of the scientific research institutes furnishing them with the necessary finances and material means.

Or the decision to oblige the economic organization to set apart and attach to the institutes the necessary number of industrial plants to be transformed into experimental works for carrying out the achievements of the new technique. Or the decision to oblige all newly building large industrial enterprises to provide for the installation of factory laboratories as an inseparable part of a given enterprise, or the awarding of premiums to enterprises adopting the advanced technique and fixing legal and material responsibility for delay in the realization of scientific achievements. No less important are the decisions concerning the publication of popular accounts by the scientific institutes on their activities, systematic travelling scholarships for practical industrial workers to take up temporary work in the scientific institutes, the inclusion of directors of scientific institutes upon managing boards of the respective trusts, the widest attraction of the trade unions to render assistance to the scientific institutes and to make propaganda for scientific and technical achievements.

18

Or let us take the decisions of such types as the inclusion of collective testing of important inventions and improvements in the general plan of the scientifico-technical work of all the branches of industry, transport, and agriculture; the working out of special tasks for inventors by factories and by branches of industry; the submission of plans and achievements of the Academy of Sciences, of the scientific institutes and laboratories, for wide discussion by workers interested in inventions, and so on and so forth.

In no capitalist country would it be possible to achieve anything resembling the measures of this kind. They are incompatible with the very nature of capitalism, they are possible only when science and technology become connnected with the process of the great socialist construction, when the scientific workers, in organized and planned fashion, direct their efforts to the carrying out of the "~social order~" of the large masses of the toilers---to raise to the highest level the whole technique and economy of the great country that is building socialism.

In this connection it is necessary to observe that even more important than the planning of scientific research work is the direct organizational connection of science and technology with the large masses of the working class.

This connection is now beginning to be realized in the Soviet Union upon an entirely unprecedented scale. The struggle for the mastery of science and technique embraces already, not scores and hundreds of thousands, but millions of workers.

This opens up such reserves of energy, initiative, inventiveness, that could not even be dreamed of a short time ago. In each factory, Soviet farm, higher school, special organizations are formed for the mastery of technique, inventor circles, and vast activity is carried on for the spreading of scientific and technical knowledge. During dinner intervals, and in their leisure hours, the great masses of the workers are eagerly and stubbornly studying, attentively watching the possibilities of improvement in their particular line of industry, preparing themselves for admission to technical schools and colleges, enthusiastically welcoming prominent scientists reporting to them on their discoveries and researches. There is only a lack of men and time to satisfy this thirst for culture, knowledge, science, which has arisen even among the most backward strata among the working class. Thus we see the truth of the prognostication made by Engels when he wrote that "~the society emancipated from the shackles of capitalist production, bringing forth a new generation of thoroughly developed producers who understand the scientific foundations of the whole of the industrial process and who study practically, each one in his branch, the whole series of branches of production from beginning to end, will be able to create a new force of production." ("Anti-Diaring. ")

In this manner the antagonism between physical and mental labour begins to be eliminated. Already now, at the very 19 beginning of this development, the struggle of the masses for the mastery of science and technique, is performing miracles. Let us refer, for instance, to the domain of workers' inventions. The number of suggestions and inventions by workers has increased a hundredfold during the past year. Frequently one finds factories receiving thousands of suggestions from the workers in the course of the year. Among other things, the struggle of the masses for the mastery of technique reveals itself in the quite novel ways of organic combination of the planned activity of the scientific research institutes with the mass inventive activity of the workers, while the latter, in its turn, is connected with an even more powerful movement of the millions---socialist competition and shock work.

Mass inventive activity of the workers is becoming one of the highest forms of socialist competition, one of the most important and most promising stages of its development.

A brilliant example of the first manifestations of this tendency is furnished by the events of recent months in the Donetz Coal Basin.

When the mechanization of the Donetz Basin was taken up as a political task, when the carrying out of mechanization became the business of the large masses of the mine workers, the Donetz Basin saw the steady rise in the wave of technical initiative on the part of the workers and the engineering and technical forces. The start was made. And in the recent months there was something like a steady stream of inventions, suggestions, rationalization proposals, all tending to bring about a conveyor flow of coal brought up from the mine, in other words, to bring about a profound technical revolution in the methods of coal mining.

The idea of continuous coal mining originated in the Donetz Basin mines at the end of 1930, when the methods of Kartashev, Kasaurov, Filimonov, and Liebhardt were put forth. This was followed by a steady flow of invention and improvement proposals made by scores of other workers. The proposals are now pouring1 in from nearly every mechanized pit. Many of these proposals are not even particularly novel. Yet, while analogous ideas were held in abeyance for years in the past, at the present time, combining with the wave of socialistic competition, with the general mighty enthusiasm of the workers, they are bringing about a revolution in the methods of production, foreshadowing in many cases the possibility of not only overtaking, but also outstripping foreign technique in the very near future.

The wave of inventiveness in the Donetz Basin presents an, exceedingly telling example of the boundless possibilities harboured in the struggle for the new technique and for industrial improvements rendered possible by arousing the initiative and the spirit of emulation among the masses of the workers.

20

Lately we saw even more interesting phenomena in this domain. No sooner did the news spread about the imminent underground revolution in the Donetz Basin, no sooner were the general features of the methods of Kartashev, Kasaurov, Filimonov, and Liebhardt made known, when from all parts of the Soviet Union, thousands of kilometers away from the Donetz Basin, in the Siberian mines, in the Urals, in the Kuznetsk Basin, there surged up a similar wave of the inventing initiative. Thus, in the Cheliabinsk coal basin the workers launched the remarkably expressive slogan : "~The Cheliabinsk Pits shall have their own Kartashevs !" And this slogan did not remain an empty sound. The Cheliabinsk pits did get their own Kartashevs. This slogan was taken up by the large masses of the workers, by engineers and technicians, by scientific research workers. The present slogans are as follows :---

Each factory, mine, Soviet farm, each scientific research institute and laboratory should have their own inventors. Each shock worker, having mastered the technique, may and should become an inventor, a rationalizer, contributing his mite to the improvement of production processes, to< the development of technique, and consequently, to the development of science.

In this connection we may refer to another domain in which we see quite similar progress, namely, the study of the natural resources of the country. In all international statistical reference books you will find data about the reserves of petroleum, coal, ores, and other mineral wealth upon the territory of the Soviet Union. These data do not reflect a hundredth part of the real resources. Already the discoveries of the last few years have increased the old data tenfold.

Each expedition of the Academy of Sciences and of the geological exploration institutes to Siberia, Central Asia, Kasakstan, Caucasus, etc., reveals new deposits of wealth. The country is being newly discovered, in the literal sense of the term. Now this work, besides scientists and special institutes, attracts thousands of voluntary workers among the local population--- school teachers, collective farmers, young people. In the most outlying parts of the country there are being formed circles and groups which study the local nature, and after mastering the rudiments of the technique of geological exploration, are enthusiastic in this work of exploring the underground wealth, not for the sake of personal gain, but to assist in the building of socialism. And this movement of the masses, fertilized by scientific thought and modern technique, yields the most unexpected discoveries resulting at times in the total transformation of the economic perspectives of entire districts and regions.

All this promises to give a new mighty stimulus to the "incessant, ever more rapid development of the process of production~" prophesied by Engels as the result of shaking off the chains of capitalism.

21

This development of the force of production postulates similar incessant and ever more rapid development of science.

This outlook is no longer of the distant future, no longer a vague and nebulous aim. It is the very reality in which we are living, working, building. It is the beginning of the new historic stage into which we have just entered.

This outlook is bound to fascinate every honest specialist who loves his work, every scientist and research worker, just as it does the masses of the proletariat in this country.

Thus, the German Professor Bonn was forced to admit, in his book on the United States, that in the U.S.S.R. "~the golden age of science and technology has come~" and that this fact is of tremendous international importance. Lenin wrote once to the great American electro-technical expert Steinmetz:---

`` You, as a representative of electrical technique of one of the most advanced countries in technical development, have become convinced of the necessity and inevitability of replacing capitalism by a new order of society which will establish the planning regulation of economy and will secure the welfare of the whole mass of the people upon the basis of electrification of entire countries.

`` In all countries throughout the world there is growing--- slower than it might be desired, yet relentlessly and steadily--- the number of representatives of science, technique, art, who become convinced of the necessity of substituting for capitalism a different social-economic order, and who, unscared by the ' tremendous difficulties ' of the struggle of Soviet Russia against the whole of the capitalist world, but rather attracted by them, are realizing the inevitability of the struggle and the necessity to take part in it, helping ' the new to overcome the old.' "

Tens of thousands of scientific workers, united in collective bodies and carrying on their work on definite plans, organically associated with the proletariat, constantly drawing re-- inforcements from its ranks, blazing new paths for science and technique jointly with the millions of worker inventors and rationalizers, are not only helping to overcome the old handicaps, but also to build up their country anew.

This evolution of progress) in U.S.S.R. upon the background of unprecedented crisis of world capitalism is becoming ever more clearly realized by numerous representatives of the bourgeois intelligentsia, by prominent scientists and technicians who cannot shut their eyes to the; real facts.

Among numerous statements of this kind, let us refer, for instance, to the remarks by the German economist Bonn on the significance of the American crisis and of the economic construction of the Soviets.

Professor Bonn writes: "~The Olympus was wrecked by an earthquake. When the crumbling walls of the temple destroyed the roofs of the huts, and the dying gods, instead of giving 22 protection, deal destruction around them, then the believers are seized, not with regret that the gods too are mortal, but with bitter doubt and blind hatred. What is the sense in worshipping such gods any longer?

`` Millions of unemployed, hundreds of thousands of ruined lives, suffering in America under the blows of the crisis: they no longer grumble against individual economic leaders who failed to prevent the crisis, they are beginning to doubt the very system which has made the crisis possible.

`` Capitalism and the capitalist economic system hitherto appeared to the average American to be the reasonable form of existence. These forces had built up the greatness of his country in the past, and afforded the opportunities of existence to his predecessors. He expected from them the possibilities of a reasonable existence along the same road.

`` This the system can no longer yield. And in thousands of hearts and brains the question arises:/ has the capitalist system any right at all to exist, if in one of the richest countries in the world it cannot bring about an order of society securing to a relatively sparse, industrious and capable population, an existence that is consistent with the requirements, and with Wie development of modern technique, without periodically throwing millions of people out of work and damning them to destitution and to the aid of soup kitchens and doss-houses?

`` The sense and significance of the American crisis consists in the fact that now not only the present possessing class in America or the ruling class, but the whole of the capitalist system as such is taken under a question mark.''^^*^^

Professor Bonn observes a profound change in the moods of the intelligentsia, especially of the technical intelligentsia, under the great ideological effect^ of the Russian revolution, of the very fact of the existence of the Soviet Union. He writes: " Before the Bolshevik revolution it was (always possible to object to advocates of socialism that their system was not only wrong, but even if true, it was unrealizable. Now one can no longer brush aside the socialist system as unrealizable. It does exist, and because it exists by the side of the capitalist system, it calls for comparisons." Professor Bonn draws this comparison from the standpoint of the technical intelligentsia of America: " Russian bolshevism implies rigid planning of economy under which the engineer, upon a vacant spot, erects gigantic enterprises with all the means of modern technique. The Americans picture it to themselves as a system which builds up skyscrapers on the prairie at even a quicker pace than it was done in America by private enterprise. This appears to them to be a grand experiment of directing all efforts to the building of a desirable world in place of the old one. The heart of the American engineer on hearing about the possibilities of activity in Russia, beats stronger and faster; because in his own country he cannot think _-_-_

^^*^^ Prof. Bonn in "~Neue Rundschau," February, 1931.

23 of erecting greater technical structures than in the past without reducing the profit possibilities.

`` The strata of intelligentsia that have gone through the collapse of the American prosperity with its terrible aftermath, are looking in amazement upon the Five-Year Plan which, in their eyes, points the way towards determining the economic fate by a firm hand will . . .

`` There is a peculiar charm to the American world emanating from Russia. If the Five Year Plan will be carried out in reality, it will lead many people to the idea that the Russians, who not so very long ago used to be considered as emotional, gifted barbarians, capable of writing the novels of Dostoyevsky or the operas of Tchaikovsky, have now overtaken the Americans in the domain of technique, while in regard to conscious social guidance of society, as demonstrated by their success, they have surpassed the Americans.

`` Should the capitalist system fail to draw the millions of unemployed into the industrial process again, the psychological effect of this development will be exceedingly far-reaching.''^^1^^

Thus, upon the basis of socialist relations in society, overcoming thousands of difficulties and obstacles, combating the numerous survivals of the old, the routine and prejudices of individualism, the Soviet Union is working out the new relations between science, technology, and economics.

It is for this very reason that science in this country, descending from the metaphysical spaces above the clouds, joins in the great problems of socialist reconstruction. It is granted quite unlimited possibilities of development and becomes the leading principle of the whole progress of further construction. While modifying the whole of life, it modifies also itself, starting with the grand remodelling of all the scientific disciplines upon the basis of new methods, of a new monism of all the branches of science. It does not isolate itself from the masses of the workers like a priestly caste; it does not become a hostile force that carries new hardships and privations to the millions of the workers as the involuntary results of its achievements; but on the contrary, it draws ever closer to these masses, steadily obtaining reinforcements from their ranks, and organically joining with the masses in the struggle for common aims and purposes. In this way, it acquires entirely new forces, and opens entirely unprecedented perspectives. The prognosis of Marx and Engels rises more and more clearly, that of the passing of humanity from the reign of necessity into the reign of liberty, where not the machine nor the product governs the man, but the man. governs the machine and the product. There is still a difficult road ahead, it will still require a good deal of struggle and many sacrifices, but there is no other way, and overcoming all the obstacles and difficulties, the human race will enter into this world of free and joyous labour by the aid of the subdued forces of nature and of its steel slaves---machines.

_-_-_

^^*^^ Ibid.

24 __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE "~PHYSICAL" AND "~BIOLOGICAL"
IN THE PROCESS OF ORGANIC
EVOLUTION.
By B. ZAVADOVSKY. [-2] ~ [-1]

THE ``PHYSICAL'' AND "BIOLOGICAL
IN THE PROCESS OF ORGANIC
EVOLUTION.
By B. ZAVADOVSKY.
SUMMARY,

The question of the relationship of the physical and biological sciences, included in the programme of the present Congress, is part of the general problem of the relationship of different systems of world outlook in the solution of the present tasks of natural science. The solution of this problem has repeatedly changed its forms, according to the particular conditions of the working experience of mankind, the condition of its material forces of production, and its socioeconomic productive relations, which have been constantly changing in the course of human history. For this reason the extent of my subject does not permit me to reply to the question propounded in all its quantitative volume, and suggests the decision to deal with a few points of principle which lead to the solution of the problem as a whole, examining the question of the relationship of the physical and biological sciences in the solution of some single theoretical problem of biology. As such a problem, I will take the theory of organic evolution---the more because in analysing this problem it will be possible to make some observations on other questions in the Congress programme: the relationship of theory and practice in scientific work, and the role of the historical method in the solution of problems of natural science.

With all the variety of existing opinion in bourgeois science on.the question of the relationship of the physical and biological sciences, it is possible to distinguish among them two basic and mutually exclusive tendencies: either (1) attempts to identify the two, reducing biological phenomena to laws of a physical character, or (2) a sharp contrasting of the biological to the physical, as two opposite entities. In the latter case, by ``physical'' is understood the material forces of inorganic nature, or ``mechano-physiological'' factors at work inside the organism and reducible in the final analysis to the same mechanical laws of molecular motion: while by ``biological'' is understood some vital forces of a non-material and non-spatial character, which "are neither the result nor the combination of physical and chemical---i.e., in the final analysis of mechanical phenomena.''

1

In spite of the multiformity and variety of contradictory forces and interests functioning in capitalist conditions of production, it is nevertheless not difficult to establish the predominance of the views of mechanical materialism in the period when capitalism was in its prime as an economic system, and when material culture was rapidly growing as a result of the successes of science and technique---at the end of the xviii. and during the xix. century: and the rebirth of idealistic, vitalistic and even mystical moods, in the measure of the growth of economic contradictions and the sharpening of the class struggle in bourgeois society.

These tendencies acquire special force in the present period of general decline and decay of capitalism, which find their expression also in those contradictions which are delaying the further successful development of natural science and technique under bourgeoisie methods of production: and when, on the other hand, the growth of scientific knowledge reveals the impossibility of reducing all the complex phenomena of nature to a single formula of physical or mechanical laws. These tendencies characterise the general disillusionment of bourgeois society in the possibilities of material culture, and the recognition of the hopelessness of solving the scientific problems which have matured while remaining within the framework of the capitalist system (cf. the report of the Prussian Minister, Dr. Becker, "Educational questions in the period of the crisis of material culture").

This struggle of two systems of world-outlook finds its natural reflection in the existing currents of evolutionist doctrine, which strive to solve the same problem of the relationship of the ``physical'' and ``biological'' as factors of organic evolution. In this case the ``physical'' is frequently identified with the surrounding ``external'' conditions, and the biological with the ``internal'' autonomous vital forces, `` entelechies'' or "dominants," immanent and inherent in life as such, in contrast to the material, ``physical'' laws of nature.

The principal characteristic of this struggle, and of the ensuing fluctuation in the relationship of the physical and biological sciences throughout the whole history of natural science, is the uncritical use of the conceptions of ``physical'' and "biological," of ``external'' and "internal," and the absence of any form of principles of philosophic method, which distinguish the overwhelming majority of the representatives of empirical science.

Thus, within the framework of the conception `` biological'' itself, there is not always a sufficiently sharp distinction drawn between the idea of "biophysiological," as a factor which determines chiefly the processes of individual development, of metabolism and the regulation of the activity of organisms (although this ``biophysiological'' also inevitably 2 includes the historical element also), and the idea of " biohistorical," as a factor in the formation of species and phylogenesis.

There are also not infrequent tendencies to include in the ``biological'' also phenomena in the social history of mankind, since human society is regarded as a simple mechanical sum of human biological species.

On the other hand, there are frequent identifications of the ``external'' in the process of organic evolution with the physical, and of the internal with the "~biological"---forgetting that the biological includes physical, chemical and physicochemical factors as the moment and necessary condition for its realisation, while the ``external'' in regard to a particular organism in its turn is composed not only of the physical conditions of inorganic nature, but also of the biological surroundings of other organisms, in the midst of and in interaction with which the life of the species proceeds. As for man, the ``external'' consists first of all of socio-economic productive relations and the condition of material productive forces, by which the socio-historical process is determined.

It is extremely characteristic of the endless contradiction in which modern empirical natural science has become involved that none of the theories of evolution existing in bourgeois science is able to maintain itself in the positions it selects for itself, but slides into the very positions which it was called upon to refute.

Thus neo-Lamarckianism, originally basing its objections to Darwinism on the alleged ``unscientific'' character of the idea of chance upon which Darwin based his theory of selection, and his attempts to provide a materialist justification for the facts of variability of organisms and their adaptations (and consequently for the whole process of formation of species) in the "direct equilibration" of the organism in relation to the influences of the outside physical surroundings, transfers the problem of adaptation, from the sphere of the rational study of the complex relationships arising between the organism and the external milieu of its existence, into the organism itself. Thus it arrives at the vitalistic and teleological conceptions of immanent vital forces which determine the course and direction of the process of evolution.

Thus, again, the ``mechanico-physiological'' theory of Nageli, or Berg's theory of Nomogenesis, in spite of all the efforts of the authors to prove the strictly scientific and materialist content of their constructions, arrive at essentially vitalistic ideas of the "principle of perfection," or to the idea of adaptation as the "primary physico-chemical quality of the living matter"---ideas which cannot deceive anyone by their outwardly materialist phraseology.

3

Thus, again, frankly vitalistic theories, which raised the banner of struggle against the vulgar materialist conceptions of mechanism, strive to find a road to the knowledge of the nature of biological phenomena through non-- cognisable and non-material forces, contrasted to the physical world. On the other hand, they are obliged to advocate " practical vitalism"---i.e., the advantage of those same mechanistic methods of research in the practical activity of the research worker. Thereby they pass to the positions of vulgar mechanism in all spheres of direct cognitive action, condemning thereby their vital forces and entelechies to the barren role of a bashful screen for our ignorance.

And thus the geneticist, uncritically developing neoDarwinist ideas of the independence of the germ-plasm of all the ``physical'' influences of the external surroundings, objectively arrives at the position of the autonomy of the `` biological'' from the "physical." Thus he descends to those very ideas of autogenesis maintained by his Lamarckian opponents, or to the conception of evolution as the result of the combinations of eternally existing genes---i.e., in fact to the negation of the very idea of evolution, as a process of the continuous unfolding of new formations in nature.

Finally, the Lamarckian, considering evolution as the result of hereditarily accumulated somatic changes, enters the past of the same mechanistic identification of the `` biophysiological'' and the "~biohistorical," forgetting the qualitative peculiarity which distinguishes the ovum, only containing within itself the potential possibilities of further development into a complex organism, and the developing organism in its realisation. In the last analysis this point of view is once again the negation of the very fact of development as an independent historical process of new formations, representing as it does the ovum as the miniature model, so to speak, of the future form, and reducing the process of development in reality to the functions of growth.

The same insoluble internal contradictions mar the numerous attempts to solve the problem of organic evolution by means of an eclectic reconciliation of the Darwinist position with Lamarckian ideas (Haeckel, Plate, Darwin himself, who accepte'd---albeit with a grimace---the Lamarckian idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics, and many others), since the logical conclusion from the Lamarckian idea of the direct adaptive group variation of the organism, in reply to one and the same influence of external surroundings, is the uselessness and impotence of selection, as a factor in the formation of species---i.e., the negation of Darwinism.

A striking example of the helplessness with which the most outstanding representatives of bourgeois science 4 hesitate between the mechanistic ``reduction'' of biological processes to physical, on the one hand, and recognition of the absolute autonomy of the biological, on the other, is the position of Professor Muller ("The Method of Evolution"). Having first proved with irreproachable lucidity the fact of dependence of germ plasm on the action of the Rontgen ray--- i.e., on physical influences of the external surroundings---so strongly denied until recently by the majority of geneticists ---and takmg his stand in general upon correct Darwinist positions, Muller nevertheless returns, albeit with many reservations, to the at bottom mechanistic proposition to consider the process: of variation as the direct result of the influence of Rontgen rays upon the germ plasm. Thus he reduces the problem of the modification of the gene, as a biological factor of heredity, to the physical moment of the expulsion of an electron from the biological molecule, forgetting thereby the profound qualitative peculiarity of the biological process compared with physical phenomena.

The final outcome of this crisis through which the theory of evolution is passing in the countries of capitalism is the attempts completely to deny the very fact of evolution, or to consider the theory as one of the possible "hypotheses," circulating side by side with the Biblical legend of the creation of the world in six days' labour, or finally the position of frank agnosticism and disillusionment as to the possibility of solving the problem of evolution at the present level of scientific knowledge (Johansen, Batson, and, in the U.S.S.R., Filipchenko).

From the socio-historical standpoint, these schools of thought are the result and reflection in the consciousness of the bourgeois scientist of the internal social-economic contradictions which have gripped the countries of capitalism, and express the impossibility of the further normal development of natural science, as of all sciences, in the framework of the capitalist system.

From the methodological standpoint, these positions are the result of the contempt displayed up to the present by naturalists, carried away by the empirical successes of their sciences and the growth of their technical application, for the tasks of the philosophic methodological review and mastery of the facts and conclusions studied in their branch of science. To the extent that individual scientists make attempts at such philosophical generalisations, the positions set forth above reflect their inability, in virtue of the class limitations upon their general train of thought, to adopt the only correct philosophic positions of dialectical materialism.

`` Naturalists imagine that they are emancipating themselves from philosophy when they ignore or abuse it. But 5 as they cannot stir a step without thought, while for thought logical definitions are necessary; and these definitions they incautiously borrow either from the current theoretical property of so-called educated people, who are dominated by the remnants of long-passed-away philosophic systems, or else from their uncritical and unsystematic reading of all kinds of philosophical works: in the long run they prove after all to be prisoners to philosophy, but, unfortunately, for the most part philosophy of the very worst quality. And so people who are particularly vehement in abusing philosophy become the slaves of the worst vulgarised relics of the worst philosophical systems." (F. Engels: "Dialectics of Nature," p. 25.)

There exists also the firm but incorrect impression that the task of science in general is at all costs to reduce the more complex phenomena to the more simple, and that consequently the successes of the biological sciences are possible only in the shape of the reduction of the phenomena of life to more simple physical rules, while the social sciences can build their laws only by relying upon the achievements of biology. In reality we see that, for example, the facts of heredity, which seemed relatively simple in the days of Darwin---when they were treated of in the Lamarckian, man-in-the-street sense of the transmission by heredity of acquired characteristics, an interpretation very attractive by its apparent simplicity---have received their true explanation to-day only in the very complicated formulae of Mendelism and Morganism. Many remarkable physical phenomena were first discovered by biologists, and many laws of their effect upon the living organism were established before their physical nature became known (X-rays, phenomena of animal electricity, etc.). The fundamental laws of development of human society, which make it possible in our time for the population of one-sixth of the globe successfully to surmount difficulties of what would seem an unequal struggle, were discovered by Marx and Engels 20 years before Darwin formulated the fundamental laws of organic evolution.

All this shows that the true task of scientific research is not the violent identification of the biological and the physical, but the ability to discover the qualitatively specific controlling principles which characterise the principal features of every given phenomenon, and to find methods of research appropriate to the phenomenon studied. This is why if, within the framework of the same physical sciences, we learned to understand that water by no means represents a simple mechanical mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, but constitutes a new quality in the physical and chemical properties of water, all the more do the phenomena of life represent a complex material system, requiring for its study special methods of bio^physiological and bio-historical research. These laws, as for example, the law of natural selection, or the physiological laws operating within an organism, are in some sense no more and no less simple or complex than the physical 6 laws conditioning the movement of the planetary system, or the movement of electrons around the atomic nucleus.

The fundamental consideration to be borne in mind in this problem is the impossibility of a simple, crude identification of these two categories of phenomena^ and the futility of attempts to reduce biological laws to physical, just like the attempts of the vitalists to comprehend the phenomena of the world from the standpoint of the universal animation of matter.

Asserting the reality of the world existing objectively outside ourselves, dialectical materialism starts from the conviction, justified by all the practice of human activity, that our consciousness reflects not only the objective reality of the facts directly perceived by our organs of sensation, but also the constant order of the relations connecting these facts one with another: the fact and its ordered relations with the other surrounding facts are considered by dialectics in their indissoluble unity and entirety. This obliges us to accept not only the facts of similarity and unity of structure of organisms, but also that sole possible and rational explanation of these facts which lies in the recognition of the unity of their origin and in the historical law of development, which interconnects all phenomena in nature with one another. Hence for us evolution is just as unquestionable a fact as the facts directly perceived by us, of the existence of the ape and man separately from each other.

Establishing the fact of development, variation, motion as the basic qualities of matter, and the unity of the fundamental laws of dialectics, binding on all forms of motion of matter (the law of the unity of opposites, the law of negation of the negation, and the law of the passing of quantity into quality and vice versa), materialist dialectics at the same time emphasizes with all its force the extreme multiformity and the specific qualitative distinctions of the various forms of motion of matter, and the laws characteristic of the different stages of development of matter: and consequently the necessity of the existence of special independent sciences studying these different forms of motion.

In this respect the dialectical conception of universal development---proved by Hegel and materialistically refashioned by Marx, Engels, and Lenin---covers the Darwinian theory of organic evolution, which is the concrete expression of the dialectical process applied to the biological form of motion of matter, and at the same time makes it possible to overcome a number of methodological errors and contradictions on these questions accumulated within the limits of bourgeois natural science.

Precisely from this point of view, biological phenomena, historically connected with physical phenomena in 7 inorganic nature, are none the less not only not reducible to physico-chemical or mechanical laws, but within their own limits as biological processes display varied and qualitatively distinct laws. Thereby biological laws do not in the least lose their material quality and cognisability, requiring only in each case methods of research appropriate to the phenomena studied.

The necessary consequence of the above is a conclusion as to the dialectical development of matter by leaps, bound up with qualitative revolutionary changes as a result of the accumulation of quantitative changes, and the idea of the relative autonomy of the biological process, advancing not only in circumstances of interaction with the physical conditions of its surroundings, but also as a result of the development of the internal contradictions latent in the biological system itself. By this means are overcome the over-simplified mechanistic attempts to conceive of the biological process of development as the result of only the physical influences of external surroundings, or of similar physical and physicochemical processes inside the organism itself or its genes, by which means, it is alleged, it is possible to explain the most complex and qualitatively peculiar phenomena of mutatory variation, and thereby the whole process of formation of species. At the same time this standpoint also overcomes the metaphysical opposition of the biological to the physical, as an absolutely autonomous and independent principle, to the extent that this biological is considered in its indissoluble historical connection with physical phenomena (as a higher form of motion, originating out of lower inorganic forms of motion of matter), and also its dynamic connection (metabolism).

At the same time dialectical methodology by no means eliminates the role of the external and physical in the process of organic evolution, requiring only a sharp definition of these conceptions in each case, and the recognition of the multiformity of all those forms of connection which exist between organisms and their external surroundings, between the `` biological'' and the "physical." Thus the physical constitutes the necessary condition in the framework of which the biological process takes place, but at the same time it enters as a necessary aspect into the biological process as such. Furthermore, it may be the direct stimulus of mutatory variations in the germ plasm, thus simultaneously being both external and internal in relation to the "~biological." Finally, it may serve as the controlling factor which, in the process of natural selection, determines the very course of the evolutionary process, and therefore acts as the creator of biological forms. In this way the ``external'' is composed not only of the physical conditions of the external surroundings, but also of the biological 8 encirclement by a milieu of other organisms, and also---in the case of the evolution of man---the social-economic relations prevailing within human society.

Differentiating the conception of the biological as an expression of ontogenetic development, on the one hand, and phylogenetic development on the other, materialist dialectics considers phylogenesis as a particular, most complex form of interaction of the ``biological'' and ``physical'' (the organism and its surroundings) and of the biological with itself (the biological relationship of organisms). In this conception there are "eliminated," as it were, or retire into the background, both the purely physical laws of the external surroundings, and the "~biophysiological" laws of individual development, qualitatively submitting to the new specific laws of historical biology.

Only in virtue of these new relations, regulated by the Darwinian law of the struggle for life and natural selection, do individual inherited variations acquire the force of a factor in the formation of species, and can the most complex phenomena of biological adaptation (such as protective colouring, mimicry, care for the progeny and the other instincts, parasitism, symbiosis, etc.), receive their rational materialist explanation.

At the same time there finally collapse the equally barren attempts to embrace all the complexity and multiformity of the world through a single mathematical formula of the mechanical movement of molecules, or through the vitalistic idea of a single "principle of perfection," in effect representing an attempt to know and explain the world through the inexplicable and the unknowable.

One of the forms of consciously or unconsciously accepted mechanistic views on the nature of things is the attempts mechanistically to transfer biological laws to the sphere of social and historical relations, in which once again is forgotten the fundamental dialectical law of the qualitative peculiarity of the laws appropriate to every form of motion of matter. These attempts, in the shape of so-called " social Darwinism," strive to find in the biological law of the struggle for existence a justification for capitalist competition, racial and class inequality, and war as a factor of " selection." While they reveal with peculiar vividness the class limitations of scientific theory, and the role of the bourgeois scientist as the ideologue reflecting the interests of his class, at the same time these theories suffer from the basic methodological defect of failing to understand all the specific conditions, in the shape of social-economic productive relations, which condition the laws of the social-historic process, allotting to biological factors a remotely subordinate importance.

9

At the same time, even remaining within the framework of biological factors and laws, we cannot but remark the patently arbitrary interpretation of biological facts on the part of bourgeois eugenists, who attempt to consider the social inequality of men as the direct result of biological inequality in their inherited characters. Since, apart from the relativity and class content of the very conception of a ``better'' and ``worse'' genetic fund, it is precisely the biologically established facts of the persistence and resisting capacity of hereditary characteristics, in relation to the influences of external surroundings, and not the Lamarckian point of view, which necessarily explain the fact, confirmed by the objective course of history, that, notwithstanding unfavourable external conditions---agelong underfeeding, unemployment and other privations connected with poverty---in the ranks of the working class there grow up ever new fighters for a better future for humanity, while the country building Socialism has at once found its own military leaders, its builders of national economy, science and technique, who have been able to provide the best examples of planned work and organisation of national life.

It is quite normal that the industrial bourgeois class, progressive in its day, saw in the consciously formulated positions of materialist radicalism a theoretical support for its struggle against the influence of the Church and the religious-idealistic ideology which served as a support for the conservative forces of feudalism. That is why the materialist nucleus of the Darwinian theory was at first received with approval by the ideologues of the bourgeoisie, as a scientific proof and justification of the principles of free capitalist competition. And it is just as normal that, in the measure of the growth of economic contradictions, we observe in presentday scientific literature of the bourgeois West more and more frequent attempts to revise Darwinism, and to return to patently idealistic and mystical conceptions---up to and including the open persecution of evolution (the monkey trial in America), and the quest in the embraces of the Church and the Bible for the reply to problems of the universe and for the revival of waning faith in the stability of the capitalist system.

All these facts prove the socio-historical and class determinateness of scientific theories.

Reflecting the state of the material forces of production and the socio-economic relations of the particular historical epoch, scientific theories express not only the actual state and level of knowledge attained by science, but also the ideological justification of the economic interests of warring groups and classes. At the same time they represent a guide 10 to action in the hands of the social groups sharing the theory concerned. That is why the proletariat, fighting for the social reconstruction of the whole world and laying the foundations of a new society and a new culture, is faced with the task of critically reviewing the whole of the heritage received by us from bourgeois science, and of overcoming the theoretical structures which, while not following from the true correlation of things, at the same time expose the class features and purposefulness of the social formations which created that science in the past. The necessity of this is dictated not only by the common interest in cognition of the truth of the world surrounding us, but also by the immediate interests of the struggle of the working class for its emancipation from the economic yoke and ideological influence of hostile classes, in the countries of capitalism, and by the practical problems of Socialist construction in all spheres of national economy in the U.S.S.R., organised by the proletariat on the foundations of the scientific study of the laws of development of nature and human society. Herein lies the cause of the profound interest in and attention to scientific theory, to scientific theoretical research, and to history of sciences, which are displayed in the Soviet Union.

The correct definition of the relationship of the biological and physical sciences, and in particular the relationship of the "~physical" and "~biological" in the biological process---on the one hand of individual development, and on the other of the formation of species and production of new breeds of domestic animals and cultivated plants---becomes of vast significance in the planned solution of the problems of largescale Socialist agriculture and cattle breeding. These necessitate the overcoming both of the mechanistic and Lamarckian conceptions, widely held among the majority of practical cattle breeders, which seek a solution of the whole problem in artificial physical influence on the organism: and of the autogenetic enthusiasm of the geneticists,, who think that the tasks of the Socialist Five Year Plan are covered by the application of the methods of modern genetics and selection, ignoring the role and importance of the rest of man's system of social measures based on the influence of the external physical surroundings on the development of the phenotype and the possible emergence of new inherited variatitons.

Finally, these theoretical conclusions are_ of no less importance in solving the practical problems arising out of the reorganisation of the whole system of pedagogy, and of the scientific reconstruction of physical culture, sanitation and hygiene of the human body, which also require for their adequate solution on each occasion theory tested by fact and methodically thought out, and relying inter alia also upon a 11 correct definition of the relationship of the physical, biological and socio-historical sciences.

Affirming the unity of the universe and the qualitative multiformity of its expression in different forms of motion of matter, it is necessary to renounce both simplified identification and reduction of some sciences to others, as the supporters of the mechanistic and positivist currents in the sphere of natural science strive to do, and sharp demarcation and drawing of absolute watersheds between the physical, biological and socio-historical sciences---which frequently take the form of admitting the existence of the causal determinateness of phenomena only in the sphere of physical science, while proposing to seek in biological science for teleological solutions, and in the sphere of socio-historical phenomena completely abandoning the search for any order and explanation of the course of historical processes at all.

Since the concrete reality of the phenomena we study is in unity and complex interaction with the whole totality of surrounding phenomena, every exhaustive and worth-while piece of research requires the consideration and drawing in of all contiguous branches of science and the particular methods of research which they represent, and at the same time the subordination of all the sciences to the single gnoseology and methodology of dialectical materialism.

The numerous attempts to revise the conceptions of mechanical materialism---unsatisfactory to the modern naturalist, but the sole conceptions with which he was familiar---without falling into the embraces of vitalism, are condemned beforehand to failure so long as the naturalist remains within the bounds of a methodology based on formal logic and of metaphysical searches for the essence of things, as isolated absolutes, irrespective of their connection and interaction with surrounding phenomena, and without taking into account those variations, that motion, which characterises the dialectical development of the whole world.

At the same time these searches bear witness to the fact that modern natural science is undergoing a profound crisis, hindering its further normal development, and that the general level of knowledge attained is ripe for the conscious application of the dialectical method.

All the more is it a matter for regret that the modern naturalist, when studying problems of philosophy and the history of natural science, remains unaware that these problems of overcoming, on the one hand, the most reactionary idealistic and vitalistic currents of thoughts, and on the other the oversimplified mechanistic positions of vulgar materialism, were not only formulated but solved in their basic and characteristic principles more than seventy years ago, in the classic works of the founders of the philosophy of dialectical materialism, Marx and Engels, and in our own times in the profound works of Lenin.

12

DYNAMIC AND STATISTICAL
REGULARITY IN PHYSICS
AND BIOLOGY.
By E. COLMAN.

[-2] ~ [-1]

DYNAMIC AND STATISTICAL REGULARITY IN PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY.
By Prof. E, COLMAN.^^2^^

I _____

The problem of the character of regularity plays a decisive part in the history of philosophy, of the natural and social sciences. And even though dynamic and statistic regularity exhaust all varieties of laws in the material world and in the consciousness that pictures it (since these are dialectical laws) as little as causality exhausts all types of relations, though the entire problem is closely connected with other questions of main philosophical categories, such as necessity and freedom, causality and chance, continuity and discontinuity, etc. in their application to physics and biology, nevertheless the problem itself does form a certain whole and is sufficiently in the centre of daily interests to serve as the theme for a separate discussion.

Without an understanding of regularity from the standpoint of dialectical materialism, physics and biology cannot steer a way through the Scylla of mechanistic fatalism and the Charybdis of indeterminism. But special importance attaches to the question, because as the crisis in capitalism develops, bourgeois world science grows more reactionary, making irresistibly towards unconcealed fideism.

If, twenty years ago, bourgeois philosophers, despite the spontaneous materialism of the majority of physicists, saw in radio-active disintegration of matter a proof of the disappearance of matter, and if, further, the theory of relativity has been taken as affirmative evidence of philosophical relativism, subjectivism, the bourgeois physicists of to-day, resting their arguments upon the quanta theory, declare that causality has been overthrown and solemnly place upon the throne thus vacated the causa finalis of Aristotles. From the multitude of recent instances we shall select a few : in his article Die Kausalitdt in der gegenwartigen Physik, published in the February number of Die Naturivissen schaften, M. Schlick regrets his earlier errors. He admits that he made all too great concessions to materialism and adopts the viewpoint that past and future cannot be differentiated, that natural phenomena are undertermined and indeterminable, denying causality and determinism.

In his address, published in the January number of Nature under the title Present Status of Theory and Experiment as to Atomic Desintigration and Atomic Synthesis, R. A. Millikan drew a comparison between three stages of theological thought _-_-_

^^*^^ The biological material was supplied by Professor A. M. Krinitzky, Vice-Director of the State Institute of Micro-Biology (Moscow).

1 on the relation between God and the World : first, the conception resting- upon the second principle of thermo-dynamics, of a God that was necessary to wind up the slowing down world mechanism; second, the theory based upon the Darwinian theory of evolution, of the identity of God with the world, which it is claimed, represents the philosophical attitude of most great scientists from Leonardo da Vinci to Newton and Einstein, and finally, the return to the medieval theistic theology of an unbroken act of creation, with which Millikan expresses a certain sympathy in the following words : "~This has been speculatively suggested many times before, in order to allow the creator to be continually on his job. Here is, perhaps, a little bit of experimental fingerpointing in that direction," and which, it is alleged, finds support in the discovery of cosmic rays.

A. S. Eddington, in The End of the World from the Stand' point of mathematical Physics (in the March issue of Nature, takes up the position that the world is spatially finite, has a beginning in time and is developing towards a greater and greater lack of organisation. To us Marxist-Leninists it is obvious that this physical theory merely reflects the general tendency in bourgeois ideology, which interprets the approaching and inevitable end of the capitalist system as the approach of anarchy. Nevertheless, viewed even from the theological, reactionary aspect, such a theory can offer little to the investigator. From the data adduced by Eddington himself:---An original world radius of 1,200 million light-years, a world radius to-day ten times as great, and the fact that the world radius doubles every 1,500 million years, it can be calculated, without much difficulty, that God created the world about 5 milliard years ago. This, it is true, indicates some error in the Bible, but it also contradicts the period of billions of years, accepted by Eddington himself elsewhere, that is necessary for the origin of stars and chemical elements.

In times of crisis the ideological pressure of the ruling class upon scientific creation is exerted more powerfully than at any other time.

In the social sciences the determination of the character of laws, their cognitive power---the scope of their content and their ability to serve scientific predictions---and their limits, is as important as it is in the natural sciences. In the Soviet Union, where the foundations of Socialist economy are nearing completion, where, consequently, the basis for free play of market forces is continually growing narrower, being thrust aside and replaced by socialist planning, questions relating to the validity of statistical methods, to the reliability of predictions, to methods of planning as a whole, are extremely acute and cannot be answered in the absence of a sure methodological basis. The problem of planning, of subjecting elemental forces to planned 2 direction, is the vital point both of the theory and the practice I

of economy and policy.

How is the problem of dynamic and statistical regularity raised and solved by contemporary philosophical tendencies in the natural sciences? The two extremes are represented by mechanism, which in truth only recognises the rule of dynamic laws interpreting them in a narrowly mechanical fashion as the

t

spatial translation of particles without quality, and by

{

indeterminism, which disguises its denial of necessity and con-

r

ditionality by recognising only statistical laws, alleged to be the

]

expression of free, undetermined chance.

;

The mechanistic conception of regularity that is characteristic

:

of the metaphysical period of the natural sciences in the igth

j

century, was formulated most clearly by H. Helmholtz in the

?

following words, taken from his Innsbruck address in 1869 Ueber

•<

das Ziel und die Fortschritte der Naturwissenschaft : "If, how-

I

ever, movement is the primary change underlying all other

'.

changes in the world, all elemental forces are forces of move-

s

ment and the aim of the natural sciences is to find the movements

underlying all other changes and to find their motive power, that

is, to resolve them into mechanics.''

For our purpose to-day, we are less interested in the unscientific identification of movements with mechanical space displacement than in another no less significant methodological error committed by Helmholtz : he does not understand the difference between the general and the particular. Engels, who understood quite as well as Helmholtz that every movement is connected in one way or another with mechanical movement but who, unlike Helmholtz, was a dialectician, did not propose to investigate the general, the average and the indifferent but, on the contrary, the particular feature in which one kind of movement differs from another. We would add that the inability to recognise the particular is closely connected with the mechanistic dismemberment of matter into identical atoms without quality and that the assertion that dynamic laws are alone objective necessarily implies that statistical regularity is recognised as being valid only subjectively (in nature it is alleged not to exist, it merely reflects our ignorance).

In biology the same methodological error underlies the mechanistic conception as in physics : a false understanding of the relations between the general, particular and individual that, in its turn, can be explained by the theory of knowledge which, subjective in its nature, denies the objectivity of quality to the individuals treated by biology, reducing them to physical-chemical processes and finally to mechanical movement. This subjectivism may possess a rationalist character, when the particular is deduced from the general, given a priori, or it may be of an 3 empirical character, when the general itself is regarded as a subjective category and is built up of individual parts. Thus the connection between the general and the particular is reduced to one of quantity only. The univocacy of natural phenomena is a necessary premiss to this, for only on this condition can dynamic regularity be applied, and mathematical apparatus be brought into play, without further ado, upon all the complicated processes and forms of the organic world.

The attempts that have been made to mathematicise biology are extremely characteristic, for their inadequacy, their inability to comprehend the multiplicity and diversity of the subject, is at times clearly apparent, particularly in concrete matters. We would take as an example the work of Ronald Ross : The Prevention of Malaria, in which a complete system of equations has been elaborated to portray the dynamics of malaria epidemics although the author is finally compelled to admit that it contributes but little to the elucidation of the actual conditions. Miihlens, the German investigator of malaria, is quite right in remarking that the extent and the severity of malaria epidemics are not dependent simply upon the number of flies and parasite-carriers, but also upon numerous other factors, including not only general, hereditary, climatic and seasonal conditions, but also the individual disposition of flies and human beings etc. Ross' purely quantitative calculations cannot, however, reflect all these qualities.

Still more significant is the attempt to portray biological laws of the relations between organic species living together, of conditions of hereditary transmission, in differential equations, an attempt made by Volterra in which he formulates three main mathematical laws of the fluctuations of species living together : (i) The law of the periodic cycle; (2) the law of the conservation of the average; (3) the law of the perturbation of the average. Volterra himself realises that mathematical treatment implies a detachment from reality, that it is unable to present even an approximate picture, that it is a crude schematisation, isolating processes from their actual context. For example, two factors only are taken into account, the power of reproduction and the rapacity of species living together. None of these equations do much towards assisting the investigation of reality. If we compare Volterra's mathematical theory of the struggle for existence with the biological treatment accorded this problem by Darwin in his Origin of Species, the superiority of the latter admits of no doubt.

Finally we would refer to Faure" Fremiet's work: La cinetique du developpment. He attempted to treat the laws of the growth of organic being on the basis of the differential equation and gives a brief formulation of his attitude in the following words: "~L'ontogonese peut Stre definie par les variations, en fonctions du temps, de deux characteYistiques, qu« 4 t • (i) La masse du substance constituant un systeme organise^^1^^; (2) le degre de he`teYogenite' et la complexite physicochimique'de ce systeme.''

The main defect in all these attempts is that they leave out of account the specific peculiarities of the given process, the given concrete, complex phenomenon (malaria, biocoenose, heredity), that the particular which characterises these laws and these alone, is ignored. The infinitely involved universal connection which characterises the objective reality in the given concrete form is simplified, coarsened and obliterated, is reduced to a narrow causality partially grasped, representing only a small part of the world in all its intricacy.

The diametrically opposed standpoint adopted in the critical situation prevailing in the natural sciences to-day, is expressed most clearly in that version of the so-called principle of indeterminacy given by its author Heisenberg, and his numerous adherents. This principle of indeterminacy is translated from the mathematical into human language in the following way: in principle it is impossible to determine with equal accuracy both the position and the speed of an electron. The more exact our measurement of one of these magnitudes, the less exact is the other; this is not a result of imperfections in our instruments; indeed, the contrary is true---that the process of measurement itself exercises an influence upon the position and the speed of the electron, and the more exact the measuremnt is, the greater the influence. Thence it follows that if we know the original state of the electron (position and speed), we cannot determine its state within any given time, from which Heisenberg draws the following conclusion (see Zeitschrift fiir Physik No. 43, 1927) :

`` Since all experiments are subject to the laws of quanta mechanics, the invalidity of the law of causality is definitely established by quanta-mechanics." It is clear, in this instance, that the methodological root of the error lies in the undialectical conception of the relation between the general and the particular. Heisenberg, and quanta mechanics as a whole, correctly emphasise the existence of mutual inter-action in any actual process, but cannot by themselves tackle the problem it raises. Marx, who dealt with the question of the mutual inter-action of the laws of capitalist production wrote in Capital (vol. III. Chap. X.) :

`` It is evident that the essential fundamental laws of production cannot be explained by the inter-action of supply and demand (quite aside from a deeper analysis of these two motive forces of social production which would be out of place here). For these laws cannot be observed in their pure state, until the effects of supply and demand are suspended, are balanced. As a matter of fact supply and demand never balance, or if they do, it is by mere accident, it is scientifically rated at zero, it is considered as not happening. But political economy assumes 5 that supply and demand balance one another. Why? For no other reason, primarily, than to be able to study phenomena in their fundamental relations, in that elementary form which corresponds to their conception, that is to say, to study them unhampered by the disturbing interference of demand and supply." In eliminating the variations of demand and supply, Marx engages in a process of abstraction, but this abstraction retains the essential features of capitalism, the laws which characterise it and it alone, while an "~abstraction~" of the law of surplus value which retained supply and demand would divest the given form of production of its specificum, would resolve the particular in the general and lead to that "~inadequacy and sterility of the pure concept of inter-action~" of which Lenin speaks in commenting upon Hegel and demanding "~intermediation (connection) in the application of the principles of causation.''

The so-called mathematical pendulum is an abstraction, distinguished from a real physical pendulum in that an abstraction is made of the mass of threads and the entire mass of the swinging body is considered as concentrated upon one point. Then it is not difficult to represent the law of oscillation of such a pendulum in empty space by a typical dynamic law. Given the length of the pendulum as I, the gravitation acceleration as g and the initial amplitude as « the corresponding amplitude a can be calculated for any time t with the required accuracy. Quanta mechanics maintains, as against this, that the smaller the content in which the mass of the swinging body is concentrated, the nearer we approach to molecular, atomic, electronic dimensions, the clearer becomes the statistical character of the laws, the law of Brown's movement, that is, of the heat movement of the molecules of any given body, which runs: the average of the squares of the deflections x of each particle from its initial position is directly proportional to the product of the average of its cinetic energy E x the time t for which this average is ascertained. Consequently, conclude Heisenberg, Schlick and others, we are not in the least entitled to make the abstractions that lead to this dynamic law. Here it is quite clear that they fail to understand the general and the particular. The statistical laws of Brown's movement, to which, in the given case, quanta mechanics refers, are equally valid for the movement of any body and are therefore able to tell us as little of the movement of a pendulum as the law of supply and demand tells us of the actual essential laws of the capitalist mode of production. In biology, as in physics, indeterminism is characterised by a failure to understand the relation between the general and the particular. The particular, the individual, the qualitative specificum, its uniqueness and irrepeatability is emphasised and the general is transformed into an illusion or at best portrayed as subjective. Such a methodological attitude leads to the denial of general laws, or else these laws are degraded to something 6 subjective, relative, the product of logic. Organic processes are regarded as spontaneously originating in themselves and one of the arguments adduced in proof thereof is the periodicity of the appearance of life. Indeterminism in its most varied forms replaces causation, and we reach Verworn's conditionalism, not far removed from Machism, which replaces the explanation, the discovery of the nature of a process by a description of its conditions, its causal connections, by functional relations.

Vitalism comes into the same category, for it too denies causation in favour of teleology, or at least places limits upon it. Thus, for example, Driesch writes in the Biologisches Zentralbratt, 1927 : "~In the inorganic sphere we can make predictions if the instantaneous constellation, instantaneous velocity and fundamental law are fully known; we cannot do this in biology." Indeterminism in present day physics has exerted a powerful influence upon biology; this is shown very clearly in Bertalanffy's articles which put forward finality and teleology as against causality and the law of the conservation of energy. It is significant that both indeterminism, which denies prediction, and fatalism which in principle does not exclude it, though in fact depriving it of any significance since, by that theory, the course of events is absolutely determined beforehand and cannot be changed, are closely allied from the point of view of the theory of knowledge. Thus, for example, Eimer's orthogenesis and Berg's nomogenesis, permit predictions of further developments, which does not, however, deprive either of its vitalist character. On the other hand emergent evolution, the Gestalt theory etc. which have a vitalist character, maintain that evolution is quite unpredictable, indecomposable and cannot be traced back to its origin. Thus absolute necessity falls into line with absolute chance.

In biology, the greatest interest, from the methodological point of view, attaches to that variety of indeterminism, expressed in the form of statistiscal regularity, which dates back to the time of Que`te'let, who laid the foundations for statistics of variation. In the works of Que`te'let, as of Dalton, and particularly of the biometrical school of Pearson which has given mathematical form to these laws, statistical regularity means nothing but the admission that dynamic laws and, in particular, their chief factor, conditionality, do not suffice, that is, the factor of chance is recognised. It should be pointed out, however, that statistical laws, which were worked out in reaction against the mechanistic character of dynamic regularity, against the denial of quality, do themselves to a certain extent repeat the same mechanistic error : soon everything became a matter of quantity, of the average, of the purely formal enumeration of external circumstances, while the inner connections and the structure of processes were ignored and often distorted, as, for example, in Galton's famous laws.

7

The solution of the problem lies in the synthesis of both forms of regularity, each of which is merely a factor of the other: in reality the two exist in an internally contradictory unity, inherent in each process, each movement of matter; it is precisely their inter-penetration and struggle that embody the immanent development of matter; the mathematical expression of these laws is not adequate to reality; hence it follows that the knowledge which is based only on dynamic, or alternatively only on statistical regularity, is certain to be incomplete, one-sided, approximate and if it claims to comprehend the whole of reality, it will also be unscientific. That is why Marx, who discovered the essential laws of capitalist production, and in doing so abstracted supply and demand, declared that these laws "~only operate in an extremely intricate and approximate fashion, as the average, impossible to determine accurately, of eternal fluctuations, as the prevailing tendency." (Capital. Vol. III. Chapter 9). The natural sciences to-day, convulsed by the problem of reconciling the corpuscular and the wave theory of light and matter, of reconciling continuity and discontinuity, can find a way out of this blind alley only with the aid of materialist dialectics, with its conception of every law as a unity of the inter-penetration and struggle of contradictions.

The protracted and painful labour through which the natural sciences to-day are giving birth to dialectical materialism strengthens our conviction that without' the midwife of history, the revolution, the matter will not proceed, that it is only the new generation of proletarian investigators of nature, liberated from the ideological slavery of capitalism, that will finally destroy the old traditions of metaphysical methodology that now hamper science; for the essential reason that prevents the bourgeois investigator of nature, the spontaneous materialist, from recognising dialectics and which, even in the period of capitalist decline, urges him towards idealism, is his close association with the ruling class and their ideology.

Between the two extremes of bourgeois philosophy concerning the character of natural laws, between mechanism and indeterminism, there lies a vast field of dualistic and eclectic intermediate tendencies. The most typical is represented by the Machists, among them Mises, who proceed from the principle that while dynamic laws govern the individual elements forming a manifold, statistical laws govern the manifold as a whole. This they regard as the objective treatment of statistical laws, frequently expressing their outlook in the following way : statistical law is the law of the microcosm, dynamical law the law of the macrocosm. But there is no whole which cannot itself be a part, not any part that cannot be represented as a whole manifold ; our earth is a macrocosm in comparison with the molecules of which it is composed, but a microcosm, in comparison with the stellar system of the Milky 8 Way. Thus the objective in the definition of the character of regularity is lost, and everything depends upon how we regard the given object. On the other hand, this definition is metaphysical, for dynamic and statistical laws are represented as existing apart from each other. Hence it follows that the eclectics' struggle against the mechanistic conception of statistical regularity as a provisional substitute for our ignorance (since finally the law of the whole is recognised to be merely the sum of individual laws), is conducted from a formalist standpoint. While conceding to the mechanists that the relation between statistical and dynamical regularity is the same as the relation between the law of the whole and the law of the parts, they exclaim against the attempts of the mechanists to reduce the laws of the whole to the laws of the parts. Eclectics draw a distinction between additive and non-additive properties, and maintain that it is the non-additive properties, which are not peculiar to each separate element of the manifold, but attach to it as such, that are portrayed by statistical laws; for this reason the statistical laws of the whole cannot be ascertained by the quantitive summing up of the laws of single events. This argument, however, does not achieve its purpose. Mechanists may dissociate themselves completely from an identification of the laws of the whole with the simple sum of the laws of the individual parts---they are still at their former position, in which they maintain that quality, can be reduced to quantity.

Actually, what meaning is there in the assertion that, for example, the statistical laws of the state of gas as a whole, cannot be reduced to the multiplicity of the dynamic laws of its molecules? This is a case of a non-additive manifold: all molecules are in process of inter-action, such properties of the whole as temperature, pressure and volume cannot be developed as the simple sum of the properties of separate molecules. But does that mean that it is altogether impossible to develop the laws of the whole on the basis of the dynamical laws of movement of the individual parts ? The question itself engenders agnosticism. In fact, the process of inter-action exists; connections between the particles are formed; why then should our knowledge fail to follow the process of origin? Perhaps because we cannot tackle the matter mathematically? That is the answer given by the mechanists : if we could solve the differential equations of the movement of the individual parts, we should thereby comprehend the movement of the whole and consequently, in principle, the laws of the whole can be reduced to the laws of the parts. Not at all! We can adduce example in which, in the case of the simplest mechanical movement, we are able to resolve the system of the differential equations of a non-additive manifold. But what does that give us? The knowledge of the behaviour of each individual particle, but that still does not tell us anything of the behaviour of the mechanic manifold as a whole. 9 Futher, if we could indicate a way of ascertaining, from a knowledge of the laws of all the parts, the laws of the whole, we should still not be able to speak of reduction, for, first of all,, this would certainly introduce a new quality, and secondly it would be inconvertible : from the laws of the parts we would have ascertained full quantitative knowledge of the laws of the whole, but the contrary does not hold. Such a way is indicated by passing to the limit. The distribution of the characteristic magnitudes (position, speed, etc.), approaches, with exceeding over all limits, that distribution which can be ascertained as a statistical regularity by the calculation of probability. It is also to be expected, therefore, that dynamic laws are the laws of the particular, the laws of the quality which gives its general character to statistical regularity.

`` In Capital, Marx first analyses the simplest, most commonplace, fundamental relation of bourgeois economy, encountered a million times---the exchange of commodities. In this simple phenomenon (in this "~cell~" of bourgeois society) the analysis covers all contradictions (or the germs of all contradictions) in present-day society. Further on we are given the development (and growth and movement) of these contradictions and this society, of their individual parts, from beginning to end." In this way, according to Lenin, the dialectical method does not rest solely upon dynamic regularity (as the mechanists would have it), nor solely upon statistical regularity (as suggested by those who would solve the problem in a formalist-idealist fashion). The dialectical materialist will conduct his investigations, not with the object of replacing statistical by dynamical laws, but in order to comprehend the object in the internally-contradictory unity of its content and its form, of the particular and the general, of the accidental and the necessary, of the discrete and the continuous. Our course lies not in "~maintaining the old conception of necessity~" and "~forcing upon nature, in the form of a law, a logical construction contradicting both itself and reality," nor in "~declaring the chaotic realm of accident to be the sole law of living nature," (Engels, Naturdialektik) nor in making an eclectic choice, but "~in showing that the Darwinian theory represents in fact the correctness of the Hegelian conception of the essential connection between necessity and chance," in showing that "~the division of the single and the understanding of its opposing parts is the essence of dialectics," "~in examining the correctness of this aspect of the content of dialectics by a study of the history of science," in which we conceive of the "~identity of contradictions~" not only as "a sum of examples~" but as "the cognitive law (and the law of the objective world).''

Both in theory and practice the question of the limits of application of laws is of particular importance. Lenin's 10 contention that "~the conception of law is merely a stage in the human understanding of the unity and connection, the mutual dependence and uniformity of the world process," his statements that, particularly in present day physics, "~a struggle must be conducted against making the idea of law absolute and primitive, against giving it the character of a fetish,'' that, in phenomena, the law selects the calm and consequently, every law is partial, incomplete, approximate, all this refers both to dynamic and to statistical laws, for every example of the general is from another aspect an example of the individual. Everything depends upon the understanding how to determine in the given case and in the given circumstances, the limits of the general, upon avoiding a complete break with what form the essence of the phenomenon, and falling into empty abstraction. Such moderation can be acquired only by studying concrete conditions and their transformations, only by practice, of which Lenin said:---" Practice stands higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it possesses the distinction not only of general validity, but also of direct reality." In statistics, which is concerned with the laws of the general, the question of limits is often forgotten. In the writings of his youth : Who are the friends of the People; The development of Capitalism in Russia; A new Economic Movement in Peasant Life; Lenin pointed out to bourgeois statisticians, frequently and in detail, how little scientific value attaches to the general average, the fictitious average, how statistics becomes a game with figures when, for example, the farms of poor peasants are added to the farms possessed by peasants who employ wage labour and to the farms of the large landowners and the total is divided by the total number of farms, etc., etc. Stalin, in a speech delivered in April, 1929, developed this idea by applying it to conditions in the Soviet Union at that time, conditions which have already been completely changed. Dealing with the extent of the area sown, he said :---" The method of averages if not corrected by the data of the different districts, is not a scientific method. In the Development of Capitalism Lenin criticises the bourgeois economists who apply the method of averages without referring to the facts of the different districts under cultivation. If we consider the movement of the area sown, that is, if we consider the matter scientifically, we see that in some districts this area is steadily increasing, in others, often because of meteorological conditions, falling, although nothing points to a steady decrease in the area sown anywhere." Statistical laws lose their scientific value, if the essential aspect of the phenomenon is forgotten, if the particular is metaphysically denied instead of being dialectically handled.

The most important factor in the unity of dynamic and statistical regularity is the direction of the movement of the law which, whether manifested as a dynamic or a statistical law, is 11 in process of self-movement. In which direction do the internally contradictory tendencies develop? To follow the direction of the development of a law we have to consider not the process as a whole, for there the direction is expressed always as a negation of negation, but, as Engels pointed out in Anti-Diihring, we must study concretely this negation of negation.

Only by investigation in the different spheres of science conducted by dialectical materialists from this standpoint, shall we be able to work out the problem of the conditions in which the opposing factors of a law melt into each other without running the danger~" of playing a futile game with empty analogies, of falling into abstruse Hegelianism," against which Lenin uttered a warning. Each of the brilliant concrete examples of the negation of negation adduced by Marx, Engels and Lenin will form the backbone for researches into all the new material offered by the most recent developments in society and its ideology, including both physics and biology.

12

THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF
THE WORLD'S AGRICULTURE
IN THE LIGHT OF THE
LATEST INVESTIGATIONS.
By N. I. VAVILOV.

[-2] ~ [-1]

THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF THE
WORLD'S AGRICULTURE IN THE LIGHT
OF THE LATEST INVESTIGATIONS.

By Prof. N. I. VAVILOV.
Member of Academy of Sciences of USSR. President of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Where are the beginnings of agriculture to be sought? Were they independent in different regions, in different continents? How is the geographical localisation of primitive agriculture to be explained? Which plants were first brought into cultivation? Which animals were first domesticated, and where? Where shall we find the primary sources of cultivated plants? How are modern domesticated field animals and cultivated plants connected with their wild related types? How did the evolution of cultivated plants and animals proceed ? How are primary agricultural civilizations connected? Which implements were used by primitive agriculturists in different regions?

Viewed from the standpoint of concrete materialistic studies all these historical questions are very actual, and of great significance for modern agriculture. In contradistinction to past practice, the present-day investigator, faced with increasingly difficult economic conditions in the world, attempts to utilise the experience of the past in order to improve upon existing practice. In the Soviet Union, which is now building up socialism and socialistic agriculture, we are interested in the problem of the origin of agriculture, and of the origin of cultivated plants and animals chiefly from the dynamic viewpoint. By knowledge of the past, by studying the elements from which agriculture has developed, by collecting cultivated plants in the ancient centres of agriculture, we seek to master the historical process. We wish to know how to modify cultivated plants and domestic animals according to the requirements of the day. We are but slightly interested in the wheat and barley found in the graves of Pharaohs of the earliest dynasties. To us, constructive questions---problems which interest the engineer-are more urgent. It is much more important for us to know how Egyptian wheat differs from wheats of other countries, which characteristics in this Egyptian wheat are of importance in order to improve our wheat, to understand how this Egyptian wheat has originated. The investigator wishes to find the primary elements, "~the bricks and mortar," from which the modern species and varieties were created. We need this knowledge in order to possess the 1 initial material for practical plant and animal breeding. We study the construction of primitive agricultural implements in order to get indications for the construction of modern machinery.

In brief, the historical problems of this origin of agriculture, of the origin of cultivated plants and domesticated animals are especially interesting for us in the sense of mastering and controlling the breeding of cultivated plants and animals.

The results of these studies may be of interest to archaeologists, historians, naturalists, agronomists, geneticists, plant and animal breeders. Therefore we take the opportunity to-day at this International Congress devoted to the history of science and technology, to draw your attention to the chief results of investigations into this subject, which have been made recently in the Soviet Union.

In the course of our work on the practical questions connected with plant-breeding, we have approached some of the problems of the world history of agriculture included in this Congress programme.

The Institute of Plant Industry in Leningrad has recently been studying the cultivated plants of the whole world according to a definite programme. During the systematic study of a number of species it became evident that so far neither the botanist, nor the agronomist, nor the breeder has yet, with any degree ot completeness, approached the study of the world's resources even of the most important cultivated plants, whose centres of evolution, as investigations have shown, are located chiefly in ancient agricultural countries. Contemporary European and American horticulture and agriculture know only fragmentary details, derived from ancient centres of agriculture, of the initial diversity of cultivated plants.

We began to study systematically the cultivated plants of the world. Numerous special expeditions were sent to different parts of the globe, chiefly to ancient mountainous countries. They collected an enormous amount of material and new data about the primitive ways and technique of agriculture. The investigations embraced the countries of the Mediterranean, including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, the whole of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, Crete, Cyprus and Rhodes. In detail were investigated : Abyssinia, Eritrea, Persia, Afghanistan, Western China, agricultural Mongolia, Japan, Korea, Formosa, and to some extent India. The ancient agricultural regions of Transcaucasia and Turkestan were studied most closely. In the new world the investigations embraced the whole of Mexico (including Yucatan), Guatemala, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia and Chili.

These expeditions collected a great number of specimens of cultivated plants (hundreds of thousands), which have now been studied for several years at different experimental stations. The 2 099-1.jpg investigations elucidated the world's geographical distribution of species and varieties; they discovered many specimens so far unknown to botanists, breeders and agronomists, often having valuable "~practical qualities." They led even to the discovery of new species of cultivated plants. Thus In Peru and Bolivia our expeditions discovered twelve new species of potatoes, instead of the one known species (Solanum tuberosum). New species of wheat and thousands of new varieties of small grains and of other field and vegetable plants.

The most essential fact established by these investigations, one which is of great importance to the comprehension of the history of the world's agriculture, is the geographical localisation of the chief varieties of cultivated plants. This has been established by close observation. It has been proved possible to locate exactly the primary original centres of the most important cultivated plants, for instance, of wheat, barley, rice, maize, of many field and vegetable crops. This facilitated the acquiring of an enormous amount of basic material, hitherto unknown to botanists.

The fundamental centres of origin of cultivated plants, as was proved by these investigations, very frequently play the r61e of accumulators of an astonishing diversity of varieties. In small, primitive, agricultural Abyssinia alone, where the whole area under wheat is certainly no more than half a million hectares, we found more varieties than in all the other countries of the world taken together. The varieties of maize in Southern Mexico---the initial home of this plant---are extremely rich. The wild fruits in Transcaucasia---the chief home of many European fruit trees--- are astonishingly varied. Diversity of varieties, however, alone, does not always determine the primary centre of origin of the cultivated plant. It is necessary to study their wild and cultivated stocks, the history of the plant's migrations. We have elaborated methods of differential systemization and of botanical geography which allow us to determine exactly the initial home of single cultivated plants.*

As a result of the investigation of several hundreds of cultivated plants we succeeded in establishing the fundamental world centres of the chief cultivated plants. Some of these results are probably of general interest.

In general our investigations have led to the establishment on the earth of seven fundamental, independent centres of origin _-_-_

*N. I. Vavilov.---Studies on the Origin of Cultivated Plants. Bull, of Applied Botany, Vol. XVI No. 2. 1926.

N. I. Vavilov.---Regularities in the Geographical Distribution of Genes of Cultivated Plants. Ibid. Vol. XVII. 1927.

N. I. Vavilov.---Mexico and Central America, as a fundamental centre of the origin of cultivated plants of the New World. Ibid. 1931. N. I. Vavilov.---The Linnean Species as a system. Ibid. 1931.

3 of cultivated plants, which at the same time were the probable foci of the independent development of world agriculture.

For the majority of our present cultivated plants the chief continent is Asia. A great number of cultivated plants are of Asiatic origin. In Asia we distinguish three fundamental centres of species formation. First and foremost, South-Western Asia, including the interior of Asia Minor, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan and North-Western India. Here is the home of soft wheats, of rye, flax, alphalpha, Persian clover (Trifolium resupinatum), of many European fruit trees (apple, pear, Prunus divaricata, pomegranate, quince, sweet cherry), of grapes, of many vegetables.

It is not altogether by chance that Biblical history locates the primary paradise, the Garden of Eden, in this region. Even now it is possible to see forests of wild apples, pears, sweet cherries, quinces, covered with wild grape-vines---paradises in the full sense of the word, in Transcaucasia and in Northern Persia.

The second independent world centre in Asia is located in India proper, including the valley of the Ganges, the whole of Indostan peninsula, and the adjoining parts of Indochina and Siam. This is the original home of rice---the most important crop in the world---which is still the staple food of half of all mankind. Here it is still possible to observe rice in its primary stage as a wild plant, as a weed in the fields, and to follow its development into the primitive cultivated forms, which display an astonishing diversity. Here also is the home of many tropical cultivated plants, sugar cane, Asiatic cottons, tropical fruit trees (for instance, the mangoes).

The third Asiatic centre is located in Eastern and Central mountainous China. Central Asia, as we now know, beyond question, had no relation to primary agriculture, notwithstanding its immense territory. Neither Mongolia nor Western China, Tianshan, nor Siberia shows any traces of independent agriculture, Whether in regard to the diversity of crop plants, or to the technique of agriculture.^^*^^

Eastern Asia, on the contrary, the upper course and the valleys of the great/ rivers of China, Hun-ho and Yangtze-Kiang, have given birth to the great Chinese culture, and perhaps even to pre-Chinese agriculture. This is the home of many plants, such as the peculiar Chinese cabbages, the radish, and of many peculiar Chinese crops little known in Europe. This is the native country of Citrus plants, Unabi (Zizyphus), the persimmon, the peach, the Chinese plum (Prunus Simoni), the tea-shrub, the mulberry tree, of many tropical and especially sub-tropical plants.

_-_-_

*N. I. Vavilov.---The r61e of Central Asia in the origin of cultivated plants. Bull, of Appl. Botany, 1931.

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In this country the technique of agriculture is very peculiar. The soil is cultivated chiefly by hand labour, farm animals rarely being used. The intensive cultivation of truck crops is widely spread. Rain in China is brought by the monsoons. The chief agricultural regions are supplied with an adequate amount of moisture. As to Japan and Formosa, our investigations have shown that these countries have borrowed their crops and technique from China. The same may be said of the Philippines and of the Malayan islands, whose agriculture is chiefly borrowed from China.

In contradistinction to China and Japan, South Western Asia (the first centre) is characterized by an extensive use of farm animals---cattle, horses, camels, and mules. The diversity of agricultural implements is here especially noteworthy.

In Europe, primary agriculture is definitely confined to the South. The fourth world centre embraces the ancient countries adjoining the Mediterranean, including the Pyrennean, Appenine and Balkan peninsulas, the coastal region of Asia Minor, Egypt, and also the territory of modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and Palestine.

In spite of the great historical and cultural importance of the Mediterranean centre, which has given rise to the greatest civilizations of antiquity---the Egyptian, Etruscan, Aegean and the Ancient Hebrew---this centre, according to the investigation of its varietal diversity, includes but few autochtonically important crops. Ancient agriculture is here based on the olive, the carobtree (Ceratonia siliqua), the fig tree. The majority of field crops, such as wheat, barley, beans and peas, have obviously been borrowed from other centres. The varietal diversity of the crops is here considerably poorer than in the principal centres of the corresponding crops. Only a series of forage plants, such as Hedysarum coronarium, the forage lens, Ervum Ervilia, the forage vetches, Lathyrus deer, L. Gorgonia, Trifolium alexandrinum, have originated in the Mediterranean region.

Here the cultivated plants have undergone a careful selection promoted by the mild climate and the high level of culture of the population. The varieties of cereals, leguminous grain crops, flax, truck plants, are distinguished in the Mediterranean region by an extraordinary large size of fruits, seeds, bulbs, as well as by their fine quality, by comparison with the corresponding crops growing in regions distant from the Mediterranean.

The primeval agriculture of the Mediterranean is characterized by special types of implements for tilling as well as for harvesting such as the Roman furrow plough, the threshing board set with sharp stones, and the stone roller. China, India, and to a considerable extent, South-Western Asia, are not acquainted with these types of implements.

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